Glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought of Rainbow Six.
BTW, could you recommend your favorite Clancey book? Rainbow Six is actually the only Clancey book I've read--several years ago at the recommendation of a friend. It's not that it put me off his writing, it just didn't insight me to read more.
If you're going to use media sensationalism as an argument at least cite the West Memphis 3 or any case that has at least gone to trial. People, even those superhuman creatures we call prosecutors, make mistakes. Here's a crazy thought: maybe that's why we have trials!
No, the system isn't perfect. Yes, sometimes a case like the West Memphis 3 slips through. This is not the rule. Honestly. Things that make international news do so because they are exceptional. Exceptional, as in: "unusual", "not typical", "not the rule". Do you have any idea how many criminal cases don't make international news? I'll give you a hint: it's more than 2. If you can prove a significant number of those is similarly handled, I'll believe you. In the meantime, 2 bad cases, or 2 bad prosecutors, especially considering the angry Fox-media-fed mob who want to see "something done about it", suggests no rule.
Like the cases you cite, your argument is poorly founded.
"...we all know..." Oh, how I love that argument: "I think, therefore we all know..."
I'm grateful to have no idea how tech-savvy my local or state cops are, or FBI field agents for that matter. Frankly, I don't believe you have any idea, either. Oh, I'm sure you assume you know; it's widely believed fact, etc. It must be true, otherwise people wouldn't say it; isn't that right?
Funnily enough, justice professionals have a very good reason to not be as assuming as you are of them: it's their job. I'm not a lawyer, but I've been told there's this small event that occurs between catching "the bad guys" and throwing them in jail. You know, that bit where the prosecution stands up and says, "Well, we're a small town so we din't really investigate the case. We din't ask for any ISP logs whatever one of them there things is, din't look through his e-mails 'cause we don't care for that there technology, din't search his computer 'cause we couldn't find the power button, din't scan his telephone records 'cause we done lost 'em, and din't ask him any questions 'cause he's a pedophile. But we are sure he done it, and we can prove it: his name done popped popped up when we searched MySpace for sex offenders."
The defense stands up, stretches, yawns, sits back down, and rests.
Apologies, I didn't realize your last post was intended to be sarcastic; I thought you were agreeing!
I have not personally seen that set that is the proper superset of the set of all sets, but reliable sources inform me that it's blue (from the outside, at least). They wanted to call it the Ultraset, but it turns out people have already started calling it other things that don't sound like a mix of Tramadol and acetaminophen. Religious people call it "The Absolute". Computers call it "NaN" or "Divide by zero error on line 42". For the rest of us, the term "cosmos" suffices.
This may be why MySpace/News Corp claimed the task couldn't be done (also likely: incompetence). However, for an already-registered sex offender, I hope data from this Perl script would be enough at least to warrant a request to the offender's ISP and e-mail service provider to see if the MySpace account is authentic.
Like others in this thread, I too find it hard to sympathize with sex offenders. I do, though, understand the cause for a more general concern: could organizations such as the RIAA use a positive outcome from one of these cases in order to argue its many repudiated cases into court? Can they say, "If the method we used is good enough to convict people of sex offenses, it's good enough for a civil case, too"?
The proper superset of all sets is: everything; also known as infinity, NaN, your system is running low on resources, etc. ("Shoot the bloody pedant!")
The proper superset of a collection of sets is best explained by example: set A is equal to set B, both are distinct from set C, and set D is the proper superset of the other 3 sets: it contains all the properties of A/B and all the properties of C. Because D contains C in addition to A and B, it is distinct from the other 3 sets and can rightly be called the proper superset of all sets. In a situation where C does not exist, A=B=D and therefore there is no proper superset of all sets. Once the symbols are removed, we see that this is accurate: there is only one set cloned three times.
It is important to distinguish "proper" supersets/subsets from supersets/subsets. Some mathematicians even use special symbols to illustrate the distinction.
That's right, I made up that stuff about proper supersets, added it to math textbooks all over the world, bribed teachers into teaching it, professors into professing it, tutors into tooting it.
Why did I do all this? Isn't it obvious? It's all part of my cunning ploy to confuse earth's inhabitants so I can take over the world.
I actually waited for the release of the MacBook Pro before deciding to buy a refurbed PowerBook 12". The only new feature that impressed me was the magnetic power cord, and I figured I could do without that and also without the extra processing power. I was looking for a reliable laptop with a smaller footprint: 15" was larger than the dying Toshiba I was using, and I didn't want to commit to first generation technology.
Can't speak for iBook vs. MacBook, but I still recommend a PowerBook over the current MacBook Pro. It's lap-safe and the 12" model is smaller and looks better than the MacBook. Then again, I'm a programmer/scripter, so I don't have much call for extreme processing power. Most of my work is done in text editors. I doubt I'd notice a speed difference in vi on a MBP...
No news here; WorldNetDaily has been accusing Google of left wing bias for quite a while now. Another Slashdotter posted a similar article on an unrelated thread back in May; you can read their comment here and my response here.
WorldNetDaily has no well-founded complaint against Google. Google has been removing material both from the left and from the right because of its policy against hate speech. WorldNetDaily == right wing crackpots who theorize that Google gives special treatment to Democrats. Why do they claim this? Because they realized a number of Google employees are democrats.
Expect to see this same article regurgitated again and again at WorldNetDaily. Editors: in future, please make sure to prescribe a salt pillar for impressionable readers when linking to WorldNetDaily.
In answer to your question: no, it would not be more intuitive to have a popup menu display for every link on left click. Here's why:
Firefox already has a better system in place: the user can drag the link to a spare spot in the tabs bar, or over an existing tab in order to replace its content.
Novice users may not wish to use tabs; however, all users savvy enough to left-click a link in the first place already have some expectation as to what will happen (new content will load). If this does not immediately happen, that expectation has not been met.
Both novice and expert users will be frustrated by a system that requires two clicks to follow a link.
HTML, XMTML 1.0 Transitional (deprecated) and XHTML "Frameset" website developers all have some say in what should happen when a link is clicked. Browsers typically respect their wishes by opening content in the targeted tab or window. Additionally, some links supply JavaScript in the destination href. Obviously, opening such links in a new tab or window will cause "location not found" errors. Although these scenarios can be worked around to prevent the popup from displaying in such instances, doing so would result in an inconsistent display (sometimes clicking a link would result in a popup choice, sometimes clicking a link would "just work").
Of course, intuition is subjective. "Intuitive" has become a buzzword for good design of late, yet intuitiveness remains the least understood, documented, or researched aspect of application design. If you don't believe me, take a stroll down the computer aisles next time you're in your local B&N/Borders and count the number of books specifically related to GUI design (note: design, as in best practices of layout; books written to provide training in a specific GUI library etc. do not count) vs. other areas of application development (all programming and project management only, if you like). The reason is that it is not a strict science. There are sciences involved, but ultimately we have to "feel" our way toward intuitive design. One warning, though: do not confuse "intuitive" with either "easy" or "helpful". As I explained earlier, intuitive design is both easy and helpful, but neither of those things describe intuitive design entirely.
The multiple close tabs might "clutter" the GUI if you have so many tabs open there is only 100 or so pixels of space to display each tab. Fortunately, the Firefox developers programmed around this possibility: in such an instance, it's obvious the user is more interested in opening tabs than in closing them and, as I've already mentioned, the close buttons disappear on all but the current tab.
No offense intended from the "quit your whining" comment, BTW. You are correct: complaint is the way forward (toward improvement). However, I still strongly believe that the Ff2 close tab buttons are a step in the right direction. Having buttons on the tabs themselves is visually more immediately accessible than a single button off to the far right that is not well connected with any specific tab.
By "more intuitive" I mean "does not require documentation", "more obvious", "apparent", "easier to use", "immediately understandable"...
We already have a pop-down menu from every link offering the choice to either open in new window or open in new tab. You can make "open in new tab" the default behavior from the Tabs section of the Preferences menu.
I'm an experienced Firefox user. Close buttons on every tab do not drive me nuts; I'm grateful for a change that will help new users with tabs. The experienced Firefox user will immediately realize he can still use the other methods of closing tabs as has been suggested in this thread: middle click, right click and "close tab", or (not suggested, don't know why--perhaps not even "experienced" users such as yourself realized this option) "ctrl+w" to close the current tab. If you are actually an "experienced" user, you have no reason to complain. So quit your whining!
Whoever modded the last post "troll" didn't read the subject line. The comment was probably meant in jest, but raises an important issue: whether or not we believe it is morally sound to use a murderer's code is not as important as the effect it has on the popularity of Linux under the fire of smear campaigners.
It's the classic word-of-mouth rumor spread: "Linux's file system was programmed by a murderer", to "some part of Linux was programmed by a murderer", to "parts of Linux were programmed by a murderer", and finally: "don't use Linux, I heard it was programmed by a murderer."
Even if Reiser is not convicted, it may be wise for the project to be distanced from him, or not used. Not for technical or moral reasons, but political ones. Yes, it's a pain in the ass, but his code could damage Linux's fragile reputation even as it improves its already superior filesystem.
I believe the Firefox development team made the correct decision to build a more intuitive single-click tab closing system. Even though the middle-click feature was documented, it is not intuitive and has limited use for laptop users such as myself (Having only a two-button touch-pad, I have to hold down a key combination to perform a "middle" click). For the general user, right clicking on a tab and selecting "close this tab", while slightly more intuitive than the middle click, results in the same number of clicks and roughly the same mouse gesture as selecting the tab and then clicking close.
As a counter point, Microsoft decided to mimic the current (1.5) Firefox close tab system. This does not mean that it's a friendly user interface (far be it from Microsoft to select an interface because of perceived "friendliness"). It does mean that IE7 users migrating over to Ff2 will have to learn a new close tab system. That will involve some learning curve, as Mike is experiencing, but at least it's a learning curve and not a discovery process.
I can't remember what Konqueror's close tab system looks like (I'm a Ff user even in KDE--it's always the first thing I install on a KDE system!) but I can confirm that Safari (which does not enable tabbed browsing by default) uses the Ff2 system.
Elsewhere in this thread, someone mentioned that in some screenshots they saw of RC2 there was not a close button on every tab. Mike is already aware of this, but here is the explanation (I have been using Ff2 since beta 1): under default settings, "close buttons" appear on every tab unless the user has so many tabs open that there is only 100-odd px or less room for each tab. In that case, close buttons disappear on every tab.
The problem with your suggestion is that it involves getting major companies to do something they don't have to.
Unfortunately, the best advice we can offer in the meantime is to buy a supported wireless device.
I do sympathize with your situation: I have a PCMCIA Netgear wireless card that Ubuntu doesn't recognize. The wireless card in my desktop machine is also Netgear, but is recognized using Madwifi.
Sorry my wording wasn't as concise as you'd hoped.
If we're talking about what people care about, clearly fewer people care about using AAA batteries since iPod still represents 70% of digital music player sales.
Also, I'd be the first to agree that iPod Shuffle is a waste of anyone's money now that it requires a special cable. The Shuffle's most important feature was that it could also be used as a key drive (BTW, few key drives run on AAA batteries, either...)
Although the previous poster specifically mentioned flash devices, iriver doesn't exclusively manufacture flash players. Matter of fact is, none of their current HDD players run on AAAs or AAs. They are user replaceable, but the devices are 4 times the thickness at a quarter the capacity.
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Glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought of Rainbow Six.
BTW, could you recommend your favorite Clancey book? Rainbow Six is actually the only Clancey book I've read--several years ago at the recommendation of a friend. It's not that it put me off his writing, it just didn't insight me to read more.
Thanks!
If you're going to use media sensationalism as an argument at least cite the West Memphis 3 or any case that has at least gone to trial. People, even those superhuman creatures we call prosecutors, make mistakes. Here's a crazy thought: maybe that's why we have trials!
No, the system isn't perfect. Yes, sometimes a case like the West Memphis 3 slips through. This is not the rule. Honestly. Things that make international news do so because they are exceptional. Exceptional, as in: "unusual", "not typical", "not the rule". Do you have any idea how many criminal cases don't make international news? I'll give you a hint: it's more than 2. If you can prove a significant number of those is similarly handled, I'll believe you. In the meantime, 2 bad cases, or 2 bad prosecutors, especially considering the angry Fox-media-fed mob who want to see "something done about it", suggests no rule.
Like the cases you cite, your argument is poorly founded.
"...we all know..." Oh, how I love that argument: "I think, therefore we all know..."
I'm grateful to have no idea how tech-savvy my local or state cops are, or FBI field agents for that matter. Frankly, I don't believe you have any idea, either. Oh, I'm sure you assume you know; it's widely believed fact, etc. It must be true, otherwise people wouldn't say it; isn't that right?
Funnily enough, justice professionals have a very good reason to not be as assuming as you are of them: it's their job. I'm not a lawyer, but I've been told there's this small event that occurs between catching "the bad guys" and throwing them in jail. You know, that bit where the prosecution stands up and says, "Well, we're a small town so we din't really investigate the case. We din't ask for any ISP logs whatever one of them there things is, din't look through his e-mails 'cause we don't care for that there technology, din't search his computer 'cause we couldn't find the power button, din't scan his telephone records 'cause we done lost 'em, and din't ask him any questions 'cause he's a pedophile. But we are sure he done it, and we can prove it: his name done popped popped up when we searched MySpace for sex offenders."
The defense stands up, stretches, yawns, sits back down, and rests.
Apologies, I didn't realize your last post was intended to be sarcastic; I thought you were agreeing!
I have not personally seen that set that is the proper superset of the set of all sets, but reliable sources inform me that it's blue (from the outside, at least). They wanted to call it the Ultraset, but it turns out people have already started calling it other things that don't sound like a mix of Tramadol and acetaminophen. Religious people call it "The Absolute". Computers call it "NaN" or "Divide by zero error on line 42". For the rest of us, the term "cosmos" suffices.
This may be why MySpace/News Corp claimed the task couldn't be done (also likely: incompetence). However, for an already-registered sex offender, I hope data from this Perl script would be enough at least to warrant a request to the offender's ISP and e-mail service provider to see if the MySpace account is authentic.
Like others in this thread, I too find it hard to sympathize with sex offenders. I do, though, understand the cause for a more general concern: could organizations such as the RIAA use a positive outcome from one of these cases in order to argue its many repudiated cases into court? Can they say, "If the method we used is good enough to convict people of sex offenses, it's good enough for a civil case, too"?
Any lawyers willing to speculate?
That should read: "...there is only one set cloned twice."
My bad.
The proper superset of all sets is: everything; also known as infinity, NaN, your system is running low on resources, etc. ("Shoot the bloody pedant!")
The proper superset of a collection of sets is best explained by example: set A is equal to set B, both are distinct from set C, and set D is the proper superset of the other 3 sets: it contains all the properties of A/B and all the properties of C. Because D contains C in addition to A and B, it is distinct from the other 3 sets and can rightly be called the proper superset of all sets. In a situation where C does not exist, A=B=D and therefore there is no proper superset of all sets. Once the symbols are removed, we see that this is accurate: there is only one set cloned three times.
It is important to distinguish "proper" supersets/subsets from supersets/subsets. Some mathematicians even use special symbols to illustrate the distinction.
That's right, I made up that stuff about proper supersets, added it to math textbooks all over the world, bribed teachers into teaching it, professors into professing it, tutors into tooting it.
Why did I do all this? Isn't it obvious? It's all part of my cunning ploy to confuse earth's inhabitants so I can take over the world.
Alternatively, you're wrong and there really are such things as proper supersets and proper subsets.
Inconceivable!
Now very far OT, but yes: all sets are supersets of empty sets, all sets are supersets of themselves, all sets are subsets of themselves.
However, A is a PROPER superset of B only if A contains B and is distinct from B.
etc.
Nothing prepares you for database modeling like good ol' fashioned high school math.
That's what xfce is for. It has a KDE compatibility layer, and now even comes in handy Xubuntu live CD form.
http://xubuntu.com/
I actually waited for the release of the MacBook Pro before deciding to buy a refurbed PowerBook 12". The only new feature that impressed me was the magnetic power cord, and I figured I could do without that and also without the extra processing power. I was looking for a reliable laptop with a smaller footprint: 15" was larger than the dying Toshiba I was using, and I didn't want to commit to first generation technology.
So far, I'm pleased with my decision.
Can't speak for iBook vs. MacBook, but I still recommend a PowerBook over the current MacBook Pro. It's lap-safe and the 12" model is smaller and looks better than the MacBook. Then again, I'm a programmer/scripter, so I don't have much call for extreme processing power. Most of my work is done in text editors. I doubt I'd notice a speed difference in vi on a MBP...
Since he started writing novels, he hasn't stopped writing for comics. I especially enjoyed the 1602 miniseries.
No news here; WorldNetDaily has been accusing Google of left wing bias for quite a while now. Another Slashdotter posted a similar article on an unrelated thread back in May; you can read their comment here and my response here.
WorldNetDaily has no well-founded complaint against Google. Google has been removing material both from the left and from the right because of its policy against hate speech. WorldNetDaily == right wing crackpots who theorize that Google gives special treatment to Democrats. Why do they claim this? Because they realized a number of Google employees are democrats.
Expect to see this same article regurgitated again and again at WorldNetDaily. Editors: in future, please make sure to prescribe a salt pillar for impressionable readers when linking to WorldNetDaily.
Doesn't work in the US, but in the UK I'd use the phrase "chasing pennies while the pounds roll away".
In answer to your question: no, it would not be more intuitive to have a popup menu display for every link on left click. Here's why:
Of course, intuition is subjective. "Intuitive" has become a buzzword for good design of late, yet intuitiveness remains the least understood, documented, or researched aspect of application design. If you don't believe me, take a stroll down the computer aisles next time you're in your local B&N/Borders and count the number of books specifically related to GUI design (note: design, as in best practices of layout; books written to provide training in a specific GUI library etc. do not count) vs. other areas of application development (all programming and project management only, if you like). The reason is that it is not a strict science. There are sciences involved, but ultimately we have to "feel" our way toward intuitive design. One warning, though: do not confuse "intuitive" with either "easy" or "helpful". As I explained earlier, intuitive design is both easy and helpful, but neither of those things describe intuitive design entirely.
The multiple close tabs might "clutter" the GUI if you have so many tabs open there is only 100 or so pixels of space to display each tab. Fortunately, the Firefox developers programmed around this possibility: in such an instance, it's obvious the user is more interested in opening tabs than in closing them and, as I've already mentioned, the close buttons disappear on all but the current tab.
No offense intended from the "quit your whining" comment, BTW. You are correct: complaint is the way forward (toward improvement). However, I still strongly believe that the Ff2 close tab buttons are a step in the right direction. Having buttons on the tabs themselves is visually more immediately accessible than a single button off to the far right that is not well connected with any specific tab.
By "more intuitive" I mean "does not require documentation", "more obvious", "apparent", "easier to use", "immediately understandable"...
We already have a pop-down menu from every link offering the choice to either open in new window or open in new tab. You can make "open in new tab" the default behavior from the Tabs section of the Preferences menu.
I'm an experienced Firefox user. Close buttons on every tab do not drive me nuts; I'm grateful for a change that will help new users with tabs. The experienced Firefox user will immediately realize he can still use the other methods of closing tabs as has been suggested in this thread: middle click, right click and "close tab", or (not suggested, don't know why--perhaps not even "experienced" users such as yourself realized this option) "ctrl+w" to close the current tab. If you are actually an "experienced" user, you have no reason to complain. So quit your whining!
Whoever modded the last post "troll" didn't read the subject line. The comment was probably meant in jest, but raises an important issue: whether or not we believe it is morally sound to use a murderer's code is not as important as the effect it has on the popularity of Linux under the fire of smear campaigners.
It's the classic word-of-mouth rumor spread: "Linux's file system was programmed by a murderer", to "some part of Linux was programmed by a murderer", to "parts of Linux were programmed by a murderer", and finally: "don't use Linux, I heard it was programmed by a murderer."
Even if Reiser is not convicted, it may be wise for the project to be distanced from him, or not used. Not for technical or moral reasons, but political ones. Yes, it's a pain in the ass, but his code could damage Linux's fragile reputation even as it improves its already superior filesystem.
I believe the Firefox development team made the correct decision to build a more intuitive single-click tab closing system. Even though the middle-click feature was documented, it is not intuitive and has limited use for laptop users such as myself (Having only a two-button touch-pad, I have to hold down a key combination to perform a "middle" click). For the general user, right clicking on a tab and selecting "close this tab", while slightly more intuitive than the middle click, results in the same number of clicks and roughly the same mouse gesture as selecting the tab and then clicking close.
As a counter point, Microsoft decided to mimic the current (1.5) Firefox close tab system. This does not mean that it's a friendly user interface (far be it from Microsoft to select an interface because of perceived "friendliness"). It does mean that IE7 users migrating over to Ff2 will have to learn a new close tab system. That will involve some learning curve, as Mike is experiencing, but at least it's a learning curve and not a discovery process.
I can't remember what Konqueror's close tab system looks like (I'm a Ff user even in KDE--it's always the first thing I install on a KDE system!) but I can confirm that Safari (which does not enable tabbed browsing by default) uses the Ff2 system.
Elsewhere in this thread, someone mentioned that in some screenshots they saw of RC2 there was not a close button on every tab. Mike is already aware of this, but here is the explanation (I have been using Ff2 since beta 1): under default settings, "close buttons" appear on every tab unless the user has so many tabs open that there is only 100-odd px or less room for each tab. In that case, close buttons disappear on every tab.
Alternatively, copy+paste the actual text.
As a bonus, you won't preserve the browser culture of this era.
Mike, I disagree. I can see where you're coming from, but I for one like having the ability to close a tab without first selecting it.
The problem with your suggestion is that it involves getting major companies to do something they don't have to.
Unfortunately, the best advice we can offer in the meantime is to buy a supported wireless device.
I do sympathize with your situation: I have a PCMCIA Netgear wireless card that Ubuntu doesn't recognize. The wireless card in my desktop machine is also Netgear, but is recognized using Madwifi.
I've heard New Zealand has been left out of the iTunes deal. If you listen to enough indie music, I do recommend eMusic.com if that's available in NZ.
It seems I have a larger music library than most.
Sorry my wording wasn't as concise as you'd hoped.
If we're talking about what people care about, clearly fewer people care about using AAA batteries since iPod still represents 70% of digital music player sales.
Also, I'd be the first to agree that iPod Shuffle is a waste of anyone's money now that it requires a special cable. The Shuffle's most important feature was that it could also be used as a key drive (BTW, few key drives run on AAA batteries, either...)
Although the previous poster specifically mentioned flash devices, iriver doesn't exclusively manufacture flash players. Matter of fact is, none of their current HDD players run on AAAs or AAs. They are user replaceable, but the devices are 4 times the thickness at a quarter the capacity.