But his comment works for the command line interface. I'm sure it would be possible to write a *far* better text-based command line interface, but I don't know of any that have been designed with usability in mind from the ground up.
The dynamic pull-down menu's on the 2000 versions of MS Office tools are another example: probably well-intended, but generally annoying, therefore bad
But this is precisely the kind of thing Raskin was speaking against - making judgements on UI components based simply one person's opinion - I happen to really like the new-style menus, but until we actually do some tests to measure it, who can say who is right?
The UK hasn't really been a 'class' society for some time now. Apart from the Royal family (grrr!) there are is no longer anybody in power due to their inherited title. Titles (again apart from thr Royal family (again, grrr!)) can no longer be passed down from generation to generation - Soon if you're a Lord, Lady, Baron, Baroness, Knight etc... it'll be because that title has been bestowed upon you.
However, things aren't quite as based on one's ability to pay as it is in the US due to British governments being historically more left wing than US governments, We still have a national health service, for instance.
The class system really began to tumble during the first world war. A huge proportion of young noblemen got killed leading 'their men' over the trenches, as they felt it was their duty to do it. Also, the first and second world wars bought such huge disruption and change that the old ways just no longer worked any more. With increasing education and career mobility anyone could become something and now you'll find the old class system is pretty much forgotten.
Come over and experience Britain sometime. The food has gotten a lot better over the last 10-15 years as well...
I think this is a cunning move by 3Dlabs - Their business is being threatened by nVidia and their Quadro range - it'll be interesting to see how unbiased they can manage to be when generating the spec.
Otherwise, I think it's a good idea. It'd be nice to see OpenGL keeping up with (or even outshining) DirectX...
... is currently my favourite distribution (apart from the fact it comes with rather old versions of glibc... no file...:-P )
32Mb download - install it by unzipping onto your FAT hardrive and run the.bat file. I don't need to do any of that repartitioning stuff and it runs just fine on an old Toshiba 486-33 laptop I've got with 16Mb or Ram. (No X, of course...)
Digital Film has a much higher resolution than Digital Video. Digital Film tends to be projected at 1280 x 1024 - digital video has a much lower resolution.
Actually, I saw my first digitally projected film on Wednesday night - Monsters Inc at the Liecester Square Odeon, and I was very impressed by the quality - it was much crisper than I've ever seen with film projection. Whether this is to do with being able to project more sharply or some inherent blurriness in the film copy I'm not sure.
At the beginning when they showed the BBFC classification notice I could just about see the pixels - but then it was white non-antialiased pixels on a black background. When the film proper started I was very impressed by the crispness and clarity and I didn't notice any pixellation artifacts.
So you've never had to track down an annoying bug that was to do with uninitialised memory, freed memory, bounds overflowing or memory leakage? Evidently I underestimated you.
I'm not trying to say that programmers routinely have problems understanding pointers, but that there are many places in large complex programs where they make it very easy to make a mistake. They also often result in errors that do not show themselves up immediately, and in fact do not show up until after you've shipped the product...
Only baby programmers and script kiddies and VB wienies are afraid to handle pointers.
You've evidently never programmed anything of any size, a notion that is backed up by a quote on your webpage: "We're studying for our Masters Degrees in Computer Science at NSU and hopefully we'll be finished on June 20, 2002."
When you get out into the Big Bad World Of Real Employment(tm) you'll find that those cute little pointers that you're so fond of in your toy CS101 code have grown up into big, badly behaved monsters that will bite you at any opportunity.
If you're doing a project of any complexity, keeping track of all your data pointers becomes a non trivial problem - more so when you start working with several other people on the same codebase. What is the lifetime of an object? whose responsibility is it to see that that object is destroyed? How do these rules change under faliure conditions? How do you ensure that all the rules you've put down are obeyed?
Jeez, why do you think Smart Pointers have become increasingly popular?
I'll be able to write my programs using a mixture of stuff - Prolog for what it's good for, C++ (or C#) for what it's good for, Python for what it's good for. I'll be able to follow the program through in my debugger irrespective of what that part of the code is written in.
No more of that annoying glue code (or at least, not much...)
There are a lot of places in filmmaking where remote-control helicopters are useful.
For instance, all the aerial shots in 'Walking with Beasts' were done with a RC Helicopter - it is substantially cheaper, especially if you need film somewhere remote.
This is why Europe should have never backed down with the US over data protection. It would be illegal to do this in Europe without the express permission of everybody who they take the data from. Europe will not allow companies to export data to countries that do not have any form of data protection legislature (like the US). However, as far as I'm aware they bowed to US pressure to make it a special case. Great. I can't think of any country with companies that are more likely to abuse that information.
What benefits? Most Windows users don't even know what a filesystem is much less a relational filesystem. Users just want to run their stuff.
Users *will* notice the difference because they'll be able to find their stuff more easily. If you're not used to sorting your data hierarchically, working out where you put your documents can be very tricky. If the filesystem is essentially a database, the OS can be a lot better at finding your files for you.
I *want* the future versions of Windows that I use to have a database-style filesystem. I *don't want* Microsoft to be prevented from adding this useful functionality because a few of their competitors are whining.
So let me get this straight. Just because putting a database as the filesystem backend will give them an advantage over some of their competitors, us desktop Windows users should be denied the benefits it would afford us?
Yes, only 2Mb of memory. I wish it had more. However, the thing I *love* about it is it's size. It really is *very* small. I think the only smaller comparable PDA you can get is one of the Sony palmOS-based jobs.
Although I think it would be neat to upgrade to a device with a better screen, memory and processing power, all the PocketPC models seem rather bulky compared to my old Palm V. And I'm not prepared to go backwards on the size department. It needs to fit comfortably in my back pocket, and that means < 1cm thick.
THIS is why why I love the BBC... ahhh - that last bastion of advertisment-free television. It makes me glad that I pay my £100-odd TV license fee every year.
I'd like to think that having ad-free TV will also prevent the commercial channels from putting too many ads inbetween their programs as well - simply because they'll get compared to ad-free TV.
Console games don't come with a EULA. The publisher is protected by copyright and any patents that it has and that's it. It has no right to try and tell me where I can or cannot play my games.
Why, exactly, can you not compare modifying a car to modifying a PS2?
Does the owner of the PS2 somehow not have less rights than a car owner?
If Sony had patents that covered the modifying of their system, then they would have taken them to court over patent infringement. The fact is they don't have patents covering that, so they've had to rely on the very dubious claim that they somehow 'license' the use of the games software to the consumer.
Sony produces a product that may people regard as flawed, in that it fails to play other region games. There are companies that sell modifications that fix the defect in Sony's original design, and people make use of them. Really, you still have to prove your point.
People, remember one important fact: The Ford car design is Ford's closed design, and other companies DO NOT have any right to produce wheels, carburettors, indicator lights and suchlike that can be fitted to Ford cars to modify them without legal consent from Ford. How hard is this for you people to understand? If you were Ford, how would you like it if people modified their cars in anyway after they'd left the factory. I would be pretty upset.
The thing that is so galling in this case is that unlike PC software, the user *has not* agreed to any form of license agreement with Sony when purchasing the software. The software *is not* 'licensed to be used in one region', it is purchased. I should be able to do anything I like with it that does not infringe on the copyright of Sony, and if I'm not copying it, then I'm not infringing on anything.
The total cost is always going to be higher, due to the fact that
a) You'll need a team of people to do it to ensure that they don't get caught doing it... (People watching the house for a while, to work out when the suspect tends to be out... lookouts etc. All of this costs money)
b) The cost of getting the warrant in the first place (Judge's time is hardly cheap - there's also the cost of the other court personnel who are involved)
c) The cost of the detectives preparing the case to get the warrant
etcetera...
All of this is a good thing. You wouldn't want wiretaps to be cheap, or they'd use them a lot more...;)
Slashdot Mirror
But his comment works for the command line interface. I'm sure it would be possible to write a *far* better text-based command line interface, but I don't know of any that have been designed with usability in mind from the ground up.
The dynamic pull-down menu's on the 2000 versions of MS Office tools are another example: probably well-intended, but generally annoying, therefore bad
But this is precisely the kind of thing Raskin was speaking against - making judgements on UI components based simply one person's opinion - I happen to really like the new-style menus, but until we actually do some tests to measure it, who can say who is right?
I somehow doubt that all of those 300,000 will pay. I reckon about 1 in 50 of those people will pay, which makes $120,000.
Even if you get 1 in 10, it's still only $600,000 with 10 people and hosting costs...
The UK hasn't really been a 'class' society for some time now. Apart from the Royal family (grrr!) there are is no longer anybody in power due to their inherited title. Titles (again apart from thr Royal family (again, grrr!)) can no longer be passed down from generation to generation - Soon if you're a Lord, Lady, Baron, Baroness, Knight etc... it'll be because that title has been bestowed upon you.
However, things aren't quite as based on one's ability to pay as it is in the US due to British governments being historically more left wing than US governments, We still have a national health service, for instance.
The class system really began to tumble during the first world war. A huge proportion of young noblemen got killed leading 'their men' over the trenches, as they felt it was their duty to do it. Also, the first and second world wars bought such huge disruption and change that the old ways just no longer worked any more. With increasing education and career mobility anyone could become something and now you'll find the old class system is pretty much forgotten.
Come over and experience Britain sometime. The food has gotten a lot better over the last 10-15 years as well...
I think this is a cunning move by 3Dlabs - Their business is being threatened by nVidia and their Quadro range - it'll be interesting to see how unbiased they can manage to be when generating the spec.
Otherwise, I think it's a good idea. It'd be nice to see OpenGL keeping up with (or even outshining) DirectX...
Palm does not own Be. Be sold its assest to Palm.
... is currently my favourite distribution (apart from the fact it comes with rather old versions of glibc... no file... :-P )
.bat file. I don't need to do any of that repartitioning stuff and it runs just fine on an old Toshiba 486-33 laptop I've got with 16Mb or Ram. (No X, of course...)
32Mb download - install it by unzipping onto your FAT hardrive and run the
Digital Film has a much higher resolution than Digital Video. Digital Film tends to be projected at 1280 x 1024 - digital video has a much lower resolution.
Actually, I saw my first digitally projected film on Wednesday night - Monsters Inc at the Liecester Square Odeon, and I was very impressed by the quality - it was much crisper than I've ever seen with film projection. Whether this is to do with being able to project more sharply or some inherent blurriness in the film copy I'm not sure.
At the beginning when they showed the BBFC classification notice I could just about see the pixels - but then it was white non-antialiased pixels on a black background. When the film proper started I was very impressed by the crispness and clarity and I didn't notice any pixellation artifacts.
So you've never had to track down an annoying bug that was to do with uninitialised memory, freed memory, bounds overflowing or memory leakage? Evidently I underestimated you.
I'm not trying to say that programmers routinely have problems understanding pointers, but that there are many places in large complex programs where they make it very easy to make a mistake. They also often result in errors that do not show themselves up immediately, and in fact do not show up until after you've shipped the product...
Only baby programmers and script kiddies and VB wienies are afraid to handle pointers.
You've evidently never programmed anything of any size, a notion that is backed up by a quote on your webpage: "We're studying for our Masters Degrees in Computer Science at NSU and hopefully we'll be finished on June 20, 2002."
When you get out into the Big Bad World Of Real Employment(tm) you'll find that those cute little pointers that you're so fond of in your toy CS101 code have grown up into big, badly behaved monsters that will bite you at any opportunity.
If you're doing a project of any complexity, keeping track of all your data pointers becomes a non trivial problem - more so when you start working with several other people on the same codebase. What is the lifetime of an object? whose responsibility is it to see that that object is destroyed? How do these rules change under faliure conditions? How do you ensure that all the rules you've put down are obeyed?
Jeez, why do you think Smart Pointers have become increasingly popular?
I was under the impression that you were not allowed to link your program to an LGPLed library - you are only allowed to dynamically bind it to it.
I think this is to ensure that the user can still recompile the LGPLed bit for herself if she needs to.
... I've had Linux crash on me more than XP...
Hopefully .net will help.
I'll be able to write my programs using a mixture of stuff - Prolog for what it's good for, C++ (or C#) for what it's good for, Python for what it's good for. I'll be able to follow the program through in my debugger irrespective of what that part of the code is written in.
No more of that annoying glue code (or at least, not much...)
I'm looking forward to it.
There are a lot of places in filmmaking where remote-control helicopters are useful.
For instance, all the aerial shots in 'Walking with Beasts' were done with a RC Helicopter - it is substantially cheaper, especially if you need film somewhere remote.
This is why Europe should have never backed down with the US over data protection. It would be illegal to do this in Europe without the express permission of everybody who they take the data from. Europe will not allow companies to export data to countries that do not have any form of data protection legislature (like the US). However, as far as I'm aware they bowed to US pressure to make it a special case. Great. I can't think of any country with companies that are more likely to abuse that information.
What benefits? Most Windows users don't even know what a filesystem is much less a relational filesystem. Users just want to run their stuff.
Users *will* notice the difference because they'll be able to find their stuff more easily. If you're not used to sorting your data hierarchically, working out where you put your documents can be very tricky. If the filesystem is essentially a database, the OS can be a lot better at finding your files for you.
I *want* the future versions of Windows that I use to have a database-style filesystem. I *don't want* Microsoft to be prevented from adding this useful functionality because a few of their competitors are whining.
So let me get this straight. Just because putting a database as the filesystem backend will give them an advantage over some of their competitors, us desktop Windows users should be denied the benefits it would afford us?
"the socialistic policies of Tony Blair"
Riiiight... I don't think that 'Socialist' and 'Labour party' really belong in the same sentence any more. It used to be simple:
Labour: Left-wing
Liberal Democrat/ SDLP/ whatever : Centre
Conservatives: Right-wing
Now you've got:
Liberal Democrats: Centre-Left
Labour: Centre-right
Conservatives: Slightly more right than Labour.
Mind you, the centre has moved to the right a bit, anyway.
I have a Palm V.
Yes, only 2Mb of memory. I wish it had more. However, the thing I *love* about it is it's size. It really is *very* small. I think the only smaller comparable PDA you can get is one of the Sony palmOS-based jobs.
Although I think it would be neat to upgrade to a device with a better screen, memory and processing power, all the PocketPC models seem rather bulky compared to my old Palm V. And I'm not prepared to go backwards on the size department. It needs to fit comfortably in my back pocket, and that means < 1cm thick.
THIS is why why I love the BBC... ahhh - that last bastion of advertisment-free television. It makes me glad that I pay my £100-odd TV license fee every year.
I'd like to think that having ad-free TV will also prevent the commercial channels from putting too many ads inbetween their programs as well - simply because they'll get compared to ad-free TV.
I agree. my post was lampooning the parent poster's post.
;)
cheers,
Tim
Well, quite.... I was lampooning the parent poster's post.
;)
cheers,
Tim
I don't sign if there is no EULA.
Console games don't come with a EULA. The publisher is protected by copyright and any patents that it has and that's it. It has no right to try and tell me where I can or cannot play my games.
Why, exactly, can you not compare modifying a car to modifying a PS2?
Does the owner of the PS2 somehow not have less rights than a car owner?
If Sony had patents that covered the modifying of their system, then they would have taken them to court over patent infringement. The fact is they don't have patents covering that, so they've had to rely on the very dubious claim that they somehow 'license' the use of the games software to the consumer.
Sony produces a product that may people regard as flawed, in that it fails to play other region games. There are companies that sell modifications that fix the defect in Sony's original design, and people make use of them. Really, you still have to prove your point.
People, remember one important fact: The Ford car design is Ford's closed design, and other companies DO NOT have any right to produce wheels, carburettors, indicator lights and suchlike that can be fitted to Ford cars to modify them without legal consent from Ford. How hard is this for you people to understand? If you were Ford, how would you like it if people modified their cars in anyway after they'd left the factory. I would be pretty upset.
The thing that is so galling in this case is that unlike PC software, the user *has not* agreed to any form of license agreement with Sony when purchasing the software. The software *is not* 'licensed to be used in one region', it is purchased. I should be able to do anything I like with it that does not infringe on the copyright of Sony, and if I'm not copying it, then I'm not infringing on anything.
The total cost is always going to be higher, due to the fact that
;)
a) You'll need a team of people to do it to ensure that they don't get caught doing it... (People watching the house for a while, to work out when the suspect tends to be out... lookouts etc. All of this costs money)
b) The cost of getting the warrant in the first place (Judge's time is hardly cheap - there's also the cost of the other court personnel who are involved)
c) The cost of the detectives preparing the case to get the warrant
etcetera...
All of this is a good thing. You wouldn't want wiretaps to be cheap, or they'd use them a lot more...