Betamax was the better technology beaten by better marketing.
Itanium was the in-the-future-better-technology-if-compilers-catch -up -and-everybody-ports-all-their-software-to-it... maybe, that pretty much killed itself. The Register have been calling it the Itanic from pretty much day one. They are now entitled to a "I told you so".
Itanic was a good research project that they made the mistake of telling the marketing people about. It is very much like Intel's new Socket format (with the pins on the motherboard rather than the processor). It was designed to make intel's life easy at the expense of everybody else. Strangely everybody else didn't like this idea very much.
Or look at something and have the brainwaves converted into words applicable to that which you're looking at (or have bound to that image).
While having a continuous stream of naked ladies (or men) appearing on the screen would be entertaining, I doubt you'd be able to convince your boss that you were actually working.
Legally it's a non issue. Ethically it's a fine example of hypocrisy.
My two step plan for dealing with the problem.
Step 1:
Politely and calmly explain it to him that as both code bases are GPL'd it's perfectly legal to do what you're doing. Also point out that he's benefitted from this arrangement by not having to recode everything to get the spin-off off the ground and doing what he's planning on doing will harm the spin-off.
Step 2:
If step 1 doesn't solve the problem then tell him to go fuck himself and use the code anyway.
Well, I've actually met one of the people who does logic board layout and one of my friends worked on one of the G4 northbridges before going to grad school. Both of them worked in Cupertino.
There's a lot more to making hardware than most people (even geeks) think. After you've designed all the hardware somebody has to design the tools to make the case etc and then how to put it all together on an assembly line.
All our elections are carried out with pencil and paper. Everybody votes in the same way and all the counting is done in a central location. We have problems with distance (if our largest electorate was a country it would be the 13th largest) so it takes a while before counting is done but everybody gets to watch and it's all verifiable.
He doesn't understand patents
on
Sun-isms Debunked
·
· Score: 4, Informative
There is a serious flaw in this reasoning; there is no legal basis for Kodak to sue end users over their use of the JRE or JDK.
Any decent software patent has four groups of claims that claim essentually the same thing. Method, system, media and the other one that I can never remember. Method protects using the same method as the claim, system protects using a system that implements the claim and media protects distributing the claim on a media (CD, DVD etc).
Using software that infringes a patent violates system and probably method claims. Unless you have a contract agreement with the software company that says they'll protect you against patent infringement lawsuits then you're screwed. And if you know the software you're using infringes a patent then you're screwed x3.
The reason you rarely see companies going after users is because they tend not to have as much money as the company making the software.
Marketing, buying and selling: Setting up a shop. How to make your shop stand out, what are people buying, how to take advantage of trends in the marketplace. Ripping people off and getting ripped off.
How can they be allowed to teach young children to become marketing people?
The biggest problem with the GNOME people in recent times is they're under the
delusion that "usability" is an absolute. That there is one true interface
that will make computing as simple as falling off a bike. There are two
problems with this way of thinking:
What one person considers usable is another persons endless
confusion/frustration. Take the "lots of options are bad. Bad. BAD. BAD!!"
accepted wisdom. I'm sure the GNOME HCI people could produce a dozen studies
that show that lots of options cause panic and an inability to configure
things and for the computer illiterate this is true. But for a significant
(especially so for GNOME's current group of users) portion of users, lots of
options are not a problem. After a short pause, curiosity takes over and there
is much clicking of pretty widgets to see what stuff does. For this group,
some sort of logical grouping (doesn't matter what it is, so long as it's
consistant) of the option is far more important than hiding
a shit load of them.
Another nightmarish development (for some of us) is task based interfaces. I
don't know if GNOME has any of this crap but I'm ranting here and this is a
pet hate. These abominations of bytes produce great results on usability tests
(see below point) but for some of us just an extra layer in the way of what we
want to do. On top of working out what I want to do, I also have to put myself
in the same frame of mind as HCI person on the particular day the interface
was designed and then guess at how he thinks I work. Task based interfaces
make using a computer like trying to unravel a M.C. Escher drawing.
Fast discoverability is not everything. In just about every HCI study I've
seen the tests involve "Do this..." type tasks, a stopwatch and a
suitably wide group of computer users.
Fastest interface is the winner. End of story.
Nowhere have I seen anything that measures a users frustation with an
interface or it's long term usability. Once again the group of people who will
take the time to learn the interface get completely forgotten. Sure it may
take 15 seconds less to find the option that does foo but if it takes twice as
long everytime after that then it's a net loss.
With that metric included, GNOME looses for a lot of people. Sure most people
don't often use the filename text box on save dialogs but for the few that do
it's a big plus. See a funny pic on a web page? Right click->save as..., Add
"~/funny/" to the front of the filename. Grand total time about 3 seconds.
Doesn't rate a mention in any GNOME tests.
GNOME HCI people need to be slapped and told to get their shit together. Heaps
of geeks are bitching about how totally appalling their interface is but
they're being written of as people who just don't understand the one true
path. Geeks might not be able to understand what a computer illiterate person
thinks when they sit down at a computer but they know what they like and
currently it ain't GNOME. Geeks are an important group even for a desktop
environment that's aiming for newbies because if the geeks wont use it then
then wont suggest it.
BTW beauty has almost nothing to do with usability. A beautiful interface will
almost certainly be less useable than a boring looking one due to there being
nothing to distract from the images that do stuff. Everything that isn't blank
does something when you click on it.
"The fantastic element that explains the appeal of dungeon-clearing games to
many programmers is neither the fire-breathing monsters nor the milkyskinned,
semi-clad sirens; it is the experience of carrying out a task from start to
finish without user requirements changing." -Thomas L. Holaday, "The Guru's
Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM) " by Ken
Henderson, ISBN: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL, page: 119
It's the fact that in most states if you win by one vote you win all the college votes. To the people in other democracies around the world this is just plain insanity.
The only thing that that puzzles us more is why some states have different rules.
Actual IBM is not a convicted monopolist. The DoJ brought suit against them but IBM drew it for so long the DoJ dropped the case because any judgement they could get wouldn't be worth the effort they put into it. Regardless of whether they were a monopolist or not, they are innocent in the eyes of the law (unlike Microsoft).
Slashdot Mirror
Itanium was the in-the-future-better-technology-if-compilers-catch -up -and-everybody-ports-all-their-software-to-it ... maybe, that pretty much killed itself. The Register have been calling it the Itanic from pretty much day one. They are now entitled to a "I told you so".
Itanic was a good research project that they made the mistake of telling the marketing people about. It is very much like Intel's new Socket format (with the pins on the motherboard rather than the processor). It was designed to make intel's life easy at the expense of everybody else. Strangely everybody else didn't like this idea very much.
ERROR 155 - You can't do that.
- Data General S200 Fortran error code list
My two step plan for dealing with the problem.
Step 1:
Politely and calmly explain it to him that as both code bases are GPL'd it's perfectly legal to do what you're doing. Also point out that he's benefitted from this arrangement by not having to recode everything to get the spin-off off the ground and doing what he's planning on doing will harm the spin-off.
Step 2:
If step 1 doesn't solve the problem then tell him to go fuck himself and use the code anyway.
It's just because MS sucks at sucking which I think makes them very special.
Just tell everybody who asks that you're calling from the dunny (toilet for those who don't speak Australian).
Them's fight'n words!"
All our elections are carried out with pencil and paper. Everybody votes in the same way and all the counting is done in a central location. We have problems with distance (if our largest electorate was a country it would be the 13th largest) so it takes a while before counting is done but everybody gets to watch and it's all verifiable.
Using software that infringes a patent violates system and probably method claims. Unless you have a contract agreement with the software company that says they'll protect you against patent infringement lawsuits then you're screwed. And if you know the software you're using infringes a patent then you're screwed x3.
The reason you rarely see companies going after users is because they tend not to have as much money as the company making the software.
My guess is we're not training them. Fremantle is so-so close to the Antarctic, although they usually depart from Tasmania.
"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."
You're that fat security guard that got away, aren't you?
How can they be allowed to teach young children to become marketing people?
Seeing as we haven't got the beer over IP protocol working yet.
- What one person considers usable is another persons endless
confusion/frustration. Take the "lots of options are bad. Bad. BAD. BAD!!"
accepted wisdom. I'm sure the GNOME HCI people could produce a dozen studies
that show that lots of options cause panic and an inability to configure
things and for the computer illiterate this is true. But for a significant
(especially so for GNOME's current group of users) portion of users, lots of
options are not a problem. After a short pause, curiosity takes over and there
is much clicking of pretty widgets to see what stuff does. For this group,
some sort of logical grouping (doesn't matter what it is, so long as it's
consistant) of the option is far more important than hiding
a shit load of them.
- Fast discoverability is not everything. In just about every HCI study I've
seen the tests involve "Do this
..." type tasks, a stopwatch and a
suitably wide group of computer users.
Fastest interface is the winner. End of story.
GNOME HCI people need to be slapped and told to get their shit together. Heaps of geeks are bitching about how totally appalling their interface is but they're being written of as people who just don't understand the one true path. Geeks might not be able to understand what a computer illiterate person thinks when they sit down at a computer but they know what they like and currently it ain't GNOME. Geeks are an important group even for a desktop environment that's aiming for newbies because if the geeks wont use it then then wont suggest it.Another nightmarish development (for some of us) is task based interfaces. I don't know if GNOME has any of this crap but I'm ranting here and this is a pet hate. These abominations of bytes produce great results on usability tests (see below point) but for some of us just an extra layer in the way of what we want to do. On top of working out what I want to do, I also have to put myself in the same frame of mind as HCI person on the particular day the interface was designed and then guess at how he thinks I work. Task based interfaces make using a computer like trying to unravel a M.C. Escher drawing.
Nowhere have I seen anything that measures a users frustation with an interface or it's long term usability. Once again the group of people who will take the time to learn the interface get completely forgotten. Sure it may take 15 seconds less to find the option that does foo but if it takes twice as long everytime after that then it's a net loss.
With that metric included, GNOME looses for a lot of people. Sure most people don't often use the filename text box on save dialogs but for the few that do it's a big plus. See a funny pic on a web page? Right click->save as ..., Add
"~/funny/" to the front of the filename. Grand total time about 3 seconds.
Doesn't rate a mention in any GNOME tests.
BTW beauty has almost nothing to do with usability. A beautiful interface will almost certainly be less useable than a boring looking one due to there being nothing to distract from the images that do stuff. Everything that isn't blank does something when you click on it.
"The fantastic element that explains the appeal of dungeon-clearing games to many programmers is neither the fire-breathing monsters nor the milkyskinned, semi-clad sirens; it is the experience of carrying out a task from start to finish without user requirements changing."
-Thomas L. Holaday, "The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM) " by Ken Henderson, ISBN: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL, page: 119
The only thing that that puzzles us more is why some states have different rules.