Why would it rely on Java at all? Since Microsoft hasn't shipped it in, what, 6 years now, that's a software package that has a lot less penetration than it used to. I agree with the first poster, Flash would have been the way to go here.
I can say hearing it's Java has dissuaded me from participating. There's no way I'm going to install that, along with Sun's other crapware, on my nice clean computer.
Because it's just some quick and dirty "clever" title some journalist on a tight deadline came up with, not some deeply-researched and discussed statement of fact?
Uh, isn't that VOIP software? Maybe you could spend at least, say, 4-5 milliseconds explaining exactly how VOIP software is supposed to solve the problem?
I don't even get why you'd ask about Gates; hadn't he proved his mastery of technology and the market *long* before he retired? He got his start writing compilers.
As for Ballmer... you may have a point, but you're talking about: * Microsoft doing really well under Ballmer, vs. * Microsoft doing incredibly well under "some mythical person who understands technology"
So either way, Microsoft's doing well. They're one of the very, very few tech companies doing well in this economy, actually.
Microsoft's Expression Web editor has a HTML editor that's more compliant than almost anything else out there. I think it's called Orcas... in any case, MS *does* have a really good standards-complaint engine in-house, it's just not well suited for end-user tasks. I'm sure with some optimization it would make a great engine for IE 9.
Trident's like Netscape's codebase pre-Mozilla. It's loaded with crap and obscure bugs, and nearly impossible to work with.
They'd be much better off grabbing the engine from Expression Web, which is one of the most (if not THE most) standards-compliant in existence right now (I believe it's named Orcas), wrapping the IE interface around it, and making that IE 9. I'm sure the Expression engine needs a lot of work to be a consumer browser, probably tons of optimizations to get it to run at a reasonable speed, but that's a better direction to go than keeping Trident alive.
Yes. And so has anyone who's had to dig deep in to their system to try and fix something that's gone wrong. Or at least... they've had someone else do it for them.
Yeah, but that's a pretty small proportion of people. Which was my point.
Actually - what I say is that the idea that users never have to resort to such arcane technicalities is just as wrong as the assumption that they must always resort to them (and I was talking about two entirely separate environments).
Fair enough.
This observation doesn't come from a "works for me" attitude. I've spent years around various IT tech; many earlier years behind helpdesks and doing desktop support. I've had to support GUIs of all types (to include early MacOS which you mention here shortly). And I've had my hand in working people through various fixes both simple clicky-clicky and arcane strings of commands.
And people didn't call you until they had a problem they required your help to solve. So you really have no clue how many of those people solved their own problem using the GUI (or CLI), or didn't have a problem in the first place.
And yet here we are today - MacOS 9 and previous incarnations a historical footnote. Huh.
Because Apple doesn't have the resources to write a modern OS from scratch, NOT because OS 9 was a horrible, terrible thing. In a perfect world, OS X would basically be the exact same UI as OS 9, except built atop a more modern foundation-- unfortunately, Apple hired a bunch of NeXT hackers who have absolutely no idea what the word "usability", "spatial", or "consistency" mean and the OS X UI turned to crap. (Look to Finder for the most discussed example.) None of this has to do with "not being able to fix problems on OS 9 using the CLI".
But what I do reject is the idea that having a GUI somehow makes a system more supportable as the parent implied.
It makes the system require less support because people are more likely to be able to find the solutions to their own problems. Discoverability.
AppleScript didn't exist until Macintosh was pretty old... System 7.5, IIRC. And for the record, while I did use it to make some macros, I never had to use it to "fix" a problem with a system.
You don't believe in the "mystical power of the GUI" because you, personally, do things that require its use?
Of course, you say that most users do have to resort to the CLI to get something done, then you say only people with your particular interests do. What makes you think most people share your particular interests? Do you have any data to back that up? (Sounds like a contradiction to me.)
And now how about talking about the "mystical power of the GUI" from the perspective of the other 99.999% of users?
For the record, Classic Mac OS quite literally had no CLI at all and yet was often praised as being one of the best designed and most usable computer interfaces ever made. Apple doesn't get their reputation for ease-of-use from OS X, OS X's UI is a hog compared to Mac OS Classic.
I agree with you. What bothers me is that I've seen this conversation about 50,000,000 times on this site:
A: Linux isn't very good at Foobar. B: Windows is just as bad at Foobar!1!!!
Notice how person B totally and completely changed the subject while simultaneously missing the point. The point isn't how good Windows is at it; in fact, the original poster didn't even *mention* Windows 90% of the time this conversation happens. The point is that Linux isn't very good at Foobar and should be better at Foobar.
Mac OS X users don't constantly compare themselves to Windows; I could go on "macosxhints.com" and post, "wow, the interface for Spotlight in Finder sucks ass" and I won't get 47 replies that all read, "yeah, well, Windows search is worse!!11!." For some reason, the Linux community does that constantly. It's annoying, it should stop.
It's logically impossible to build an OS better than Windows if you only work on problems until you're "as good as Windows" at them. If the Linux cared about making a usable, supported, real alternative OS, they wouldn't do this constant penis-measuring about Windows and they'd start working on it.
First of all, OS X doesn't have a color scheme. (Well, it has "greyscale" and "not-as-greyscale" as themes, I suppose.)
Secondly, the OS provides functions for determining what the color scheme is, from which the software can update its color scheme to match. How do you think Windows applications manage this, exactly? Magic fairy dust? No, they just ask the OS which colors to use, then use them.
First of all, you're making a false comparison: How usable Linux is is an entirely separate issue from how usable Windows is. In an ideal world, Linux would be EASIER than Windows. With your approach, you're basically saying "once you're as good as Windows, you can give up and stop improving."
Secondly: 1) You don't need to use the CLI to install antivirus software. 2) You don't need to use the CLI to install Office. 3) Registry repair hasn't been part of the Windows experience since Windows 2000 came out; do try and keep up.
Hell, an obscure text file is easier to walk someone through editing than the registry is, and a LOT lower chance of completely hosing the entire system while you're at it.
A large part of usability is discoverability. Discoverability basically means giving the users a way to figure out how to solve their own problem in a rational, logical manner. Keeping settings in an obscurely-named, often invisible to the GUI, text file is pretty much exactly the opposite of that.
That said, you may be right: it's potentially easier to walk people through changing the contents of a file than adjusting options in a dialog. But there's no way the person can fix their OWN problem that way.
Ok, there's a lot of weirdness going on in your posts:
The grandparent is correct, I was mistaken and there is only one sequel to Jurassic Park, I got confused with the movies. Yet, I stand by my point that a) Lost World sucked and b) Crichton was a hack.
He's a hack because you're confusing movies (which he did not write) with books (that he did write.) Moreover, you're SO confused between the two that you don't even KNOW how many books he wrote.
Strong credentials for criticism there.
and I was not entertained in the least by Westworld because I had seen that movie before, the same way that Lost World was sorry and predictable.
Westworld was made in 1973. It was a movie. It was written and directed by Crichton. All clear on that point?
Jurassic Park was written in 1990. It was a book. The movie of Jurassic Park was NOT written by Crichton.
You're blaming Crichton that a work *he did not write* is too similar to a work he *did* write. So... it's his fault that someone else ripped him off? For the record, the books are very distinct.
From reading this thread, some people are entertained by his other novels, so maybe I'm wrong and he is a good author,
You can't even tell the difference between books and movies. I don't see why anybody would listen to your opinion on the matter; in short: you're wrong.
but I would bet dollars to doughnuts that Jurassic Park won't make it into any school reading lists the way H.G. Wells stuff does or George Orwell, or some other science fiction by truly great authors.
It already has, actually. Not every school, of course, but it's was definitely on the reading list of the Sci Fi class at my high school.
The summary and the article don't even come remotely close to accurately relaying Microsoft's statement.
In short, saying that moving to Windows 7 is easy doesn't contradict what Microsoft actually said at HEC. It just contradicts the bullshit Slashdot and the article linked made-up.
"urging device manufacturers to start immediate testing with its pre-beta release" "to avoid the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Vista" "'There is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released,' Microsoft has warned them."
You do realize that NONE of these statements are from Microsoft, right? (With the exception of the inner quote in the third one, but I severely doubt it was phrased as a "warning.")
You're actually getting your quotes from a publication that, as an accompanying image, chose a bad photoshop of Ballmer screaming at Godzilla. Or from Slashdot. Either way.
Here's an actual quote from a Microsoft representative:
"You create a device, you write the driver" seems like a perfectly reasonable policy to me, at least for manufactures that don't open their specs to all.
I'd go a step further than that, and say the driver for X is part of the hardware. We shouldn't be thinking of these as two different things; it's all one single product. If HP makes a laserjet and then cripples it with really crummy drivers, then it's a really crummy printer. Period.
You realize that Microsoft's RDC does that as well, right?
True, it has problems with programs that decide to draw their own GUI instead of using the Windows built-in one, but that'd be just as much a problem with X11. (Since in that case, you really have no choice but to transmit the bitmaps.)
If spanking is such a violent discipline that breeds violence -- then why is it only in the last 10-20 years that school violence has reached unprecedented levels?
You have to prove that assertion before your question is valid.
So in the US one can just "arrive" somewhere, move in a random house and everything is ok for the Government? They don't need to know where to send your tax letter or anything? Strange.
Strange how? Why wouldn't it be ok?
Given, I'm a pretty red-blooded American, but I think it's not ok to have to tell the government about every little thing you do. There's not a lot of difference between that and "papers please, citizen."
Of course, that all said, from a *practical* point of view, you'll need to tell the post office where you are so they know where to send your mail. You'll probably have to register with various local government entities, like the school district (if you have kids) or your city's water/utilities service. If you stay longer than, I think, 3 months and you drive, you'll need to get a driver's license with the new address probably, or you can get ticketed.
Of course, if you're hard-core, you could not drive, not receive mail, teach your kids at home, not use any city services, and you're not breaking any laws. Go for it.
She's got weirdly compelling eyes, but Zooey Deschanel can't act her way out of a paper bag. Or she can't act her way out of a shitty M. Night Shyamalan flick, which frankly is a much worse thing to be trapped in than a paper bag.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would it rely on Java at all? Since Microsoft hasn't shipped it in, what, 6 years now, that's a software package that has a lot less penetration than it used to. I agree with the first poster, Flash would have been the way to go here.
I can say hearing it's Java has dissuaded me from participating. There's no way I'm going to install that, along with Sun's other crapware, on my nice clean computer.
Because it's just some quick and dirty "clever" title some journalist on a tight deadline came up with, not some deeply-researched and discussed statement of fact?
Just a thought.
Uh, isn't that VOIP software? Maybe you could spend at least, say, 4-5 milliseconds explaining exactly how VOIP software is supposed to solve the problem?
I don't even get why you'd ask about Gates; hadn't he proved his mastery of technology and the market *long* before he retired? He got his start writing compilers.
As for Ballmer... you may have a point, but you're talking about:
* Microsoft doing really well under Ballmer, vs.
* Microsoft doing incredibly well under "some mythical person who understands technology"
So either way, Microsoft's doing well. They're one of the very, very few tech companies doing well in this economy, actually.
Microsoft's Expression Web editor has a HTML editor that's more compliant than almost anything else out there. I think it's called Orcas... in any case, MS *does* have a really good standards-complaint engine in-house, it's just not well suited for end-user tasks. I'm sure with some optimization it would make a great engine for IE 9.
Trident's like Netscape's codebase pre-Mozilla. It's loaded with crap and obscure bugs, and nearly impossible to work with.
They'd be much better off grabbing the engine from Expression Web, which is one of the most (if not THE most) standards-compliant in existence right now (I believe it's named Orcas), wrapping the IE interface around it, and making that IE 9. I'm sure the Expression engine needs a lot of work to be a consumer browser, probably tons of optimizations to get it to run at a reasonable speed, but that's a better direction to go than keeping Trident alive.
Fine; then nobody should post it because it's a cliche. Either way, I'm completely and utterly sick of reading it.
Yes. And so has anyone who's had to dig deep in to their system to try and fix something that's gone wrong. Or at least... they've had someone else do it for them.
Yeah, but that's a pretty small proportion of people. Which was my point.
Actually - what I say is that the idea that users never have to resort to such arcane technicalities is just as wrong as the assumption that they must always resort to them (and I was talking about two entirely separate environments).
Fair enough.
This observation doesn't come from a "works for me" attitude. I've spent years around various IT tech; many earlier years behind helpdesks and doing desktop support. I've had to support GUIs of all types (to include early MacOS which you mention here shortly). And I've had my hand in working people through various fixes both simple clicky-clicky and arcane strings of commands.
And people didn't call you until they had a problem they required your help to solve. So you really have no clue how many of those people solved their own problem using the GUI (or CLI), or didn't have a problem in the first place.
And yet here we are today - MacOS 9 and previous incarnations a historical footnote. Huh.
Because Apple doesn't have the resources to write a modern OS from scratch, NOT because OS 9 was a horrible, terrible thing. In a perfect world, OS X would basically be the exact same UI as OS 9, except built atop a more modern foundation-- unfortunately, Apple hired a bunch of NeXT hackers who have absolutely no idea what the word "usability", "spatial", or "consistency" mean and the OS X UI turned to crap. (Look to Finder for the most discussed example.) None of this has to do with "not being able to fix problems on OS 9 using the CLI".
But what I do reject is the idea that having a GUI somehow makes a system more supportable as the parent implied.
It makes the system require less support because people are more likely to be able to find the solutions to their own problems. Discoverability.
AppleScript didn't exist until Macintosh was pretty old... System 7.5, IIRC. And for the record, while I did use it to make some macros, I never had to use it to "fix" a problem with a system.
So...
You don't believe in the "mystical power of the GUI" because you, personally, do things that require its use?
Of course, you say that most users do have to resort to the CLI to get something done, then you say only people with your particular interests do. What makes you think most people share your particular interests? Do you have any data to back that up? (Sounds like a contradiction to me.)
And now how about talking about the "mystical power of the GUI" from the perspective of the other 99.999% of users?
For the record, Classic Mac OS quite literally had no CLI at all and yet was often praised as being one of the best designed and most usable computer interfaces ever made. Apple doesn't get their reputation for ease-of-use from OS X, OS X's UI is a hog compared to Mac OS Classic.
I agree with you. What bothers me is that I've seen this conversation about 50,000,000 times on this site:
A: Linux isn't very good at Foobar.
B: Windows is just as bad at Foobar!1!!!
Notice how person B totally and completely changed the subject while simultaneously missing the point. The point isn't how good Windows is at it; in fact, the original poster didn't even *mention* Windows 90% of the time this conversation happens. The point is that Linux isn't very good at Foobar and should be better at Foobar.
Mac OS X users don't constantly compare themselves to Windows; I could go on "macosxhints.com" and post, "wow, the interface for Spotlight in Finder sucks ass" and I won't get 47 replies that all read, "yeah, well, Windows search is worse!!11!." For some reason, the Linux community does that constantly. It's annoying, it should stop.
It's logically impossible to build an OS better than Windows if you only work on problems until you're "as good as Windows" at them. If the Linux cared about making a usable, supported, real alternative OS, they wouldn't do this constant penis-measuring about Windows and they'd start working on it.
End rant, sorry.
First of all, OS X doesn't have a color scheme. (Well, it has "greyscale" and "not-as-greyscale" as themes, I suppose.)
Secondly, the OS provides functions for determining what the color scheme is, from which the software can update its color scheme to match. How do you think Windows applications manage this, exactly? Magic fairy dust? No, they just ask the OS which colors to use, then use them.
First of all, you're making a false comparison: How usable Linux is is an entirely separate issue from how usable Windows is. In an ideal world, Linux would be EASIER than Windows. With your approach, you're basically saying "once you're as good as Windows, you can give up and stop improving."
Secondly:
1) You don't need to use the CLI to install antivirus software.
2) You don't need to use the CLI to install Office.
3) Registry repair hasn't been part of the Windows experience since Windows 2000 came out; do try and keep up.
Hell, an obscure text file is easier to walk someone through editing than the registry is, and a LOT lower chance of completely hosing the entire system while you're at it.
A large part of usability is discoverability. Discoverability basically means giving the users a way to figure out how to solve their own problem in a rational, logical manner. Keeping settings in an obscurely-named, often invisible to the GUI, text file is pretty much exactly the opposite of that.
That said, you may be right: it's potentially easier to walk people through changing the contents of a file than adjusting options in a dialog. But there's no way the person can fix their OWN problem that way.
Ok, there's a lot of weirdness going on in your posts:
The grandparent is correct, I was mistaken and there is only one sequel to Jurassic Park, I got confused with the movies. Yet, I stand by my point that a) Lost World sucked and b) Crichton was a hack.
He's a hack because you're confusing movies (which he did not write) with books (that he did write.) Moreover, you're SO confused between the two that you don't even KNOW how many books he wrote.
Strong credentials for criticism there.
and I was not entertained in the least by Westworld because I had seen that movie before, the same way that Lost World was sorry and predictable.
Westworld was made in 1973. It was a movie. It was written and directed by Crichton. All clear on that point?
Jurassic Park was written in 1990. It was a book. The movie of Jurassic Park was NOT written by Crichton.
You're blaming Crichton that a work *he did not write* is too similar to a work he *did* write. So... it's his fault that someone else ripped him off? For the record, the books are very distinct.
From reading this thread, some people are entertained by his other novels, so maybe I'm wrong and he is a good author,
You can't even tell the difference between books and movies. I don't see why anybody would listen to your opinion on the matter; in short: you're wrong.
but I would bet dollars to doughnuts that Jurassic Park won't make it into any school reading lists the way H.G. Wells stuff does or George Orwell, or some other science fiction by truly great authors.
It already has, actually. Not every school, of course, but it's was definitely on the reading list of the Sci Fi class at my high school.
The summary and the article don't even come remotely close to accurately relaying Microsoft's statement.
In short, saying that moving to Windows 7 is easy doesn't contradict what Microsoft actually said at HEC. It just contradicts the bullshit Slashdot and the article linked made-up.
"urging device manufacturers to start immediate testing with its pre-beta release"
"to avoid the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Vista"
"'There is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released,' Microsoft has warned them."
You do realize that NONE of these statements are from Microsoft, right? (With the exception of the inner quote in the third one, but I severely doubt it was phrased as a "warning.")
You're actually getting your quotes from a publication that, as an accompanying image, chose a bad photoshop of Ballmer screaming at Godzilla. Or from Slashdot. Either way.
Here's an actual quote from a Microsoft representative:
"We're looking to make that super easy,"
Wow, look at that!
"You create a device, you write the driver" seems like a perfectly reasonable policy to me, at least for manufactures that don't open their specs to all.
I'd go a step further than that, and say the driver for X is part of the hardware. We shouldn't be thinking of these as two different things; it's all one single product. If HP makes a laserjet and then cripples it with really crummy drivers, then it's a really crummy printer. Period.
So, you deal with really stupid Windows users?
Because that's not really that revolutionary in any OS at this point. Nor was it 5 years ago.
You realize that Microsoft's RDC does that as well, right?
True, it has problems with programs that decide to draw their own GUI instead of using the Windows built-in one, but that'd be just as much a problem with X11. (Since in that case, you really have no choice but to transmit the bitmaps.)
Oh crap, I typoed the code. I'm the newb!
I can make up for it:
10 FOR X = 1 TO 16
20 PRINT "YAY!";
30 POKE 646,X
40 NEXT X
50 GOTO 10
Now we're cooking with gas.
Semi-colon, buddy, tells the C-64 to not append a newline after the string. Feh, NEWB!
You could rewrite that as:
10 PRINT "YAY!";
20 GOTO 20
If spanking is such a violent discipline that breeds violence -- then why is it only in the last 10-20 years that school violence has reached unprecedented levels?
You have to prove that assertion before your question is valid.
http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu/violence-in-schools/national-statistics.html
This site indicates that school violence is going down since the early 90s, drastically.
The state I live in (California) has more people than your entire country,
Also: amusement parks
So in the US one can just "arrive" somewhere, move in a random house and everything is ok for the Government? They don't need to know where to send your tax letter or anything? Strange.
Strange how? Why wouldn't it be ok?
Given, I'm a pretty red-blooded American, but I think it's not ok to have to tell the government about every little thing you do. There's not a lot of difference between that and "papers please, citizen."
Of course, that all said, from a *practical* point of view, you'll need to tell the post office where you are so they know where to send your mail. You'll probably have to register with various local government entities, like the school district (if you have kids) or your city's water/utilities service. If you stay longer than, I think, 3 months and you drive, you'll need to get a driver's license with the new address probably, or you can get ticketed.
Of course, if you're hard-core, you could not drive, not receive mail, teach your kids at home, not use any city services, and you're not breaking any laws. Go for it.
I'm sorry, but did you SEE "The Happening?"
She's got weirdly compelling eyes, but Zooey Deschanel can't act her way out of a paper bag. Or she can't act her way out of a shitty M. Night Shyamalan flick, which frankly is a much worse thing to be trapped in than a paper bag.