Yes, but you're missing the point. I'm not a developer with OpenOffice, and I don't want to be. I don't need to know, or particularly care, what all those dozens of different software components are. It's not my job to assign a bug to a specific developer, nor to give it a priority. I'm just a user who wants to help them make their product better. Why make it difficult for me to do that?
Now, if that bug tracker was labelled as being for project members only, or for developers only, or something like that and some easier-to-use alternative existed for the end-user, then everyone would be happy.
Linux users are always going on about usability... this project needs to be more usable, my Aunt Tillie needs to be able to install a printer, dialog boxes in whatever suck because the buttons aren't consistant, etc. Well, I'm trying to help the OpenOffice project with usability. Whether or not I can figure out the bugtracker isn't the issue at all... I had it mostly figured out by the time I wrote that email, except I still couldn't figure out how to search bugs by keyword.
Most PC gamers have never heard of Marathon and its two sequels. What I find funny is that they then come out with games for Windows that have features that Marathon had years and years before. Half-Life has a good story? Been there. Environmental sound effects instead of cheesy music? Marathon 2, done that. Unreal 2004 has voice communication built-in? You could do that in Marathon in 1995 over a LAN.
So anyway, yeah. Personally, I think Marathon is hugely under-rated, Half-Life is hugely over-rated, and System Shock 2 somewhat under-rated.
You have a software program named R? Whoever came up with that name seriously needs to go back to the drawing board, as Googling for "R" is quite useless.
What is it? What does it do? Where's the website? Can I get some info on R?
As long as you're only whining about camping in deathmatch games, I'm fine with it. What really pisses me off is whining about camping in team-based games! Uh, hello people, that's not "camping" that's "defending." I'm not "camping the flag" I'm defending it to keep it from getting taken! That's part of the design of the game!
I've gotten accused of camping for defending a power node in Unreal 2004 Onslaught mode, and it boggles my mind. Why *wouldn't* our team want to defend power nodes? Especially the important one at the middle?
It's a public server, what do you want? The open source community isn't *my* community... hell, I hate almost all the software they produce except Mozilla and Open Office (both sponsored by large corporations)... but I'm free to post here, right?
Just because I don't agree with the open source community means I can't use Slashdot? Come on, don't be an elitist ass, that's why I hate the open source community in the first place. (Those types who say VI is the best text editor ever? Those are the kind of elitist asses I'm talking about.)
I use MacOS X and Windows. I write (closed source) code for a MUD that runs in Redhat Linux. I don't recall having to sign a document that says I agree with everything the open source movement does before creating an account here.
Relax. If you don't like it, don't read the comments.
Happened To Me
on
JOE Hits 3.0
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
No crap! That happened to me when I was remotely logged onto a server and tried to use the cvs commit command without the -m flag. (Disclaimer: I'm a Mac user, so I have no clue how to do much in Unix other than CVS.) Suddenly the screen blanked with a little line across the bottom and a blinking cursor at the top and I'm supposed to know what the hell to do? It wasn't until I was talking with a bud later on that I figured out I was even in a text editor. At the very least, can't they spare a line at the top of the screen for "VI Text Editor version X" or something? After trying every key combination I could think of I ended up just closing the terminal window and cutting off the connection.
When people say that open source software has terrible, terrible UIs it's not just talking about the graphical stuff. It's usually worth it to be to hook up FTP, download the file, edit it with my old copy of the Codewarrior IDE, then re-upload. I could have done that process twice in the time it would have taken me to figure out how to type a line of text and save it in VI.
Revision tracking gets entirely mucked up by OpenOffice. Usually, all the revisions dealing with font/style issues are simply deleted.
This doesn't bother me, except that OpenOffice *also* doesn't give you a dialog box that says something like, "The Revision Tracking Data in this document is too complicated for OpenOffice to understand. Data may have been lost during conversion." or SOMEthing. If it doesn't work, OpenOffice shouldn't pretend that it does.
This is not directly related, but OpenOffice also has a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE bug tracking system. I found a bug relating to the installer a few weeks ago, and damned if I could figure out how to report the bug at all... so I wrote this email:
Ok, I've filed a lot of bugs for a lot of software products before, but I've never seen a bugtracker as confusing as yours in my entire life. Since this email address appears on the page, I'll just use it instead, but *please* make the bugtracker easier to use! I'm reporting this issue because it took me a few hours to find and because, at the very least, the FAQ needs to be updated so future users won't get as annoyed as I got.
Problem: Upgrade install overwrites Microsoft Office filetypes without prompting
Steps: Here's the steps to follow, starting with a blank install of Windows XP:
1) Install OpenOffice 1.0.2. Allow it to associate with all supported filetypes. (Makes sense, since there is no other office product installed.) 2) Install Microsoft Office XP. Microsoft Office XP associates with all filetypes it supports while it installs. 3) Install OpenOffice 1.1.1.
a) When asked whether to install fresh or upgrade OpenOffice 1.0.2, choose "upgrade"
b) OpenOffice 1.1.1 will install itself, overwriting the Office XP filetypes in the process without ever asking the user whether he wants to associate those filetypes with OpenOffice or not.
When I looked up this issue in the FAQ for OpenOffice 1.1.1, the FAQ said that the install was supposed to ask me if I wanted it to take-over those filetypes. Since I was doing an upgrade install, the installer never asked me that and I was extremely confused and annoyed when all of my Word files were suddenly OpenOffice files. Please fix ASAP.
And here's a quick critique of the bugtracker:
1) Have to create an account to register a single bug? Not only is that overkill, IMO, but creating an account consists of:
a) Filling in name and email address.
b) Waiting for password email to be sent. (Was not instant; took several minutes!)
c) Clicking link on email to create a password. (I already had a browser window open sitting right on the login screen... why did I have to click the link and create a new browser window? Annoying. Just put the temporary password in the email.)
d) Finally creating a new password. This is ridiculous to me. Can't you just add a password field to the initial form to create an account? Or, even better, can't you just create an account automatically in the process of submitting a bug? People aren't going to submit their bugs if they have to go through this hassle.
2) As all good beta testers do, I tried searching the bug database before I submitted a new bug to see if it'd already been submitted. Your query screen is terribly confusing.
a) Issue Type I understand, but that's about the only thing on this page.
b) Component? I want to search bugs for OpenOffice. How do I do that? What component do I select? (By going to the "new bug" screen, which actually explains what the components are, I could have figured this out, but that's far too much work for a user who just wants to submit a bug report!) The component menu should only contain components the user is used to seeing: "Writer, Calc, Draw, Installer, Website" or such. What component is br-pt? Or incubator? Or l10n?
c) Once a component is chosen, the subcomponent is slightly more understandable. But is my bug in the Code
I've had a TI-86 for... hmm, almost 10 years now... and you can take it from me when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
I don't give a whoop if it's "aimed for students" or not, I love the bugger. I wish they still made it, I'd buy a second one for work. (And yes, I know it's been superceded for other models, but I like the 86.)
Usually, control-alt-delete, kill "Explorer.exe" in the processes list, then start up a new one with the New Task button works for me.
I agree, though, right now the weak point in XP's stability is Explorer, which still seems to have a few minor bugs. Still, I keep my computer running a week at a time and only shut down on weekends at work. (My home PC I shut down often to save power, so I couldn't say how much uptime it's capable of.)
People who say that Windows 2000 Professional is the best Microsoft operating system EVAR look really dumb when they realize that, hey, Windows XP Pro includes *every feature* of Windows 2000 Pro plus a hell of a lot more.
You like 2000 Pro? You're *still* better off buying XP Pro (at the same price!) and turning off the features you don't happen to like. And, hey, maybe they'll come a day when you're smacking your forehead with your palm because you turned off System Restore... after all 2000 Pro didn't have it!... and now you have to spend 20 minutes re-installing corrupted driver files. Oh look, you got a new roommate... well, now you can turn on fast user switching and you're in heaven... sure couldn't do that with Windows 2000 Pro. Etc.:)
There is no logical reason whatsoever to favor 2000 Pro over XP Pro. There's not one thing that 2000 Pro can do that XP Pro can't, and XP Pro can do a hell of a lot more.
Well, I didn't do the historical research beforehand and I didn't think it was interesting or groundbreaking. Unless you're Stephenson himself, there's really no need to defend the work you know... it's not like me saying I don't like it is a personal insult to you.
It's not THAT he got killed, it's that he got killed by having a spear (or whatever, it's been a few years) rammed up his rectum and through his entire body out his mouth, and of course Stephenson has to describe it in great detail including the pieces of feces smeared on the side of the spear.
Let me tell you, I've read through American Psycho, I can take the gore and the sickness, but in American Psycho it has something to do with the story at least. Stephenson could write "he was killed" and it'd be the same thing to the readers without having them suffer through the specifics.
Maybe I'm a prude, but that kind of thing does bother me.
Well, there's Spellforge. And I'm sure there are a few others that aren't springing to mind immediately... Rise to Nations wasn't last six months, was it?
I do see your point, though. I've always kind of hoped for a resurgance of the kind of development that happened in the 80s and early 90s. You could buy a copy of Lemmings for: Atari, Apple II, Apple Macintosh, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, IBM PC, etc. Most of the good-selling games had ports to pretty much every platform in existence, it was very nice.
Snowcrash is 1 part nifty and 3 parts lame as hell. I'm sorry, I just wasn't that big a fan of the book... it didn't even come close to suspending my disbelief. Look at the main character:
1) He invented half the virtual world, knew all its tricks, wrote the swordfighting code, etc. 2) He was a master swordfighter himself. 3) He owned like the fastest and coolest car ever. 4) But as the book starts, he's living in a storage container and working as a pizza boy? Er... huh? 5) Not to mention, he's like 30 years old. There's no way anyone can accomplish this in 30 years of *work*, much less 15 or so.
Not even close to believable.
Oh, and then there were the stupid pointless scenes of gore that made me almost puke. (One of the cops getting impaled, for instance... had nothing to do with the story, was just there to gross you out.)
That said, the premise of the book was quite clever... but the lameness outweighed the coolness by quite a bit. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, of course, but Snowcrash was the first, and last, Stephenson I'll read.
What makes you think there's an "overall decrease in quality of video games"? You said that in your post as if it was an established fact.
Look at it this way: Unreal 2004 was released at $39.99, compared to Warcraft III released at $59.99. I know some people will disagree with me, but I didn't find Warcraft III all that great... I played through it once, hit the multiplayer a few times, then hit uninstall.
Unreal 2004, on the other hand, is the best value I've seen in gaming in years. 1) It's a damned good game, both singleplayer and multiplayer. 2) It contains, what, 10 different game types, all of them fairly unique. 3) It contains the entire content of a game released just a year ago, Unreal 2003. 4) It runs and was released on every major platform at the same time. 5) It includes all the modding tools and support from Epic you could possibly ask for.
In short, Unreal 2004 is an incredible value and an extremely high quality product.
I'd be interested in hearing why you think the quality of video games is decreasing, though. Remember "Old Fogey Syndrome" where people, as they age, keep their tastes frozen at a certain point and declare everything beyond that point crap. (See older people saying rap music is 'just noise', etc.)
As a note, (unless things have changed recently) you can install Overnet entirely spy-ware free if you just uncheck all the boxes it presents you with on the installer. At least, last time I installed it, I unchecked everything, ran Ad-Aware, and it shows up clean.
Doesn't help, of course, if they just hit "next" 4 times to install it without reading the options they just agreed to but, eh.
Just to play Devil's Advocate here for a moment...
You say "programmer" is one area where Linux has it covered. So where can I find a tool like RealBasic for Linux? A cross-platform visual RAD? (And please don't say Runtime Revolution; I've tried it, it's a piece of crap.)
I'm sure you'll all say that "only wimps use RAD tools, real men use C++ and wxWindows" (or whatever) but bear with me, here. This is a type of programming tool that exists both in Windows and MacOS and you can't really say that Linux has all the bases covered until it's there.
As the other poster noted, what's wrong with the phrase "which hackers tend not to target?" Is it that stupid debate over whether the word actually is "hacker" or "cracker?" (Using "cracker" would be dumb, considering the Economist's target argument.) Or is there some other reason I'm not seeing off-hand?
What you are experiencing is The Mac User Delema (tm). You don't have a lot of software, but that wont change until you have a larger userbase, but you won't have a larger userbase untill you have more software. Have fun, it's a great argument to have with people.
Of course the difference is that MacOS is an easy-to-use system that never gives its users driver headaches or "DLL Hell" or "Dependencies" or anything like that.
Not only is Linux in the MacOS camp of "not enough users to get software; not enough software to get users," but it's going to have a much more difficult time gaining more users (or even keeping the ones it has in the face of OS X and Windows XP. Say what you want about Windows 98 or ME, but Windows XP *really is* a good operating system, no doubt about it.)
How is this insightful? It's a man posting that he hates OS X because of an issue it has (all of which is entirely off-topic) then, at the very end, saying he doesn't really hate OSX at all.
The anti-Nintendo fanboyism gets a bit thick around here, sometimes.
Are you joking? Please tell me you're joking!
Slashdot.org is about the most PRO-Nintendo website I've ever seen in my life by far. I don't know who submitted that story but, hell, if you make a single comment that *maybe* Nintendo made a mistake by doing X, or that the "double screen" sounds like a dumb idea, and you get modded into the basement.
And God-forbid you post something about the XBox having a good game, or the XBox controller-S being comfortable, or how the XBox supports HDTV better.
Slashdot Mirror
Or (it's been mentioned by a previous posted, but) Marathon.
http://marathon.bungie.org/story/
Check it out. The deepest FPS I've ever played, and possibly the deepest that's ever been made.
Yes, but you're missing the point. I'm not a developer with OpenOffice, and I don't want to be. I don't need to know, or particularly care, what all those dozens of different software components are. It's not my job to assign a bug to a specific developer, nor to give it a priority. I'm just a user who wants to help them make their product better. Why make it difficult for me to do that?
Now, if that bug tracker was labelled as being for project members only, or for developers only, or something like that and some easier-to-use alternative existed for the end-user, then everyone would be happy.
Linux users are always going on about usability... this project needs to be more usable, my Aunt Tillie needs to be able to install a printer, dialog boxes in whatever suck because the buttons aren't consistant, etc. Well, I'm trying to help the OpenOffice project with usability. Whether or not I can figure out the bugtracker isn't the issue at all... I had it mostly figured out by the time I wrote that email, except I still couldn't figure out how to search bugs by keyword.
Most PC gamers have never heard of Marathon and its two sequels. What I find funny is that they then come out with games for Windows that have features that Marathon had years and years before. Half-Life has a good story? Been there. Environmental sound effects instead of cheesy music? Marathon 2, done that. Unreal 2004 has voice communication built-in? You could do that in Marathon in 1995 over a LAN.
So anyway, yeah. Personally, I think Marathon is hugely under-rated, Half-Life is hugely over-rated, and System Shock 2 somewhat under-rated.
You have a software program named R? Whoever came up with that name seriously needs to go back to the drawing board, as Googling for "R" is quite useless.
What is it? What does it do? Where's the website? Can I get some info on R?
As long as you're only whining about camping in deathmatch games, I'm fine with it. What really pisses me off is whining about camping in team-based games! Uh, hello people, that's not "camping" that's "defending." I'm not "camping the flag" I'm defending it to keep it from getting taken! That's part of the design of the game!
I've gotten accused of camping for defending a power node in Unreal 2004 Onslaught mode, and it boggles my mind. Why *wouldn't* our team want to defend power nodes? Especially the important one at the middle?
Anyway, rant over.
It's a public server, what do you want? The open source community isn't *my* community... hell, I hate almost all the software they produce except Mozilla and Open Office (both sponsored by large corporations)... but I'm free to post here, right?
Just because I don't agree with the open source community means I can't use Slashdot? Come on, don't be an elitist ass, that's why I hate the open source community in the first place. (Those types who say VI is the best text editor ever? Those are the kind of elitist asses I'm talking about.)
I use MacOS X and Windows. I write (closed source) code for a MUD that runs in Redhat Linux. I don't recall having to sign a document that says I agree with everything the open source movement does before creating an account here.
Relax. If you don't like it, don't read the comments.
No crap! That happened to me when I was remotely logged onto a server and tried to use the cvs commit command without the -m flag. (Disclaimer: I'm a Mac user, so I have no clue how to do much in Unix other than CVS.) Suddenly the screen blanked with a little line across the bottom and a blinking cursor at the top and I'm supposed to know what the hell to do? It wasn't until I was talking with a bud later on that I figured out I was even in a text editor. At the very least, can't they spare a line at the top of the screen for "VI Text Editor version X" or something? After trying every key combination I could think of I ended up just closing the terminal window and cutting off the connection.
When people say that open source software has terrible, terrible UIs it's not just talking about the graphical stuff. It's usually worth it to be to hook up FTP, download the file, edit it with my old copy of the Codewarrior IDE, then re-upload. I could have done that process twice in the time it would have taken me to figure out how to type a line of text and save it in VI.
This doesn't bother me, except that OpenOffice *also* doesn't give you a dialog box that says something like, "The Revision Tracking Data in this document is too complicated for OpenOffice to understand. Data may have been lost during conversion." or SOMEthing. If it doesn't work, OpenOffice shouldn't pretend that it does.
This is not directly related, but OpenOffice also has a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE bug tracking system. I found a bug relating to the installer a few weeks ago, and damned if I could figure out how to report the bug at all... so I wrote this email:
I've had a TI-86 for... hmm, almost 10 years now... and you can take it from me when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
I don't give a whoop if it's "aimed for students" or not, I love the bugger. I wish they still made it, I'd buy a second one for work. (And yes, I know it's been superceded for other models, but I like the 86.)
Usually, control-alt-delete, kill "Explorer.exe" in the processes list, then start up a new one with the New Task button works for me.
I agree, though, right now the weak point in XP's stability is Explorer, which still seems to have a few minor bugs. Still, I keep my computer running a week at a time and only shut down on weekends at work. (My home PC I shut down often to save power, so I couldn't say how much uptime it's capable of.)
Gonna toot my own horn:
My post on this topic
If you don't want to see the dog, turn it off.
Hear, hear.
:)
People who say that Windows 2000 Professional is the best Microsoft operating system EVAR look really dumb when they realize that, hey, Windows XP Pro includes *every feature* of Windows 2000 Pro plus a hell of a lot more.
You like 2000 Pro? You're *still* better off buying XP Pro (at the same price!) and turning off the features you don't happen to like. And, hey, maybe they'll come a day when you're smacking your forehead with your palm because you turned off System Restore... after all 2000 Pro didn't have it!... and now you have to spend 20 minutes re-installing corrupted driver files. Oh look, you got a new roommate... well, now you can turn on fast user switching and you're in heaven... sure couldn't do that with Windows 2000 Pro. Etc.
There is no logical reason whatsoever to favor 2000 Pro over XP Pro. There's not one thing that 2000 Pro can do that XP Pro can't, and XP Pro can do a hell of a lot more.
It's an experiment to see whether the Slashdot moderators ever moderate a comment as off-topic. The answer? No.
But you can be sure they'll moderate this questioning of the moderation as off-topic. Go figure.
Well, I didn't do the historical research beforehand and I didn't think it was interesting or groundbreaking. Unless you're Stephenson himself, there's really no need to defend the work you know... it's not like me saying I don't like it is a personal insult to you.
It's not THAT he got killed, it's that he got killed by having a spear (or whatever, it's been a few years) rammed up his rectum and through his entire body out his mouth, and of course Stephenson has to describe it in great detail including the pieces of feces smeared on the side of the spear.
Let me tell you, I've read through American Psycho, I can take the gore and the sickness, but in American Psycho it has something to do with the story at least. Stephenson could write "he was killed" and it'd be the same thing to the readers without having them suffer through the specifics.
Maybe I'm a prude, but that kind of thing does bother me.
Well, there's Spellforge. And I'm sure there are a few others that aren't springing to mind immediately... Rise to Nations wasn't last six months, was it?
I do see your point, though. I've always kind of hoped for a resurgance of the kind of development that happened in the 80s and early 90s. You could buy a copy of Lemmings for: Atari, Apple II, Apple Macintosh, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, IBM PC, etc. Most of the good-selling games had ports to pretty much every platform in existence, it was very nice.
Snowcrash is 1 part nifty and 3 parts lame as hell. I'm sorry, I just wasn't that big a fan of the book... it didn't even come close to suspending my disbelief. Look at the main character:
1) He invented half the virtual world, knew all its tricks, wrote the swordfighting code, etc.
2) He was a master swordfighter himself.
3) He owned like the fastest and coolest car ever.
4) But as the book starts, he's living in a storage container and working as a pizza boy? Er... huh?
5) Not to mention, he's like 30 years old. There's no way anyone can accomplish this in 30 years of *work*, much less 15 or so.
Not even close to believable.
Oh, and then there were the stupid pointless scenes of gore that made me almost puke. (One of the cops getting impaled, for instance... had nothing to do with the story, was just there to gross you out.)
That said, the premise of the book was quite clever... but the lameness outweighed the coolness by quite a bit. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, of course, but Snowcrash was the first, and last, Stephenson I'll read.
What makes you think there's an "overall decrease in quality of video games"? You said that in your post as if it was an established fact.
Look at it this way: Unreal 2004 was released at $39.99, compared to Warcraft III released at $59.99. I know some people will disagree with me, but I didn't find Warcraft III all that great... I played through it once, hit the multiplayer a few times, then hit uninstall.
Unreal 2004, on the other hand, is the best value I've seen in gaming in years.
1) It's a damned good game, both singleplayer and multiplayer.
2) It contains, what, 10 different game types, all of them fairly unique.
3) It contains the entire content of a game released just a year ago, Unreal 2003.
4) It runs and was released on every major platform at the same time.
5) It includes all the modding tools and support from Epic you could possibly ask for.
In short, Unreal 2004 is an incredible value and an extremely high quality product.
I'd be interested in hearing why you think the quality of video games is decreasing, though. Remember "Old Fogey Syndrome" where people, as they age, keep their tastes frozen at a certain point and declare everything beyond that point crap. (See older people saying rap music is 'just noise', etc.)
As a note, (unless things have changed recently) you can install Overnet entirely spy-ware free if you just uncheck all the boxes it presents you with on the installer. At least, last time I installed it, I unchecked everything, ran Ad-Aware, and it shows up clean.
Doesn't help, of course, if they just hit "next" 4 times to install it without reading the options they just agreed to but, eh.
Just to play Devil's Advocate here for a moment...
You say "programmer" is one area where Linux has it covered. So where can I find a tool like RealBasic for Linux? A cross-platform visual RAD? (And please don't say Runtime Revolution; I've tried it, it's a piece of crap.)
I'm sure you'll all say that "only wimps use RAD tools, real men use C++ and wxWindows" (or whatever) but bear with me, here. This is a type of programming tool that exists both in Windows and MacOS and you can't really say that Linux has all the bases covered until it's there.
As the other poster noted, what's wrong with the phrase "which hackers tend not to target?" Is it that stupid debate over whether the word actually is "hacker" or "cracker?" (Using "cracker" would be dumb, considering the Economist's target argument.) Or is there some other reason I'm not seeing off-hand?
What you are experiencing is The Mac User Delema (tm). You don't have a lot of software, but that wont change until you have a larger userbase, but you won't have a larger userbase untill you have more software. Have fun, it's a great argument to have with people.
Of course the difference is that MacOS is an easy-to-use system that never gives its users driver headaches or "DLL Hell" or "Dependencies" or anything like that.
Not only is Linux in the MacOS camp of "not enough users to get software; not enough software to get users," but it's going to have a much more difficult time gaining more users (or even keeping the ones it has in the face of OS X and Windows XP. Say what you want about Windows 98 or ME, but Windows XP *really is* a good operating system, no doubt about it.)
Anyway, good luck. I like using OpenOffice.
Ditto that, that's a good one.
Wait... moderators... insightful?
How is this insightful? It's a man posting that he hates OS X because of an issue it has (all of which is entirely off-topic) then, at the very end, saying he doesn't really hate OSX at all.
So, how is that insightful again?
Are you joking? Please tell me you're joking!
Slashdot.org is about the most PRO-Nintendo website I've ever seen in my life by far. I don't know who submitted that story but, hell, if you make a single comment that *maybe* Nintendo made a mistake by doing X, or that the "double screen" sounds like a dumb idea, and you get modded into the basement.
And God-forbid you post something about the XBox having a good game, or the XBox controller-S being comfortable, or how the XBox supports HDTV better.