The real problem is the people who *don't* cheat, but still come out of the program completely unable to write software.
And I'm not talking about just the things they don't teach you (although they should), like UI design. I'm talking about the basics-- something as simple as querying a row from a database. The number of CS graduates who don't know any SQL more advanced than "SELECT * FROM table" then looping through every result instead of just using a WHERE clause in the first place.
I'm a college drop-out, and most of the CS grads at my company come to me when they need help with things I'd consider extremely trivial in software development. Things they should already know. The really retarded part is that I only work here because I got grandfathered-in-- I worked for a company that hired based on merit and not on "letters behind the name", then was acquired by a "letters behind the name"-only company. I shouldn't even be working here, based on my own company's hiring policies.
It's like that episode of Red Dwarf where Rimmer finds out that he more successful version of himself was actually a "failure" by his standards.
I "don't" really have anything "to reply to" in your post, but I just wanted to make sure somebody on "Slashdot" is mocking your insane use of quote "marks." "Consider" this a "public service."
I'm not saying this is the case with the guy in this thread, but from my experience, bugs filed against open source projects are either ignored, or get triaged, then remain unfixed for years.
My track history for filing bugs against open source projects is something like 2 in 25 or so-- low enough that I generally don't bother anymore. Especially if I'm only using the open source project to evaluate it as a substitute for a commercial or freeware product I already have (which is pretty often.)
The funny thing is when they get fixed "by accident"... i.e. a developer notices the bug and fixes it without ever bothering to close my 2-year-old initial bug report. That frankly tells me a lot about how disorganized most open source development is.
At this point, C#/.net is so easy to write quick-and-dirty GUI applications for that I think Microsoft's going to start squeezing Access out of the picture, at least for new development. (Legacy stuff that uses it uses it, but eh.)
It's frankly easier to set up your GUI/front-end in, say, the free Visual Studio Express. If you only need Access-level data storage, you attach the free SQL Server Express, and bam there's your Access replacement. The beauty is that now you can trivially update to full SQL Server just by changing a connection string, so you're more scalable than Access to-boot. And, like you said, you can remove Access from your software loadout.
Exchange is NOT stable in a 29,000 user environment.
I don't have a ton of interest in email servers, but that statement is blatantly ridiculous considering Microsoft runs Exchange in a 70,000 user environment with no problems. And they run the beta versions for all their users months before releases. And it never goes down, for all practical values of "never."
Anyway, I'm not saying Exchange is the right choice for your company. But it obviously scales to that level and beyond.
As for copying files, I'm not sure how that would even work. It apparently isn't a very discoverable UI, since I was totally unaware that the Windows native common dialogs did that. (Unless by "copying" you mean Open and then Save As, for each file, one at a time. I've known people who copy files in that fashion, but they were not the sort of people who read slashdot.)
Yes, but it's a consistent UI, as right-clicking an icon in an Open/Save dialog has the exact same choices as right-clicking the same icon in Explorer. Thus, you can right-click and Cut/Copy an icon from an Open dialog, move the dialog to another folder, then right-click and Paste the copied icon. That's a perfectly cromulent operation, and consistency is a valuable UI concept as well.
And again, the real point here is that Windows applications support that, so if you're advertising your application as being for Windows, it needs to support that.
In the other post you were talking about ones that were "mapped as drives". To me that means they have drive letters. What else would the phrase "mapped as drives" mean, in the context of MS Windows?
I'm probably just using "mapped as drives" as a shorthand for "shows up as an icon in Explorer." Forget the details, and focus on the important bits: GTK+ Open/Save dialogs don't support shit.
Now, that's an interesting question. OpenOffice did the same thing (write their own open/save dialogs), so presumably there's some kind of reason for doing so, but I'm not really sure what it would be.
Javaness, possibly?
The only reason I can determine to not use the OS-provided services is user-hatred. "Man, I hate users. Let's make a shitty dialog instead of doing the far easier task of using Windows' good dialog!"
Do the GTK and OpenOffice open/save dialogs provide something that the native Windows ones lack?
It's been awhile, but nothing I can think of except perhaps the image previews were a bit easier to see. (IIRC, they show in a separate pane instead of you having to set the main icon list to a preview view.) Memory's foggy, though, and that alone isn't a good enough reason to remove the dozens of other things that the standard dialogs do automagically.
Oh, I think I understand now. You're saying GTK doesn't support the Fisher Price theme in XP or the Aero Glass stuff in Vista. Have I got that about right?
Yes, actually. If the user sets their color scheme to blue and green, who the fuck are you to tell them it's wrong? Windows has a theme manager like every other OS, if an application doesn't use the theme colors, then it's a bug.
Again: it does not matter whether you like the Windows feature or not. DOES. NOT. MATTER. The point here is that if you're going to be compatible with Windows, you have to be compatible with Windows. Stop trying to derailing the conversation with things like "haha! Windows XP has bad themes! Haha!!" It's irrelevant, and it's annoying me.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Windows, do as Windows does. It's that simple.
I didn't know. By the time I install any third-party software on a Windows system, the theme has always already been changed back to Classic (it's nearly the first thing I do). GTK looks right at home.
Wow, either you're using Windows 98 or you're blind. Classic appearance in 2000 and Vista uses gradients in the title bar and a completely difference shade of grey, GTK+ does neither. Plus, GTK+'s buttons are still wrong, even compared to the Windows Classic theme.
Blake, NT WAS designed with Posix-compliance, yes, but the over-arching goal was backward compatibility with Windows 3.1, remember?
So what you meant to say is, "POSIX-designed OSes are secure, unless they're Windows." Great job with that double-standard, there.
Look, POSIX-compliance says nothing about security. It does specify a method of file-level security, but it's a bare-minimum standard... Novell went way above and beyond and so did Windows. Modern Linux probably does also, frankly.
In the year 2010, security is about two things: 1) Keeping grandma from installing the cute kittens screensaver trojan 2) Keeping buggy-ass third-party software (like Adobe anything) from bypassing your normal security
Ah, but there's the rub: You (likely) started out with Windows, and now it feels natural to you.
No I started on Mac Classic, which is where I got my appreciation of a good clean UI. Now that Apple OSes don't got one, I tried Linux and eventually moved on to Windows when Vista came out, as I believe Vista's UI is right on-par with Apple's at the moment.
I'm actually kind of insulted you believe the only criteria I use when judging the quality of a UI is how familiar I am with it. Believe me, I've tried everything from GeOS to BeOS... I appreciate good ideas when I see them, regardless of where they come from.
I mean program-installation (package management) seems far more logical in Linux... No need to go hunting around for what I want, then hunting for the download, then trying to find the downloaded package, etc...
Linux is neater: Look in the catalog, then select what you want and it installs.
Well, ok, but that one thing Linux does better than Windows (if you even believe it's better; I'm not so certain) doesn't make up for the millions of things Linux gets wrong in other areas.
You can also install things manually if you want or even in your home folder.
Are you suggesting you can't do this in Windows?
It's much more logical.
To your way of thinking. But I don't think like the typical Linux user... I much prefer a spatial UI, and Linux doesn't provide one. (Actually, GNOME is pretty close.)
Again: you must realize that not everybody is like you. You're welcome to like Linux. Notice how I'm not trying to talk you into using Windows, because I want you to use whatever makes you happy. But at the same time, you can't make these sweeping claims that Linux is better for every user! (If for no other reason than, if those claims were true, Linux would probably be more popular.)
And coming from long experience programming Windows at every level (device-driver through services to gui apps) I can attest that Linux IS more secure by design because its parent specification (POSIX) was just much better thought-out, whereas in Windows it's always been an afterthought.
Windows is based on the NT kernel, which is POSIX-compliant. It always has been. So you're just demonstrating my point: NT permissions and Linux permissions are the exact same thing. Or at least, the differences are so minor as to be meaningless.
(Microsoft has recently removed some of the POSIX layer. But if you're implying that OSes based on the POSIX specification are secure, you're also claiming Windows NT is secure.)
When you talk about security, it's a bit of a matter of the underlying filesystem, isn't it?
Not really, no.
If you were to use FAT32 instead of NTFS then the security would be reduced quite a bit.
How?
NT permissions work fine in FAT32. Windows 2000 and Windows XP actually support this configuration. Of course, Microsoft has switched to NTFS because of the thousands of other benefits it offers, but... well, I'm going to have to see some evidence that your filesystem has anything at all to do with your level of security.
Once you really give Linux a shot, you see that it is more thought-out, has better quality,
I've given Linux a shot, several in fact. I've never come to the conclusion that it's well thought-out or has better quality.
But then again, I'm this crazy and wild person who actually cares about usability, especially in a GUI... the Linux philosophy has always been "once you learn Linux it's great," but I think the OS should meld to the user's expectations, not the other way around. After all, human behavior is the result of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution-- a 20-year-long development process isn't likely to change it.
That basic philosophical disconnect is why I'll probably never be a full-time Linux user.
I also believe your statement that Linux has better security is wrong; from my perspective, Linux and Windows have pretty much the exact same permissions system and the exact same amount of protection in them*. The only difference is that Windows has tons of people trying to crack into it, and Linux doesn't.
In other words, Linux may be a better choice for you, but you're not everybody.
* Actually, Windows permissions are more powerful than Linux ones... and Windows' UAC feature is more usable, since it alerts the user before the application fails. The corresponding technology in Linux requires the application to fail the first time.
You don't have to reinstall Windows anymore after a few months, though. That's outdated-- yah, Windows 2000 and XP had those problems, but Vista and Windows 7 doesn't.
I don't care about excuses. If you're going to support Windows, you have to *support* Windows. If you're not going to bother to get the basics right, don't even bother making a Windows download. Not trying to be too harsh, it's just that people always respond with excuses. Bugs me.
The worst part is that since the bugs are in GTK+, they're in a butt-ton of applications-- but at the same time, a butt-ton of applications can all be fixed in one place! Unfortunately, that one place does not give a flying shit, so it never happens. (Every bug I've filed against GTK+, including most of the pointed-out issues, has been ignored.)
Ah, that. I didn't think of it, because it's not specific to open/save dialogs. It's a more general problem with.lnk file support in cross-platform and open-source software.
You've already commented on this, the fact that shortcuts have been around for decades and they're still not supported does not bode well for GTK+.
The last time I had access to an OS X system, getting GTK software to run on it could ONLY be done via the X server,
Still true, as of 10.4. Forcing users to use the X11 server is bad enough, but brain-dead bugs like not alphabetizing correctly just make things worse. It's like they wanted to pile crap on top of crap, just in case X11 on Mac wasn't crappy enough already.
> 4) No open to move, delete, create shortcut, map > network drive or any of those other options normal > Open/Save dialogs have
Not can sentence fully this understand I.
Sorry. I think the word "open" there is supposed to be "option." No clue what happened while I was typing that point... I'm sober, I swear!
Are you saying you use open and save dialog boxes as a file manager? So, like, if you want to copy some files, you pull up a word processor or something, hit Save As, find the location where the files are that you want to copy, and then, umm, somehow use the dialog box to copy them?
I was not aware that was even possible. Sounds cumbersome.
If you're going to support Windows, you have to *support* Windows. You can't say "oh we support Windows, except for the features that 'sound cumbersome'." No, it doesn't work that way... if your download page says this is a Windows application, it needs to support all of Windows.
That aside, you really like having to leave your application, go to a completely different application, open a few windows, just because you forgot to make a folder for the project before you started? If GNOME *doesn't* have the ability to make new folders in the Open/Save dialog (something that Mac has had since like 1988 or so), that's a much bigger WTF than anything here.
(I can give a pass on the more advanced features like moving files or mapping network drives. But making folders!?)
Call me weird, but personally I use file open and save dialog boxes for opening and saving.
I apologize that you find it cumbersome, and yet that's completely irrelevant to the conversation.
If it's mapped as a drive with a letter (the closest analog, on Windows, to mounting it), the software shouldn't have to do anything special to access it. It should work just like accessing any other part of the filesystem. The app shouldn't even have to *know* that it's actually an ftp server (or nfs, or cifs, or whatever). If it's mounted (i.e., has a drive letter), it should Just Work. If it doesn't, that's a bug in the operating system, and a fairly major one.
FTP sites by default don't get drive letters, that's exactly the problem. That feature has also been around for a decade, and is not supported.
Look, you're dodging the real issue: the real issue is, why the hell did GTK+ write their own Open/Save dialogs instead of using the ones built-in to the OS? They're going way out of their way to make terrible Open/Save dialogs, when Windows itself is willing and able to provide that service for you automatically.
You said XP was missing a feature to report on hard drive SMART status. Here's a quote:
That reminds me. Does Windows 7 finally report on hard drive SMART status? Glaring missing feature from XP.
XP has that feature. So you simultaneously make yourself look like an idiot by claiming XP doesn't have a feature it actually does have, but you also waste my time trying to correct your retarded wrongness.
I apologize that you didn't say what you fucking mean, but I'm not going to apologize for replying to the post you *typed* and not the post you *meant*. I don't have the psychic abilities to know what you meant.
What any of this has to do with me not keeping track of the topic of conversation is a mystery. But since we've already established that you don't say what you fucking mean, I'm just going to assume you actually meant "wow, Blakey Rat is an awesome guy" and move on with my life.
XP reported SMART status. It was in the Disk Management administrative tool. (Same place it is in Vista and Windows 7, actually.) Pretty sure Windows 2000 had it also.
To answer your question: Yes, Windows 7 reports SMART status.
For KDE and Gnome, and many others, it saves you clicks.
You seemed to miss the point: I don't give a shit about "saving clicks." Clicks are not a finite resources, they don't cause global warming, and so I don't mind using up a lot of them.
You're going to need to come up with a more concrete method of convincing me than telling me it "saves clicks."
Out of curiousity, what, exactly, does GTK get wrong about file open/save dialogs on Windows?
You'll have to excuse vagueness, I'm not going to install GTK+ again on my nice clean Windows 7 box. But as a very small list from memory: 1) Shortcuts to folders were treated as files 2) (On OS X) the dialog alphabetized incorrectly (files would be listed: a.jpg, b.jpg, x.jpg, A.jpg, D.jpg... OS X is case-insensitive) 3) (On Windows) no accessibility features work... meaning no voice control, no tablet stylus support, no touchscreen support (that's universal among all GTK+, BTW. On a tablet it's doubly-useless) 4) No open to move, delete, create shortcut, map network drive or any of those other options normal Open/Save dialogs have 5) It's been awhile, but I seem to recall it was incapable of accessing FTP servers mapped as drives in Windows, or any network drive that didn't have a drive letter (could be wrong on this one) 6) And of course BUTT FUGLY
Anyway, I'd really have to install a GTK+ application to make a full list.
They are if they are. If you put the floating windows inside the main window, then they are floating windows inside the main window. If you don't, they aren't.
I have no idea what point you're trying to make here.
While it's not technically DRM, it feels like DRM because it's tracking software that the user has little control over if they want to play their game.
That's complete nonsense. Don't devalue the term "DRM" by applying it to things that aren't Digital Restriction Management in any way, shape or form.
In any case, as an Xbox owner, I appreciate it... my achievements all go into the same place, instead of having a set in Steam, another set on Xbox, etc. Steam and Live aren't redundant until Live runs on *all* Steam games, or Steam runs on Xbox.
What does Windows Live have anything to do with DRM?
All it does it integrate the PC game with the Xbox Live system, so you can track achievements, IM Xbox Live-using friends, etc. It also provides voice chat for games that don't already have that.
Paint.NET lets you keep the tool palettes over the image, or drag them out of the windows to somewhere else on the screen(s). It's not mutually-exclusive, you know-- let people drag the tools where ever they want.
If they like it on a second monitor, they can drag them there. If not, they don't have to. Everybody's happy.
Slashdot Mirror
The real problem is the people who *don't* cheat, but still come out of the program completely unable to write software.
And I'm not talking about just the things they don't teach you (although they should), like UI design. I'm talking about the basics-- something as simple as querying a row from a database. The number of CS graduates who don't know any SQL more advanced than "SELECT * FROM table" then looping through every result instead of just using a WHERE clause in the first place.
I'm a college drop-out, and most of the CS grads at my company come to me when they need help with things I'd consider extremely trivial in software development. Things they should already know. The really retarded part is that I only work here because I got grandfathered-in-- I worked for a company that hired based on merit and not on "letters behind the name", then was acquired by a "letters behind the name"-only company. I shouldn't even be working here, based on my own company's hiring policies.
It's like that episode of Red Dwarf where Rimmer finds out that he more successful version of himself was actually a "failure" by his standards.
I "don't" really have anything "to reply to" in your post, but I just wanted to make sure somebody on "Slashdot" is mocking your insane use of quote "marks." "Consider" this a "public service."
I'm not saying this is the case with the guy in this thread, but from my experience, bugs filed against open source projects are either ignored, or get triaged, then remain unfixed for years.
My track history for filing bugs against open source projects is something like 2 in 25 or so-- low enough that I generally don't bother anymore. Especially if I'm only using the open source project to evaluate it as a substitute for a commercial or freeware product I already have (which is pretty often.)
The funny thing is when they get fixed "by accident"... i.e. a developer notices the bug and fixes it without ever bothering to close my 2-year-old initial bug report. That frankly tells me a lot about how disorganized most open source development is.
At this point, C#/.net is so easy to write quick-and-dirty GUI applications for that I think Microsoft's going to start squeezing Access out of the picture, at least for new development. (Legacy stuff that uses it uses it, but eh.)
It's frankly easier to set up your GUI/front-end in, say, the free Visual Studio Express. If you only need Access-level data storage, you attach the free SQL Server Express, and bam there's your Access replacement. The beauty is that now you can trivially update to full SQL Server just by changing a connection string, so you're more scalable than Access to-boot. And, like you said, you can remove Access from your software loadout.
Exchange is NOT stable in a 29,000 user environment.
I don't have a ton of interest in email servers, but that statement is blatantly ridiculous considering Microsoft runs Exchange in a 70,000 user environment with no problems. And they run the beta versions for all their users months before releases. And it never goes down, for all practical values of "never."
Anyway, I'm not saying Exchange is the right choice for your company. But it obviously scales to that level and beyond.
And Wargames 2 only slides past on a technicality-- it was direct-to-video.
http://blakeyrat.com/2008/09/wargames-the-dead-code/
The are so many fucking legitimate reasons for that, you ignorant tool:
Well, at least you're respectful about it. You ignorant tool.
As for copying files, I'm not sure how that would even work. It apparently isn't a very discoverable UI, since I was totally unaware that the Windows native common dialogs did that. (Unless by "copying" you mean Open and then Save As, for each file, one at a time. I've known people who copy files in that fashion, but they were not the sort of people who read slashdot.)
Yes, but it's a consistent UI, as right-clicking an icon in an Open/Save dialog has the exact same choices as right-clicking the same icon in Explorer. Thus, you can right-click and Cut/Copy an icon from an Open dialog, move the dialog to another folder, then right-click and Paste the copied icon. That's a perfectly cromulent operation, and consistency is a valuable UI concept as well.
And again, the real point here is that Windows applications support that, so if you're advertising your application as being for Windows, it needs to support that.
In the other post you were talking about ones that were "mapped as drives". To me that means they have drive letters. What else would the phrase "mapped as drives" mean, in the context of MS Windows?
I'm probably just using "mapped as drives" as a shorthand for "shows up as an icon in Explorer." Forget the details, and focus on the important bits: GTK+ Open/Save dialogs don't support shit.
Now, that's an interesting question. OpenOffice did the same thing (write their own open/save dialogs), so presumably there's some kind of reason for doing so, but I'm not really sure what it would be.
Javaness, possibly?
The only reason I can determine to not use the OS-provided services is user-hatred. "Man, I hate users. Let's make a shitty dialog instead of doing the far easier task of using Windows' good dialog!"
Do the GTK and OpenOffice open/save dialogs provide something that the native Windows ones lack?
It's been awhile, but nothing I can think of except perhaps the image previews were a bit easier to see. (IIRC, they show in a separate pane instead of you having to set the main icon list to a preview view.) Memory's foggy, though, and that alone isn't a good enough reason to remove the dozens of other things that the standard dialogs do automagically.
Oh, I think I understand now. You're saying GTK doesn't support the Fisher Price theme in XP or the Aero Glass stuff in Vista. Have I got that about right?
Yes, actually. If the user sets their color scheme to blue and green, who the fuck are you to tell them it's wrong? Windows has a theme manager like every other OS, if an application doesn't use the theme colors, then it's a bug.
Again: it does not matter whether you like the Windows feature or not. DOES. NOT. MATTER. The point here is that if you're going to be compatible with Windows, you have to be compatible with Windows. Stop trying to derailing the conversation with things like "haha! Windows XP has bad themes! Haha!!" It's irrelevant, and it's annoying me.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Windows, do as Windows does. It's that simple.
I didn't know. By the time I install any third-party software on a Windows system, the theme has always already been changed back to Classic (it's nearly the first thing I do). GTK looks right at home.
Wow, either you're using Windows 98 or you're blind. Classic appearance in 2000 and Vista uses gradients in the title bar and a completely difference shade of grey, GTK+ does neither. Plus, GTK+'s buttons are still wrong, even compared to the Windows Classic theme.
Or the video game Galapagos. That came out in, what, 1996?
(Yah, it wasn't a physical robot, but it was a virtual one, and it certainly learned to walk on its own given enough time.)
Blake, NT WAS designed with Posix-compliance, yes, but the over-arching goal was backward compatibility with Windows 3.1, remember?
So what you meant to say is, "POSIX-designed OSes are secure, unless they're Windows." Great job with that double-standard, there.
Look, POSIX-compliance says nothing about security. It does specify a method of file-level security, but it's a bare-minimum standard... Novell went way above and beyond and so did Windows. Modern Linux probably does also, frankly.
In the year 2010, security is about two things:
1) Keeping grandma from installing the cute kittens screensaver trojan
2) Keeping buggy-ass third-party software (like Adobe anything) from bypassing your normal security
Ah, but there's the rub: You (likely) started out with Windows, and now it feels natural to you.
No I started on Mac Classic, which is where I got my appreciation of a good clean UI. Now that Apple OSes don't got one, I tried Linux and eventually moved on to Windows when Vista came out, as I believe Vista's UI is right on-par with Apple's at the moment.
I'm actually kind of insulted you believe the only criteria I use when judging the quality of a UI is how familiar I am with it. Believe me, I've tried everything from GeOS to BeOS... I appreciate good ideas when I see them, regardless of where they come from.
I mean program-installation (package management) seems far more logical in Linux... No need to go hunting around for what I want, then hunting for the download, then trying to find the downloaded package, etc...
Linux is neater: Look in the catalog, then select what you want and it installs.
Well, ok, but that one thing Linux does better than Windows (if you even believe it's better; I'm not so certain) doesn't make up for the millions of things Linux gets wrong in other areas.
You can also install things manually if you want or even in your home folder.
Are you suggesting you can't do this in Windows?
It's much more logical.
To your way of thinking. But I don't think like the typical Linux user... I much prefer a spatial UI, and Linux doesn't provide one. (Actually, GNOME is pretty close.)
Again: you must realize that not everybody is like you. You're welcome to like Linux. Notice how I'm not trying to talk you into using Windows, because I want you to use whatever makes you happy. But at the same time, you can't make these sweeping claims that Linux is better for every user! (If for no other reason than, if those claims were true, Linux would probably be more popular.)
And coming from long experience programming Windows at every level (device-driver through services to gui apps) I can attest that Linux IS more secure by design because its parent specification (POSIX) was just much better thought-out, whereas in Windows it's always been an afterthought.
Windows is based on the NT kernel, which is POSIX-compliant. It always has been. So you're just demonstrating my point: NT permissions and Linux permissions are the exact same thing. Or at least, the differences are so minor as to be meaningless.
(Microsoft has recently removed some of the POSIX layer. But if you're implying that OSes based on the POSIX specification are secure, you're also claiming Windows NT is secure.)
When you talk about security, it's a bit of a matter of the underlying filesystem, isn't it?
Not really, no.
If you were to use FAT32 instead of NTFS then the security would be reduced quite a bit.
How?
NT permissions work fine in FAT32. Windows 2000 and Windows XP actually support this configuration. Of course, Microsoft has switched to NTFS because of the thousands of other benefits it offers, but... well, I'm going to have to see some evidence that your filesystem has anything at all to do with your level of security.
Once you really give Linux a shot, you see that it is more thought-out, has better quality,
I've given Linux a shot, several in fact. I've never come to the conclusion that it's well thought-out or has better quality.
But then again, I'm this crazy and wild person who actually cares about usability, especially in a GUI... the Linux philosophy has always been "once you learn Linux it's great," but I think the OS should meld to the user's expectations, not the other way around. After all, human behavior is the result of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution-- a 20-year-long development process isn't likely to change it.
That basic philosophical disconnect is why I'll probably never be a full-time Linux user.
I also believe your statement that Linux has better security is wrong; from my perspective, Linux and Windows have pretty much the exact same permissions system and the exact same amount of protection in them*. The only difference is that Windows has tons of people trying to crack into it, and Linux doesn't.
In other words, Linux may be a better choice for you, but you're not everybody.
* Actually, Windows permissions are more powerful than Linux ones... and Windows' UAC feature is more usable, since it alerts the user before the application fails. The corresponding technology in Linux requires the application to fail the first time.
You don't have to reinstall Windows anymore after a few months, though. That's outdated-- yah, Windows 2000 and XP had those problems, but Vista and Windows 7 doesn't.
I don't care about excuses. If you're going to support Windows, you have to *support* Windows. If you're not going to bother to get the basics right, don't even bother making a Windows download. Not trying to be too harsh, it's just that people always respond with excuses. Bugs me.
The worst part is that since the bugs are in GTK+, they're in a butt-ton of applications-- but at the same time, a butt-ton of applications can all be fixed in one place! Unfortunately, that one place does not give a flying shit, so it never happens. (Every bug I've filed against GTK+, including most of the pointed-out issues, has been ignored.)
Ah, that. I didn't think of it, because it's not specific to open/save dialogs. It's a more general problem with .lnk file support in cross-platform and open-source software.
You've already commented on this, the fact that shortcuts have been around for decades and they're still not supported does not bode well for GTK+.
The last time I had access to an OS X system, getting GTK software to run on it could ONLY be done via the X server,
Still true, as of 10.4. Forcing users to use the X11 server is bad enough, but brain-dead bugs like not alphabetizing correctly just make things worse. It's like they wanted to pile crap on top of crap, just in case X11 on Mac wasn't crappy enough already.
> 4) No open to move, delete, create shortcut, map
> network drive or any of those other options normal
> Open/Save dialogs have
Not can sentence fully this understand I.
Sorry. I think the word "open" there is supposed to be "option." No clue what happened while I was typing that point... I'm sober, I swear!
Are you saying you use open and save dialog boxes as a file manager? So, like, if you want to copy some files, you pull up a word processor or something, hit Save As, find the location where the files are that you want to copy, and then, umm, somehow use the dialog box to copy them?
I was not aware that was even possible. Sounds cumbersome.
If you're going to support Windows, you have to *support* Windows. You can't say "oh we support Windows, except for the features that 'sound cumbersome'." No, it doesn't work that way... if your download page says this is a Windows application, it needs to support all of Windows.
That aside, you really like having to leave your application, go to a completely different application, open a few windows, just because you forgot to make a folder for the project before you started? If GNOME *doesn't* have the ability to make new folders in the Open/Save dialog (something that Mac has had since like 1988 or so), that's a much bigger WTF than anything here.
(I can give a pass on the more advanced features like moving files or mapping network drives. But making folders!?)
Call me weird, but personally I use file open and save dialog boxes for opening and saving.
I apologize that you find it cumbersome, and yet that's completely irrelevant to the conversation.
If it's mapped as a drive with a letter (the closest analog, on Windows, to mounting it), the software shouldn't have to do anything special to access it. It should work just like accessing any other part of the filesystem. The app shouldn't even have to *know* that it's actually an ftp server (or nfs, or cifs, or whatever). If it's mounted (i.e., has a drive letter), it should Just Work. If it doesn't, that's a bug in the operating system, and a fairly major one.
FTP sites by default don't get drive letters, that's exactly the problem. That feature has also been around for a decade, and is not supported.
Look, you're dodging the real issue: the real issue is, why the hell did GTK+ write their own Open/Save dialogs instead of using the ones built-in to the OS? They're going way out of their way to make terrible Open/Save dialogs, when Windows itself is willing and able to provide that service for you automatically.
If GTK
It would probably cost more than $4 a month to rewrite the Linux kernel to that extent. :)
Dude.
You said XP was missing a feature to report on hard drive SMART status. Here's a quote:
That reminds me. Does Windows 7 finally report on hard drive SMART status? Glaring missing feature from XP.
XP has that feature. So you simultaneously make yourself look like an idiot by claiming XP doesn't have a feature it actually does have, but you also waste my time trying to correct your retarded wrongness.
I apologize that you didn't say what you fucking mean, but I'm not going to apologize for replying to the post you *typed* and not the post you *meant*. I don't have the psychic abilities to know what you meant.
What any of this has to do with me not keeping track of the topic of conversation is a mystery. But since we've already established that you don't say what you fucking mean, I'm just going to assume you actually meant "wow, Blakey Rat is an awesome guy" and move on with my life.
Just as an FYI, I don't read minds so you have to actually type what you mean.
XP reported SMART status. It was in the Disk Management administrative tool. (Same place it is in Vista and Windows 7, actually.) Pretty sure Windows 2000 had it also.
To answer your question: Yes, Windows 7 reports SMART status.
For KDE and Gnome, and many others, it saves you clicks.
You seemed to miss the point: I don't give a shit about "saving clicks." Clicks are not a finite resources, they don't cause global warming, and so I don't mind using up a lot of them.
You're going to need to come up with a more concrete method of convincing me than telling me it "saves clicks."
Out of curiousity, what, exactly, does GTK get wrong about file open/save dialogs on Windows?
You'll have to excuse vagueness, I'm not going to install GTK+ again on my nice clean Windows 7 box. But as a very small list from memory:
1) Shortcuts to folders were treated as files
2) (On OS X) the dialog alphabetized incorrectly (files would be listed: a.jpg, b.jpg, x.jpg, A.jpg, D.jpg... OS X is case-insensitive)
3) (On Windows) no accessibility features work... meaning no voice control, no tablet stylus support, no touchscreen support (that's universal among all GTK+, BTW. On a tablet it's doubly-useless)
4) No open to move, delete, create shortcut, map network drive or any of those other options normal Open/Save dialogs have
5) It's been awhile, but I seem to recall it was incapable of accessing FTP servers mapped as drives in Windows, or any network drive that didn't have a drive letter (could be wrong on this one)
6) And of course BUTT FUGLY
Anyway, I'd really have to install a GTK+ application to make a full list.
They are if they are. If you put the floating windows inside the main window, then they are floating windows inside the main window. If you don't, they aren't.
I have no idea what point you're trying to make here.
While it's not technically DRM, it feels like DRM because it's tracking software that the user has little control over if they want to play their game.
That's complete nonsense. Don't devalue the term "DRM" by applying it to things that aren't Digital Restriction Management in any way, shape or form.
In any case, as an Xbox owner, I appreciate it... my achievements all go into the same place, instead of having a set in Steam, another set on Xbox, etc. Steam and Live aren't redundant until Live runs on *all* Steam games, or Steam runs on Xbox.
What does Windows Live have anything to do with DRM?
All it does it integrate the PC game with the Xbox Live system, so you can track achievements, IM Xbox Live-using friends, etc. It also provides voice chat for games that don't already have that.
Paint.NET lets you keep the tool palettes over the image, or drag them out of the windows to somewhere else on the screen(s). It's not mutually-exclusive, you know-- let people drag the tools where ever they want.
If they like it on a second monitor, they can drag them there. If not, they don't have to. Everybody's happy.
NO!
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!
Did I mention, NO?
You could just not use it. Did that thought occur before your spazzing-out fit?