Online retailers in Washington only charge the minimum Washington tax rate (6.5%) instead of calculating the actual rate based on your address. (For example, I'd normally pay 8.2% tax if I bought the same item at a brick-and-mortar store, but online I pay 6.5%.)
It still means that online business has an advantage, but it's not nearly so burdensome. If all other 49 states agreed to a similar method of simply calculating a tax-proxy, that would be ideal. But there's no way that would happen realistically.
But a jillion national brand brick-and-mortar companies (Walmart, Home Depot, Sears, JCPenney, etc, etc) know how to do it, so Amazon and NewEgg can figure out how to do it.
Those jillion brick-and-mortar stores all have a general manager whose job it is to ask the city/county/whatever where it's located how to calculate the tax, then implement that. In short, they have actual human presence in every place where there is a store, and therefore they can ask the tax schedule in a way that local governments are set up to deliver that.
Amazon doesn't currently have that manpower. They'd have to hire thousands of employees to fill an initial database of tax rates, and that's assuming that the local cities/counties are set up to respond to those requests via email. Amazon could pull it off, but it would kill smaller online retailers, then there's less competition all-around.
Man I pay more in my home city then I would in the unincorporated county. And in Seattle, it can vary by *block*. (There's one tax, a restaurant tax, that's calculated via proximity to Qwest Field, IIRC.) It's far more fine-grained than county, from my experience... county would only be 50 states times 45-50 counties each, that would be somewhat manageable.
That said, I'm all for online retailers paying taxes. Mostly because most of them are already in Washington State, so I already have to pay the base Washington sales tax-- all you freeloaders in the rest of the country can suck it! (Heh.)
What's crazy is that I have to pay the base WA rate (6.5%) for Steam games, even though the product isn't even a physical product at all, and Valve just happens to run their data center from WA.
Windows 7 crashing isn't normal. Your computer is busted. Fix it, then it won't be busted, and Windows 7 won't crash. Of course then you wouldn't be able to bitch about how "unstable" Windows 7 is on Slashdot, so it's a trade-off.
Oh yeah, it was probably more user-friendly than the competition *at the time*. Credit granted. Now? Not so much.
Yeah, but that said it's still more user-friendly than a lot of the competition now. Sadly, a bunch of GUI apps are still written in C++. And Java, while it has many user-friendly IDEs and automatic memory management, can't make a native-looking UI to save its life.
Now when you put it up against other.net languages, then yah it's lost some of the magic. But it's not as if it's bad in general, when you compare it to the rest of the industry. I'd much rather build any GUI app in VB than C++, for example. (Although I'd prefer C# to both.)
Visual Basic was a very early language with a visual layout tool, and automatic memory collection. It's notable, and was popular, because of those two features alone... despite its weaknesses. Now, it's true that it's definitely fallen behind the competition in the intervening years, but VB was state-of-the-art at one time. Give credit where credit is due.
Dude, it's CrazyJim. Just be glad he's not pretending to invent every video game made in the last 20 years, or whining about how he can't get a job in the games industry despite spending a decade accomplishing absolutely nothing. Or writing a comic book about samurai swords with rockets in the hilt.
Seriously, for a CrazyJim post, that's about the most sane thing I've ever read.
Most MUDs were a mixture of spaghetti C/C++ and some horrible BASIC-based scripting language designed by idiots.
You learned because you were highly motivated, not because MUDs are a good environment to learn in. Actually, a MUD built in Python or some other nice language would be interesting, but I doubt anybody's working on a brand new MUD engine in this day and age. Those old ones were crap piled on crap.
On the other hand, some rules are still needed to avoid wikipedia being filled with extremely detailed articles written by über-nerds and containing complete commentary on every 5minute slice of every Star-Trek episode. Or completely fabricated articles written by maniac zealot trying to push their vision of reality/science/conspiracy theories. Or politically motivated article by people trying to bend and rewrite the "truth" in their own advantage.
Why shouldn't it have that stuff?
We have to find a middle ground between the tendency of editor-dictatorship and complete mess/chaos.
There are tons of good potential middle grounds, but God knows Wikipedia hasn't done shit to implement any of them. It hasn't changed at all, in fact, in years and years-- leading me to believe they don't care about improving the project at all.
Bah. It's more efficient for the clueless, a big pain in the butt for anyone who knows what they're doing.
Studies preformed with users show that you are wrong. People who "know what they're doing" (defined by you rather narrowly as "know the Office 2003 interface") might not like using the Ribbon, but watch them with a stopwatch and you'll realize they're more efficient with it.
And people who "really knows what they're doing" (defined as "also knows the Office 2003 keyboard shortcuts) don't have to change a thing, all their shortcuts still work.
A truly well-designed UI has thoughtful features that you may not even notice at first but that just make it feel right.
I love all these definitions of "well-designed UI" that don't involve user testing.
Look, you can hate the ribbon all you want, but you have to *demonstrate* that your favorite UI is better. You can't just pull it out of your ass and proclaim it to be better for some half-assed reason... you test it against Office 2007, then I'll give you a little credit. Right now? Ass-pulling.
Alright, I'll bite - you canceled your vacation because you may have to spend an extra, what, hour in line?
Nah, he's just full of shit and trying to make a "dramatic" post.
He made up the vacation, made up cancelling it, made up a little outrage now that his imaginary vacation has been cancelled, and wrote up the post assuming that everybody reading it is too retarded to realize that anybody can lie out their ass on a web forum.
The solution could actually be something like better incorporation of multiple feeds. I mean, they could spruce up the NASA TV cable network to make it a bit more appealing to the "brain dead crowd",
First of all, you're being insulting. Because I don't like raw footage of a SUV driving through tall grass in silence, means I'm "brain dead"? Fuck you.
while at the same time having the raw footage and all the good stuff (which, to non-Slashdotters, is ridiculously boring)
I'm a Slashdotter, and I find the channel boring as shit. I can't watch it for longer than 5-10 minutes, and that's assuming that they're playing the radio chatter. (Oftentimes, they aren't even playing that.)
Look, the real point is that NASA does have a lot of information to convey and a lot to say and a lot of people to say it-- but their editing is shit. They don't need Spike TV's commentators, they need Spike TV's control room staff.
I'm not going to lie and say that NFL doesn't have a lot of ads, but this:
It showed very short clips of bits of play so you had little idea of what was actually going on
Is probably more a result of not knowing the rules of the sport than anything. Not only do they show you every moment that's important to actual gameplay (the commercial breaks are during time-outs and the break between quarters, and occasionally when a play is being reviewed), but they usually keep a constant display of all game-specific information on the screen at all times.
In short, I don't see how it's possible to watch an NFL game and not know exactly what's going on at all times. The stuff you didn't see, wasn't directly relevant to the game.
Yes. There is absolutely nothing in-between boring as watching paint dry, and Spite TV. I'm glad you're able to so succinctly summarize our black-and-white world for us.
I never figured out why the ribbon is allegedly "better".
Microsoft has done extensive studies comparing the ribbon to their older menus-and-toolbars system, and the ribbon comes out on top in nearly every category. Learning curve, ease of finding new functions, etc. This is solid, measurable, improvement-- which is why I said "measurably better" in my initial post.
Some kind of quick-search on partial text, mini-Google-like, with a "see also", would be a better route to finding menu items in my opinion.
You're welcome to have an opinion, but until you've implemented and tested it in a rigorous manner with dozens of test groups, it will remain your opinion. Again: usability isn't just throwing darts, it's objective and measurable.
Past a certain quantity, hierarchically-nested groups of features grow too convoluted and un-intuitive.
Definitely true. IIRC, Microsoft's biggest clue that the old menus-and-toolbars needed to go was that they kept getting feature requests for features Office already have.
Otherwise STFU; I'm beginning to understand how your ISP feels.
I know, I've been 2/3rds down this thread, and there are tons of helpful posts. Hacker here just keeps responding with the same shit over and over and over again.
Look, Hacker, you fucked up by not moving providers after the first incident. You come across as a total jackass here, and probably also to your provider. If the server is worth $35 to you, then pay the $35 and fix the damned thing, then move providers. If not, then start up a new account somewhere else and restore it from a backup. (If you don't have backups, that's also your fault.)
So suck up, swallow your goddamned pride, stop being so paranoid, and deal with the goddamned problem. Period.
Guess what? You're going to get screwed sometimes in life. COPE WITH IT AND MOVE ON.
Maybe if you had not been a paranoid jackass, you wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.
I don't know what else we can tell you, buddy. You know how to operate computers, great... not learn how to interface with human beings. Believe me, it's more rewarding.
Here's what I want a high quality, fast and truly usable tablet for : medical care. It should be possible to walk into a patient's room carrying a clipboard sized device that resembled a giant iphone.
I worked at a hospital 4 years ago that already did this. And they ran Windows, of course all medical software is Windows.
Apple is one of the few companies that really gives UI's any thought
Actually, Microsoft has done quite a bit of UI research culminating in the Ribbon interface. Since this is Slashdot, you're going to start whining about all the horrible diseases the ribbon interface brought to mankind, but the fact of the matter is that it's a measurable improvement in usability.
They write their own articles, and license content from AP and Reuters, just like any printed paper does. There's no reason publishers should be upset about that, since it's the same thing they're doing-- until recently I'd say the only difference is the lack of a printing press, but now a lot of previously printed papers are online-only too.
Slashdot Mirror
Online retailers in Washington only charge the minimum Washington tax rate (6.5%) instead of calculating the actual rate based on your address. (For example, I'd normally pay 8.2% tax if I bought the same item at a brick-and-mortar store, but online I pay 6.5%.)
It still means that online business has an advantage, but it's not nearly so burdensome. If all other 49 states agreed to a similar method of simply calculating a tax-proxy, that would be ideal. But there's no way that would happen realistically.
But a jillion national brand brick-and-mortar companies (Walmart, Home Depot, Sears, JCPenney, etc, etc) know how to do it, so Amazon and NewEgg can figure out how to do it.
Those jillion brick-and-mortar stores all have a general manager whose job it is to ask the city/county/whatever where it's located how to calculate the tax, then implement that. In short, they have actual human presence in every place where there is a store, and therefore they can ask the tax schedule in a way that local governments are set up to deliver that.
Amazon doesn't currently have that manpower. They'd have to hire thousands of employees to fill an initial database of tax rates, and that's assuming that the local cities/counties are set up to respond to those requests via email. Amazon could pull it off, but it would kill smaller online retailers, then there's less competition all-around.
County?
Man I pay more in my home city then I would in the unincorporated county. And in Seattle, it can vary by *block*. (There's one tax, a restaurant tax, that's calculated via proximity to Qwest Field, IIRC.) It's far more fine-grained than county, from my experience... county would only be 50 states times 45-50 counties each, that would be somewhat manageable.
That said, I'm all for online retailers paying taxes. Mostly because most of them are already in Washington State, so I already have to pay the base Washington sales tax-- all you freeloaders in the rest of the country can suck it! (Heh.)
What's crazy is that I have to pay the base WA rate (6.5%) for Steam games, even though the product isn't even a physical product at all, and Valve just happens to run their data center from WA.
So... fix it?
Windows 7 crashing isn't normal. Your computer is busted. Fix it, then it won't be busted, and Windows 7 won't crash. Of course then you wouldn't be able to bitch about how "unstable" Windows 7 is on Slashdot, so it's a trade-off.
Oh yeah, it was probably more user-friendly than the competition *at the time*. Credit granted. Now? Not so much.
Yeah, but that said it's still more user-friendly than a lot of the competition now. Sadly, a bunch of GUI apps are still written in C++. And Java, while it has many user-friendly IDEs and automatic memory management, can't make a native-looking UI to save its life.
Now when you put it up against other .net languages, then yah it's lost some of the magic. But it's not as if it's bad in general, when you compare it to the rest of the industry. I'd much rather build any GUI app in VB than C++, for example. (Although I'd prefer C# to both.)
I'm glad everybody's discussing the article... but I have another concern.
What the holy hell is a "horselaugh?"
Whoa whoa, be fair.
Visual Basic was a very early language with a visual layout tool, and automatic memory collection. It's notable, and was popular, because of those two features alone... despite its weaknesses. Now, it's true that it's definitely fallen behind the competition in the intervening years, but VB was state-of-the-art at one time. Give credit where credit is due.
Dude, it's CrazyJim. Just be glad he's not pretending to invent every video game made in the last 20 years, or whining about how he can't get a job in the games industry despite spending a decade accomplishing absolutely nothing. Or writing a comic book about samurai swords with rockets in the hilt.
Seriously, for a CrazyJim post, that's about the most sane thing I've ever read.
Most MUDs were a mixture of spaghetti C/C++ and some horrible BASIC-based scripting language designed by idiots.
You learned because you were highly motivated, not because MUDs are a good environment to learn in. Actually, a MUD built in Python or some other nice language would be interesting, but I doubt anybody's working on a brand new MUD engine in this day and age. Those old ones were crap piled on crap.
On the other hand, some rules are still needed to avoid wikipedia being filled with extremely detailed articles written by über-nerds and containing complete commentary on every 5minute slice of every Star-Trek episode. Or completely fabricated articles written by maniac zealot trying to push their vision of reality/science/conspiracy theories. Or politically motivated article by people trying to bend and rewrite the "truth" in their own advantage.
Why shouldn't it have that stuff?
We have to find a middle ground between the tendency of editor-dictatorship and complete mess/chaos.
There are tons of good potential middle grounds, but God knows Wikipedia hasn't done shit to implement any of them. It hasn't changed at all, in fact, in years and years-- leading me to believe they don't care about improving the project at all.
Bah. It's more efficient for the clueless, a big pain in the butt for anyone who knows what they're doing.
Studies preformed with users show that you are wrong. People who "know what they're doing" (defined by you rather narrowly as "know the Office 2003 interface") might not like using the Ribbon, but watch them with a stopwatch and you'll realize they're more efficient with it.
And people who "really knows what they're doing" (defined as "also knows the Office 2003 keyboard shortcuts) don't have to change a thing, all their shortcuts still work.
A truly well-designed UI has thoughtful features that you may not even notice at first but that just make it feel right.
I love all these definitions of "well-designed UI" that don't involve user testing.
Look, you can hate the ribbon all you want, but you have to *demonstrate* that your favorite UI is better. You can't just pull it out of your ass and proclaim it to be better for some half-assed reason... you test it against Office 2007, then I'll give you a little credit. Right now? Ass-pulling.
The TSA confiscated his Shift key!!
Alright, I'll bite - you canceled your vacation because you may have to spend an extra, what, hour in line?
Nah, he's just full of shit and trying to make a "dramatic" post.
He made up the vacation, made up cancelling it, made up a little outrage now that his imaginary vacation has been cancelled, and wrote up the post assuming that everybody reading it is too retarded to realize that anybody can lie out their ass on a web forum.
Oh yes, obviously EMACs and vi are so much easier and less complex than the *free* Visual Studio Express you can get on Windows.
The solution could actually be something like better incorporation of multiple feeds. I mean, they could spruce up the NASA TV cable network to make it a bit more appealing to the "brain dead crowd",
First of all, you're being insulting. Because I don't like raw footage of a SUV driving through tall grass in silence, means I'm "brain dead"? Fuck you.
while at the same time having the raw footage and all the good stuff (which, to non-Slashdotters, is ridiculously boring)
I'm a Slashdotter, and I find the channel boring as shit. I can't watch it for longer than 5-10 minutes, and that's assuming that they're playing the radio chatter. (Oftentimes, they aren't even playing that.)
Look, the real point is that NASA does have a lot of information to convey and a lot to say and a lot of people to say it-- but their editing is shit. They don't need Spike TV's commentators, they need Spike TV's control room staff.
I'm not going to lie and say that NFL doesn't have a lot of ads, but this:
It showed very short clips of bits of play so you had little idea of what was actually going on
Is probably more a result of not knowing the rules of the sport than anything. Not only do they show you every moment that's important to actual gameplay (the commercial breaks are during time-outs and the break between quarters, and occasionally when a play is being reviewed), but they usually keep a constant display of all game-specific information on the screen at all times.
In short, I don't see how it's possible to watch an NFL game and not know exactly what's going on at all times. The stuff you didn't see, wasn't directly relevant to the game.
Yes. There is absolutely nothing in-between boring as watching paint dry, and Spite TV. I'm glad you're able to so succinctly summarize our black-and-white world for us.
I never figured out why the ribbon is allegedly "better".
Microsoft has done extensive studies comparing the ribbon to their older menus-and-toolbars system, and the ribbon comes out on top in nearly every category. Learning curve, ease of finding new functions, etc. This is solid, measurable, improvement-- which is why I said "measurably better" in my initial post.
Some kind of quick-search on partial text, mini-Google-like, with a "see also", would be a better route to finding menu items in my opinion.
You're welcome to have an opinion, but until you've implemented and tested it in a rigorous manner with dozens of test groups, it will remain your opinion. Again: usability isn't just throwing darts, it's objective and measurable.
Past a certain quantity, hierarchically-nested groups of features grow too convoluted and un-intuitive.
Definitely true. IIRC, Microsoft's biggest clue that the old menus-and-toolbars needed to go was that they kept getting feature requests for features Office already have.
Otherwise STFU; I'm beginning to understand how your ISP feels.
I know, I've been 2/3rds down this thread, and there are tons of helpful posts. Hacker here just keeps responding with the same shit over and over and over again.
Look, Hacker, you fucked up by not moving providers after the first incident. You come across as a total jackass here, and probably also to your provider. If the server is worth $35 to you, then pay the $35 and fix the damned thing, then move providers. If not, then start up a new account somewhere else and restore it from a backup. (If you don't have backups, that's also your fault.)
So suck up, swallow your goddamned pride, stop being so paranoid, and deal with the goddamned problem. Period.
Guess what? You're going to get screwed sometimes in life. COPE WITH IT AND MOVE ON.
Maybe if you had not been a paranoid jackass, you wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.
I don't know what else we can tell you, buddy. You know how to operate computers, great... not learn how to interface with human beings. Believe me, it's more rewarding.
Maybe you can remind me. What Apple product is the Ribbon concept ripped-off from?
Or just maybe did, *gasp*, Microsoft conceive, test, and implement a completely original idea!? UNPOSSIBLE!
Here's what I want a high quality, fast and truly usable tablet for : medical care. It should be possible to walk into a patient's room carrying a clipboard sized device that resembled a giant iphone.
I worked at a hospital 4 years ago that already did this. And they ran Windows, of course all medical software is Windows.
So... welcome to 2005.
And don't even get me started about Windows.
Apple is one of the few companies that really gives UI's any thought
Actually, Microsoft has done quite a bit of UI research culminating in the Ribbon interface. Since this is Slashdot, you're going to start whining about all the horrible diseases the ribbon interface brought to mankind, but the fact of the matter is that it's a measurable improvement in usability.
Probably because Yahoo News isn't an aggregator?
They write their own articles, and license content from AP and Reuters, just like any printed paper does. There's no reason publishers should be upset about that, since it's the same thing they're doing-- until recently I'd say the only difference is the lack of a printing press, but now a lot of previously printed papers are online-only too.
Congratulations on slowly getting to the point that everybody else figured out right away.