Google charges for their advertising-related products.
And since half of that money comes from what is essentially a scam, they have plenty to spare for programs that make them look good. They also bought DoubleClick, so they have their hands in that business too.
* Gee, Google, why aren't you using a more sophisticated conversion attribution model than "last click"? Oh yeah, it's because "last click" benefits you, and only you! My guess is that 30-50% of their search placement value is derived from that outdated and logically faulty attribution model. I hope Bing wipes them out, or at least makes them honest, but sadly I know that's not likely.
I can't speak for all Universities, but mine had a "basic and breadth" requirement for all degree programs. I dropped out, not because of that (my favorite class, actually, was a History of Film class I'd have never taken if not for basic and breadth), but because of Calculus, which was required for the CS program and yet I've never, ever used it in my career.
I'm all for "basic and breadth" being made optional, as it is apparently in the UK, but I'd really like to see the difficult classes that have absolutely nothing to do with the field removed as well. I'd have a degree right now, if it weren't for that useless Calculus course. (Fortunately, my current employers don't give a crap about degrees as long as you can do the job.)
On the other hand, I have barely any formal post-High School education at all, and I've not only survived 3 rounds of layoffs at the company where I worked (which, at the time, had a "4-year degrees only" hiring policy-- I was grandfathered-in), but I actually got a raise this year after it was announced company-wide that there was no money for raises. I'm not going to blow my own horn, but obviously the company seems to think I'm a valuable contributor.
A 4-year degree is just a piece of paper. So is a vocational degree. I've interviewed dozens of people with degrees who couldn't write a simple Sort() function on a whiteboard in psuedo-code. I've also interviewed more than a couple people with no degree who wrote their own software from scratch as a hobby.
We're all individuals. Don't judge people by a piece of paper.
Then, when the standards finally get there, the transition to the standards upsets at least some people's expectations and whining ensues.
This illustrates part of the problem for me. Open source coders don't understand human psychology: whining *always* ensues, regardless of the difficultly of the change, regardless whether it's a change for the better or the worse. A good software development process would know how to separate the whining from the legitimate complaints. (Not an easy task.)
Most of Vista's problems were in the "whining" category, they weren't actual problems with Vista.
Users should learn to save their god-damned files somewhere sensible so they can actually find them again, and close windows when they're done with them.
Should, would, could. Reality is: they don't.
Cope with reality. You can't live your entire life in some fantasy world where people do exactly what you'd like them to do all the time, because that's simply not going to happen. People have evolved to be the way they are for millions of years, you're not going to change that after a couple of lectures about what they "should" do.
UI design is as much about psychology as it is software engineering. I hope that someday people like you figure that out, so we could get more usable software for everybody.
I used to be an old-school Mac user. Back when Macintosh was *really* kicking ass (UI-wise), it was simultaneously one of the easiest-to-use and most powerful desktops ever made. AppleScript in its prime whoops the *crap* out of any other GUI scripting language, to this day.
Of course, since people whine and cry over every little tiny UI change *anyway*, I'm afraid that doesn't hold much weight anymore. We've figured it out: the whining doesn't indicate dissatisfaction, it indicates that you changed something, no matter how tiny. It's just something to be filtered out and ignored after each change.
Or, in the words of a long lamented Fark admin, who posted this brilliance in the middle of a giant thread bitching about Fark layout changes: "You'll get over it."
But really, the point is this: if you don't like the direction GNOME is going, just don't use it. Right? There's not much more to it than that. Otherwise, if you want to define the direction GNOME is going, then become part of the project and do that.
None of those two options require bitching about it on Slashdot.
Hell, even Windows 7, which doesn't even SHOW the app icon on Explorer windows anymore, *still* lets you double-click the empty space where the app icon goes to close windows. Even when they change the appearance of the windows, they didn't even change the functionality, meaning there's now an *invisible widget* in Windows Explorer. Something that always boggles my mind.
(But I appreciate it, since I'm one of those freaks who closed windows using double-click on the app icon.)
With your perfect happy UI where a single click opens icons, how do you select an icon to move it to a different folder? Is that operation impossible to do without reverting to the keyboard? Because I'd say that's a huge step back to how other OSes do selection/activation.
Also, how do... say... listboxes work in your perfect happy UI? Do they also activate on a single click? How do you select multiple items before performing an operation on them? Or is that impossible, too?
The way the mouse button works is one click selects, the second activates. It's been that way for... ever, as far as I'm aware, except for some weird X11 UIs that went *against* the common wisdom and did it differently. Maybe there's a better way to use a mouse button. I highly doubt it.
Wow, it's almost as if they're trying to... improve the user experience by... changing things... shocking!
Seriously, the only way to make people like you happy is to do absolutely nothing: you've cemented your mind about one particular UI and your mind is now closed for new accounts. You're the exact same as the wags who constantly whine about the Office 2007 interface, but haven't used it. Or who bitched and moans when Firefox *improves* the way the URL search box works. Bah to you.
Considering that the GUI is *still* the weakest part of all Linux distributions, I welcome any improvements to it.
Obviously, Microsoft would no longer have control of the patents if they were sold. So I don't see why their statement is controversial on any way (instead of, you know, simply blindingly obvious.)
But then again, having a site "remember you" between sessions is a security risk.
So lock your damned workstation, if you're concerned about this.
I mean ok, who cares if your brother starts trolling people with your slashdot account if he comes over for the weekend... but just the concept.
Next time, don't give your brother your password, set up a guest account for him. This isn't hard, people!
You know, you CAN provide unique service to someone using a login, session ID's and designing your website with the appropriate GET/POST commands. Admittedly it is a LOT more work for the web designer, but far more secure than cookies. However you guarantee that the session "expires" the minute you close the web browser.
ASP.net can actually do this with a simple config option (in fact, I think it's on by default, too.) It tracks your state using a hidden form that gets posted every time you click a link. It's still a stupid work-around, though.
I work in a company of 500+ computers, all behind a single IP.
Since we work on the web, there are times when a dozen or more of those 500 computers will be viewing the same website at the same time-- now try your "solution" to the problem!
You could do the.net hack, and fill invisible form fields with codes that you "post" every time the user clicks a link. But that's a dumb work-around, cookies are a much better solution.
And there's absolutely NO replacement for third-party cookies, that I'm aware of.
Except you can already block all that with your web browser, if you don't like it.
Why put undue burden on site owners when cookie blocking features *already exist* in every browser out there? That's why this law is retarded-- not because of the intention (which I also kind of agree with, to an extent).
If the EU is really concerned, they could pass a law against third-party cookies. This would remove most of their concern, without unduely affecting site owners. (Most, if not all, ad networks and analytics packages already allow for this usage.) Or they could pass a law saying that cookies must contain *only* references to a secured database, and no personal information in plain-text. That would also make sense.
Really, though, I understand an Intel mini is worth $350 on eBay. If they have a PPC mini they might get $150 for it from a guy wanting to run mythfrontend. Their machine is at least three years old, so maybe a $200 upgrade would be in the mix?
Or I could *not* be a jerk, and instead of telling them to throw out a perfectly good computer for no reason, I could just spend 15 minutes burning a DVD for them. Apple's behavior is awful, though... I left them because I was pissed at my not-very-old software *constantly* being made obsolete by their 1) insistence in changing CPUs/OS kernels all the fucking time, and 2) utter disdain for backwards compatibility.
(Actually, that second point isn't quite fair-- they USED to care. When the PPC came out, and they switched from 68k to PPC, backwards compatibility support was top-notch. The OS X switch killed something like 20-30% of Classic apps. The Intel switch has killed more than that, I believe... what happened, Apple? Oh yeah, they finally have their customers so brainwashed that it doesn't even matter what they release anymore.)
Really though, installing Sony software on your Windows machine? You're not new here.
If you know of a good alternative that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars, I'm all ears. Who knows, it might not even come up again... they haven't pulled out the camcorder in months. It's not like the Sony software can hurt my machine if I never run it... *crosses fingers*
You seem to assume I'm a pirate. I don't recall mentioning pirating any games.
Not 5 sentences later...
I do seek other ways to try out games before I pay for them. There are too many shit games out there - hell, I've downloaded, played and deleted 3 in the past two days; they just weren't worth the space on my hard disk, let alone actual cash.
Yah. "I don't pirate games, except the three I pirated in the last 2 days!"
Angband is a game I've been playing for 17 years. It cost nothing. The creators, maintainers and modifiers have all been paid nothing. Your statement is excessively broad sweeping and thus incorrect.
Thus my saying "by and large."
Angband's creators MADE it free. Therefore you can download and play it for free.
Company of Heroes' creators didn't. Therefore you can't.
Possibly, but my parents have a PPC one, so that doesn't help them at all. Instead, they just cart the camera over to my place every time they need a DVD burned.
Even worse? It means I have to have the shitty Sony software *on my computer!* Sony somehow managed to make their camera incompatible with Windows Movie Maker. Bastards.
News services have become such an opinion mill that it's starting to make it hard to take them seriously. There is a time and place for people to banter on but I don't want it from a news outlet.
"Starting to?"
I hate to break this to you, but the news has always been shit. The only reason people are finally realizing it now is that they can easily fact-check them with the Internet and all these new-fangled computer things.
I'm going to paraphrase a quote I can't remember the origin of: "How many times have you read a newspaper article about your field, and noticed how many inaccuracies and out-of-date information were in it? Now think: is there any reason to believe their coverage of other fields is better than yours?"
If you read the book It's Not News, It's Fark (based on the Fark website, and written by its founder), it makes a very compelling case that not only is news coverage now awful, it's gotten *worse* since the foundation of 24-hour news networks. It gives rules for predicting how long a particular news cycle will last. Points out the craziness that, of all the missing people reported each year, the only ones who get mass media coverage are attractive white women, etc. Highly recommended.
The only thing the media is good at covering is the media, since that's the only topic they're actually experts in!
The Mac advice doesn't help when they go out and buy a Sony camcorder with no Mac software, and no Firewire port (which would work with the software Apple does have.)
The worst part? Some jerk at the Apple store talked them into that particular model! "Genius" my ass.
If I play a game I don't own and really like it and want to play it some more, I'll buy it.
Yah. EVERY pirate uses that tired old excuse. Every. Single. One.
It's bullshit when they say it, and it's bullshit when you say it. You haven't paid for jack, you've just run your mouth about it.
If you really cared about try-before-you-buy, then you'd download the demo of the game (or rent it) legally. And you'd avoid games that have no demo. You wouldn't pirate it.
I've lost count of the number of games I wouldn't have bought had I not had the chance to play them first.
That's ok, I kept count for you: it's zero.
Information wants to be free
Ugh. I now want to murder you with a hammer. Congratulations.
and so do computer games.
Computer games, by and large, only exist because you can make money selling them. The creators of those games, by and large, do not want them to be free-- if they did, they could easily make them free, because copyright works that way.
Well, ok, but the point remains that it was an OBVIOUSLY rhetorical device, and you have shitty reading comprehension if you didn't pick up on that.
If you don't agree with my argument, that's fine. I don't care. But don't come at me to "correct" a number which was obviously phony to start with because you don't understand how language works, that's retarded.
Problems with the law have to be fixed within the law.
I understand and agree with everything you just said, but it's still NO justification for making unauthorized copies, and there's no reason it be mentioned when chiding people for making unauthorized copies.
Slashdot Mirror
Google charges for their advertising-related products.
And since half of that money comes from what is essentially a scam, they have plenty to spare for programs that make them look good. They also bought DoubleClick, so they have their hands in that business too.
* Gee, Google, why aren't you using a more sophisticated conversion attribution model than "last click"? Oh yeah, it's because "last click" benefits you, and only you! My guess is that 30-50% of their search placement value is derived from that outdated and logically faulty attribution model. I hope Bing wipes them out, or at least makes them honest, but sadly I know that's not likely.
I can't speak for all Universities, but mine had a "basic and breadth" requirement for all degree programs. I dropped out, not because of that (my favorite class, actually, was a History of Film class I'd have never taken if not for basic and breadth), but because of Calculus, which was required for the CS program and yet I've never, ever used it in my career.
I'm all for "basic and breadth" being made optional, as it is apparently in the UK, but I'd really like to see the difficult classes that have absolutely nothing to do with the field removed as well. I'd have a degree right now, if it weren't for that useless Calculus course. (Fortunately, my current employers don't give a crap about degrees as long as you can do the job.)
On the other hand, I have barely any formal post-High School education at all, and I've not only survived 3 rounds of layoffs at the company where I worked (which, at the time, had a "4-year degrees only" hiring policy-- I was grandfathered-in), but I actually got a raise this year after it was announced company-wide that there was no money for raises. I'm not going to blow my own horn, but obviously the company seems to think I'm a valuable contributor.
A 4-year degree is just a piece of paper. So is a vocational degree. I've interviewed dozens of people with degrees who couldn't write a simple Sort() function on a whiteboard in psuedo-code. I've also interviewed more than a couple people with no degree who wrote their own software from scratch as a hobby.
We're all individuals. Don't judge people by a piece of paper.
What if the badger is lying down?
... and reliable witnesses who testified in his defense.
Seriously, people, the Slashdot summaries DO NOT GIVE THE FULL STORY. Please click through if you're going to comment.
Then, when the standards finally get there, the transition to the standards upsets at least some people's expectations and whining ensues.
This illustrates part of the problem for me. Open source coders don't understand human psychology: whining *always* ensues, regardless of the difficultly of the change, regardless whether it's a change for the better or the worse. A good software development process would know how to separate the whining from the legitimate complaints. (Not an easy task.)
Most of Vista's problems were in the "whining" category, they weren't actual problems with Vista.
Users should learn to save their god-damned files somewhere sensible so they can actually find them again, and close windows when they're done with them.
Should, would, could. Reality is: they don't.
Cope with reality. You can't live your entire life in some fantasy world where people do exactly what you'd like them to do all the time, because that's simply not going to happen. People have evolved to be the way they are for millions of years, you're not going to change that after a couple of lectures about what they "should" do.
UI design is as much about psychology as it is software engineering. I hope that someday people like you figure that out, so we could get more usable software for everybody.
I used to be an old-school Mac user. Back when Macintosh was *really* kicking ass (UI-wise), it was simultaneously one of the easiest-to-use and most powerful desktops ever made. AppleScript in its prime whoops the *crap* out of any other GUI scripting language, to this day.
Of course, since people whine and cry over every little tiny UI change *anyway*, I'm afraid that doesn't hold much weight anymore. We've figured it out: the whining doesn't indicate dissatisfaction, it indicates that you changed something, no matter how tiny. It's just something to be filtered out and ignored after each change.
Or, in the words of a long lamented Fark admin, who posted this brilliance in the middle of a giant thread bitching about Fark layout changes: "You'll get over it."
But really, the point is this: if you don't like the direction GNOME is going, just don't use it. Right? There's not much more to it than that. Otherwise, if you want to define the direction GNOME is going, then become part of the project and do that.
None of those two options require bitching about it on Slashdot.
Hell, even Windows 7, which doesn't even SHOW the app icon on Explorer windows anymore, *still* lets you double-click the empty space where the app icon goes to close windows. Even when they change the appearance of the windows, they didn't even change the functionality, meaning there's now an *invisible widget* in Windows Explorer. Something that always boggles my mind.
(But I appreciate it, since I'm one of those freaks who closed windows using double-click on the app icon.)
Can I ask a stupid question?
With your perfect happy UI where a single click opens icons, how do you select an icon to move it to a different folder? Is that operation impossible to do without reverting to the keyboard? Because I'd say that's a huge step back to how other OSes do selection/activation.
Also, how do... say... listboxes work in your perfect happy UI? Do they also activate on a single click? How do you select multiple items before performing an operation on them? Or is that impossible, too?
The way the mouse button works is one click selects, the second activates. It's been that way for... ever, as far as I'm aware, except for some weird X11 UIs that went *against* the common wisdom and did it differently. Maybe there's a better way to use a mouse button. I highly doubt it.
Wow, it's almost as if they're trying to... improve the user experience by... changing things... shocking!
Seriously, the only way to make people like you happy is to do absolutely nothing: you've cemented your mind about one particular UI and your mind is now closed for new accounts. You're the exact same as the wags who constantly whine about the Office 2007 interface, but haven't used it. Or who bitched and moans when Firefox *improves* the way the URL search box works. Bah to you.
Considering that the GUI is *still* the weakest part of all Linux distributions, I welcome any improvements to it.
Duh?
Obviously, Microsoft would no longer have control of the patents if they were sold. So I don't see why their statement is controversial on any way (instead of, you know, simply blindingly obvious.)
But then again, having a site "remember you" between sessions is a security risk.
So lock your damned workstation, if you're concerned about this.
I mean ok, who cares if your brother starts trolling people with your slashdot account if he comes over for the weekend... but just the concept.
Next time, don't give your brother your password, set up a guest account for him. This isn't hard, people!
You know, you CAN provide unique service to someone using a login, session ID's and designing your website with the appropriate GET/POST commands. Admittedly it is a LOT more work for the web designer, but far more secure than cookies. However you guarantee that the session "expires" the minute you close the web browser.
ASP.net can actually do this with a simple config option (in fact, I think it's on by default, too.) It tracks your state using a hidden form that gets posted every time you click a link. It's still a stupid work-around, though.
I work in a company of 500+ computers, all behind a single IP.
Since we work on the web, there are times when a dozen or more of those 500 computers will be viewing the same website at the same time-- now try your "solution" to the problem!
You could do the .net hack, and fill invisible form fields with codes that you "post" every time the user clicks a link. But that's a dumb work-around, cookies are a much better solution.
And there's absolutely NO replacement for third-party cookies, that I'm aware of.
Except you can already block all that with your web browser, if you don't like it.
Why put undue burden on site owners when cookie blocking features *already exist* in every browser out there? That's why this law is retarded-- not because of the intention (which I also kind of agree with, to an extent).
If the EU is really concerned, they could pass a law against third-party cookies. This would remove most of their concern, without unduely affecting site owners. (Most, if not all, ad networks and analytics packages already allow for this usage.) Or they could pass a law saying that cookies must contain *only* references to a secured database, and no personal information in plain-text. That would also make sense.
What they have here? Makes no sense.
Really, though, I understand an Intel mini is worth $350 on eBay. If they have a PPC mini they might get $150 for it from a guy wanting to run mythfrontend. Their machine is at least three years old, so maybe a $200 upgrade would be in the mix?
Or I could *not* be a jerk, and instead of telling them to throw out a perfectly good computer for no reason, I could just spend 15 minutes burning a DVD for them. Apple's behavior is awful, though... I left them because I was pissed at my not-very-old software *constantly* being made obsolete by their 1) insistence in changing CPUs/OS kernels all the fucking time, and 2) utter disdain for backwards compatibility.
(Actually, that second point isn't quite fair-- they USED to care. When the PPC came out, and they switched from 68k to PPC, backwards compatibility support was top-notch. The OS X switch killed something like 20-30% of Classic apps. The Intel switch has killed more than that, I believe... what happened, Apple? Oh yeah, they finally have their customers so brainwashed that it doesn't even matter what they release anymore.)
Really though, installing Sony software on your Windows machine? You're not new here.
If you know of a good alternative that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars, I'm all ears. Who knows, it might not even come up again... they haven't pulled out the camcorder in months. It's not like the Sony software can hurt my machine if I never run it... *crosses fingers*
You seem to assume I'm a pirate. I don't recall mentioning pirating any games.
Not 5 sentences later...
I do seek other ways to try out games before I pay for them. There are too many shit games out there - hell, I've downloaded, played and deleted 3 in the past two days; they just weren't worth the space on my hard disk, let alone actual cash.
Yah. "I don't pirate games, except the three I pirated in the last 2 days!"
Angband is a game I've been playing for 17 years. It cost nothing. The creators, maintainers and modifiers have all been paid nothing. Your statement is excessively broad sweeping and thus incorrect.
Thus my saying "by and large."
Angband's creators MADE it free. Therefore you can download and play it for free.
Company of Heroes' creators didn't. Therefore you can't.
It's not hard.
Possibly, but my parents have a PPC one, so that doesn't help them at all. Instead, they just cart the camera over to my place every time they need a DVD burned.
Even worse? It means I have to have the shitty Sony software *on my computer!* Sony somehow managed to make their camera incompatible with Windows Movie Maker. Bastards.
News services have become such an opinion mill that it's starting to make it hard to take them seriously. There is a time and place for people to banter on but I don't want it from a news outlet.
"Starting to?"
I hate to break this to you, but the news has always been shit. The only reason people are finally realizing it now is that they can easily fact-check them with the Internet and all these new-fangled computer things.
I'm going to paraphrase a quote I can't remember the origin of:
"How many times have you read a newspaper article about your field, and noticed how many inaccuracies and out-of-date information were in it? Now think: is there any reason to believe their coverage of other fields is better than yours?"
If you read the book It's Not News, It's Fark (based on the Fark website, and written by its founder), it makes a very compelling case that not only is news coverage now awful, it's gotten *worse* since the foundation of 24-hour news networks. It gives rules for predicting how long a particular news cycle will last. Points out the craziness that, of all the missing people reported each year, the only ones who get mass media coverage are attractive white women, etc. Highly recommended.
The only thing the media is good at covering is the media, since that's the only topic they're actually experts in!
The Mac advice doesn't help when they go out and buy a Sony camcorder with no Mac software, and no Firewire port (which would work with the software Apple does have.)
The worst part? Some jerk at the Apple store talked them into that particular model! "Genius" my ass.
Most distros don't need to move gallons of blood...
Come to think of it, what the heck is SUSE doing!?
If I play a game I don't own and really like it and want to play it some more, I'll buy it.
Yah. EVERY pirate uses that tired old excuse. Every. Single. One.
It's bullshit when they say it, and it's bullshit when you say it. You haven't paid for jack, you've just run your mouth about it.
If you really cared about try-before-you-buy, then you'd download the demo of the game (or rent it) legally. And you'd avoid games that have no demo. You wouldn't pirate it.
I've lost count of the number of games I wouldn't have bought had I not had the chance to play them first.
That's ok, I kept count for you: it's zero.
Information wants to be free
Ugh. I now want to murder you with a hammer. Congratulations.
and so do computer games.
Computer games, by and large, only exist because you can make money selling them. The creators of those games, by and large, do not want them to be free-- if they did, they could easily make them free, because copyright works that way.
Well, ok, but the point remains that it was an OBVIOUSLY rhetorical device, and you have shitty reading comprehension if you didn't pick up on that.
If you don't agree with my argument, that's fine. I don't care. But don't come at me to "correct" a number which was obviously phony to start with because you don't understand how language works, that's retarded.
Problems with the law have to be fixed within the law.
I understand and agree with everything you just said, but it's still NO justification for making unauthorized copies, and there's no reason it be mentioned when chiding people for making unauthorized copies.