Comment Re:Obvious (Score 1) 211
One of the complaints I've heard about Firefox is that there is no way to do an installation similar to how msi files are setup.
If you mean that Firefox installs can't be "packaged" for
One of the complaints I've heard about Firefox is that there is no way to do an installation similar to how msi files are setup.
If you mean that Firefox installs can't be "packaged" for
It's not a matter of being lazy, it's just stupid to support something that is such a colossal piece of shit. I did it for many years, in fact, IE 5.5 hacking as well. At most when I support IE6, I just make sure the entire layout doesn't break.
It's called browser deprecation, preach it to your clients. Websites DO NOT need to look exactly the same in every type of browser.
Depending on who your clients are, and where they earn their money, your view might just be business suicide... I agree about the lack of a need to make sites appear identical in different browsers though. But I've just been reminded we have clients who still run OS/2 - major clients (think nationwide chain of service stations). Though all their systems are internal, one of the reasons we hold the contract is because we're the only company that doesn't lecture them, though I do have reservations about their 1980 email system which is routed through NZ. (takes hours for email to be delivered)
If supporting a colossal piece of shit pays a stable, hassle free, (and colossal) income, I'll do it (a good well documented plan means no headaches)- especially as these folks have a hardware and software system in place that has worked flawlessly for over twenty years - despite the fact that most of the operators are pump jockeys.
Surely the solution to this is just to remove any mod points if a post is edited?
That would remove down-mods too. Having time limits on moderation means GNAA (and other) trolls are guaranteed to be at score:1 for that time limit. It increases the incentive for trolls to fristpost.
Won't someone think of the grammar nazis please!
Oops, I meen grammer nazies...
Possibly, the fact that large numbers of corporate desktops still have IE 6 means that a non-trivial number of Web programmers code to where IE6 will still work, whereas no one is using old Netscape, even for fun, except for this dude.
Possibly because of the fact that a lot of large corporations (and government departments) spent so much money on some software (Oracle and SAP I'm looking at you) that is dependent on IE (due to brain dead IT decisions) that anyone whose business is dependent on dealing with those folk *needs* to support IE6.
Sadly I'm guilty of taking advantage of the growing trend to build sites that don't support IE6. By which I mean - I build sites for clients whose clients are those same corporations and government departments who use IE6. It works really well for me.
Company A announces that they no longer support IE6 on their websites, corporations and government departments where the people who contract to outside companies can no longer view their websites *don't buy their services*. A few code tweaks and the willingness to live with half a dozen minor W3org in-validations meant that one of my clients went from the second largest service company in a country town - to the second largest in the nation. Simply because their competitors all proudly announced last year they'd no longer support IE6 on their websites - and I decided to go against the trend because my clients get their work from people who only use IE6. And yes, some of those people use foot rests, wrist rests, screen filters, wear beer coolers on their wrist, and have those huge upside down mice - but the money they control is the same as any other money.
I've interviewed a view "developers" (read point and click fffrontpage/ddddreamweaver operators) in the last twelve months who've given me great spiels on how *not* supporting IE6 was something you do "for the good of the user" - but in actual fact it is because they simply don't know how to. To the fellow who claimed he refused to support IE6 because he supported standards (while querying my non-use of Windoof) - how come nothing in your portfolio supported handicapped viewers?.
Horses for courses - if the site is commercial, and the clients use Mosiac 1.1 then I'll make the site support it - either design it to degrade properly, steer the browser to the correct code, or get a job you're capable of doing. Oh, and the decision by Joomla and other "popular" cms (by which I mean rubbish) not to support IE6 hasn't done some of the end clients any favours either.
We stopped supporting Netscape (and Mosaic) a long time ago - simply because we see no need to support them, but if there was - it's really not that hard.
Now ActiveX is a whole 'nuther barrel of rotten fish though....
Disclaimer:- I'm getting out of the industry so I'm not exactly digging my own grave pointing out obvious business failings in others.
So, you see a girl whose name you don't remember...
Now you have to remember: is this the girl who is careening down an icy road, or is this the girl that has to breathe oxygen?
I don't see how adding an extra step in the process helps!?
It just works - there is no "I see a girl who's name I don't remember" - though I might find it hard not to smile when I think of her name, Bettina (Bettina == bluetits). Best of all I remember her voice and the colour of her eyes too, and the little scar on her eyebrow, the way she twitches her lips etc, and I met her when I walked through a office and was quickly introduced to the dozen or so people there (I don't remember how many people, but I remember their names and faces when I see or talk to them). I use her as an example because I met her last year, and saw her in a queue near me this morning, I could see she was trying to remember my name. (she has tits, they're prominent, she was wearing a blue top when I met her.
He's talking about the technique I learnt, I also learnt that the word/sound/image you use to associate with it doesn't have to resemble it - it just has to have "impact". I meet a lot of people in my work, I never forget a name because I always associate them with something, not their name, them. John Dwibbles is the name, the feature that stands out is his nose, I think "dick nose", and somehow I never forget his name - when I see the face I think the name, when I hear the name I see the face - ditto with the voice. And I'm not Mr Memory. The trick it two-fold - 1st consciously make an effort to "key" the memory, 2nd use a key that has "impact". Seriously it works, if anything the "riskier" the association, the stronger the key ie. the more fucked you'd be if you came out with the key rather than the name the more you'll remember it. And I've never accidentally said "howdy dick nose/syphilis/cheezel sweat etc.
Got a list to memorize? SMEG is easier the remember than MEGS, SPEW is easier to remember the PEWS.
Strangely the "key" doesn't have to be unique, you can have multiple bluetits and dicknoses, it only has to "key" one thing, that thing keys another etc,etc, till you find you remember a surprising amount of details (odour, minor characteristics, skin tone, micro expressions).
It offered real techniques that simply work. I adapted some of it to help me remember names. For a friend named Carice, I imagined her careening down an icy road with a look of terror on her face. Car + Ice = Carice.
Another, Flo (real name!) I couldn't remember so I picked out that she has to use oxygen. The oxygen "flo's" into her nose.
Simple things like that really do work, it doesn't have to be elaborate.
Oh, another one. I kept mixing up the names of two brothers who looked very much alike, except that one was much taller than the other (about 6'6"). So, I looked at their names: Lewis and Drake. On an alphabet counted upwards from the bottom, Lewis is higher than Drake! Great, so the tall one is Lewis.
I would love to remember more things that aren't easy to remember automagically. Like, why do I remember that a MIG 25 used drone engines with a overhaul time of 100hrs and that mach 3 would kill the engines in short order, but can't remember the process for some stupid Windows thing that I do every other day? Seems like my head is full of useless trivia, but when I think about those things guess what pops into my head? Images.
Images + association = Memory.
I did a speed reading course in my youth, that was the (neurolinguistic) technique they taught, it still works for me.
It seems risky at first, but it's never failed me eg. meeting new people on job sites - this is John Dwibble (dick nose, cos he's got a large nose) - I always remember the name, and even drunk I've never accidentally said the word I used to remember them.
I have had a number of friends who learned highly-passable Spanish (and other languages) in three weeks to a month.
How does that compare with the intensive immersion courses? Do you friends think in their second language?
On a separate note I learned to memorize faces - you just practice describing someone to yourself, after about a week it becomes a habit, just like mental summarizing during cramming sessions.
'Memory palace' = 'method of loci' is a method, i.e. something that an average person can learn and train her or himself to use efficiently. It is not particularly new, it is attributed to 5th/6th century (BC) Greek poet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
It is actually quite simple and can be taught in an hour or less. Training takes more time.
It is based on a simple fact that our brain is more specialized for remembering spatial facts and relations (has probably a bit to do with being able to quickly remember paths: either to successfully chase that squirrel or find the closest path to the most secure location while running away from a malnourished tiger of some sorts)
These methods map this mental power to non spatial concepts through visual association. Not completely unlike using GPU to do some non graphic tasks efficiently. The trick, in both cases, is to be able to recognize which tasks are best suited for it.
Yep, been around for a long, long, time. Just like the eidetic myth - if it exists no ones managed to prove it. Not that there haven't been people who demonstrated amazing memorization feats - but that a long way from a photographic memory. Plenty claim to have it - but I think you'll find the Great Randi hasn't had to fork out any money yet. I've read of few experiments where they failed to memorize everything - even over quite short periods of time (if you can see and hear it, but not remember all of it, it ain't photographic, usually just confabulation). No one has ever demonstrated the ability to remember languages they've never heard before, for instance.
And the Rainman thing, it's not memory it's math (Doomsday) and loci technique. The loci technique is particularly powerful when combined with (practiced) neurolinquistics.
Apparently one of the most talented is a guy who managed to learn fluent Icelandic in a couple of days - and he stands head and shoulders above the actual achievements of others (from my dodgy memory his book was called Blue Sky Dreaming).
And every Agency would have to pay on an annual basis for an Enterprise License to be "allowed" to side-load their own applications to the devices.
Why were iPads even considered? That sort of restricted access should rule them out at the first step.
Well it's obvious really:- Victoria increased the number of doctors there by giving tree iPads, now it's time to boost ASIO recruiting. I know it makes me want to endure the "intrusive vetting" in order to work with cheezel scented fat fucks for a low wage, and hey, once a month you get to play paintball out the back of the airport. Sign me up.
When I graduated from my IT Security and Cryptography degree I saw most of the morons of the class ending up working for ASIO and the DSD, so I wouldn't trust the DSD to certify that my CAT-5 patch cables have connectivity let alone an proprietary operating system. All they do is use inflexible checklists and frameworks to make their decisions on, they can't think outside of the box, and that's where the problems are going to lie.
Was one of them a kind of chubby, dark haired, autistic looking guy, works at Russell, carries an umbrella (always), and catches the bus to Civic?
Coz if he can't keep track of his briefcase I sure wouldn't trust him with anything smaller. He seems to have a little problem with literacy too....
XP is an 11 year old operating system.
Yep - it's not beta any more, what Microsoft hasn't reluctantly fixed third parties have provided replacements for, and a great deal of the unknowns are no longer. Somewhere on the shelf behind me I've got an old Thinkpad running Spud from the days when floppy installs were the still available - it still works fine too. And Windoof 98 (SE) makes a neat little vm when you lite it and replace most of the Microsoft bloat with third part stuff. And Windoof ME still sucks shit through a straw - I suspect 7 years from now I'll be saying thing about Vistass. Actually W2K lites up nicely too. The difference is that I can run a modern true 32-bit OS on old hardware using a GNU, but not Windoof (or Apple). Doesn't matter which distro I pick, I can leverage more life out of old hardware with new software.
Well actually it's a bit harder with Ubuntu, because despite Shuttleworths original announcement, Ubuntu doesn't do a lot to support old hardware (or Africa). And there's my main grudge against Canonical, Fedora (OLPC) do more to bring computers to those that don't have them than Ubuntu does.
Well IMO the problem isn't really with Unity, which is meant to draw a younger audience, not codgers like me, it is the fact that Unity still doesn't make Linux play Windows games, so their attempt to draw in teens will probably backfire (and WINE is still far too difficult to use in many cases, even if it works).
Try PlayonLinux - or fork out the bucks for Crossover, or maybe just run Windoof games under Windoof.
I've been helping a Linux noob, and several suggestions:
1) avoid acronyms and abbreviations. Everyone is guilty of this, but Linux is worst - do you think
It
Well I can tell you for a fact that it doesn't, because I've been helping one. She didn't even know that was referring to her primary disk drive
It doesn't necessarily mean it's the primary drive.. and this is computers you're talking about, it's either exactly right or it's fucking useless, there is no "you know what I mean", or close enough. Having spent an evening trying to install packages by cutting and pasting words from a web page I'd of thought you'd learned that.
until I told her (and she's a tech geek in every way except Linux - and yes married [to my best friend, but he's less of a geek than she is]).
Let me remove all those acronyms for you, even the ones that aren't acronyms so you can "help" you best friends wife (though if she's the "technical geek" she's probably better off on her own without some patronizing bloke "helping" her). Lets call the first partition on the first drive C: shall we? Or maybe just replace partition with thingy.... Your problems start when you want to add other "thingies", the second one we'll call D:, but pretty soon you're simple system ceases to be "intuitive" or even understandable (so which one if F:?). And we've got such a nice naming system too! dev - it's short for devices 'cause people not only naturally shorten words, they complain more about long ones than they do about abbreviations. And it means nothing to you because the only system that you can conceive of is a standard desktop, our system is designed to describe *all possible configurations of hardware*, even the ones you can't conceive (like the one this forum runs on, and I don't mean just the cms) of - fucking amazing huh?
Keep reading for my explanation on why you shouldn't be allowed near an install if you have to make suggestions like that. I'll skip the whole Universal Serial Bus , Digital Video Disk thingy 'cause I don't agree with you on the abbreviation thing, (and I think you're full of it).
And good for your teeth apparently
(for instance, iTunes makes a pretty nice mnemonic for what it does, but they've had their failures too - QuickTime?! The only time I want time to go quick is when I'm working and not under a tight deadline).
Please post me some of that shit you're smoking - Outlook, what the fuck was Microsoft thinking - it should be called email client obviously, like Coca-Cola should be just fizzy drink. Can you see a problem here? I don't know about Gnome - though I'm willing to bet a large amount of money that's the desktop environment you're talking about, but most menuing systems allow you to show either the package name and/or it's function. Did you read the documentation?
3) Shortcuts for multiple package select that can be dropped in. Why? Because installing them from package manager is too tedious, so people knowing how always go to terminal and do an apt-get. I want to copy the names of the packages I need from a URL and drop them on an installer and have them magically appear.
And the only thing stopping you from doing that is your own ignorance or laziness - Ubuntu has a graphical package installer, it has a number of graphical package installers, it (like most distros) will handle packages from other distro, and yes Virginia there is "drop them on the installer and have them magically appear" program - it's distro independant... Kwiksomething, or Klicksomething (I don't remember, I'm happy with apt-get)
4) Icons should at least nearly always appear for new software, and if you need command line arguments there should be a way to add them and convenient help. I know that is a lot to ask, but for ease-of-use it is essential.
How does a n00b help a n00b? I mean, I don't want to upset you because obviously you're an experienced computer user, and obviously you understand the difference between a computer operator (user) and computer technician or engineer right? It's similar to the difference between a telephone user and a telephone technician - without all the ego.
If you're attempting to configure or install software, let alone an operating system, you are trying to be a technician. All the wishful thinking in the world won't bridge the gap between tech and user without an understanding of the system. That requires study - wishful thinking is what makes people without a clue about computers demand the "it should be simple". So should rocket science and brain surgery - but reality dictates that there's more to brain surgery than holding a scalpel. And more to being a tech than just moving a mouse and being able to type, or plug things into obvious sockets... like having a vague idea about a stack, or how a driver works, what happens on a bus, knowing that Harvard architecture is not an English style of building schools, the difference between hardware and software, applications and utilities - when those things are understood your suggestions (for which we all thank you, shed the scales from our eyes that did) become redundant. What you've failed to appreciate is the degree of complexity behind the system. Think about the difference between a telephone user and a telephone technician - and every time you get the urge to say "but.." smack yourself in the forehead. And remember - geeks are what we used to pay money to see in sideshows - having a collection of things too you don't understand but know the names of might make you a geek, but it doesn't make you informed, any more than knowing the all the trivia about sports cars when you can't build an engine doesn't make you an automotive engineer, or being able to drive doesn't automatically mean you can, or should be able to install an engine.
In many distributions there is also a program with an odd name that manages packages like Package Manager, and to a noob that means fedex packages, not software.
I think you're confusing a n00b with an idiot. How can a program that manages packages, called a Package Manager, be an odd name? Are you fucking retarded or just a whiner? What should we call it? A camel?
PS. nowhere in that comp-u-ta is there any 0s and 1s.
Sure you can win in the linux world. You use Debian until you decide you would rather have a bleeding edge distro. Then you switch to Ubuntu. When you get tired of the issues of having a bleeding edge distro, you switch back to Debian until you start wanting bleeding edge again. Maybe you use one of the in between distros for a while when you feel like it. Sounds like a win to me. There are time and uses that I want bleeding edge. There are times and uses that I want stability. The fact that I get to choose means that I win.
Bleeding edge Debian is called unstable, but you can have experimental if you wish, or just go stable and pin backports (or testing). If that's not Gentoo enough you can compile every package from source. Hell you can even do that without having to do a single make. You can run Woody, Spud or Sarge - pick a damn CPU, go on, pick any CPU you like - don't like people who eat reindeer for Xmas dinner? Drop in a HURD or BSD kernel instead. And if you're really bored you can install Ubuntu packages - Ubuntu holds your hand and provides you with the sort of support experience only Windoof users can expect, meaning quality paid support, good commercial documentation and training, and totally shitful forums full of bullshit advice (no debian-users list there). What Ubuntu currently tries to do has been done successfully by others, with less money and greater stability (Xandros anyone?).
Ubuntu has brought a lot of new users to the world of GNU Linux - and some of them stick around, fewer still become contributors.
I've found a lot of people's first experience (these days) with GNU Linux is Ubuntu, it's not perfect 'cause bleeding edge never can or will be, and after trying other distros looking for something that "just works" (as if Windoof ever "just worked") they either learn to learn, or go back to Windoof and perpetual rebuilds or wormfarming. They're the OS equivalents of ISP "churners". In some respects todays new Ubuntu user is the Slack user of last century (an I'm not calling Slack ancient). Without trying to badmouth Ubuntu (and I'm no Ubuntu fanboi) - it's the (semi)GNU Linux aimed and massively promoted for the lowest common denominator of computer user. To say that there is no bad feeling towards Ubuntu or it's users is dangerously naive - I'm not the only person who's quick to avoid Ubuntu users. But then, I found the whole "Linux is the best OS, Microsoft is evil, viva la penguin revolution, dual-boot is bliss" thing boring a long time before Ubuntu appeared on the scene.
Ubuntu, and Ubuntu users - they're like young people, I appreciate the need for them, I just wish they'd stay the fuck off my lawn!
does this mean the guys selling copies of linux on ebay for ten bucks is legal?
Difficult for *you* to figure out where to find the licences, probably hard for you to actually read it, so understanding it would be beyond your abilities.
I'm guessing living under a bridge saves you a lot of rent huh?
I thought artists didn't deserve copyrights anymore and lived on a "failed business model".
Always hard to always stay up to date on the current common wisdom of Slashdot.
Fortunately it's still easy to spot the trolls. Like you.
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson
