Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 22nd Sep 2010 17:58 UTC
As I was casually browsing around today, I came across this blog post. It's about the recently released VLC media player for the iPad, which you can use to play just about any video under the sun on your iPad. The blog post is a complaint about a bit of help text that's not properly rendered inside the application - annoying, but no dealbreaker. Until I actually read the text - this is how you're supposed to get content on your iPad?
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RE[6]: Intention is to hide the file system
by axilmar on Thu 23rd Sep 2010 11:20
in reply to "RE[5]: Intention is to hide the file system"
Member since:2006-03-20
RE[7]: Intention is to hide the file system
by werpu on Thu 23rd Sep 2010 11:33
in reply to "RE[6]: Intention is to hide the file system"
Member since:2006-01-18
Files and directories is not the appropriate metaphor for illiterate computer users. There needs to be another metaphor.
Well apples approach was to hide them and make things in this area 10 times more complicated. Guess what 90% of computer users are perfectly fine with folders and files the 10% impaired cannot be helped not even by removing folders and files but trying that causes problems for the 90% who actually can think and adapt.
RE[7]: Intention is to hide the file system
by Icaria on Thu 23rd Sep 2010 11:53
in reply to "RE[6]: Intention is to hide the file system"
Member since:2010-06-19
Bullshit. If you can't comprehend a file and *folder* metaphor for cataloguing your data, you're officially too retarded to use a computer and shouldn't be allowed.
The problem isn't the metaphor, the problem is:
a) Implementation. The FHS and layout of the Windows filesystem are both horrible. FHS is redeemed only by everything the user creates being in the /home/username/ directory. Windows can't even get that right, with files ending up all over the place, merged folders and shortcut abuse (nothing is quite as retarded as recursively navigating the filesystem in Windows) - although Windows at least has a sane way of managing multiple filesystems, without nesting them inside of one another.
b) Abstraction. MS gave up on the filesystem back in the mid 90's. It was about then that they started introducing recent files lists and shortcuts in the file dialogues, making the filesystem *less* apparent to the user. These days, it's gotten to the point where 'desktop search' in a standard feature on most desktops, which is absurd; it should never have gotten to the point where you need to search for files on your own bloody computer.
c) Users simply aren't schooled correctly on how to use a filesystem. Beginners' tutorials in computing generally consist of performing a task, like writing a document, or using a web browser. The filesystem and file management are either assumed, or neglected. It's up there with tooltips and the menubar, on the list of shit that people should learn about but are never taught.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.More News »
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Member since:
2010-06-19
Oh god, that's just too accurate. I'm not sure whether to laugh, or cry.
That said, DnD is a nightmare in itself: you never know whether dragging and dropping something in explorer is going to cut, copy, or create a link to the file, plus it's all too common for someone's finger to slip mid-dragging and for the file to get lost into the nethers of computer oblivion.
The number of times that I've shown someone how to open up two windows side-by-side (that is, after I've stripped most of the crap out of Explorer's UI) and ctrl+c/v or copy/paste from the context menus and, once I handed control back over to the user, the *first* thing the user did was maximise one of the explorer windows... ugh, it's just exasperating.
Worse yet is people who don't know where their files are: they just save their document to wherever the Windows save dialogue takes them, then they only know how to access the file from Word's recent files list.