Posts by Geoffrey W

He brought something unpleasant back from the far reaches of the universe. Elon Musk has the perfect name for the job, and he's trying to get there. Keep an eye on those billionaires; they're up to no good. Mark my words!

The three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch?

<SULK>No one likes my little whimsy? You boring bunch of boring bores.</SULK>

Re: "skeuomorphism"

RE: "tap into users pre-existing knowledge."

There's an entire generation who for their entire lives have known these modern styles of UX and that is their pre-existing knowledge. There's a pretty good chance that these young uns don't see very many objects with real buttons, so flat is what they know. I'm not really defending these "Flatty McFlatso" - as some one in our vicinity would say - UXs, nor am I attacking them; I honestly don't care. Things change, as do peoples experience. Just as long as they don't start doing black text on a dark background, or vice versa, then I don't care; As I said, things change. We either change with them or stay behind grumbling about how it were better in our day. Somethings really were better in the past; and if they were really good they will come round again if we wait long enough and be discovered as new. Keep cool, dude, it's a fight you'll never win!

Re "skeuomorphism"

Hmmm, a skeuomorph is a representation in one medium of something that exists in another medium; In this usage a digital representation of something in the real world. Devices with flat interfaces exist in the world so does it not follow that flat interfaces have become skeuomorphs of themselves? Microsoft weren't the first with flatness so aren't they just creating new skeuomorphs that mimic other interfaces which they are copying and which exist in the world? I think so...

Re: Can't they just drop the GUI and boot to powershell

Dear God, No! If it became a typey OS I'd never have time to sleep for people ringing to ask "Why won't my mouse work?, or Where's notepad? or Where's Facebook gone??? what's this keyboard thing it says I have to use? I tried holding it like a phone but my thumbs aren't long enough to reach all the keys!!!"

Re: The Audacity of them!!!

Probably both, then dance on the ashes singing a hymn and tossing their 10 gallon hats in the air displaying to us all their righteous wonderfulness - Stereotypes? Stereotypes only become stereotypes by being often seen.

Re: Seriously?

RE: "Someone does not like a name for a project so physically goes round to your home and threatens you?"

My reading of the article is that the 4chan choice - Sneedacity, which is almost as stupid as Boaty McBoatface - won in a poll of users for a new name, then the poll was rejected (rightly IMHO, YMMV) and Tenacity used instead. So the babies at 4chan had a tantrum. You involve the general internet denizens in your affairs at your peril. The internet is as unpredictable as a crocodile floating in the river; Or as predictable in it's unpredictability. You know you're going to get bitten, you just don't know where or when. Roll the dice and say something on the internet - Perhaps you'll be the lucky loser today! Good luck!

Re: "measure what they deliver"

Also, the 486 was better for playing DooM because the sound and graphics on my Cray were horrible. Don't know if you can play DooM on a Sparc though I've seen it running on a fridge...or a toaster...or something equally awesome.

Re: Not office hours? No contact

I've found there to be two main issues with moving to the USA, which you really must consider; Health Care, and Tax Man, who is an evil little bastard. No Pay As You Earn* over here so you do your own taxes or pay an equally evil accountant to do them for you. Or you hide your income under the table and hope the evil bastard doesn't come knocking...

A slightly lesser issue is that unless you are a millionaire or president then you're expected to work stupid hours with few holidays.

Other issues are of the Hunt'n, Shoot'n, Pray'n, Sport'n variety which are lesser evils and livable with...just about. Mercans are madder than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

* If there is any PAYE scheme over here then I'm just ignorant, and haven't come across it yet.

Re: "measure what they deliver"

RE: "Sun Sparc20 might be closer to that pinnacle?"

If you're being like that then the C90 Cray was maybe a bit better than a Sparc. But at about $30 million I could only afford one of them in my bedroom, so I had more 486s knocking about than Crays.

I wish *My* voices told me that. Mine tell me to hide in a cupboard ears and don't come out until I evolve.

Re: One should really refrain from ...

RE: "Reading the comments for videos "

Reading the comments for videos is actually a pretty good measure of the video. A rule of thumb - If the idiots don't like something then it's more likely to be true; If the idiots like something then it's bollocks.

The tricky part, though, is spotting the idiots. If one is an idiot too then other idiots can seem to be blazingly brilliant. It's a minefield. I'm sure the "Algorithms" can walk it safely though and we'll all be good in the end.

Re: Tech Noking

I think it's a bit like Muffin the Mule.

Considering Google is known for providing, on site, everything their employees could ever want or need, then how hard to provide a creche too? I bet, in fact, they do provide creche facilities so that all those mummies and daddies can maintain contact with their beloved. I bet, in fact, that you're trolling with a rather lame effort. Why not advocate barring women from education unless they have their ovens removed so there's no chance of any buns being baked, or educations being wasted. That would be a much more offensive troll.

Re: They have the money and they want the talent.

RE: "But not, apparently, if it wears a skirt "

Well durn! That's where I've been going wrong. I thought they just didn't like me. Do you think the color of skirt matters? I have a nice black goth one.

Re: what symbols?

There was a swastika or two on display, tattoo and badge and flag, plus a bloke in a shirt that read "Camp Auschwitz" on the front, and apparently the slogan from above the gate of said camp - "Arbeit macht frei" (Work will set you free, or not, in the case of concentration camps). Is that Nazi enough for you?

And don't bother telling me they were trolling the snowflakes. If a troll is indistinguishable from a Nazi then it's a Nazi; ducks quacking and dogs barking, and all that.

Re: Hmm

Presumably they would have used the worst of his misdemeanors as a reason to sack him, or at least highlight the priors. If this was the worst of then then I feel free to assume it was a neo-nazi nitwit higher up in the company who melted and took offense and so fired him.

Re: Opportunistic?

And it's more than likely that the aforementioned snowflake was of the extreme right variety. Honestly, I've never seen such snowflaky people as these right wing violent neo-nazi nitwits. There aught to be an internet law for it: The more one witters on about snowflakes, the more snowflaky one is. I'm perfectly happy for it to be called "GeoffreyW's Law.

Re: Ah, the Bien Pensant Reichskulturkammer has arrived at last..

GODWIN!!!

Re: Only 4 years late

<--- That's the way to go; exit stage left where monsters hopefully gobble him up.

Re: Not his finest hour

Surely none of these finest hours can be true since he is "A Very Stable Genius"?

Re: Not his finest hour

No. His finest hour doesn't mean its a good hour, just the finest of all his shitty hours so far. Anyway, this isn't it.

Re: Dead mouse

One of ours was black and liked to sit in dark places where you could see his big eyes staring out balefully. I once found him with a small rabbit in his fangs. He struggled a bit getting it up the gully but managed to offer it to the great can opening serfs who served him. Sadly a coyote got him and so the cycle of life turns. Everything eats something else, and in turn is eaten by something larger. Humans eat everything on the planet and are eaten by space aliens...Or Royals...Probably...

Re: "Across the free software world we have a problem in getting people to pay for things"

I had a look too and my dodgy eyes couldn't read any of it. I had to pull out my magnifying glass and stick my nose right up to it to see there was text there at ll; I'm exaggerating with that last point - my eyeballs aren't quite that bad yet - but it was bad. "User Hostile" sums it up perfectly.

When I turned on the Dark Night Mode addon, in Firefox, which darkens the whole page, it became much more readable, though I still had to squint. If you're going to put information on a web page, no matter how little it gets read, please make it legible and don't tuck it away among a solid mass of other links. It would be nicer to put a single nice big legible link somewhere on the page that points you to "Other Information". It really isn't going to completely ruin your Awesome UX/GUI design.