Posts by Gaius Maximus

Can't have anything to due with the UI, can it?

Superficially, bring back 3D. It helps. Otherwise, give us back keyboardability. EVERYWHERE! If I have no choice but to reach for the mouse, or, worse, the screen, then it's broken. Touch is simply inferior, as demonstrated by decades of failed touch-screen add-ons for monitors. Touch is suitable only as a kludge, resorted to only on small devices, and only because the Star Trek computer is not yet a reality. And even then, keyboard and display will often prove preferable because of the privacy they offer. Can you imagine a train or plane full of 'executives' barking orders into their phondleslabs?

From Google to GitHub?! That's quite a leap.

I can tell you why I'm bored: I'm frustrated by all the goofy, touchy stuff being forced upon us. And not only have the UIs been dumbed down with indecipherable icons, they're now abandoning menus and keyboards, so it's touch or nothing. And the more traditional UIs aren't as complete. xfce doesn't really have a suit of applications like Gnome and KDE, so we're forced to bastel together a Frankenstein patchwork of applications that, while not being as comfortable or as evolved as things such as gedit, at least still support the keyboard as their primary, even their only control interface.

My rule is that if it can only be done with a pointing device/touch-screen, then it's irreparably broken. That's why I keep going back to Ubuntu 10.04. And, by the way, I'm writing this from Ubuntu 14.04 with Mate. And It's still just not where 10.04 was.

Wouldn't it be nice ...

... if fewer shills exacerbated an already ailing market? And M$ is the chief offender here. Your 'evangelists' have you eating your own cooking.

You want to know what killed the PC market? Sure the economy has something to do with it. And yet, there are movies making over a billion US$. So what else ya got? Could it be your absurd insistence on 'cool' for coolness' sake? Everyone seems to have decided that whatever Apple is doing is what they should be doing, entirely forgetting what a niche role Apple still plays. Chicklet keys, all eye-candy UIs, and San Fran sex-appeal was never going to fly with most of us. Knock it off, and we'll start buying your products again.

And I've got some advice for M$ in particular. Shed your Snidley Whiplash approach to customer AND PARTNER relations. Cease ALL the psychopathic attempts to generate your own 'reality distortion' field, and by this, I mean all the stupid marketing hyperbole (yes it it!) like 'charms' and 'digital life experiences'. (Get over yourselves!) (We're not Apple fanbois.) Simpllfy and standardize the UI (and the terminology). (And by standard, I mean that you STOP changing it with every release, as if that's supposed to fool us into thinking that we're buying something truly different when we all know that it isn't.) Expand the scriptability of your applications a la *n*x. ('Power' shell is a joke!) And try to do for web(site)-development what you did for application development with VisualBasic, the absolutely last truly great thing you've ever done (XP, after all, really having been nothing more than the logical development/merging of 98 and NT). (Yeah, I know, they just bought it, and marketed it.)

If I can't do it within a few keystrokes, it's broken. If reaching for the mouse is the only way to do it, it's broken. Icons are broken. 'Tiles' are DOA. If I can't script it, it's useless. So, pretty much everything out of Microsoft for the past decade has been broken. Did you not hear your own users complaining about the ribbon in Office? How deaf can you be? And then you seriously think we're going to love Metro?!

Phone users aren't PC users, and those who are, don't want their PCs working like their phones. They only wish their phones were as useful as their PCs, but that can never be. So stop trying.

Surface RT?! Brilliant packaging. Brilliant move with the keyboard cover. I'm almost tempted to get one. But I can't install any real OS on that ARM processor. Besides, no 4G. Dumb. Seriously, seriously dumb.

The system works

Has anyone noticed that?

All true, but ...

The weird this is that, for all the sexploitation, dirty old/single Japanese men and the vending-machine dispensed school-girl panties, my 22-year-old daughter (no victim type, to be sure) (but who swoons over Gerard Butler) absolutely loves this stuff. So do all her friends. She even has the figurines on her bookshelves, right next to the dozens of manga containing more of the same. And her favorite among them is written by a woman (?!).

Anyone who thinks this is about men needs to rethink their position. Even my wife joins my daughter in LOVING that movie, Sucker Punch.

Whiskey Tango Hotel, over?

Another one bites the dust

So, Apple, too, now joins Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, and Microsoft in the one-size-fits-all madness sweeping the globe that favours the hardly usable toy phablets' touchiness over the truly productive desktops' and laptops' keyboards.

The backlash has already begun, though. Mint with Mate or Cinnamon has already replaced Ubuntu as the number 1 Linux, while Mark Shuttleworth insults his user-base for refusing to slavishly adore everything he chooses for them. Apple's sales and share prices have fallen in light of his former lover's revelations about his lack of humanity, and this 'upgrade' is hardly going to help that downward slide. Microsoft is already seeing the light, and offering 8.1, but, just as with previous course corrections (after DOS 4.0, Windows ME, and Vista), this correction, too, will be a half-hearted, token effort meant to dupe the unwary into just giving up and using 'Metro' anyway.

And, of course, we'll now hear from a few evangelists and/or true-believers telling me not to 'speak for everyone' (as if I have), or to just 'stop being such a Luddite and get with the times' (which has pretty much defined my career as a programmer, system architect, instructor, and author) (so, no, I'm no Luddite), and/or that if I'd just give it a try, I really would like it. (Sorry. Tried 'em all. A lot. Hated 'em all. They all hinder rather than help pretty much everything but light system administration and light text-editing/coding.) (In other words, mucking about.), or from someone who just really likes the new UIs. Well, to each his own. But, as I said, Mint has suddenly dethroned Ubuntu, and Microsoft is already trying to defuse the rebellion against Metro, so it looks like you're in the minority pretty much everywhere.

I was thinking that something like the Pi would make a great basis for clustering. That's what I see as the next great leap in computing. Although, I'd like to see a model C with a capacity for, say, 4GB RAM, and a second network jack.

How many times must this be debunked?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-RvUedfKpk

Read your own numbers.

As the powers that be corral us ever more into their 'domed cities of the future' (because they regard us as a blight on their otherwise pristine planet), the natural frictions between people result in astronomical homicides, robberies, rapes, and just general irritation, and all the health-draining consequences that go with it. Heart disease, anyone?

In the mean-time, rural residents live healthier, happier lives, and aren't really all that upset that you anti-gun, anti-car types no longer wish to live amongst us 'Philistines'.

Enjoy your latte.