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5876

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft goes all Apple with a Kill Switch for Apps under Win8

« Last post by IainB on December 08, 2011, 05:33 PM »

One word: Linux

-40hz (December 08, 2011, 05:16 PM)

You may well be right.   

This sort of corporate domination and control over what is MY client device and MY data is detestable and wholly unacceptable.
Yes, Apple/Jobs were the latest or most recent good examples of such legal corporate psychopathy.
But before that though, I think Amazon had shown the direction to take when, in July 2009, they remotely deleted people's copies of the book 1984 from their Kindles. (A rather ironic act that, if you happen to have read 1984.)

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General Software Discussion / Re: CNET Download Installer Changes

« Last post by IainB on December 08, 2011, 05:23 PM »

Revenue sharing, so they're going with opencandy model ?

-mahesh2k (December 08, 2011, 02:25 PM)

Yes, that's exactly what it seems to be stacking up to be, in one form or another. It's a parasitic model, and so it makes great commercial/business sense.
Of course, this would probably be done regardless of what the developers might actually think about the ethics of such a practice, and to shut any naysayers up they "share" the revenue (give them some of the loot).
Money can often hush the noisiest of mouths.

The plan was probably for a fait accompli, but the bad press botched that idea.
Which is probably why you haven't been given a glimmer of an idea about all these "mutually beneficial" plans before - i.e., until the bad press had to be mitigated.

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Living Room / Re: Huh? Thailand can put an American in jail for posting internet content??

« Last post by IainB on December 08, 2011, 05:02 PM »

+1 from me for what Carol Haynes wrote.    

By the way the US is the only developed nation (to my knowledge) that still has to ratify the international convention on human rights.

-Carol Haynes (December 08, 2011, 03:53 PM)

I was unsure as to what "the international convention on human rights" was,  so I googled it and found that Wikipedia, says (in summary) that the term "the international bill of rights" is sometimes used to refer to three UN treaties:

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
• The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The US apparently signed but did not ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Presumably, the US government would have had cogent reasons for this, and are not forced/obliged to ratify it if they don't want to.
So let's not put the UN on a pedestal. A lot of what the UN do is arguably or in fact biased, ineffectual, trivial or just plain wrong, and therefore I do not infer the lack of the above ratification to be pejorative for the US. Quite the contrary, it's  

Similarly, the US sensibly refused to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol - which latter in hindsight would seem to have been revealed (per Climategate whistle-blowing emails) to be a potential scam of global proportions, being driven officially through the UN IPCC and unofficially by US and UK "scientists", religio-political cranks, government depts. and pseudo-NGOs and lobbyists.

There's no doubt but that some people could make a blanket statement about all that may be bad about official US government-sponsored actions/policies, but not ratifying the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is something that probably could not legitimately be covered by that blanket.

5879

Official Announcements / Re: Cody got into the electrical cables again .. Server went down on 12/8/11

« Last post by IainB on December 08, 2011, 03:55 PM »

Actually it was the entire hosting company (Softlayer) network where the DC server lives.. They lost power for a while.

-mouser (December 07, 2011, 10:02 PM)

Is it normal for hosting companies to have power outages?
If so, then maybe I am missing something here, because I don't understand that.
By training, whenever I have been involved in setting up data centres, I have had to ensure that the risk mitigation plan always insists on there being at least four basic built-in redundancies (i.e., quite apart from computer system redundancies):

• dual/backup air conditioning systems.
• dual telecomms links (using two different telco suppler networks).
• onsite single or dual backup diesel power generators - which automatically kick in when the power dies/fluctuates.
• interim UPS (batteries) for server systems. (This supply allows sufficient time for the generators to get up to full capacity after they automatically kick in.)

If your hosting contract expressly excludes these things, then presumably you would receive service at a significant discount.

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Living Room / Re: Huh? Thailand can put an American in jail for posting internet content??

« Last post by IainB on December 08, 2011, 03:29 PM »

What happened to this guy probably makes a great deal of sense, only he would perhaps not have understood what he had effectively done by publishing what he did.

The Thais have long (I forget how long) had a lèse majesté law, that prohibits publishing, saying, writing bad or negative things about the King and/or the royal family generally. From experience, whilst this may limit freedom of the press and inhibit media discussion of the royal family, it does not necessarily inhibit what Thai people say/think when discussing things in a private or family context, or in anonymous comments to posts on the Internet (e.g., Google "economist Thai les majeste" or similar).

Suffice it to say that, whatever members of the royal family do/say is not generally reported by the media unless it is with the approval of the King/family.
Thailand operates a democratic monarchy.
The King is especially very highly regarded as being a good man. Probably reluctantly made king when, as next in line following the premature death of the previous heir apparent, he inherited the title, he later threw himself wholeheartedly into the responsibility of his position. In his long life he has done a tremendous amount of good for the country - the people and the economy - and been a beacon of stability in times of political and serious civil unrest in the democracy.
Like many Thai people, my Thai wife (who is a Buddhist) likes to keep a picture of the King and Queen located high up near the ceiling in our living room. This is a token of respect/honour.

The  lèse majesté law is taken very seriously and offences under it sometimes seem to be quite severely punished.
As someone who has lived and worked in Thailand, I have understood and respected that law whilst in Thailand and outside, and for that reason I would not publicly say or write anything disparaging about the royal family in this forum or in any other medium.

I think it was Dec. 2008 that the Economist magazine ran a pretty frank "no-holds-barred" briefing/analysis on Thailand that was critical in its references to the king and the royal family's influence in such a way as to put them in a decidedly less than flattering light. I read that edition of the Economist on a Qantas flight into Bangkok, and I noticed that some Thai passengers on the flight were trying to secure copies to take with them when they disembarked - this was apparently because it had been banned from circulation in Thailand, under the lèse majesté law.

I think it was an easy thing for the Economist to make such comments safely and from a distance, and perhaps it was cowardly too - as there were no named authors.

If you think this is a restriction on freedoms, then wait till the Arab-dominated UN pass the recently proposed resolution that would make it illegal to defame a religion (which religion might that be?) or cause an offense to a religion or a religious person. Inshallah.

5881

General Software Discussion / Re: CNET Download Installer Changes

« Last post by IainB on December 08, 2011, 02:02 PM »

Forgive me if I slip into communications analysis mode for a brief moment.

It might sound like they are going in the right direction, but the email seems to ooze corporate doublespeak/BS - which, when you think about it, is probably only natural, considering that they have to try and make a profit.

For example:

Spoiler

• "...a mutually beneficial model to market." - BS. the only beneficiary they would have in mind would probably be CNET.
• "fulfilling our vision of coming to market with an installer model that..." - BS/buzzword. "Having a vision" excuses any behaviour. Hitler had a "vision" for the Aryan race. This was probably a hallucination of overflowing coffers.
• "I am reaching out now to address that press..." - major BS/buzzword.
• "This was a mistake on our part and we apologize..." - BS. "Oops. You caught us at it..."
• "We take feedback from our developer & user communities very seriously" - BS. Yeah, right. So that is why they have been persisting with this approach for so long.
• "I want to share progress made thus far:" - major BS/buzzword. "Look, what we have really been doing is making progress - and progress sounds good, right?"
• "...we are excited to bring this to the broader community as soon as possible" - major BS. "Excited" my #ss.
• "...thank you for continuing to work with Download.com." - BS. Arrogantly and immaturely flipping the bird in the closing sentence. "But hey, we're going to do this whether you like it or not, buddy, so suck on that."

Whoever wrote this rubbish had probably only gone through Marketing Communications 101 at most, by the looks of things. By the same token, they probably hadn't done Damage Control 301.

If this is the case, then the incredibly annoying behaviour of CNET over the past few months looks like it could well have been a deliberate and cynical test marketing exercise to see just exactly how far they could push things past the limits before the developers and users got really pissed off. The fact that this email was apparently to developers shows that they appreciate only too well their (CNET's) dependence on developers in the supply chain. Without the developers' co-operation, CNET would probably be dead in the water.
The objective of the test marketing? Always clearly in sight - max profits. Nothing else matters when you are financially on the ropes and being threatened with redundancy if you don't change things.

The thing about test marketing is that it is a tried-and-tested approach to test a new product/service out on a small, isolated control group and iron out the wrinkles first, before you expose the whole market to your new product/service. This is very difficult to do for a web-based service delivery system, where the reality is that you have to create the test market by a limited invite to people to try something out. Google appreciate this and get it exactly right. They gather a "by invitation only" test group and say "This is a Beta product and may be for quite a long time, so please help us to make it better and get it right before we launch it." After the limited test, they then open up the service to the whole market, but still launch it as a Beta service. For example, look how many years Gmail was in ß.

The CNET approach would seem to have been almost the exact opposite of that. This was a dumb thing to do, and for that and their arrogance they would be deserving of our scorn - and the consequences. This is probably just another corporate gaff like the Paypal/Regretsy fiasco, which has now blown up in PayPal's face as "NOWAYPAL" and with a potential consequence being the significant erosion of their market niche position. This sort of thing is sometimes referred to as "shooting oneself in the foot".

5882

Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by IainB on December 07, 2011, 03:54 AM »

@40hz: Oh. I see what you mean. Yes, maybe this "new" market state has a lot of "settling down" to do yet.

Separately, I see the FT is reporting that:

Online retailer [Amazon] acquires Marshall Cavendish children’s books in bid to secure bigger share of ebooks and take on Apple’s tablet.

Growth by acquisition is usually a valid business approach, and the bonus is that it narrows down your potential competitors too.
Oh, but wait...I wonder which comes first?

5883

Living Room / Re: AFT! Blocking Google Nonsense is HERE!

« Last post by IainB on December 07, 2011, 12:33 AM »

Failing that, find an auto-clicker, then hit their unique google link, so they end up paying a fortune for no real results...

-Stephen66515 (December 06, 2011, 02:14 PM)

That looks like rather a nifty idea. I wonder if the Google people haven't already thought of that one?

@Renegade: Interesting rant.
I agree, any FF add-ons seem to slow the thing down. Same for Chromium add-ons - they seem to be even worse (slower).
To compensate, I hardly browse the web much nowadays - at least, not in any random browsing manner.
I feed all the sites I am likely to be interested in into my feed aggregator (Google reader), filter out duplicate items, and search/scan the rest for items of interest. When I decide to go to read agiven web page, all the ad-blocking is enabled.
As for CNET, yep it is horrible. But it doesn't look too bad after all the ad garbage has been filtered out, and it looks really quite nice (made just how you like it) when viewed with the FF add-on Reader 2.0 and your customised colours/fonts. Ah! Bliss for the eyes.

What annoys me about this though is that the admen have hijacked the Internet and are pumping all this garbage noise down to our modems/routers, and we are paying with our money for the bandwidth utilisation and with our time for the browser lag to filter it all out again.
I still reckon the JunkBuster approach was the most effective, efficient and least wasteful of resources. As far as I understood it, that just stopped the garbage at the source webserver you client was communicating with. I think the advertisers must have somehow "fixed" the authors of that software though. It was too effective at what it did.

5884

Living Room / Re: Paypal vs. Regretsy

« Last post by IainB on December 06, 2011, 05:02 PM »

Yes, I had been following the Regretsy v. PayPal thing with acute interest after reading their blog of the 4th. Dec.
Looks like PayPal shot themselves in both feet whilst they had said feet in their mouth.
(I think the vulgar terminology for this is a "clusterf***" - if you will pardon my French.)

By all reports, the apology apparently came out initially as a non-apology, with the word "sorry" being belatedly added to it.
Unspeakable arrogance. I think that this and their whole approach - as recorded on the Regretsy blog - is probably indicative of how they may really regard some of their customers. Their customer support rep. kinda leaves little room for doubt about that.

Hence, the apology statement by Anuj Nayar (as Director of Communications, PayPal) would appear to be a damage control FAIL. Even the title - "Regretsy Issue Resolution" is corporate doublespeak.

It had already seemed to me - a couple of years back - that PayPal had turned into JACP (Just Another Corporate Psychopath) - "evil" in Google parlance. When I opened up an account with PayPal in 2003 to buy a licence for GetRight (from Headlight Software), I was a happy customer and pleased that PayPal's inception effectively poked those other efficient corp. psychos - Big Banks - in the collective eye, and opened up their oligopoly of the payments system.
However, in the years since then, I generally refrained from using PayPal as far as possible, as it seemed that they had gone badly astray - though I have had to make an exception when donating to DC.    
I have recommended to people that they consider joining oDesk, for example, but because of the oDesk system's reliance on PayPal, I always mention that as a caveat.

Ironically, when you log on to PayPal it says:

PayPal. The world's most-loved way to pay and be paid.

What to do?
One of the commenters on Regretsy put it rather succinctly:

As far as I’m concerned, I have no reason to do business with them again until they not only resolve this with April but make it sparkling clear that they have reviewed their customer service policy and implemented a better one. If that rep still HAS a job at PayPal it should not involve dealing with the public. Janitorial services might be allowable.

I'm now waiting for someone to do a Hitler-in-his-bunker spoof on this. Those spoofs always make me smile.

5885

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on December 06, 2011, 03:01 PM »

There is an excellent YouTube video explanation of the sub-prime crisis as well:
Bird and Fortune - Subprime Crisis

5886

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on December 06, 2011, 02:43 PM »

This is a useful financial intro to how the sub-prime market works:
Subprime primer - subprime mortgages.pdf

5887

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on December 06, 2011, 02:36 PM »

"Mummy, how does the EU bailout package work?"

Spoiler

It  is a slow day in a dusty little Greek town near Thessaloniki . The sun is  beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in  debt, and everybody lives on credit.

On this  particular day, a rich German tourist called Angela Merkle' is driving through  the town, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling  the hotel owner she wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one  to spend the night.

The owner  gives her some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the  hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the  butcher.

The butcher  takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig  farmer.

The pig farmer  takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and  fuel.

The  guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill  at the pub.

The publican  slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has  also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on  credit.

The hooker  then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with  the €100 note.

The hotel  proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller  will not suspect anything.

At that moment  the German traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states  that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one  produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out  of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.

That is how  the EU bailout package works!

5888

Living Room / Re: AFT! Blocking Google Nonsense is HERE!

« Last post by IainB on December 06, 2011, 01:44 PM »

So this is basically the same thing as Personal Blocklist but without requiring the extension?

-Deozaan (December 06, 2011, 12:23 PM)

Well, I don't think it's quite the same thing as as that.
I mean, I have the FF add-ons NoScript and ABP (AdBlock Plus), which seem to block/disable all such ads by default. (I also use Ghostery, which blocks the advertisers' data-gathering links, and I have ad-blocking in Gmail etc..)
My whole online browsing experience is thus generally pretty much ad-free and has been for years.
So I never seem to see these sorts of ads. that @Renegade writes of, unless I deliberately enable them. I don't even need think that much about it nowadays, I have become so used to having things this way.

So, where @Renegade writes:

That's going to be VERY useful!

- I can't really understand it. I can only suppose that he maybe doesn't have the ad-blocking features in his browser that I (and lots of others) have.

Nevertheless the feature that he is writing about evidently seems to be a handy - albeit belatedly courteous - extension by Google.

5889

Find And Run Robot / Re: Hanging behavior -- FARR Problem?

« Last post by IainB on December 06, 2011, 03:13 AM »

Another of these strange "hangs" again today with the same "ghost" button symptom.
I had not been using FARR that much.
The last thing I had done in FARR before the hang  was to launch some proggies, then exited the FARR display.
Same workaround used.
There was some general system instability though (e.g., PAUSE hotkey for FARR did not work, CHS misbehaving) so I rebooted the laptop.
All came back up OK.

5890

Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by IainB on December 05, 2011, 09:01 PM »

It's not just Amazon that are publishing.
This seems to be self-publishing: The Book World Is Changing: Mark Cuban Creates A Best Seller Out Of Some Blog Posts

The idea of being able to produce smaller books, much more quickly is really quite appealing. And the legacy publishers still just aren't getting it.

Probably don't want to get it.

5891

Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by IainB on December 05, 2011, 07:24 PM »

Interesting:
How to read your Nook books on the Kindle Fire

Looks like Amazon don't want to sell you this particular app.

A quick search for the Nook app in the Kindle Fire's Appstore results in absolutely nothing.
The Nook app is available for Android (which is the Fire's OS), but Amazon chose to exclude its competitor's e-reader app from its store.

Probably just another reminder (if one were needed) that you need to avoid a proprietary OS on these devices.
You evidently can't expect the supplier to unlock you or to ensure that you are informed enough to be a non-captive customer.

5892

Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by IainB on December 05, 2011, 07:17 PM »

You know, it just occurred to me...it isn't so much a matter of Amazon writing publishers out as it is Amazon has become a publisher.
 

-40hz (December 05, 2011, 06:47 PM)

Eh?
I think that may have been discussed in the thread above...or was it somewhere else...?   

5893

Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by IainB on December 05, 2011, 06:43 PM »

Presumably contracts are for a certain length of time and not in-perpetuity - what happens when the big six publishers finally realise that Amazon has them in a headlock and they don't renew their contract? Presumably a lot of blank Kindles ????

-Carol Haynes (November 30, 2011, 03:48 AM)

I just had to "share" this: Never mind if it is blank, you could always "repurpose" a reading device made obsolete by the suppliers' draconian DRM - if this example of a Barnes & Noble Nook colour is anything to go by:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1372396
Its a "jailbroken" Nook tablet mounted into a Jeep's dashboard to make a for a futuristic audio player and engine monitoring tool.

So ingenious.      

(It's enough to make me want to buy a Nook now, anyway.)

5894

General Software Discussion / Re: List of freeware and other releases from The Windows Club

« Last post by IainB on December 04, 2011, 03:33 PM »

By the way, I see that there is RightClick Restart Explorer in the list.

-IainB (December 04, 2011, 02:11 PM)

-doesn't work on my 32-bits Vista Home Premium  

-Curt (December 04, 2011, 02:23 PM)

That's odd. It should - shouldn't it?
Though I haven't tried it out (I don't want that in my Right-click menu), I thought these Windows Club apps would have all worked for Vista and Win7.
Out of interest, have you run FixWin? I only ask as that may discover some reason why RightClick Restart Explorer doesn't work for your peculiar installation.
EDIT 2011-12-05 1114hrs: Have you tried Restart Explorer (bundled with Ultimate Windows Customizer) on its own? - i.e., does it work for you? It worked fine for me.

5895

General Software Discussion / Re: List of freeware and other releases from The Windows Club

« Last post by IainB on December 04, 2011, 02:11 PM »

Well, I have been slowly going through the list of proggies and documentation that I posted about.
It looks like Quite an Aladdin's Cave of treasures! (Rather like DC!)

I have tried out FixWin - which took a while to scan my system and then told me there was nothing wrong with it.
It seemed to be using MS TrustedInstaller.exe a lot to somehow do the checking.

I am going to try out: (and shall post any comments in this thread)

• QRM Plus Manager
• Spoiler

  QRM Plus Manager lets you create restore points, carry out system restore operations & selectively delete system restore points in your Windows computer. You can also add these options to your right-click context menu.
  
  
• System Restore Manager
• Spoiler

  System Restore Manager is a freeware portable utility which allows you to completely manage your Windows system restore points and customize its options. Using this utility, you can even select a Drive and change the maximum amount of disk space to use, System Restore can use, change the System Restore Point Creation Interval, change the Restore Point Time to Live and more!
  
  
• Gpedit Installer
• Spoiler

  Gpedit Installer will add the Group Policy Editor or Gpedit.msc in Windows 7 Home Premium, Home Basic and Starter Editions.
  
  

I only went to this list to look up any updates to the Windows Club UWC (Ultimate Windows Customizer) - which I posted about separately on DCF. (UWC seems to be still in ß, but already looks potentially quite useful.)
By the way, I see that there is RightClick Restart Explorer in the list.

Spoiler

RightClick Restart Explorer is a simple tool that adds Restart explorer to your right-click context menu.

RE was the useful utility that is included with UWC, that I mentioned in my separate post. When it restarts Windows Explorer, it restores any missing Systray icons that should be displaying but weren't. (Seems to be a bug in Win7.)

5896

General Software Discussion / List of freeware and other releases from The Windows Club

« Last post by IainB on December 04, 2011, 06:23 AM »

At the risk of duplication, I thought this latest list could be interesting/useful to DCF members.
Quite a selection of tools here: List of freeware and other releases from The Windows Club

5897

Developer's Corner / Re: Ribbon UI - is it really THAT good?

« Last post by IainB on December 03, 2011, 12:57 AM »

I don't suppose a whole lot survives that list these days...

-ewemoa (December 02, 2011, 08:44 PM)

Haha. Yes, you are probably right - but then that's a good thing, I think. Your selection process using those criteria (or similar) can be quite speedy. You can narrow the field down rapidly because the failure rate is so high. It narrows things down to just a few choices at most.

Spoiler

It is a pretty tough list. I developed it from work I did over several years helping clients to define their requirements criteria for software selection. The thing about that list is that it forces you to see, for example, that though some aspect of a proggy may stink, the rest of it is quite good if not ruddy great, so you can deliberately make a trade-off/compromise - and you do it wittingly.
Thus, after the proggy has been purchased/developed/licenced by the client, they don't go around saying "Oh but this/that proggy stinks!" - because the response will be "Yes, and we knew that when we bought it, but the compromise/trade-off was an acceptable business risk".

Software selection or requirements identification can be a complex and bias-laden business. For clients, I therefore tend to recommend that they use a weighted table and panel selection to average out the bias (per Kepner-Tregoe).

Where it's just for myself and not a client though, it is a bit different. For example, I use FARR, CHS, Process Tamer and SSC from DC - have tried a few others also, but those are the main ones that I persist in using. Some of these have passed through my criteria checklist and failed at various points. However, since I am talking about my requirements here, I am prepared to use a less-than-perfect proggy if it is in ß, because I can get a rough idea of the direction it is being taken in by the developer(s), and if that direction looks like it could potentially meet my requirements down the line, then I will tend to stick with the proggy (that's compromise/trade-off).
I also have the freedom/flexibility to experiment with prototypes - at least for a short time.

Occasionally you trip over an apparent stroke of genius - such as the built-in SQL search capability in CHS, for example. I kid you not, that got me really excited.

But the Ribbon? Seems like another possible case of The Emperor's New Clothes to me.
My list is pragmatic at least, and the Ribbon fails big time on Criterion #7a - Use - Ergonomics (and efficiency).

5898

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Firefox add-on - MAFIAAFire now adds "PirateBay Danciing" - quick review

« Last post by IainB on December 03, 2011, 12:05 AM »

Thankyou, @app103!        
I was downloading some single tracks (mp3s) of music for my daughter Lily a while back and wishing I had something like this.

That's just one more good thing about this forum - there are a bunch of knowledgeable people about who often have useful/helpful tips like this, sometimes exactly what you were seeking an answer to.
Now I can vote with my feet and my wallet as well as my PC.

5899

Developer's Corner / Re: Ribbon UI - is it really THAT good?

« Last post by IainB on December 02, 2011, 08:39 PM »

+1 from me for just about all of what @barney says.   

Especially:

My biggest complaint with the ribbon is screen real estate - it takes a significant amount compared to a menu or even a toolbar.  (That's generic, not application specific, btw.)  And while you folk without vision impairment might well be able to discern each discrete icon and recognize its function  , older or visually impaired folk may not have that luxury  .  Oh, yeah, those same icons are not intuitive, they have to be learned  .

But my biggest gripe is screen real estate  .  Recently discontinued a program I'd been using for years for that very reason.  They added a ribbon which stole a minimum of four (4) lines of vertical dimension.  That's four (4) lines of information that can no longer be viewed w/o scrolling.  OK, the ribbon can be minimized to some extent, but that's just more work - clicks, shortcuts, or the like - that has to be done, consuming more time that could be devoted to the project at hand.

MS was notorious when I was in IT for changing the menu structure in every new release of Office, and the ribbon strikes me as one more unwarranted change, just so you'll know it's a new version.  I can see some usefulness in, say, a graphics program, but for me and some of my contemporaries, it is a production hindrance in most of the software that we've seen utilize it.

-barney (December 02, 2011, 01:32 PM)

Criterion #7a - Use - Ergonomics (and efficiency) - (see below) is, for me and from experiences of many users arguably the single most important factor for user acceptance and continued use of a piece of software. If the UI is a pig, then the Criterion #11 - Trade-off/compromise - fails as well.

Spoiler

I am very critical of the quality, design and purposes of most new technology. I tend towards a minimalist approach. The technology that I acquire usually has to meet some general benefit and function criteria. I usually put it through a PMI (Plus, Minus, Interesting - per De Bono) review before I acquire it. The PMI will cover these pretty basic requirements:

• #1: Input: Does it improve my current processes of data/information/knowledge gathering?
• #2: Processing (includes Output): Does it improve my current processing methods?
• #3: Storage/backup: Does it improve my current processes of storage or backup/recovery?
• #4: Quality: Is it technically sound, well-designed and well-made for its purpose?
• #5: Support: Is it likely to have some reasonable degree of continuing support?
• #6: Reliability: Can I trust the provider to be delivering something of reasonable quality and that he will not rip me off (i.e., make a victim of the customer)?
• #7a: Use - Ergonomics (and efficiency): Does it at least meet my current ergonomic requirements?
• #7b: Use - Control: Will I have full, free and unencumbered control over the technology, to use as I need/please?
• #8: Cost: What is the cost, and does it seem reasonable?
• #9: Change: Will the use of the technology effect/necessitate a change for the better in the way I do things?
• #10: Deficiencies: How is it deficient in light of the above criteria, or in any other way?
• #11: Trade-off/compromise: What deficiencies are worth accepting in order to realise the improvements/benefits of using this technology?
  

-IainB (November 30, 2011, 12:16 PM)

5900

Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by IainB on December 02, 2011, 08:10 PM »

The Swiss just don't like an argument so long as it doesn't affect their bottom line
...

-Carol Haynes (December 02, 2011, 05:49 PM)

Absolutely spot-on. 

So without that kind of incentive, it will be interesting to see how Amazon succeed in further establishing their DRM control in their marketplace, in such countries - and there will probably be more than just this single case of Switzerland already.