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On 15/04/2011 2:53 PM, Invisible wrote:
>> From my memory.
>
> That's not how I remember it, but hey, OK...
Yes everyone is different.
>
>>> The possible answers include:
>>> - Play video games.
>>
>> There weren't any then. Text games or wireline graphics.
>
> I certainly remember knowing several people who owned a C64 or a ZX
> Spectrum or something similar exclusively so they could play games on it.
>
Different peer groups then.
>>
>> Most people used pen and paper. Most people could not type and the ones
>> that could probable learned how to at commercial lessons or typing
>> classes.
>
> Again, I certainly remember us owning a typewriter. Me and my sister
> used to type stuff on it just for entertainment. Having a word processor
> made life so much easier. And then my parents got a dot matrix printer
> to go with it...
>
> As late as 1995, one of the people at school paid hundreds of pounds for
> an "electronic type writer" that was basically a computer keyboard, dot
> matrix printer and a tiny LCD all in one unit. So, like a real
> typewriter, but computerised. (I don't think you could even turn it off
> without losing your work, mind you...)
>
My father had one of them. IIRC it was a Starwriter, a typewriter style
keyboard, a 4 or 6 line LCD display and a printer all in the cace of a
portable typewriter.
> Yeah, I'm having trouble thinking of any large volume of information
> that you'd actually bother keeping that would be too large to hold on
> paper... The contents of your filofax maybe.
>
Since all official communication was by paper it built up. Some people
keep every thing.
>> You probably don't realise how much things have changed just in my
>> lifetime.
>
> I know how much they changed in *my* lifetime, but I'm not quite as old.
> ;-)
>
Not quite, indeed. :-D
>> Cars were for the rich, children could play in the street without fear
>> of getting knocked down. But collecting number plates (I don't mean
>> ripping them off cars) had just gone out of fashion but adults thought
>> that it was a suitable hobby. Ballpoint pens were banned in schools, we
>> used dip pens. (That changed when I went to high school). The first
>> check book I got cost 1/2d per check for stamp duty. People used to go
>> out to the airport to see planes taking off and landing for
>> entertainment. Foreign holidays were unheard of for most people.
>
> As I say, I'm younger.
And live in a new town.
>
> When I was a kid, almost everyone had a TV, most people had a knackered
> old car that they spent months per year fixing,
Sometimes when out for a drive.
> and some but not all
> families owned an 8-bit home computer of some sort. I can distinctly
> remember being utterly addicted to Space Invaders, so much so that I
> didn't want to leave my friend's room when mum said it was time to go home.
>
I forgot, you live in the affluent south. (As I do now.)
> My parents bought a ZX Spectrum so they could run "educational" type
> games on it for me and my sister. Later my dad had a Commodore Plus4.
> That died spectacularly; left on his bed, the air vents apparently got
> blocked, and I came back to find that the tape hadn't finished loading.
> Instead, the screen was now pink with diagonal white stripes and random
> flashing glyphs. It never worked again, so we got a C64. Pitty; the
> Plus4 was better.
>
I had rubber bands to play with and marbles. ;-)
> I haven't seen that one yet. Then again, I've only really got experience
> of one brand - Acer.
>
My old Acer laptop came with a manual on the HDD.
> Unless you count that IBM thing I was allowed to use, way back in
> 1990-something. You know, when only business executives, accountants and
> professional programmers could such things. Cyan and magenta screen that
> rippled when you touched it. VGA graphics FTW! :-D
>
A tad more people than than that but I worked in industry then so there
was more need for things like spreadsheets etc.
>> Yes, plug it in and clean with a damp cloth but not at the same time.
>
> During boiling, the outside of the kettle may become hot. This does not
> indicate a fault condition.
>
LOL
>>> What, you don't know any gamers? ;-)
>>
>> Only you. My brother-in-law plays some sort of fantasy football game but
>> that is a solo thing, I think. I don't play games myself I'm not any
>> good at them.
>
> Solo games are still games. ;-)
>
I was thinking of people like your clan.
--
Regards
Stephen
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On 15/04/2011 07:42 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/15/2011 10:16, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> So I paid money for some software, but I need to pay more money to
>> find out how to actually use it? WTF?
>
> No. You have to pay money to learn how to fix it. "I paid all this money
> for my car, and when it breaks down I have to pay a mechanic to repair
> it too?"
OK. So if I wanted to do something crazy like make it so that when a
user drag-and-drops a file onto my program's icon, it loads up Excel, my
program fires a bunch of data to it, and Excel generates a graph and
pastes it into the email I'm writing, *that* I would expect to have to
pay money for. Trying to figure out what the options in the settings
dialog do? *That* I would expect to be part of the product documentation.
> Now you're changing what you're talking about again. What word
> configuration are you curious about.
Right now I don't need to look anything up. My point is that every time
I've needed to find something out, I haven't been able to.
>> (and MS products are insanely expensive)
>
> Generally not. Have you looked at the price of something like autocad or
> maya?
That's like saying "housing isn't overpriced at all; have you seen the
price of buying Buckingham Palace?!"
>> But do you? Do you *really*? You still have to figure this crap out,
>> remember? ;-)
>
> Well, I just spent an hour putting my own 2-color trivial model in in
> place of the 1-color trivial model in the demo, and confirmed that it
> works in every configuration *except* the one I actually need to use.
WIN!
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On 4/16/2011 3:18, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> OK. So if I wanted to do something crazy like make it so that when a user
> drag-and-drops a file onto my program's icon, it loads up Excel, my program
> fires a bunch of data to it, and Excel generates a graph and pastes it into
> the email I'm writing, *that* I would expect to have to pay money for.
Except you don't.
> Trying to figure out what the options in the settings dialog do? *That* I
> would expect to be part of the product documentation.
What option are you talking about that isn't sufficiently documented?
>> Now you're changing what you're talking about again. What word
>> configuration are you curious about.
>
> Right now I don't need to look anything up. My point is that every time I've
> needed to find something out, I haven't been able to.
I don't mean to offend, but you've demonstrated many times here that you
aren't really very good at looking things up. Maybe it's not the product's
fault? (Maybe it is, sure, but without a specific example, I'm actually
going to err on the side of my own experience.)
> That's like saying "housing isn't overpriced at all; have you seen the price
> of buying Buckingham Palace?!"
"Overpriced" and "insanely expensive" are different things. You just seem to
never have gotten used to the fact that commercial software costs money.
$200 for a commercial program isn't expensive. $20,000 is expensive.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Coding without comments is like
driving without turn signals."
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>> Right now I don't need to look anything up. My point is that every
>> time I've
>> needed to find something out, I haven't been able to.
>
> I don't mean to offend, but you've demonstrated many times here that you
> aren't really very good at looking things up. Maybe it's not the
> product's fault? (Maybe it is, sure, but without a specific example, I'm
> actually going to err on the side of my own experience.)
Obviously I don't happen to have a specific item to hand for the
purposes of this argument. But there's been plenty of times when I've
wondered "where the hell is the button for X?" or "what does this option
mean?"
As I say, I especially like how in Windows 2000 (I think) they added a
new UI element: a little "?" button next to the close button. The idea
being that you click this button, and then click anything in the window,
and it brings up a description for the thing you just clicked.
Apparently the description for every such thing is "no help found".
Gotta love that, eh?
>> That's like saying "housing isn't overpriced at all; have you seen the
>> price
>> of buying Buckingham Palace?!"
>
> "Overpriced" and "insanely expensive" are different things. You just
> seem to never have gotten used to the fact that commercial software
> costs money. $200 for a commercial program isn't expensive. $20,000 is
> expensive.
Meh. I remember when you couldn't *get* software without paying money
for it! :-P
$20 for a word processor isn't expensive. $200 is.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On 4/17/2011 7:50, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Obviously I don't happen to have a specific item to hand for the purposes of
> this argument. But there's been plenty of times when I've wondered "where
> the hell is the button for X?" or "what does this option mean?"
My memory is that when you ask, most people can find an answer for you in
the docs with a tiny bit of searching.
> Apparently the
> description for every such thing is "no help found". Gotta love that, eh?
I had indeed noticed that. Note that the same UI element carries over in the
libraries to this day, in the form of a Help URL on every widget. :-)
> $20 for a word processor isn't expensive. $200 is.
I think it depends on what the word processor does. There are free ones,
there are inexpensive ones, and there are expensive ones. So use the free one.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Coding without comments is like
driving without turn signals."
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>>> From my memory.
>>
>> That's not how I remember it, but hey, OK...
>
> Yes everyone is different.
Fair enough.
>> As late as 1995, one of the people at school paid hundreds of pounds for
>> an "electronic type writer" that was basically a computer keyboard, dot
>> matrix printer and a tiny LCD all in one unit. So, like a real
>> typewriter, but computerised. (I don't think you could even turn it off
>> without losing your work, mind you...)
>
> My father had one of them. IIRC it was a Starwriter, a typewriter style
> keyboard, a 4 or 6 line LCD display and a printer all in the cace of a
> portable typewriter.
Yeah, that's the kind of thing. The one I saw was light brown. ;-)
>> When I was a kid, almost everyone had a TV, most people had a knackered
>> old car that they spent months per year fixing,
>
> Sometimes when out for a drive.
Oh hell yeah... I'll never forget the time one of the pistols LEFT THE
ENGINE BLOCK while we were driving back to the camp site one time while
on holiday. o_O
>> and some but not all
>> families owned an 8-bit home computer of some sort.
>
> I forgot, you live in the affluent south. (As I do now.)
Is there actually a difference?
>> My parents bought a ZX Spectrum so they could run "educational" type
>> games on it for me and my sister.
>
> I had rubber bands to play with and marbles. ;-)
I remember my sister collecting marbles. All sorts of different colours.
Other than looking at them, we could never figure out anything
interesting to do with 'em though.
>> I haven't seen that one yet. Then again, I've only really got experience
>> of one brand - Acer.
>
> My old Acer laptop came with a manual on the HDD.
Really? I haven't seen that on any of the ones I've bought or used.
>> Unless you count that IBM thing I was allowed to use, way back in
>> 1990-something. You know, when only business executives, accountants and
>> professional programmers could such things.
>
> A tad more people than than that but I worked in industry then so there
> was more need for things like spreadsheets etc.
I imagine most people who had a laptop actually had "the company's
laptop", not one of their own.
>> During boiling, the outside of the kettle may become hot. This does not
>> indicate a fault condition.
>
> LOL
No kidding, the manual for our tap says that shortly after use, it may
dribble water, and this is not a fault. (It's a swan-neck tap.)
>> Solo games are still games. ;-)
>
> I was thinking of people like your clan.
Sure. But even if you only play Freecell, that's still a "use" for a
computer, as such...
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On 17/04/2011 17:14, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/17/2011 7:50, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Obviously I don't happen to have a specific item to hand for the
>> purposes of
>> this argument. But there's been plenty of times when I've wondered "where
>> the hell is the button for X?" or "what does this option mean?"
>
> My memory is that when you ask, most people can find an answer for you
> in the docs with a tiny bit of searching.
There was a time when searching the manual meant, you know, actually
turning pages. I think back when MS used to *print* the manual, they
perhaps put more effort into making it worth the paper it's printed on.
From what I've seen, today if you ask for help in the latest version of
Office, it just takes you to a publicly editable wiki. Great...
>> Apparently the
>> description for every such thing is "no help found". Gotta love that, eh?
>
> I had indeed noticed that. Note that the same UI element carries over in
> the libraries to this day, in the form of a Help URL on every widget. :-)
Most dialogue boxes have a "help" button right next to "OK" and
"cancel". Rarely does it actually /help/ you though...
>> $20 for a word processor isn't expensive. $200 is.
>
> I think it depends on what the word processor does. There are free ones,
> there are inexpensive ones, and there are expensive ones. So use the
> free one.
In reality, MS Word is /the only/ word processor that anybody ever uses.
I tiny few people might use OpenOffice these days, but most people have
never heard of it. To them, a word processor = MS Word.
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>> In short, almost nothing is documented. I find this extremely
>> frustrating.
>
> Now it's been years since I had to seriously look up a Windows error
> code, but it at least used to be that the MS Knowledgebase was pretty
> good about having the things I needed (usually STOP error codes). Maybe
> that's changed since I switched to Linux; the last Windows thing I did
> was set up a 2008 server and XP clients for our mobile testing centre,
> but I don't use Windows if I don't have to (as you probably know by now).
STOP messages you can usually look up. (Almost all of them mean
"something happened which is never supposed to happen. Go check your
hardware and device drivers." But then, I guess that's the nature of a
kernel failure...)
>> The Commodore 64 came with an extensive (yet surprisingly small) user
>> manual
>
> Yes, the C64, with only 64 KB of memory and a 1 Mhz (more or less)
> processor was a much simpler machine from a much simpler time.
> Similarly, the Model T Ford was a lot simpler than the hybrid Ford
> Focus. That should really not be that surprising. ;)
By contrast, the GHC user manual expects you to already know Haskell,
and its description of the non-standard language features you can enable
is "go read this PDF research paper describing the theoretical
motivation and technical underpinnings of this feature". Still, GHC
doesn't cost money...
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On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:08:55 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>>> In short, almost nothing is documented. I find this extremely
>>> frustrating.
>>
>> Now it's been years since I had to seriously look up a Windows error
>> code, but it at least used to be that the MS Knowledgebase was pretty
>> good about having the things I needed (usually STOP error codes).
>> Maybe that's changed since I switched to Linux; the last Windows thing
>> I did was set up a 2008 server and XP clients for our mobile testing
>> centre, but I don't use Windows if I don't have to (as you probably
>> know by now).
>
> STOP messages you can usually look up. (Almost all of them mean
> "something happened which is never supposed to happen. Go check your
> hardware and device drivers." But then, I guess that's the nature of a
> kernel failure...)
Um, yes, STOP messages are a type of ABEND (ie, Abnormal End) of the
kernel.
But those aren't the only error messages I ever had to look up, and I
never really had a problem finding *something* about the error I was
running into, that was my point.
>>> The Commodore 64 came with an extensive (yet surprisingly small) user
>>> manual
>>
>> Yes, the C64, with only 64 KB of memory and a 1 Mhz (more or less)
>> processor was a much simpler machine from a much simpler time.
>> Similarly, the Model T Ford was a lot simpler than the hybrid Ford
>> Focus. That should really not be that surprising. ;)
>
> By contrast, the GHC user manual expects you to already know Haskell,
> and its description of the non-standard language features you can enable
> is "go read this PDF research paper describing the theoretical
> motivation and technical underpinnings of this feature". Still, GHC
> doesn't cost money...
I'm not really sure what that has to do with what I was saying....
Jim
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On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:50:10 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Meh. I remember when you couldn't *get* software without paying money
> for it! :-P
>
> $20 for a word processor isn't expensive. $200 is.
Then you must be older than you claim, because freeware has been around
nearly as long as computing has been.
$200 isn't very much money if you have it. We've been over that before.
But as Darren said, if you don't want to pay $200 for it, don't - use a
free alternative. But don't be surprised if you discover that the free
version doesn't have the same features as the $200 one does or can't read
the files that people send you.
Though with openoffice/libreoffice, my experience has been good, some
people haven't had similar experiences.
Jim
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