DavidAbrams

How? Windows installation has been fine for a decade and a half. Actually, it's going BACKWARD, with vendors now not bothering to ask you WHERE you want application links stored and instead littering your machine's program menu with endless directories named after themselves. Who the hell organizes their applications by vendor? I want my graphics apps together, my audio apps in another group, general office-type apps in another.

With every release, Windows has made this basic function (organizing applications) a bigger pain in the ass. If Microsoft is going to start enforcing policies, then this should be one: No application can simply barf a bunch of crap into your Start menu without ASKING where you want it to go.

Unfortunately, Illustrator is essentially abandonware at this point. It's so hobbled by design defects and other bugs that you're much better off with Corel Draw, even if you have to run it in a VM on a Mac.

This is just one example:

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2362/1800773495_d1f776e335.jpg

Many (most?) vector-drawing applications let you select only the items that are fully enclosed by a selection rectangle. So if you wanted to select only the circles in that image, you'd need only to draw a selection rectangle around them.

Illustrator gives you no way to do this. Every shape that comes into contact with the selection rectangle (or even the path of the lasso tool) is selected. You can fire up Windows and do the whole thing in Corel Draw in the time you'll waste tediously clicking on everything in Illustrator.

Why and how is a Photoshop plug-in being sold only through the App Store?

There seem to be regular posts about this for-pay service...

"Astroturfing"?

Come on, use real words that mean something.

WTF, New York Times? Look at this bullshit editorializing:

"the band wants to ignore valid contracts and deprive theaters and promoters of standard revenue sources."

First off, they bought the tickets FROM THE THEATER BOX OFFICE. So no, they're not depriving the theater.

What they're doing is looking out for the FANS, which have been victimized by a far more complete and consumer-harming monopoly than Microsoft ever was. Ticketmaster should've been shut down decades ago. I've written to senators about it. These scumbags violate antitrust law in a way that should be a case study in schools around the world. Yet our "representatives" do nothing.

Ticketmaster even scalps its own tickets, which is inexplicably allowed while the same act by private citizens is illegal.

Bend over and take it, America.

Yes, I'm sick of this bullshit where something that easily fits in a standard envelope isn't sent by USPS for less than 50 cents.

Buried for not being an analysis of PICTURE quality.

A "forgot password" or password-reset function. It's not letting me log in, and I'm mystified because I know what password I used. I had to use an alternate ID to post this.

Pro tip: "pro tip" is two words.

Whatever "Rapportive" is.

Time to start using descriptive terms in headlines, not obscure names.

So this headline says that something undefined is "listed" on something else undefined.

Talk about lazy and useless.

Ugh. Just get rid of restricted TLDs entirely. Oh wait, ICANN finally decided to do that, but then made it into a giant sham and rip-off.

Inept clowns and scammers.

Are you saying you don't recognize a printer when you see it?

Hm, yeah, check their page:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7233/7169306722_60b500bf36.jpg

Munch munch! It's fun to play stupid, right?

Assuming you've defined one, and a URL is not an appropriate user ID either.

Even then, the Gmail UI sucks badly:

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6034/6310566055_4a5f5d4a53_b.j...

Not to mention that the icon is for the reels in a cassette, not a reel-to-reel tape.

Yep. I'm pretty sure Blue and others sell mics designed to look exactly like those old chrome ones.

And he missed the "film" icon for movies. I think about this one when I see the stylized movie-chain trailers in theaters: What percentage of the audience even knows what that strip is supposed to be?

Yep, and you have supposed "leaders" like Apple that just give up and stop trying. Apple widely just throws up a button with a "gear" on it when they're too lazy to organize functions properly. And there's no telling what the gear button will do.

Even worse is the Easter-egg UIs that are becoming a widespread problem: There's no icon (or even control) at all until you accidentally roll the cursor over the area. WTF? Are users supposed to sweep across every pixel on the screen now, looking for hidden goodies?

Yep. It's a perfectly good word for the repository of copied items.

What's the point in inventing a new term for something, when this one makes sense and is widely understood?

The question is why Facebook forces you to use an E-mail address as a user ID. Now THAT's amateur hour.

This headline illustrates the importance of the hyphen.

The headline refers to "people icons" that are old. I went to see how many people icons there could even be. Turns out that what he really means is old-people icons.

This report says essentially nothing concrete.

But I don't see anyone using D or development tools that support it.

Vala sounds like Objective-C (although I'm sure its syntax is less retarded). If people are going to spend time learning some enhanced flavor of C, they might as well learn the more-marketable Objective-C.

Goes to show what a hack-riddled mess Web presentation still is.

Is this some regional drinking game? Like Three-Man?

Is Rails as prevalent as it once was, or has something emerged to overtake it for whatever it is that Rails excels at?

Microsoft's naming has generally ranged from clueless to infantile.

.NET was definitely an attempt to play catch-up to everyone else in regard to the Internet, and even Microsoft couldn't explain what it was. We went to TechEd every year, and even attended a traveling dog-and-pony show that Microsoft held to explain .NET. We came away thinking it was distributed COM.

But then everything was named .NET. Or "My". .NET sucks, but the "My" this and "My" that was downright insulting. Yes, I know it's MY computer, because it's on MY desk. Holy shit, are those MY documents on MY computer? Who would've thought!

Then "Windows Me". WTF. Where was the enterprise version called "Windows Us"? And no, it didn't stand for "Millenium Edition", because that would've been "Windows ME".

Microsoft used to design good UIs, though. They did more to advance the GUI in the '90s than anyone else; definitely more than Apple has done to desktop GUIs since the '80s. But they've lost their way sadly over the last few years. Hopefully they can become relevant again and attract some decent design talent to replace what they've obviously lost.

And clean up this mess (this is Windows 7): http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7194/6889938667_20f136ca0b_b.j...