171–180 of 250 posts
IBM was legendarily over-managed. This is second-hand but a guy I used to work with told a story of when he interned for a summer at IBM in London during the mid-90s doing what would now be called a QA engineering. At that time everyone wore suits to work but the culture was changing so the interns put in a request to be allowed casual Fridays. Bear in mind that they were locked in a back room somewhere without any c…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this really true, or is it just something people have repeated enough times like 'nuclear Ghandi'? I mainly ask because Microsoft has another product called Linux Integration Services: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=551...
It's not a rule, it's just convention. Trademark law is about whether there is confusion about who made the product but not specific wording. Using "Blah For XXX" wording just makes it clearer. "Tool for Windows" vs "Windows Tool" The latter sounds much more like it could come from Microsoft. People repeat this because it avoids this confusion but it is not mandatory. A few projects on Github have had to be renamed b…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Err... wasn't your post a perfect example of why patents exist? The concept probably has a real name, I call it first mover disadvantage. It is much easier to copy a mechanism than to invent it. So why even try? Every thing you have to spend real effort to invent is trivially copied the instant you try to sell it. And them copying it don't have to bear the nearly the R&D expenses you did. so it is trivial for them to…
> Err... wasn't your post a perfect example of why patents exist? Why? In this scenario, what would happen with a patent that wouldn't happen without a patent?
The final UI was simple and intuitive, but it took a lot of money figuring it out.
I don't think the money would have been spent if our competition could immediately copy what we figured out.
Customers did benefit then, and now, 20 years later, anyone can do it, and humanity is little better off than if no research was done.
IBM was legendarily over-managed. This is second-hand but a guy I used to work with told a story of when he interned for a summer at IBM in London during the mid-90s doing what would now be called a QA engineering. At that time everyone wore suits to work but the culture was changing so the interns put in a request to be allowed casual Fridays. Bear in mind that they were locked in a back room somewhere without any c…
I have a few of these. I asked to be excepted from a contract condition giving IBM first pick on any IP I develop in my own time. Keep in mind, I was working in one of their technical support call centres. I had no access to IBM proprietary information, I had no role in developing it, I was a complete non risk on this front. I had more access to customer systems, no access to RED or BLUE networks, just an IBM lotus n…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’d need to install WSL2 first though!
It's a Linux subsystem for Windows so we'll call it Windows Subsystem For Linux.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a Linux subsystem for Windows so we'll call it Windows Subsystem For Linux.
To solve this matter, I propose renaming it to WNL: WSL is not Linux
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I don't like the tab key for field change. Firstly it was a breaking change from dos. Dos programs used Enter. And enter meant you could capture numeric data using 1 hand, since the numeric keypad has an enter key. That means left hand can stay on the (paper) source. Right hand types. People got fast at this. (Really fast). And this pattern lives on in some programs kline Excel). Lots of people (ie my cust…
> Dos programs used Enter. I have used plenty of DOS programs back in the late 80s/early 90s, and I don't remember a single one that used "enter" to move between fields. Most of the time, "enter" closes the dialog. They all use TAB to move to the next field. But maybe you're talking about even older software?
Maybe.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I interned at an IBM R&D site in Winchester (UK) for a year in 1988-89 and none of us interns wore suits, or even ties. I don't recall many of the f/t IBMers doing so either. It was pretty informal really. (Not disputing your story, just providing a different perspective.)
I work with a lot of government departments. The "policy" is not a thing that can enforce itself, and often barely exists at all. Rarely is it actually written down! Mostly these things boil down to a vetocracy where all managers in some hierarch must say 'yes', otherwise a single 'no' is a final 'no'. Hence, the trick is not to ask because the more people are involved the higher the chance that one of them will say…
Not particularly clever. My experience is that low-level team/line managers typically already have the authority to say "no" to their own people; but they don't want to take the blame for saying "no" (they want their team to like them!), so by punting the decision up the chain, they're effectively punting the blame for saying no up the chain (under the expectation that anything so punted will get a "no" response.)
Some this backfires, though: everyone above them says yes, and so they have to be the one to say no. (They may end up lying if asked, vaguely saying "someone important" said no.)
Sometimes this backfires badly: not only does everyone above them say yes, but someone somewhere up the chain loves the idea, and turns it into an "initiative" — i.e. something the line-level manager is now locked into doing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Err... wasn't your post a perfect example of why patents exist? Why? In this scenario, what would happen with a patent that wouldn't happen without a patent?
I worked on a software project make years ago. We spent a lot of money over months doing users studies to figure out the best UI for a narrow demographic. The final UI was simple and intuitive, but it took a lot of money figuring it out. I don't think the money would have been spent if our competition could immediately copy what we figured out. Customers did benefit then, and now, 20 years later, anyone can do it, an…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Non english speaker trying to wrap my head around what Brendan said to you. I was once told that the tab key can be represented in different ways on different systems, and that's why spaces are safer because they're always represented the same. Is that what Brendan was trying to say?
Literally try entering a "tab" character in a Hacker News reply. For me in Safari, it changes the focus to the "reply" button. It's literally difficult to enter a "tab" character into many text entry fields and dialogs and applications, because it's used so often as a navigation key.
I only found this because I am an Emacs user and I instinctively tried Control-Q first (because many other key bindings like C-f or C-b work). The Control-I bit is a guess that worked. I cannot imagine a non-technical user knowing how to insert a tab character in Safari.