fefzero's comments

This about sums it up for me:

"Nor does United seem better for its employees, who used to own the airline, but are now stuck enforcing cruel and arbitrary rules, and assessing the punitive fees. They are cast as wardens, trying to keep unruly passengers in line."

The bar for basic service has dropped so far that you are no longer treated like a person if you don't pay for the extras. My wife and I saved up for a resort trip for our ten year anniversary only to find that our 4-hour flight included a seat without enough leg room for me to sit while the person in front of me reclined into my lap (I'm 6'2"). The passenger in front of me wanted to stay reclined and the flight attendant could only offer me a seat upgrade to sit by myself in a section with more leg room. Not my only bad experience with them but United was far worse than any other recent trip I've had.

We're pissed because they set the bar so low we have to trip on it. Those of us who don't fly often have no idea how bad it's gotten compared to how things used to be.

Agreed. I think there's a way to add in a few features like this and still make it simple and user-friendly. One request when you do MPAA ratings is to not make it a slider bar, but just use checkboxes like you do for genres. Netflix tends to categorize lots of things as Unrated when you wouldn't normally expect it.

I was only referencing the parent post about the 200 buttons, it's certainly true that they're available in ribbon form.

If the commands are things that were previously available and less discoverable, then that's one thing. However, I felt like it was a jump to go from having so few commands available menu to having around 200. Do they expect the new commands to be used frequently? Were they actually needed? That's what I was trying to ask.

What do you mean when you say "is it risky"?

* You risk that you won't be able to find developers at a salary that will help your company earn money * There is a risk that you may have to do lots of the work yourself and may not be able to pass it on if you write programs for these industries

In my opinion, you need to decide why you want to use a "fringe" languages over something with more available talent. Are you using it because it's what you know? Because it will be fun? Or is there a benefit of that language that you wouldn't have otherwise?

It won't be impossible, but it's hard to replace commodity software with something that would end up being more expensive without adding any innovation or new benefits.

If I took all that time to customize my command ribbon, I'd certainly want it to look the same across every computer I use. Will there be a way to synchronize my preferences for settings like this anywhere?

It definitely seems like a jump. Did they interview users? If so, why not reference that data? If not, why not? And what user data prompted them to create 203 buttons if some of the (far less than 200) commands they have now don't get used in more than 1% of user sessions?

Personally, I can't stand Finder. I used a Mac for several years every day before I felt like I really figured it out, and even then I didn't feel like it was user-friendly - it just felt incapable of doing many advanced things (for example, how would you "copy path" in Finder?).

Not only can you hide the buttons in the ribbon (which is nice if you typically use keyboard shortcuts), but the experience is consistent with other recent Microsoft applications. I'm not sure a computer novice or even 50% or more of non-power users would have any idea what the buttons on Finder do (does anyone know what that eye button does before they click on it?), and I think that's the target demographic here. Power users know how to hide unwanted buttons or the text that goes with the buttons.

I thought it was great that they discussed what user's actually do within Windows Explorer before they decided what to change with it. Too often I feel like changes are forced for change's sake, and, despite my own opinions on the design, it's great that they're open about their reasoning.

I thought it was great that they discussed what user's actually do within Windows Explorer before they decided what to change with it. Too often I feel like changes are forced for change's sake, and it's great that they're open about their reasoning.

Awesome that you guys are still following along here. I don't see a back button anywhere, but maybe with 2 you were referring to the ability to copy a link, which works great.

It seems really speedy tonight. I'm pretty sure part of this is because the user interface just makes it seem speedy, but maybe it's because it's not at the top of the front page anymore?

A few things:

1) I just tried a query (weezer "buddy holly") that had worked a couple of days ago but didn't now (it didn't work with quotes, either).

2) I miss the back button and, as others have said, the ability to bookmark anything

3) It would be nice to see the song title on the lyrics page. I know it's sometimes still in the search box, but I do miss it if I've changed my search (or if I just searched by artist).

I don't have any Macs at my house, so I hadn't experienced Plex before a few weeks ago when I installed the media server on my Windows Box to serve to our Roku. It was already the best local media app for the Roku, and this just makes it even better since I can run it on my Unraid box and only keep one machine running 24/7.

In regards to equating being overweight and being irresponsible, I think you're right. I just had never seen it that way, and hopefully this can start a paradigm shift for me.

What this implies is that overeating/under-exercising should be taboo just like smoking cigarettes. These things aren't considered taboo by some people, but maybe that's the reason people aren't healthier.

"But the real reason [married people gain weight] is moral hazard, or the tendency to take more risks and behave more irresponsibly when there are no consequences."

I'd never equated being overweight as behaving irresponsibly. If everyone thought this way, would we all be thinner? If my spouse can't nag me to lose weight (see #1), is there anything she could do to encourage it, or is it all on me?

It's tough. I certainly haven't mastered this, but it takes a reputation of delivering outstanding products, which often comes from passionate developers. Feeding that passion is key.

I liked Kurzweil's response best: "As long as AI has any flaws or limitations, people will jump on these. By the time that the set of these limitations is nil, AI will have long since surpassed unaided human intelligence."

Watson isn't the end, it's a building block. It's true that it's been largely hyped to some degree, but I think that opens doors that wouldn't have been opened otherwise. Chomsky's dismissal seems too quick.

The writers had no knowledge of which clues would be used for the Watson episodes; they only mention that they don't use audio or video clues. I certainly haven't done any analysis of it, but I didn't feel like they were any less common in the preview round than normal. Between all the games I'm sure we'd see more "linguistically tricky" clues. I'm hoping for some good "before and after" questions.

I'm sure that's true for a lot of people, but I think there were probably a lot of people who thought of it as "try before you buy". This mentality certainly applies to some percentage of those who would have pirated it, but I think there are plenty of people who saw this as a free sample.

Another key to remember is that there is time after the button press to think of the answer - it's a common strategy to ring in when you have a certain confidence level that you can think of the answer quickly. Watson uses confidence levels, too, but he already has a particular answer in mind instead of a vague confidence level for the whole clue.