Microsoft "Sculpt" Mice







  • Whose idea was it to not only put a start button on the mouse, but to put it where your thumb goes? I guess they think that people like having the start menu randomly appear while they're playing a game or whatever.



  • Must not be Windows 8 compatible...



  • Said it before, will say it again: Microsoft had the best mouse in the world and then they just lost the plot completely.

    I sometimes wonder why a fear of not changing is held to be somehow more worthy than a fear of change.



  • @flabdablet said:

    I sometimes wonder why a fear of not changing is held to be somehow more worthy than a fear of change.

    Lenovo has the same disease. Thinkpads were the best laptops ever, but now Lenovo is all over the place with glossy screens, cheap plastic keyboards, weird hdmi port (just the size they never keep in most stores), etc. And on some models they reversed the default for the function keys - now one has to press FN to activate F1-F12, very annoying. Maybe there is an option in the BIOS... but why do it.



    Sometimes I hate hardware designers. It's like those fuckers who think that they can "improve" keyboards by moving keys around, shrinking the ins/del keys to make place for useless multimedia keys, and so on. It's getting more and more difficult to find a non-annoying keyboard and so far there has been no gain whatsoever for anyone. When it's not broken leave it the fuck alone.


  • Considered Harmful

    @Ronald said:

    It's like those fuckers who think that they can "improve" keyboards by moving keys around, shrinking the ins/del keys to make place for useless multimedia keys, and so on. It's getting more and more difficult to find a non-annoying keyboard and so far there has been no gain whatsoever for anyone. When it's not broken leave it the fuck alone.

    Damn it, I don't want to agree with you, but I guess Hitler ate sugar.



  • @joe.edwards said:

    Hitler ate sugar.
     

    I closed that tab after reading the first paragraph, and didn't even blink.

    ...what has become of me



  • @flabdablet said:

    I sometimes wonder why a fear of not changing is held to be somehow more worthy than a fear of change.
    On the vendor side, this was explained once by Raymond Chen: People don't notice improvements under the hood and bug fixes, they want visible "improvements".

    In other words, the fear of not changing is present among vendors because it's present among customers, possibly because it was drilled into their skulls by vendors in the first place.



  • @flabdablet said:

    I sometimes wonder why a fear of not changing is held to be somehow more worthy than a fear of change.
    @flabdablet said:
    I sometimes wonder why a fear of not changing is held to be somehow more worthy than a fear of change.
    @flabdablet said:
    I sometimes wonder why a fear of not changing is held to be somehow more worthy than a fear of change.
    Triple quote for great justice.

    PS: I want my volume wheel back. Buttons suck.



  • I have a law for this: Any company that produces great software will produce crap hardware, and vice versa.

    Only exceptions seem to be Google (which can be said because they "produce" hardware in the sense that they beat on other hardware companies until those companies make what Google wants) and Apple (which can be said because their hardware and software is both acceptable but not really great).

    If you want good hardware, you have to go to a company or a division that doesn't target consumers, although those options don't tend to be cheap. For example: Apple and Dell's high-end PCs and Motorola Solutions's "handheld computers" (cell phones/PDAs).


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @MiffTheFox said:

    Any company that produces great software will produce crap hardware, and vice versa.
    Some places seem to manage to avoid producing anything other than crap software on crap hardware. TRWTF is that they don't always go bust…



  • @dkf said:

    @MiffTheFox said:
    Any company that produces great software will produce crap hardware, and vice versa.
    Some places seem to manage to avoid producing anything other than crap software on crap hardware. TRWTF is that they don't always go bust…

    I never said that the law applied in reverse.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    I have a law for this: Any company that produces great software will produce crap hardware, and vice versa.

    That does seem to fit with my feeling that the ancient MS Serial Mouse 2.0 is one of the best mice I've ever used.



  • @Ronald said:

    Thinkpads were the best laptops ever,

    ... when was this?

    They were always clunky, ugly pieces of crap with keyboard nipples. I guess they were great if you wanted your laptop's design scheme to match the AS/400 in the basement. That must be a market of, what, 4 or maybe even 5 60 year-olds?



  • Obligatory pitch for the Cyborg RAT series of mouses, the best mouses in the world:



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Obligatory pitch for the Cyborg RAT series of mouses, the best mouses in the world:

    I prefer a mouse that doesn't look like a Michael Bay Transformer.


  • Considered Harmful

    @MiffTheFox said:

    I never said that the law applied in reverse.
    @MiffTheFox said:
    and vice versa.



  • Again, since all of you seem to be misunderstanding me whenever you can, let's just spell it out:

    • If a company makes great software, then they make shitty hardware.
    • If a company makes great hardware, then they make shitty software.
    • If a company makes shitty hardware, nothing can be inferred about their software.
    • If a company makes shitty software, nothing can be inferred about their hardware.

    Better?



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    Again, since all of you seem to be misunderstanding me whenever you can, let's just spell it out:

    • If a company makes great software, then they make shitty hardware.
    • If a company makes great hardware, then they make shitty software.
    • If a company makes shitty hardware, nothing can be inferred about their software.
    • If a company makes shitty software, nothing can be inferred about their hardware.

    Better?

    You forgot one:

    • If a company makes goofy knock-down furniture with model names full of umlauts, then they make pretty decent meatballs.

     


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @MiffTheFox said:

    Again, since all of you seem to be misunderstanding me whenever you can, let's just spell it out:

    • If a company makes great software, then they make shitty hardware.
    • If a company makes great hardware, then they make shitty software.
    • If a company makes shitty hardware, nothing can be inferred about their software.
    • If a company makes shitty software, nothing can be inferred about their hardware.

    Better?

     

    - Unless they make both great software and great hardware, in which case that blows your entire theory out of the trees. As such, those datapoints should be summarily ignored. Instead, Slashdot article about that 30 day Java office thing, except that it's offtopic AND 5 days behind everyone else (in other words, norm for both here and Slashdot): http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/05/26/0418229/java-developer-says-he-built-launched-basic-open-source-office-suite-in-30-days

     

     



  • @da Doctah said:

    You forgot one:

    • If a company makes goofy knock-down furniture with model names full of umlauts, then they make pretty decent meatballs.

     

    That place smells like dirty babies.


    Oh I just noticed your avatar...



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    Unless they make both great software and great hardware, in which case that blows your entire theory out of the trees. As such, those datapoints should be summarily ignored.

    Yeah, but I haven't seen a single company that does this.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    Unless they make both great software and great hardware, in which case that blows your entire theory out of the trees. As such, those datapoints should be summarily ignored.

    Yeah, but I haven't seen a single company that does this.

    Amazon! The Kindle paperwhite is just awesome. As for software, they practically wrote the book on cloud computing, e-commerce, digital distribution and customer loyalty building.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @MiffTheFox said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    Unless they make both great software and great hardware, in which case that blows your entire theory out of the trees. As such, those datapoints should be summarily ignored.

    Yeah, but I haven't seen a single company that does this.

     

    ORLY?

    @MiffTheFox said:


    "Only exceptions seem to be Google (which can be said because they "produce" hardware in the sense that they beat on other hardware companies until those companies make what Google wants) and Apple (which can be said because their hardware and software is both acceptable but not really great)."


    Admittedly, you refer to Apple as "acceptable", and never quantify the greatness of Google-- but I need to fulfill my pedantic dickweed ratio or Alex will beat me again.

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Ronald said:
    Thinkpads were the best laptops ever,

    ... when was this?

    They were always clunky, ugly pieces of crap with keyboard nipples. I guess they were great if you wanted your laptop's design scheme to match the AS/400 in the basement. That must be a market of, what, 4 or maybe even 5 60 year-olds?

    Agreed. I always preferred Dell's business laptops.



  • @da Doctah said:

    You forgot one:

    • If a company makes goofy knock-down furniture with model names full of umlauts, then they make pretty decent meatballs.

    I hate going into an Ikea. You can see visions of the hellish, aseptic conformity of the dystopian state the Swedes have planned for us. It's like human values like love, taste and individuality are merely defects for the Ikea leviathan to curb.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    ...or Alex will beat me again.

    I think you meant to say "or Alex won't beat me again and I will be unable to get off." Otherwise, given what we know about you, what you said makes no sense.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I always preferred Dell's business laptops.
    Not me. Thinkpads and HPs - the few Dell laptops we sold all had problems (I think there wasn't one that didn't have a hard drive die in the warranty period, and several had to have the motherboard replaced, one of them twice). Thinkpads were ugly as hell (I still remember seeing a Thinkpad for the first time, and not knowing what was worse - somebody daring to put that ugly thing for sale, or buying it; but beyond that we've rarely had any problems), and HPs had bad reputation, but we never had any major problems with them (a few dead disks, but those are the component that dies most anyway), and their service is excellent (besides, a certain client is still using a HP laptop that was thrown across the room in anger, had one corner shattered, but despite that works without a hitch).



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Obligatory pitch for the Cyborg RAT series of mouses, the best mouses in the world:

     

    What in the [RACIST BULLSHIT REMOVED] is that thing?!  It looks like it'd hurt to hold after about 20 minutes.  If you play that many MMOs though, I'd consider the Razer Naga.  It has as many buttons as that...  thing, but it's designed for humans to hold in their hands.

     



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    Unless they make both great software and great hardware, in which case that blows your entire theory out of the trees. As such, those datapoints should be summarily ignored.

    Yeah, but I haven't seen a single company that does this.

     

    Sun from 1999 through whenever Oracle bought them.

     



  • @drurowin said:

    @MiffTheFox said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    Unless they make both great software and great hardware, in which case that blows your entire theory out of the trees. As such, those datapoints should be summarily ignored.

    Yeah, but I haven't seen a single company that does this.

     

    Sun from 1999 through whenever Oracle bought them.

     

    Java has always been a WTF since it has had arrays.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @drurowin said:

    @MiffTheFox said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    Unless they make both great software and great hardware, in which case that blows your entire theory out of the trees. As such, those datapoints should be summarily ignored.

    Yeah, but I haven't seen a single company that does this.

     

    Sun from 1999 through whenever Oracle bought them.

     

    Java has always been a WTF since it has had arrays.

     

    Name another write-once-run-anywhere programming language that doesn't involve a few WTFs.  Hell, a certain top-selling AAA video game was written in Java.

     



  • @drurowin said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @drurowin said:

    @MiffTheFox said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    Unless they make both great software and great hardware, in which case that blows your entire theory out of the trees. As such, those datapoints should be summarily ignored.

    Yeah, but I haven't seen a single company that does this.

     

    Sun from 1999 through whenever Oracle bought them.

     

    Java has always been a WTF since it has had arrays.

     

    Name another write-once-run-anywhere programming language that doesn't involve a few WTFs.  Hell, a certain top-selling AAA video game was written in Java.

     

    Other than the JVM, where can I run my Java program?



  • @Ben L. said:

    Other than the JVM, where can I run my Java program?
     

    Dalvik.  *rimshot*

     



  • @drurowin said:

    It looks like it'd hurt to hold after about 20 minutes.

    Try it before you knock it.

    @drurowin said:

    Hell, a certain top-selling AAA video game was written in Java.

    Which one?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @drurowin said:
    Hell, a certain top-selling AAA video game was written in Java.

    Which one?

    Minecraft.



  • @drurowin said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    @drurowin said:
    Hell, a certain top-selling AAA video game was written in Java.

    Which one?

    Minecraft.

    Oh. I thought you meant RuneScape.

    I can't decide which game is a bigger WTF...



  • @Ben L. said:

    @drurowin said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    @drurowin said:
    Hell, a certain top-selling AAA video game was written in Java.

    Which one?

    Minecraft.

    Oh. I thought you meant RuneScape.

    I can't decide which game is a bigger WTF...

     

    Runescape was only an AA title.

     



  • @drurowin said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    @drurowin said:
    Hell, a certain top-selling AAA video game was written in Java.

    Which one?

    Minecraft.

    Minecraft is a AAA game? Since when? It's a self-published indie.

    Lesson learned: when idiots on this forum use terms like "AAA video game" do not assume they know what the fuck they're talking about.



  • @drurowin said:

    Sun from 1999 through whenever Oracle bought them.

    Bullshit. Maybe in the 80s through mid-90s, Sun was okay, but Java was shit, Solaris was dying and nobody cared about SPARC.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @drurowin said:
    Sun from 1999 through whenever Oracle bought them.

    Bullshit. Maybe in the 80s through mid-90s, Sun was okay, but Java was shit, Solaris was dying and nobody cared about SPARC.

     

    Solaris is stronger than ever, and I'd have an UltraSPARC box on my desk right now if they weren't all rackmount systems that sounded like a 737 getting ready for takeoff.



  • @drurowin said:

    Solaris is stronger than ever...

    If by "stronger than ever" you mean "the only people who still use it are those who are locked-in and a few delusional souls." Still, ZFS is good. It shows just show bad Linux development is that it still is nowhere close to having a filesystem as good as ZFS or NTFS.

    @drurowin said:

    ...and I'd have an UltraSPARC box on my desk right now if they weren't all rackmount systems that sounded like a 737 getting ready for takeoff.

    So Sun made good hardware, it's just that it's not practical to actually use it. Gotcha.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @drurowin said:
    ...and I'd have an UltraSPARC box on my desk right now if they weren't all rackmount systems that sounded like a 737 getting ready for takeoff.

    So Sun made good hardware, it's just that it's not practical to actually use it. Gotcha.

     

    They didn't discontinue the workstations until after the Oracle takeover.



  • @drurowin said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @drurowin said:
    ...and I'd have an UltraSPARC box on my desk right now if they weren't all rackmount systems that sounded like a 737 getting ready for takeoff.

    So Sun made good hardware, it's just that it's not practical to actually use it. Gotcha.

     

    They didn't discontinue the workstations until after the Oracle takeover.

    Yes, Sun was committed to wasting shareholder monies up until the very end.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @drurowin said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @drurowin said:
    ...and I'd have an UltraSPARC box on my desk right now if they weren't all rackmount systems that sounded like a 737 getting ready for takeoff.

    So Sun made good hardware, it's just that it's not practical to actually use it. Gotcha.

     

    They didn't discontinue the workstations until after the Oracle takeover.

    Yes, Sun was committed to wasting shareholder monies up until the very end.

     

    Fucking pissed me off too.  I have a Blade 2500, and I was going to upgrade to an Ultra 45, and then BAM.  End of life.

     



  • @drurowin said:

    I have a Blade 2500, and I was going to upgrade to an Ultra 45, and then BAM.  End of life.

     

    It's called progress. Now open an AWS account like everyone else and move on with your life. Let the Indians and Chinese deal with hardware.



  • @Ronald said:

    Let the Indians and Chinese deal with hardware.

    "Non-deterministic Horse, the Great Cloud of our ancestors tell us warnings of the future."

    "Okay, Runs-With-Administrator-Privileges, you silence the Nagios alerts and I will send the stuck processes to the happy hunting ground."



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I hate going into an Ikea. You can see visions of the hellish, aseptic conformity of the dystopian state the Swedes have planned for us. It's like human values like love, taste and individuality are merely defects for the Ikea leviathan to curb.
    There is one thing that IKEA has to do to redeem itself in my eyes.  Just one, and I'll forgive all the rest.

    Sell a lamp that takes bulbs I can buy somewhere else.

    Do that and I'll beat a path through your store.



  • @da Doctah said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    I hate going into an Ikea. You can see visions of the hellish, aseptic conformity of the dystopian state the Swedes have planned for us. It's like human values like love, taste and individuality are merely defects for the Ikea leviathan to curb.
    There is one thing that IKEA has to do to redeem itself in my eyes.  Just one, and I'll forgive all the rest.

    Sell a lamp that takes bulbs I can buy somewhere else.

    Do that and I'll beat a path through your store.

     

    What, they don't take regular Edison base light bulbs?

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @drurowin said:

    Minecraft.


    Minecraft is a AAA game? Since when? It's a self-published indie.

    Lesson learned: when idiots on this forum use terms like "AAA video game" do not assume they know what the fuck they're talking about.

    If Minecraft was a AAA game, it'd be written in C++, require three different versions of MSVC++, two different versions of DirectX, and two different versions of the .NET Framework (!), but still default to 1024*768 fullscreen.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @drurowin said:

    What, they don't take regular Edison base light bulbs?
    They sell lamps with both Edison and mini-Edison sockets. (Plus some weird stuff for tracked lighting IIRC, but I never bought that.) Since they started doing that, those types of bulbs have become far more available in local stores.


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