I think you're right about Blizzard underestimating the appeal of user content. I bought Warcraft III back in the day just to play DotA. The single player campaigns were a bonus.
It comes back to the Von Neumann model of computation which pretty much all modern computers use. Both data and executable instructions are loaded into memory. Once in memory both are just a sequence of 1s and 0s and appear the same to the CPU. It has no way of telling that a particular section of memory is executable and another is not.
If your "data" 1s and 0s just so happen to match the machine code and you get an instruction pointer to jump to where that data is in memory then you're now executing "static data". For example, this is how buffer overflows and JIT compilation work.
The greens don't fight for the status quo - that would be the major parties. The greens are vocal critics of coal fired power stations, especially the brown coal ones. They argue for renewable energy.
There was one mission that we couldn't do in GTA San Andreas for the same reason. It was the one where you ride a motorbike into the back of a plane as it takes off. I think the smoke and other effects were slowing down our frame rate too much.
It worked on a new machine I got not too long after that. So games being linked to clock speed or FPS is still a problem.
The lobbying against parallel imports was from publishers and some Aussie authors. These guys make good profits from having an effective monopoly.
The big bookstores lobbied for parallel imports. They wanted to be able to import cheaper books instead of having to buy expensive, locally published editions.
If you're a lawyer then you should know that just because something is legal doesn't mean it's moral or ethical. TSA patdowns clearly fall into this category - perfectly legal however many argue it's immoral for a government to mandate an invasive search like this.
I'd prefer to be a minimum wage worker in Australia earning approx. $15/hour compared with half that in the USA. I fail to see how earning twice as much is a bad thing, unless you're of the mindset that all regulation is bad because it's the gubmint and they're evil.
If I had mod points I would have given it troll. For the Al Gore, Bill Gates and $27 Trillion comments (none of which have any connection with reality and are designed to be inflammatory).
Or rather, what the Bible claims he said, and with any modifications various saints/popes/copyists/translators made along the way. You have no way of knowing for certain.
The Bible has the more manuscripts, and closer in date to the original than any other ancient writing. Plato, Socrates, Homer etc, you wouldn't suggest these have been changed. There is a much bigger gap between the manuscripts for these and the time they were originally written.
Disagree with the content of the Bible all you like, but what's written there is an English translation of the original text. The evidence doesn't support any other conclusion.
ICANN might be stupid, but they wouldn't be so foolish as to ask for payment in an obsolete currency. I think they'd prefer to sell it to whoever has the most Euros.
If you don't like your government you and other like-minded people can elect a new one. There are freedom of information requests and similar transparency measures to keep them accountable.
What do you do if all corporations supplying product X are bad? I'm assuming that product X is an essential and not a want. How do you even know if a company is bad in the first place? They don't have to disclose anything and you can bet that their PR and marketing will put a positive spin on things.
How about another example - There's solid evidence that Giant Mining Corp (tm) is destroying the environment. You sell your shares and stop buying from them directly. That has no effect because hardly any of their other customers join in the boycott. Also the companies you buy products from are all customers of Giant Mining Corp, so you can't avoid indirectly sending them money.
When an article is submitted without bias in the summary the editors add some flamebait biased lines to the end.
When TFA in the original submission is a serious news website or a link to a primary source then the editors change it to a link to a blog with the article split over 10 pages full of ads.
I'll go one step further. I think the awesome bar in FF is an example of great user interface design. Typing is quick and easy. Using a mouse is slow.
I don't have to hunt through a couple of folders of bookmarks in a menu; oh whoops moved the mouse a few pixels to far have to start at level 1 of the tree again. Instead I can type sla [down arrow][enter] and be on slashdot. Other bookmarks are the same, type the first couple of letters and it appears at the top of the auto-completions.
If I was reading a cool article on last week and want to look at it again all I have to do is type a few keywords and it will appear. I don't have to hunt through the menu to find the history button then try and remember the exact day I was looking at it, then find it in the pages looked at that day. For example I opened a new tab and only had to type "url bar" to see this article as the top result. Quick, easy, effective.
As one of the "younger generation", I echo the sentiment of this post. We didn't have touch typing classes in school. I guess it was expected that you'd pick it up yourself. As a result I learnt a really bad technique from my self-teaching. A large amount of mistakes and not really using all 5 fingers. Home position for my left hand was in line with WASD instead of lining up with the 2nd finger on F.
I've since unlearned my bad habits and taught myself to type properly with "Typing of the Dead". It took a while and I'm probably not as fast as I was. On the plus side I'm a heap more accurate and speed will improve as muscle memory builds. I had hit the limit in speed/accuracy of what was possible with the poor technique, which is much lower than doing things correctly.
We still teach years of handwriting at school. Even after that most people's handwriting is terrible. A year or two of typing seems equally important in the modern, computerised world.
Slashdot Mirror
The Inmates are running the asylum.
I highly recommend this book. It puts forward the case for user-centred design and describes some basic but effective techniques.
Some of the technology in the examples is a bit dated, however the experiences of using bad interfaces is still fresh.
Nielsen's heuristics should also be referred to constantly in user interface design: http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html
In other words, size doesn't matter it's how you use it?
I think you're right about Blizzard underestimating the appeal of user content. I bought Warcraft III back in the day just to play DotA. The single player campaigns were a bonus.
Gates: OK boys, buy him out.
Chuck Norris, is that you?
It comes back to the Von Neumann model of computation which pretty much all modern computers use. Both data and executable instructions are loaded into memory. Once in memory both are just a sequence of 1s and 0s and appear the same to the CPU. It has no way of telling that a particular section of memory is executable and another is not.
If your "data" 1s and 0s just so happen to match the machine code and you get an instruction pointer to jump to where that data is in memory then you're now executing "static data". For example, this is how buffer overflows and JIT compilation work.
The greens don't fight for the status quo - that would be the major parties. The greens are vocal critics of coal fired power stations, especially the brown coal ones. They argue for renewable energy.
There was one mission that we couldn't do in GTA San Andreas for the same reason. It was the one where you ride a motorbike into the back of a plane as it takes off. I think the smoke and other effects were slowing down our frame rate too much.
It worked on a new machine I got not too long after that. So games being linked to clock speed or FPS is still a problem.
WHOOSH!
The lobbying against parallel imports was from publishers and some Aussie authors. These guys make good profits from having an effective monopoly.
The big bookstores lobbied for parallel imports. They wanted to be able to import cheaper books instead of having to buy expensive, locally published editions.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-04-24/australians-want-cheaper-books-dymocks/1661020
If you're a lawyer then you should know that just because something is legal doesn't mean it's moral or ethical. TSA patdowns clearly fall into this category - perfectly legal however many argue it's immoral for a government to mandate an invasive search like this.
Slashdot has been an international site for a long time.
I'd prefer to be a minimum wage worker in Australia earning approx. $15/hour compared with half that in the USA. I fail to see how earning twice as much is a bad thing, unless you're of the mindset that all regulation is bad because it's the gubmint and they're evil.
If I had mod points I would have given it troll. For the Al Gore, Bill Gates and $27 Trillion comments (none of which have any connection with reality and are designed to be inflammatory).
Yo dog, we heard you like roundabouts so we put roundabouts in your roundabout so you can go around while you go around.
The Bible has the more manuscripts, and closer in date to the original than any other ancient writing. Plato, Socrates, Homer etc, you wouldn't suggest these have been changed. There is a much bigger gap between the manuscripts for these and the time they were originally written.
Disagree with the content of the Bible all you like, but what's written there is an English translation of the original text. The evidence doesn't support any other conclusion.
ICANN might be stupid, but they wouldn't be so foolish as to ask for payment in an obsolete currency. I think they'd prefer to sell it to whoever has the most Euros.
It's called a screen-reader. Presumably the CAPTCHA and audio button have useful alt-text.
Hey TSA officer, don't touch iJunk!
If you don't like your government you and other like-minded people can elect a new one. There are freedom of information requests and similar transparency measures to keep them accountable.
What do you do if all corporations supplying product X are bad? I'm assuming that product X is an essential and not a want. How do you even know if a company is bad in the first place? They don't have to disclose anything and you can bet that their PR and marketing will put a positive spin on things.
How about another example - There's solid evidence that Giant Mining Corp (tm) is destroying the environment. You sell your shares and stop buying from them directly. That has no effect because hardly any of their other customers join in the boycott. Also the companies you buy products from are all customers of Giant Mining Corp, so you can't avoid indirectly sending them money.
When an article is submitted without bias in the summary the editors add some flamebait biased lines to the end.
When TFA in the original submission is a serious news website or a link to a primary source then the editors change it to a link to a blog with the article split over 10 pages full of ads.
I'll go one step further. I think the awesome bar in FF is an example of great user interface design. Typing is quick and easy. Using a mouse is slow.
I don't have to hunt through a couple of folders of bookmarks in a menu; oh whoops moved the mouse a few pixels to far have to start at level 1 of the tree again. Instead I can type sla [down arrow][enter] and be on slashdot. Other bookmarks are the same, type the first couple of letters and it appears at the top of the auto-completions.
If I was reading a cool article on last week and want to look at it again all I have to do is type a few keywords and it will appear. I don't have to hunt through the menu to find the history button then try and remember the exact day I was looking at it, then find it in the pages looked at that day. For example I opened a new tab and only had to type "url bar" to see this article as the top result. Quick, easy, effective.
Sadly the stupid idea is modded up and the John Donne paraphrase is still at one T_T.
Wow, what an unexpected yet beautiful post from an AC.
As one of the "younger generation", I echo the sentiment of this post. We didn't have touch typing classes in school. I guess it was expected that you'd pick it up yourself. As a result I learnt a really bad technique from my self-teaching. A large amount of mistakes and not really using all 5 fingers. Home position for my left hand was in line with WASD instead of lining up with the 2nd finger on F.
I've since unlearned my bad habits and taught myself to type properly with "Typing of the Dead". It took a while and I'm probably not as fast as I was. On the plus side I'm a heap more accurate and speed will improve as muscle memory builds. I had hit the limit in speed/accuracy of what was possible with the poor technique, which is much lower than doing things correctly.
We still teach years of handwriting at school. Even after that most people's handwriting is terrible. A year or two of typing seems equally important in the modern, computerised world.