Yeah, it's a bit much to expect a computer to be able to handle running both a web browser *and* an mp3 player at the same time as another program. I mean, come on - *3* programs at once?
You can call anything client-server. My wife's taking an introductory Java course (at a nearby, well respected University). Her instructor - who hasn't had any Java beyond this first course - is calling class files "servers" and the programs that instantiate objects "clients". When I saw "client-server programming" in her notes, I thought "boy, that's a little advanced for students who don't even really know what an object is yet". Then I read the notes. Weird.
They're providing hosting for some crappy extensions - the most popular extensions are hosted elsewhere, so it seems - so presumably they'll be the repository for the crap extensions. At least, that's what I got from the article.
IMHO, the only things missing from Firefox are things that don't belong in a browser anyway. Maybe I'm just not a visionary, though...
A hub is just that, the middle (hub) of a spoked layout. A hub can be switching or not (call it a repeater if it doesn't do switching), but it's a hub either way.
A penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and half-dollar are all coins, and are all fractions of a dollar (.01,.05,.10,.25, and.50, respectively). The smalles denomination is a cent, which is, in fact, a coin (just like the next 5 steps). A dollar is just a hectocent, but "dollar" is so much easier to remember - and "dollar" doesn't sound like a sci-fi alien race that somehow feeds off of other organisms. "I'd hate to meet up with a pack of hectocents in a dark alley..."
My favorite "bad use of the trash" is with CD-Rs on OS X. To burn a CD with the finder, you put a blank disk in. It appears on the desktop, and you can drag files to it + rename it. Then, you drag it to the trash in order to commit your changes to the disk. Granted, the trash can turns into the "warning, radioactive waste - this might burn something, maybe even a CD" symbol, but that's still an awful design decision. If I want to erase a disk, I can't use the trash can, I have to use the disk image utility (or the terminal).
Anyway, consistency still doesn't imply intuitiveness, no matter how many people have learned to work around the stupid interface.:)
BTW, I tend to waffle between Gnome, KDE, and Windowmaker on my primary systems - and I always choose a theme that uses checkmarks for checkboxes. They're called *check* boxes for a reason, IMHO.
I was just looking at it. It does look pretty damned cool, but I don't have a real need for it, and can't invent a need that justifies the price. If i rode in cars as much as I drove, I could possibly do it - but I just don't travel enough. A $50 eBay laptop will work just fine anyway.:)
Just say that the criminal in question violated the DMCA or the Patriot Act or some other terrorist-like activity. Damned terrorists. I'm gonna go out and put another american flag no my car right now, as just the thought of such unamerican activities - like hacking that game device - makes me sick.:)
We just have the little thing that plugs in to the side and allows you to record video. The new ones look like they have an actual dock, but I'd imagine the reroding works similarly - but I'd expect things like TV listings, etc to be in a PVR, and the one we have doesn't do that. It does record in realtime, though, and works well for that. And it's well built.
I dunno. I don't have either one. I've got a computer that plays games better *and* is useful for other things. None the less, the X was a stupid choice for "select" on the PS1, and is still a stupid choice on the PS2 and PSP. The flashy but cumbersome interface was a stupic choice. The decision to use a telephone-like pad to type characters was a stupid choice. It's rife with bad interface, though it does have a nice screen and some nifty stuff from a hardware point of view. The interface, though, is piss-poor.
The article has nothing to do with games and everythign to do with using a PSP for non-game uses. And "familiar controls"? Why in the hell does Sony use the "X" - you know, the universal symbol for closing/exiting/canceling in everything else electronic - as the friggin' *select* button? Familiar my ass - maybe familiar to the people who have another playstation...
The Archos has a better interface, is more durable, and doesn't force you to name the files in the form "PV00000.jpg" or "PV00000.mpg" in order to view them. Nor does it require you to re-encode using a weird utility - it just plays regular mpegs, images, sounds, etc.
Yes, there's an Archos and a PSP laying on a desk in the next room. The PSP has a lot of emphasis on looking flash, and might have som egames one day. The Archos actually works well, and has a good interface. I see no benefits to the PSP as a media device (but it's a better video game system, or I guess it woudl be if there was an actual game in the package instead of a pile of demos).
Speeding isn't neccesarily going "too fast for conditions". Similarly, hacking hardware that *you own* is just using the device in a way other than which it is intended, not stealing ideas for fun and profit. Speeding is definitely cooler, just ask the dumb girl riding on the back of some punk's sport bike.:)
If you get in trouble for hacking hardware, the feds get involved and media spin generaly makes you look like a criminal. Speeding just costs a few bucks and might get your name included in a small listing in the local newspaper.
Then again, I sped to work today, and I'm spending the afternoon looking for ways to hack the PSP, so I'm a big ol' criminal either way (but this is a timely article for me).
Yes, it happens. No, it's not always the software developer's fault. I think we agree on that. My point was/is that it's more often the user making unreasonable demands than it is the software developer making unreasonable interface descisions.
Using a concrete, well-distributed example, let's look at MS Office. The interface is crap. The bad interface is exactly the reason I don't use it. People use it and get frustrated daily. However, I don't know more than one or two people anywhere that have ever looked in the help, let alone worked through the tutorial. Most MS Office users would be shocked to find that there even *is* a tutorial.
Now, lots of people are going to use MS Office whether they actually understand it well or not. They aren't going to choose to use something else, because MS Office is just "the standard" (BTW, the Open Office 2.0 prerelease/beta/whatever looks really nice - They're just about to the point where I can get rid of MS Office on our specific network). Anyway, people are using this software daily. They fumble around finding a few basic function, and then end up frustrated frequently by things that they don't understand. They do things the "long way" because they didn't bother to learn about their software. It only takes a few minutes to walk through the tutorial, and a mooment to bring up the help and search for what they want to do, but they never do it. They don't "have time". But somehow, they have the time to muddle around, half-assing or asking someone else how to kinda do what they want. If they'd just invest a little time learning the software, man, they'd both save that frustration time *and* probably gain a little productivity. 10 years to get a return on investment is a bit of an overstatment in that area.
You're right, though. Computers are often too hard to use. The cause for that difficulty, however, does not rest entirely on software developers. Expecting the software to be intuitive to a trained user and intuitive to someone who's never used a computer are not the same thing. I personally think that it's totally reasonable to expect some level of training in a user.
Oh, and that Dr./Lawyer should really hire a trained seceretary, and maybe get a Palm system with a book (then read the book!).:)
My dad's a farmer, as is his dad. Surprising as this may be, farmers don't punch a time clock. On a farm, if you have work to do, you just do it. You don't wait until 8AM, work until exactly noon, stop for 1 hour to eat lunch, and then work until exactly 5. You start working when the sun comes up, and you stop when the sun either goes down or you're done working, whichever comes first. Time matters only when 1) selling to a market that opens/closes at a specific time and 2) dealing with other people that worry about times. Farmers in general don't give a rat's ass if the day starts at 2AM or 6PM. Yes, a rat's ass.:) It doesn't matter what's on the clock, if there's work to do and enough light to do it, you do the work.
I'm far too lazy to farm, so I'm a sysadmin. Same "work when you have to" deal, but with more artificial lighting and less welding.:)
Yes, sleeping an hour later every morning, relative to the sun's position, is certainly a cramp on *my* sleep, too. I don't know how I'll ever get enough sleep with that extra hour of darkness in the morning and all.
Slashdot Mirror
Yay gopher!
Yeah, it's a bit much to expect a computer to be able to handle running both a web browser *and* an mp3 player at the same time as another program. I mean, come on - *3* programs at once?
You can call anything client-server. My wife's taking an introductory Java course (at a nearby, well respected University). Her instructor - who hasn't had any Java beyond this first course - is calling class files "servers" and the programs that instantiate objects "clients". When I saw "client-server programming" in her notes, I thought "boy, that's a little advanced for students who don't even really know what an object is yet". Then I read the notes. Weird.
They're providing hosting for some crappy extensions - the most popular extensions are hosted elsewhere, so it seems - so presumably they'll be the repository for the crap extensions. At least, that's what I got from the article.
IMHO, the only things missing from Firefox are things that don't belong in a browser anyway. Maybe I'm just not a visionary, though...
The in-store version of Netscape included an HTML editor. The browser was always free.
I still run Mosaic on my NeXT machine...
A hub is just that, the middle (hub) of a spoked layout. A hub can be switching or not (call it a repeater if it doesn't do switching), but it's a hub either way.
4 days later, and some moderator is still improperly moderating posts in this discussion, rather than things that are on the front page. Great job!
That reminds me - I haven't metamoderated for a while...
Hmph. Thanks. I have even less faith in my govenrnment than I did before - I didn't think that was possible.
And nikki is latin for 1/5, right?
Wait, who *wrote* the Patriot Act? Was it just the idle ramblings of a congressional janitor?
A penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and half-dollar are all coins, and are all fractions of a dollar (.01, .05, .10, .25, and .50, respectively). The smalles denomination is a cent, which is, in fact, a coin (just like the next 5 steps). A dollar is just a hectocent, but "dollar" is so much easier to remember - and "dollar" doesn't sound like a sci-fi alien race that somehow feeds off of other organisms. "I'd hate to meet up with a pack of hectocents in a dark alley..."
My favorite "bad use of the trash" is with CD-Rs on OS X. To burn a CD with the finder, you put a blank disk in. It appears on the desktop, and you can drag files to it + rename it. Then, you drag it to the trash in order to commit your changes to the disk. Granted, the trash can turns into the "warning, radioactive waste - this might burn something, maybe even a CD" symbol, but that's still an awful design decision. If I want to erase a disk, I can't use the trash can, I have to use the disk image utility (or the terminal).
:)
Anyway, consistency still doesn't imply intuitiveness, no matter how many people have learned to work around the stupid interface.
BTW, I tend to waffle between Gnome, KDE, and Windowmaker on my primary systems - and I always choose a theme that uses checkmarks for checkboxes. They're called *check* boxes for a reason, IMHO.
I was just looking at it. It does look pretty damned cool, but I don't have a real need for it, and can't invent a need that justifies the price. If i rode in cars as much as I drove, I could possibly do it - but I just don't travel enough. A $50 eBay laptop will work just fine anyway. :)
Just say that the criminal in question violated the DMCA or the Patriot Act or some other terrorist-like activity. Damned terrorists. I'm gonna go out and put another american flag no my car right now, as just the thought of such unamerican activities - like hacking that game device - makes me sick. :)
reroding = "recording". Argh.
We just have the little thing that plugs in to the side and allows you to record video. The new ones look like they have an actual dock, but I'd imagine the reroding works similarly - but I'd expect things like TV listings, etc to be in a PVR, and the one we have doesn't do that. It does record in realtime, though, and works well for that. And it's well built.
I dunno. I don't have either one. I've got a computer that plays games better *and* is useful for other things. None the less, the X was a stupid choice for "select" on the PS1, and is still a stupid choice on the PS2 and PSP. The flashy but cumbersome interface was a stupic choice. The decision to use a telephone-like pad to type characters was a stupid choice. It's rife with bad interface, though it does have a nice screen and some nifty stuff from a hardware point of view. The interface, though, is piss-poor.
I think they both eat seedless grapes.
The article has nothing to do with games and everythign to do with using a PSP for non-game uses. And "familiar controls"? Why in the hell does Sony use the "X" - you know, the universal symbol for closing/exiting/canceling in everything else electronic - as the friggin' *select* button? Familiar my ass - maybe familiar to the people who have another playstation...
The Archos has a better interface, is more durable, and doesn't force you to name the files in the form "PV00000.jpg" or "PV00000.mpg" in order to view them. Nor does it require you to re-encode using a weird utility - it just plays regular mpegs, images, sounds, etc.
Yes, there's an Archos and a PSP laying on a desk in the next room. The PSP has a lot of emphasis on looking flash, and might have som egames one day. The Archos actually works well, and has a good interface. I see no benefits to the PSP as a media device (but it's a better video game system, or I guess it woudl be if there was an actual game in the package instead of a pile of demos).
Speeding isn't neccesarily going "too fast for conditions". Similarly, hacking hardware that *you own* is just using the device in a way other than which it is intended, not stealing ideas for fun and profit. Speeding is definitely cooler, just ask the dumb girl riding on the back of some punk's sport bike. :)
If you get in trouble for hacking hardware, the feds get involved and media spin generaly makes you look like a criminal. Speeding just costs a few bucks and might get your name included in a small listing in the local newspaper.
Then again, I sped to work today, and I'm spending the afternoon looking for ways to hack the PSP, so I'm a big ol' criminal either way (but this is a timely article for me).
Yes, it happens. No, it's not always the software developer's fault. I think we agree on that. My point was/is that it's more often the user making unreasonable demands than it is the software developer making unreasonable interface descisions.
:)
Using a concrete, well-distributed example, let's look at MS Office. The interface is crap. The bad interface is exactly the reason I don't use it. People use it and get frustrated daily. However, I don't know more than one or two people anywhere that have ever looked in the help, let alone worked through the tutorial. Most MS Office users would be shocked to find that there even *is* a tutorial.
Now, lots of people are going to use MS Office whether they actually understand it well or not. They aren't going to choose to use something else, because MS Office is just "the standard" (BTW, the Open Office 2.0 prerelease/beta/whatever looks really nice - They're just about to the point where I can get rid of MS Office on our specific network). Anyway, people are using this software daily. They fumble around finding a few basic function, and then end up frustrated frequently by things that they don't understand. They do things the "long way" because they didn't bother to learn about their software. It only takes a few minutes to walk through the tutorial, and a mooment to bring up the help and search for what they want to do, but they never do it. They don't "have time". But somehow, they have the time to muddle around, half-assing or asking someone else how to kinda do what they want. If they'd just invest a little time learning the software, man, they'd both save that frustration time *and* probably gain a little productivity. 10 years to get a return on investment is a bit of an overstatment in that area.
You're right, though. Computers are often too hard to use. The cause for that difficulty, however, does not rest entirely on software developers. Expecting the software to be intuitive to a trained user and intuitive to someone who's never used a computer are not the same thing. I personally think that it's totally reasonable to expect some level of training in a user.
Oh, and that Dr./Lawyer should really hire a trained seceretary, and maybe get a Palm system with a book (then read the book!).
My dad's a farmer, as is his dad. Surprising as this may be, farmers don't punch a time clock. On a farm, if you have work to do, you just do it. You don't wait until 8AM, work until exactly noon, stop for 1 hour to eat lunch, and then work until exactly 5. You start working when the sun comes up, and you stop when the sun either goes down or you're done working, whichever comes first. Time matters only when 1) selling to a market that opens/closes at a specific time and 2) dealing with other people that worry about times. Farmers in general don't give a rat's ass if the day starts at 2AM or 6PM. Yes, a rat's ass. :) It doesn't matter what's on the clock, if there's work to do and enough light to do it, you do the work.
:)
I'm far too lazy to farm, so I'm a sysadmin. Same "work when you have to" deal, but with more artificial lighting and less welding.
Yes, sleeping an hour later every morning, relative to the sun's position, is certainly a cramp on *my* sleep, too. I don't know how I'll ever get enough sleep with that extra hour of darkness in the morning and all.
Man, I had mod points yesterday...