In my experience there is way way more software failures. The vendor just sends software updates every couple months. Oh yeah the previous version had a problem where if you did things in the wrong order it would change the patient that the radiation machine was programmed for. Sorry about that but here is the fix. Or worse notices saying their is a problem so telling users to double check all the time until they release a new version... sometime.
I agree on the shoved down your throat bit. They almost could have gotten it right just by having a little software switch say Intel + > 2GB RAM default desktop otherwise metro. With an easy to find button to switch latter. I think Mountain Lion is pushing people more towards the tablet model in a lot of ways but not forcing you to discover it right away (but within a couple days if you want to know what is going on in the background). They are hyping Game Centre integration between iOS and X and games/apps from phones being ported to the desktop which has an app store (I have a 27" iMac I'm pretty sure I don't want > HD Angry Birds that I interact with with a mouse... thanks:)). Notfication tray is a big one for me. The "power users" are more likely to actually look at notifications more likely to have lots of stuff that will give notifications (things like video ripping, etc) and they only demoed a swipe (left?) option to get to it. The probably have something clunky like click command and mouse over to the right as a keyboard shortcut but still it is touch first.
There doing it with mountain lion ( and even earlier but to a lesser extent). For example you "stretch" all the way out in Safari to get tab previews. You swipe right to get to your notifications (not sure how you do it with a normal mouse wasn't in the demo at WWDC).
They seem to be more and more assuming you have a trackpad or one of the magic mouses. I never got used to trying to pinch and stretch with two fingers on a mouse I guess it takes some getting used to. For a laptop assuming you are just consuming content it wasn't so bad because the pad is flat. But if you are in the middle of something say editing a pdf and you just want to make it bigger having to taking you hand way off the keyboard (and off the mouse if you are like me and can't really fine control two fingers while clasping something) it sucks.
They also integrated the app store in Lion and in Mountain Lion have more integration to "Game Centre" so all the junk from an iPhone is coming to the Mac.
I was mostly joking. What I mean is the ridiculous success of the iPad has made everyone think everything has to be like a tablet to be worth selling. I don't want my desktop to turn into a giant iPhone/iPad.
Exactly with the smartphone on a desktop thing. The other side of things: the start screen showing all your tiles. Again very phone like. Huge privacy issues IMHO. The tiles update with your data and if every app you use sits on your start screen with your data on it and you have to go back to the start screen for everything anyone in the room can see your personal data.
Metro is supposed to be more power efficient than win 7. Apps need to be made so that they can be hibernated really quickly since whenever the system is under memory pressure it will start dropping apps that are in the background. They claim crazy fast "rehydrating" something like 200ms (I wonder if they tried real programs not the phone->computer demo apps that ship with the beta but something "real" like VS or photoshop sized). Anyways since the system hiberates things and everything is supposed to use asyncronous functions the system can slip and wait for things like WOL packets and such much more efficiently. Whether it actually ends up working that way when things are out in the wild and users get a couple months do dump every stupid app a friend of a friend liked on FB is a different thing. But in theory metro is supposed to be rediculously efficient. Since the desktop is just another app it can be hibernated and rehydrated too so the memory management their should get you nice memory management on your legacy apps too since "windows" will just go away whenever you do something else.
I didn't have a good experience with the beta so only played around with it for about 20 min on a VM. Didn't notice the search. Did notice the pain of navigating metro with a mouse. Might be the beta but it was click and drag, click and drag. Click. Clicky clicky click. It seemed all the examples were content consumption based apps very little for the "get to the keyboard and start typing" sorts. Of course their was the VS demo but that was just type to make yet another app that requires you to go back to metro (beta didn't have desktop projects available if I recall (maybe it was dev preview not sure MS has way too many "here try this" releases).
The super bar is what they are calling the "system tray" no? It is there in the "desktop app" it is just the start button that sends you back to metro. I think metro should have been an optional skin or even better a "space" like it is in Mac for an app store. Multiple desktop support should come with any modern OS IMHO.
I have a hundred or more installed programs. Yes I use the start menu. I don't actually use the mouse to get there though. Windows key and start typing. Usually in 5 or less characters the list is down to 2-3 and I arrow over to the right one. I'm not sure how you do it but for changing settings it is great because you don't have to navigate around the control panel. Just type a few characters (eg. win -> def for defrag) and you are right to what you want.
So all the things I really don't care much about. They can have them. I'd dispute the internet thing (by bandwidth I suspect guys win what with gaming and porn). But otherwise: location based apps? I see it more as a privacy risk for little benefit, FB and other narcissistic tools: no use and I really don't care what my cousin's friend found funny so can't be bothered with other people's personal BS.
Also of tech demographic means relatively simple to use "chatty" services than girls might win. How about hard (for mainstream user) tech adoption? Setting up a home server, remote backup, dual booting systems etc.?
Size: that is my biggest objection. If they use a decent sized font but then make it all caps it makes the menus larger than they need to be taking up screen real estate. Yeah our screens are getting bigger but we always can use more space especially in the vertical direction.
But then again I don't really like Metro. The design changes are consistent with the new UI for the OS IMHO. Capital or "block" letters are boxy like metro tiles. Lack of colour makes the code stand out more which is consistent with the whole content not controls idea of a metro app. That said when I'm looking for a control it damn well be clearly visible which one I want to click on which is what I don't like about the new UI. They added a bit more colour since the beta but still kind of dull.
A work around could have been to have the colour "pop out" if you are moving the mouse over the toolbars (actual mouse movement not just having the pointer happen to be on a menu).
The good thing is in my experience in the US they brew coffee as weak as tea so probably not as much a difference as if you were drinking coffee in Turkey say:)
Was the nasty gram from RIAA? I got one of those while working as a sys-admin in Germany. A quick "we are not in the US so suck it" usually is sufficient to deal with those.
I'd like to know who. I literally do not no a single person that has bought a signal song electronically. At the moment I have ~20k songs in my iTunes collection and I'm a relatively light user compared to my friends. Rot in hell CRIA.
The article claims 3 cups of coffee a day. Tea has about half the caffeine so you'd be looking at 6 cups a day. No wonder the brits are always taking the piss.
Very basic questions that require 3 lines to solve. If the student is allowed notes they can get lucky just by finding the formula on their crib sheet. I think exams should be open notes but questions complicated enough that you aren't going to luck out and find the question or solution on your equation list or previous assignments. That said I had some silly exams in my time too. Nuclear physics course that the prof said wouldn't have scattering theory questions on it ended up being 3/5 questions on an exam that was either 80% or 100% depending on which would work out better for you. The average mark for the course was a fail... nice:-)
Oh and also: I had a bunch of profs, and it made sense, that only had maybe 1-2 marks for the final answer. The other 3-8 were for steps in between. So you could get a 70-80% in a course and have a stupid arithmetic error somewhere in the question. Didn't matter it was understood that you're stressed and that in a normal situation you'd be able to be more methodical about checking your work.
Any sane prof would require that you show your work. In the real world you'll have calculators and other methods of checking your work. I don't see why exams need to be different. You still have to understand why an answer is right and figure out which formulas you need to get there. Trig identities for example, you can know the final answer all you want, heck sometimes the prof will give it to you as in "show that blah = blah" questions, but if you don't know the tools in the middle you'll get no where.
Something that helps is having deep understanding questions not trivial calculation questions. In the real world you'll have Google and 90% of what you learn in college will not be relevant to your job and when you switch jobs it will be understood that it was 10 years ago and you need time to get up to speed. Google/internet has a very hard time of giving answers to understanding type questions (things like what causes electric current to flow on the outer edge of a conductor rather than through the whole thing). You take a while to figure it out and you either understand it or you don't versus 4 pages of DEs to solve only to find out that you made a 4th grade arithmetic error on page one. It doesn't test understanding just the ability to churn out lots of math with little errors quickly.
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In my experience there is way way more software failures. The vendor just sends software updates every couple months. Oh yeah the previous version had a problem where if you did things in the wrong order it would change the patient that the radiation machine was programmed for. Sorry about that but here is the fix. Or worse notices saying their is a problem so telling users to double check all the time until they release a new version ... sometime.
Legally distinct aka YouCorp? :-)
I agree on the shoved down your throat bit. They almost could have gotten it right just by having a little software switch say Intel + > 2GB RAM default desktop otherwise metro. With an easy to find button to switch latter. I think Mountain Lion is pushing people more towards the tablet model in a lot of ways but not forcing you to discover it right away (but within a couple days if you want to know what is going on in the background). They are hyping Game Centre integration between iOS and X and games/apps from phones being ported to the desktop which has an app store (I have a 27" iMac I'm pretty sure I don't want > HD Angry Birds that I interact with with a mouse ... thanks :)). Notfication tray is a big one for me. The "power users" are more likely to actually look at notifications more likely to have lots of stuff that will give notifications (things like video ripping, etc) and they only demoed a swipe (left?) option to get to it. The probably have something clunky like click command and mouse over to the right as a keyboard shortcut but still it is touch first.
There doing it with mountain lion ( and even earlier but to a lesser extent). For example you "stretch" all the way out in Safari to get tab previews. You swipe right to get to your notifications (not sure how you do it with a normal mouse wasn't in the demo at WWDC).
They seem to be more and more assuming you have a trackpad or one of the magic mouses. I never got used to trying to pinch and stretch with two fingers on a mouse I guess it takes some getting used to. For a laptop assuming you are just consuming content it wasn't so bad because the pad is flat. But if you are in the middle of something say editing a pdf and you just want to make it bigger having to taking you hand way off the keyboard (and off the mouse if you are like me and can't really fine control two fingers while clasping something) it sucks.
They also integrated the app store in Lion and in Mountain Lion have more integration to "Game Centre" so all the junk from an iPhone is coming to the Mac.
I was mostly joking. What I mean is the ridiculous success of the iPad has made everyone think everything has to be like a tablet to be worth selling. I don't want my desktop to turn into a giant iPhone/iPad.
So soon we'll have dual 24" monitor tablet pcs you need to drag around with a mouse. Thanks iPad.
Exactly with the smartphone on a desktop thing. The other side of things: the start screen showing all your tiles. Again very phone like. Huge privacy issues IMHO. The tiles update with your data and if every app you use sits on your start screen with your data on it and you have to go back to the start screen for everything anyone in the room can see your personal data.
Metro is supposed to be more power efficient than win 7. Apps need to be made so that they can be hibernated really quickly since whenever the system is under memory pressure it will start dropping apps that are in the background. They claim crazy fast "rehydrating" something like 200ms (I wonder if they tried real programs not the phone->computer demo apps that ship with the beta but something "real" like VS or photoshop sized). Anyways since the system hiberates things and everything is supposed to use asyncronous functions the system can slip and wait for things like WOL packets and such much more efficiently. Whether it actually ends up working that way when things are out in the wild and users get a couple months do dump every stupid app a friend of a friend liked on FB is a different thing. But in theory metro is supposed to be rediculously efficient. Since the desktop is just another app it can be hibernated and rehydrated too so the memory management their should get you nice memory management on your legacy apps too since "windows" will just go away whenever you do something else.
I didn't have a good experience with the beta so only played around with it for about 20 min on a VM. Didn't notice the search. Did notice the pain of navigating metro with a mouse. Might be the beta but it was click and drag, click and drag. Click. Clicky clicky click. It seemed all the examples were content consumption based apps very little for the "get to the keyboard and start typing" sorts. Of course their was the VS demo but that was just type to make yet another app that requires you to go back to metro (beta didn't have desktop projects available if I recall (maybe it was dev preview not sure MS has way too many "here try this" releases).
The super bar is what they are calling the "system tray" no? It is there in the "desktop app" it is just the start button that sends you back to metro. I think metro should have been an optional skin or even better a "space" like it is in Mac for an app store. Multiple desktop support should come with any modern OS IMHO.
I have a hundred or more installed programs. Yes I use the start menu. I don't actually use the mouse to get there though. Windows key and start typing. Usually in 5 or less characters the list is down to 2-3 and I arrow over to the right one. I'm not sure how you do it but for changing settings it is great because you don't have to navigate around the control panel. Just type a few characters (eg. win -> def for defrag) and you are right to what you want.
So all the things I really don't care much about. They can have them. I'd dispute the internet thing (by bandwidth I suspect guys win what with gaming and porn). But otherwise: location based apps? I see it more as a privacy risk for little benefit, FB and other narcissistic tools: no use and I really don't care what my cousin's friend found funny so can't be bothered with other people's personal BS.
Also of tech demographic means relatively simple to use "chatty" services than girls might win. How about hard (for mainstream user) tech adoption? Setting up a home server, remote backup, dual booting systems etc.?
Size: that is my biggest objection. If they use a decent sized font but then make it all caps it makes the menus larger than they need to be taking up screen real estate. Yeah our screens are getting bigger but we always can use more space especially in the vertical direction.
But then again I don't really like Metro. The design changes are consistent with the new UI for the OS IMHO. Capital or "block" letters are boxy like metro tiles. Lack of colour makes the code stand out more which is consistent with the whole content not controls idea of a metro app. That said when I'm looking for a control it damn well be clearly visible which one I want to click on which is what I don't like about the new UI. They added a bit more colour since the beta but still kind of dull.
A work around could have been to have the colour "pop out" if you are moving the mouse over the toolbars (actual mouse movement not just having the pointer happen to be on a menu).
The good thing is in my experience in the US they brew coffee as weak as tea so probably not as much a difference as if you were drinking coffee in Turkey say :)
Was the nasty gram from RIAA? I got one of those while working as a sys-admin in Germany. A quick "we are not in the US so suck it" usually is sufficient to deal with those.
I'd like to know who. I literally do not no a single person that has bought a signal song electronically. At the moment I have ~20k songs in my iTunes collection and I'm a relatively light user compared to my friends. Rot in hell CRIA.
The article claims 3 cups of coffee a day. Tea has about half the caffeine so you'd be looking at 6 cups a day. No wonder the brits are always taking the piss.
Who are you, why are you here?
Very basic questions that require 3 lines to solve. If the student is allowed notes they can get lucky just by finding the formula on their crib sheet. I think exams should be open notes but questions complicated enough that you aren't going to luck out and find the question or solution on your equation list or previous assignments. That said I had some silly exams in my time too. Nuclear physics course that the prof said wouldn't have scattering theory questions on it ended up being 3/5 questions on an exam that was either 80% or 100% depending on which would work out better for you. The average mark for the course was a fail ... nice :-)
Shocking.
It is a lot easier to copy an answer than a whole calculation. Also depending on the topic guessing can get you a right answer every once and a while.
Oh and also: I had a bunch of profs, and it made sense, that only had maybe 1-2 marks for the final answer. The other 3-8 were for steps in between. So you could get a 70-80% in a course and have a stupid arithmetic error somewhere in the question. Didn't matter it was understood that you're stressed and that in a normal situation you'd be able to be more methodical about checking your work.
Any sane prof would require that you show your work. In the real world you'll have calculators and other methods of checking your work. I don't see why exams need to be different. You still have to understand why an answer is right and figure out which formulas you need to get there. Trig identities for example, you can know the final answer all you want, heck sometimes the prof will give it to you as in "show that blah = blah" questions, but if you don't know the tools in the middle you'll get no where.
Something that helps is having deep understanding questions not trivial calculation questions. In the real world you'll have Google and 90% of what you learn in college will not be relevant to your job and when you switch jobs it will be understood that it was 10 years ago and you need time to get up to speed. Google/internet has a very hard time of giving answers to understanding type questions (things like what causes electric current to flow on the outer edge of a conductor rather than through the whole thing). You take a while to figure it out and you either understand it or you don't versus 4 pages of DEs to solve only to find out that you made a 4th grade arithmetic error on page one. It doesn't test understanding just the ability to churn out lots of math with little errors quickly.