At the nonprofit where I volunteer, I consistently see compatibility issues between the aging Mac running Word 6.0 (IIRC, only one version behind Word 95, and the first to use the same file format for Windows and MacOS) and my Win2K work PC, and that's with fairly simple documents.
Not to mention that on my own work PC, I can save a document from Word 2002 into Word 95 format, open the back-saved version, and see quite a different document. Yes, there are good reasons I'm doing this--it's not just to pick on Uncle Bill.
And OpenOffice can at least load the MacOS Word 6.0 files, the back-saved Win95 files, and Word 2002 files without screwing them up much worse than Microsoft's own office suite does. The ensuing hand-tweaking is what leads me to distribute most of our stuff as PDF these days, but occasionally our other volunteers need documents they can edit in their office suite of force^W choice.
There's your evidence. Yeah, I know, it's only one user, and it's anecdotal. But I'm sure there are others.
My TDMA/analog phone works (nearly) everywhere in the United States. Backroads, alleys, islands, cities, byways, meadows; it's like that nerdy guy in the Verizon commercials who crosses the entire country, stopping once every few steps to check reception. (Except that my provider's not Verizon, but rather a different large company that also sucks.)
So there.
I'll admit, though, that TDMA is on its way out. And when I can't get good TDMA service any more, I'll ditch my aging but still wonderful Nokia handset and move on to the next big thing. Which probably won't be GSM/GPRS.
Just as a side note: InstallShield (the real one, not the Express version) is absolutely the worst piece of software I've ever used. It makes the worst offenders in the Interface Hall of Shame seem well-written. This isn't the place for a full review, but who at InstallShield came up with the brilliant idea of making it look just like Outlook? "InstallShield Today?" What exacly is different about my copy today? Then there are the icons at left, with the dislocating top-to-bottom-jumping tabs... Arggh.
And God help you if you actually need to use the installer you built with InstallShield. I've seen everything from "Admin permission not given" errors on Win98 boxes with no admins, to failure to uninstall, to outrageously slow performance. Just getting the InstallShield development environment installed and working on my PC took four installs. How crappy is your installer if it can't even install itself?!?
Charles Petzold's books on the raw Windows API (Microsoft Press, IIRC) were a godsend back in the olden days of Win3.1 when the job of maintaining a spaghetti-code straight-C app fell into my lap at my old job. Lots of useful information about why things were the way they were.
It did occasionally wander into slavish devotion ("Instead of just passing a function pointer you have to run these ten lines of 'thunking' code on it. Microsoft engineers are really smart for inventing the need for these extra ten lines of boilerplate!") but there were plenty of "just the facts" moments to offset the worst of the hiney-licking.
Heh--I remember those. I had one of the early models (TI-84? TI-81? Who can remember?). There was no keypress detection on mine, just the INPUT statement--so action games were out of the question. But I made a little Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which you could look up (for example) Earth, see a little animation of a Vogon weapon destroying it, and read the caption "Mostly harmless." I managed to get three or four entries that were (I thought) moderately amusing.
My friends, meanwhile, had a full-on text adventure working on theirs (1 = Go north, 2 = go south, etc.). I wonder what we were supposed to be learning during Government class while we were writing and playing all these games? I guess I'll write King Bush II and find out....
Therefore, if a situation arises where the driver needs full concentration..., the passenger can shut up.
I dunno about you, but my passengers aren't that polite. They keep on droning. I just tune 'em out. Why should it be different for someone who's on a wireless phone?
And those of use who have waded through reams of "normal" 600-line structured C functions can all attest to how refreshing it is to see expressive C++ code whose intent can be made clear in just a few lines.
Heh. I got a bill from a telco I'd never heard of, charging me for all calls to my veterinarian over a three-month period. Funny, the vet's office is only a couple of miles down the road; they're local calls, not "1+" as the invoice claimed. I sent them the following:
----
Dear Customer:
Yesterday, I received the enclosed statement from your company for services I have never requested in any form. Furthermore, I am curious as to how a service described as "Casual Calling 1+" could possibly apply to the given list of phone numbers, which are all local calls and are therefore covered by my local telecommunications provider. Since I receive these services exclusively from my provider and not from (company), I ask that you clear all amounts owed from my account and close my account immediately.
I am an engineer with an Electrical Engineering degree working in the telecommunications industry; my time and services are valuable. Because your bill directed me to call (company) at the phone number listed above, you have requested my services in helping you resolve this technical issue. I am pleased to provide this service; this morning, I called (company) and described in detail the problem in order to assist you in correcting it. I have also contacted my local land line and wireless providers to ensure that this issue is completely resolved.
I believe the issue is now resolved. Above you will find an invoice for one hour of my time at a billing rate of $100.00 per hour. Please remit payment promptly to avoid late charges. Since I have never requested telecommunications services from (company) and will never do so in the future, I will interpret any future invoices from (company) as requests for further assistance, billable at $100.00 per hour at a ten-hour minimum. Thank you for your business.
Not really. But I know as much about how the desktop OS works as much as or more than the IS guys do. Being forced to develop for some of the uglier aspects of the API kinda does that to you.
Let me guess... you think of yourself as responsible for protecting your users from themselves, even if it means completely hobbling their access to the machine when they really need it to do their job? I don't really give a flying fuck if our server gets Nimda-ized; I expect those running it to be on top of the situation even before that can happen. As it happens, I often find out about viruses and network problems before they do. Not really their fault; the corporate numbskulls two time zones ahead of us don't trust our local guys to do the job. Ah, for the days when we had NetWare....
The biggest problem with the lack of virus scan configurability on my machine is that I can still turn the scan off entirely; I just can't customize its behavior (like keeping e-mail scanning but making the background disk scan happen less often). So if I were the type of user who opens VBS attachments, nothing at all would stop me from turning off the virus scan altogether.
That would be all the other fuckwads. This fuckwad is paranoid and should be trusted to turn off his own unneeded tools on the occasions when the machine's repeated scanning of files (which it should recognized as unchanged and uninfected) bogs everything down.
I'll leave aside the story of a friend who did a full restore from backup (which in theory should produce 0% frag or darn near) to find his hard drive fragged far worse than before....
I've got Win2K doing nothing special (development, mainly), and the hard drive becomes hopelessly fragmented in an alarmingly short period of time. Couple that with the s-l-o-w-n-e-s-s brought on by the overzealous virus scanner (thanks for locking us out of customizing how it scans, IT guys!), and this supposedly state-of-the-art machine can be infuriating to use. Ah, for the days when my 512K PC booted in only a minute!
There's a flip side to that. Back when there was money and everyone was scrambling for new talent (was that really only a year ago?), my boss posted job listings on Monster (or possibly one of its competitors--can't remember). We got very few responses, even though he was constantly checking, following up, and keeping the content fresh.
Yeah, I like my job. 'Course, the boss is watching me type this...:)
I've done it myself... and consider it no different from mailing out hardcopy resumes to companies I'm interested in working for.
There's nothing wrong with e-mailing a resume to a few HR departments if the addresses came from a "Send resumes here" link. But wouldn't be even more effective to send an individually tailored cover letter and resume to each company, rather than CC'ing an identical letter/resume to all of them?
Might've even spared Bernie the "broadcast" part of the spam definition....
going to my first mensa-related social gathering. No lie, these people were sitting around, sipping wine, nibbling cheese, listening to Opera on an incredibly expensive sound system, and discussing the legitimacy of Star Trek
That's funny, the one I went to was a bunch of people sitting around drinking beer and playing board games. But then again, I live in Texas--that's about as highbrow as we get...:)
The form was... not tested before being put into use.
I think your comment, among all these others, has stated the problem most clearly: the ballot should have been tested.
Now, the picture of the ballot didn't look confusing to me personally. What's more, I disagree with your profile of the Coke-bottle-glasses-wearing senior reading two candidates and marking the second hole. (I think he would have seen the big black arrow despite his myopia and punched the hole next to it.)
But all this could have been shaken out by testing the layout. The designers meant well, but taking the form home to Gramma and letting her try it first could have made a world of difference.
The seniors who accidentally voted Buchanan made a mistake (some would say, "so did the ones who deliberately voted for him!"), but a different layout could have made it more difficult to make a mistake.
The users complained that it caused lots of problems, even though if you looked carefully at it, it was clear which checkbox belonged to each label and the users worked with the application every single day.
Well, that's something that they "use every day." I only use a ballot once in a while, so it's not a big deal to take the time to look at it carefully. I would be less tolerant of a difficult-to-read interface if I had to use it all the time (like in a PDA or cell phone or godawful voice mail system).
You make a good point that a lot of folks at the ballot got just one chance (and were refused new ballots if they made a mistake). But, when there's something I can do only once, like punching a ballot or signing loan documents, I do it carefully. Maybe I shouldn't have to, but that's another argument.
User interface designers have a lot of battles to fight. Let's start with the ones that will do some good--let's make great interfaces to the things people need all the time. Then we'll worry about stuff people use once in four years.
Another point--the people who designed the ballot say they were thinking carefully about its ease of use for senior citizens. In fact, the two-page layout was chosen so that they could use a larger, easier-to-read font.
On an amusing note, our ballot-makers in Dallas weren't thinking too clearly, either--the damned things were supposed to be filled in by permanent markers that bled through the page, obscuring text on the other side.
Just think--MCSE certification will finally be worth something ("SSL? What's that? I just know I click on the little happy face icon and get a brand new life.").
And those who get caught screwing around on company time can tell their bosses, "I was just evaluating our encryption strategy."
Apologies if someone already thought of this entry--I searched, but not carefully enough to use up the time remaining in my lunch break....
A business model, whereby the practitioner uses a multibillion-dollar marketing campaign to feed lies to the masses, relies on illegal strongarm tactics (such as prohibitively high license fees against companies that don't play along) to force competitors out of the marketplace, and a series of idiotic patents to defend its suspect products. This business model also utilizes a bribe budget and squadrons of lawyers to pass stupid legislation in order to protect the practitioner from actually having to develop anything of value.
I object to the term "verbal violence". That term should be reserved for credible threats of violence
Like it or not, many people have used the term "verbal violence" to include language other than fist-waving threats. Therapist Suzette Haden Elgin even extends the term to situations where the speaker doesn't know he is being abusive. When the speaker has a greater mastery of language than the "victim," the listener can walk away feeling hurt, guilty, and that the argument was all the victim's fault. That fits some people's definitions for abuse.
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Not to mention that on my own work PC, I can save a document from Word 2002 into Word 95 format, open the back-saved version, and see quite a different document. Yes, there are good reasons I'm doing this--it's not just to pick on Uncle Bill.
And OpenOffice can at least load the MacOS Word 6.0 files, the back-saved Win95 files, and Word 2002 files without screwing them up much worse than Microsoft's own office suite does. The ensuing hand-tweaking is what leads me to distribute most of our stuff as PDF these days, but occasionally our other volunteers need documents they can edit in their office suite of force^W choice.
There's your evidence. Yeah, I know, it's only one user, and it's anecdotal. But I'm sure there are others.
So there.
I'll admit, though, that TDMA is on its way out. And when I can't get good TDMA service any more, I'll ditch my aging but still wonderful Nokia handset and move on to the next big thing. Which probably won't be GSM/GPRS.
Can you use the wheel to send touch-tone numbers while you're in a call (e.g., "For English, press 1. Para espan~ol, marque el nu'mero 2.")?
And God help you if you actually need to use the installer you built with InstallShield. I've seen everything from "Admin permission not given" errors on Win98 boxes with no admins, to failure to uninstall, to outrageously slow performance. Just getting the InstallShield development environment installed and working on my PC took four installs. How crappy is your installer if it can't even install itself?!?
It did occasionally wander into slavish devotion ("Instead of just passing a function pointer you have to run these ten lines of 'thunking' code on it. Microsoft engineers are really smart for inventing the need for these extra ten lines of boilerplate!") but there were plenty of "just the facts" moments to offset the worst of the hiney-licking.
Can't speak for 1.1 yet, but I've crashed Win2K more than I've crashed Moz 1.0
My friends, meanwhile, had a full-on text adventure working on theirs (1 = Go north, 2 = go south, etc.). I wonder what we were supposed to be learning during Government class while we were writing and playing all these games? I guess I'll write King Bush II and find out....
Or should that be "Deerhunter and its elk?"
*ducks to avoid water balloon*
And those of use who have waded through reams of "normal" 600-line structured C functions can all attest to how refreshing it is to see expressive C++ code whose intent can be made clear in just a few lines.
Heh. I got a bill from a telco I'd never heard of, charging me for all calls to my veterinarian over a three-month period. Funny, the vet's office is only a couple of miles down the road; they're local calls, not "1+" as the invoice claimed. I sent them the following:
----
Dear Customer:
Yesterday, I received the enclosed statement from your company for services I have never requested in any form. Furthermore, I am curious as to how a service described as "Casual Calling 1+" could possibly apply to the given list of phone numbers, which are all local calls and are therefore covered by my local telecommunications provider. Since I receive these services exclusively from my provider and not from (company), I ask that you clear all amounts owed from my account and close my account immediately.
I am an engineer with an Electrical Engineering degree working in the telecommunications industry; my time and services are valuable. Because your bill directed me to call (company) at the phone number listed above, you have requested my services in helping you resolve this technical issue. I am pleased to provide this service; this morning, I called (company) and described in detail the problem in order to assist you in correcting it. I have also contacted my local land line and wireless providers to ensure that this issue is completely resolved.
I believe the issue is now resolved. Above you will find an invoice for one hour of my time at a billing rate of $100.00 per hour. Please remit payment promptly to avoid late charges. Since I have never requested telecommunications services from (company) and will never do so in the future, I will interpret any future invoices from (company) as requests for further assistance, billable at $100.00 per hour at a ten-hour minimum. Thank you for your business.
----
Not really. But I know as much about how the desktop OS works as much as or more than the IS guys do. Being forced to develop for some of the uglier aspects of the API kinda does that to you.
Let me guess... you think of yourself as responsible for protecting your users from themselves, even if it means completely hobbling their access to the machine when they really need it to do their job? I don't really give a flying fuck if our server gets Nimda-ized; I expect those running it to be on top of the situation even before that can happen. As it happens, I often find out about viruses and network problems before they do. Not really their fault; the corporate numbskulls two time zones ahead of us don't trust our local guys to do the job. Ah, for the days when we had NetWare....
The biggest problem with the lack of virus scan configurability on my machine is that I can still turn the scan off entirely; I just can't customize its behavior (like keeping e-mail scanning but making the background disk scan happen less often). So if I were the type of user who opens VBS attachments, nothing at all would stop me from turning off the virus scan altogether.
That would be all the other fuckwads. This fuckwad is paranoid and should be trusted to turn off his own unneeded tools on the occasions when the machine's repeated scanning of files (which it should recognized as unchanged and uninfected) bogs everything down.
I'll leave aside the story of a friend who did a full restore from backup (which in theory should produce 0% frag or darn near) to find his hard drive fragged far worse than before....
I've got Win2K doing nothing special (development, mainly), and the hard drive becomes hopelessly fragmented in an alarmingly short period of time. Couple that with the s-l-o-w-n-e-s-s brought on by the overzealous virus scanner (thanks for locking us out of customizing how it scans, IT guys!), and this supposedly state-of-the-art machine can be infuriating to use. Ah, for the days when my 512K PC booted in only a minute!
Let's see.... There's the fast-food industry, the airline industry, the automobile industry, the petroleum industry, the phone companies,....
Yeah, I like my job. 'Course, the boss is watching me type this... :)
No, officer, that's not a computer, that's, er, a table lamp.
There's nothing wrong with e-mailing a resume to a few HR departments if the addresses came from a "Send resumes here" link. But wouldn't be even more effective to send an individually tailored cover letter and resume to each company, rather than CC'ing an identical letter/resume to all of them?
Might've even spared Bernie the "broadcast" part of the spam definition....
Awww...they shied away from the obvious choice, tits.
Which is why they use ternary computing on Eroticon VI.
That's funny, the one I went to was a bunch of people sitting around drinking beer and playing board games. But then again, I live in Texas--that's about as highbrow as we get... :)
I think your comment, among all these others, has stated the problem most clearly: the ballot should have been tested.
Now, the picture of the ballot didn't look confusing to me personally. What's more, I disagree with your profile of the Coke-bottle-glasses-wearing senior reading two candidates and marking the second hole. (I think he would have seen the big black arrow despite his myopia and punched the hole next to it.)
But all this could have been shaken out by testing the layout. The designers meant well, but taking the form home to Gramma and letting her try it first could have made a world of difference.
The seniors who accidentally voted Buchanan made a mistake (some would say, "so did the ones who deliberately voted for him!"), but a different layout could have made it more difficult to make a mistake.
Well, that's something that they "use every day." I only use a ballot once in a while, so it's not a big deal to take the time to look at it carefully. I would be less tolerant of a difficult-to-read interface if I had to use it all the time (like in a PDA or cell phone or godawful voice mail system).
You make a good point that a lot of folks at the ballot got just one chance (and were refused new ballots if they made a mistake). But, when there's something I can do only once, like punching a ballot or signing loan documents, I do it carefully. Maybe I shouldn't have to, but that's another argument.
User interface designers have a lot of battles to fight. Let's start with the ones that will do some good--let's make great interfaces to the things people need all the time. Then we'll worry about stuff people use once in four years.
Another point--the people who designed the ballot say they were thinking carefully about its ease of use for senior citizens. In fact, the two-page layout was chosen so that they could use a larger, easier-to-read font.
On an amusing note, our ballot-makers in Dallas weren't thinking too clearly, either--the damned things were supposed to be filled in by permanent markers that bled through the page, obscuring text on the other side.
And those who get caught screwing around on company time can tell their bosses, "I was just evaluating our encryption strategy."
A business model, whereby the practitioner uses a multibillion-dollar marketing campaign to feed lies to the masses, relies on illegal strongarm tactics (such as prohibitively high license fees against companies that don't play along) to force competitors out of the marketplace, and a series of idiotic patents to defend its suspect products. This business model also utilizes a bribe budget and squadrons of lawyers to pass stupid legislation in order to protect the practitioner from actually having to develop anything of value.
Oh, and you have to relocate to Redmond.
unDees
Like it or not, many people have used the term "verbal violence" to include language other than fist-waving threats. Therapist Suzette Haden Elgin even extends the term to situations where the speaker doesn't know he is being abusive. When the speaker has a greater mastery of language than the "victim," the listener can walk away feeling hurt, guilty, and that the argument was all the victim's fault. That fits some people's definitions for abuse.
--unDees