Actually, MSN is showing an almost surprising amount of restraint, ad-wise; two links and a search box to MSN Search on the "error" page. And even the MSN Search is fairly ad-light, just one line text links at the bottom.
I still find it a bit annoying, though, because if I made a simple typo (and the correct link doesn't showup in the 'did you mean?' list), then the URL in the address bar has been completely fscked, and I have to cut and or paste to get back to what I typed so I can correct it.
It's interesting that people seem to be missing the real fight. For probably a majority of desktop users (those using IE), they already have this "functionality" in the form of a redirect to search.msn.com. So it's kind of a fight of Verisign vs. Microsoft, not just Verisign vs. people who like good web standards.
Responding to a question from Richard Dawkins at the 2003 Reith Lectures (great stuff, btw) Vilayanur Ramachandran explains about a "colour-blind synesthete"--color-blind, but he has that condition where someone STRONGLY associates certain numbers with certain colors...in his case, colors he couldn't generally see "in real life"! Crazy ideas, but seem to demonstrate the existence of qualia, the "actual sensation" in the brain of colors and what not, independent of experiencing them in the real world.
Interesting. I hadn't heard much about W. Richard Stevens before then...and it's funny, the negative comments were modded down to hell, just leaving a lot of people pointing out the ignorance and unseemliness of the negative comments. Seemed like a strong case of "a few bad apples".
Actually, I'm always a little amazed that any "big names" show up here, and then I'm amazed that I find that amazing.
Feh, I wish I had gotten my username here when I started reating, instead of a year or two after. I'd have an even lower # then;-)
The article makes some points but it misses some points...the biggest idea is that of selection. Most of the biggest hits are already available in various commercial forms. StarROMS has some "second tier" titles, but it's all Atari.
The other odd part is that in some sense, people might not play the ROMs that much...they just want to see a game that maybe they've heard about, or the title sounds intriguing.
I agree that if you play a game every one in a while, you should pay up. But, in a big way it's like Napster...I'd buy more music if each CD wasn't a $9-$18 gamble.
Wasn't too excited by Sprint...reception at my house was always lousy for every service provider, though...we're right by major cell towers. They're right on the other side of that stone hill. (This is in Waltham, a suburb of Boston.)
But then recently the reception at home for Sprint got perfect...I guess adding towers and coverage is still an ongoing thing? So I think I'll stick with my now...2 or 3 year old phone.
I've thought about this myself. My wife thinks I'm nuts when I watch a movie on TV that I own on DVD. But on some subconscious level it does have aspects of being a shared experience. That's pretty sad, I guess.
Well, maybe. It's similar to one of two reasons to go to the movies: 1. bigger picture and sound, of course, but 2. so you can talk about it while it's still a hot topic of conversation, the shared cultural experience of the moment.
You get some of the second factor when it comes on tv, but it is very watered down, and there are commercial interruptions.
(And I suppose there's reason 3. to see a movie rather than wait for DVD: "cause you might die before the DVD comes out on" and you'd like to see it before then.
To the right of the area where the belts level off for the first time is a room with three switches that control the direction of the belts. Move the switches so that all the belts are moving forward.
No, I think it's after that...I think you mean before, where thre were 3 (not 2) belts, you hit the switches, disable the mashers with another switch, and then RUN. I've gone through that, a bit more, got past some horizontal battering ram looking mashers, then a few more stompers, and into a very large room, where if you keep riding the conveyour belts (dropping from one to another before going into the big vats of water) you end up near where you started, and one of the belts goes through a hot furnace you should run through.
Think of all the possibilities before making such suggestions in the future.
I was just repeating what the webpage said, duh.
Though I don't think it's a terrible terrible idea. I think HTTP 1.1 added the ability to download that extra content on the same kept-alive connection...if everything was easily embeddable it wouldn't be a problem. On the other hand, it is probably messier from a keeping things orderly standpoint.
And you know, I'm not too concerned about someone not having the plugin if it's not a giant sized thing.
How many of you slashdoters watched the Matrix when it aired on tv, while at the same time you OWN THE DAMN FREAKING MOVIE ON DVD! sitten right next to you dvd player and yet you will watch it on tv with 2 hours worth of ads about suv's, fast food, and color safe bleach.
That's an interesting point. I know I sometimes feel drawn to a tv broadcast of a movie that I own or could easily rent. I think--seriously--watching broadcast tv is still a bit of meta-social event. There is something about knowing you're watching something at the same time as everybody else. And commercials, while sometimes annoying (though while sometimes really cool) are a shared bit of cultural memage. (Sometimes that's really obvious, like "WHAAAAAAZUUUUUUUUUUP" a while back.)
This is similar to why they invented the laugh track. Its inventors weren't so much worried about you not knowing when to laugh, they though that people sitting home alone would feel less lonely with the slight illusion of being part of the shared experience of an audience member.
And the news programs... don't even get me started. They tell you, "Up next," whatever story they were advertising all day. But the only thing that's "up next" is more commercials, and the story you're interested in is always about 2 seconds long and at the very end of the news program.
Hah! One night I got totally suckered by a Fox news teaser "find out why you might want to avoid that second cup of coffee!"...I watch the whole crappy "news" program for half an hour for a 15 seconds blurb that 3 cups or more of decaf coffee daily is linked to rheumotoid artheritis in middle aged women.
Ok, I decided to see what all the fuss about Halflife was about, got it for PS2.
My friend points out that I'm probably not going to see what ALL the fuss was about, simply because that doesn't include Counter Strike.
Anyway, I'm totally stuck in the level with all the conveyor belts in a big room. I ride around, finally end up over a big machine looking thing with two conveyor belts, one heading in, the other out. If I ride the one heading in, I go back to to just below where I entered the room (having ducked some mashers there). The one heading out just dead-ends. All the other conveyor belts head to dead ends (just have meat parts dropping in) and one time I fell to the floor, climbed stairs, and managed to get...back to the conveyor belts.
Anyone know what I was doing wrong? What do I do next?
Err...yeah. I haven't done much with OBJECT and PARAM tags, but it looks to me like NOEXTERNALDATA can surpress the prompt, but if you then rely on external data, your object won't work. I don't think this "nullifies this change" at all. There are then other hacks, like using base64 to put your binary data inline in the page.
See, it helps to read, also to understand what you're reading.
Man, judging by that preview, this really sucks, for endusers as well as developers. The whole "does this load external data" thing is like trying to program in a new language, "Legalese.NET".
One thing that's annoying me along these lines...specifically Outlook and IE and the clipboard--sometimes I just want the text data without all the stupid font and color changes...
hmm, strue, And thanks to the power of exponents...if you needed 10x10 meters before, now you can get by with 14x14 or so. Eh, maybe not so bad. I guess the real question is: how much room do you need to power your house? Would covering your roof do it? (I'm guessing probably not here in New England winter.)
They mention that they're 10% effecient, as opposed to more expensive setups that are 15%-20%--I wonder if it means a much larger surface area will be needed in order to get much benefit out of it? Any solarheads (or whatever the group name is) have any thoughts on that?
I don't think "Psychology" is that much more intimidating than "Design". And I do remember hearing that anecodete about the renaming, but have no idea where...a quick Google search didn't yield any conclusive evidence.
Yes, that whole "Sorceror's Stone" bit was quite disgusting and insulting. (Though while I will grant a typical young English reader might be more likely to know the term "philosopher's stone", I doubt that that knowledge is universal there.) I think I've heard they've been doing less UK->USA "translation" in the later books, and getting the "original texts" for the earlier ones is popular here.
Apple has been publishing books on Human Interface Guidelines for years.
Why not just start following them on other platforms ? If the following of this strategy gives us software is what gave us the QuickTime player application on Windows--No Thanks.
There are serious usability issues with that program: 1. For reasons which may or may not be Apple's fault, double clicking a.mov file won't start up the applicatin, even after I've agreed to its request to reclaim its file associations. 2. There is no "open movie in this window", there's only open in a new window, unless you dig up the option in preferences 3. There is no drag and drop a movie onto a window.
The long and short of those 3 things is, the only way to get to a new movie is hit "open movie", and browse from whatever random directory it opens up in the file dialog to wherever your movie is.
4. sacrificing usability for prettiness, like with the volume dials and what not. (well, maybe it's returned to a simple volume slider, but it still has that stupid brushed gray look)
5. The default settings for muting things not in the foreground are pretty annoying as well.
You mean ideas of how the UI can be better for yourself.
No, I mean better for a large percentage of the user base. My arguments are not entirely subjective, I try to argue keeping a user's likely mental model in mind...hell, I even admitted "and that's always with the risk of not seeing why the 'improvement' was made...there could be decent reasons for some of them."
Just like a programmer shouldn't assume he's a UI guru, a non-programmer shouldn't assume that a programmer is a UI-moron, incapable of taking a mental step back away from his or her own "power user" mentality to try and see the larger usability picture.
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Actually, MSN is showing an almost surprising amount of restraint, ad-wise; two links and a search box to MSN Search on the "error" page. And even the MSN Search is fairly ad-light, just one line text links at the bottom.
I still find it a bit annoying, though, because if I made a simple typo (and the correct link doesn't showup in the 'did you mean?' list), then the URL in the address bar has been completely fscked, and I have to cut and or paste to get back to what I typed so I can correct it.
It's interesting that people seem to be missing the real fight. For probably a majority of desktop users (those using IE), they already have this "functionality" in the form of a redirect to search.msn.com. So it's kind of a fight of Verisign vs. Microsoft, not just Verisign vs. people who like good web standards.
Responding to a question from Richard Dawkins at the 2003 Reith Lectures (great stuff, btw) Vilayanur Ramachandran explains about a "colour-blind synesthete"--color-blind, but he has that condition where someone STRONGLY associates certain numbers with certain colors...in his case, colors he couldn't generally see "in real life"! Crazy ideas, but seem to demonstrate the existence of qualia, the "actual sensation" in the brain of colors and what not, independent of experiencing them in the real world.
Interesting. I hadn't heard much about W. Richard Stevens before then...and it's funny, the negative comments were modded down to hell, just leaving a lot of people pointing out the ignorance and unseemliness of the negative comments. Seemed like a strong case of "a few bad apples".
;-)
Actually, I'm always a little amazed that any "big names" show up here, and then I'm amazed that I find that amazing.
Feh, I wish I had gotten my username here when I started reating, instead of a year or two after. I'd have an even lower # then
Oh yeah...that phone also comes with a very nice cradle. Cradles are so much nicer than just plain plugs-on-a-wire.
Funny, I was
talking about this stuff 5 years ago...
The article makes some points but it misses some points...the biggest idea is that of selection. Most of the biggest hits are already available in various commercial forms. StarROMS has some "second tier" titles, but it's all Atari.
The other odd part is that in some sense, people might not play the ROMs that much...they just want to see a game that maybe they've heard about, or the title sounds intriguing.
I agree that if you play a game every one in a while, you should pay up. But, in a big way it's like Napster...I'd buy more music if each CD wasn't a $9-$18 gamble.
Wasn't too excited by Sprint...reception at my house was always lousy for every service provider, though...we're right by major cell towers. They're right on the other side of that stone hill. (This is in Waltham, a suburb of Boston.)
But then recently the reception at home for Sprint got perfect...I guess adding towers and coverage is still an ongoing thing? So I think I'll stick with my now...2 or 3 year old phone.
An double extra dose of healing CRT radiation!
(Guess we should ask for the LCDs...)
I've thought about this myself. My wife thinks I'm nuts when I watch a movie on TV that I own on DVD. But on some subconscious level it does have aspects of being a shared experience. That's pretty sad, I guess.
Well, maybe. It's similar to one of two reasons to go to the movies: 1. bigger picture and sound, of course, but 2. so you can talk about it while it's still a hot topic of conversation, the shared cultural experience of the moment.
You get some of the second factor when it comes on tv, but it is very watered down, and there are commercial interruptions.
(And I suppose there's reason 3. to see a movie rather than wait for DVD: "cause you might die before the DVD comes out on" and you'd like to see it before then.
To the right of the area where the belts level off for the first time is a room with three switches that control the direction of the belts. Move the switches so that all the belts are moving forward.
No, I think it's after that...I think you mean before, where thre were 3 (not 2) belts, you hit the switches, disable the mashers with another switch, and then RUN. I've gone through that, a bit more, got past some horizontal battering ram looking mashers, then a few more stompers, and into a very large room, where if you keep riding the conveyour belts (dropping from one to another before going into the big vats of water) you end up near where you started, and one of the belts goes through a hot furnace you should run through.
Think of all the possibilities before making such suggestions in the future.
I was just repeating what the webpage said, duh.
Though I don't think it's a terrible terrible idea. I think HTTP 1.1 added the ability to download that extra content on the same kept-alive connection...if everything was easily embeddable it wouldn't be a problem. On the other hand, it is probably messier from a keeping things orderly standpoint.
And you know, I'm not too concerned about someone not having the plugin if it's not a giant sized thing.
How many of you slashdoters watched the Matrix when it aired on tv, while at the same time you OWN THE DAMN FREAKING MOVIE ON DVD! sitten right next to you dvd player and yet you will watch it on tv with 2 hours worth of ads about suv's, fast food, and color safe bleach.
That's an interesting point. I know I sometimes feel drawn to a tv broadcast of a movie that I own or could easily rent. I think--seriously--watching broadcast tv is still a bit of meta-social event. There is something about knowing you're watching something at the same time as everybody else. And commercials, while sometimes annoying (though while sometimes really cool) are a shared bit of cultural memage. (Sometimes that's really obvious, like "WHAAAAAAZUUUUUUUUUUP" a while back.)
This is similar to why they invented the laugh track. Its inventors weren't so much worried about you not knowing when to laugh, they though that people sitting home alone would feel less lonely with the slight illusion of being part of the shared experience of an audience member.
And the news programs... don't even get me started. They tell you, "Up next," whatever story they were advertising all day. But the only thing that's "up next" is more commercials, and the story you're interested in is always about 2 seconds long and at the very end of the news program.
Hah! One night I got totally suckered by a Fox news teaser "find out why you might want to avoid that second cup of coffee!"...I watch the whole crappy "news" program for half an hour for a 15 seconds blurb that 3 cups or more of decaf coffee daily is linked to rheumotoid artheritis in middle aged women.
Right up there with my favorite ever Fox 'teaser' line
BALLOONS: Why are they so DEADLY.
Ok, I decided to see what all the fuss about Halflife was about, got it for PS2.
My friend points out that I'm probably not going to see what ALL the fuss was about, simply because that doesn't include Counter Strike.
Anyway, I'm totally stuck in the level with all the conveyor belts in a big room. I ride around, finally end up over a big machine looking thing with two conveyor belts, one heading in, the other out. If I ride the one heading in, I go back to to just below where I entered the room (having ducked some mashers there). The one heading out just dead-ends. All the other conveyor belts head to dead ends (just have meat parts dropping in) and one time I fell to the floor, climbed stairs, and managed to get...back to the conveyor belts.
Anyone know what I was doing wrong? What do I do next?
Sometimes it helps to read...
Err...yeah. I haven't done much with OBJECT and PARAM tags, but it looks to me like NOEXTERNALDATA can surpress the prompt, but if you then rely on external data, your object won't work. I don't think this "nullifies this change" at all. There are then other hacks, like using base64 to put your binary data inline in the page.
See, it helps to read, also to understand what you're reading.
Man, judging by that preview, this really sucks, for endusers as well as developers. The whole "does this load external data" thing is like trying to program in a new language, "Legalese.NET".
One thing that's annoying me along these lines...specifically Outlook and IE and the clipboard--sometimes I just want the text data without all the stupid font and color changes...
If they ever compile a list of the best computer and video game names of all time, "Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord" is right up there.
hmm, strue,
And thanks to the power of exponents...if you needed 10x10 meters before, now you can get by with 14x14 or so. Eh, maybe not so bad. I guess the real question is: how much room do you need to power your house? Would covering your roof do it? (I'm guessing probably not here in New England winter.)
They mention that they're 10% effecient, as opposed to more expensive setups that are 15%-20%--I wonder if it means a much larger surface area will be needed in order to get much benefit out of it? Any solarheads (or whatever the group name is) have any thoughts on that?
They dropped the price $50. To pay for the ad campaign, they'll have to sell what, 2M units to break even?
Err, your math only works out if it costs nothing to make or ship a GC, and they also can't make any money selling games.
Skip the marketing. With a 4X increase already, the news is out. BC
Ehh, that could be. But who knows.
I don't think "Psychology" is that much more intimidating than "Design". And I do remember hearing that anecodete about the renaming, but have no idea where...a quick Google search didn't yield any conclusive evidence.
Yes, that whole "Sorceror's Stone" bit was quite disgusting and insulting. (Though while I will grant a typical young English reader might be more likely to know the term "philosopher's stone", I doubt that that knowledge is universal there.) I think I've heard they've been doing less UK->USA "translation" in the later books, and getting the "original texts" for the earlier ones is popular here.
Apple has been publishing books on Human Interface Guidelines for years.
.mov file won't start up the applicatin, even after I've agreed to its request to reclaim its file associations.
Why not just start following them on other platforms ?
If the following of this strategy gives us software is what gave us the QuickTime player application on Windows--No Thanks.
There are serious usability issues with that program:
1. For reasons which may or may not be Apple's fault, double clicking a
2. There is no "open movie in this window", there's only open in a new window, unless you dig up the option in preferences
3. There is no drag and drop a movie onto a window.
The long and short of those 3 things is, the only way to get to a new movie is hit "open movie", and browse from whatever random directory it opens up in the file dialog to wherever your movie is.
4. sacrificing usability for prettiness, like with the volume dials and what not. (well, maybe it's returned to a simple volume slider, but it still has that stupid brushed gray look)
5. The default settings for muting things not in the foreground are pretty annoying as well.
You mean ideas of how the UI can be better for yourself.
No, I mean better for a large percentage of the user base. My arguments are not entirely subjective, I try to argue keeping a user's likely mental model in mind...hell, I even admitted "and that's always with the risk of not seeing why the 'improvement' was made...there could be decent reasons for some of them."
Just like a programmer shouldn't assume he's a UI guru, a non-programmer shouldn't assume that a programmer is a UI-moron, incapable of taking a mental step back away from his or her own "power user" mentality to try and see the larger usability picture.