Are you talking about the UEFA Cup final? Because that annoyed the hell out of me as well. If you are talking about some other event you can read about the UEFA incident here.
I remember Microsoft at one of the first Quake cons trying to convince people they could play quake with a sidewinder. It was a joke. The rep kept getting his ass kicked by even the most mundane players. He looked like a sad guy. Felt bad for him so I let him beat me. Even then I had to play like a retard.
When I started playing Quake is used a joystick. Figuring it sucked for aiming I complemented it with a mouse. That was not a bad setup. Circle-strafing has never been easier. And I got quite good at aiming with my left hand. Since them I am nearly ambidextrous when it comes to mousing. I gave up on the joystick, though, because it wasn't portable. I wanted to play the same way at home as I could anywhere else. But mouse and joystick is pretty neat. Joystick alone is horrible. There used to be a joystick/trackball combo aimed at FPS-players, but I can't remember what it was called.
In fact, as someone who's read virtually every UI book I can get my hands on, I'd like to point out that it works as a metaphor. And that's what UIs are supposed to do.
It still was a disaster for one simple reason: The volume control. Rotary controls are extremely easy and intuitive to control in real life. But the mouse is not an adequate input device to translate this functionality on screen. You could adjust the volume by click and holding on the little dial and then moving it linearly but immediately broke the metaphor that way. When they switched to the fader input, that is used now, the metaphor was not broken, but the usability was greatly improved. I never claimed that Apple was taking a step in the wrong direction, I just observed that the first iteration of the metal interface was poorly executed.
I don't need a play button that's NEARLY as big as QT Player's is. Couple that with the size of the other buttons, and you no longer have to wonder why the player window has to remain so friggin' large when you play a small movie.
Now we're getting somewhere. You find the size of the buttons offensive. That doesn't make them bad UI. The most noticeable button is also the most frequently used one. You know--the one mapped to the space-bar. I can't really argue with the fact, that there is a minimum size the player window will have. That means you can't realistically display more than 6 windows at the same time on a 1024x768 screen. I have no idea how many users feel that this is a problem. If we stay as unscientific as humanly possible and take you and me as sample group, then I would guess that it could be about 50%. If the problem is about having the movie playing in the background then I don't see how player size keeps anyone from doing that.
Intiutive? Clicking the timecode in the window to get to balance, treble, and bass controls is/not/ intuitive at all. If it were consistent, at least, it would reverse itself to time remaining rather than time elapsed.
You're right. Clicking on the icon (and even though it is animated, it still is an icon) displaying the sound levels of the movie you are watching should not display the controls for modifying sound properties. What where they thinking?
Give me a break. I love OS X as much as the next guy, but QuickTime Player hasn't gotten better.
The volume control is a slider again, but the player's UI still eats ass.
Really? I'm not sure I agree. Play/Pause? Check. Fast forward and reverse? Check. First and last frame? Check? Volume Fader? Check. Everything you typically need from a media player is easily accessible. It works and the pro features for combine/split files are pretty intuitive. Performance with certain file types (AVI) can be bad, but I don't count that as an UI issue.
I suppose you are referring to the article about QuickTime 4. When was that released? Three years ago? Four? Everyone agrees that this interface was a disaster, but Apple has come a long way since then. And you have to admit that they tried something new back then. You learn more from a failure.
As opposed to what, a console version? What more do you need than a.exe?
Slashdot still is a non Windows-centric site. So people using other operating systems like Linux or Mac OS X might be interested in more than an.exe. But then the majority of visitors seems to be using IE/Win so maybe it really is not an issue.
It doesn't explicitly say so on the page, but the game seems to be Windows/Dos only. The download-able zip doesn't include a read-me, but it does include an.exe.
Customers should take care not to buy CDs without the official CD label, and make use of their right to return defective disks that illegally carry this label.
Sometimes that label only is on the actual disc itself, which you can't really look at in some stores (because of anti-theft packaging or because you are not allowed to open the shrink-wrapping. Nearly all new releases are copy-protected, though--even bands you would expect to be opposed to such schemes. The labels don't even inform the artists when CDs are crippled. DRM'd music from the iTunes store is less crippled than a new CD from a store. How bad is that? I don't know if they still sell music on tapes. But tapes and records are the only media that you will always be able to play back on the equipment you already own. With everything digital you might as well be screwed. Most stand alone players can handle the new 'CDs'. CD drives carry just the same 'Compact Disc-Digital Audio' logo, but of course that doesn't mean that you should be able to listen to music on your computer, does it?
No, it's not. I've seen rips of the text already. It's actually pretty easy to do, I could do it on my computer if I wanted to.
I tried reading a e-book copy of a book once. Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age' wasn't available at any local bookstores so I downloaded it. It was horrible. Plain-text is really bad for large amounts of text. So I layouted parts of it myself and that was a bit better but I still had to read it on a computer screen. Sure--you can print it out, but a stack of loose pages is a lot less comfortable to handle than a bound book. That is the big difference between books and other forms of entertainment. With books the package is important and not easily recreate-able at home. Films, games and music can be burned on any old blank. With 'The Diamond Age' I read the first couple of pages and then ordered it.
From the article: By the next year, The Times would have to bend to Harry's will and initiate its first separate weekly children's best-seller list, lest adult fiction get crowded out by the Rowling juggernaut.
That is kind of unfair, isn't it? After all people of all ages read the books.
On the other hand J.K.R. doesn't seem to have any problems with fan fiction. Therearequite a few web-sites out there who specialised in publishing Harry Potter fan fiction. I think J.K.R. doesn't want others to profit from her creation and AOL-TW might not like the use of copyrighted material on fan-sites, but they both let people take the characters and settings and try something new with them.
...it may result in a UK iTMS, a French iTMS, etc.
Just like XBox live which is available in some European countries, coming to others later this year and not even on the horizon for the rest. I live in one of the smaller countries (but one where live is coming soonish). So I might soon have to watch friends in other countries using ITMS while I can't. As long as it's US only I don't care that much, because I don't actually know any Americans.
As far as my tastes are concerned there is good music in Europe. More so than anywhere else in the world. Okay, so America has Weezer, Princess Superstar and Saul Williams who kind of make up for Michael Bolton and Garth Brooks.
BTW, what is up with the formatting on Slashdot? The comment form REFUSED to accept the URL correctly, it kept putting a space in the word 'raid'. That sucks a lot, and there is no reason for it work like that. How can anyone post a URL?
Slashcode automatically inserts a space after a certain number of characters. This is to keep long URLs (and trolls) from messing up the layout. You get used to it and remove the space after copying the address. If you want to make things convenient for others you could just use standard HTML linking:
to the "looting" of the Iraqi national museum (at last count, 33 pieces, not tens of thousands), I guess the open source community is pretty safe.
Here is a little quote from the article: These treasures were created over tens of thousands of years, and all of a sudden, because of the lack of foresight of a few greedy people, a lot of them were removed from the world.(Emphasis added)
And you can even sort of play Jennifer Government. But I agree. When reading the book I had to think about Acclaim U.K's marketing philosophy more than once.
And, as I mentioned below, the most egregious benchmark, the Quake one, wasn't mentioned at all. Yet independent tests had P4's running that benchmark at nearly double the quoted speed.
I can honestly say, that I have no idea what you are talking about. I located your other post in this thread you were referring to, but all you said there was that you would like to see some Quake benchmarks. What independent tests are you talking about? And what quoted speed were the P4s able to surpass so clearly? Please enlighten me.
I could be wrong but isn't the gameboy the best selling computer/console ever? The portable entertainment market is gigantic.
What are you trying to say? I never said that there wasn't a market for the Game Boy. The Sony guy stated that they weren't after the Game Boy's market. I was just wondering if there is any market left.
From the original article: âoeMaybe it might compete with people on the planes, but in the school yard I donâ(TM)t think people will be able to walk around with the PSP and treat it as roughly as you do with Game Boy. So itâ(TM)s trying for a new part of the market to escape the TV, for the shorter leisure time slots that are seeming to be a factor.â
Is there a portable market outside the one the Game Boy satisfies? Movies on the go might make some sense, but what about games? When you play the GB at home it's because it is the only current system playing classic SNES era games. I suppose the PSP would play Playstation era games. At home you can have that on your normal console and if it's not durable enough to be used on the go then why get it in the first place? Sony haven't got the same awe-inspiring back catalogue that Nintendo has, have they? If that is their idea of a modern Walkman then they are in for a surprise. The Walkman was great, because you could easily convert your music to a transportable version. I don't know that for sure, but I suppose that people bought much more music on record or CD than on tape. Now we are supposed to buy the films a second time? If you could copy the movie from a DVD to this thing that would be a completely different story, but in the current climate it is never going to happen.
Which I presume you're able to rip just fine with cdparanoia?
No. I rip them by connecting the turntable to the line in of my computer and then press record. I simply decided not to buy any more music on crippled media. I guess that there are ways around today's copy protection schemes, but I don't want to bet on that. And I don't want to support these schemes by buying them. I never said that my way was convenient, or that everyone should do that.
Enemy Of the enemy, the latest Asian Dub Foundation Album *is* copy protected, so long for the Indies'altruism...
I got burned by that one as well. Turns out that the band wasn't even informed that the album would be copy protected. I was unable to rip the album on my computers. I had to record it via line in. It was the last CD I bought. Since then I only bought vinyl.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you talking about the UEFA Cup final? Because that annoyed the hell out of me as well. If you are talking about some other event you can read about the UEFA incident here.
Seriously? You gotta link? Adobe products have been one of the cornerstones of software applications for the Mac for many years.
Seriously!
I remember Microsoft at one of the first Quake cons trying to convince people they could play quake with a sidewinder. It was a joke. The rep kept getting his ass kicked by even the most mundane players. He looked like a sad guy. Felt bad for him so I let him beat me. Even then I had to play like a retard.
When I started playing Quake is used a joystick. Figuring it sucked for aiming I complemented it with a mouse. That was not a bad setup. Circle-strafing has never been easier. And I got quite good at aiming with my left hand. Since them I am nearly ambidextrous when it comes to mousing. I gave up on the joystick, though, because it wasn't portable. I wanted to play the same way at home as I could anywhere else. But mouse and joystick is pretty neat. Joystick alone is horrible. There used to be a joystick/trackball combo aimed at FPS-players, but I can't remember what it was called.
In fact, as someone who's read virtually every UI book I can get my hands on, I'd like to point out that it works as a metaphor. And that's what UIs are supposed to do.
It still was a disaster for one simple reason: The volume control. Rotary controls are extremely easy and intuitive to control in real life. But the mouse is not an adequate input device to translate this functionality on screen. You could adjust the volume by click and holding on the little dial and then moving it linearly but immediately broke the metaphor that way. When they switched to the fader input, that is used now, the metaphor was not broken, but the usability was greatly improved. I never claimed that Apple was taking a step in the wrong direction, I just observed that the first iteration of the metal interface was poorly executed.
I don't need a play button that's NEARLY as big as QT Player's is. Couple that with the size of the other buttons, and you no longer have to wonder why the player window has to remain so friggin' large when you play a small movie.
/not/ intuitive at all. If it were consistent, at least, it would reverse itself to time remaining rather than time elapsed.
Now we're getting somewhere. You find the size of the buttons offensive. That doesn't make them bad UI. The most noticeable button is also the most frequently used one. You know--the one mapped to the space-bar. I can't really argue with the fact, that there is a minimum size the player window will have. That means you can't realistically display more than 6 windows at the same time on a 1024x768 screen. I have no idea how many users feel that this is a problem. If we stay as unscientific as humanly possible and take you and me as sample group, then I would guess that it could be about 50%. If the problem is about having the movie playing in the background then I don't see how player size keeps anyone from doing that.
Intiutive? Clicking the timecode in the window to get to balance, treble, and bass controls is
You're right. Clicking on the icon (and even though it is animated, it still is an icon) displaying the sound levels of the movie you are watching should not display the controls for modifying sound properties. What where they thinking?
Give me a break. I love OS X as much as the next guy, but QuickTime Player hasn't gotten better.
The volume control is a slider again, but the player's UI still eats ass.
Really? I'm not sure I agree. Play/Pause? Check. Fast forward and reverse? Check. First and last frame? Check? Volume Fader? Check. Everything you typically need from a media player is easily accessible. It works and the pro features for combine/split files are pretty intuitive. Performance with certain file types (AVI) can be bad, but I don't count that as an UI issue.
The real world device metaphor always works well.
I suppose you are referring to the article about QuickTime 4. When was that released? Three years ago? Four? Everyone agrees that this interface was a disaster, but Apple has come a long way since then. And you have to admit that they tried something new back then. You learn more from a failure.
As is being old enough to have taken an orthography class in high school.
Aha! I suspected that they stopped teaching English quite a while ago.
So what?
Cyrto breahing is for dorks.
As is orthography, it seems.
As opposed to what, a console version? .exe?
.exe. But then the majority of visitors seems to be using IE/Win so maybe it really is not an issue.
What more do you need than a
Slashdot still is a non Windows-centric site. So people using other operating systems like Linux or Mac OS X might be interested in more than an
It doesn't explicitly say so on the page, but the game seems to be Windows/Dos only. The download-able zip doesn't include a read-me, but it does include an .exe.
Customers should take care not to buy CDs without the official CD label, and make use of their right to return defective disks that illegally carry this label.
Sometimes that label only is on the actual disc itself, which you can't really look at in some stores (because of anti-theft packaging or because you are not allowed to open the shrink-wrapping. Nearly all new releases are copy-protected, though--even bands you would expect to be opposed to such schemes. The labels don't even inform the artists when CDs are crippled. DRM'd music from the iTunes store is less crippled than a new CD from a store. How bad is that? I don't know if they still sell music on tapes. But tapes and records are the only media that you will always be able to play back on the equipment you already own. With everything digital you might as well be screwed. Most stand alone players can handle the new 'CDs'. CD drives carry just the same 'Compact Disc-Digital Audio' logo, but of course that doesn't mean that you should be able to listen to music on your computer, does it?
No, it's not. I've seen rips of the text already. It's actually pretty easy to do, I could do it on my computer if I wanted to.
I tried reading a e-book copy of a book once. Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age' wasn't available at any local bookstores so I downloaded it. It was horrible. Plain-text is really bad for large amounts of text. So I layouted parts of it myself and that was a bit better but I still had to read it on a computer screen. Sure--you can print it out, but a stack of loose pages is a lot less comfortable to handle than a bound book. That is the big difference between books and other forms of entertainment. With books the package is important and not easily recreate-able at home. Films, games and music can be burned on any old blank. With 'The Diamond Age' I read the first couple of pages and then ordered it.
From the article:
By the next year, The Times would have to bend to Harry's will and initiate its first separate weekly children's best-seller list, lest adult fiction get crowded out by the Rowling juggernaut.
That is kind of unfair, isn't it? After all people of all ages read the books.
MANY fansites are being shut down.
On the other hand J.K.R. doesn't seem to have any problems with fan fiction. There are quite a few web-sites out there who specialised in publishing Harry Potter fan fiction. I think J.K.R. doesn't want others to profit from her creation and AOL-TW might not like the use of copyrighted material on fan-sites, but they both let people take the characters and settings and try something new with them.
...it may result in a UK iTMS, a French iTMS, etc.
Just like XBox live which is available in some European countries, coming to others later this year and not even on the horizon for the rest. I live in one of the smaller countries (but one where live is coming soonish). So I might soon have to watch friends in other countries using ITMS while I can't. As long as it's US only I don't care that much, because I don't actually know any Americans.
As far as my tastes are concerned there is good music in Europe. More so than anywhere else in the world. Okay, so America has Weezer, Princess Superstar and Saul Williams who kind of make up for Michael Bolton and Garth Brooks.
BTW, what is up with the formatting on Slashdot? The comment form REFUSED to accept the URL correctly, it kept putting a space in the word 'raid'. That sucks a lot, and there is no reason for it work like that. How can anyone post a URL?
Slashcode automatically inserts a space after a certain number of characters. This is to keep long URLs (and trolls) from messing up the layout. You get used to it and remove the space after copying the address. If you want to make things convenient for others you could just use standard HTML linking:
<a href="insert URL here">Descriptive Text</a >
This way you get Those fancy links.
to the "looting" of the Iraqi national museum (at last count, 33 pieces, not tens of thousands), I guess the open source community is pretty safe.
Here is a little quote from the article:
These treasures were created over tens of thousands of years, and all of a sudden, because of the lack of foresight of a few greedy people, a lot of them were removed from the world.(Emphasis added)
How safe is the open source community again?
And you can even sort of play Jennifer Government. But I agree. When reading the book I had to think about Acclaim U.K's marketing philosophy more than once.
And, as I mentioned below, the most egregious benchmark, the Quake one, wasn't mentioned at all. Yet independent tests had P4's running that benchmark at nearly double the quoted speed.
I can honestly say, that I have no idea what you are talking about. I located your other post in this thread you were referring to, but all you said there was that you would like to see some Quake benchmarks. What independent tests are you talking about? And what quoted speed were the P4s able to surpass so clearly? Please enlighten me.
Isn't this the guy who had links to porn sites on his senator website?
Don't know about that, but he definitely is the guy who wants to destroy computers.
I could be wrong but isn't the gameboy the best selling computer/console ever? The portable entertainment market is gigantic.
What are you trying to say? I never said that there wasn't a market for the Game Boy. The Sony guy stated that they weren't after the Game Boy's market. I was just wondering if there is any market left.
From the original article:
âoeMaybe it might compete with people on the planes, but in the school yard I donâ(TM)t think people will be able to walk around with the PSP and treat it as roughly as you do with Game Boy. So itâ(TM)s trying for a new part of the market to escape the TV, for the shorter leisure time slots that are seeming to be a factor.â
Is there a portable market outside the one the Game Boy satisfies? Movies on the go might make some sense, but what about games? When you play the GB at home it's because it is the only current system playing classic SNES era games. I suppose the PSP would play Playstation era games. At home you can have that on your normal console and if it's not durable enough to be used on the go then why get it in the first place? Sony haven't got the same awe-inspiring back catalogue that Nintendo has, have they? If that is their idea of a modern Walkman then they are in for a surprise. The Walkman was great, because you could easily convert your music to a transportable version. I don't know that for sure, but I suppose that people bought much more music on record or CD than on tape. Now we are supposed to buy the films a second time? If you could copy the movie from a DVD to this thing that would be a completely different story, but in the current climate it is never going to happen.
Which I presume you're able to rip just fine with cdparanoia?
No. I rip them by connecting the turntable to the line in of my computer and then press record. I simply decided not to buy any more music on crippled media. I guess that there are ways around today's copy protection schemes, but I don't want to bet on that. And I don't want to support these schemes by buying them. I never said that my way was convenient, or that everyone should do that.
I'm buying a copy for myself and every friend that has a mac and will play it.
If I make you my friend will you buy me a copy as well? I promise that I will play it.
Enemy Of the enemy, the latest Asian Dub Foundation Album *is* copy protected, so long for the Indies'altruism...
I got burned by that one as well. Turns out that the band wasn't even informed that the album would be copy protected. I was unable to rip the album on my computers. I had to record it via line in. It was the last CD I bought. Since then I only bought vinyl.