Volunteer some time to Project Gutenberg or something.
Sit down with a book or magazine and just type the whole thing in. Stop when you get tired. Do at least a couple of pages every day for a week. Just be sure to finish it.
Like with anything else, practice makes perfect. I guarantee your speed and accuracy will improve!
As many others have pointed out, users have become conditioned to just click "OK" to proceed, even when that's not the best course of action.
Put buttons on the dialog that make the user think about the answer:
"I agree/Disagree" "Save in this directory/Choose another location" "Cancel import/Search for file" "Continue with errors/Ignore bad data"
Of course, this assumes you have some control over the messages. If you're trying to get them to read messages from some third party, well...make it more painful when they don't!:)
And what, exactly, do you want to do with an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad... Multitrack audio recording?
Funny you should mention multitrack...
I was really, really hoping that the "Apple tablet" would be basically a keyboardless laptop with a multitouch interface, so that I could use Main Stage or Abelton Live or some such performance-oriented software to play/record in a live setting.
Using a laptop to play music is cumbersome, but if I had a multitouch "control panel" running multitracked softsynths, that I could plug MIDI controllers into, and even switch to a mixing board with a single tap, that would be SUBLIME!
Oh, I'm not advocating copyright infringement. I'm just pointing out the studios don't respect copyright either, given what they've done to the law and the distribution system to protect their profits.
They are NOT victims - the artists, authors, and consumers are.
> Cool, so you feel entitled to have something for free, not respecting licenses or copyright.
Oh, put a cork in it.
The studios have ripped us off for years by collusion (price fixing) and by getting a cut of every blank CD/DVD sold, so don't act like they aren't trying to get something for free also.
"Hotblack Desiato's chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent."
By that point in time the Mac kicked the stuffing out of the Amiga for doing everything but the video production, and don't get me started on how much better of an OS System 7 was as compared to AmigaOS.
It's kind of odd, but around 1990 the Amiga and the Mac were each more mature than the other in different ways. System 7 was very forward-thinking. It was lacking in comparison to "real" operating systems like Unix and VMS, but far ahead of DOS/Windows. It had great stuff like CD-ROM support, Applescript, and Colorsync, but it still had a kludgey filesystem and no pre-emptive multitasking. 256-color graphics and 8-bit sound were not that impressive.
I admired what the Apple team produced with System 7, but I still wanted an Amiga very badly - even if money were no object, I would have chosen it over a color Mac.
Apple were pretty smug about their superior user experience back then, and suffered from Not-Invented-Here Syndrome, but the Amiga raised the bar in a huge way. The Mac team should have taken one look at the Amiga and said, "Okay, from now on, every computer we design should be at LEAST as good as the Amiga!"
Case in point: today I ripped a DVD I made a few months ago. I opened one of the VOB files from the HDD in VLC to do a frame grab.
While skipping through the file by clicking in the timeline/playhead indicator, the picture froze several times, tore several times, and audio got out of sync with the video. Finally, it just froze the video frame and the playhead skipped ahead by increments to the end, without any audio or video playback. I had to quit the player to regain any playback.
Since when is stating an honest negative opinion "flamebait"?
Fucking asshole mods on crack! I'm going back to posting AC until you put the pipe down...
P.S. I know people will say you shouldn't complain about VLC because it's free...I've given it several tries over the last few years, and every time I conclude that it's worth every penny I paid for it!
Just let Mac VLC go the way of the dodo, it's utter crap.
Even when the stupid thing manages to open a file, half the time it will play back the audio and spew useless error messages into a status window instead of playing video or giving you a dialog box with a clue about how to fix the problem.
It's fickle, unstable, un-Mac-like and inferior to the Windows/Linux versions. Seriously, we'd be better off if someone else picked up the ball and started over from scratch!
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I think you got that backwards: it should be that the undergrads don't need Profs, if the books are any good.
Thanks to the DPMCA (the Digital Post-Modernist Copyright Act), it's now required to have a professor explain post-modernist works to you.
Any device which enables you to circumvent the professor and understand Lacan or Derrida directly can land you in jail!
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, it's still there...go to Window -> Customize Perspective -> Tool Bar Visibility -> Editor Presentation
Check "Show Source of Selected Element Only" to add it to your toolbar.
Volunteer some time to Project Gutenberg or something.
Sit down with a book or magazine and just type the whole thing in. Stop when you get tired. Do at least a couple of pages every day for a week. Just be sure to finish it.
Like with anything else, practice makes perfect. I guarantee your speed and accuracy will improve!
Go away, Louis.
The name "Cerberus" is already in use for an FTP server: http://www.cerberusftp.com/
Dunno if they have a trademark or service mark on it, though.
It also might get confused with Kerberos by people who don't know better! :)
As many others have pointed out, users have become conditioned to just click "OK" to proceed, even when that's not the best course of action.
Put buttons on the dialog that make the user think about the answer:
"I agree/Disagree"
"Save in this directory/Choose another location"
"Cancel import/Search for file"
"Continue with errors/Ignore bad data"
Of course, this assumes you have some control over the messages. If you're trying to get them to read messages from some third party, well...make it more painful when they don't! :)
Could you provide a link? Are you referring to PHPDBO ?
"Pico" is also Spanish for "peak," but somehow I don't think that's what the marketroids had in mind!
> So it would change to a gaseous state without changing to a liquid first?
Nope, it would bring Brad Nowell back from the dead. :)
> I saw this on hackaday.com a week or so ago. Maybe it's sort of what you're after, if a little bigger?
That is way cool! :)
It's also encouraging that they have it running on a Mac. It does look a bit laggy, though.
Funny you should mention multitrack...
I was really, really hoping that the "Apple tablet" would be basically a keyboardless laptop with a multitouch interface, so that I could use Main Stage or Abelton Live or some such performance-oriented software to play/record in a live setting.
Using a laptop to play music is cumbersome, but if I had a multitouch "control panel" running multitracked softsynths, that I could plug MIDI controllers into, and even switch to a mixing board with a single tap, that would be SUBLIME!
Oh, I'm not advocating copyright infringement. I'm just pointing out the studios don't respect copyright either, given what they've done to the law and the distribution system to protect their profits.
They are NOT victims - the artists, authors, and consumers are.
> Cool, so you feel entitled to have something for free, not respecting licenses or copyright.
Oh, put a cork in it.
The studios have ripped us off for years by collusion (price fixing) and by getting a cut of every blank CD/DVD sold, so don't act like they aren't trying to get something for free also.
> I too share empathy for those rovers.
Don't anthropomorphize machines. They hate that!
That gibberish they spoke was cityspeak; gutter talk. A mishmash of Japanese, Spanish, German, what have you.
I didn't really need a translator--I knew the lingo, every good engineer did...but I wasn't going to make it easier for them.
Will NASM let you write structured assembly, like MASM?
I picked up a used copy of Inner Loops by Rick Booth, and it intrigued me enough to consider tracking down an old version of MASM.
Now we evidently need tin-foil underwear!!
"Hotblack Desiato's chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent."
It's kind of odd, but around 1990 the Amiga and the Mac were each more mature than the other in different ways. System 7 was very forward-thinking. It was lacking in comparison to "real" operating systems like Unix and VMS, but far ahead of DOS/Windows. It had great stuff like CD-ROM support, Applescript, and Colorsync, but it still had a kludgey filesystem and no pre-emptive multitasking. 256-color graphics and 8-bit sound were not that impressive.
I admired what the Apple team produced with System 7, but I still wanted an Amiga very badly - even if money were no object, I would have chosen it over a color Mac.
Apple were pretty smug about their superior user experience back then, and suffered from Not-Invented-Here Syndrome, but the Amiga raised the bar in a huge way. The Mac team should have taken one look at the Amiga and said, "Okay, from now on, every computer we design should be at LEAST as good as the Amiga!"
They already did-- but they call it "safe sleep," and it's not easily accessible from the System Preferences.
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/pmset.1.html
http://www.jinx.de/SmartSleep.html
> RAM is effectively non-volatile, so long as you don't turn off the power.
Yah, and my house is effectively indestructible, so long as you don't destroy it!
Also recommended: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
Case in point: today I ripped a DVD I made a few months ago. I opened one of the VOB files from the HDD in VLC to do a frame grab.
While skipping through the file by clicking in the timeline/playhead indicator, the picture froze several times, tore several times, and audio got out of sync with the video. Finally, it just froze the video frame and the playhead skipped ahead by increments to the end, without any audio or video playback. I had to quit the player to regain any playback.
Like I said, utter crap.
Since when is stating an honest negative opinion "flamebait"? Fucking asshole mods on crack! I'm going back to posting AC until you put the pipe down... P.S. I know people will say you shouldn't complain about VLC because it's free...I've given it several tries over the last few years, and every time I conclude that it's worth every penny I paid for it!
Just let Mac VLC go the way of the dodo, it's utter crap.
Even when the stupid thing manages to open a file, half the time it will play back the audio and spew useless error messages into a status window instead of playing video or giving you a dialog box with a clue about how to fix the problem.
It's fickle, unstable, un-Mac-like and inferior to the Windows/Linux versions. Seriously, we'd be better off if someone else picked up the ball and started over from scratch!
Thanks to the DPMCA (the Digital Post-Modernist Copyright Act), it's now required to have a professor explain post-modernist works to you.
Any device which enables you to circumvent the professor and understand Lacan or Derrida directly can land you in jail!