I also do not play sports games which often require more space than a memory card can hold.
I don't play ANY sports games except driving-related games, and I have many, many save files which are far too large to fit on a memory card. Extremely large save files are common with the more involved RPG games, for example.
Which is why most medical practice management software (I wrote some for several years) runs on extremely low-end machines. Assuming the doctor isn't gaming the books (chiropractors are especially famous for this), there is a great deal of value in having everybody on the network. Medical billing is painfully complex -- having patient information and appointments online is itself more than enough justification to put her on a low-end PC.
And hell, these days, the PC you described would probably be cheaper than that typewriter.
Most of the time though, users don't have the FOGGIEST idea of what they want.
It isn't just "users", it is people in all roles, in general. Two simple examples come to mind, both of non-computer-related situations in which I have heard professionals complain that their customers or clients rarely have any idea whatsoever about what they want when they walk through the door, cash in hand:
1. Custom homebuilding. I am building a new, 100% custom home. It is an extremely time-consuming and complex process. My builder tends towards homes in the $1M+ range, and over the past 18 months we've gotten to know each other well. He frequently complains about how most of his customers don't have the slightest inkling about what they want in a home. It isn't uncommon for people to walk in and not even know something as basic as whether they're looking for a one- or two-story home. One of his customers recently demanded that he stop asking so many questions about details and just build his ($1.8M) house.
2. Picture framing. I recently had a piece framed, and the woman working at the framing shop commented that few people are able to decide upon what they want without making several visits to the shop. (The discussion resulted from my attempt to describe to her the framing and matting I had pictured in my head for this particular item.)
Neither of these directly involve computers or software, yet they are identical to the problems faced by programmers who are expected to interpret a user's desires and produce a usable end product.
I believe the best answer in all situations is prototyping -- the more realistic or functional, the better. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be an especially reasonable course of action for most FOSS projects (unless you consider "Office" the prototype for "OpenOffice", but I don't feel like arguing innovation-vs-copying right now).
one big defect in the GPL is that it does not protect the rights of the testers and others who put in the hard yards to change a bunch of lines of code into real useful software
What rights do you believe are being infringed upon?
The FOSS way of doing things is perceived as encouraging copying and unoriginality.
Especially ironic since the original article is one of many instances where the FOSS types are trying to lay claim to the title of Supreme Innovators. "If we say it often enough, it MUST be true."
Not to mention the fact that most style guides to modern writing strongly prefer a simple "first, second, etc." to the dated-sounding "firstly, secondly, etc.". The moral of the story is, don't be a Style Nazi unless you're actually a competent writer.
Despite which OS you've decided you like to use you really can't say that OS X isn't easier for a computer novice to use.
Yeah, actually I can. I know two formerly-computer-averse "regular people" who couldn't manage to get much useful done under OS X on their shiny new Macs, but who rather quickly "got it" when I brought an XP laptop to them. Both have since ditched their Macs. As a bonus, they're much happier that their PC's are so relatively inexpensive.
I'm not saying "TEH MAC SUX" or anything extreme like that, but the assumption of UI superiority has, in my opinion, never been proven with any especially compelling authority. It is my opinion that the Mac superiority thing is primarily a result of very careful MARKETING efforts.
The Mac isn't bad, but it isn't a miraculous plateau of UI wisdom, either.
I do and have done a LOT of typing and I would welcome a powerful text editing system consistant accross platforms that combines the best of all worlds and I think this has a LOT of potential.
While I don't necessarily disagree, (1) Firefox isn't proving to be much better, (2) in a highly managed environment like the grandparent poster describes the IE Admin Toolkit can go a long way towards locking down IE and eliminating many common attack vectors (e.g. user stupidity), and (3) it sounds like he'll be overruled by the business types in short order anyway.
His approach is a shining example of why IT & dev types are usually viewed as "part of the problem".
Today, the 4th user came to me demanding back their IE icon (I have disabled access in windows xp to IE, which amounts to disabling access to its icon)...
So I have only one demand: inform the potential users correctly, don't give them the false impression that Firefox is better in every way than IE. It is not, and such misinformation will only create a backlash. 2 of those users are now actively looking for more and more justfications to have IE back as the standard browser. They are not interested in philosophy or open source ideals. They are interested in accessing the sites they want.
Which prompts the question, why don't you simply give them IE instead of (apparently) making them search for additional justification?
The caption under a photo in the article seeks to address concerns that the machine will build "concrete bunker" houses:
Khoshnevis believes that the varied shapes created by a miniature version of the contour crafter herald a revolution in architecture. "You will see houses, neighbor-hoods, and cities that look very different," he says.
This caption accompanies a photo of swirly shapes cranked out by the tabletop version of his wall-builder, suggesting that someday we can all run out and design cool spiral-shaped Custom Future Houses.
However, there is a little problem with this vision of artistic utopian housing called "financing". Banks LIKE cookie-cutter bunker-style housing. Speaking as someone fighting banks and appraisers to get financing for a relatively standard-looking custom home, I can tell you that even very minor deviations from "the same house everybody else already has" will make it nearly impossible to finance a homebuilding project.
Those freaks who live in converted 747 fuselages and water towers didn't pay for their weird domiciles with the help of a banker. I can't imagine this wall-builder will magically reduce construction costs to the point that nobody needs mortgages. Examples of people getting a banker smack-down are easy to find -- ask around, you'll discover you probably already know somebody who had an interest in those octagonal domed houses that were in all the magazines in the 80's, for example, and those are relatively extreme cases.
Big business likes their houses built just like they love their cube-farms... neat and orderly and more or less identical...
Worth mentioning is that lunar dust has not been in contact with the common gases we simply breathe as humans. Nor with the fluids & matter of our lungs.
RTFA. Hell, don't even RTFA, just THINK about it briefly.
It clings to the outside of your suits, tools, and vehicles, which you presumably bring indoors at some point. Voila, it makes contact with the common gasses you simply breathe as a human, and from there it is a very short trip to your fluids , lungs, and other favorite meaty bits.
Actually, Robosapien's walk is a pretty good approximation (for an assemblage of ultra low cost parts, anyway) of the way bipedal biological walking is executed. Throw everything off balance slightly, then catch it again before it stops being walking and turns into just falling down.
It's almost a universal snobbery that inhabits the world...where people will always say "the book was better than the movie". Why can't the two artforms exist on an even keel?
If nothing else, people are willing to invest much more time in reading a book. There aren't a lot of worthwhile books which you can crank through in the ~2 hours that a typical movie takes. In order to fit a story into those two hours, quite a lot of the original book's contents are interpreted, ignored, condensed, or otherwise whittled away.
Granted, there is some loss in the other direction, since books require more effort to present environments and scenery and other factors which can be represeted in a movie "at a glance" but those factors are rarely ones which make a book or a movie stand out as above average, or even great.
A movie is created with the artifical storytelling constraints of a time limit, actor quality, budgets, and whatever effects the current technology is able to produce (when applicable). A book has none of those constraints -- the only limitations are those of the author's and the reader's imaginations.
Hence, it seems extremely reasonable to expect that the sort of person who enjoys reading is likely to judge the book a better storytelling experience.
The correct interpretation is to go back to the original Greek. It was written as "zeta zeta zeta", which in Greek is an expression of a power function -- so it's 6 to the 6th power to the 6th power, which yields a very large number indeed.
The best good old Windows Calculator can manage is:
Slashdot Mirror
I also do not play sports games which often require more space than a memory card can hold.
I don't play ANY sports games except driving-related games, and I have many, many save files which are far too large to fit on a memory card. Extremely large save files are common with the more involved RPG games, for example.
And if you haven't seen the OAP project, it's worth a look too.
http://oap.sourceforge.net/
Yikes:
"Major project milestone reached dwalters - 2003-10-08"
An excellent example of the reason you're familiar with the phrase "exception to the rule."
Making it up as you go along, eh?
Which is why most medical practice management software (I wrote some for several years) runs on extremely low-end machines. Assuming the doctor isn't gaming the books (chiropractors are especially famous for this), there is a great deal of value in having everybody on the network. Medical billing is painfully complex -- having patient information and appointments online is itself more than enough justification to put her on a low-end PC.
And hell, these days, the PC you described would probably be cheaper than that typewriter.
Most of the time though, users don't have the FOGGIEST idea of what they want.
It isn't just "users", it is people in all roles, in general. Two simple examples come to mind, both of non-computer-related situations in which I have heard professionals complain that their customers or clients rarely have any idea whatsoever about what they want when they walk through the door, cash in hand:
1. Custom homebuilding. I am building a new, 100% custom home. It is an extremely time-consuming and complex process. My builder tends towards homes in the $1M+ range, and over the past 18 months we've gotten to know each other well. He frequently complains about how most of his customers don't have the slightest inkling about what they want in a home. It isn't uncommon for people to walk in and not even know something as basic as whether they're looking for a one- or two-story home. One of his customers recently demanded that he stop asking so many questions about details and just build his ($1.8M) house.
2. Picture framing. I recently had a piece framed, and the woman working at the framing shop commented that few people are able to decide upon what they want without making several visits to the shop. (The discussion resulted from my attempt to describe to her the framing and matting I had pictured in my head for this particular item.)
Neither of these directly involve computers or software, yet they are identical to the problems faced by programmers who are expected to interpret a user's desires and produce a usable end product.
I believe the best answer in all situations is prototyping -- the more realistic or functional, the better. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be an especially reasonable course of action for most FOSS projects (unless you consider "Office" the prototype for "OpenOffice", but I don't feel like arguing innovation-vs-copying right now).
one big defect in the GPL is that it does not protect the rights of the testers and others who put in the hard yards to change a bunch of lines of code into real useful software
What rights do you believe are being infringed upon?
The FOSS way of doing things is perceived as encouraging copying and unoriginality.
Especially ironic since the original article is one of many instances where the FOSS types are trying to lay claim to the title of Supreme Innovators. "If we say it often enough, it MUST be true."
Last year the story ran about a $30k personal helicopter.
Best of all, in the comments for that story somebody posted a link to the AutoScooter: here...
Not to mention the fact that most style guides to modern writing strongly prefer a simple "first, second, etc." to the dated-sounding "firstly, secondly, etc.". The moral of the story is, don't be a Style Nazi unless you're actually a competent writer.
Despite which OS you've decided you like to use you really can't say that OS X isn't easier for a computer novice to use.
Yeah, actually I can. I know two formerly-computer-averse "regular people" who couldn't manage to get much useful done under OS X on their shiny new Macs, but who rather quickly "got it" when I brought an XP laptop to them. Both have since ditched their Macs. As a bonus, they're much happier that their PC's are so relatively inexpensive.
I'm not saying "TEH MAC SUX" or anything extreme like that, but the assumption of UI superiority has, in my opinion, never been proven with any especially compelling authority. It is my opinion that the Mac superiority thing is primarily a result of very careful MARKETING efforts.
The Mac isn't bad, but it isn't a miraculous plateau of UI wisdom, either.
I do and have done a LOT of typing and I would welcome a powerful text editing system consistant accross platforms that combines the best of all worlds and I think this has a LOT of potential.
We call those "word processors".
I have a feeling this will be Doom in name only...
You don't need to "have a feeling," they came right out and told everybody that last year.
Here, for example.
While I don't necessarily disagree, (1) Firefox isn't proving to be much better, (2) in a highly managed environment like the grandparent poster describes the IE Admin Toolkit can go a long way towards locking down IE and eliminating many common attack vectors (e.g. user stupidity), and (3) it sounds like he'll be overruled by the business types in short order anyway.
His approach is a shining example of why IT & dev types are usually viewed as "part of the problem".
It'll be interesting to see where the company ends up once it pwns the industry.
I'm more concerned about where the INDUSTRY ends up after the EA crap-factory pwns the industry...
It's pretty excellent, but you have to take your shoes off when dancing on it to keep it clean and non-broken.
Not according to the FAQ. RTF...F...
Excellent. See sig.
Today, the 4th user came to me demanding back their IE icon (I have disabled access in windows xp to IE, which amounts to disabling access to its icon) ...
So I have only one demand: inform the potential users correctly, don't give them the false impression that Firefox is better in every way than IE. It is not, and such misinformation will only create a backlash. 2 of those users are now actively looking for more and more justfications to have IE back as the standard browser. They are not interested in philosophy or open source ideals. They are interested in accessing the sites they want.
Which prompts the question, why don't you simply give them IE instead of (apparently) making them search for additional justification?
The caption under a photo in the article seeks to address concerns that the machine will build "concrete bunker" houses:
Khoshnevis believes that the varied shapes created by a miniature version of the contour crafter herald a revolution in architecture. "You will see houses, neighbor-hoods, and cities that look very different," he says.
This caption accompanies a photo of swirly shapes cranked out by the tabletop version of his wall-builder, suggesting that someday we can all run out and design cool spiral-shaped Custom Future Houses.
However, there is a little problem with this vision of artistic utopian housing called "financing". Banks LIKE cookie-cutter bunker-style housing. Speaking as someone fighting banks and appraisers to get financing for a relatively standard-looking custom home, I can tell you that even very minor deviations from "the same house everybody else already has" will make it nearly impossible to finance a homebuilding project.
Those freaks who live in converted 747 fuselages and water towers didn't pay for their weird domiciles with the help of a banker. I can't imagine this wall-builder will magically reduce construction costs to the point that nobody needs mortgages. Examples of people getting a banker smack-down are easy to find -- ask around, you'll discover you probably already know somebody who had an interest in those octagonal domed houses that were in all the magazines in the 80's, for example, and those are relatively extreme cases.
Big business likes their houses built just like they love their cube-farms... neat and orderly and more or less identical...
Meaning *none* beyond the name.
Are you sure?
(Of course, I agree with the comment as regards the crappy languages by the same name.)
Worth mentioning is that lunar dust has not been in contact with the common gases we simply breathe as humans. Nor with the fluids & matter of our lungs.
RTFA. Hell, don't even RTFA, just THINK about it briefly.
It clings to the outside of your suits, tools, and vehicles, which you presumably bring indoors at some point. Voila, it makes contact with the common gasses you simply breathe as a human, and from there it is a very short trip to your fluids , lungs, and other favorite meaty bits.
Actually, Robosapien's walk is a pretty good approximation (for an assemblage of ultra low cost parts, anyway) of the way bipedal biological walking is executed. Throw everything off balance slightly, then catch it again before it stops being walking and turns into just falling down.
It's almost a universal snobbery that inhabits the world...where people will always say "the book was better than the movie". Why can't the two artforms exist on an even keel?
If nothing else, people are willing to invest much more time in reading a book. There aren't a lot of worthwhile books which you can crank through in the ~2 hours that a typical movie takes. In order to fit a story into those two hours, quite a lot of the original book's contents are interpreted, ignored, condensed, or otherwise whittled away.
Granted, there is some loss in the other direction, since books require more effort to present environments and scenery and other factors which can be represeted in a movie "at a glance" but those factors are rarely ones which make a book or a movie stand out as above average, or even great.
A movie is created with the artifical storytelling constraints of a time limit, actor quality, budgets, and whatever effects the current technology is able to produce (when applicable). A book has none of those constraints -- the only limitations are those of the author's and the reader's imaginations.
Hence, it seems extremely reasonable to expect that the sort of person who enjoys reading is likely to judge the book a better storytelling experience.
The page you linked says Ekahau has a 3.5' resolution.
The article is looking for something about three times as accurate.
Sorry, but that's just "stupid stupid stupid."
The correct interpretation is to go back to the original Greek. It was written as "zeta zeta zeta", which in Greek is an expression of a power function -- so it's 6 to the 6th power to the 6th power, which yields a very large number indeed.
The best good old Windows Calculator can manage is:
1.0638735892371652480771347575246e+56