The first two will save time and are very easy to setup. Of the others, LEGO is by far the best... kids love it (even those that aren't geeks) and you can do some really creative things with them that can branch over multiple teaching units.
Those "troublemakers" should be encouraged to do just that. Those are the ones that will do well in computing and it can be used as an effective tool to engage them. Sure you'll have to do some clean up on occasion but it's better than shutting them down on something they show skill at.
Let the students do what they will on the computers, so long as they're completing what you've asked.
- Depending on your OS: Deep Freeze http://www.faronics.com/enterprise/deep-freeze/ on every computer. - Give them a honeypot to hack into and poke around - Human interface devices. Let them see how their actions on a computer can do something in the real world. LEGO robotics software is great for this stuff. - Software to allow integration with other classes... doing a catapult launch in science? simulate the physics and test designs before making them. Algebra? Link it to programming. etc - Build in problems for students to diagnose/resolve into your software and hardware setup. Nothing complicated but problem solving is the best way to learn computers imo.
Whatever you do, never treat someone as a troublemaker.
Exactly. You can use existing metrics to help diagnose an issue but you'd never develop a metric to do so unless the source was masked in some way. They're very useful for evaluating existing systems and finding performance gains and hidden patterns. Problem is that with every variable change you get a new perspective.
Example: Leading cause of death in women, heart disease. Leading cause of death in women under 40, accidents. Leading cause of death in women 40-50... could be something else entirely. Each one tells a different story by changing a single variable. With the permutations in business and the subjectivity of much of it, it's difficult to come up with meaningful metrics or enough metrics to encompass an entire process.
It's not about identifying what's wrong - it's about identifying where you want improvement. There's a big difference between the two.
What you're talking about is diagnosing and fixing problems. These do not require metrics, they do require gathering information but metrics are too expensive to bother on something like you're talking about. A true metric is used to uncover patterns that you can't see on the surface of the data.
I'd disagree completely. Determining what is optimal is the first step. From there you build your metrics to track the effectiveness of changes.
The problem is illustrated very well in a TED lecture about Microsoft Pivot. You can create all sorts of metrics but every time you take a different perspective on the data it can tell you something different. Unless you are going to create a metric to monitor every perspective you'll never get the whole picture. If you do create a metric to monitor every perspective you'll be so overloaded with information that you'll stagnate.
1) Identify an area that you want improvement in 2) Determine what is optimal from a business perspective 3) Build the metrics to monitor changes towards the optimal and for possible problem areas (example: improving ticket times... logical metrics to monitor would be employee retention/stress/satisfaction, customer retention/satisfaction, ticket recurrence, etc)
1) hard drive space. My collection is 400+ games... fitting them on a single hard drive would be impossible 2) internet data transfer caps. 3) Not everyone has stable/fast internet 4) No pricing competition/used games which will drive customers away
I think that option will always be available but there's too many gaps in the business model that another company could fill if MS doesn't.
There's a line of dialogue in Transformers 3... I think it was Transformers 2 they did the Xbox 360 that came alive? Anyway, it's just subtle product placement here and there for the 720.
It's a stupid assumption to think the next XBox will be called the XBox 720.
By Microsoft advertising it as such it's not longer a stupid assumption. It can be taken with a grain of salt, but it's no longer an assumption, nor stupid as a marketing department to latch on to a term that's already gained traction in the marketplace is a pretty smart thing to do.
oh and I forgot to mention: It would make the consoles cheaper to produce and less prone to failure. Optical drive = high heat, lots of parts, requires a lot of physical space, etc. take that out and you could see $99-150 consoles a couple years in.
disc formats are dead for the new generation (or should be). Flash drives make more sense in every area. Faster read, scalable cost (crappy games can use crappy flash drives, games that push the limits can use quality ones), can be sized to fit the game, more durable... etc. Heck, the music industry wants to switch to them to replace CDs - they make a lot more sense for games.
If you don't want an application on the start menu, you can remove it from the list with two clicks. Notepad does show up on the list, however this depends on whether you launch it a way a normal user would, through the start menu, task bar, explorer, etc. It can't just stick every executable that is ran as it would end up with a bunch of crap that gets loaded by other programs, for instance.
I use notepad on a daily basis for storing random bits of temporary information - never appeared in the menu. 'Remove from list' also doesn't work permanently. Example, I removed 'Section 8' just now along with a bunch of other stuff, the next time I open the start menu it's at the top of the list. I've played that game all of twice yet Thunderbird is opened constantly and doesn't appear. The feature is shit.
You don't have to use libraries if you don't want to. Explorer's starting location can be changed via the shortcut properties, it never changed itself for me, plus it seems to default to "My computer" when launched with Win+E anyway.
Try setting the shortcut to this. It was such a problem MS actually put it into a kb article... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/221878 - one would think copying the address and placing it in the 'Start In' box would work, but no that would be too simple.
you can disable the desktop peek feature of that region.
Thanks for this, I didn't know that.
Also, Windows doesn't give focus on mouse-over, so can just keep typing as you move the mouse all over the screen anyway.
Hun?
I disagree about the clutter, despite combining many different elements I think the ribbon manages to keep everything look nice and consistent. Or have you forgotten the mess of toolbars that came before it?
I guess it's good that you can make your own ribbon tabs with whatever buttons you want now...
How is different sized buttons, different shaped buttons, different colour schemes and styles keep everything looking 'nice' let alone consistent. I do remember the toolbars that came before, and I much prefer them. They could be customized, they were smaller so you could have more buttons at your fingertips, etc. They were also customizable the same way ribbons are. I look at something like this: http://www.sunflowerhead.com/msimages/DifferentLayouts-9-14-2005.png and my eyes just gloss over, there's too much to look at, no patterning, just a jumble of controls.
Really, you have a problem with buttons having descriptive text labels? Do buttons outside of the ribbon never have them?
*Looks at just about every browser, icon buttons no text* *Looks at Adobe CS5 programs, icon buttons text only where sliders or input box controls* *Looks at Skype, where text and buttons exist the text is integrated into the design of the button, not floating and wrapping below the icon* *Looks at VLC.... nope no text, just icons!* etc, etc, etc.
Descriptive labels are great - they were just much better as tooltip text.
Of course the ribbon uses more space than a menu, because it isn't replacing just the menu, but also the toolbars. You can google yourself for comparisons, but the ribbon typically takes up about as much space as a default set of toolbars, and much less than the 10-rows of toolbars horrors that you often see in the wild. The ribbon takes advantage of wide-screen monitors by creating a flexible layout that takes advantage of the winder windows by scaling its content. A bit more flexibility of being able ot put it on the side of the screen would be nice, admittedly.
The default size of everything above the document: Office 2003: 102px (2 toolbars) Office 2007/2010: 138px - as for 10 rows of toolba
Speak for yourself. UI is the most important factor for me in any piece of software.
Windows 7 Start Menu, the problems: - The quick icons... it's a great idea to have, unfortunately just because I access a program frequently doesn't mean I want it in the start menu. It also seems to arbitrarily exempt certain programs from being in there - like Notepad. - Windows Explorer - I've never used the default libraries, I'm not interested in it. I don't store information in that manner and it's great that a lot of people do, however, I used to be able to do it my way not the popular way. It refuses to default to anything but 'Libraries' and if I manually adjust it it resets frequently. - Right click doesn't always right click. Granted this one may be a bug, but I'll often find that desktop icons can't be right clicked until they're given focus. Mouseover is supposed to give them focus but in some cases it doesn't. - Mouse position actions are SOOO annoying. Examples - the most common resting position for the mouse is off tot he bottom or right of the screen. This is because there's no gutter on the left for the mouse to disappear into, nor top. This means that the most common resting position for the mouse is also where they decided to put a mouse over desktop preview. Try bottom left? The open items on your start menu, as I type this message the mouse moves due to my thumbs touching the mousepad (granted this is bad design by Samsung but it's a common that the mousepad is directly under the space between the H and J on laptops with a full keyboard). Because the mouse movies it pops up the program preview over what I'm typing. Try top right? Oh, the close menu is there and accidentally closes your programs with an accidental mouse tap when you hit space. Middle right? Same deal as top right except it hits the scrollbar and moves you to a random spot in your document. - Control over context menus is entirely with individual developers. Control is great, but part of what makes an operating system an operating system is a common set of controls you can use for all programs. When I right click->close, it should close the program not minimize it.
Office Ribbons the problems - Clutter. Plain and simple. There are so many different colours, shapes, sizes, and wrapping text that it's a jumbled mess. They also assume which buttons you use commonly. Most common functions I use, I use key commands for because I use them commonly and that means I want them as fast as possible. Buttons I use for less frequent items, that I would have trouble remembering which menu they fell under, those I want as buttons. - The whole point of a button is to provide a small icon representing the function you want to use to make a convenient shortcut to it. Reduces memory work required to operate a program. I don't need to see the text below it, otherwise what's the point of the icon itself? You might as well make it a grouping of text. - Overall desktop real estate. Ribbons are massive compared to other menu styles. They also don't take advantage of the fact that most screens are widescreen now and the UI would be much better along the sides of a document (CS5 style). PS: Menu hiding is bad.
Seriously. I can deal with 22 minutes of commercials every hour but between the so called "watermarks", 1/3rd screen pop-over ads, screen scrollers, product placement, "breaking news" interruptions, and product "reviews". There's almost no point to watching TV - the experience is so much better on DVD.
I had to threaten to expose a security flaw which exposed hundreds of thousands of peoples info (luckily no financial info) - within an hour of threatening full disclosure they'd closed my "tech ticket" and an administrator was emailing me for more details and a timeline for a fix.
"of what can be extracted" is the key statement there. 1% of the total energy stored but not necessarily can be extracted with current technology/economics
It is inane and will lead to biased results. This paper was countering that original study which said the hummer was more environmentally friendly over time.
By not clicking the link you missed out on the fact that it wasn't only a comparison of those two vehicles but rather numerous vehicles including the Accord, Escape, Civic, Highlander.
What you also missed out on is that a half dozen or so reports from various sources determined that the energy used in the production of gas is about 8% and the production of the vehicle sits between 7% and 12% whether it's hybrid or not.
Slashdot Mirror
?
Plods along on 3.6 still...
They're tested to the same standards as gas cars. You'll consume more gas going up hills just the same as in hybrids.
I mean common - did they really think the advertised 30mpg of a gas vehicle was accurate?
The first two will save time and are very easy to setup. Of the others, LEGO is by far the best... kids love it (even those that aren't geeks) and you can do some really creative things with them that can branch over multiple teaching units.
Those "troublemakers" should be encouraged to do just that. Those are the ones that will do well in computing and it can be used as an effective tool to engage them. Sure you'll have to do some clean up on occasion but it's better than shutting them down on something they show skill at.
Let the students do what they will on the computers, so long as they're completing what you've asked.
- Depending on your OS: Deep Freeze http://www.faronics.com/enterprise/deep-freeze/ on every computer.
- Give them a honeypot to hack into and poke around
- Human interface devices. Let them see how their actions on a computer can do something in the real world. LEGO robotics software is great for this stuff.
- Software to allow integration with other classes... doing a catapult launch in science? simulate the physics and test designs before making them. Algebra? Link it to programming. etc
- Build in problems for students to diagnose/resolve into your software and hardware setup. Nothing complicated but problem solving is the best way to learn computers imo.
Whatever you do, never treat someone as a troublemaker.
Exactly. You can use existing metrics to help diagnose an issue but you'd never develop a metric to do so unless the source was masked in some way. They're very useful for evaluating existing systems and finding performance gains and hidden patterns. Problem is that with every variable change you get a new perspective.
Example: Leading cause of death in women, heart disease. Leading cause of death in women under 40, accidents. Leading cause of death in women 40-50... could be something else entirely. Each one tells a different story by changing a single variable. With the permutations in business and the subjectivity of much of it, it's difficult to come up with meaningful metrics or enough metrics to encompass an entire process.
It's not about identifying what's wrong - it's about identifying where you want improvement. There's a big difference between the two.
What you're talking about is diagnosing and fixing problems. These do not require metrics, they do require gathering information but metrics are too expensive to bother on something like you're talking about. A true metric is used to uncover patterns that you can't see on the surface of the data.
I'd disagree completely. Determining what is optimal is the first step. From there you build your metrics to track the effectiveness of changes.
The problem is illustrated very well in a TED lecture about Microsoft Pivot. You can create all sorts of metrics but every time you take a different perspective on the data it can tell you something different. Unless you are going to create a metric to monitor every perspective you'll never get the whole picture. If you do create a metric to monitor every perspective you'll be so overloaded with information that you'll stagnate.
1) Identify an area that you want improvement in
2) Determine what is optimal from a business perspective
3) Build the metrics to monitor changes towards the optimal and for possible problem areas (example: improving ticket times... logical metrics to monitor would be employee retention/stress/satisfaction, customer retention/satisfaction, ticket recurrence, etc)
Great read too. I question this:
determining if we are performing above or below what is considered optimal
How do you determine 'optimal'? How you determine that determines the metrics you use.
So you'd have to buy the same media all over again! Win win in their eyes ;)
games on demand also has several major drawbacks.
1) hard drive space. My collection is 400+ games... fitting them on a single hard drive would be impossible
2) internet data transfer caps.
3) Not everyone has stable/fast internet
4) No pricing competition/used games which will drive customers away
I think that option will always be available but there's too many gaps in the business model that another company could fill if MS doesn't.
*looks at pile of cartridges that are still working* sweet!
Excellent point! DRM would be a bit of a pain to deal with in that model but it could definitely work.
Yeah, I had the same problem - now the noisiest part of the 360s is the power supply fan!
There's a line of dialogue in Transformers 3... I think it was Transformers 2 they did the Xbox 360 that came alive? Anyway, it's just subtle product placement here and there for the 720.
I'd suspect that wouldn't be the case, cloud saves make more sense and people generally want their profile too not just a single game save.
It's a stupid assumption to think the next XBox will be called the XBox 720.
By Microsoft advertising it as such it's not longer a stupid assumption. It can be taken with a grain of salt, but it's no longer an assumption, nor stupid as a marketing department to latch on to a term that's already gained traction in the marketplace is a pretty smart thing to do.
umm - Microsoft has advertised it as such in Transformer 3 among other places.
oh and I forgot to mention: It would make the consoles cheaper to produce and less prone to failure. Optical drive = high heat, lots of parts, requires a lot of physical space, etc. take that out and you could see $99-150 consoles a couple years in.
disc formats are dead for the new generation (or should be). Flash drives make more sense in every area. Faster read, scalable cost (crappy games can use crappy flash drives, games that push the limits can use quality ones), can be sized to fit the game, more durable... etc. Heck, the music industry wants to switch to them to replace CDs - they make a lot more sense for games.
If you don't want an application on the start menu, you can remove it from the list with two clicks.
Notepad does show up on the list, however this depends on whether you launch it a way a normal user would, through the start menu, task bar, explorer, etc. It can't just stick every executable that is ran as it would end up with a bunch of crap that gets loaded by other programs, for instance.
I use notepad on a daily basis for storing random bits of temporary information - never appeared in the menu. 'Remove from list' also doesn't work permanently. Example, I removed 'Section 8' just now along with a bunch of other stuff, the next time I open the start menu it's at the top of the list. I've played that game all of twice yet Thunderbird is opened constantly and doesn't appear. The feature is shit.
You don't have to use libraries if you don't want to. Explorer's starting location can be changed via the shortcut properties, it never changed itself for me, plus it seems to default to "My computer" when launched with Win+E anyway.
Try setting the shortcut to this. It was such a problem MS actually put it into a kb article... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/221878 - one would think copying the address and placing it in the 'Start In' box would work, but no that would be too simple.
you can disable the desktop peek feature of that region.
Thanks for this, I didn't know that.
Also, Windows doesn't give focus on mouse-over, so can just keep typing as you move the mouse all over the screen anyway.
Hun?
I disagree about the clutter, despite combining many different elements I think the ribbon manages to keep everything look nice and consistent. Or have you forgotten the mess of toolbars that came before it?
I guess it's good that you can make your own ribbon tabs with whatever buttons you want now...
How is different sized buttons, different shaped buttons, different colour schemes and styles keep everything looking 'nice' let alone consistent. I do remember the toolbars that came before, and I much prefer them. They could be customized, they were smaller so you could have more buttons at your fingertips, etc. They were also customizable the same way ribbons are. I look at something like this: http://www.sunflowerhead.com/msimages/DifferentLayouts-9-14-2005.png and my eyes just gloss over, there's too much to look at, no patterning, just a jumble of controls.
Really, you have a problem with buttons having descriptive text labels? Do buttons outside of the ribbon never have them?
*Looks at just about every browser, icon buttons no text*
*Looks at Adobe CS5 programs, icon buttons text only where sliders or input box controls*
*Looks at Skype, where text and buttons exist the text is integrated into the design of the button, not floating and wrapping below the icon*
*Looks at VLC.... nope no text, just icons!*
etc, etc, etc.
Descriptive labels are great - they were just much better as tooltip text.
Of course the ribbon uses more space than a menu, because it isn't replacing just the menu, but also the toolbars. You can google yourself for comparisons, but the ribbon typically takes up about as much space as a default set of toolbars, and much less than the 10-rows of toolbars horrors that you often see in the wild. The ribbon takes advantage of wide-screen monitors by creating a flexible layout that takes advantage of the winder windows by scaling its content. A bit more flexibility of being able ot put it on the side of the screen would be nice, admittedly.
The default size of everything above the document: Office 2003: 102px (2 toolbars) Office 2007/2010: 138px - as for 10 rows of toolba
Speak for yourself. UI is the most important factor for me in any piece of software.
Windows 7 Start Menu, the problems:
- The quick icons... it's a great idea to have, unfortunately just because I access a program frequently doesn't mean I want it in the start menu. It also seems to arbitrarily exempt certain programs from being in there - like Notepad.
- Windows Explorer - I've never used the default libraries, I'm not interested in it. I don't store information in that manner and it's great that a lot of people do, however, I used to be able to do it my way not the popular way. It refuses to default to anything but 'Libraries' and if I manually adjust it it resets frequently.
- Right click doesn't always right click. Granted this one may be a bug, but I'll often find that desktop icons can't be right clicked until they're given focus. Mouseover is supposed to give them focus but in some cases it doesn't.
- Mouse position actions are SOOO annoying. Examples - the most common resting position for the mouse is off tot he bottom or right of the screen. This is because there's no gutter on the left for the mouse to disappear into, nor top. This means that the most common resting position for the mouse is also where they decided to put a mouse over desktop preview. Try bottom left? The open items on your start menu, as I type this message the mouse moves due to my thumbs touching the mousepad (granted this is bad design by Samsung but it's a common that the mousepad is directly under the space between the H and J on laptops with a full keyboard). Because the mouse movies it pops up the program preview over what I'm typing. Try top right? Oh, the close menu is there and accidentally closes your programs with an accidental mouse tap when you hit space. Middle right? Same deal as top right except it hits the scrollbar and moves you to a random spot in your document.
- Control over context menus is entirely with individual developers. Control is great, but part of what makes an operating system an operating system is a common set of controls you can use for all programs. When I right click->close, it should close the program not minimize it.
Office Ribbons the problems
- Clutter. Plain and simple. There are so many different colours, shapes, sizes, and wrapping text that it's a jumbled mess. They also assume which buttons you use commonly. Most common functions I use, I use key commands for because I use them commonly and that means I want them as fast as possible. Buttons I use for less frequent items, that I would have trouble remembering which menu they fell under, those I want as buttons.
- The whole point of a button is to provide a small icon representing the function you want to use to make a convenient shortcut to it. Reduces memory work required to operate a program. I don't need to see the text below it, otherwise what's the point of the icon itself? You might as well make it a grouping of text.
- Overall desktop real estate. Ribbons are massive compared to other menu styles. They also don't take advantage of the fact that most screens are widescreen now and the UI would be much better along the sides of a document (CS5 style).
PS: Menu hiding is bad.
Seriously. I can deal with 22 minutes of commercials every hour but between the so called "watermarks", 1/3rd screen pop-over ads, screen scrollers, product placement, "breaking news" interruptions, and product "reviews". There's almost no point to watching TV - the experience is so much better on DVD.
Blow it up sounds fun but it'll get you sued or worse.
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/
I had to threaten to expose a security flaw which exposed hundreds of thousands of peoples info (luckily no financial info) - within an hour of threatening full disclosure they'd closed my "tech ticket" and an administrator was emailing me for more details and a timeline for a fix.
"of what can be extracted" is the key statement there. 1% of the total energy stored but not necessarily can be extracted with current technology/economics
It is inane and will lead to biased results. This paper was countering that original study which said the hummer was more environmentally friendly over time.
By not clicking the link you missed out on the fact that it wasn't only a comparison of those two vehicles but rather numerous vehicles including the Accord, Escape, Civic, Highlander.
What you also missed out on is that a half dozen or so reports from various sources determined that the energy used in the production of gas is about 8% and the production of the vehicle sits between 7% and 12% whether it's hybrid or not.