Usability testing is absolutely essential to producing good software -- I've seen too many applications that left the developers hands and went right to market and were utter crap, because the developers put together what *they* thought people wanted, rather than actually verifying at any point that they were on the right track. (And then, most developers have the nerve to get pissed at the user for suggesting they make changes. Go figger.)
Usability testing also mitigates most of the round-and-round arguments developers will always have between themselves over some feature or another. Instead of butting egos, ask the users.
Portable usability test environments are not all that hard to come by. Here, we use a couple of Windows Laptops with TechSmith's Camtasia to record users sessions. We can take the laptop to them, present them with whatever we're testing, record the sessions, bring them back, play back the sessions, make our notes and changes, and go about our business. It works rather well for us, and it's much more affordable than building a dedicated facility. Much more convenient for the users, too.
The rest of the world wants a kinder, gentler, docile, submissive, POWERLESS United States of America. They see Kerry and the liberal camp as a means to that end.
All the more reason to wake up, America, and vote for George W. Bush.
It's kind of funny, here in a country, were moral relativism reigns and the mantra of the times is "I don't care what anyone else thinks!" , that we're so concerned about what the rest of the world thinks about us. We should *all* be shouting that from the mountain tops.
"Guess what, world, we don't care what you think of us!"
We've got Freedom, we've got money, we've got power, we've got bombs. And we did it all in just over two and a quarter centuries. We're obviously doing something RIGHT.
Rest of the world, we don't care that you hate us.
I know! Ciphertrust's Ironmail works the same way... It stops ALL mail inbound, runs it through about a dozen different detection queues, only letting legitimate stuff through. I'd really like to see how this new one is otherwise unique.
Hell what about Cisco? A few years back, didn't they take a large chunk of money from the Chinese to create the system by which China censors a large part of the internet from the Chinese People?
If you want to call someone "irresponsible," start there.
In other words, Ted's pissed that the nasty evil conservative Fox News Channel is more popular and less vilified than CNN, so now it's time to change the rules.
I'm sure Big Media was perfectly fine to Ted back in the AOL-Time-Warner heyday, but now, his empire's receded, it's time to lop the winners off at the knees. Why should he care now -- after all, he's made his Big Media money.
Hell, people have had a second child *specifically* to harvest bone marrow or other tissue for use in medical procedures to try to save the first child. Is it so much of a stretch to think that if getting pregnant and harvesting stem cells were the answer to some medical condition within the family (or the woman herself) that some would be willing to undergo the procedure? I don't think so.
The problem is, though, the possibility of a very scary alternative: Women getting pregnant to harvest stem cells, and then aborting the baby (possibly late-term) to avoid actually giving birth.
Since this would 1) get around the ban on stem cells from aborted babies, but 2) still result in an abortion, you've just skirted the legal issue surrounding the production/research of *new* stem cell lines, and still terminated the life of the child via legal means.
Same end, very different -- and at present, legal -- means.
If I were you, I'd go *only* as far as supplying a broadband connection, a cable/DSL router (which should block *most* crap by default) with DHCP enabled, a hub/switch (if necessary) in a closet somewhere. Then, in plain view, ethernet wall jack and a one-page sheet of instructions on how to make it work with *their* computer. Maybe a spare ethernet cable or two.
The way I figger it, if they can afford to rent a beach house, they can probably afford their own laptop if they wanna get some work done. And the most you'll have to do to service it *should* be to tell them to recycle the power on the router or cable modem, and you don't have to worry about the PC.
I'll throw my two cents in for the Blackberry as well -- I've got a 6280 that just rocks. It handles email (from 3 separate accounts), address book, calendaring and misc. notes pretty well. The phone is crystal clear. As for the lack of 3rd party applications, that's not so much a problem for me -- I just create WAP applications that I can reach with the built-in browser. All is good!:)
Okay, so they've shown it to a few scientists who concur.
Whatever happened to *publishing* the results of your experiments (and the data) in peer-reviewed journals?
Now, granted, there's plenty of political bias in the journals -- anyone that thinks science is purely dealing with the facts these days is *beyond* an idiot, but still. Just because you've got the rovers and you've got a daily press conference doesn't mean that your statements should be treated as anything but sensational speculation this early on.
If NASA were claiming Cold Fusion or Perpetual Motion, they've be laughed out of the scientific community for broadcasting just a revolutionary claim without first publishing.
Take the example of "6" inputs on the lock and the key:
A B C D E F
In order for it to "complete" a circuit (or circuits), you have to "connect" certain inputs together to sort of "loop" the light back to the lock and complete the circuit.
For instance:
A-B C-D E-F
That's three "loops", lets call them.
There are 30 possible combinations for the first loop.
There are then 12 combinations for the second loop,
and the third, no combination -- there's only one choice.
A total of 360 combinations, give or take. You could easily make a device to mimic every possible circuit very easily. Breaking the lock would take seconds.
Now let's look at the lock.
Assuming the light source exists in the lock, you would be able to tell immediately which inputs send light *to* the key, and which return light *from* the key. With a simple LED, you could easily "light up" the return paths, to see which loops they connect to. Armed with this information, it's easy to find the remaining possibly valid combinations, and try them.
I'm telling you, this lock could be picked with near lightning speed.
No, you would need to include some sort of electronic timing component -- preferrably in the key -- to initiate *pulses* of light, rather than a steady stream. In which case, the path of the light is basically irrelevany -- it's the timing of the light pulse that would act as the key. More secure (but not pick-proof.) and less complicated.
Or you could do something fancy with prisms or whatnot to split the red-green-blue portion of a white/colored light into different light paths, but, again, it's overkill, and still not very secure.
See, I don't know about this. I think that if you open-source Java with a free softwareish license, and folks have the ability to use, modify, distribute, etc... Java, then you run the risk of *more* "bastardized versions", and close-but-no-cigar java variants, I would think, as people decide to add their own hooks into it for their own purposes. The thought of which gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Many many moons ago, when I was doing video production work, I received a sample CD from an audio library collection billed as "3D-sound".
I don't know how the stuff was recorded, but it was recorded such that you really could localize the sound, in space, in 3 dimensions, from regular ol' stereo headphones. The most memorable tracks on the CD was of someone getting a haircut. You could hear *where* the scissors "were" around your head. You could tell where the hairdryer was blowing. Not just left-or-right, but *around* your head. The stuff was amazing.
I'm guessing that not just volume and left-or-right determines where you hear things, but phase as well.
But, anyhoo, the point being that you can very likely achieve good surround-sound sounding stuff with just one speaker per ear, and not three.
Slashdot Mirror
Steve, I've got a Commodore 64 I'll set you for $100!
... cheap software that's actually *worth* the sticker price?
Usability testing is absolutely essential to producing good software -- I've seen too many applications that left the developers hands and went right to market and were utter crap, because the developers put together what *they* thought people wanted, rather than actually verifying at any point that they were on the right track. (And then, most developers have the nerve to get pissed at the user for suggesting they make changes. Go figger.)
Usability testing also mitigates most of the round-and-round arguments developers will always have between themselves over some feature or another. Instead of butting egos, ask the users.
Portable usability test environments are not all that hard to come by. Here, we use a couple of Windows Laptops with TechSmith's Camtasia to record users sessions. We can take the laptop to them, present them with whatever we're testing, record the sessions, bring them back, play back the sessions, make our notes and changes, and go about our business. It works rather well for us, and it's much more affordable than building a dedicated facility. Much more convenient for the users, too.
Slashdot isn't what you'd call the pinacle of journalistic integrity, dude. *shrug*
... So I guess I'm going to get to vote Republican TWICE!!!
Thanks, Liberal Federal Judges!!!! And remember, kiddies... Voter Fraud works both ways!
My brain could be farting here, but didn't Richard Feynman mention fluid-based logic gates way back when in a lecture somewhere?
Of course the rest of the world wants Kerry!
The rest of the world wants a kinder, gentler, docile, submissive, POWERLESS United States of America. They see Kerry and the liberal camp as a means to that end.
All the more reason to wake up, America, and vote for George W. Bush.
It's kind of funny, here in a country, were moral relativism reigns and the mantra of the times is "I don't care what anyone else thinks!" , that we're so concerned about what the rest of the world thinks about us. We should *all* be shouting that from the mountain tops.
"Guess what, world, we don't care what you think of us!"
We've got Freedom, we've got money, we've got power, we've got bombs. And we did it all in just over two and a quarter centuries. We're obviously doing something RIGHT.
Rest of the world, we don't care that you hate us.
Self-hating liberal Americans, let your guilt go.
And for God's sake, please vote Republican.
All things being equal, you know, I can still masturbate for free.
I know! Ciphertrust's Ironmail works the same way... It stops ALL mail inbound, runs it through about a dozen different detection queues, only letting legitimate stuff through. I'd really like to see how this new one is otherwise unique.
Yeah, wow... somebody tell the various ethnic groups!
Hell what about Cisco? A few years back, didn't they take a large chunk of money from the Chinese to create the system by which China censors a large part of the internet from the Chinese People?
If you want to call someone "irresponsible," start there.
In other words, Ted's pissed that the nasty evil conservative Fox News Channel is more popular and less vilified than CNN, so now it's time to change the rules.
I'm sure Big Media was perfectly fine to Ted back in the AOL-Time-Warner heyday, but now, his empire's receded, it's time to lop the winners off at the knees. Why should he care now -- after all, he's made his Big Media money.
Wah wah, Ted Turner. Wah waaaaaaaah.
Hell, people have had a second child *specifically* to harvest bone marrow or other tissue for use in medical procedures to try to save the first child. Is it so much of a stretch to think that if getting pregnant and harvesting stem cells were the answer to some medical condition within the family (or the woman herself) that some would be willing to undergo the procedure? I don't think so.
The problem is, though, the possibility of a very scary alternative: Women getting pregnant to harvest stem cells, and then aborting the baby (possibly late-term) to avoid actually giving birth.
Since this would 1) get around the ban on stem cells from aborted babies, but 2) still result in an abortion, you've just skirted the legal issue surrounding the production/research of *new* stem cell lines, and still terminated the life of the child via legal means.
Same end, very different -- and at present, legal -- means.
I find that possibility absolutely chilling.
If I were you, I'd go *only* as far as supplying a broadband connection, a cable/DSL router (which should block *most* crap by default) with DHCP enabled, a hub/switch (if necessary) in a closet somewhere. Then, in plain view, ethernet wall jack and a one-page sheet of instructions on how to make it work with *their* computer. Maybe a spare ethernet cable or two.
The way I figger it, if they can afford to rent a beach house, they can probably afford their own laptop if they wanna get some work done. And the most you'll have to do to service it *should* be to tell them to recycle the power on the router or cable modem, and you don't have to worry about the PC.
.. because they can't make little fists.
Cool! So when does, "Cunnilingus, Cunnilingus, Revolution!" ship?
Up.. Up.. down... down... left... right... down! *moan*
I'll throw my two cents in for the Blackberry as well -- I've got a 6280 that just rocks. It handles email (from 3 separate accounts), address book, calendaring and misc. notes pretty well. The phone is crystal clear. As for the lack of 3rd party applications, that's not so much a problem for me -- I just create WAP applications that I can reach with the built-in browser. All is good! :)
Okay, so they've shown it to a few scientists who concur.
Whatever happened to *publishing* the results of your experiments (and the data) in peer-reviewed journals?
Now, granted, there's plenty of political bias in the journals -- anyone that thinks science is purely dealing with the facts these days is *beyond* an idiot, but still. Just because you've got the rovers and you've got a daily press conference doesn't mean that your statements should be treated as anything but sensational speculation this early on.
If NASA were claiming Cold Fusion or Perpetual Motion, they've be laughed out of the scientific community for broadcasting just a revolutionary claim without first publishing.
So *that's* how you say, "shit or get off the pot," in 9 pages.
Let's look at the key.
Take the example of "6" inputs on the lock and the key:
A B C D E F
In order for it to "complete" a circuit (or circuits), you have to "connect" certain inputs together to sort of "loop" the light back to the lock and complete the circuit.
For instance:
A-B C-D E-F
That's three "loops", lets call them.
There are 30 possible combinations for the first
loop.
There are then 12 combinations for the second loop,
and the third, no combination -- there's only one choice.
A total of 360 combinations, give or take. You could easily make a device to mimic every possible circuit very easily. Breaking the lock would take seconds.
Now let's look at the lock.
Assuming the light source exists in the lock, you would be able to tell immediately which inputs send light *to* the key, and which return light *from* the key. With a simple LED, you could easily "light up" the return paths, to see which loops they connect to. Armed with this information, it's easy to find the remaining possibly valid combinations, and try them.
I'm telling you, this lock could be picked with near lightning speed.
No, you would need to include some sort of electronic timing component -- preferrably in the key -- to initiate *pulses* of light, rather than a steady stream. In which case, the path of the light is basically irrelevany -- it's the timing of the light pulse that would act as the key. More secure (but not pick-proof.) and less complicated.
Or you could do something fancy with prisms or whatnot to split the red-green-blue portion of a white/colored light into different light paths, but, again, it's overkill, and still not very secure.
If the code is free-as-in-speech, how do you stop/prevent forks?
You can't.
See, I don't know about this. I think that if you open-source Java with a free softwareish license, and folks have the ability to use, modify, distribute, etc... Java, then you run the risk of *more* "bastardized versions", and close-but-no-cigar java variants, I would think, as people decide to add their own hooks into it for their own purposes. The thought of which gives me the heebie-jeebies.
...Those mice are f*cking like monk-- oh, wait.
Many many moons ago, when I was doing video production work, I received a sample CD from an audio library collection billed as "3D-sound".
I don't know how the stuff was recorded, but it was recorded such that you really could localize the sound, in space, in 3 dimensions, from regular ol' stereo headphones. The most memorable tracks on the CD was of someone getting a haircut. You could hear *where* the scissors "were" around your head. You could tell where the hairdryer was blowing. Not just left-or-right, but *around* your head. The stuff was amazing.
I'm guessing that not just volume and left-or-right determines where you hear things, but phase as well.
But, anyhoo, the point being that you can very likely achieve good surround-sound sounding stuff with just one speaker per ear, and not three.