When I read a book review, I am usually less interested in a grammatical analysis of the book and more interested in the book's content and usefulness. I found it difficult to get much out of this review because of all the nit-picking. It would have sufficed to point out that the book contains grammatical and spelling errors rather than detailing them all. That information would perhaps be more interesting to the book's editor.
I can relate to this. My boy is around the same age and is just starting to learn to use the computer and interact with learning games. Using the computer with him on good quality educational sites is great fun but it is only a part of the bonding and learning we do. He already has around a hundred books and bedtime wouldn't be complete without reading a selection. He also loves playing with the games on my phone and even with simple things like Arkanoid on the DS - again he can't actually play them which can be frustrating for him at times, but he loves the whole experience of joining in.
Fortunately his curiosity and love of learning aren't confined to sedentary activities, he is just as happy being outside in the woods or playing in the garden and he is extremely social. But he is definitely picking things up from the media around him as well as from us and his nursery school (we live in Sweden and he is at an international English speaking school). Watching the learning process is fascinating!
You obviously haven't RTFA otherwise you would know they are actually called wiggy crystals and were invented by Ricky Gervais while eating a ham sandwich. Tut!
Excellent reply! No insult intended - well, maybe a little jab;-)
You are right that the client often thinks that their way is the only right way - I have also had this experience. I also have many clients who I can happily involve in an early discussion about specific details of UI and then go ahead and recommend improvements without them getting wound up.
However I have also seen programmers who have completely shot down clients when having discussions about UI design and the way your original comment was phrased was much more along those lines than the reasoned and structured reply you have given to my post.
IMHO you are only partly right. Asking for goals in functionality is the way to go in the beginning, but getting feedback on useability and design later in the process can be invaluable.
Sure, users can have unrealistic expectations, but it is the job of a project manager or interaction designer to interpret and manage those expectations.
Your example of a user who had completely unrealistic expectations actually creates a positive situation. If you had just given that user a finished piece of software it would not have matched their expectations. If you know what the user is expecting is unrealistic from the beginning then you are in a position to explain to them why that is not possible and suggest alternatives.
In the other example you give of a user asking for something that seems simple, but would be difficult to use, then you as a solution designer have a starting point to try and find something that will accomplish the task in a way that balances the complexity of the task with the budget.
I have often reacted with a kneejerk that something a client asks for is impossible, but when I've given it more thought and discussed it with the client I've found a solution close to their expectations that does the job well.
In fact, if anything I think that your answer perfectly illustrates why programmers should not be allowed to communicate directly with a client without a translator;-)
But even that can cause unintended problems. Gmail does something similar by putting (afaik) your most frequently mailed contact at the top of the autocomplete. I had a contact who I mailed frequently and who I knew was at the top of the list. But then I started to mail a new contact with the same first name frequently and after a while that person came to the top of the list. It took a good while for me to unlearn that the original contact was no longer the first result for that name.
This has happened to me several times now. So even though it seems at first hand to be a much more elegant solution, it still causes similar problems to what it's intended to solve.
I doubt that would work in the long run. All it takes is for a bot owner to go and look at the page and identify which image is the captcha for the bot.
Personally I would stick with what the original poster has and if spam posts start to show up on the site again, then change the algorithm behind the captcha. If it works for a year or two first then it's done its job.
I was also a ZX-81 kiddie. I remember at the tender age of 10 that someone's dad brought a ZX-80 to show at my primary school. I was so excited by the prospect of actually getting to see a computer that I played up enough for the teacher to punish me by not letting me see the demo.
A year or so later I nagged my parents into getting me a ZX-81. Joy! I even had a 16K ram pack which used to glitch if it wobbled too much so I would use blue-tack to hold everything in place.
I did program my own stuff, but I never really got the hang of it, so my Basic programs were pretty, well, basic! (I used to make animated greetings for my family on their birthdays and programmed simple text adventures. Kind of a precursor to HTML in a way). I moved on to a Spectrum (for the games) which I used for years. Eventually though I lost the taste for computing for a number of years and sold my Spectrum to buy a bike.
I didn't get back into computing again until the desktop publishing revolution when I bought a 386 - and after 10 years of web development I now own my own development company. Amazing what that little 1K box of tricks has inspired over the years!
All you need to increase drag for swim training is something that acts like a parachute in the water. There are products like a drogue chute that are dragged behind the swimmer attached to a belt. There are also belts that have "pockets" on the sides which are positioned to open out and collect water, increasing drag, as one swims forwards.
This could make for the best ever game of Rollercoaster Tycoon. All the little Sims walking about could be real people. All they need now is fsome system that measures the visitor's mood and keeps track of exactly how much the spend at any given store in the park.
Slashdot Mirror
When I read a book review, I am usually less interested in a grammatical analysis of the book and more interested in the book's content and usefulness. I found it difficult to get much out of this review because of all the nit-picking. It would have sufficed to point out that the book contains grammatical and spelling errors rather than detailing them all. That information would perhaps be more interesting to the book's editor.
Good ol' Stross: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross#Eschaton_series
I can't believe you are the only commentor who picked up on this. It was the first thing I thought of when I read the post.
What is Slashdot coming to?
I bet it's got tons of Google-juice now though!
Cuba librux
I can relate to this. My boy is around the same age and is just starting to learn to use the computer and interact with learning games. Using the computer with him on good quality educational sites is great fun but it is only a part of the bonding and learning we do. He already has around a hundred books and bedtime wouldn't be complete without reading a selection. He also loves playing with the games on my phone and even with simple things like Arkanoid on the DS - again he can't actually play them which can be frustrating for him at times, but he loves the whole experience of joining in.
Fortunately his curiosity and love of learning aren't confined to sedentary activities, he is just as happy being outside in the woods or playing in the garden and he is extremely social. But he is definitely picking things up from the media around him as well as from us and his nursery school (we live in Sweden and he is at an international English speaking school). Watching the learning process is fascinating!
You obviously haven't RTFA otherwise you would know they are actually called wiggy crystals and were invented by Ricky Gervais while eating a ham sandwich. Tut!
Excellent reply! No insult intended - well, maybe a little jab ;-)
You are right that the client often thinks that their way is the only right way - I have also had this experience. I also have many clients who I can happily involve in an early discussion about specific details of UI and then go ahead and recommend improvements without them getting wound up.
However I have also seen programmers who have completely shot down clients when having discussions about UI design and the way your original comment was phrased was much more along those lines than the reasoned and structured reply you have given to my post.
IMHO you are only partly right. Asking for goals in functionality is the way to go in the beginning, but getting feedback on useability and design later in the process can be invaluable.
Sure, users can have unrealistic expectations, but it is the job of a project manager or interaction designer to interpret and manage those expectations.
Your example of a user who had completely unrealistic expectations actually creates a positive situation. If you had just given that user a finished piece of software it would not have matched their expectations. If you know what the user is expecting is unrealistic from the beginning then you are in a position to explain to them why that is not possible and suggest alternatives.
In the other example you give of a user asking for something that seems simple, but would be difficult to use, then you as a solution designer have a starting point to try and find something that will accomplish the task in a way that balances the complexity of the task with the budget.
I have often reacted with a kneejerk that something a client asks for is impossible, but when I've given it more thought and discussed it with the client I've found a solution close to their expectations that does the job well.
In fact, if anything I think that your answer perfectly illustrates why programmers should not be allowed to communicate directly with a client without a translator ;-)
But even that can cause unintended problems. Gmail does something similar by putting (afaik) your most frequently mailed contact at the top of the autocomplete. I had a contact who I mailed frequently and who I knew was at the top of the list. But then I started to mail a new contact with the same first name frequently and after a while that person came to the top of the list. It took a good while for me to unlearn that the original contact was no longer the first result for that name.
This has happened to me several times now. So even though it seems at first hand to be a much more elegant solution, it still causes similar problems to what it's intended to solve.
I doubt that would work in the long run. All it takes is for a bot owner to go and look at the page and identify which image is the captcha for the bot.
Personally I would stick with what the original poster has and if spam posts start to show up on the site again, then change the algorithm behind the captcha. If it works for a year or two first then it's done its job.
And he can apparently lick his own balls!
Not often I find myself genuinely laughing out loud at a Slashdot comment these days, but you got me!
Hats off to you.
Ratface23 says "No thanks - it sucks"
(And I am a fan of lots of indutrial music, but NIN tracks always sound the same to me for some reason)
Absolutely - a retro gaming section would be a great addition to most games shops! Especially if it were mandated by law ;-)
http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/09/ 05/ap2993239.html
9 terror suspects arrested today.
... to reassign the top-level domains so that all web addresses end in .eh eh?
Where I come from, women don't wear pants now - they wear knickers or panties. Men wear pants!
I was also a ZX-81 kiddie. I remember at the tender age of 10 that someone's dad brought a ZX-80 to show at my primary school. I was so excited by the prospect of actually getting to see a computer that I played up enough for the teacher to punish me by not letting me see the demo.
A year or so later I nagged my parents into getting me a ZX-81. Joy! I even had a 16K ram pack which used to glitch if it wobbled too much so I would use blue-tack to hold everything in place.
I did program my own stuff, but I never really got the hang of it, so my Basic programs were pretty, well, basic! (I used to make animated greetings for my family on their birthdays and programmed simple text adventures. Kind of a precursor to HTML in a way). I moved on to a Spectrum (for the games) which I used for years. Eventually though I lost the taste for computing for a number of years and sold my Spectrum to buy a bike.
I didn't get back into computing again until the desktop publishing revolution when I bought a 386 - and after 10 years of web development I now own my own development company. Amazing what that little 1K box of tricks has inspired over the years!
Don't hold back Steve - tell us what you *really* think!
Nope - the robot in the book is probably very similar to what you remember uilding. It uses a comparator circuit.
I used this book to build my first robot couple of years back and went on to build a Basic Stamp based programmable robot shortly after.
Some pics and video on my blog.
All you need to increase drag for swim training is something that acts like a parachute in the water. There are products like a drogue chute that are dragged behind the swimmer attached to a belt. There are also belts that have "pockets" on the sides which are positioned to open out and collect water, increasing drag, as one swims forwards.
;-)
No hi-tech materials needed I'm afraid
This could make for the best ever game of Rollercoaster Tycoon. All the little Sims walking about could be real people. All they need now is fsome system that measures the visitor's mood and keeps track of exactly how much the spend at any given store in the park.
Thank you! I have been looking for a gmail invite for ages :-D
Dags att skriva lite mer svenska på din sajt eller hur? :-D