The artists like it though because it's familiar to them, so it can be a bit of a fight to get them to switch to another system.
The last article I saw about it suggested that most MMO artists aren't in fact familiar with flash... it's just not a tool that's ever been used in that particular business before, so there really is little advantage in using it over other cross-platform UI toolkits. It's a buzzword that managers like, though, so it's probably getting a foothold that way.
And, while you're at it, please specify where the idea that "diet colas aren't any better" comes from, because it isn't in TFA and is explicitly contradicted by the bbc's article on the same study, which goes into more depth about the hypothesis being explored, which is that the combination of caffeine and sugars is responsible.
I hate it when I glance down to the speedo and then look back up to find out little johnny just threw his soccer ball into the street from the dumpster he was hiding behind.
Why can't this info be integrated into the motorcycle hemlet visor?
True. I have a Yahoo account, $20 a year. I've had a few issues over the years and sent queries in. All I get back are cut and paste from FAQs that I've already read. I've pointed out they didn't answer my question, asked again. A week later, another copy of the same fucking FAQ.
You're lucky you don't have to deal with them over something serious. I have a string of e-mails archived somewhere of me corresponding with HMRC (the UK equivalent of the IRS) over how the tax system works; general enquiries about how to operate a payroll, basically. Because I was writing payroll software. HMRC publish a document that explains how all this works and is specifically designed for payroll software developers. I knew this. I knew the title of the document I wanted. I knew who could provide a copy of it, i.e. the Internet Services Helpdesk. So I e-mail them and ask for a copy.
Get a response back, asking for my PAYE reference code. Respond that I don't have a PAYE reference code, I'm making a general enquiry. Get a response back stating that specific enquiries have to be addressed to my local tax office. Respond that my local tax office can't help, as they don't have copies of the document I'm trying to get hold of. Attach the previous correspondence so that anyone reading it can easily see what was discussed previously. Get a response back asking for my PAYE reference code, worded identically to the first. Respond pointing out that as an individual self-employed software developer I don't operate a PAYE payroll, so don't have a reference code, I just want access to the damned document. Get a response back worded identically to the second. At this point I start ranting, which actually got me a personalised response. It said that they didn't have the document I wanted, they were for help with Internet services. So I respond with a quote from the list of available documents that quite clearly states that the document I want is obtained from the Internet services helpdesk. Etc.
It took me about twenty e-mails and four days to get hold of that damned document. All but two of them were copies and pastes of form responses that didn't apply to my situation.
.... We in the legal industry solved this issue about 3,000 years ago -- back at least to Roman Times. You need to establish your identity for a legal purpose? You go to a notary public [...]
Except this isn't about establishing identity. There are plenty of ways to establish identity, like (as suggested in TFA) faxing a drivers licence copy (or other government-issued ID), which has the advantage of being much cheaper than getting a document notarised (which, at least where I'm from, can cost non-trivial sums of money... £50, I think I paid last time I needed the service).
The problem is one of how to handle the process in such a fashion that you can have large volumes of people doing it, it doesn't cost a fortune to run, and there are as few mistakes as possible. FWIW, if this were a serious, frequent problem, I think Bennett would be on the right track. As it is, though, I don't think it's common enough to warrant the kind of resources he's talking about throwing at it.
Really? So why do newspapers lay out stuff in columns? I'll give you a hint: It's easier to read that way.
Well, yes, but a line of text in a newspaper column is typically 132 points x 11 points, so about twelve times as wide as it is tall. This is the basic unit that you'll want to use while laying stuff out on screen: rectangles that are multiples of this proportion.
No, seriously. The first part of the problem is something that it's hard to blame anyone for: the uninformed user confuses the computer with the monitor. The monitor's where interesting stuff happens, so it's easy to see why anyone who didn't know better would be under the impression that was the important part.
Unfortunately, jumping to this obvious and incorrect conclusion leaves the user with something of a conundrum: what's the big grey box for? Fortunately, Microsoft have supplied the answer in the form of the standard Windows Explorer icons. Open up "My Computer" (an icon with a monitor on it, of course), and you see a set of grey boxes that look something like what you have sitting under your desk. And when you click on them, that thing starts making noises. And we all know those icons are for where your files are stored, and your files are stored on hard drives, so that thing under the desk must be a hard drive, right? Stands to reason.
That will never be as aggravating as memory vs. storage. "I need more memory for my program" is more likely to mean "I'm out of disk space" than "I need more RAM".
Of course, even some applications get that one wrong. Older versions of photoshop for windows, for instance, if you try to start them when there isn't enough disk space to create their tile cache, will complain that there isn't enough "memory (RAM)" in the system.
Adding more RAM just makes matter worse, because the size of the tile cache that it tries to create is proportional to the amount of memory you have.
Back when the OP's rant was actually correct (i.e., when we were using ISDN rather than ADSL), the term of choice was "terminal adapter", or just simply "adapter". Always seemed a little bit clunky, but it's at least better than "transcoder".
IE7 prompts you the first time you open a new tab, giving you a guide to how to use them, and asking whether you want to use them or not. Seems like a good starting place to me.
just look at the screenshot of the proof of concept. Notice how you have to scroll to the side in gmail just to see you mail subject lines. Hardly a good use of screen real-estate.
Agreed. This is a horrible starting point for a design. The designer says:
"On the side. Our screens are wider than they are tall; vertical height is the scarce resource."
There's a reason our screens are wider than they are tall, though: we need horizontal space more, because we read from side to side. This means things with text in them generally need to be (much) wider than they are tall.
In his mockup, the new bar takes up 208x530px == 110,240 pixels. This quick re-organization I've just designed uses 1022x49 = 50,078 or less than half as many pixels. Sure, vertical pixels are more important than horizontal pixels, but my design uses less than a quarter as many vertical pixels as his does horizontal pixels, and includes all the same information. Vertical pixels are less than twice as valuable as horizontal pixels, given his arguments for why this makes sense, so this appears to be a much less costly design using his model of what's important.
And the notion that we're going to be playing our games on "exotic gizmos descended from the iPhone" sort of defies current trends.
Not really, no. More and more people play games on their phones all the time. Games are among the most pouplar add-on software for phones. It isn't far-fetched to suggest that this trend will continue and a lot of people will spend a lot of time playing games on their phones in the future.
I especially can't imagine playing a game on any descendant of the iPhone if I'm going to have "presbyopic eyes", unless the author foresees us connecting our iPhone-descendants to large displays and HID controllers, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of using the iPhone descendant.
Did you... err... read the article? The bit where it talks about using picoprojectors pointed at glasses as output devices so we get equivalents of extremely large displays without the bulk?
And they're going to be playing on these exotic gizmos descended from the iPhone and its clones: gadgets... with screens the size of a postage stamp?
He has to be kidding.
Read his novel, Halting State, which is set in the future he's talking about here. Sure, the people in this world play games on their phones, but they aren't phones as we would recognise them today. Their output devices are augmented-reality glasses that show messages and icons overlayed over real objects when the device is used as a phone, or replace reality entirely when it is used for a game, total-immersion style.
Sure, he acknowledges that some people will still play on desktop machines, simply because they can get higher resolution graphics and faster response times that way, but he sees most people playing games while commuting, in breaks from work, stuff like that. I think he has a point. Lots of people play silly little games on their phones to fill in time; if that could be a fully-fledged MMORPG with high quality, immersive graphics, I think it would be even more popular. And that tech is probably about 15-20 years away (I think the 2020 quoted is probably a typo; he may have meant 2028, as the novel this stuff was based on was published end of 07/early 08, so 2008 is likely when this was written).
From what I know of Charlie, I don't suspect he cares all that much. He'll probably _use_ the term SF, but largely only because he hangs around with some people who _do_ care.
Sci-fi is Hollywood entertainment [...]
The distinction is far from universally maintained, and that is certainly not what the term meant when Forry Ackerman originally invented it. AFAICT, over here in the UK the distinction is far less maintained. And we're more likely to pronounce it skiffy than syfy.
right now, today, Apple are creating a mobile platform and eco-system that could very well remain dominant for the next couple of decades, just as MS did on the desktop.
Really? Then how come I see _way_ more people using Nokia N-series smartphones than i do iPhones? It seems to me that Symbian was and still is the dominant platform for smartphones. iPhone may have overtaken windows mobile (though I'm not sure even of that, I really don't see many people with iPhones here in the UK, but I do know quite a few who have windows mobile devices), but nokia are a long way ahead in terms of installed base.
right now, today, Apple are creating a mobile platform and eco-system that could very well remain dominant for the next couple of decades, just as MS did on the desktop
Right. But in 1985 a lot of people would have said the same about Apple on the desktop. They had a product that was clearly a technical improvement over their major competitor (IBM at the time, Nokia now), but they failed to convert it into the kind of dominance you're talking about. Whether they can do it this time is still an open question.
Actually, he does. He's employing a very clever trick here... he doesn't want answers, he just wants popular sites to cover the subject, so that his search keyword gets redistributed in places with high google pageranks. Those pirate links? Don't appear on the top 10 of google any more. This page, mirrors of it, an NY Times blog entry, the Amazon page for the book, that's about all that turns up.
Yes. Practicing discrimination against homosexuals is unlawful, not to mention morally repugnant.
LOL WUT?
No, it's not. For employment or housing or some other Govt. related BS, but not for a private organization.
You are wrong. See this summary of discrimination laws. Quote:
"The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) [...] provides that certain personnel actions can not be based on attributes or conduct that do not adversely affect employee performance, such as marital status and political affiliation. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has interpreted the prohibition of discrimination based on conduct to include discrimination based on sexual orientation."
Slashdot Mirror
The artists like it though because it's familiar to them, so it can be a bit of a fight to get them to switch to another system.
The last article I saw about it suggested that most MMO artists aren't in fact familiar with flash... it's just not a tool that's ever been used in that particular business before, so there really is little advantage in using it over other cross-platform UI toolkits. It's a buzzword that managers like, though, so it's probably getting a foothold that way.
Does anyone else find it amusing that three stories today have been tagged "skynet", but not this one which is actually _about_ skynet?
Define "excessive", please.
And, while you're at it, please specify where the idea that "diet colas aren't any better" comes from, because it isn't in TFA and is explicitly contradicted by the bbc's article on the same study, which goes into more depth about the hypothesis being explored, which is that the combination of caffeine and sugars is responsible.
I hate it when I glance down to the speedo and then look back up to find out little johnny just threw his soccer ball into the street from the dumpster he was hiding behind.
Why can't this info be integrated into the motorcycle hemlet visor?
Your wish, my command.
Sorry, your comment was too long. I didn't read it. Perhaps you could summarise it in a single letter, rather than two of them?
True. I have a Yahoo account, $20 a year. I've had a few issues over the years and sent queries in. All I get back are cut and paste from FAQs that I've already read. I've pointed out they didn't answer my question, asked again. A week later, another copy of the same fucking FAQ.
You're lucky you don't have to deal with them over something serious. I have a string of e-mails archived somewhere of me corresponding with HMRC (the UK equivalent of the IRS) over how the tax system works; general enquiries about how to operate a payroll, basically. Because I was writing payroll software. HMRC publish a document that explains how all this works and is specifically designed for payroll software developers. I knew this. I knew the title of the document I wanted. I knew who could provide a copy of it, i.e. the Internet Services Helpdesk. So I e-mail them and ask for a copy.
Get a response back, asking for my PAYE reference code. Respond that I don't have a PAYE reference code, I'm making a general enquiry.
Get a response back stating that specific enquiries have to be addressed to my local tax office. Respond that my local tax office can't help, as they don't have copies of the document I'm trying to get hold of. Attach the previous correspondence so that anyone reading it can easily see what was discussed previously.
Get a response back asking for my PAYE reference code, worded identically to the first. Respond pointing out that as an individual self-employed software developer I don't operate a PAYE payroll, so don't have a reference code, I just want access to the damned document.
Get a response back worded identically to the second. At this point I start ranting, which actually got me a personalised response. It said that they didn't have the document I wanted, they were for help with Internet services. So I respond with a quote from the list of available documents that quite clearly states that the document I want is obtained from the Internet services helpdesk.
Etc.
It took me about twenty e-mails and four days to get hold of that damned document. All but two of them were copies and pastes of form responses that didn't apply to my situation.
Damned bureaucrats.
.... We in the legal industry solved this issue about 3,000 years ago -- back at least to Roman Times. You need to establish your identity for a legal purpose? You go to a notary public [...]
Except this isn't about establishing identity. There are plenty of ways to establish identity, like (as suggested in TFA) faxing a drivers licence copy (or other government-issued ID), which has the advantage of being much cheaper than getting a document notarised (which, at least where I'm from, can cost non-trivial sums of money... £50, I think I paid last time I needed the service).
The problem is one of how to handle the process in such a fashion that you can have large volumes of people doing it, it doesn't cost a fortune to run, and there are as few mistakes as possible. FWIW, if this were a serious, frequent problem, I think Bennett would be on the right track. As it is, though, I don't think it's common enough to warrant the kind of resources he's talking about throwing at it.
Really? So why do newspapers lay out stuff in columns? I'll give you a hint: It's easier to read that way.
Well, yes, but a line of text in a newspaper column is typically 132 points x 11 points, so about twelve times as wide as it is tall. This is the basic unit that you'll want to use while laying stuff out on screen: rectangles that are multiples of this proportion.
No, seriously. The first part of the problem is something that it's hard to blame anyone for: the uninformed user confuses the computer with the monitor. The monitor's where interesting stuff happens, so it's easy to see why anyone who didn't know better would be under the impression that was the important part.
Unfortunately, jumping to this obvious and incorrect conclusion leaves the user with something of a conundrum: what's the big grey box for? Fortunately, Microsoft have supplied the answer in the form of the standard Windows Explorer icons. Open up "My Computer" (an icon with a monitor on it, of course), and you see a set of grey boxes that look something like what you have sitting under your desk. And when you click on them, that thing starts making noises. And we all know those icons are for where your files are stored, and your files are stored on hard drives, so that thing under the desk must be a hard drive, right? Stands to reason.
Without someone looking up the word, how are they supposed to know what that obscure reference to the word means?
Because it isn't obscure. You'd be hard pressed to find anybody British who didn't understand that sentence.
the person still comes off sounding elitist for using that definition of a common word
No, they sound _British_. Unless you think all British people are elitist, this really doesn't follow.
That will never be as aggravating as memory vs. storage. "I need more memory for my program" is more likely to mean "I'm out of disk space" than "I need more RAM".
Of course, even some applications get that one wrong. Older versions of photoshop for windows, for instance, if you try to start them when there isn't enough disk space to create their tile cache, will complain that there isn't enough "memory (RAM)" in the system.
Adding more RAM just makes matter worse, because the size of the tile cache that it tries to create is proportional to the amount of memory you have.
Do you have a superior term?
Back when the OP's rant was actually correct (i.e., when we were using ISDN rather than ADSL), the term of choice was "terminal adapter", or just simply "adapter". Always seemed a little bit clunky, but it's at least better than "transcoder".
IE7 prompts you the first time you open a new tab, giving you a guide to how to use them, and asking whether you want to use them or not. Seems like a good starting place to me.
just look at the screenshot of the proof of concept. Notice how you have to scroll to the side in gmail just to see you mail subject lines. Hardly a good use of screen real-estate.
Agreed. This is a horrible starting point for a design. The designer says:
"On the side. Our screens are wider than they are tall; vertical height is the scarce resource."
There's a reason our screens are wider than they are tall, though: we need horizontal space more, because we read from side to side. This means things with text in them generally need to be (much) wider than they are tall.
In his mockup, the new bar takes up 208x530px == 110,240 pixels. This quick re-organization I've just designed uses 1022x49 = 50,078 or less than half as many pixels. Sure, vertical pixels are more important than horizontal pixels, but my design uses less than a quarter as many vertical pixels as his does horizontal pixels, and includes all the same information. Vertical pixels are less than twice as valuable as horizontal pixels, given his arguments for why this makes sense, so this appears to be a much less costly design using his model of what's important.
Here's the google cache: http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:hfakwNq-YlQJ:www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/05/login_2009_keynote_gaming_in_t.html+http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/05/login_2009_keynote_gaming_in_t.html&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1
And the notion that we're going to be playing our games on "exotic gizmos descended from the iPhone" sort of defies current trends.
Not really, no. More and more people play games on their phones all the time. Games are among the most pouplar add-on software for phones. It isn't far-fetched to suggest that this trend will continue and a lot of people will spend a lot of time playing games on their phones in the future.
I especially can't imagine playing a game on any descendant of the iPhone if I'm going to have "presbyopic eyes", unless the author foresees us connecting our iPhone-descendants to large displays and HID controllers, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of using the iPhone descendant.
Did you... err... read the article? The bit where it talks about using picoprojectors pointed at glasses as output devices so we get equivalents of extremely large displays without the bulk?
And they're going to be playing on these exotic gizmos descended from the iPhone and its clones: gadgets ... with screens the size of a postage stamp?
He has to be kidding.
Read his novel, Halting State, which is set in the future he's talking about here. Sure, the people in this world play games on their phones, but they aren't phones as we would recognise them today. Their output devices are augmented-reality glasses that show messages and icons overlayed over real objects when the device is used as a phone, or replace reality entirely when it is used for a game, total-immersion style.
Sure, he acknowledges that some people will still play on desktop machines, simply because they can get higher resolution graphics and faster response times that way, but he sees most people playing games while commuting, in breaks from work, stuff like that. I think he has a point. Lots of people play silly little games on their phones to fill in time; if that could be a fully-fledged MMORPG with high quality, immersive graphics, I think it would be even more popular. And that tech is probably about 15-20 years away (I think the 2020 quoted is probably a typo; he may have meant 2028, as the novel this stuff was based on was published end of 07/early 08, so 2008 is likely when this was written).
I think he would probably prefer the term SF.
From what I know of Charlie, I don't suspect he cares all that much. He'll probably _use_ the term SF, but largely only because he hangs around with some people who _do_ care.
Sci-fi is Hollywood entertainment [...]
The distinction is far from universally maintained, and that is certainly not what the term meant when Forry Ackerman originally invented it. AFAICT, over here in the UK the distinction is far less maintained. And we're more likely to pronounce it skiffy than syfy.
right now, today, Apple are creating a mobile platform and eco-system that could very well remain dominant for the next couple of decades, just as MS did on the desktop.
Really? Then how come I see _way_ more people using Nokia N-series smartphones than i do iPhones? It seems to me that Symbian was and still is the dominant platform for smartphones. iPhone may have overtaken windows mobile (though I'm not sure even of that, I really don't see many people with iPhones here in the UK, but I do know quite a few who have windows mobile devices), but nokia are a long way ahead in terms of installed base.
right now, today, Apple are creating a mobile platform and eco-system that could very well remain dominant for the next couple of decades, just as MS did on the desktop
Right. But in 1985 a lot of people would have said the same about Apple on the desktop. They had a product that was clearly a technical improvement over their major competitor (IBM at the time, Nokia now), but they failed to convert it into the kind of dominance you're talking about. Whether they can do it this time is still an open question.
... you charge to much ...
At $52 for a 240 page book, or $42 for the kindle version, it is clearly overpriced.
Actually, he does. He's employing a very clever trick here... he doesn't want answers, he just wants popular sites to cover the subject, so that his search keyword gets redistributed in places with high google pageranks. Those pirate links? Don't appear on the top 10 of google any more. This page, mirrors of it, an NY Times blog entry, the Amazon page for the book, that's about all that turns up.
Why hate the AC? The game's mentioned in TFA... oh, right.
Probably no one cares, but that's the wrong "queues" there. They mean "cues."
I was wondering why I had trouble parsing that sentence, but didn't spot the reason. Thanks. :)
multi resolution analysis perhaps? an example of this method is wavelet decomposition.
Which is even more processor-intensive than a moderately sized neural net.
Yes. Practicing discrimination against homosexuals is unlawful, not to mention morally repugnant.
LOL WUT?
No, it's not. For employment or housing or some other Govt. related BS, but not for a private organization.
You are wrong. See this summary of discrimination laws. Quote:
"The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) [...] provides that certain personnel actions can not be based on attributes or conduct that do not adversely affect employee performance, such as marital status and political affiliation. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has interpreted the prohibition of discrimination based on conduct to include discrimination based on sexual orientation."