One thing I noticed from the comments in the study is that the subjects knew they were taking part in a useability study (duh) and were happy to offer up comments from an imagined new user perspective, not their own.
"Someone might be overwhelmed by the amount of options." (P7)
"There are too many features and icons for sombody new." (P7)
"Some things were accessible that an entry-level user would not want or need, but other things were buried deep." (P11)
"If someone showed me it would be okay, but if I was a new employee without help, I wouldn't get it." (P6)
While that is what we all do, it is what the useability experts are paid to figure out, not the test subjects. We all think we know what a new user would do but we don't, we have to watch them.
While their opinions and insights are great, some nice hard metrics (time to accomplish a task, clicks / keystrokes required, number of false selections, etc) are also great and leave the UI designer with some goals to shoot for. (In typical slashdot fashion I've not finished reading the study in question so that may very well indeed be in the study).
Chris Cothrun Curator of Chaos
Re:That's cool, but if the apps aren't there...
on
DeMuDi Linux
·
· Score: 2
I think musicians more than most computer users would be willing to use whatever it takes to get the job done, putting aside the stuff they've used before to try something new.
VST support would probably be the easiest to achieve, as VST plugins are already cross platform (Mac and Win) although I don't know the details of how painful it is to port one. DXi would be a little more difficult but having seen Windows avi codecs interfaced to in Linux, ActiveX controls and the WINE project, I wouldn't be surprised to see wrappers for the Windows DXi plugins and VST instruments.
Oops, reading Ardour's features page bears my point about VST but introduces some IP stupidity on the part of Steinberg.
Yeah I just found that yesterday, I don't usually use IE on Windows (Opera or Mozilla) but I fired it up to check a site I'm working on and started blowing veins out of the side of my head when links started popping up in yellow.
With Kazaa being positioned as a good candidate for a napster replacement, quite a few people will end up with it. At least the mp3 sharing market has fragmented, otherwise we would have the successor to SamrtTags.
That link of yours doesn't refute Bernoulli's law, in fact it states that Bernoulli's law is sound and well proven. The page refutes the basic explanation of Bernoulli's law that is commonly taught to people.
While certain military and stunt aircraft can fly upside down, they are probably neither as stable nor as effecient. They rely as much on powerful engines as they do on lift from the wings.
cool, thanks. I think I read an earlier incarnation of that article on the vbr encoding. He links to this c't article in German that looks like a nifty test. Problem is, I don't read (or speak) German and c't doesn't do English articles (what a shame). And of course it doesn't seem to go far enough, only comparing various bit rates with the mp3 format.
Ah, but in this case the 'sugar content' has many other implications. Bandwidth and file size are very important with portable devices and for anyone on a slow connection. Others archiving music collections might not care as much, at higher bitrates a codec might stand out better.
Certain codecs might work better with certain types of music or might sound better to people who prefer genres of music.
You do have a point though, some of the test I've seen online have focused on quantifiable measures of harmonic distortion, frequency response and such from various codecs and at various bitrates. While these kinds of tests do produce hard numbers to toss around, they ignore the point I think you were hitting on, they miss the final measure of the intended destination - the human ear.
They obviously didn't use very rigorous testing methods, the fact that the quotes from various testers named different file formats indicates that they knew the format as they were listening to it.
Combine that with no mention of the bitrates used and you essentially have a fluff piece.
I've only seen one test that might be called rigorous and that was a few years back. Does anyone know of quality listening comparisons between various codecs at various bitrates? Blind testing (Double Blind?), listeners with some musical background (musicians, recording engineers, even audiophiles), a wide range of music, maybe even different sound systems? I'm curious, almost (but not quite, I'm also lazy) enough to round up some friends and do my own sorry version of the test.
The PhoneCode project is important because it attempted to measure programmer productivity and code quality. While not nearly rigorous enough for more than a conversation, it makes for a very interesting conversation.
They're following Sun's lead in marketing Java the language and Java the platform independant bytecode interpreter and the Java libraries and Java applets and JavaScript and so on. It clouds the issues to the point of making it an all or nothing proposition for the PHBs ("We're using Java!" or "We're going with.NET") instead of using the best tool for the task.
It calls a few newsgroups 'web addresses', misleading at best.
What I find disturbing is that they will legally be able to pull regular pr0n off (or get the newsgroups shut down) but all the kiddie pr0n still remains (along with the associated newsgroups).
Actually, a great many of the X's you see on pavement are there as 'control points' for photogrammetry done from airplanes, not satellites. These are used for surveying and land use purposes, often stereo sets of photos are taken to determine elevations within about 1/2' ( 15cm ) and horizontal location to a few inches ( 10cm ). Those X's are surveyed with conventional equipment or high accuracy GPS (1cm) so that the relationship to the rest of the world can be established and so that errors due to the airplane's tilt, deviation from flightpath, etc. can be determined. Then maps are made from the stereo pairs that allow subdivisions and shopping malls to be built. Of course I'm simplifying the entire process but that will get you started.
I've taken a brief look at these and they appear to be wonderful very useful tools, aside from the patent stuff in question. I appears that IPIX is acting in an overbroad manner by supressing these.
We've always had it with Cox Cable, in theory at least.
Their $50/mo consumer plan used to be 7.5 or 10 GB, is now 15 GB I believe. Rate capped at 1.5 down, 128 up, used to be 512 down, 128 up (and back in the day was 512 down, 64 up).
Rarely enforced, as their page to check this is usually down. Typically you don't exceed this unless you're a warez/mp3 hound or running a server.
I don't complain though, even under the old rate caps. Cox treated it as just IP connection, with no attempts to regulate what you did with it. None of this @Home garbage of what is and what is not a server.
I just helped a 13 year old kid set up apache and a dynamic dns client on his computer, I'm pretty sure all he wants to do is share mp3s with his buddies.
Actually I'm hoping he'll develop an interest in more than that, but who knows?
In the meantime, he's happily telling his buddies about his new website or whatever.
That java visualization thingie is neat, but at first glance it tells me exactly what I already kinda know, that there is a core group of people that are social, that generally know each other and have lots more 'connections'. Then there are those on the fringes, that have less connections, that only have relationships with a few others.
Sounds just like real life, right? One thing about measuring this via weblinks and such is that you are going to get different results than real life social connections. We all know that some of us are great socializers online but not so good at it in person, we all know of some people that might be great in real life but haven't a clue how they would manifest that online. I think the intersting paper is where these two 'sets' overlap and don't overlap. Considering the study is on individuals at a college campus with geographic proximity, the results would differ from people in general.
I only skimmed the paper and didn't see too much, however, an interesting chart was the difference between Stanford and MIT, MIT had twice the percentage of people that linked to someone else at school and nearly three times the percentage of both 'who are linked to by at least one other person' and 'with links in both directions'. So MIT has more online culture? Again, I'd like to see the overlap with real life social interaction.
One last thought, isn't this a social engineer's dream? Use this data to exploit connections between people? Impersonate a friend of a friend? It could backfire, what if a friend of a friend measured via links and mailing list participation are actually close friends in real life...
the uninformed opinions on Slashdot and the profiteering lawyers disgust me.
So many posters don't mention the entire concept of land use rights that is a well established part of US property law. I'm no expert, but I've seen the effects of mining industry lobbying, who pay miniscule 1870 era pricing for mining rights on public land.
I've always understood the same to hold true for property, that different rights can be bought and sold for multiple uses of the land. Farming or grazing rights above ground, separate water rights, mineral rights, etc. I bet there is a well established body of law on this that clearly spells out what can be done by who.
And a bunch of people have suggested that fiber be run an inch below the surface. Who on the face of this planet wants their fiber an INCH underground where I can sever it digging with those plastic sporks from KFC!?!? Isn't it bad enough when the idiot with the backhoe severs a line a few feet down? I'm sorry, but I want my fiber deep deep down where it stays connected a few years at a time and where some idi0t who reads a slashdot story about the CIA splicing undersea fibers can't get to it to try to splice in to get his pr0n faster.
I've always heard that it only takes 10mA through the heart to kill, so by your calcs it could be dangerous. A quick search didn't turn anything up that would support either claim.
Without lots of knowledge and a little experience, high voltage can be tricky.
In the end though, I'd tend to agree, your monitor's tube is probably only going to give you a good zap, chances are you'll live to tell the story.
The supposed Macromedia Spam you link to is mostly 3rd party resellers, training companies and warez CD sellers sending spam, not Macromedia themselves. If that is the justification for a RBL block against Macromedia then MAPS truly has gotten out of hand.
Is that Avery complied with Microsoft's request. He might not have agreed with it but he did remove the offending code and binaries and moved on. Now he's on the opposite side of a similar issue and he can't get any kind of respect from the offender.
I think the people at Vidomi are a little jealous that one guy can code up a program that makes their product look like a toy. VirtualDub is like a Swiss Army Knife of video, it might be a little clumsy but it is small and it does everything you need it to.
but cross-platform development needs to forego this aspect of useability in favor of LCD functionality.
Don't we need to be worried about the LCDs functioning on the Macs? Wasn't there just a story about Macs only shipping with LCDs?
Oh, Least Common Denominator...
Chris Cothrun Curator of Chaos
in their business section...
on
Shared Source?
·
· Score: 5
Notice that these pages are in their business section, not MSDN?
Others have pointed out that this is indeed a PR/business strategy, not a technology one. MS is not arguing technology, code quality or any of such, they are pushing that the GPL is bad for business.
MSDN does give away great quantities of source, most of which is example code, not core implementations that can be improved.
Oh, and this is just my opinion, but www.shared-source.com needs some web design help. I think the PHB types that this should be aimed need eyecandy to feel good about the opinions stated. I'll try and throw something together this weekend but I'm sure there are more capable designers that could help.
1) Some webmasters go to great lengths to ensure their pages are spidered often, whether it is nefarious attempts to get first page listing or just attempts to keep the engines up to date with content. These people would be happy to run a client that kept their page listing fresh.
2) Count on it happening.
3) Userlands content management system could do better to recognize robots and present them with a narrower view of the site. I set a robot to pull down one of my editthispage sites and it found every version of each page that Frontier can generate, at least 20 versions of each page. But you're right, what if grub starts spidering every morning at 8am, we're going to have some bad net congenstion.
I would imagine some of this has been addressed but these are important issues.
Slashdot Mirror
"Someone might be overwhelmed by the amount of options." (P7)
"There are too many features and icons for sombody new." (P7)
"Some things were accessible that an entry-level user would not want or need, but other things were buried deep." (P11)
"If someone showed me it would be okay, but if I was a new employee without help, I wouldn't get it." (P6)
While that is what we all do, it is what the useability experts are paid to figure out, not the test subjects. We all think we know what a new user would do but we don't, we have to watch them.
While their opinions and insights are great, some nice hard metrics (time to accomplish a task, clicks / keystrokes required, number of false selections, etc) are also great and leave the UI designer with some goals to shoot for. (In typical slashdot fashion I've not finished reading the study in question so that may very well indeed be in the study).
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
VST support would probably be the easiest to achieve, as VST plugins are already cross platform (Mac and Win) although I don't know the details of how painful it is to port one. DXi would be a little more difficult but having seen Windows avi codecs interfaced to in Linux, ActiveX controls and the WINE project, I wouldn't be surprised to see wrappers for the Windows DXi plugins and VST instruments.
Oops, reading Ardour's features page bears my point about VST but introduces some IP stupidity on the part of Steinberg.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
With Kazaa being positioned as a good candidate for a napster replacement, quite a few people will end up with it. At least the mp3 sharing market has fragmented, otherwise we would have the successor to SamrtTags.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
While certain military and stunt aircraft can fly upside down, they are probably neither as stable nor as effecient. They rely as much on powerful engines as they do on lift from the wings.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
cool, thanks. I think I read an earlier incarnation of that article on the vbr encoding. He links to this c't article in German that looks like a nifty test. Problem is, I don't read (or speak) German and c't doesn't do English articles (what a shame). And of course it doesn't seem to go far enough, only comparing various bit rates with the mp3 format.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Certain codecs might work better with certain types of music or might sound better to people who prefer genres of music.
You do have a point though, some of the test I've seen online have focused on quantifiable measures of harmonic distortion, frequency response and such from various codecs and at various bitrates. While these kinds of tests do produce hard numbers to toss around, they ignore the point I think you were hitting on, they miss the final measure of the intended destination - the human ear.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Combine that with no mention of the bitrates used and you essentially have a fluff piece.
I've only seen one test that might be called rigorous and that was a few years back. Does anyone know of quality listening comparisons between various codecs at various bitrates? Blind testing (Double Blind?), listeners with some musical background (musicians, recording engineers, even audiophiles), a wide range of music, maybe even different sound systems? I'm curious, almost (but not quite, I'm also lazy) enough to round up some friends and do my own sorry version of the test.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
The PhoneCode project is important because it attempted to measure programmer productivity and code quality. While not nearly rigorous enough for more than a conversation, it makes for a very interesting conversation.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
They're following Sun's lead in marketing Java the language and Java the platform independant bytecode interpreter and the Java libraries and Java applets and JavaScript and so on. It clouds the issues to the point of making it an all or nothing proposition for the PHBs ("We're using Java!" or "We're going with .NET") instead of using the best tool for the task.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
It calls a few newsgroups 'web addresses', misleading at best.
What I find disturbing is that they will legally be able to pull regular pr0n off (or get the newsgroups shut down) but all the kiddie pr0n still remains (along with the associated newsgroups).
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Google Category
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
I've taken a brief look at these and they appear to be wonderful very useful tools, aside from the patent stuff in question. I appears that IPIX is acting in an overbroad manner by supressing these.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
PTVJ_EX.zip
PanoTools.tar.gz
PTVJ.zip
PTViewer.tar.gz
PtFAQ.html
StBp.JPG
PanoTools.zip
examplesWin.zip
examples.tar.gz
On my Gnutella and coming soon to a server near you.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Their $50/mo consumer plan used to be 7 .5 or 10 GB, is now 15 GB I believe. Rate capped at 1.5 down, 128 up, used to be 512 down, 128 up (and back in the day was 512 down, 64 up).
Rarely enforced, as their page to check this is usually down. Typically you don't exceed this unless you're a warez/mp3 hound or running a server.
I don't complain though, even under the old rate caps. Cox treated it as just IP connection, with no attempts to regulate what you did with it. None of this @Home garbage of what is and what is not a server.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
I just helped a 13 year old kid set up apache and a dynamic dns client on his computer, I'm pretty sure all he wants to do is share mp3s with his buddies.
Actually I'm hoping he'll develop an interest in more than that, but who knows?
In the meantime, he's happily telling his buddies about his new website or whatever.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
actually I get 500 Server Error Hard Transfer Limit for this user exceeded. It is off, due to a Slashdot effect of a different type.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Sounds just like real life, right? One thing about measuring this via weblinks and such is that you are going to get different results than real life social connections. We all know that some of us are great socializers online but not so good at it in person, we all know of some people that might be great in real life but haven't a clue how they would manifest that online. I think the intersting paper is where these two 'sets' overlap and don't overlap. Considering the study is on individuals at a college campus with geographic proximity, the results would differ from people in general.
I only skimmed the paper and didn't see too much, however, an interesting chart was the difference between Stanford and MIT, MIT had twice the percentage of people that linked to someone else at school and nearly three times the percentage of both 'who are linked to by at least one other person' and 'with links in both directions'. So MIT has more online culture? Again, I'd like to see the overlap with real life social interaction.
One last thought, isn't this a social engineer's dream? Use this data to exploit connections between people? Impersonate a friend of a friend? It could backfire, what if a friend of a friend measured via links and mailing list participation are actually close friends in real life...
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
So many posters don't mention the entire concept of land use rights that is a well established part of US property law. I'm no expert, but I've seen the effects of mining industry lobbying, who pay miniscule 1870 era pricing for mining rights on public land.
I've always understood the same to hold true for property, that different rights can be bought and sold for multiple uses of the land. Farming or grazing rights above ground, separate water rights, mineral rights, etc. I bet there is a well established body of law on this that clearly spells out what can be done by who.
And a bunch of people have suggested that fiber be run an inch below the surface. Who on the face of this planet wants their fiber an INCH underground where I can sever it digging with those plastic sporks from KFC!?!? Isn't it bad enough when the idiot with the backhoe severs a line a few feet down? I'm sorry, but I want my fiber deep deep down where it stays connected a few years at a time and where some idi0t who reads a slashdot story about the CIA splicing undersea fibers can't get to it to try to splice in to get his pr0n faster.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Without lots of knowledge and a little experience, high voltage can be tricky.
In the end though, I'd tend to agree, your monitor's tube is probably only going to give you a good zap, chances are you'll live to tell the story.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
The supposed Macromedia Spam you link to is mostly 3rd party resellers, training companies and warez CD sellers sending spam, not Macromedia themselves. If that is the justification for a RBL block against Macromedia then MAPS truly has gotten out of hand.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
I think the people at Vidomi are a little jealous that one guy can code up a program that makes their product look like a toy. VirtualDub is like a Swiss Army Knife of video, it might be a little clumsy but it is small and it does everything you need it to.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Don't we need to be worried about the LCDs functioning on the Macs? Wasn't there just a story about Macs only shipping with LCDs?
Oh, Least Common Denominator...
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Others have pointed out that this is indeed a PR/business strategy, not a technology one. MS is not arguing technology, code quality or any of such, they are pushing that the GPL is bad for business.
MSDN does give away great quantities of source, most of which is example code, not core implementations that can be improved.
Oh, and this is just my opinion, but www.shared-source.com needs some web design help. I think the PHB types that this should be aimed need eyecandy to feel good about the opinions stated. I'll try and throw something together this weekend but I'm sure there are more capable designers that could help.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
1) Some webmasters go to great lengths to ensure their pages are spidered often, whether it is nefarious attempts to get first page listing or just attempts to keep the engines up to date with content. These people would be happy to run a client that kept their page listing fresh.
2) Count on it happening.
3) Userlands content management system could do better to recognize robots and present them with a narrower view of the site. I set a robot to pull down one of my editthispage sites and it found every version of each page that Frontier can generate, at least 20 versions of each page. But you're right, what if grub starts spidering every morning at 8am, we're going to have some bad net congenstion.
I would imagine some of this has been addressed but these are important issues.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
So if what you say is true, Gracenote hasn't a gangrene infected legal leg to stand on.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos