Interesting set of examples. All I would say quite exotic and unlikely to matter to the kind of people who would buy an ultraportable. Certain small niches would use each, but they would generally get a more standard laptop for that.
Isn't there still an issue that cells coming from existing body cells "know" they are "Nth" generation and hence already old - ie. you can't regrow an old persons cells like this?
We all understand or can imagine the ridiculous legal situations and vast sums paid to lawyers renegotiating them all. But we don't care. We just want to buy the music. Please please may we give you money Sony?
They also missed the most obvious problem with many of the keyboards - lack of 4 separate cursor keys. That was the thing that bothered me the most about the C64 keyboard...
So there is very little music in movies then? Well actually music is one huge component of movies that can make the difference between average and great. So I think it's pretty important to have good sound reproduction for movies too.
Thanks for the link, these guys look a lot more knowledgable. And despite your comment about English it seems to be more correct than the hothardware one. I'm amazed they include a detailed delay analysis, which is a huge issue in games but seems not to be noticed by most reviewers.
I think there is quite strong evidence that consumer electronics companies are terrible at this. They seem to let their engineers and graphic designers have their way, and actual usability is a distant third.
This is one reason why Apple has taken it all by storm - they actually care about simplicity and usability (without being too patronising).
First, I should clarify I'm not talking about all bugs. I agree that the user should supply information on how they get the bug to happen, and hopefully in many cases the developer can reproduce that.
But in some cases it is incredibly difficult to reproduce the problem even if the user tells you exactly what they are doing. This is sometimes the case for timing, system setup, or server-related issues. Therefore with all the will in the world you still won't be able to reproduce it as a developer. I have seen this on several Mozilla bugs.
Secondly, this is not theoritical for me. In our business, we have problems that we cannot reproduce *all the time* because we are dealing with expensive third-party devices that we can't reasonably obtain every variant of. Therefore, we DO work out many problems from the detailed logs our system writes. And yes, we still ask the user to supply some information, and yes sometimes it is difficult to get them to provide the logs, and yes the logs are huge (100MB is typical) and sometimes we have to go back and put additional logging in and get the customer to try again. But nevertheless we solve many problems this way.
Sure its a bother, but developers can solve the problems this way if they have enough motivation, and sometimes theres no other option.
Have the application write trace log files. Plug in an engine analyser and it will likely tell them what the problem is.
Of course, this may not solve the whole issue but it's common enough to instrument your code/product such that problems can be detected without the users help.
Still using Windows 2000 here, even for games, however new games no longer "support" it. Usually its for some absurd reason like some DLL isn't allowed on Windows 2000 (Xinput ?). Nevertheless, as I expected I am being forced to upgrade if I want to use new software. Same old story. Nothing wrong with the OS but it falls out of favour and becomes impractical.
Thanks for the summary. So many people rant on about Aero and other crap which power users will disable or ignore, and omit the small but nice things.
Other small but nice improvements that don't get often mentioned, but fix long-standing pains in Windows:
- The users folders are now simply c:\users\name instead of "Documents and settings" - option for a default shutdown option (really, how often does your last shutdown reflect what you want to do this time?). Making sepearate buttons instead of a fiddly dropdown would be even better, but... - recycle bin's stupid percentage setting has been replaced with a MB setting. You don't have to allocate a minimum 1% (5GB on a 500GB drive!).
But yes, the lost performance and incompatibility with drivers just makes it too annoying to consider for me.
Yes, but times are changing. Even if it's exactly the same thing, people are no longer so excited about the latest and greatest PC. Instead, the PC has become a fairly standard tool that is expected to work a certain way and there's no point throwing thousands of dollars at it just to be "up to date".
sites that offer a subscription service to avoid ads just make me turn Adblock on.
What?! Why? If they offer you an ethical way to remove ads and provide them with payment for the service, you specifically try to avoid using it? Makes no (ethical) sense.
They really need to make up their mind. Either they're selling us a license to their content (in which case the media should be irrelevant) OR they should be charging us for a physical product
They HAVE made up their mind: they want to sell something which is both! You get a license to the content, on this particular physical disc - that's it. Nothing mysterious or contradictory about it, they just want to sell us the the most restricted item possible.
One of the management theories explains this. Money is a factor up to a certain point - everyone has a limit to what they consider enough money - and after that it doesn't affect motivation much.
Normally the open plan offices translate into qualitative benefits in the company (people are happier, more collaborative, less secretive etc...).
Oh really? And that applies to software development as well does it? And it means more productivity as well, right - of course many people are happy to sit in a big open office and chat all day, but do they get more work done?
Joelbelieves it's all rubbish and private offices are much more productive. Personally, I have seen exactly the same thing. When I started at my current job we all were in one room. It was very sociable and we all agreed on what to do... for every. Single. Task. Amazingly our boss noticed this and deliberately gave us separate offices, and this seems a lot better. You can still go and chat to people, but you don't involve everyone just to talk to one guy, and when people need to concentrate they can.
Frankly, those studies are either not applicable or just missing the point.
change in allele frequency in a population over time
I'm not disputing this, but allele is such a vague and technical term that this sentence means nothing to most people. (And various results from Google give a variety of vague and/or technical definitions) Wouldn't it be a lot more intuitive as an approximation to say "change in DNA makeup in a population over time"? Most people would have a basic understanding of what this means.
That's hilarious! Blaming environmentalists for the Space Shuttle! I think I can see the thought process... "space shuttle bad... reusable... sounds like hippies... the hippies made the space shuttle!". Knee connected directly to mouth?
The drivers for making a reusable space launcher were economic, engineering idealism, the desire for a big fancy "proper" spaceship, and in the background a large expensive project to fund lots of aerospace work. I doubt environmental considerations were even mentioned except in an offhand manner after some PR person thought of it.
Kudos. A much more balanced and to-the-point summary. I don't know about the Ascend Accoustics speakers as they seem a bit specific and perhaps hard to get for some people. BUt especially, pointing people to Projector Central and Remote Central is the best advice around, as those guys are real experts and do thorough reviews.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting set of examples. All I would say quite exotic and unlikely to matter to the kind of people who would buy an ultraportable. Certain small niches would use each, but they would generally get a more standard laptop for that.
... OK one.
Not to mention that no such discrete ExpresssCard video cards exist, and most likely not the RAID either. Hm
http://www.expresscard.org/web/do/pub/product/view?id=132
Isn't there still an issue that cells coming from existing body cells "know" they are "Nth" generation and hence already old - ie. you can't regrow an old persons cells like this?
We all understand or can imagine the ridiculous legal situations and vast sums paid to lawyers renegotiating them all. But we don't care. We just want to buy the music. Please please may we give you money Sony?
They also missed the most obvious problem with many of the keyboards - lack of 4 separate cursor keys. That was the thing that bothered me the most about the C64 keyboard...
Laptops are (obviously) not meant for this. Real monitors are better. I have a Dell 24" and use it all the time in portrait mode with no problem.
The problem is that for the cost of a single shuttle maintenance mission to Hubble you could build and launch a new telescope.
So there is very little music in movies then?
Well actually music is one huge component of movies that can make the difference between average and great. So I think it's pretty important to have good sound reproduction for movies too.
Thanks for the link, these guys look a lot more knowledgable. And despite your comment about English it seems to be more correct than the hothardware one. I'm amazed they include a detailed delay analysis, which is a huge issue in games but seems not to be noticed by most reviewers.
I think there is quite strong evidence that consumer electronics companies are terrible at this. They seem to let their engineers and graphic designers have their way, and actual usability is a distant third.
This is one reason why Apple has taken it all by storm - they actually care about simplicity and usability (without being too patronising).
First, I should clarify I'm not talking about all bugs. I agree that the user should supply information on how they get the bug to happen, and hopefully in many cases the developer can reproduce that.
But in some cases it is incredibly difficult to reproduce the problem even if the user tells you exactly what they are doing. This is sometimes the case for timing, system setup, or server-related issues. Therefore with all the will in the world you still won't be able to reproduce it as a developer. I have seen this on several Mozilla bugs.
Secondly, this is not theoritical for me. In our business, we have problems that we cannot reproduce *all the time* because we are dealing with expensive third-party devices that we can't reasonably obtain every variant of.
Therefore, we DO work out many problems from the detailed logs our system writes. And yes, we still ask the user to supply some information, and yes sometimes it is difficult to get them to provide the logs, and yes the logs are huge (100MB is typical) and sometimes we have to go back and put additional logging in and get the customer to try again. But nevertheless we solve many problems this way.
Sure its a bother, but developers can solve the problems this way if they have enough motivation, and sometimes theres no other option.
Have the application write trace log files.
Plug in an engine analyser and it will likely tell them what the problem is.
Of course, this may not solve the whole issue but it's common enough to instrument your code/product such that problems can be detected without the users help.
having a default web browser that doesn't run code written in C++
Safari/Konquerer is written in C++ (or perhaps C) is it not?
Yeah, so I heard, but apparently its not that simple for Unreal Tournament 3, the one I want to play....
Still using Windows 2000 here, even for games, however new games no longer "support" it. Usually its for some absurd reason like some DLL isn't allowed on Windows 2000 (Xinput ?).
Nevertheless, as I expected I am being forced to upgrade if I want to use new software. Same old story. Nothing wrong with the OS but it falls out of favour and becomes impractical.
Thanks for the summary. So many people rant on about Aero and other crap which power users will disable or ignore, and omit the small but nice things.
Other small but nice improvements that don't get often mentioned, but fix long-standing pains in Windows:
- The users folders are now simply c:\users\name instead of "Documents and settings"
- option for a default shutdown option (really, how often does your last shutdown reflect what you want to do this time?). Making sepearate buttons instead of a fiddly dropdown would be even better, but...
- recycle bin's stupid percentage setting has been replaced with a MB setting. You don't have to allocate a minimum 1% (5GB on a 500GB drive!).
But yes, the lost performance and incompatibility with drivers just makes it too annoying to consider for me.
Yes, but times are changing. Even if it's exactly the same thing, people are no longer so excited about the latest and greatest PC. Instead, the PC has become a fairly standard tool that is expected to work a certain way and there's no point throwing thousands of dollars at it just to be "up to date".
sites that offer a subscription service to avoid ads just make me turn Adblock on.
What?! Why? If they offer you an ethical way to remove ads and provide them with payment for the service, you specifically try to avoid using it? Makes no (ethical) sense.
They really need to make up their mind. Either they're selling us a license to their content (in which case the media should be irrelevant) OR they should be charging us for a physical product
They HAVE made up their mind: they want to sell something which is both! You get a license to the content, on this particular physical disc - that's it. Nothing mysterious or contradictory about it, they just want to sell us the the most restricted item possible.
One of the management theories explains this. Money is a factor up to a certain point - everyone has a limit to what they consider enough money - and after that it doesn't affect motivation much.
Normally the open plan offices translate into qualitative benefits in the company (people are happier, more collaborative, less secretive etc...).
... for every. Single. Task. Amazingly our boss noticed this and deliberately gave us separate offices, and this seems a lot better. You can still go and chat to people, but you don't involve everyone just to talk to one guy, and when people need to concentrate they can.
Oh really? And that applies to software development as well does it? And it means more productivity as well, right - of course many people are happy to sit in a big open office and chat all day, but do they get more work done?
Joel believes it's all rubbish and private offices are much more productive. Personally, I have seen exactly the same thing. When I started at my current job we all were in one room. It was very sociable and we all agreed on what to do
Frankly, those studies are either not applicable or just missing the point.
change in allele frequency in a population over time
I'm not disputing this, but allele is such a vague and technical term that this sentence means nothing to most people. (And various results from Google give a variety of vague and/or technical definitions) Wouldn't it be a lot more intuitive as an approximation to say "change in DNA makeup in a population over time"? Most people would have a basic understanding of what this means.
That's hilarious! Blaming environmentalists for the Space Shuttle! I think I can see the thought process ... "space shuttle bad... reusable... sounds like hippies... the hippies made the space shuttle!". Knee connected directly to mouth?
The drivers for making a reusable space launcher were economic, engineering idealism, the desire for a big fancy "proper" spaceship, and in the background a large expensive project to fund lots of aerospace work. I doubt environmental considerations were even mentioned except in an offhand manner after some PR person thought of it.
Do you mean "modal" or "un-movable"? They are separate things...
Yeah, and surprisingly entertaining! Those were the only text books I actually got some enjoyment out of reading.
Kudos. A much more balanced and to-the-point summary. I don't know about the Ascend Accoustics speakers as they seem a bit specific and perhaps hard to get for some people. BUt especially, pointing people to Projector Central and Remote Central is the best advice around, as those guys are real experts and do thorough reviews.