I have this theory that programmers who write software should have to do in person tech support for that demographic for at least a year or so. It really opens your eyes as to what users are actually doing, why they're doing it (if you can get them to be frank with you), what they like, what they don't, what works, and what doesn't.
It makes some decisions about how to do things a whole lot easier...
Same here. I miss having access to Sun boxes. Linux is nice and I use it at home, but it always just kind of felt... less than adequate for some things. just my opinion.
I keep getting this answer. Keep in mind that I do agree with it. Renaming the shortcut does work.
However, there's a problem with this. What about the people that don't have someone to do that for them be it relative or IT person? The ones that just buy a Dell, Gateway, etc and go from there. These are the same types of people that don't apply patches because they either don't know about them or don't care because the computer "just works" the way that it is.
And the people you rename it for can't tell their friends about the program because they now have absolutely NO idea of what it's name is because the shortcut is labeled "The Web" so that they know what it does.
It's sort of a no win situation...
Until you get to the "problem" people, you're still going to have a problem.
Outlook... gee couldn't be because it's bundled with a software package called "Office" could it? Plus the fact that most people, when they call tech support for their isps get walked through how to set up and use it if they don't know already.
You've got two options. A whole boatload of marketing AND a name that makes sense or just a whole boatlaod of marketing.
I'll let you guess as to which one works best in the realm of things like programs.
amazon, google, msn, yahoo, etc are all web pages. something you can easily bookmark or even set as your home page. Programs are a whole different story. why should I run this firefox thing? I don't know what it is... it might be a virus...
ipod - advertised beyond belief. ford focus - um... ford is a car company. nuff said. google - that's been around for just a wee bit of time and has seen both advertising, a whole *lot* of media attention and a lot of word of mouth (espeically on frequently traveld sites).
Either they get a *huge* advertising campaign going and keep it going, get the name plastered over everything in another manner, or change the name to something that makes sense to "normal" people. If they haven't heard of it, and the name gives no indication of what it does, why would they possibly want it.
When? Okay, here's the rundown of your average just-wants-to-look-at-the-interweb-and-get-email user (kind of like my grandma. This isn't a troll, it's a serious example)
Well, it's called "Internet Explorer". It's got the keyword - internet. That's what they're looking for. How in the nine hells are they supposed to know what "Firefox" is (most of them do not read the times). Firefox is not an intuitive name. It gives the average person absolutely no idea what it does by just looking at what the name is.
People *MIGHT* start using something other than IE when this stops being the case. Most people want something they can understand. They don't want to feel stupid by having no idea what to do or what tools to use in order to do it.
Not to mention the fact that they all KNOW about Microsoft. They know the name. They know it's been around for quite a while. Therefore it must be good, right? (not my opinion, but it is the view of people that I have known)
Just my opinion as a tech with "normal" relatives and clients.
Wow. Aparently the AC that responded to you *really* doesn't like math heh.
Back on topic, though, I agree with the opinion that you have to be exposed to different fields than just your own (wether you think they are related or not). In fact, a lot of the things most people don't see as being related to their field are often the most useful because they give you insight into different ways to look at things.
Keep in mind though that the person saying this graduated with a degree in CS and has way too many hobbies and interests (language, philosophy from several periods and regions, history, anthro, blacksmithing, etc etc - most of which led to me being offered side projects by profs that I didn't have the time to pursue due to also working my way through college). I also trained martially from the time I was a kid and even helped teach fencing while in college as a way to both feel productive and work my way through some personal problems (relationship changes sometimes suck).
Having said that, one of the things that the people I have worked with have commented on and enjoyed is the fact that I tend to think "outside the box" and relate to other cultures rather well (It has been my pleasure to know a lot of people from many different parts of the world. Amusingly enough, the ones from Asia tend to get me to help them with their English. In return, I pick up more of their language - be it Chinese, Japanese, etc). Not to mention the fact that I can speak "normal person" as one of my co-workers called it.
It's not just what you know, but how you look at the things that you *don't* know...
I'm an 80's (missed the 70's by a few months) kid too, but I remember the plastic ones in the 80's and early 90's. Don't think I've seen any but the foam ones in the last few years though. Pondered getting a few for the office so my fellow techs could blow off a little steam but decided against it.
I still wonder why most people see the two options of creation and evolution as mutually exclusive when really they aren't.
Okay, we've seen that evolution works in the mid to semi long term (pepper moths come to mind off the top of my head). However, everything comming together juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust right in just the right proportions to start everything from basic proteins seems a bit remote to me. granted, it's possible, just not that likely, especially with the complexity that things have developed. It all kind of lends credibility to the possibility of an at least passive guiding force somewhere along the line if not the entire way.
The point is that it's not just an XOR problem. Both could be true at the same time. It could have started from *some* point and then gone on from there.
And just for the record, I'm Taoist, so I really don't have the stigmata of feeling I have to believe in creationism (or complete evolution for that matter). I simply see posibilities...
I agree. I still liked Ann Freter's story about how you deal with the geese that South Americans use as guard animals. (distract the goose with one hand and grab it by the neck and wing when it tries to bite. Toss the damned thing as far as you can and then work while it fumes for a few minutes. Hopefully you only have to repeat this once or twice for a quick check.)
She's one of the people who developed a method for dating cultural sites by measuring the amount of water lost by obsidion tools found at the site.
I loved her class. It was probably one of the most enjoyable classes I got a chance to take.
I am not their type however. The only instructor in that dept that I was of the appropriate type for was a rather attractive TA my frosh year. I was taken at the time, so she was disappointed.
As far as the profs in my dept went, most of them really just genuinely cared to get to know their students (especially the ones who actually knew what they were doing). It was probably one of the closest knit departments on the campus. The department chair even went so far as to say it was alright to call him at home (even if it was at three in the morning) if something happened in the lab (locked out, etc) or if something bad happened to us that might impact our classes.
Most of the really difficult classes that I had to take were in the last two years of being an undergrad. The first part of my undergrad career was spent working through the basics and most of the electives.
I think the only real fluff class I had the last year at my college was a linguistics class because I needed one more credit hour in one of the electives. The class was a piece of cake - mostly because language design was one of my concentrations, so it was just kind of a fun thing to do.
The teacher found out what my major was (her interest being piqued by the fact that my assignments were done 15 minutes into the class) and ended up asking me to make a relatively simple language parser because she was curious as to how it worked in programming.
That was probably one of the most enjoyable classes I had the entire time I was at college just because of the novelty factor. As a general rule, at my university at least, the last couple of years were anything but easy for the CS majors.
Frighteningly enough, the profs who most closely met the "lock yourself in the room and have no social contact" at my uni tended to be the ones in the history dept. There were a couple of cool ones, but most of them had little in the way of social skills. (The anthro profs were a *whole* other story. They were great fun with senses of humor almost as weird as mine, but then anthro has interested me since I've been a kid.)
Most of the engineering and CS profs I knew were cool (there were exceptions). The language profs were an absolute riot (even if the insane German wiped the floor with me in pool. Yes, I have this thing with pool. I spent several years as a kid living over a game room). The philosophy profs tended to be social creatures, as were most of the profs in the other departments that I dealt with (in academic, social, and professional capacities).
That's weird. Most of the CS profs I had classes with were cool (most of them were married, but a couple of them were still dating). However, you have to consider that most of them were less than 35 or 40.
The CS profs were cool enough that I regularly shot pool with 3 of them early friday night (loosing team paid for the beer) before I went uptown to party with my classmates. The looks on the faces of the underclassmen when the chair of our dept walks up to me and asks if I'm shooting pool with them that evening were hilarious.
They even came to most of the "professional" house parties that we threw. It was really weird the first time I was at one of the house parties. I'm chatting with someone and all of a sudden my prof walks in. I nearly choked on my jello shot. He just came over, said hi, and then went over to get a couple of jello shots himself. It was also really weird the first few times I ran into one of them in the bars and they bought me a drink.
Just goes to show you that not all profs lack social skills.
Because, for whatever reason, most people specifically ask for doc and xls files. They tend to get snippy when you send them pdfs.
When dealing with buisnesses that you wish to continue dealing with in a positive manner (be it for commerce, looking for a job, or any other reason), you try not to do things to annoy them overmuch. Just shrug, show them what they want to see while you do what needs to be done in the background. Most of them will be happy as long as they get the results that they wanted and what *they* see is what they expected to (there are exceptions to this, but as a general rule it's not a bad guideline).
Thinking for yourself is great. However, just thinking things though without really living, taking chances, and following your heart on occasion leads to a rather empty life in my opinion. Life is more than just books and cerebral activities.
Life can't just be thought through. It also has to be felt and experienced. Does it occasionally hurt? yes. Is it occasionally frightening? oh yeah. Is it worth it? I think so...
Where you go with it and what you do is up to you. The point is that life is about more than just seeing the downside to the rest of the world as an excuse to not participate.
To quote a friend of mine talking about his now s/o who used to basically lock herself away in order to "think her way through life" - "You're drawing breath, but you aren't really alive."
Expoldes randomly? Can I send one of those as a gift to my old bosss? It would allow the result to look more like an accident that say, grounding a tesla coil to his office chair...
I think my favorite here so far as been a locally made oatmeal vanilla stout. Insanely great stuff. As for the rest of it, I usually only do the micro brews if I drink it at all.
To be honest, I generally perfer a good cider to beer because the beer here is horrid.
I didn't used to be that outgoing until I started getting dragged out by a couple of girls that I knew in jr high.
I completely understand grinning like an idiot on annoying the football coach. The fact that I chose to help build a drama club was just too much for them after they were rejected, I think...
I also agree with the wannabe geeks. I grew up being a science geek (chem and archeology, actually), started in on computers at about age 10 when I got tossed into the talented and gifted section, got my first computer with a hard drive at 14 (had one before that, but this was the first one I ever had with a hard drive), and modded the living hell out of it over the next few years because I couldn't afford to buy a new one.
As far as the army jacket goes, didn't do that. I was goth, though. Still am.
I was a geek a long time before I was outgoing. Now I'm both and rather enjoy it at times.
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I have this theory that programmers who write software should have to do in person tech support for that demographic for at least a year or so. It really opens your eyes as to what users are actually doing, why they're doing it (if you can get them to be frank with you), what they like, what they don't, what works, and what doesn't.
It makes some decisions about how to do things a whole lot easier...
Same here. And it looks like we both agree with Penn of Penn&Teller
Same here. I miss having access to Sun boxes. Linux is nice and I use it at home, but it always just kind of felt... less than adequate for some things. just my opinion.
The first thing that came to mind with me was Atari, but that's largely because I was discussing games with a friend at the time. =]
I keep getting this answer. Keep in mind that I do agree with it. Renaming the shortcut does work.
However, there's a problem with this. What about the people that don't have someone to do that for them be it relative or IT person? The ones that just buy a Dell, Gateway, etc and go from there. These are the same types of people that don't apply patches because they either don't know about them or don't care because the computer "just works" the way that it is.
And the people you rename it for can't tell their friends about the program because they now have absolutely NO idea of what it's name is because the shortcut is labeled "The Web" so that they know what it does.
It's sort of a no win situation...
Until you get to the "problem" people, you're still going to have a problem.
Outlook... gee couldn't be because it's bundled with a software package called "Office" could it? Plus the fact that most people, when they call tech support for their isps get walked through how to set up and use it if they don't know already.
You've got two options. A whole boatload of marketing AND a name that makes sense or just a whole boatlaod of marketing.
I'll let you guess as to which one works best in the realm of things like programs.
amazon, google, msn, yahoo, etc are all web pages. something you can easily bookmark or even set as your home page. Programs are a whole different story. why should I run this firefox thing? I don't know what it is... it might be a virus...
ipod - advertised beyond belief.
ford focus - um... ford is a car company. nuff said.
google - that's been around for just a wee bit of time and has seen both advertising, a whole *lot* of media attention and a lot of word of mouth (espeically on frequently traveld sites).
Either they get a *huge* advertising campaign going and keep it going, get the name plastered over everything in another manner, or change the name to something that makes sense to "normal" people. If they haven't heard of it, and the name gives no indication of what it does, why would they possibly want it.
When? Okay, here's the rundown of your average just-wants-to-look-at-the-interweb-and-get-email user (kind of like my grandma. This isn't a troll, it's a serious example)
Well, it's called "Internet Explorer". It's got the keyword - internet. That's what they're looking for. How in the nine hells are they supposed to know what "Firefox" is (most of them do not read the times). Firefox is not an intuitive name. It gives the average person absolutely no idea what it does by just looking at what the name is.
People *MIGHT* start using something other than IE when this stops being the case. Most people want something they can understand. They don't want to feel stupid by having no idea what to do or what tools to use in order to do it.
Not to mention the fact that they all KNOW about Microsoft. They know the name. They know it's been around for quite a while. Therefore it must be good, right? (not my opinion, but it is the view of people that I have known)
Just my opinion as a tech with "normal" relatives and clients.
Wow. Aparently the AC that responded to you *really* doesn't like math heh.
Back on topic, though, I agree with the opinion that you have to be exposed to different fields than just your own (wether you think they are related or not). In fact, a lot of the things most people don't see as being related to their field are often the most useful because they give you insight into different ways to look at things.
Keep in mind though that the person saying this graduated with a degree in CS and has way too many hobbies and interests (language, philosophy from several periods and regions, history, anthro, blacksmithing, etc etc - most of which led to me being offered side projects by profs that I didn't have the time to pursue due to also working my way through college). I also trained martially from the time I was a kid and even helped teach fencing while in college as a way to both feel productive and work my way through some personal problems (relationship changes sometimes suck).
Having said that, one of the things that the people I have worked with have commented on and enjoyed is the fact that I tend to think "outside the box" and relate to other cultures rather well (It has been my pleasure to know a lot of people from many different parts of the world. Amusingly enough, the ones from Asia tend to get me to help them with their English. In return, I pick up more of their language - be it Chinese, Japanese, etc). Not to mention the fact that I can speak "normal person" as one of my co-workers called it.
It's not just what you know, but how you look at the things that you *don't* know...
What about Asia Carrera? The thought of a porn star that's in Mensa is just kind of weird...
I'm an 80's (missed the 70's by a few months) kid too, but I remember the plastic ones in the 80's and early 90's. Don't think I've seen any but the foam ones in the last few years though. Pondered getting a few for the office so my fellow techs could blow off a little steam but decided against it.
I still wonder why most people see the two options of creation and evolution as mutually exclusive when really they aren't.
Okay, we've seen that evolution works in the mid to semi long term (pepper moths come to mind off the top of my head). However, everything comming together juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust right in just the right proportions to start everything from basic proteins seems a bit remote to me. granted, it's possible, just not that likely, especially with the complexity that things have developed. It all kind of lends credibility to the possibility of an at least passive guiding force somewhere along the line if not the entire way.
The point is that it's not just an XOR problem. Both could be true at the same time. It could have started from *some* point and then gone on from there.
And just for the record, I'm Taoist, so I really don't have the stigmata of feeling I have to believe in creationism (or complete evolution for that matter). I simply see posibilities...
I agree. I still liked Ann Freter's story about how you deal with the geese that South Americans use as guard animals. (distract the goose with one hand and grab it by the neck and wing when it tries to bite. Toss the damned thing as far as you can and then work while it fumes for a few minutes. Hopefully you only have to repeat this once or twice for a quick check.)
She's one of the people who developed a method for dating cultural sites by measuring the amount of water lost by obsidion tools found at the site.
I loved her class. It was probably one of the most enjoyable classes I got a chance to take.
Some of them do, yes. Not all of them, however.
I am not their type however. The only instructor in that dept that I was of the appropriate type for was a rather attractive TA my frosh year. I was taken at the time, so she was disappointed.
As far as the profs in my dept went, most of them really just genuinely cared to get to know their students (especially the ones who actually knew what they were doing). It was probably one of the closest knit departments on the campus. The department chair even went so far as to say it was alright to call him at home (even if it was at three in the morning) if something happened in the lab (locked out, etc) or if something bad happened to us that might impact our classes.
Most of the really difficult classes that I had to take were in the last two years of being an undergrad. The first part of my undergrad career was spent working through the basics and most of the electives.
I think the only real fluff class I had the last year at my college was a linguistics class because I needed one more credit hour in one of the electives. The class was a piece of cake - mostly because language design was one of my concentrations, so it was just kind of a fun thing to do.
The teacher found out what my major was (her interest being piqued by the fact that my assignments were done 15 minutes into the class) and ended up asking me to make a relatively simple language parser because she was curious as to how it worked in programming.
That was probably one of the most enjoyable classes I had the entire time I was at college just because of the novelty factor. As a general rule, at my university at least, the last couple of years were anything but easy for the CS majors.
Frighteningly enough, the profs who most closely met the "lock yourself in the room and have no social contact" at my uni tended to be the ones in the history dept. There were a couple of cool ones, but most of them had little in the way of social skills. (The anthro profs were a *whole* other story. They were great fun with senses of humor almost as weird as mine, but then anthro has interested me since I've been a kid.)
Most of the engineering and CS profs I knew were cool (there were exceptions). The language profs were an absolute riot (even if the insane German wiped the floor with me in pool. Yes, I have this thing with pool. I spent several years as a kid living over a game room). The philosophy profs tended to be social creatures, as were most of the profs in the other departments that I dealt with (in academic, social, and professional capacities).
That's weird. Most of the CS profs I had classes with were cool (most of them were married, but a couple of them were still dating). However, you have to consider that most of them were less than 35 or 40.
The CS profs were cool enough that I regularly shot pool with 3 of them early friday night (loosing team paid for the beer) before I went uptown to party with my classmates. The looks on the faces of the underclassmen when the chair of our dept walks up to me and asks if I'm shooting pool with them that evening were hilarious.
They even came to most of the "professional" house parties that we threw. It was really weird the first time I was at one of the house parties. I'm chatting with someone and all of a sudden my prof walks in. I nearly choked on my jello shot. He just came over, said hi, and then went over to get a couple of jello shots himself. It was also really weird the first few times I ran into one of them in the bars and they bought me a drink.
Just goes to show you that not all profs lack social skills.
I was watching CNN a week ago or so, as they were showing part of one of his speaches. He made an interesting Freudian slip.
"we are a large company..er country..." - George W Bush
I thought it summed up his thoughts on things nicely - especially with the current "focus on the short term profits" approach of so many buisnesses.
I'm still waiting for ordinary buisness users. They all seem pretty bizare to me.
Because, for whatever reason, most people specifically ask for doc and xls files. They tend to get snippy when you send them pdfs.
When dealing with buisnesses that you wish to continue dealing with in a positive manner (be it for commerce, looking for a job, or any other reason), you try not to do things to annoy them overmuch. Just shrug, show them what they want to see while you do what needs to be done in the background. Most of them will be happy as long as they get the results that they wanted and what *they* see is what they expected to (there are exceptions to this, but as a general rule it's not a bad guideline).
Thinking for yourself is great. However, just thinking things though without really living, taking chances, and following your heart on occasion leads to a rather empty life in my opinion. Life is more than just books and cerebral activities.
Life can't just be thought through. It also has to be felt and experienced. Does it occasionally hurt? yes. Is it occasionally frightening? oh yeah. Is it worth it? I think so...
Where you go with it and what you do is up to you. The point is that life is about more than just seeing the downside to the rest of the world as an excuse to not participate.
To quote a friend of mine talking about his now s/o who used to basically lock herself away in order to "think her way through life" - "You're drawing breath, but you aren't really alive."
Expoldes randomly? Can I send one of those as a gift to my old bosss? It would allow the result to look more like an accident that say, grounding a tesla coil to his office chair...
Have to agree on the American "beer".
I think my favorite here so far as been a locally made oatmeal vanilla stout. Insanely great stuff. As for the rest of it, I usually only do the micro brews if I drink it at all.
To be honest, I generally perfer a good cider to beer because the beer here is horrid.
I didn't used to be that outgoing until I started getting dragged out by a couple of girls that I knew in jr high.
I completely understand grinning like an idiot on annoying the football coach. The fact that I chose to help build a drama club was just too much for them after they were rejected, I think...
I also agree with the wannabe geeks. I grew up being a science geek (chem and archeology, actually), started in on computers at about age 10 when I got tossed into the talented and gifted section, got my first computer with a hard drive at 14 (had one before that, but this was the first one I ever had with a hard drive), and modded the living hell out of it over the next few years because I couldn't afford to buy a new one.
As far as the army jacket goes, didn't do that. I was goth, though. Still am.
I was a geek a long time before I was outgoing. Now I'm both and rather enjoy it at times.