I was thinking Rosetta as well. The fact that the first and last sections share the same number of lines might indicate that they contain the same data described in different ways. Since all the sections vary in width, it seems that line count / number is somehow important, or a clue.
Interesting, all those hex digits correspond to things we're given in the center section. Also notice that everything in the center section is a valid hex digit? There are a few missing, namely A and 1, which gives a clue that the S in the 3 "letter" code could be either of those.
Know the author Ed Tufte.
Know what HCI stands for.
Know your audience and let them evaluate Throwaway Prototypes.
Great starting points here. The audience one is a massive factor.
For instance, are your programs for designers, artists, programmers, office workers, etc? Different groups tend to use applications in different ways. They've also been exposed to different styles of UI design. An important factor is often not to "surprise" your audience with some neat new UI trick *cough* Office 2007 Ribbon *cough* because it tends to frustrate them if it is different then what they're used to in similar applications. However, there are times when this is acceptable - I'll admit, once you get used to it, the Ribbon is can be rather handy.
Your audience is also important in how they use the application in their workflow. If you don't know how they work with the app, you'll be shooting in the dark as to what it should look like and how useful it will be to them. I've been given several projects where I get specs and a general idea of what the app is used for, and I end up going straight to the people that -actually- use it and asking them what they need it to do. The end result is much better (for the users) then what they would have had if I had just gone straight from the specs. Throwaway prototypes are -very- useful for this, and continued development.
Your example runs into a bit of an added problem because its for a suite of tools, and not just a single app. That means you'll need to evalute each tool invididually, and it's audience, and try to come up with set of design standards that fits the majority - but don't throw out all the exceptions. Sometimes an app needs something thats a little different then something else in the suite, it happens.
There are some great papers written about how to do this using anthropological ethnographic field methods, but chances are you won't have the kind of time to delve into reading something that lengthy. The best bet is doing some googling for HCI and see what you come up with.
As others have mentioned, hire a consultant if all else fails. There are people that specialize in this. They know what to look for, who to talk to, and how to evaluate the needs of the users.
Thats really an understatement. Most of the time I see "td align" these days, its to address issues with CSS's lack of object alignment. Yes, text-align works in IE to position boxes, but this behavior has been, and probably will continue to be inconsistent between IE and Firefox, with firefox generally doing the "right" thing and only aligning the text, and IE doing the... well you get the idea.
Before they start removing things from HTML because "CSS can do it", they need to make sure that CSS -really- can do it (and do it without complex nested tags or cross-browser trickery), and make sure that the browsers support that version of CSS.
Disclaimer: I apologize if IE7 has fixed some of these CSS inconsistencies, but most of my work is specced to work on IE6 and FF, and if I can, Opera.
If I remember correctly (and my memory may be failing here), but MS has used online license agreements for quite awhile with their OEM system builder program for Windows sales, which has enabled them to unilaterally redefine terms such as "oem hardware requirements" from something as small as a stick of RAM to requiring an entire computer, as well as requiring the software be install on the system at time of distribution.
While I understand, partially, this particular move was made mainly to combat sale of pirated copies and the like, it does raise the question of how far they could push it.
Oh, Adobe angered the MS deities today? Maybe MS is trying to make headway with it's PDF replacement. Fine, suddenly the License changes to say windows cannot be included on a computer system that includes Acrobat reader.
Granted, a change like this would probably never hold up, it was just an outlandish example. But it does make one wonder just where the line is.
Hopefully this case will set a better precedent for the future.
Yeah, if you were looking for a quick solution on any verizon locked-down phone, you're probably not in luck. Firstly, there's no J2ME on most (if any) verizon phones, because they use a wonderfully propriatary programming system (BREW), which requires all applications to be signed by Qualcomm (a fairly expensive process).
There are get-arounds for this on certain phones using a data cable and PC, but you'll have to find out how that works for your specific phone. And even with that, finding information on how to actually program anything for it is a rather difficult venture. My info may be a little out of date, its been a year or two since I looked into it, but I have a feeling its just as nasty.
On an afterthought, I think I'm gonna go hit gamasutra.com and read post mortums from game companies that actually care enough to write about what people want to know...
Come on guys, I'd expect this kind of PR slush from Electronic Arts, but Blizzard? You've got a user base that really loves the work you do, and a chance to answer some of thier more technical questions and make them even happier with you and your games, and you just toss it right out the window.
If I wasn't one for giving a platform a second (or third) chance, I wouldn't be using linux or freeBSD now.;)
Rather than just completely denounce an idea because of where it came from, I'm at least willing to give it a try. There comes a point where you just have to drop prior observations and let some things make a fresh start, holding a grudge only limits your options in the future and limits the directions a business can take, often times leading to eventual failure.
I figure Java will be ready for a fourth try in about three years or so, maybe I'll look into that around then.;)
My friend, you have some big balls. You're going to release something which needs a lot of security when the underlying security bits are unfinished and thus cannot be tested. Good luck with that.
The idea we're using at the moment is to initially use the secure version built with.Net, and use a seperate, custom scripting language we're working on for our linux and OSX builds until Mono has proven it's security a bit more, and possibly allow a "security" level within the app for mono-based scripts, default set to high, making it so users that -need- the feature can turn it on, rather than having it on by default.
I just have to ask: what about Java or JavaScript?
Java was ruled out, quite simply because none of the developers on the team like it very much, and we considered it difficult for novice programmers to quickly learn the ins and outs.
Javascript was brought up several times, In fact it was what I personally wanted to use(I went as far as to download the mozilla engine for it, spidermonkey, and start playing around). But one of the project managers (who has more of a say than we do) doesn't like it - and we've yet to find out exactly why.
Python can be compiled into CIL code that Mono can be run, I believe the project is called IronPyhon or something. So, you'd get the ability to run your python scripts, -and- allow for other scripting languages to run side by side, and only have to implement a single scripting engine.
Mono may be a reimplementation of an MS product, even looking at the source, you'll notice a folder full of *nix implementations of windows API calls. But what does it really matter if it does the job you need it to?
I started looking into it a few weeks ago when a project I was (am) working on required a scripting engine that could handle running scripts from anonymous sources, id est untrusted.
We went through a large range of languages: python, perl, angelscript, php, lua, etc etc but ended up with a few rather large problems in all of them: either lack of sandboxing and protecting a system from the effects a script could have, or lack of documentation and user friendlyness for those who may not be too familier with programming (yes, we have to consider them)
One of the dev's on the team brought up that.Net includes a set of security features that help to lock down scripts fairly tight, the problem being, our app has to be cross platform. This started us looking into Mono, which doesn't implement all the security features -yet-, but by our planned release date, they should be done, or very close.
Another thing to consider, is that Mono will run any CIL compiled code, meaning that we can support a virtually innumerable count of languages, with very little excess implementation (find a compilier and link it into the project).
So now we have: cross platform scripting (with sandboxing eventually), and the ability to present the users/programmers of the scripts with the syntax they are most comfortable with using.
Not only that, but Mono is going to save us a fortune on our development costs, because we may be able to drop Qt GUI implementation from our project roadmap, which averaged about $6000 for each developer(Qt Enterprise with QSA), I believe, and had some -major- limitations on what you could use thier scripting language for (for example, you're not allowed to use it to expose features of Qt itself to the scripter, which may be neccisary for our project)
Mono does the job, fits our specs almost perfectly, saves us money, and is built on CIL ECMA standards. What more -could- we ask?
.... I dont think the pricetag of $50 is entirely accurate. She lists out all the parts you need on the hardware page except one, which is mentioned further on under "fabrication."
"Make the PCB at a reputable PCB manufacturing house. "
Could someone a little more experience fill me in on how much -that- little gem is going to cost?
Ok, so the idea of a blog torrent may not be completely well founded, because of the "how many relatives are -really- going to be downloading your home movies" factor.
But what about HTTP content over some torrent-like system? Might work by basically streaming content out of other people's caches. Flags could be set for certain secure and frequently updated pages (Meta tags already do things such as this) so you don't stream someone else's credit card number from them.
Large sites could benefit from this heavily, I think. Even just sites that have small amounts of content, but large numbers of hits would probably gain performance. -even if the only thing being "torrented" were items like static images, flash objects, etc.
Sure the overall internet load wouldn't go down, but it would distribute it over a larger area for a possible performance gain. A lot of research would have to go into this though, to see if its really plausible..
I would suspect that the selection of color for things like the special paints and reentry tiles is fairly limited. It's not like there's a SpaceShuttle Depot where you can color coordinate all the panels on your reentry vehical;)
Considering this, I'm inspired to file for a new "pan-dimensional database structure" that I've just invented. And maybe a new "transcendental database structure", too.
I wouldn't do that, I've already got a patent on multi or extra dimensional storage of data in an heirarchal structure or metaphorical system.
they list a basic CS 4 year degree for Computer Science patents, but under Electrical Engineer there's about a page and half of specific requirements.
Half these companies are probably sending employee's children to college under an "I want to be a patent examiner" fund to get there ideas quickly approved.
I think this is the only job in CS I've ever seen that doesn't include any prerequisite experience.
Break it down into two groups first. You've got the publishing house and the developer / studio. Your marketing, and usually a nice chunk of management in a game studio comes from the publisher. The publisher foots the bill for the studio to develope a game, so they get to set all the deadlines, promote the product, and push the developer around as much as they'd like to.
I've read several game post-mortums where the developer said something to the sound of "Yeah, we wanted to include this and this in our original specifications, but the publisher made us chop it out so they could get a holiday launch in, it really would have added so much more to the game."
The deadlines the publisher sets are commonly unreasonable to begin with, and really makes you think they don't have a clue about the problems that can occure during development. You take a group of people, only have a vague understanding about how they work, and stick on deadlines that most likely couldn't be met if the team pulled 80 hour weeks every week of dev.
ID Software used to hit deadlines pretty well, if I remember correctly. Doom 3, what happened, wait, is that an Activision publishing credit I see? I don't know the full story on thier involvment, but a safe bet that they had a hand in deciding the deadline.
Nintendo gets around all this madness pretty well because they train large chunks of thier programming force, and have very very high guidelines for employment. In most cases, thier games are developed either in house working directly for Nintendo, or in the case of third party games, by groups that Nintendo has made absolutely certain can live up to thier expectations.
I suppose what it comes down to, is either be more selective with the studio you want to publish, do your games yourself, or let the studio's set thier own deadlines and let -them- dictate the amount of coverage and promises that are given.
The big publishers (Activision, Electronic Arts) need to step down, shut up, and let the studio's do thier thing. This is really the only good way to improve the industry as a whole, but unfortunately it usually means someone at the top of the ladder won't be able to afford to buy the island he wants and will have to settle for a smaller one.
Look at cars even. Want added horsepower? Go reprogram a chip! Sometimes you can get major increases to performance (with minor extra wear and tear) with just a couple of settings changed. Heck, the top speed limiter on my 1990 car is just a wire you can disconnect - if you know where it is.
Point being, this isn't a new thing. Lots of different industries have been doing the same type of easy-to-bypass limitations for years now.
Hrm.... wonder if there's something I can cut on my washing machine to speed up the laundry...
I helped open up a business. Little small thing, only 3 phone lines, but when we tried to sign up for the do not call registry, we were told that we couldn't add our numbers because businesses were not eligable. Sooo, we waste up to a good half an hour a day on solicitations from random companies wanting who knows what.
Anyone know if this has changed, or if we can be sneaky about it and add ourselves anyways? (or if possibly, the phone company was full of crap and businesses are in fact covered)
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking Rosetta as well. The fact that the first and last sections share the same number of lines might indicate that they contain the same data described in different ways. Since all the sections vary in width, it seems that line count / number is somehow important, or a clue.
Interesting, all those hex digits correspond to things we're given in the center section. Also notice that everything in the center section is a valid hex digit? There are a few missing, namely A and 1, which gives a clue that the S in the 3 "letter" code could be either of those.
For instance, are your programs for designers, artists, programmers, office workers, etc? Different groups tend to use applications in different ways. They've also been exposed to different styles of UI design. An important factor is often not to "surprise" your audience with some neat new UI trick *cough* Office 2007 Ribbon *cough* because it tends to frustrate them if it is different then what they're used to in similar applications. However, there are times when this is acceptable - I'll admit, once you get used to it, the Ribbon is can be rather handy.
Your audience is also important in how they use the application in their workflow. If you don't know how they work with the app, you'll be shooting in the dark as to what it should look like and how useful it will be to them. I've been given several projects where I get specs and a general idea of what the app is used for, and I end up going straight to the people that -actually- use it and asking them what they need it to do. The end result is much better (for the users) then what they would have had if I had just gone straight from the specs. Throwaway prototypes are -very- useful for this, and continued development.
Your example runs into a bit of an added problem because its for a suite of tools, and not just a single app. That means you'll need to evalute each tool invididually, and it's audience, and try to come up with set of design standards that fits the majority - but don't throw out all the exceptions. Sometimes an app needs something thats a little different then something else in the suite, it happens.
There are some great papers written about how to do this using anthropological ethnographic field methods, but chances are you won't have the kind of time to delve into reading something that lengthy. The best bet is doing some googling for HCI and see what you come up with.
As others have mentioned, hire a consultant if all else fails. There are people that specialize in this. They know what to look for, who to talk to, and how to evaluate the needs of the users.
Thats really an understatement. Most of the time I see "td align" these days, its to address issues with CSS's lack of object alignment. Yes, text-align works in IE to position boxes, but this behavior has been, and probably will continue to be inconsistent between IE and Firefox, with firefox generally doing the "right" thing and only aligning the text, and IE doing the... well you get the idea. Before they start removing things from HTML because "CSS can do it", they need to make sure that CSS -really- can do it (and do it without complex nested tags or cross-browser trickery), and make sure that the browsers support that version of CSS. Disclaimer: I apologize if IE7 has fixed some of these CSS inconsistencies, but most of my work is specced to work on IE6 and FF, and if I can, Opera.
If I remember correctly (and my memory may be failing here), but MS has used online license agreements for quite awhile with their OEM system builder program for Windows sales, which has enabled them to unilaterally redefine terms such as "oem hardware requirements" from something as small as a stick of RAM to requiring an entire computer, as well as requiring the software be install on the system at time of distribution.
While I understand, partially, this particular move was made mainly to combat sale of pirated copies and the like, it does raise the question of how far they could push it.
Oh, Adobe angered the MS deities today? Maybe MS is trying to make headway with it's PDF replacement. Fine, suddenly the License changes to say windows cannot be included on a computer system that includes Acrobat reader.
Granted, a change like this would probably never hold up, it was just an outlandish example. But it does make one wonder just where the line is.
Hopefully this case will set a better precedent for the future.
Yeah, if you were looking for a quick solution on any verizon locked-down phone, you're probably not in luck. Firstly, there's no J2ME on most (if any) verizon phones, because they use a wonderfully propriatary programming system (BREW), which requires all applications to be signed by Qualcomm (a fairly expensive process).
There are get-arounds for this on certain phones using a data cable and PC, but you'll have to find out how that works for your specific phone. And even with that, finding information on how to actually program anything for it is a rather difficult venture. My info may be a little out of date, its been a year or two since I looked into it, but I have a feeling its just as nasty.
On an afterthought, I think I'm gonna go hit gamasutra.com and read post mortums from game companies that actually care enough to write about what people want to know...
Come on guys, I'd expect this kind of PR slush from Electronic Arts, but Blizzard? You've got a user base that really loves the work you do, and a chance to answer some of thier more technical questions and make them even happier with you and your games, and you just toss it right out the window.
Way to go.
...all that's left is COM/DCOM and some new libraries.
;)
And honestly, thats pretty much how we plan on using it.
If I wasn't one for giving a platform a second (or third) chance, I wouldn't be using linux or freeBSD now. ;)
;)
Rather than just completely denounce an idea because of where it came from, I'm at least willing to give it a try. There comes a point where you just have to drop prior observations and let some things make a fresh start, holding a grudge only limits your options in the future and limits the directions a business can take, often times leading to eventual failure.
I figure Java will be ready for a fourth try in about three years or so, maybe I'll look into that around then.
My friend, you have some big balls. You're going to release something which needs a lot of security when the underlying security bits are unfinished and thus cannot be tested. Good luck with that.
.Net, and use a seperate, custom scripting language we're working on for our linux and OSX builds until Mono has proven it's security a bit more, and possibly allow a "security" level within the app for mono-based scripts, default set to high, making it so users that -need- the feature can turn it on, rather than having it on by default.
The idea we're using at the moment is to initially use the secure version built with
I just have to ask: what about Java or JavaScript?
Java was ruled out, quite simply because none of the developers on the team like it very much, and we considered it difficult for novice programmers to quickly learn the ins and outs.
Javascript was brought up several times, In fact it was what I personally wanted to use(I went as far as to download the mozilla engine for it, spidermonkey, and start playing around). But one of the project managers (who has more of a say than we do) doesn't like it - and we've yet to find out exactly why.
Python can be compiled into CIL code that Mono can be run, I believe the project is called IronPyhon or something. So, you'd get the ability to run your python scripts, -and- allow for other scripting languages to run side by side, and only have to implement a single scripting engine.
Mono may be a reimplementation of an MS product, even looking at the source, you'll notice a folder full of *nix implementations of windows API calls. But what does it really matter if it does the job you need it to?
.Net includes a set of security features that help to lock down scripts fairly tight, the problem being, our app has to be cross platform. This started us looking into Mono, which doesn't implement all the security features -yet-, but by our planned release date, they should be done, or very close.
I started looking into it a few weeks ago when a project I was (am) working on required a scripting engine that could handle running scripts from anonymous sources, id est untrusted.
We went through a large range of languages: python, perl, angelscript, php, lua, etc etc but ended up with a few rather large problems in all of them: either lack of sandboxing and protecting a system from the effects a script could have, or lack of documentation and user friendlyness for those who may not be too familier with programming (yes, we have to consider them)
One of the dev's on the team brought up that
Another thing to consider, is that Mono will run any CIL compiled code, meaning that we can support a virtually innumerable count of languages, with very little excess implementation (find a compilier and link it into the project).
So now we have: cross platform scripting (with sandboxing eventually), and the ability to present the users/programmers of the scripts with the syntax they are most comfortable with using.
Not only that, but Mono is going to save us a fortune on our development costs, because we may be able to drop Qt GUI implementation from our project roadmap, which averaged about $6000 for each developer(Qt Enterprise with QSA), I believe, and had some -major- limitations on what you could use thier scripting language for (for example, you're not allowed to use it to expose features of Qt itself to the scripter, which may be neccisary for our project)
Mono does the job, fits our specs almost perfectly, saves us money, and is built on CIL ECMA standards. What more -could- we ask?
.... I dont think the pricetag of $50 is entirely accurate. She lists out all the parts you need on the hardware page except one, which is mentioned further on under "fabrication." "Make the PCB at a reputable PCB manufacturing house. " Could someone a little more experience fill me in on how much -that- little gem is going to cost?
Ok, so the idea of a blog torrent may not be completely well founded, because of the "how many relatives are -really- going to be downloading your home movies" factor.
But what about HTTP content over some torrent-like system? Might work by basically streaming content out of other people's caches. Flags could be set for certain secure and frequently updated pages (Meta tags already do things such as this) so you don't stream someone else's credit card number from them.
Large sites could benefit from this heavily, I think. Even just sites that have small amounts of content, but large numbers of hits would probably gain performance. -even if the only thing being "torrented" were items like static images, flash objects, etc.
Sure the overall internet load wouldn't go down, but it would distribute it over a larger area for a possible performance gain. A lot of research would have to go into this though, to see if its really plausible..
Common people, Google Cache Torrent!
I would suspect that the selection of color for things like the special paints and reentry tiles is fairly limited. It's not like there's a SpaceShuttle Depot where you can color coordinate all the panels on your reentry vehical ;)
Considering this, I'm inspired to file for a new "pan-dimensional database structure" that I've just invented. And maybe a new "transcendental database structure", too.
I wouldn't do that, I've already got a patent on multi or extra dimensional storage of data in an heirarchal structure or metaphorical system.
Gotta love that...
they list a basic CS 4 year degree for Computer Science patents, but under Electrical Engineer there's about a page and half of specific requirements.
Half these companies are probably sending employee's children to college under an "I want to be a patent examiner" fund to get there ideas quickly approved.
I think this is the only job in CS I've ever seen that doesn't include any prerequisite experience.
Break it down into two groups first. You've got the publishing house and the developer / studio. Your marketing, and usually a nice chunk of management in a game studio comes from the publisher. The publisher foots the bill for the studio to develope a game, so they get to set all the deadlines, promote the product, and push the developer around as much as they'd like to.
I've read several game post-mortums where the developer said something to the sound of "Yeah, we wanted to include this and this in our original specifications, but the publisher made us chop it out so they could get a holiday launch in, it really would have added so much more to the game."
The deadlines the publisher sets are commonly unreasonable to begin with, and really makes you think they don't have a clue about the problems that can occure during development. You take a group of people, only have a vague understanding about how they work, and stick on deadlines that most likely couldn't be met if the team pulled 80 hour weeks every week of dev.
ID Software used to hit deadlines pretty well, if I remember correctly. Doom 3, what happened, wait, is that an Activision publishing credit I see? I don't know the full story on thier involvment, but a safe bet that they had a hand in deciding the deadline.
Nintendo gets around all this madness pretty well because they train large chunks of thier programming force, and have very very high guidelines for employment. In most cases, thier games are developed either in house working directly for Nintendo, or in the case of third party games, by groups that Nintendo has made absolutely certain can live up to thier expectations.
I suppose what it comes down to, is either be more selective with the studio you want to publish, do your games yourself, or let the studio's set thier own deadlines and let -them- dictate the amount of coverage and promises that are given.
The big publishers (Activision, Electronic Arts) need to step down, shut up, and let the studio's do thier thing. This is really the only good way to improve the industry as a whole, but unfortunately it usually means someone at the top of the ladder won't be able to afford to buy the island he wants and will have to settle for a smaller one.
Thanks, my $0.02
Look at cars even. Want added horsepower? Go reprogram a chip! Sometimes you can get major increases to performance (with minor extra wear and tear) with just a couple of settings changed. Heck, the top speed limiter on my 1990 car is just a wire you can disconnect - if you know where it is. Point being, this isn't a new thing. Lots of different industries have been doing the same type of easy-to-bypass limitations for years now. Hrm.... wonder if there's something I can cut on my washing machine to speed up the laundry...
I helped open up a business. Little small thing, only 3 phone lines, but when we tried to sign up for the do not call registry, we were told that we couldn't add our numbers because businesses were not eligable. Sooo, we waste up to a good half an hour a day on solicitations from random companies wanting who knows what. Anyone know if this has changed, or if we can be sneaky about it and add ourselves anyways? (or if possibly, the phone company was full of crap and businesses are in fact covered)