You know what would really make tech support better? Error messages that actually contained some information. To me the absolute WORST part of UI design is error messages. Come on, it's 2010, why are we still giving error codes instead of meaningful error messages?*(ok stuff thats in the kernel and whatnot that will be called bazillions of times and has to perform really well has an excuse, but other programs do not).
As a part time sysadmin trying to understand cryptic error messages is probably the most frustrating part of my job, esp. when they don't give you any information. For example saying "file not found" without actually telling you WHAT file wasn't found. You obviously have that information available to you since you were looking for the file, so why the hell aren't you sharing it?
Even companies that generally have the other parts of their UI down pat are guilty of having crappy error messages. My favorite is Apple's "unexpected error"..... is the unexpected error the opposite of the expected error? I think "Unanticipated" would be a better word, but if they used that people might think that they aren't in fact programming gods:P
Unfortunately since error messages are probably the least sexy components of UI design there isn't really a lot of motivation to fix them and they will probably stay an afterthought for most projects.
You would have to take height into consideration as well, I'm a 6'2 male, I'm always going to weigh more than a healthy 5'8 female and there is nothing I can do about that.
Yeah, but how valuable is dead person info? Perhaps some sort of post-mortem ad system should be developed to capitalize on this underutilized market:P
Unfortunately 2 years after the last date of sale seems to be the absolute maximum Apple is willing to actually support their products. iPhone 3g was released in July of 08 and about 2 years later Apple stopped supporting it leaving it vulnerable, ditto for Tiger, Leopard went on sale in late 07 and the last Tiger security update(ignoring Safari updates) was September of 09. If Apple wants to be taken more seriously in the corporate environment they MUST be willing to support their products for at least 3 years after the new version comes out.....
Statiscally speaking you probably have caught at least 1 strain of hpv, but considering the vast majority of strains are harmless and get cleared within a year it isn't a big deal.
this is why it's important to always, ALWAYS rub your penis(or vaginal juices!) all over the screen as soon as you get it. Not only does that create extra smudging, you are pretty much guaranteed that nobody will want to touch it afterwards.
I can sleep through almost any sound, but the slightest bit of light wakes me right up(which is why I usually end up getting up at sunrise). I wonder if the parts of the brain that wake people up when they hear sounds are responsible for waking them up in response to increases in light.
But doesn't declaring it a pandemic at least imply that it has SOME danger? By your definition couldn't the diseases caused by the human herpes virus family be declared a "pandemic" since it is insanely widespread? For instance, I would say at LEAST 95% of the people reading this post are currently infected with at least one strain of the virus.
is that unlike most computer games where at most your "ranking" is the only thing up for grabs, the people involved in an arcade match actually have something tangible, ie their money, at stake. If you win you get to keep playing and force the other guy to pony up more cash if he wants to keep playing, if you lose then you gotta put up the cash. Humans seem to respond better when they perceive there are real consequences to losing and prizes for winning.
Last time I went into a B&N store I was looking for something to read on an intercontiental flight, I found something but a quick check on amazon.com(not even bothering to look for anything that may even be cheaper) they had about a 50% markup and thats not even including the sales tax(shipping from Amazon was free). Now I understand having to pay a couple of bucks more for the convenience of walking out of the store with the book, but 50% is just insane. Their online store isn't much better, 95+% of the time they are considerably more expensive than amazon. They aren't dying solely because of factors outside of their control, they are dying because they feel entitled to margins that the more successful players in the industry have known to be unreasonable for a long while.
Couldn't they just stick a cat up in the ammonia part of the cooling system? Those fuckers produce tons of the stuff and they seem to want to distribute it around as much as possible.
Yet another reason why intertwining the physical and logical arrangement of storage was a dumb idea. Microsoft really needs to ditch the whole "drive letter" concept and move to a single file system tree a la unix.
Doubtful. The biggest bottlenecks for contests like this are I/O, network, and memory latency. While faster CPUs are always welcome increases in CPU speed rarely make a HUGE differences, esp. when you are talking about the relatively small gains you get from overclocking. Considering the drawbacks of overclocking, namely increased heat production and decreased reliability, it doesn't really seem all that compelling for supercomputer operators to employ it.
Yes, the people you mention are the elites of society and they created a system that dumbs people down, I never said or implied that there was some sort of conspiracy, the dumbing down of society(esp. by republicans) is happening out in the open. It's quite easy to see and sometimes the elites responsible for it are sometimes quite proud of what they have done.
Well the "unwashed masses" are generally products of the system set up by the elites, so if the elites don't like the results, why did they set up a system to produce people like this?
As per the religious right, while I am certainly not defending the religious right, I do sort of understand where a lot of them are coming from. The radical shift towards radical religion didn't really start until the 80s the elites started moving factories overseas en mass. When these factories closed a lot of people lost any real shot at finding meaningful work that paid a living wage. People want to find SOMETHING meaningful in their lives and since working retail isn't exactly the most fulfilling of occupations people start to look elsewhere for a reason to get up in the morning. The religious right was able to seize upon this unease and started pushing people into finding meaning in their life by becoming religious zealots.
Elites complaining about the society in which they shaped does strike me as a bit hypocritical.
Not to mention the problem with "false positives". Someone with my name(which which not being rare isn't super common either) who came from a town less than 50 mikes from where I grew up and is only 2 years older than me has been arrested twice. I am always worried that a potential employer will find this and assume it was me. The more I go on in life the more I realize the immense value of having a super common name, it makes it a lot harder for people to locate you. If I ever have a son I am going to name him after an actor that has my last name, nit because I am a fan but simply because it will be a lot harder to google my son.
Actually what you are more likely to see is more people switching from the web to dedicated smartphone apps published by the banks and officially blessed by the smartphone manufacturer(apple,google,rim etc). Not perfect but closer to a standalone terminal and much more likely to see widespread adoption.
You are severely underestimating the time value of money. While the results may be cheaper than hiring a professional, you have absolutely 0 guarantee you will see something presentable in your desired timeframe. The longer you wait the more opportunities your competitors have to catch up and eventually surpass you, not to mention you may have to idle some of your resources while you wait for a critical component.
While competitions like these may turn a lot of heads because they are so unconventional, in reality the noise generated is a lot more than the actual impact.
Admittedly I don't fly a lot in the states(I do occasionally on business, but at least for the time being transcontinental flights have free baggage...) but it seems that the baggage fee policy more often than not causes delays due to people futzing around with the overhead bins. These bins invariably become full and then the flight attendant always comes on and announces that they will now check bags for free, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of charging for a checked bag to begin with. A lot of seasoned flyers know this and intentionally pack huge carry-ons(which almost never get weighed/measured even though the airlines could conceivably do this) because they know they will be allowed to check them for free after they get on the plane.
By the time all this crap gets settled it's usually 30 minutes after the scheduled departure time and all the airline has done is cost themselves money and pissed a lot of people off..... brilliant!
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You know what would really make tech support better? Error messages that actually contained some information. To me the absolute WORST part of UI design is error messages. Come on, it's 2010, why are we still giving error codes instead of meaningful error messages?*(ok stuff thats in the kernel and whatnot that will be called bazillions of times and has to perform really well has an excuse, but other programs do not).
:P
As a part time sysadmin trying to understand cryptic error messages is probably the most frustrating part of my job, esp. when they don't give you any information. For example saying "file not found" without actually telling you WHAT file wasn't found. You obviously have that information available to you since you were looking for the file, so why the hell aren't you sharing it?
Even companies that generally have the other parts of their UI down pat are guilty of having crappy error messages. My favorite is Apple's "unexpected error"..... is the unexpected error the opposite of the expected error? I think "Unanticipated" would be a better word, but if they used that people might think that they aren't in fact programming gods
Unfortunately since error messages are probably the least sexy components of UI design there isn't really a lot of motivation to fix them and they will probably stay an afterthought for most projects.
Pay a hooker to test you software and if it doesn't crash, and ONLY if it doesn't crash, have her give you a blowjob. Case closed.
You would have to take height into consideration as well, I'm a 6'2 male, I'm always going to weigh more than a healthy 5'8 female and there is nothing I can do about that.
Yeah, but how valuable is dead person info? Perhaps some sort of post-mortem ad system should be developed to capitalize on this underutilized market :P
Unfortunately 2 years after the last date of sale seems to be the absolute maximum Apple is willing to actually support their products. iPhone 3g was released in July of 08 and about 2 years later Apple stopped supporting it leaving it vulnerable, ditto for Tiger, Leopard went on sale in late 07 and the last Tiger security update(ignoring Safari updates) was September of 09. If Apple wants to be taken more seriously in the corporate environment they MUST be willing to support their products for at least 3 years after the new version comes out.....
Statiscally speaking you probably have caught at least 1 strain of hpv, but considering the vast majority of strains are harmless and get cleared within a year it isn't a big deal.
No, the juvenile attitude American fat asses have towards people who don't drive made me leave.
this is why it's important to always, ALWAYS rub your penis(or vaginal juices!) all over the screen as soon as you get it. Not only does that create extra smudging, you are pretty much guaranteed that nobody will want to touch it afterwards.
100 kph over the speed limit?! I didn't even think you could get a moose to run that fast! Whats he feeding him?
I can sleep through almost any sound, but the slightest bit of light wakes me right up(which is why I usually end up getting up at sunrise). I wonder if the parts of the brain that wake people up when they hear sounds are responsible for waking them up in response to increases in light.
But doesn't declaring it a pandemic at least imply that it has SOME danger? By your definition couldn't the diseases caused by the human herpes virus family be declared a "pandemic" since it is insanely widespread? For instance, I would say at LEAST 95% of the people reading this post are currently infected with at least one strain of the virus.
because you know, it only makes sense to send up 10 females for every male.
is that unlike most computer games where at most your "ranking" is the only thing up for grabs, the people involved in an arcade match actually have something tangible, ie their money, at stake. If you win you get to keep playing and force the other guy to pony up more cash if he wants to keep playing, if you lose then you gotta put up the cash. Humans seem to respond better when they perceive there are real consequences to losing and prizes for winning.
Last time I went into a B&N store I was looking for something to read on an intercontiental flight, I found something but a quick check on amazon.com(not even bothering to look for anything that may even be cheaper) they had about a 50% markup and thats not even including the sales tax(shipping from Amazon was free). Now I understand having to pay a couple of bucks more for the convenience of walking out of the store with the book, but 50% is just insane. Their online store isn't much better, 95+% of the time they are considerably more expensive than amazon. They aren't dying solely because of factors outside of their control, they are dying because they feel entitled to margins that the more successful players in the industry have known to be unreasonable for a long while.
Couldn't they just stick a cat up in the ammonia part of the cooling system? Those fuckers produce tons of the stuff and they seem to want to distribute it around as much as possible.
Couldn't you pretty much just replace the word "Wii" with the word "Windows" and have an equally valid article?
Hooray for trolling!
Yet another reason why intertwining the physical and logical arrangement of storage was a dumb idea. Microsoft really needs to ditch the whole "drive letter" concept and move to a single file system tree a la unix.
Doubtful. The biggest bottlenecks for contests like this are I/O, network, and memory latency. While faster CPUs are always welcome increases in CPU speed rarely make a HUGE differences, esp. when you are talking about the relatively small gains you get from overclocking. Considering the drawbacks of overclocking, namely increased heat production and decreased reliability, it doesn't really seem all that compelling for supercomputer operators to employ it.
Yes, the people you mention are the elites of society and they created a system that dumbs people down, I never said or implied that there was some sort of conspiracy, the dumbing down of society(esp. by republicans) is happening out in the open. It's quite easy to see and sometimes the elites responsible for it are sometimes quite proud of what they have done.
Well the "unwashed masses" are generally products of the system set up by the elites, so if the elites don't like the results, why did they set up a system to produce people like this?
As per the religious right, while I am certainly not defending the religious right, I do sort of understand where a lot of them are coming from. The radical shift towards radical religion didn't really start until the 80s the elites started moving factories overseas en mass. When these factories closed a lot of people lost any real shot at finding meaningful work that paid a living wage. People want to find SOMETHING meaningful in their lives and since working retail isn't exactly the most fulfilling of occupations people start to look elsewhere for a reason to get up in the morning. The religious right was able to seize upon this unease and started pushing people into finding meaning in their life by becoming religious zealots.
Elites complaining about the society in which they shaped does strike me as a bit hypocritical.
Stewart Smalley Saves the Internet!
Not to mention the problem with "false positives". Someone with my name(which which not being rare isn't super common either) who came from a town less than 50 mikes from where I grew up and is only 2 years older than me has been arrested twice. I am always worried that a potential employer will find this and assume it was me. The more I go on in life the more I realize the immense value of having a super common name, it makes it a lot harder for people to locate you. If I ever have a son I am going to name him after an actor that has my last name, nit because I am a fan but simply because it will be a lot harder to google my son.
Actually what you are more likely to see is more people switching from the web to dedicated smartphone apps published by the banks and officially blessed by the smartphone manufacturer(apple,google,rim etc). Not perfect but closer to a standalone terminal and much more likely to see widespread adoption.
You are severely underestimating the time value of money. While the results may be cheaper than hiring a professional, you have absolutely 0 guarantee you will see something presentable in your desired timeframe. The longer you wait the more opportunities your competitors have to catch up and eventually surpass you, not to mention you may have to idle some of your resources while you wait for a critical component.
While competitions like these may turn a lot of heads because they are so unconventional, in reality the noise generated is a lot more than the actual impact.
Admittedly I don't fly a lot in the states(I do occasionally on business, but at least for the time being transcontinental flights have free baggage...) but it seems that the baggage fee policy more often than not causes delays due to people futzing around with the overhead bins. These bins invariably become full and then the flight attendant always comes on and announces that they will now check bags for free, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of charging for a checked bag to begin with. A lot of seasoned flyers know this and intentionally pack huge carry-ons(which almost never get weighed/measured even though the airlines could conceivably do this) because they know they will be allowed to check them for free after they get on the plane.
By the time all this crap gets settled it's usually 30 minutes after the scheduled departure time and all the airline has done is cost themselves money and pissed a lot of people off..... brilliant!