First off, you're thinking of Wikitude, and I agree, it's not original, the idea's been around for a while, it just hasn't been entirely feasible till now.
But it's far from useless. Just because YOU don't have a use for it doesn't mean others don't. I, for instance, am a huge astronomy buff, and think that Google Sky Map is very cool. Instead of spending an hour orienting and aligning my telescope to Polaris, and constantly tweaking it, I can point my phone at the sky and it's tell me what I'm looking at and where to find other objects. Very handy for me, not so handy for someone who doesn't go outside.
Last year I spent a week in Europe, including Prague, and would've loved to have Wikitude point out building data and points of interest. It's a brilliant tool for tourists.
The technology is VERY useful, but it's only in it's infancy right now. Once upon a time people thought GPS was useless when it was first introduced to the commercial sector. Now many people can barely drive without it. Whether you like it or not, semantically associating data online with reality is the future, and makes that data infinitely more useful.
PS - Maybe you'd find a use for it if you ever went outside;)
You're probably thinking of Wikitude, which has been around for a while, and overlays wikipedia information on buildings and landmarks. It's a pretty cool app, and a bit more altruistic than Layar (which does it for commercial purposes).
Did you even RTFA? Or did you just decide that you 'know his type'? Of the 4 steps, or actions, you mention, he did only 1: Photoshopping.
The article makes it clear that this guy apparently had no contact with any of the 3 girls (for fuck's sake, one of the girls was Miley Cyrus, I highly doubt he could ever afford to hire her for a photoshoot even if he wanted to), did not distribute the material at all, and made no profit from it, so it's not criminal libel, and it's certainly not any form of criminal sexual activity. So go make up more 'facts' if you wish but what you *think* happened does not change reality.
"I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-Evelyn Beatrice Hall, "The Friends of Voltaire"
Ummm, here's one example that's pure fusion and economical: THE SUN.
As one of the previous posters said, you have a remarkably poor understanding of stellar fusion. The fusion reaction within a star is triggered by the massive gravitational force exerted by the star's mass. The force is so great that the mass collapses in on itself until the tremendous pressure and heat of the collapse ignites a fusion process within the core. Once ignited, the fusion reaction's force pushes the mass outward, holding back gravitational collapse.
The life of a star is this continual struggle between gravity threatening to collapse the star in on itself, and fusion, threatening the make it explode. Nova and supernova form when the star reaches an age at which it has burned off the majority of it's fuel (converting it into heavier elements in the process). This makes the fusion process less efficient, as elements above Iron on the periodic table yield a negative energy return in this scenario. As such, the gravitational force overcomes the fusion force and collapses the star further, causing the heavier elements which have formed to begin fusing, and releasing a massive amount of energy in the process, which in turn, causes the stellar shell to burst. After this, the star's death depends on the amount of mass remaining, but that's the general idea.
Fission has nothing to do with it because fission requires super heavy elements, such as Uranium and Plutonium, to occur. Stars have very little of these elements during their lifecycle, and indeed, they CREATE these elements through heavy fusion at the very end of their life, which is how these elements arrived on Earth: through the heavy elemental fusion in long dead stars, and being blasted into space by the star's death.
The problem for humans is not economy in this technique, but scale. We need the fusion to occur on a much smaller scale, or else it's of little use to us.
Native SVG animation is something which already works in Opera and which Firefox is working on implementing as well. As someone who's worked with both Flash and SVG animations, SVG is WAY easier in my opinion to work with, and one it becomes more prevalent, you can be that there will be software released for anyone who's too lazy to learn the ridiculously simple code syntax.
Independence from Adobe for one. Right now, without Flash, Youtube does not work, period, end of story. That's why they're experimenting with the HTML5 video tag, so that Adobe won't be able to screw them over one day if they feel like it. Granted the likelihood of that happening is slim to none, the potential threat is enough for them to try as hard as possible to push for open standards. This is exemplified by things like the mobile web. While Opera pushes their mobile browser hard, mobile browsers as a whole are limited by Adobe's watered down FlashLite deployments, which makes rich media for mobile browsers nearly impossible using anything but javascript (which is still limited).
Not to mention the fact that it enhances the user experience. If you can just get a browser, with no plugins required, that's much easier for users to deal with.
And on a final note, have most of the people arguing that Flash is "easier for designers to use" actually used Flash? Doing anything really interesting in Flash requires using Actionscript, and Actionscript 2 is basically a javascript clone, while Actionscript 3 is more similar to Java. I learned actionscript 2 before I learned javascript, and the total time to go from one to the other was about 10 minutes (how long it took to learn the new constants, global variables, and proper DOM manipulation).
The fact is, if the web is to continue to grow, it MUST shirk Adobe and Microsoft's proprietary plugins for open standards. Not only do they often run better (Flash can be amazingly bloated, just look at Hulu's standalone Adobe Air app), but they give us more options and possibilities as well.
Lastly if an ISP slows something down it doesn't mean they regard it as illegal.
Ah, but the question that comes up is what right does the ISP have to inhibit traffic that isn't illegal? For the ISP to legally be able to throttle P2P traffic just because 'it *might* be used for illegal activity' sets a dangerous precedent, especially since often they describe their service plans as 'unlimited.' This is the entire crux of the argument over Net Neutrality; whether ISPs have the right to shape and manipulate traffic without any legal precedent, and without any legal right, for that matter. The issue is especially touchy since most ISPs have local monopolies, so the consumer can't even switch to another provider, because there is no other provider.
And on a side note, your method doesn't cover how to block one-click hosts such as megaupload and rapidshare, since that's just regular HTTP traffic. Though technically not P2P, the end result is the same.
Arch updates better than Ubuntu. Unfortunately, Ubuntu is rather infamous for being nearly un-updateable without a fresh install. Often users are advised to just backup their home directory and do a clean format (I like Ubuntu, don't get me wrong, but let's call a spade a spade here: This is a problem which many linux developers and ubuntu community members seem to gloss over, from what I've seen).
Don't have time for a point-by-point reply at the moment, but just the respond to some of your points...
1. The person who built the site is not the person who does a usability test. Outside contractors are hired for that. It would be idiotic to have the developers do it, since people often ignore fault in their own work. Hence why an impartial third party is used.
2. Yes, statistics can lie, but do explain what the motivation for a third party, who's sole job is to gauge the effectiveness of a product based on the expectations laid out by their client (the company which made the product), to lie? They have to make recommended changes to improve the system if they find an issue, and if those changes don't help, then it damages their reputation as a consultant.
3. Putting the developer in the user's shoes doesn't always work because the developer has an idea of what the sit does and does not do, not to mention the difficulty in getting people to criticize their own work in general.
4. In a production scenario, yes, people assume the product is at fault. But in a monitored usability test, the testers often feels scrutinized, and as such, have a tendency to blame themselves for mistakes and not fess up for (unjustified) fear of showing ignorance.
5. I'm not defending Microsoft's specific test, I agree, that was idiotic, since they're not observing or monitoring the participant to gauge their reaction. I'm defending the concept of testing a product with your user base.
Before I actually did a usability test I had a lot of the same assumptions that you did. In particular with regard to users blaming the product rather than vice versa, but when someone's being watched, it's an entirely different attitude toward the way people interact with software and consumer goods.
I hate to break it to you, but deciding what your customer needs based on your own rather biased point of view and your own tainted motivations is usually not in their best interest.
You don't seem to understand. It has nothing to do with bias. It's about gathering real, measurable, metrics of performance (such as time taken, mistakes made, etc) and usability and comparing them to expected metrics, making changes, and measuring the result once again. It has nothing to do with opinion and a lot to do with statistical analysis and cognitive psychology. With web pages, for example, when a page loads slowly, many users assume it's the connection and not a fault with the page. As such, it often doesn't occur to them to say "Optimize the page to load faster." At best you'll get a "Wow, this is taking a while" in situations where the load times are extreme. The most common issue is users thinking that the mistake was theirs, and not an issue with the product, and no matter how much you tell them otherwise, it's common for them not to speak up about an issue due to pride pr embarrassment. Yet whether they realize it or not, users react subconsciously to changes such as these, and they are more often than not more influential than more obvious changes (such as UI changes, which are often little more than "This looks weird"). Trust me, I've done usability tests. Sometimes you get amazing insight from users, but usually you get nothing of substance from them verbally. A great deal of the real juicy stuff is subconscious.
...and if you let them know they're part of an experiment, I see no problem. When you start experimenting with people to further your own goals, without telling them, you're on a slippery slope to hell.
That's a fair point. The users are legally obligated to know their rights during such tests and special permits are sometimes needed for using a pool of human test subjects, and in that sense, yes, what Microsoft is doing is rather less than ethical.
I hate to break it to you, but customers don't know what they need. They can tell you what they WANT, but often, that's not what they NEED, and their feedback tends to be anecdotal or garbage data. That's why when new products, software, and sites are designed, they often go through a usability test, where potential customers *gasp* are brought in to use the product. Their feedback, though, is secondary to actual physical metrics that can be obtained by either watching them use the product or through automated data gathering techniques. These can often reveal patterns that the users are unaware of, and allow you to improve the product.
In this, there is also the possibility of becoming complacent and ill-tuned to the needs of your users. Taking Google as an example, they keep their services in a perpetual state of beta, always in testing, never reaching a final v1. This type of reliance on constant feedback from customers may work for a short while, but unless the product reaches a state of relative stability (in terms of both not crashing and also not changing) the users will typically find some other software to use.
Yeah! I mean, take IE6 for example. That didn't change in a REALLY long time, and lots of people use it! That makes it good, right? [/sarcasm]
Your statement neglects quality. Yes, people want sites that're stable and don't crash, and yes, changing the design every week is bad and confusing, but improving on the design and function of a site is always a good thing, so long as you do so at intervals large enough for users to adjust to. The design of Gmail has only changed drastically two or three times in it's history design-wise, but they still consider it a Beta (depending on what you consider a drastic change, of course).
The issue is that Google, once simply a search engine, is now in the Web Services industry. The fact is, no matter what the label says, Gmail and many of their other apps are not in Beta, and haven't been in a long time. They're just hesitant to call it "v1" or something because that has a sense of finality, like customers shouldn't expect it to change very often. With the web, and Web Apps in particular, that's no longer really the case. They are often redesigned and redone to improve their performance, effectiveness, ease-of-use, and even aesthetics. You even point out yourself how agile the web is as an environment for releasing software. You neglect, though, that this keeps it interesting for the users as well, because they like the feeling that their product is continually being improved at no extra cost to them (unlike many shrink-wrapped software) (Note: When I say "extra cost," I mean in addition to any subscriptions they already have to the service, if any).
The "Beta" in Google's case is very much a marketing issue as much as it is a technical issue.
I hate to sound like an ad or something, but I had a similar dislike for glasses until I got a pair of Silhouettes. They're titantium, flexible/bendy, have no screws, super-light, and no frame around the lens. They don't hinder your field of view at all, because the only border for the lense is the edge of the lens itself, which you don't even see after a while. I used to go through glasses every year because I kept breaking them, but I had my last pair or Silhouettes for 6 years before getting a new pair. I've even fallen asleep in the things and the only result was having to clean the lens afterward. They're a bit more expensive, but well worth it imo.
I recommend them to the GP as well, since, like I said, the things are hard as hell to break, no screws means no maintenance, and if you get the ones that don't have hinges (instead they have a flexible metal bend where the hinge usually is), then they stay on your face really well, much better than regular glasses, and don't put too much pressure on your head.
Just a reply to every idiot spouting "BUT HULU DOSENT WORK OUTSIDE OF AMERIKA!":
READ WHAT I WROTE. I SAID THAT, IN THE PARENT POST, among other problems which Hulu has. Don't reply to a comment unless you read it in it's entirety. Otherwise, shut the FUCK up. All you're doing is bringing up redundant points. Same goes for the idiot moderators who can't read and confuse "Redundant" with "Insightful."
Did you seriously just equate the risk of getting a virus just by having an internet connection, to the risk of having a virus while having an internet connection WHILE browsing warez sites which often have viruses posing as cracks for applications, or videos, etc? Are you really that thick that you think having any open internet connection is as dangerous as engaging in risky activity online?
Try reading my full comment instead of just hitting reply half way through. I mentioned those drawbacks, among others. And Hulu's interface IS functionally better because of things like being able to dim the rest of the page, change resolutions with a button that actually works (as opposed to youtube which sometimes will and sometimes won't depending on the video), being able to see the exact time your mouse is hovering over the seek bar, as well as some other things.
People aren't "stealing" their stuff for the sake of stealing it. They're doing it because they want more control and use out of their media than Sony and others provide. Hulu is an excellent example of a proper solution. People used to download tv shows much more frequently before it's advent. It allows the rights holder to still make money through commercials, but at the same time gives the user control over when they watch the media, how they watch it, as well as pause, rewind, and fast forward, with a great UI which far surpasses YouTube in my opinion. The quality is pretty much as good as the tvrips (in 480p mode at least) and it even allows for discussion and ratings, making it a very social site as well. It simply provides for a much better user experience than the alternative, and the content usually goes up within a day or so of the air date.
"But there's DVR!" you say. DVR doesn't help you when you're stuck in JFK because your flight was delayed for 3 hours, and all you have is your notebook. DVR doesn't help you when you want to watch a show that's no longer in syndication, and hasn't been released on DVD (of which there are many), etc etc. Add to this that they're working on an iphone app and will likely have an Android app in the works as well and Hulu is a perfect example of how to properly take advantage of the internet's abilities. Is it perfect? Not yet. I personally would still like to see the ability to download the episodes so you can view them offline, but what it is now is certainly a great start.
So with all of this, why would people bother downloading rips? Hulu is more ubiquitous, requires no hard drive space, no messing with codec converters, no dealing with potentially virus laden downloads, etc etc etc. Do people still download? Yes, but mostly because you can get a tvrip quicker than Hulu will put it up (often within 30 minutes rather than a few hours), and Hulu doesn't have everything yet, doesn't retain everything yet, and isn't available outside of the US due to legal reasons. The important thing, though, is that it's moving in the right direction.
Sony Pictures, however, is so stuck in its "1. Release in theaters, 2. Release on DVD several months later, 3. Release on TV several years later" that they think nothing else will work, while Paramount, 20th Century Fox, MGM, Universal, and others have already begun adding some of their titles to Hulu. Is it an exhaustive collection? No, not yet at least, but again, it's a start.
I wish you luck Sony, given your recently posted losses this year, you're gonna fucking need it if you keep acting this way.
Entropy is correct. You're using a colloquial definition of evolution of "change over time." This is not what we're talking about. The original poster is referring to the biological theory evolution, which is NOT the same thing. The biological theory of evolution depends on reproduction and adaptation. The theory of evolution is a very specific theory and applying it colloquially to other events and claiming that it's the same thing is disingenuous to science and to anyone who listens to you and thinks you're correct, as well as undermining the case for evolution.
Demonstrating that another link in the evolutionary chain...
Stop right there. You couldn't even make it half-way through the first sentence without being wrong about something, impressive...
Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. Evolution is the concept that organisms change over time due to external forces/stimuli (be they natural or artificial). It has nothing to do with the origin of life whatsoever, period, end of story.
Evolution is about the origin of species (an apt name for a book might I add:P) and the diversity of life, not where life itself comes from.
First of all, just to clarify, I didn't say they were the best, I said they were one of the best:P
A part of this is due to the massive limitations they're under. The area underneath New York City is VERY limited, so they're unable to build massive multi-tiered stations like the newer ones in Barcelona. And as I mentioned, the NYC subway runs 24 hours a day, which means there's no real downtime for construction. Add to that the fact that NYC is a series of islands at or around sea level, which means that they have to combat flooding routinely, and the speed and efficiency at which it runs really does become apparent and impressive. Plus, unlike most metros, you can ride from one end of the city to the other on the same relatively cheap fare. There are no "zones," and you're allowed to transfer free of charge between subway networks and even to/from the local bus system on a single fare.
I just wish our subway stations looked nicer. I always like the stations in Prague personally, though I still to this day have no idea how their fare/ticket system works:/ I bought a ticket but it was never collected. Weird. Ah well, at least they finally cleaned up Grand Central. I'm still amazed at how gorgeous it was under all the grime they let pile up:P They even forgot there was a ceiling mural until they cleaned it, lol.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, you're thinking of Wikitude, and I agree, it's not original, the idea's been around for a while, it just hasn't been entirely feasible till now.
;)
But it's far from useless. Just because YOU don't have a use for it doesn't mean others don't. I, for instance, am a huge astronomy buff, and think that Google Sky Map is very cool. Instead of spending an hour orienting and aligning my telescope to Polaris, and constantly tweaking it, I can point my phone at the sky and it's tell me what I'm looking at and where to find other objects. Very handy for me, not so handy for someone who doesn't go outside.
Last year I spent a week in Europe, including Prague, and would've loved to have Wikitude point out building data and points of interest. It's a brilliant tool for tourists.
The technology is VERY useful, but it's only in it's infancy right now. Once upon a time people thought GPS was useless when it was first introduced to the commercial sector. Now many people can barely drive without it. Whether you like it or not, semantically associating data online with reality is the future, and makes that data infinitely more useful.
PS - Maybe you'd find a use for it if you ever went outside
You're probably thinking of Wikitude, which has been around for a while, and overlays wikipedia information on buildings and landmarks. It's a pretty cool app, and a bit more altruistic than Layar (which does it for commercial purposes).
Did you even RTFA? Or did you just decide that you 'know his type'? Of the 4 steps, or actions, you mention, he did only 1: Photoshopping.
The article makes it clear that this guy apparently had no contact with any of the 3 girls (for fuck's sake, one of the girls was Miley Cyrus, I highly doubt he could ever afford to hire her for a photoshoot even if he wanted to), did not distribute the material at all, and made no profit from it, so it's not criminal libel, and it's certainly not any form of criminal sexual activity. So go make up more 'facts' if you wish but what you *think* happened does not change reality.
"I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-Evelyn Beatrice Hall, "The Friends of Voltaire"
Ummm, here's one example that's pure fusion and economical: THE SUN.
As one of the previous posters said, you have a remarkably poor understanding of stellar fusion. The fusion reaction within a star is triggered by the massive gravitational force exerted by the star's mass. The force is so great that the mass collapses in on itself until the tremendous pressure and heat of the collapse ignites a fusion process within the core. Once ignited, the fusion reaction's force pushes the mass outward, holding back gravitational collapse.
The life of a star is this continual struggle between gravity threatening to collapse the star in on itself, and fusion, threatening the make it explode. Nova and supernova form when the star reaches an age at which it has burned off the majority of it's fuel (converting it into heavier elements in the process). This makes the fusion process less efficient, as elements above Iron on the periodic table yield a negative energy return in this scenario. As such, the gravitational force overcomes the fusion force and collapses the star further, causing the heavier elements which have formed to begin fusing, and releasing a massive amount of energy in the process, which in turn, causes the stellar shell to burst. After this, the star's death depends on the amount of mass remaining, but that's the general idea.
Fission has nothing to do with it because fission requires super heavy elements, such as Uranium and Plutonium, to occur. Stars have very little of these elements during their lifecycle, and indeed, they CREATE these elements through heavy fusion at the very end of their life, which is how these elements arrived on Earth: through the heavy elemental fusion in long dead stars, and being blasted into space by the star's death.
The problem for humans is not economy in this technique, but scale. We need the fusion to occur on a much smaller scale, or else it's of little use to us.
Native SVG animation is something which already works in Opera and which Firefox is working on implementing as well. As someone who's worked with both Flash and SVG animations, SVG is WAY easier in my opinion to work with, and one it becomes more prevalent, you can be that there will be software released for anyone who's too lazy to learn the ridiculously simple code syntax.
Independence from Adobe for one. Right now, without Flash, Youtube does not work, period, end of story. That's why they're experimenting with the HTML5 video tag, so that Adobe won't be able to screw them over one day if they feel like it. Granted the likelihood of that happening is slim to none, the potential threat is enough for them to try as hard as possible to push for open standards. This is exemplified by things like the mobile web. While Opera pushes their mobile browser hard, mobile browsers as a whole are limited by Adobe's watered down FlashLite deployments, which makes rich media for mobile browsers nearly impossible using anything but javascript (which is still limited).
Not to mention the fact that it enhances the user experience. If you can just get a browser, with no plugins required, that's much easier for users to deal with.
And on a final note, have most of the people arguing that Flash is "easier for designers to use" actually used Flash? Doing anything really interesting in Flash requires using Actionscript, and Actionscript 2 is basically a javascript clone, while Actionscript 3 is more similar to Java. I learned actionscript 2 before I learned javascript, and the total time to go from one to the other was about 10 minutes (how long it took to learn the new constants, global variables, and proper DOM manipulation).
The fact is, if the web is to continue to grow, it MUST shirk Adobe and Microsoft's proprietary plugins for open standards. Not only do they often run better (Flash can be amazingly bloated, just look at Hulu's standalone Adobe Air app), but they give us more options and possibilities as well.
Ah, but the question that comes up is what right does the ISP have to inhibit traffic that isn't illegal? For the ISP to legally be able to throttle P2P traffic just because 'it *might* be used for illegal activity' sets a dangerous precedent, especially since often they describe their service plans as 'unlimited.' This is the entire crux of the argument over Net Neutrality; whether ISPs have the right to shape and manipulate traffic without any legal precedent, and without any legal right, for that matter. The issue is especially touchy since most ISPs have local monopolies, so the consumer can't even switch to another provider, because there is no other provider.
And on a side note, your method doesn't cover how to block one-click hosts such as megaupload and rapidshare, since that's just regular HTTP traffic. Though technically not P2P, the end result is the same.
No, I've been getting it too, and have no idea what's causing it :/
It'd take about 5 - 10 minutes, if that, depending on your fluency with javascript.
It's called "Javascript validation" and can also be found everywhere
Arch updates better than Ubuntu. Unfortunately, Ubuntu is rather infamous for being nearly un-updateable without a fresh install. Often users are advised to just backup their home directory and do a clean format (I like Ubuntu, don't get me wrong, but let's call a spade a spade here: This is a problem which many linux developers and ubuntu community members seem to gloss over, from what I've seen).
Don't have time for a point-by-point reply at the moment, but just the respond to some of your points...
1. The person who built the site is not the person who does a usability test. Outside contractors are hired for that. It would be idiotic to have the developers do it, since people often ignore fault in their own work. Hence why an impartial third party is used. 2. Yes, statistics can lie, but do explain what the motivation for a third party, who's sole job is to gauge the effectiveness of a product based on the expectations laid out by their client (the company which made the product), to lie? They have to make recommended changes to improve the system if they find an issue, and if those changes don't help, then it damages their reputation as a consultant. 3. Putting the developer in the user's shoes doesn't always work because the developer has an idea of what the sit does and does not do, not to mention the difficulty in getting people to criticize their own work in general. 4. In a production scenario, yes, people assume the product is at fault. But in a monitored usability test, the testers often feels scrutinized, and as such, have a tendency to blame themselves for mistakes and not fess up for (unjustified) fear of showing ignorance. 5. I'm not defending Microsoft's specific test, I agree, that was idiotic, since they're not observing or monitoring the participant to gauge their reaction. I'm defending the concept of testing a product with your user base.
Before I actually did a usability test I had a lot of the same assumptions that you did. In particular with regard to users blaming the product rather than vice versa, but when someone's being watched, it's an entirely different attitude toward the way people interact with software and consumer goods.
You don't seem to understand. It has nothing to do with bias. It's about gathering real, measurable, metrics of performance (such as time taken, mistakes made, etc) and usability and comparing them to expected metrics, making changes, and measuring the result once again. It has nothing to do with opinion and a lot to do with statistical analysis and cognitive psychology. With web pages, for example, when a page loads slowly, many users assume it's the connection and not a fault with the page. As such, it often doesn't occur to them to say "Optimize the page to load faster." At best you'll get a "Wow, this is taking a while" in situations where the load times are extreme. The most common issue is users thinking that the mistake was theirs, and not an issue with the product, and no matter how much you tell them otherwise, it's common for them not to speak up about an issue due to pride pr embarrassment. Yet whether they realize it or not, users react subconsciously to changes such as these, and they are more often than not more influential than more obvious changes (such as UI changes, which are often little more than "This looks weird"). Trust me, I've done usability tests. Sometimes you get amazing insight from users, but usually you get nothing of substance from them verbally. A great deal of the real juicy stuff is subconscious.
That's a fair point. The users are legally obligated to know their rights during such tests and special permits are sometimes needed for using a pool of human test subjects, and in that sense, yes, what Microsoft is doing is rather less than ethical.
I hate to break it to you, but customers don't know what they need. They can tell you what they WANT, but often, that's not what they NEED, and their feedback tends to be anecdotal or garbage data. That's why when new products, software, and sites are designed, they often go through a usability test, where potential customers *gasp* are brought in to use the product. Their feedback, though, is secondary to actual physical metrics that can be obtained by either watching them use the product or through automated data gathering techniques. These can often reveal patterns that the users are unaware of, and allow you to improve the product.
Yeah! I mean, take IE6 for example. That didn't change in a REALLY long time, and lots of people use it! That makes it good, right? [/sarcasm]
Your statement neglects quality. Yes, people want sites that're stable and don't crash, and yes, changing the design every week is bad and confusing, but improving on the design and function of a site is always a good thing, so long as you do so at intervals large enough for users to adjust to. The design of Gmail has only changed drastically two or three times in it's history design-wise, but they still consider it a Beta (depending on what you consider a drastic change, of course).
The issue is that Google, once simply a search engine, is now in the Web Services industry. The fact is, no matter what the label says, Gmail and many of their other apps are not in Beta, and haven't been in a long time. They're just hesitant to call it "v1" or something because that has a sense of finality, like customers shouldn't expect it to change very often. With the web, and Web Apps in particular, that's no longer really the case. They are often redesigned and redone to improve their performance, effectiveness, ease-of-use, and even aesthetics. You even point out yourself how agile the web is as an environment for releasing software. You neglect, though, that this keeps it interesting for the users as well, because they like the feeling that their product is continually being improved at no extra cost to them (unlike many shrink-wrapped software) (Note: When I say "extra cost," I mean in addition to any subscriptions they already have to the service, if any).
The "Beta" in Google's case is very much a marketing issue as much as it is a technical issue.
I hate to sound like an ad or something, but I had a similar dislike for glasses until I got a pair of Silhouettes. They're titantium, flexible/bendy, have no screws, super-light, and no frame around the lens. They don't hinder your field of view at all, because the only border for the lense is the edge of the lens itself, which you don't even see after a while. I used to go through glasses every year because I kept breaking them, but I had my last pair or Silhouettes for 6 years before getting a new pair. I've even fallen asleep in the things and the only result was having to clean the lens afterward. They're a bit more expensive, but well worth it imo.
I recommend them to the GP as well, since, like I said, the things are hard as hell to break, no screws means no maintenance, and if you get the ones that don't have hinges (instead they have a flexible metal bend where the hinge usually is), then they stay on your face really well, much better than regular glasses, and don't put too much pressure on your head.
Just a reply to every idiot spouting "BUT HULU DOSENT WORK OUTSIDE OF AMERIKA!":
READ WHAT I WROTE. I SAID THAT, IN THE PARENT POST, among other problems which Hulu has. Don't reply to a comment unless you read it in it's entirety. Otherwise, shut the FUCK up. All you're doing is bringing up redundant points. Same goes for the idiot moderators who can't read and confuse "Redundant" with "Insightful."
Did you seriously just equate the risk of getting a virus just by having an internet connection, to the risk of having a virus while having an internet connection WHILE browsing warez sites which often have viruses posing as cracks for applications, or videos, etc? Are you really that thick that you think having any open internet connection is as dangerous as engaging in risky activity online?
Try reading my full comment instead of just hitting reply half way through. I mentioned those drawbacks, among others. And Hulu's interface IS functionally better because of things like being able to dim the rest of the page, change resolutions with a button that actually works (as opposed to youtube which sometimes will and sometimes won't depending on the video), being able to see the exact time your mouse is hovering over the seek bar, as well as some other things.
People aren't "stealing" their stuff for the sake of stealing it. They're doing it because they want more control and use out of their media than Sony and others provide. Hulu is an excellent example of a proper solution. People used to download tv shows much more frequently before it's advent. It allows the rights holder to still make money through commercials, but at the same time gives the user control over when they watch the media, how they watch it, as well as pause, rewind, and fast forward, with a great UI which far surpasses YouTube in my opinion. The quality is pretty much as good as the tvrips (in 480p mode at least) and it even allows for discussion and ratings, making it a very social site as well. It simply provides for a much better user experience than the alternative, and the content usually goes up within a day or so of the air date.
"But there's DVR!" you say. DVR doesn't help you when you're stuck in JFK because your flight was delayed for 3 hours, and all you have is your notebook. DVR doesn't help you when you want to watch a show that's no longer in syndication, and hasn't been released on DVD (of which there are many), etc etc. Add to this that they're working on an iphone app and will likely have an Android app in the works as well and Hulu is a perfect example of how to properly take advantage of the internet's abilities. Is it perfect? Not yet. I personally would still like to see the ability to download the episodes so you can view them offline, but what it is now is certainly a great start.
So with all of this, why would people bother downloading rips? Hulu is more ubiquitous, requires no hard drive space, no messing with codec converters, no dealing with potentially virus laden downloads, etc etc etc. Do people still download? Yes, but mostly because you can get a tvrip quicker than Hulu will put it up (often within 30 minutes rather than a few hours), and Hulu doesn't have everything yet, doesn't retain everything yet, and isn't available outside of the US due to legal reasons. The important thing, though, is that it's moving in the right direction.
Sony Pictures, however, is so stuck in its "1. Release in theaters, 2. Release on DVD several months later, 3. Release on TV several years later" that they think nothing else will work, while Paramount, 20th Century Fox, MGM, Universal, and others have already begun adding some of their titles to Hulu. Is it an exhaustive collection? No, not yet at least, but again, it's a start.
I wish you luck Sony, given your recently posted losses this year, you're gonna fucking need it if you keep acting this way.
That's why they're wrong ;)
Entropy is correct. You're using a colloquial definition of evolution of "change over time." This is not what we're talking about. The original poster is referring to the biological theory evolution, which is NOT the same thing. The biological theory of evolution depends on reproduction and adaptation. The theory of evolution is a very specific theory and applying it colloquially to other events and claiming that it's the same thing is disingenuous to science and to anyone who listens to you and thinks you're correct, as well as undermining the case for evolution.
Stop right there. You couldn't even make it half-way through the first sentence without being wrong about something, impressive...
:P) and the diversity of life, not where life itself comes from.
Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. Evolution is the concept that organisms change over time due to external forces/stimuli (be they natural or artificial). It has nothing to do with the origin of life whatsoever, period, end of story.
Evolution is about the origin of species (an apt name for a book might I add
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#Project_Thor
First of all, just to clarify, I didn't say they were the best, I said they were one of the best :P
:/ I bought a ticket but it was never collected. Weird. Ah well, at least they finally cleaned up Grand Central. I'm still amazed at how gorgeous it was under all the grime they let pile up :P They even forgot there was a ceiling mural until they cleaned it, lol.
A part of this is due to the massive limitations they're under. The area underneath New York City is VERY limited, so they're unable to build massive multi-tiered stations like the newer ones in Barcelona. And as I mentioned, the NYC subway runs 24 hours a day, which means there's no real downtime for construction. Add to that the fact that NYC is a series of islands at or around sea level, which means that they have to combat flooding routinely, and the speed and efficiency at which it runs really does become apparent and impressive. Plus, unlike most metros, you can ride from one end of the city to the other on the same relatively cheap fare. There are no "zones," and you're allowed to transfer free of charge between subway networks and even to/from the local bus system on a single fare.
I just wish our subway stations looked nicer. I always like the stations in Prague personally, though I still to this day have no idea how their fare/ticket system works