It's in bloody DETAIL view so what do you expect?!
Easy question. I expect every view to have had thought put into it. Just because this isn't the default view doesn't mean it's not worth bothering with.
The precise point of the detail view is to show you all the text in a list form.
Then by your own definition the screen you're talking about fails in that regard by not showing all of the text. It's clipped on the right hand side where there's not enough space. It's lazy design. If you'd like to learn about information design I'd recommend starting with books by Edward Tufte.
in terms of a good UI I think that you need to make it simple for the least experienced users to get the most out of it as quickly as possible. more advanced users will always want to customise the experience, so let them do it. but make it easy for the learners first.
While I agree with the point that learners should get priority because more experienced users know how to bypass all the fluffy stuff and get to the functionality, CyricZ has a point. The screenshots he linked to show that the designers have failed to use space in an efficient and informative way, which is sad considering some of the design talent at Microsoft.
For every variable you introduce, the liklihood of defects rises fivefold.
For every generalised statistic you quote, the likelihood of talking accurately about any specific application decreases fivefold.
These people seem to have put so much effort into thinking through possible variables that could effect this clock, from the value of the materials to the transparency of the operation, that I'd be very surprised if they didn't stop to consider one of the two most fundamental aspects: reliability.
If you paid with a credit card, then yes, they have it in a database.
The retailer or manufacturer may have it in a database, but whatever shadowy organisations the parent was alluding to probably doesn't. Government agencies have enough trouble keeping track of where people live without having to track their posessions too.
2. What bothers me about an X system is that it is targetted at client-server, and the resultant code bloat may prove hazardous to an embedded implementation.
Surely mobile phones are the definition of a client-server application? That aside, if the system is built according to a few simple OO principles the excess components will be easily removable.
Some corporate engineering decisions are sometimes taken for non-technical reasons, but I suspect there's no non-technical factor here other than cost. There's no salesman to convince management that their app just *needs* product X. Or is there?
This all sounds very good but how cost efficient will large, industry scale production of resin be?
Pretty efficient I expect. Having substances made by bacteria isn't a new idea, and since this will primarily be proccesed in liquid form is should be fairly easy to produce. The major question for me would be how long the bacteria take to synthesise the material.
The question as to whether it's economically viable is misleading, because you can't answer it accurately without knowing the application for which you're determining viability. I would guess that there will be so many possible applications for this that it wont be hard to find some that can afford the probably high initial cost.
I can't think of a situation where an eNewsPaper would require more than one page of ePaper... isn't that the whole idea?
Animation is a very effective way of diplaying large quantities of continuous data that would be more difficult to comprehend statically, so this could appear in the articles of science/engineering publications. Also; sports clips, film trailers, short films, nature clips in publications like National Geographic, the list goes on.
It's unlikely that an entire page of this stuff will be required. They'll probably just need an image-sized rectangle. At £30 per square metre than would mean a 5cm x 5cm image costs less than a penny (plus the cost of the power source and actually adding the image to the page).
Basically, there's huge scope for this in publishing if it's durable and doesn't need much power. If not there'll always be applications elsewhere... household wallpaper for one.
There is no way to fully test a building, and 99% of the time it will be under low-stress conditions, never testing the limits it was designed for.
Exactly. You can't prove that a given input wont break a computer without actually doing it, just like you can't prove what would break a building without trying it. All you can do is compare similar situations.
Of course, that sounds like an argument in favour of liability. Now I have to think of a reason why that argument is invalid. Damn.
They *used* to be. However, it's plain to see that OS X/Aqua was built to be flashy first and usable second.
I suspect both this and the parent are subjective interpretations of the situation. Apple's design team currently consider both graphic flashyness amd usability. At various points in the past they've done things which were attractive, unattractive, usable and unusable.
It's always going to be a vast simplification to say that Apple are/were '(insert adjective here)' because you're talking about a range of products designed and built by many different people at different times in different industries.
Plus, I suspect for a lot of people it's also a matter of "usability". Yes, I know it doesn't really fit the real definition of "usability", but please bear with me. It's the same idea: making people jump through extra hoops and go through extra web pages just to buy your product is bad. If someone doesn't have a PayPal account, having to go through all those hoops to register a PayPal account, get confirmed, etc, then finally return to get the product they wanted... some may lose interest and go shop somewhere else.
I think it fits the conventional definition of poor usability rather well actually. The customer has money that they're willing to part with, and they have to fill in extra forms, then wait days, or longer if they don't have online banking, for a Paypal code to appear on their bank statement. It's not exactly user-friendly.
A CEO who spends large amounts of time reading email feels like a micromanager...
I think there's a subtle but important difference. A micromanager interferes with your work in an uninvited fashion, you have to encourange them let you get on with your job yourself. This guy only reads the email that employees have chosen to send him. Since sensible employees would only send him something really important he can't really be accused of micromanagement for simply allowing employees to email him.
If I were a shareholder, i'd be scared if I had any part in removing the governement's accounts, when some of those governement officials will be the judges when my case hit the superior court...
If I were a judge with a Blackberry that stopped working that would illustrate to me how far removed from the public interest this kind of behaviour is. That's probably why the IP holder didn't demand shut-down government employees too.
The statistical data gained would be horribly inaccurate because nobody would ever know whether or not you're actually the one wearing the shoes.
They don't need to know that you're the one wearing them. They just want to know that you're the type of person they can sell more of them to. One off purchases are one thing, but if they establish a pattern they can use it to predict what you might like. It's not rocket science.
In other news, scientists have invented a new way you can lock yourself out!
Seriously though, I can see this being used for businesses where they might want records of who's coming in and out, but I certainly wont be buying one for my house.
A stub could start out as a beta, where it gets many edits. After a certain ammount of time/edits the entry could be forked into a RC and dev page. The RC could be locked and the dev maintained on a seperate tab (like the discussion or talk links are now). You could then put up a voting system where you can give a thumbs up or down.
History isn't decided by a vote. Voting is an awful system for determining accuracy. It's a bad enough system for choosing leaders, but there are other reasons why we use it for that.
Anyway, that's beside the point. All of that "well they buy music anyway" is simply rationalization for acting illegally and/or unethically. Saying "I wouldn't have paid for it anyway so they lose nothing" doesn't make it OK -- you're enjoying the benefit of something that costs money but you haven't paid for. It may not be theft per se, but it's pretty nearly morally equivalent.
Granted, the research in question doesn't prove that the people who download music illegally wouldn't buy *more* music if they couldn't download. Nor does it prove that they would.
I disagree entirely with the premise that sharing music is inherently unethical. I agree it would be unethical to listen to music without the intention to buy it, but I don't know anyone who does that, and the research shows that file sharers as a group are willing to get their wallets out.
I agree that in some cases it's similar to theft, but it's too complicated a situation to generalise like that. There are too many situations where "illegal downloading" would actually be ethically sound.
Slashdot Mirror
It's in bloody DETAIL view so what do you expect?!
Easy question. I expect every view to have had thought put into it. Just because this isn't the default view doesn't mean it's not worth bothering with.
The precise point of the detail view is to show you all the text in a list form.
Then by your own definition the screen you're talking about fails in that regard by not showing all of the text. It's clipped on the right hand side where there's not enough space. It's lazy design. If you'd like to learn about information design I'd recommend starting with books by Edward Tufte.
in terms of a good UI I think that you need to make it simple for the least experienced users to get the most out of it as quickly as possible. more advanced users will always want to customise the experience, so let them do it. but make it easy for the learners first.
While I agree with the point that learners should get priority because more experienced users know how to bypass all the fluffy stuff and get to the functionality, CyricZ has a point. The screenshots he linked to show that the designers have failed to use space in an efficient and informative way, which is sad considering some of the design talent at Microsoft.
Perhaps I shouldn't be posting while doing wireless surveying in the car. Don't worry, I'm not driving... my boss is.
Right, and you were just down there looking for your keys. Heard it all before...
Any large corporation would / should search before they use a name.
Agreed. It doesn't look good, and it pisses off users. If my email address changes I'll probably move to Yahoo.
For every variable you introduce, the liklihood of defects rises fivefold.
For every generalised statistic you quote, the likelihood of talking accurately about any specific application decreases fivefold.
These people seem to have put so much effort into thinking through possible variables that could effect this clock, from the value of the materials to the transparency of the operation, that I'd be very surprised if they didn't stop to consider one of the two most fundamental aspects: reliability.
If you paid with a credit card, then yes, they have it in a database.
The retailer or manufacturer may have it in a database, but whatever shadowy organisations the parent was alluding to probably doesn't. Government agencies have enough trouble keeping track of where people live without having to track their posessions too.
The key OO principles of: 1. Wishful Thinking 2. Fairie Dust
No, forward thinking and actual interest.
Audible has always used their own in-house DRM format, not MP3, so you got that wrong.
That's as may be, but I bought The Hitchhikers Guide series one and two on MP3 from Waterstones last year. This story seems like a non-story to me.
For one thing, the Royal Society have considerable prestige.
The Royal Society do have considerable prestige, but we're talking about the The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce - commonly known as the RSA. As far as I know the two organisations are not connected. You may know this already but plenty of people wont.
2. What bothers me about an X system is that it is targetted at client-server, and the resultant code bloat may prove hazardous to an embedded implementation.
Surely mobile phones are the definition of a client-server application? That aside, if the system is built according to a few simple OO principles the excess components will be easily removable.
Some corporate engineering decisions are sometimes taken for non-technical reasons, but I suspect there's no non-technical factor here other than cost. There's no salesman to convince management that their app just *needs* product X. Or is there?
This all sounds very good but how cost efficient will large, industry scale production of resin be?
Pretty efficient I expect. Having substances made by bacteria isn't a new idea, and since this will primarily be proccesed in liquid form is should be fairly easy to produce. The major question for me would be how long the bacteria take to synthesise the material.
The question as to whether it's economically viable is misleading, because you can't answer it accurately without knowing the application for which you're determining viability. I would guess that there will be so many possible applications for this that it wont be hard to find some that can afford the probably high initial cost.
Sorry, slight brain malfunction there. Less than 10p.
I can't think of a situation where an eNewsPaper would require more than one page of ePaper... isn't that the whole idea?
Animation is a very effective way of diplaying large quantities of continuous data that would be more difficult to comprehend statically, so this could appear in the articles of science/engineering publications. Also; sports clips, film trailers, short films, nature clips in publications like National Geographic, the list goes on.
It's unlikely that an entire page of this stuff will be required. They'll probably just need an image-sized rectangle. At £30 per square metre than would mean a 5cm x 5cm image costs less than a penny (plus the cost of the power source and actually adding the image to the page).
Basically, there's huge scope for this in publishing if it's durable and doesn't need much power. If not there'll always be applications elsewhere... household wallpaper for one.
There is no way to fully test a building, and 99% of the time it will be under low-stress conditions, never testing the limits it was designed for.
Exactly. You can't prove that a given input wont break a computer without actually doing it, just like you can't prove what would break a building without trying it. All you can do is compare similar situations.
Of course, that sounds like an argument in favour of liability. Now I have to think of a reason why that argument is invalid. Damn.
They *used* to be. However, it's plain to see that OS X/Aqua was built to be flashy first and usable second.
I suspect both this and the parent are subjective interpretations of the situation. Apple's design team currently consider both graphic flashyness amd usability. At various points in the past they've done things which were attractive, unattractive, usable and unusable.
It's always going to be a vast simplification to say that Apple are/were '(insert adjective here)' because you're talking about a range of products designed and built by many different people at different times in different industries.
Since when is Windows beautiful?
I'm not sure whether this was intended as a joke or not, but assuming you're serious then you're misunderstanding the nature of the word beautiful.
Plus, I suspect for a lot of people it's also a matter of "usability". Yes, I know it doesn't really fit the real definition of "usability", but please bear with me. It's the same idea: making people jump through extra hoops and go through extra web pages just to buy your product is bad. If someone doesn't have a PayPal account, having to go through all those hoops to register a PayPal account, get confirmed, etc, then finally return to get the product they wanted... some may lose interest and go shop somewhere else.
I think it fits the conventional definition of poor usability rather well actually. The customer has money that they're willing to part with, and they have to fill in extra forms, then wait days, or longer if they don't have online banking, for a Paypal code to appear on their bank statement. It's not exactly user-friendly.
A CEO who spends large amounts of time reading email feels like a micromanager...
I think there's a subtle but important difference. A micromanager interferes with your work in an uninvited fashion, you have to encourange them let you get on with your job yourself. This guy only reads the email that employees have chosen to send him. Since sensible employees would only send him something really important he can't really be accused of micromanagement for simply allowing employees to email him.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to, but I'm going to hazard a guess that you mean the billiard ball analogy of subatomic particles.
He meant the Standard Model, not a billiard ball analogy.
It's questioned because it's not particularly elegant and doesn't explain gravity.
If I were a shareholder, i'd be scared if I had any part in removing the governement's accounts, when some of those governement officials will be the judges when my case hit the superior court...
If I were a judge with a Blackberry that stopped working that would illustrate to me how far removed from the public interest this kind of behaviour is. That's probably why the IP holder didn't demand shut-down government employees too.
The statistical data gained would be horribly inaccurate because nobody would ever know whether or not you're actually the one wearing the shoes.
They don't need to know that you're the one wearing them. They just want to know that you're the type of person they can sell more of them to. One off purchases are one thing, but if they establish a pattern they can use it to predict what you might like. It's not rocket science.
Is there anything you can't do with carbon nanotubes?
Divorce them. It's totally impossible. I've tried.
In other news, scientists have invented a new way you can lock yourself out!
Seriously though, I can see this being used for businesses where they might want records of who's coming in and out, but I certainly wont be buying one for my house.
A stub could start out as a beta, where it gets many edits. After a certain ammount of time/edits the entry could be forked into a RC and dev page. The RC could be locked and the dev maintained on a seperate tab (like the discussion or talk links are now). You could then put up a voting system where you can give a thumbs up or down.
History isn't decided by a vote. Voting is an awful system for determining accuracy. It's a bad enough system for choosing leaders, but there are other reasons why we use it for that.
Anyway, that's beside the point. All of that "well they buy music anyway" is simply rationalization for acting illegally and/or unethically. Saying "I wouldn't have paid for it anyway so they lose nothing" doesn't make it OK -- you're enjoying the benefit of something that costs money but you haven't paid for. It may not be theft per se, but it's pretty nearly morally equivalent.
Granted, the research in question doesn't prove that the people who download music illegally wouldn't buy *more* music if they couldn't download. Nor does it prove that they would.
I disagree entirely with the premise that sharing music is inherently unethical. I agree it would be unethical to listen to music without the intention to buy it, but I don't know anyone who does that, and the research shows that file sharers as a group are willing to get their wallets out.
I agree that in some cases it's similar to theft, but it's too complicated a situation to generalise like that. There are too many situations where "illegal downloading" would actually be ethically sound.