I've had more than 4 in the last couple days in my GMail, but your advice is still sound. In the last month, GMail successfully filtered over 15,400 spam for that account. (That's actually down from the 30,000 it used to be.)
The opposite is true, too. Devices can be killed by wonky USB ports.
My father managed to kill 2 MX1000 receivers simply by plugging them into the front of his computer. After getting both RMAd, I bought him a powered USB hub and never had the problem again. (Plugged it into the same port on the front, too!)
I don't. I rent most of them because there's so much crap.
This goes for the 360 and PS3, too. And I generally don't play games on the PC because I can't rent them first. (The ones with demos are an exception to that, but I still generally don't buy them because I dislike the demos.)
Basically, that means I'm a console gamer now because I hate throwing money away.
I got a call from BrightHouse the other day, trying to sell me TV service to go with my internet. I said I didn't want it, but wanted to talk about upgrading to their new 15mbps plan. I was told that I could because "your equipment couldn't handle it unless you also bought TV and Phone service from us."... WTF? Make up a better lie next time. Rather than argue, I just said I didn't want any of it then.
So it's not that I can't get 15mpbs, I just have to be willing to pay for services I don't want or use in order to get it.
Careful, they got their lead on that market by outlawing certain types of porn. We'd get there in a hurry by outlawing them, too. I'm sure you don't really want that.
Yes, but how can I agree to something I've never read? If EULAs were all identical, or able to be read before the sale, I could agree with you. But they aren't, and you can't. And getting your money back is not possible in some case without going to court over it.
I don't care if a court case DID decide that it's legal, it's obviously stupid and I don't think it would stand up if tried properly.
"how many will accept early death in exchange for short-term glory?"
This is exactly the point I was looking for. I thought the anti-doping rules were in place to prevent athletes from being required to dope. The idea is that they can all compete naturally and don't need to destroy their bodies to do so.
If you let people dope, it won't be long before people are using drugs that improve their performance spectacularly for a few years, and then leave them a useless mess after that. The only way to compete with these super-athletes is to do what they do, and destroy your own body.
Something has changed since then: The exchange of information is now very, very easy and extremely fast. Finding a new job in another country can be done over the internet now. Finding a job in the same town is a piece of cake.
Yes, there's something to what you say... It's unequal, but not like it used to be. Back a century ago, talking to someone in another state was tough enough to prevent people from getting a job there first, and then moving. That made moving even tougher than it was to start with.
It depends on where you work, doesn't it? He obviously works somewhere that they value their employees enough to recognize that working overtime is doing them a HUGE favor, and give him time off when he wants it in return.
Overtime work isn't regular work... It's harder, and it's generally an 'emergency' situation that has to be completed on a timeframe. Trading overtime for regular time is a really, really good deal for a company and they should appreciate it.
The company I work for, if you end up working an extra day's worth in a week, they offer to let you take a day off the next week. (Or even that same week, if it works out that way.) Yes, they offer... You don't have to ask. Less than a day's worth, and you generally have to ask if you want the time off another day, but unless the 'emergency' is still on, they answer is usually 'Yes.'
(I put 'emergency' in quotes because there's not really any such thing in a business, but they treat the situation like it is.)
I'm not 100% sure what his point was, since he doesn't make much sense, but I can state the objection to 4 still existing:
The developers of PHP can now spend time working on 5 & 6 instead of maintaining 4. Progress can be made on things that matter that could not be before.
I'm not sure it really makes all that much of a difference, my self. Progress will happen whether someone is maintaining the old version or not... And there's no guarantee the progress will be faster now.
It does, except that I want to know this. I have only put a few docs on Google Docs, but I'd like an easy way to back that stuff up so I never lose it. I can manually save each one, but I'd rather push a button and go eat lunch, instead.
Someone above suggested writing a script that automates it, but let's be honest... I'm lazy. If someone else writes it, that means I don't have to. If Google writes it, I'll feel pretty confident about it working and being there when I want it.
I'm not so crazy yet as to store critical data on there, but I'd still feel the loss if it went *poof*.
Yes, but will it be 'open'? Will I be able to use the SDK for their platform to create free apps and distribute them however I like, or will I be forced to use their store, just like Apple's offering?
I'm only interested in programming for a platform that I can distribute for as I see fit.
As for the 'how much it uses the internet' bit... Cripes, don't the customers already pay for that? Taking money from the developer AND the consumer is just... Wrong. I could understand it if they offered decently priced 'unlimited' internet, but they don't. The closest is the 'web only' for like $6.
How much time do you think anyone can or will sit in a computer lab that they are sharing with several dozen other students?
If they're forced to by the school's rules, or voluntarily?
Maybe your experience differs, but I find just having a computer is not enough to make me study with it. I have to specifically set aside time that I'll only do studying. If I'm forced to travel to a lab to do that, you can bet that time is used for what is necessary, instead of playing games or browsing the web. Or even just fiddling with things.
Having more time is actually bad, in this case. It allows you to procrastinate to the point that you miss your deadline due to outside factors.
Still, having each student have a computer is better in its own ways... It ensures that everyone gets a chance to use it, for 1 thing. (Assuming they don't break, or that they have spares available.)
I don't think there's a clear winner between the 2 approaches.
How did you think it would work? Did you think the bag-fairies swoop down and absorb the cost of the bags? -EVERY- business passes costs on to the customer. It's how it works.
In case that's not clear: The customer always pays for everything. Everything. Always. No exceptions.
It's not about pain or anything, I'm just not a competitive person. Not even 'against myself'. I used to play games to 'beat them' or 'beat the opponent', but I don't really even enjoy that any more.
Our species may be competitive by nature, but that doesn't mean every single one of us is.
Instead, I find that I over-exert myself when there's a job to do, or fun to be had. The last vacation I took left me in physical pain for about a week because I overdid all the fun activities, like seadooing, for about 5 days straight. (Yeah, I'm badly out of shape... Hence the thread I'm posting in.) Despite the pain on the first day, I continued to overdo it the whole vacation. There was no competition involved at all, just good fun.
I remember mellow fun from my karate class when I was a kid, and I'd like that again from a new class. The only thing I didn't like about it was the sparring.
Actually, I think a concerted effort like that would be well received... If not by the original developers, then by a secondary set that would fork the project. It's happened before, and it could happen again... And when the original developers lose most users to the new design, they take a good fresh look at it... And everything is combined again. (No, I don't have the example off the top of my head.)
The real problem would be what happens just after you get started. The truly negative people would bombard you with 'your design sucks' and 'how could you possibly think you know better than the developers!' messages before it was even out of the planning phase. It's immensely disheartening, and tends to kill projects that don't have an iron will.
I love FOSS, Kubuntu is my favorite distro/OS, etc etc... But 100% satisfied? -Nothing- satisfies me 100% in this world, and no OS or application is so perfect that it satisfies me anywhere near 100%.
I can always find things that I wish were combined from different apps. For instance, Quanta Plus is my favorite PHP editor. But the code completion is wonky sometimes and the Doc support is iffy at best. I'm currently forced to use Aptana (on OS X) at work, and I find that the code completion and doc support is much better, but the keyboard shortcuts suck and the command to comment/uncomment code isn't nearly as good as Quanta's.
Yes, if I were willing to put in the time, I could probably fix either of them to have the features I want... The problem is that I've got so many other things I want to do as well. I've already got enough stuff that I could add nothing to the list for several years and have no time that I got bored.
After reading his post and yours, I think you read his wrong. He didn't say you have to be an expert to tell someone how to fix their UI. He said you have to actually know WTF you're talking about.
A billion messages of 'Your interface sucks' is nearly useless. It can only confirm that there is a problem, which was probably obvious long ago if it got a billion messages about it.
Messages of 'Your X tool doesn't work right' is nearly the same.
'Your X tool doesn't work like X tool in program Y' is better.
'Your X tool doesn't do Z' is good. This is the first really usable message. It still doesn't say how to fix the problem, but it at least states what the user wants.
'Your X tool should (long explanation)' is much better yet. It can only be given by someone actually experienced with whatever work the tool is supposed to do.
'If you did W, your X tool would be a lot better' is the best. It tells the programmer exactly what's needed in no uncertain terms. It would need someone that could write the tool themselves, and hits the attitude you think the previous poster has.
Good developers appreciating anything from 'good' up. Great developers listen to all the complaints, but the first 2 kinds can only be filed in the 'another complaint' file and the third is only good if you want to rip off someone else's idea exactly... They can't really serve much use and largely waste the developer's time.
Complaints about GIMP illustrate this nicely. I've seen everything up to 'GIMP isn't photoshop' and never anything better. I've even voiced my own 'GIMP's interface sucks' complaints, but I can't see how to make it better, either. I just know I hate it. (I still use it, though, because I can't afford $900 for Photoshop for a hobby.) If I could express what I wanted to be different about GIMP, I'd be a lot more help, and I recognize that.
His yahoo/mailing list example is only ironic if you assume older means wiser, even for businesses. It doesn't, it just means that it's been there longer.
Yours is a bit thin on irony, too, as irony has to do with situations that you'd think would be backwards to what they are. Since it's the law that anyone that -looks- under 34 (or 29, or whatever it is in your area) gets carded when they buy alchohol and the 16yr old clerk doesn't own the liquor (and therefore can't drink it), it's not a very ironic situation. It's not that I don't see the irony, it's just so thin as to be pointless.
There's 1 rather large difference between a wiki (or other webpage or forum) and newsgroups: The wiki is there until the site maintainer drops the site. The newsgroup posting is there until your individual newsgroup provider deletes the posting. Wikis last a -lot- longer than newsgroup postings.
With services like Giganews, the lifetime of newsgroup postings is a lot longer now, but it's still not as long as webpages in general. In addition, search engines for webpages are a lot easier to use and are more useful.
I have been considering a local Aikido class, but I kept thinking back to the karate class I had when I was about 10. It was constantly about sparring and they talked about competitions. I actually did okay on the sparring, except against girls... I just couldn't bring myself to hit them, even when they were much bigger than me.
Knowing that Aikido isn't into sparring and competitions brings me one step closer to joining.
Also, there are entire genres for puzzles games so that the twitch gamers don't have to be annoyed by them now. Point n Click adventures are still be made, and casual games are all ABOUT puzzles.
The market hasn't declined, it has grown and evolved. It's big enough to sell directly to the target, instead of slapping puzzles in where they don't below and annoying everyone. (Twitch gamers are annoyed by the puzzles, puzzle gamers are annoyed by having to play the twitch portions.)
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I've had more than 4 in the last couple days in my GMail, but your advice is still sound. In the last month, GMail successfully filtered over 15,400 spam for that account. (That's actually down from the 30,000 it used to be.)
The opposite is true, too. Devices can be killed by wonky USB ports.
My father managed to kill 2 MX1000 receivers simply by plugging them into the front of his computer. After getting both RMAd, I bought him a powered USB hub and never had the problem again. (Plugged it into the same port on the front, too!)
I don't. I rent most of them because there's so much crap.
This goes for the 360 and PS3, too. And I generally don't play games on the PC because I can't rent them first. (The ones with demos are an exception to that, but I still generally don't buy them because I dislike the demos.)
Basically, that means I'm a console gamer now because I hate throwing money away.
I got a call from BrightHouse the other day, trying to sell me TV service to go with my internet. I said I didn't want it, but wanted to talk about upgrading to their new 15mbps plan. I was told that I could because "your equipment couldn't handle it unless you also bought TV and Phone service from us." ... WTF? Make up a better lie next time. Rather than argue, I just said I didn't want any of it then.
So it's not that I can't get 15mpbs, I just have to be willing to pay for services I don't want or use in order to get it.
Careful, they got their lead on that market by outlawing certain types of porn. We'd get there in a hurry by outlawing them, too. I'm sure you don't really want that.
Yes, but how can I agree to something I've never read? If EULAs were all identical, or able to be read before the sale, I could agree with you. But they aren't, and you can't. And getting your money back is not possible in some case without going to court over it.
I don't care if a court case DID decide that it's legal, it's obviously stupid and I don't think it would stand up if tried properly.
"how many will accept early death in exchange for short-term glory?"
This is exactly the point I was looking for. I thought the anti-doping rules were in place to prevent athletes from being required to dope. The idea is that they can all compete naturally and don't need to destroy their bodies to do so.
If you let people dope, it won't be long before people are using drugs that improve their performance spectacularly for a few years, and then leave them a useless mess after that. The only way to compete with these super-athletes is to do what they do, and destroy your own body.
Hmm, a rock garden!
They just released Shiki Tei on the PS3 in Japan. All you do it make a garden. That's it.
A rock garden game on the DS, if done right, could really make some money.
Something has changed since then: The exchange of information is now very, very easy and extremely fast. Finding a new job in another country can be done over the internet now. Finding a job in the same town is a piece of cake.
Yes, there's something to what you say... It's unequal, but not like it used to be. Back a century ago, talking to someone in another state was tough enough to prevent people from getting a job there first, and then moving. That made moving even tougher than it was to start with.
Things have changed. The past isn't the present.
It depends on where you work, doesn't it? He obviously works somewhere that they value their employees enough to recognize that working overtime is doing them a HUGE favor, and give him time off when he wants it in return.
Overtime work isn't regular work... It's harder, and it's generally an 'emergency' situation that has to be completed on a timeframe. Trading overtime for regular time is a really, really good deal for a company and they should appreciate it.
The company I work for, if you end up working an extra day's worth in a week, they offer to let you take a day off the next week. (Or even that same week, if it works out that way.) Yes, they offer... You don't have to ask. Less than a day's worth, and you generally have to ask if you want the time off another day, but unless the 'emergency' is still on, they answer is usually 'Yes.'
(I put 'emergency' in quotes because there's not really any such thing in a business, but they treat the situation like it is.)
I'm not 100% sure what his point was, since he doesn't make much sense, but I can state the objection to 4 still existing:
The developers of PHP can now spend time working on 5 & 6 instead of maintaining 4. Progress can be made on things that matter that could not be before.
I'm not sure it really makes all that much of a difference, my self. Progress will happen whether someone is maintaining the old version or not... And there's no guarantee the progress will be faster now.
Because it's a big pain in the ass and if they just tell people on the net about it, their point will come across just nicely. Just like it is.
Whoa whoa whoa... By that logic, anyone should be able to assassinate the President, since they are impeding your free will by stopping you.
No, you need to add some more qualifications to that, such as: As long as it doesn't step on anyone else's rights.
But then, if you did that, this case wouldn't apply, would it? Since the IP owners have rights and you'd be stepping on them.
It does, except that I want to know this. I have only put a few docs on Google Docs, but I'd like an easy way to back that stuff up so I never lose it. I can manually save each one, but I'd rather push a button and go eat lunch, instead.
Someone above suggested writing a script that automates it, but let's be honest... I'm lazy. If someone else writes it, that means I don't have to. If Google writes it, I'll feel pretty confident about it working and being there when I want it.
I'm not so crazy yet as to store critical data on there, but I'd still feel the loss if it went *poof*.
Yes, but will it be 'open'? Will I be able to use the SDK for their platform to create free apps and distribute them however I like, or will I be forced to use their store, just like Apple's offering?
I'm only interested in programming for a platform that I can distribute for as I see fit.
As for the 'how much it uses the internet' bit... Cripes, don't the customers already pay for that? Taking money from the developer AND the consumer is just... Wrong. I could understand it if they offered decently priced 'unlimited' internet, but they don't. The closest is the 'web only' for like $6.
How much time do you think anyone can or will sit in a computer lab that they are sharing with several dozen other students?
If they're forced to by the school's rules, or voluntarily?
Maybe your experience differs, but I find just having a computer is not enough to make me study with it. I have to specifically set aside time that I'll only do studying. If I'm forced to travel to a lab to do that, you can bet that time is used for what is necessary, instead of playing games or browsing the web. Or even just fiddling with things.
Having more time is actually bad, in this case. It allows you to procrastinate to the point that you miss your deadline due to outside factors.
Still, having each student have a computer is better in its own ways... It ensures that everyone gets a chance to use it, for 1 thing. (Assuming they don't break, or that they have spares available.)
I don't think there's a clear winner between the 2 approaches.
"The cost is totally transfered to customers."
How did you think it would work? Did you think the bag-fairies swoop down and absorb the cost of the bags? -EVERY- business passes costs on to the customer. It's how it works.
In case that's not clear: The customer always pays for everything. Everything. Always. No exceptions.
It's not about pain or anything, I'm just not a competitive person. Not even 'against myself'. I used to play games to 'beat them' or 'beat the opponent', but I don't really even enjoy that any more.
Our species may be competitive by nature, but that doesn't mean every single one of us is.
Instead, I find that I over-exert myself when there's a job to do, or fun to be had. The last vacation I took left me in physical pain for about a week because I overdid all the fun activities, like seadooing, for about 5 days straight. (Yeah, I'm badly out of shape... Hence the thread I'm posting in.) Despite the pain on the first day, I continued to overdo it the whole vacation. There was no competition involved at all, just good fun.
I remember mellow fun from my karate class when I was a kid, and I'd like that again from a new class. The only thing I didn't like about it was the sparring.
Actually, I think a concerted effort like that would be well received... If not by the original developers, then by a secondary set that would fork the project. It's happened before, and it could happen again... And when the original developers lose most users to the new design, they take a good fresh look at it... And everything is combined again. (No, I don't have the example off the top of my head.)
The real problem would be what happens just after you get started. The truly negative people would bombard you with 'your design sucks' and 'how could you possibly think you know better than the developers!' messages before it was even out of the planning phase. It's immensely disheartening, and tends to kill projects that don't have an iron will.
I love FOSS, Kubuntu is my favorite distro/OS, etc etc... But 100% satisfied? -Nothing- satisfies me 100% in this world, and no OS or application is so perfect that it satisfies me anywhere near 100%.
I can always find things that I wish were combined from different apps. For instance, Quanta Plus is my favorite PHP editor. But the code completion is wonky sometimes and the Doc support is iffy at best. I'm currently forced to use Aptana (on OS X) at work, and I find that the code completion and doc support is much better, but the keyboard shortcuts suck and the command to comment/uncomment code isn't nearly as good as Quanta's.
Yes, if I were willing to put in the time, I could probably fix either of them to have the features I want... The problem is that I've got so many other things I want to do as well. I've already got enough stuff that I could add nothing to the list for several years and have no time that I got bored.
After reading his post and yours, I think you read his wrong. He didn't say you have to be an expert to tell someone how to fix their UI. He said you have to actually know WTF you're talking about.
A billion messages of 'Your interface sucks' is nearly useless. It can only confirm that there is a problem, which was probably obvious long ago if it got a billion messages about it.
Messages of 'Your X tool doesn't work right' is nearly the same.
'Your X tool doesn't work like X tool in program Y' is better.
'Your X tool doesn't do Z' is good. This is the first really usable message. It still doesn't say how to fix the problem, but it at least states what the user wants.
'Your X tool should (long explanation)' is much better yet. It can only be given by someone actually experienced with whatever work the tool is supposed to do.
'If you did W, your X tool would be a lot better' is the best. It tells the programmer exactly what's needed in no uncertain terms. It would need someone that could write the tool themselves, and hits the attitude you think the previous poster has.
Good developers appreciating anything from 'good' up. Great developers listen to all the complaints, but the first 2 kinds can only be filed in the 'another complaint' file and the third is only good if you want to rip off someone else's idea exactly... They can't really serve much use and largely waste the developer's time.
Complaints about GIMP illustrate this nicely. I've seen everything up to 'GIMP isn't photoshop' and never anything better. I've even voiced my own 'GIMP's interface sucks' complaints, but I can't see how to make it better, either. I just know I hate it. (I still use it, though, because I can't afford $900 for Photoshop for a hobby.) If I could express what I wanted to be different about GIMP, I'd be a lot more help, and I recognize that.
His yahoo/mailing list example is only ironic if you assume older means wiser, even for businesses. It doesn't, it just means that it's been there longer.
Yours is a bit thin on irony, too, as irony has to do with situations that you'd think would be backwards to what they are. Since it's the law that anyone that -looks- under 34 (or 29, or whatever it is in your area) gets carded when they buy alchohol and the 16yr old clerk doesn't own the liquor (and therefore can't drink it), it's not a very ironic situation. It's not that I don't see the irony, it's just so thin as to be pointless.
There's 1 rather large difference between a wiki (or other webpage or forum) and newsgroups: The wiki is there until the site maintainer drops the site. The newsgroup posting is there until your individual newsgroup provider deletes the posting. Wikis last a -lot- longer than newsgroup postings.
With services like Giganews, the lifetime of newsgroup postings is a lot longer now, but it's still not as long as webpages in general. In addition, search engines for webpages are a lot easier to use and are more useful.
Thank you.
I have been considering a local Aikido class, but I kept thinking back to the karate class I had when I was about 10. It was constantly about sparring and they talked about competitions. I actually did okay on the sparring, except against girls... I just couldn't bring myself to hit them, even when they were much bigger than me.
Knowing that Aikido isn't into sparring and competitions brings me one step closer to joining.
Also, there are entire genres for puzzles games so that the twitch gamers don't have to be annoyed by them now. Point n Click adventures are still be made, and casual games are all ABOUT puzzles.
The market hasn't declined, it has grown and evolved. It's big enough to sell directly to the target, instead of slapping puzzles in where they don't below and annoying everyone. (Twitch gamers are annoyed by the puzzles, puzzle gamers are annoyed by having to play the twitch portions.)