Interesting Links for 29-6-2011

[andrewducker]

• Crows learn to scold dubious humans
  (tags: crows birds behaviour)
• The surprising reason why soda tax to reduce obesity won't work
  (tags: tax behaviour obesity food health)
• Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy - 90% less materials wastage
  (tags: solarpower electricity)
• Everything you need to know about Google+
  (tags: xkcd google socialnetworking facebook)
• Capcom releases game with a single save slot that can't be reset. Fuckers
  (tags: gaming capcom evil computer_games)
• "90% of your users are idiots"
  (tags: ui ux software development)
• Android hits 500,000 activations per day
  (tags: android google mobile_phones)

Comments

[birguslatro]

The trouble with the users are idiots approach is that idiots do the unexpected. So you lock things down tightly so they can only do the one thing, which isn't what they're trying to do, thus you lose your idiot customers - plus the non-idiots who also leave due to it not being able to do what they want to do either.

Once pressing Enter in a text field on a webpage would usually result in it being treated as a submit, but not so often now, which is a nice example of all users being treated as idiots. The reason it's not treated as a submit is obvious - some parts of the page that should've been attended to by the idiots won't have been. Trouble is, those who've gotten used to the page are now wasting time scrolling down to the submit button every time they visit it. This is not progress.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

The update to that Capcom article makes it slightly better as it seems it's not a campaign style game but merely a one-off shoot-em-up high-score type game. the only thing you can't reset is the high scores when you buy a used copy. Even so, the idea of non-reset campaign/level type games with one save slot is dangerous - and will likely lead to a massive boycott should it ever happen.

[andrewducker]

Aaah well. Less evil, but I still don't approve.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

No, nor do I but all they'll end up doing is shooting themselves in the foot when no-one buys it because of the locked reset. Then they'll learn the hard way.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

seems to be something so fucking obvious that there's not much 'learning' to be done

could be that the dev's aren't remotely bothered about loss of sales to resellers, who they don't like anyway. Most gamers I know [which isn't very many] are also collectors and don't resell very often.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Games without resets should be an interesting experiment in the value of secondary markets.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

I like the "90%" article. It's a damn good point and is making me go back and rethink my current UI design.

For a start, all of the all-singing all-dancing stuff is going under an "Advanced..." button where most of them will never go but the 10% can get to it if they want.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

We've had much less trouble with functionality roll-outs since we started applying that principle with our CMS.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Diet sodas (possibly just those with aspartame) may cause weight gain.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit concerned by that study; they mention controlling for waist circumference but that's not the best indicator for obesity. (I have a 36" waist that's stayed steady since my college days; what's changed is the size of the beer belly hanging over said waist. The proverbial swap of a 6-pack for a keg...)

I'd also want to know how they controlled for diet; let's face it, a lot of folks don't switch to diet drinks until there is already a weight problem, which may skew the correlation a bit.

-- Steve isn't saying the study is wrong, just that the extract leaves him with some questions.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, though I've heard elsewhere that aspartame can increase appetite.

[andrewducker]

I believe it spikes insulin, which is why I avoid it.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

In fairness the only people I know who don't drink diet drinks are people who have absolutely no weight worries or rarely drink fizzy drinks at all (and will therefore just go for the sugar on the rare occasion they do drink it because they can). And kids.

And Erin makes the very good point that what you mostly see parents giving their kids are those fake fruit juices like Sunny D and so on, and they are every bit as bad for you as fizzyjuice and don't seem to be mentioned here.