Monday, April 27, 2009

call it stupid

remember a couple of posts back when i was listing things i hate and i mentioned people who ask stupid, irrelevant questions in class?? yeah, well i think today i found the guy that wins the prize for stupidest question and subsequent argument. so i'm sitting in class, right?? it's human-computer interactions and we basically learn how computers and humans interact. shocking, right?? so anyways the professor was discussing some failed attempts at user-friendliness. one of his examples was of a product that was so complex to use "you need another set of hands." obviously a fail.
so some oh-so-enlightened guy in the front says, in all seriousness, "well what if we had three arms and three hands, then it would be fine, right?? so it's not a complete fail."
my professor explains that "yes if we had three hands then it would be alright, but we dont."
"well i dont think you can say it failed then."
"but you design things for people in this day and age to be able to use. right now, people only have two arms."
"i'm sure someone somewhere has three arms."
"you design a product for the mass majority of people to use, not the exception."
"but since that person can use it, i dont think you should be saying it failed."
"but it did fail."
"not completely, that one person may have been able to use it easily. meaning it didnt fail."
at this point, some other dude decided to take a stab at explaining, "you dont even know if a three armed person exists to use the product, it failed as a product targeted towards normal people.
"so what youre saying is that people with three arms are not normal??"
by now, we were all pretty annoyed with him. i was feeling pretty sick and just about decided to leave class early. the thing is, he wasnt even joking. he wasnt trying to be funny, or clever, or disrupt class. he was really arguing the case of a hypothetical three armed person. of course, after the rest of the guys got involved in the conversation - with a few threats and words i wont repeat - he eventually shut up and sulked in a corner.

speaking of stupidity, someone was apparently sued for using a phrase in his (her?) blog. it was apparently the title of some random author's book. remember, this person wasnt stealing an idea of the author's. he didnt copy out a page of the book and pass it off as his own. he used a common phrase. since when could you copyright that?? he was instructed to put that little r in a circle thing and mention that the phrase was a copyrighted trademark of whatever the author's name was. he refused. so apparently if you say "that was then, this is now" "you don't know me" "go ask alice" "into the wild" "twilight" or any other common thing that's also a book's title, you are potentially a copyright infringer. beware.

on a completely unrelated note, oy with the poodles already. if you know where that's from, then you are a very awesome individual. if you dont, then you suck. if you google it then not only do you suck, but you also have no life.

*Shining - Kristian Leontiou

2 comments:

  1. anonymous hippopotamusJune 7, 2011 at 3:17 PM

    1. awesomeness you used shining as your blog title!
    2. the arguing guy sounds like me or daddy except i wouldn't be serious i would just be trying to annoy everyone. haha
    3. crazy bout the suing and stuff..
    4. i was gonna google oy with the poodles but you said i'd suck and have no life so i didn't. so i guess now i just suck. :'(

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  2. :O it's gilmore girls, stupid! you should know that! and i hated that kid.

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