Not enough. MicroUSB is rated (someone else said) for 10,000 insertions. Insertion count means nothing if it's rated that way based on "perfect" connections. I am highly suspect that MicroUSB can hold up to anywhere close to 10,000 under normal, "human" usage.

I think you need to go farther with this one. The connector must be able to be connected in either extremely low-light or no-light conditions and not have the possibility of being bent or broken in those conditions.

Maybe, maybe not. I've read several accounts from former Apple engineers who state Jobs pushed them to do far more than they ever thought they could. Many times, they would present work to Jobs they thought was "good enough" only to have it thrown back at them.

"Making fun" of PC's? Yes. Making fun of customers, no. "I'm a Mac" and "I'm a PC".

First computer. When I bought it, it had 16K, but I saved and was able to upgrade it to 32K. The plastic-enclosed memory modules certainly distanced you from the technology, but I can still vividly remember the solid fit-and-finish when I plugged that module into place.

No, I did not RTFA, but the first thought I had was; if the planet is between us and its star, we'd be "seeing" the side of the planet facing away from the star. Wouldn't it be dark? It's not like it's a binary system with another star lighting the opposite side. Since it's a gas giant, I guess there would be enough light filtering through the upper atmosphere edges to cast off some light, but overall, it seems like such a small area to glean colors from.

Are there any plug-ins or methods which allow you to spoof what information is sent back?

What we need is a law that allows anyone (individuals, corporations, government agencies) to inform the public of such eavesdropping, with protection and no ramifications by whatever agency is requiring them to do so. Then the NSA or whomever can't make these secret "let-us-in-and-don't-tell-anyone-or-we'll-throw-you-into-a-deep-dark-hole" demands.

Atari 800 > C64 > Atari 1040ST (TOS) > Mac OS 8 - X ...At this point things get muddy.

I dabbled in Linux and then built a couple XP boxes, but still was firmly in the OS X camp. Currently our household tally is:

2 - XP (one is dual boot on my MacBook Pro)
2 - Win7
3 - OS X

I can totally believe that. As in all fields, there are bad UX professionals. There can also be bad data. If testing is done with limited participants or resources, the results can lead to bad conclusions.

While user feedback is not the best method to determine features and design (there are situations where users ask for features or changes that aren't really needed or can be provided in better ways), it can be valuable in determining areas to focus on. Good UX professionals would have definitely taken user feedback into account.

In the end, UX never has the last say, anyway. Business and stakeholders many times can and do push software off the user-friendly path and the end result is not as good as it could have been. This is my theory as to why Windows 8 turned out the way it did, even though many here want to blame UX.

UAT is not Usability or UX. As you said, UAT is nothing more than users following a script, testing all parts and paths in an application to make sure nothing is broken. UAT is performed after the application has been coded and is nearing deployment.

UX is ideally involved throughout the development process. Observing users, identifying requirements, understanding the workflow, testing concepts and designs before coding even begins are crucial steps to creating easy-to-use software. Working closely with the developers is also critical, including them in the process to help them understand why certain UI and workflow decisions were made.

The sad part is, we'll never see it coming.

I almost could have written your post, except my first computer was an Atari 800. I took a while to choose between it and the TRS-80, mostly because those were the two computers I found set up at the local mall. Star Raiders was awesome on the 800, and I couldn't count the number of hours I spent typing in programs and saving them to the tape drive. I still remember one game which felt like it took a couple hours to type in -- I saved it out 5 times onto 5 different tapes and I still wasn't able to ever load it up to play. One of the first games I bought was called, Captivity(?), which was a 3D maze game. The cassette it came on played guitar music while the game took 9 minutes to load. After that, I switched to the C64, and then went through several iterations of Atari ST's. And yes, had the Jaguar too, which was loads of fun.

Good points. I know next-to-nothing about acupuncture, but I do know it requires a lot of study. It's not just poking needles in random places on people. So a "degree in acupuncture" I could see and agree with. A "SCIENCE degree in acupuncture" I'm not so sure. It depends on what the implications are behind the "science" label. I think there is a science to acupuncture, it's just not something that we can define using Western understanding which hasn't been through the rigors we place on Western medicine.

I know very little about acupuncture, but it seems to me it would be possible to perform "placebo" tests. I thought acupuncture was based on areas on the body corresponding to other parts of the body and they didn't always seem to corelate (I'm just making stuff up here, but for instance, the left shin corelates to the liver). Seeing as most people don't know or understand these corelations, it seems like a placebo test could apply acupuncture to unrelated areas. You could then measure results and see whether you get an acceptable or unacceptable placebo rate as compared to those who had the acupuncture administered correctly.

The reverse is also true. My son does not respond to traditional pain relief remedies; aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen. None of them work on him. A while back he started getting these intense abdominal pains. For two weeks he was essentially bed-ridden. We tried everything we could think of. He saw several doctors and had multiple scans and tests run. Nothing told us what was wrong or alleviated the pain. We then tried an acupuncturist. Before the session was over, his pain was completely removed. Now you could say it was coincidence, and maybe it was. A few months later, the pain reoccurred and within a couple days we took him back to the acupuncturist and again, his pain went away instantly. I believe if there are scientific paths to treat illness, you should take them. In general, I doubt many homeopathic claims, but if something works for you and it's not endangering or it can avoid negative side effects of traditional methods, how can you deny that?