I think what you're trying to say is:

I think the point is more: Why are your users not working for you?

As for the bit about frustration, that's more of an overall issue. That's a bug in the human system; not the user, the whole organization.

If users had an approachable, understandable and friendly way to report bugs, there wouldn't be such stress. The frustration comes from the expectation of how a bug report (or opening a ticket, or calling IT, etc) will play out. Often, for them, it's an exercise in futility and exasperation, dealing in a great many things that they don't understand and, more to the point, don't care to understand.

If the process wasn't so confusing or demeaning, it wouldn't be considered as a "last resort" for so many users.

Hell, we could recount "worst user" stories all day long. This does point to a typical social phenomenon; perceived competence.

The user in question probably just wants to be seen as more-competent, so they remember a time when they spoke to someone knowledgeable. It may have been the Geek Squad guy or a Desktop Support person, it doesn't really matter. Back then, they were told that the "page not available" paragraph that appears when they expected to see ReadNewsAllDay.com was sometimes called a "404", because that's what machines called the error. (not that the HTTP error table is all that accurate in the first place)

That impression, when you combine it with the syndrome of brow-beater IT personnel, makes for a false association. The user then thinks, "So an error in my browser is called a '404' by the pros. I don't want to be talked-down to, so I'm going to use it the next time I call them and they might relate to me like I'm a human!"

Brilliant, right?

So, who carries the blame?
I say it's a systemic problem, not a causational relationship.

Blame the user?

It's not his fault, nobody explained the actual significance of '404' to him, they just gave him a connection to it.

Blame the sales geek?

Not really his fault either, because his job is to make the technology more 'shiny' and less 'scary' --just doing his job.

Blame the browser source?

How can we? They caved to pressures from thousands of users to make errors "more understandable" and so the numbers were replaced with friendly paragraphs of hit-and-miss suggestions.

Blame the brow-beating IT professionals?

Can you really blame those guys after dealing with all of those ignorant, demanding and thankless users?

Blame the makers of HTTP?

Y'know... maybe we can!

What can we take away from this?

Here's one thing; technology has its deepest roots in obscure, cryptic and sometimes senseless nomenclature. The numbers, codes, acronyms and techniques being used were once so mystifying to the average person, it was almost like magic to them. As technology keeps evolving, it also keeps becoming more accessible to Joe Q User. However, some of the older technology has nigh-immortal longevity and persists it's often non-sensical origins of coded gobbletygook, (e.g., http) and--like an ancient language--requires an interpreter.

The challenge then presents itself; being an interpreter without the implication that you are imparting actual, workable knowledge. Good luck.

Technically correct... or in other words: Yes, but south is also to your left, as well as in front of you, to your right and behind you.

To "go east" from the North Pole, you would, literally, turn to your left. When you stop turning, you've arrived at your 'eastern' destination. It's not like there's an Eastern Pole and the North Pole is drifting towards it.

TFS is more confusing than enlightening, especially with these egregious references to cardinal directions that cannot possibly apply to a polar-zero coordinate. Have we lost our way so completely that we cannot remember how to manage these simple paradoxes? (HINT: Longitude)

At the North Pole, when you take one step in any direction, it's a southward direction. Same goes, but vice-versa, for the South Pole.

The biggest difference is that you will still be able to stand on the South Pole in twenty years.

Oh no... not what you think. All of the opinions about the trailer (movie.trailer != movie), the rants about Card's personal views, the woe and despair over how bad everything is and the doom of sci-fi... 100% conjecture, categorically unprovable.

What this thread does prove is how pivotal and evocative Ender's Game, as a work of literature, is and will continue to be for the science fiction genre. This thread would not be so controversial if this wasn't already true.

I read the novel right after HS graduation. (yeah, go fig'... I'm a "seven digit"... how did that happen!?) There's more strong opinions here than there were at the NRA conference-nay-coronation-ceremony, and in the same light, the same tones are struck about the same old flawed arguments. Despite that, or rather because of it, this is clearly one of the greatest works in all of science fiction!

I'm going to see it, and pay to do so—in theaters and in 3D—not because I think the trailer depicts a good movie, but because I don't believe that a trailer is always an accurate synopsis of the film. (e.g., remember the Matrix trailer? How about any of the M. Night Shyamalan works? Those didn't reveal the entire plot, either.) Just because we know how it ends doesn't mean we know how the movie gets there.

No piece of cinematographic work can be measured by how it ends, for it is the journey that entertains. Anyone who claims that their judgement is certainty is only upholding the theory of self-fulfilling prophecies. Plain and simple; you don't know until you've seen the whole thing.

As for Mr. Card's personal views, I may not agree with them, but I will defend to the death his right to have a different viewpoint. In the meantime, if he can continue to create and imagine deep characters and interesting plots, then I will continue to appreciate his work. Doing so does not–in any way–validate Mr. Card's personal views, saying "I agree with Mr. Card's views," does.

In the same sense, paying to see Tom Cruise in Oblivion is not supporting Scientology in any way. I just happen to believe that The Last Samurai was the absolute last movie wherein Mr. Cruise played a believable character. Also, I'm not going to pay to see another movie with Morgan Freeman having to explain everything to a clueless protagonist; although I do love Morgan Freeman as an actor... and titty sprinkles.

Or... to take the argument at "face value"...

Yes, it's true that a human riding a bicycle has elevated heart-rate and respiration, therefore producing higher levels of CO2, when compared to another human sitting in a driver's seat.

Classic bait-and-switch, we're not supposed to think of the car as a CO2 producer (or CO producer, or O3 producer, or NO2 producer, etc) but simply take it as rote that bicycles are contributing to the demise of the global climate.

It seems that Orcutt believes that cars run on magical dinosaur blood and not the oxidation process of a dense hydrocarbon. Q.E.D. Prima facie!

What happened with OP was, technically, an exception-handling bug. The exception was that some condition of the next event wasn't satisfied, and did so with time-sensitive language on the screen. That's not a poor progress bar, that's just negligent coding.

Kudos for pointing out the difference with the Progress Bar and Time Estimation. A good example for both? wget

A properly crafted Progress Bar is not hard to do: Amalgamate the task at hand into a number of homogeneous units and express those in the graphic bar as [ units.done / units.total ] and you'll be fine. Where most fail at this is in keeping the units consistent and/or appropriate. A classic fallacy is one of file-count vs. byte-count, but the most egregious of those failures is a total-units value that dynamically updates. (vis-a-vis, the "dancing left and right" progress bar)

OTOH, there's Time Estimation, which is a far more fickle beast, especially when applied to ISP throughput. This requires more of an understanding of statistics and averages, where the algorithm is actively measuring units of time as well as units of data. A classic approach is to simply calculate the mean throughput and apply it to the bytes remaining to get the ETA, but this quickly falls short when the connection hangs or if the algorithm is relying on throughput statistics to ratchet the loop. The best—and most frugal—implementations of Time Estimation have used a timed loop with throughput calculated on a rolling average from a fixed number of samples. Again, the most common errors here are; using incorrect units; using an unreliable source for rate and/or throughput; using too small of a sample base before starting prediction trends, and the icing on the cake; mistaking a partially completed task as an accurate measurement of throughput in the sum prediction. (Back in the days of 56k dialup, I would resume d/c downloads all the time, and the download managers were regularly telling me that the 10MB chunk I already have somehow sped up the process to twice—or even ten times—the highest possible speed of my dialup connection. el. oh. el.)

Now, all of this goes "out the Windows(tm)" if you happen to be at Microsoft any time in the past fifteen years. Their idea of a "progress bar" seems to be just a mechanism to make the user sit and do nothing for a number of minutes at a time. The progress bars they typically have made are either (A) simple timer animations that masquerade as a progress bar [see: browsing the network] or (B) the obsequious progress bars from Win98, that fill up to 100% and stay there for another two minutes before actually triggering the next process.

Thankfully, someone in the Win8 file manager team actually got the memo, as you can see here.

So, there's really no mystery. The "how to" of making an accurate progress bar or time estimation algorithm is really quite well established. The real question is, how to convince software developers to implement one?

P.S. Units. Units! UNITS!!!

FTFY

Yes, indeed. It is a pity.

How about 7GB of cloud storage; free? That comes with a Microsoft Account.

I think I'd rather have that space for having photos, music, movies and documents available at all times rather than simply hope that it will work for disaster recovery. Should anyone really be dependent on cloud storage to initiate disaster recovery? Is that really such a good idea?

I find it interesting that any comments on that "pre-release" article (that didn't even test an actual Surface device) are hidden and have been closed. "Semi-accurate" indeed.

The pure anti-MSFT sentiment is palpable and equally as misleading as the article claims MSFT to be; I'd call it a fountain of non-information.

• Leaving 10GB for patching -- Updates are not as cumulative with Win RT, so that figure is pure hyperbole
• Nightly scheduled updates -- Handled via Windows Update over Wi-Fi and automatically when you 'sleep' your device.
• A Virus Scanner -- irrelevant; Win RT comes with Security Essentials installed and activated (firewall+antivirus+monitoring) eliminating any need for 3rd-party packages.
• Regular de-fragmentation of the disk -- yes, automatically (see Updates above)
• Turn off unnecessary services like the "Print Spooler" -- I invite you to please point those out in Windows RT and provide the quantified advantage of doing so
• Periodically clear on the systems logs to reduce the amount of used diskspace -- again, please point those out in RT and state those numbers
• Link your tablet to MS Live account -- it's now referred to as a Microsoft Account, but can be inclusive of former services under MS Live. These services ensure consistent appearance, user-preferences and cloud storage access, which are all the more important with a mobile device.

Indeed!

Obviously, you didn't, but they really have. (FTFY)

I'm having a hard time figuring out which group looks the most asinine in this event; TSA, Delta Airlines® or the NTFA?

From what we know in the article, I'm leaning towards NFTA getting the "ass hat" award. They weren't happy enough to trust the TSA screening or assume an unbiased stance on why Delta kicked him off the flight. (Keep in mind, if the Delta staff didn't have such a problem, he would have been flown to his destination.) No, that wasn't good enough for the high-falutin' NFTA; they had to keep pesterin' him.

The audacious measures that people go through, when they're only answering to the voices in their heads. The risks and threats that these "officers" were addressing were completely and purely imaginary. None of them seemed to be satisfied with reality; they just had to go the panic route and persecute someone who was just trying to make a point.

Is this going to spear-head the next attack on the 1st Amendment?

In all, the TSA didn't prove to be the cause... or were they? Did they call Delta about this passenger before the flight boarded? Did they call NFTA to alert them of this "threat"? Consider this; I visit a shop and the owner is present with two attack dogs. If I crack a joke that the owner doesn't find funny, he may ask me to leave. If I leave, it should be clear that I'm cooperating with the owner's wishes. Now, if the dogs attack me as I'm leaving the store... do I blame the dogs?

Think about it.