Author: Vincent Diepeveen
Date: 13:23:15 04/06/04
Go up one level in this thread
On April 06, 2004 at 13:55:38, Sune Fischer wrote: > >>Still, I think it absurd to think that someone who walks into a retail store >>will bother to learn what parameters like those mean. These things are >>interesting to persons of a certain bent who are very rare. >> >>You did not understand my illustration about the horse. My point was that most >>people don't know what those terms meant or how to accomplish the goal. Of the >>group that do not know them, only a small fraction will care to learn them. >> >>There are 5 million people who have bought ChessMaster. I am guessing that >>4,990,000 of them have NO IDEA what a hash table is. Probabbly about one >>million of them use the product regularly (e.g. once per month or more). Very >>very few people will need to know technical things to use and enjoy the product. >> Sure, if they want to learn intricacies they might enjoy it even more. In the >>same way, most people cannot tell you what a good valve clearance for their >>engine is, or why the spark ignites the gasoline before top dead center. But >>they can still enjoy and drive the car, even without knowing how to tune it up. >> >>I am not disagreeing that it is better to learn. I am saying that most people >>won't care about all those parameters we spent weeks fussing over and it is not >>a defect on their part, any more than not knowing the compression ratio of your >>car's engine is a defect in the driver. > >Sure I agree to all of that, but I'm still unsure of your point. >Are you saying that winboard engines require this level of knowledge? >If so that isn't true. > >Editing one line in the winboard ini-file is not rocket science, not even for >techno-phobes I think. It's just something 99.9% of the customers is not capable of doing. First of all they have *no clue* that they must modify it. It's like all those linux freaks that tell me: "you didn't know this? look in the 10-gigabyte-read-before-you-realize-what-to-modify-online-help-file." Even if you try to teach that 99.9% of the customers to modify an inifile, still 90% will not be capable of knowing how to do it. Because at each computer it is in a different directory and no way they are going to find the correct directory. Additionally XP works different from win2000 and NT. You explain it for win2000 but the 'run' in XP is on a different spot than in win2000. So they will not manage to get notepad to work at all. Some will load it in word. Others in excel. So that will go wrong too. Basically they have no clue what an editor is, just like you have no clue what a ventieldopdoosetiketverfletteraar is. In fact it's a legal dutch item and until shortly was listed as one of the longer words in the dutch dictionaries. if i spelt it correct hehe, i guess so. You are suffering from a typical 'engineers' syndrome which i would call freakomania: "Completely uncapable imagining how a normal sane person lacking your knowledge and skills is capable of dealing with technology". >Even it if were, they could just install Arena instead. 60% of the users won't manage to install it off a cdrom as it has no autostart. No way that average users will manage to install stand alone winboard enginesinto Arena. Just for once and for all forget it. The average user is *not* capable of doing that. Like 99% for sure won't ever manage that. Note that i doubt you would manage to get diep to work without help from me under Arena. How would you start it, just click at diepm.exe? In fact experienced linux users never managed had each 6 months the same problem getting it to work. Where all it requires one simple thing in linux and it requires one simple thing in windows. So that's why my own GUI just accepts an OK and it works. Now i'm sure that you already understand what means 'gui', but in fact with 'gui' i mean interface+engine, just like normal users. 'the chess engine' is the stand alone engine which just can play chess. Try to explain it to the average user. Stefan Meyer Kahlen is trying it at his homepage. Completely useless. It should've been put in an 'expert faq' instead :) >Arena can scan your harddrive for available engines, so all you have to do is >download them and unzip them. You still must find that button to do it and know it has that capability or it won't succeed. >-S.
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