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Subject: Re: which 6 man tablebases are the most important?

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 14:53:58 04/06/04

Go up one level in this thread


On April 06, 2004 at 17:07:42, Sune Fischer wrote:

>>>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.
>
>You're just making up numbers, the number is distorted because you never hear
>complaints from those who succeed.
>
>>First of all they have *no clue* that they must modify it.
>
>It is possible they have no clue, but then they won't have much use for a chess
>engine either. It goes hand in hand at some level.
>
>>>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.
>
>Of course, and if they can't they have much bigger problems anyway, like how to
>find the "power on" switch :)
>
>Seriously.
>You are expecting programmers to design software for users
>*) who are scared of techno,
>*) who can't install from a CD,
>*) who doesn't know what a file is,
>*) who can't browse a menu and
>*) who can't push buttons.

If software just must take into account those points then it's still easy to
create software. Software also needs to be

*) foolproof

Because in general a reasonable % of the users after installing new software
product is getting an information overload. the reaction that happens then is at
best described as: "Utter panic and clicking all clickable areas until the
software shows some type of response they recognize. Usually combined with 100
times pressing the ENTER key"

>Good luck writing software to these people, I give up on those.

Don't worry, i happily create software that's foolproof.

>Luckly, I think we are dealing with a minory among the computer chess interested
>folks!

Computerchess is a technical sport.

If you do not see the average chessproduct user as a computerchess enthusiast,
because he doesn't know much from computers, then there is something very wrong
with you.

>-S.



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