Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion
Fuze V1 USB support broken under Rockbox 3.7 / 3.7.1
Roj:
"Free" and "open source" do NOT automatically equal "good". Those terms are far too often used as a panacea and can quite easily mean "mediocre" and "substandard". I was quite serious when I said that anyone using a registration process designed like that in the outfit I work for would find themselves out of work - and my employer is not a particularly small one (we're about 14,000 users across the planet). It takes accomodation for individuals with visual and other disabilities very seriously indeed and the registration process for this site would fail hands down, especially since such accomodation is mandated by law here.
I'm actually rather laid back compared to those who work to ensure our sites are easily accessible by all - they're quite zealous about their mandate.
And they have every right to be.
From my own professional point of view as a security specialist, the best security does not get in the way of users to the point that even those without disabilities are hampered, never mind those with disabilities.
After all, you WANT people to join and post issues; that way your product improves.
YMMV.
PS.
I thought about this after I posted and I forgot to add the following:
One of the reasons I use Rockbox is the absolutely superb support for people who are visually impaired like myself. The large font support and the voice commands are exceptional, especially in light of this being a non-commercial community supported project. Cowon, my DAP vendor of choice (and arguably the Rolls Royce of DAPs), does not offer support of this calibre. I simply cannot praise it highly enough in that department.
[Saint]:
That's all very well and good, except:
1: - Rockbox is not a "product", it's created by the developers...for the developers and if the general public can get a kick out of it too then great.
2: - You didn't mention what you would change to make the experience better for you/others.
You established the fact that you think it is lacking, I get that, but without any feedback on how it is lacking exactly or what could be done to improve it, your criticisms really don't serve a lot of purpose except getting something you found annoying off your chest and venting your frustration.
[St.]
AlexP:
We have to have some sort of captcha system for the registration. We have a problem with spam, and we need to try and stop them somehow. I find the words readable, but of course if they were perfectly clear then it would be trivial for spam bots to exploit them, and I can understand how it would be diffcult for people with poor eyesight. There has to be some trade-off between how easy they are to read and how well they actually do their job of stopping spammers. I agree that the audio part is useless, I just tried it and had no idea what it was saying, it didn't correspond at all to what I read.
That being said, I'm terribly sorry but we don't have the resources to implement our own system. We aren't a company with paid employees, we are a group of individuals who do this in our spare time, and very generously offer up all our hard work to everyone else for free. If you can find us a better system that fits in with the forum software, that makes it easier for genuine people to register yet still efficiently blocks spam bots, then please let us know and we will do our best to incorporate it. If you are just going to rant and not try to help, then you are entitled to a full refund and to be ignored.
I do sometimes wonder about the mentality of people that just rant at a project such as Rockbox. If you are paying a company for a service or product, then sure you have the right to expect a minimum level. However when people spend hundreds of thousands of hours of their own time on something for no remuneration, then offer it all up for free and do their best to offer support and to help those people that get everything for free, it is slightly galling when all people can do is rant and complain. It doesn't make me want to continue giving up my free time. If you had spent a lot of time on something that you then gave away, would you feel like giving up more time to help someone who turned up and said, "This is crap" or someone who said, "This is difficult to use, I've done some research and it seems like xxx might be a better option"?
Please think about this.
Roj:
--- Quote from: [St.] on December 11, 2010, 04:58:57 AM ---That's all very well and good, except:
1: - Rockbox is not a "product", it's created by the developers...for the developers and if the general public can get a kick out of it too then great.
2: - You didn't mention what you would change to make the experience better for you/others.
You established the fact that you think it is lacking, I get that, but without any feedback on how it is lacking exactly or what could be done to improve it, your criticisms really don't serve a lot of purpose except getting something you found annoying off your chest and venting your frustration.
[St.]
--- End quote ---
Since you asked:
1) Everything created is a product, whether you choose to acknowledge that it is or not. If you put effort into it, even if it is only for yourself, then it is - plain and simple.
2) The site needs a method of registration verification that is not as Draconian for those who are visually impaired. I have a set of $350 multimedia speakers and the audio verification was still extremely fuzzy and indistinct, thanks in no small part to the background noise put there for obfuscation. Someone with a lesser set of speakers will find it all but impossible. Clean up the audio verification so that it is more realistically achievable. The visual aspect of registration is achieved by sampling books and morphing the letters together into words that are often nonsensical. The resolution is jaggy and very difficult to discern for visually impaired users. Make the letters smoother and more distinct (less morphed) and users will stand half a chance of being able to identify them. Furthermore, the human brain is an awesome pattern recognition machine. Tests have been done that indicate that with only the first and last letters discernible in a word, the human brain can "fill in the gaps". Unfortunately, if the words are pure rubbish, this built-in talent is useless, further impairing the intent of the presentation. I realize that the purpose of this method is to defeat bots. However, it should not (and unfortunately does) defeat humans from using it as well.
That more specific for you?
gevaerts:
The way I see it, we have two options:
* Run the forums the best we can, taking into account that all of this is volunteer work done by people who may also try to have a life
* Shut down the forums
I think the second option would meet all of your requirements. Is that what we should do then?
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