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Whilst I agree with the fundamentals of this post and the problems of A/B testing I think the analogy with Groundhog Day is completely wrong.
The "Perfect Date" was never the perfect outcome of Groundhog Day and therefore achieving it did not end the movie. Once that particular goal was achieved it produced another failure. The true perfect outcome was for Groundhog Day to end. This did eventually happen after many more outcomes were achieved and this is when the A/B testing scenario happened.
So whilst A/B testing can be considered "bad". Groundhog Day itself is an absolutely perfect example of how it could work, not how it couldn't.
Commented Jul 29, 2010 on Groundhog Day, or, the Problem with A/B Testing at Coding Horror
Groundhog Day, or, the Problem with A/B Testing
On a recent airplane flight, I happened to catch the movie Groundhog Day. Again. If you aren't familiar with this classic film, the premise is simple: Bill Murray, somehow, gets stuck reliving the same day over and over. It's been at least 5 years since I've seen Groundhog Day. I don't know...
Just because it's hard/impossible doesn't mean it's completely wrong to do it. I'd rather see a few clbuttic mistakes that certain words all over kids internet browsers.
Commented Jul 27, 2010 on Obscenity Filters: Bad Idea, or Incredibly Intercoursing Bad Idea? at Coding Horror
Obscenity Filters: Bad Idea, or Incredibly Intercoursing Bad Idea?
I'm not a huge fan of The Daily WTF for reasons I've previously outlined. There is, however, the occasional gem – such as this one posted by ezrec: Browsing through a web archive of some old computer club conversations, I ran across this sentence: "Apple made the clbuttic mistake of forcing out...
I use three monitors with two cards without a problem. Very simple setup.
I did buy one of these SAPPHIRE TECHNOLOGY RADEON HD 4850X2 1GB GDDR3 PCI-E QUAD-DVI
http://www.amazon.co.uk/SAPPHIRE-TECHNOLOGY-RADEON-QUAD-DVI-FULL-RETAIL/dp/B0028YB690/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1270808484&sr=8-1
Which in theory was great and the price was no real different from two cards. However, my workstation was unable to power it. It has no problem with two individual 4850s but this monster needed so many power cables and just caused random crashes because of the juice it pulled on my standard PSU. Bear in mind this is a high efficiency PSU on a fairly new HP Workstation. I wasn't about to upgrade the PSU so went back to two cards!
Commented Apr 9, 2010 on Three Monitors For Every User at Coding Horror
Three Monitors For Every User
As far as I'm concerned, you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much screen space. By "screen", I mean not just large monitors, but multiple large monitors. I've been evangelizing multiple monitors since the dark days of Windows Millennium Edition: Multiple Monitors and Productivity...
The problem with the "Ejector Seat" analogy is that whilst accidental deployment is bad, not being able to deploy easily is arguably worse!
Commented Mar 24, 2010 on The Opposite of Fitts' Law at Coding Horror
The Opposite of Fitts' Law
If you've ever wrangled a user interface, you've probably heard of Fitts' Law. It's pretty simple -- the larger an item is, and the closer it is to your cursor, the easier it is to click on. Kevin Hale put together a great visual summary of Fitts' Law, so rather than over-explain it, I'll refer...
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