Slashdot Mirror
Too Much Tech Makes End Users Blink
There's a strange, somewhat funny story in The Washington Post today about how technology is probably going to keep outstripping people's ability to deal with it for many decades to come. It's a long piece, but please bear with it to the end; that's where Jaron Lanier (who some credit with inventing the phrase "virtual reality"), whimsically suggests that, in exchange for being granted U.S. copyright protection, commercial software publishers should have to pay users $1 every time their product screws up. "Instead of hunting down people who smoke pot," Lanier says, "they'd be hunting down people who sell business software that crashes. They'd owe people a buck or go to jail. That's what Washington should be doing."
Finally another person who understands the TRUTH. I always end up having the same argument with Windows and Mac advocates who beleive abstracting and simplifying a computer user interface is somehow making it MORE powerful, when it reality complexity is proportional to functionality. An SUV that can tow a giant boat will have a special interface for the boat that the operator must know and understand in order for it to work well and yet NOONE complains that it is too complex, and yet computer software MUST have some moron-level graphical abstraction even when the user is doing something very specific.. Why *shouldn't* it be hard to use a tool that is designed for a specific job? Why must we pander to the lowest common denominator instead of encouraging and educating people on how to use computers when it is fully in their best interest to use it properly?
I think Spider Robinson said it best about programming a VCR (I don't remember the exact phrasing)
Not only are people unable to set their watch, twice, and then pick a TV channel, they seem to be proud of it!
...and setting the clock is even easier. It's just like... SETTING A CLOCK! I don't see what the problem is.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
The plane was well under control and test pilots were entirely comfortable with its flight envelope- then, some flights training airline pilots turned sour, with inexperienced pilots allowing too much yaw to develop, causing either emergencies or in one case a full-scale crash with fatalities to the flight crew onboard during the training flight.
Boeing risked being legally put on the spot and took responsibility for redesigning the rudder, giving more yaw authority and making the dangerous situation less easy for an inexperienced pilot to get into. Boeing covered the costs of this itself, and a good thing too.
I don't see many software vendors even attempting to be as trustworthy. The software company version of this would be changing the trainee pilots' contracts to say "And if the trainee crashes our expensive aircraft, his estate has to pay for the broken plane! Plus we keep his car."
*spit*
Well, the Arianne 4 (maybe 5) was lost because of a programmer error. Periodically, spacecraft will have some sort of hiccup that involves software, though usually non-fatal.
More importantly, while it's possible to engineer software to much greater tolerance, it's simply not cost-effective to do so. The teams that code for the space shuttle, for example, write code that's about as bug free as mortal man can hope for. If you employed them to write your web browser, however, you'd have to get $100 from every web user for every new version just to break even. The time between sucessive browser generations would skyrocket-- we'd probably still be using Netscape 2. And forget about support for new features in a timely manner.
All in all, I'd much rather have a free browser today that does a pretty good job of rendering most any page and crashes periodically than a browser that never crashes but was stuck using 6-year-old technology.
Of course, I'd make the opposite trade off for the software that operates the jet I fly in!
That's a good point. In fact, why don't all the clocks set their own time? I received a clock just like this for Christmas from Radio Shack. Nice LCD clock with the date, time, temperature, etc. It sets the clock automatically from the radio signals it picks up. I've checked it against my NTP time sources and it runs perfectly. I suppose the short answer is that it isn't cheap enough to add in this radio circuitry to make it worth it to manufacturers looking to make a profit. Still, most VCR's probably get hooked up to the cable anyway. My cable box seems to always know what time it is based on what the cable company throws over the line.. why not have something in the VCR that picks that up and sets the time based on that? At least when you set your VCR to record it'd be based on the time the cable company is using. :-)
That's why that would never work. It sounds like you have other issues with your computer if it crashes that much. Ever think it might be bad memory or a faulty CPU? Windows2000 for example has only crashed on me once in a year. Maybe your system is faulty?
Sure it's fair, with enough engineering it would be possable to make software that has no bugs.
Look at the flight control software for military aircraft and spacecraft. In the Apollo days the number of bugs in the Lunar Module software could be counted on one hand and the astronauts knew what they were and the work arounds.
How many F-16s, F-22s, B-1Bs, F-117s, Airbuses, etc have been lost to software issues?
The only ones I know of were the two Saab Grippin and the second F-22A prototype that had landing software issues...that have been fixed. Has the software on Galileo crashed yet since it was launched in 1989? Nope.
Bugless software can be written, it's just that engineers and marketing don't care enough for the end user to make something that doesn't crash.
Do you really believe that most VCR owners actually ever read the manual? Most people never bother - my parents are famous for this. They toss the manual in a drawer somewhere, then complain that they can't figure out how to do X (X being some arbitrary thing, like setting the time, setting up a timed recording, disabling auto-tracking, whatever). Yet do they read the manual? Hell, they wouldn't recognize it if they saw it.
That's the problem - the "average" user wants products engineered for someone who knows nothing, and is unwilling to educate oneself. The techies are willing to educate themselves to use things, and most (not all, but most) don't expect users to know everything, but at least to be functionally literate, so they can read directions.
The situation here isn't as opposite as it seems.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Tax alcohol
tax cigarettes
tax SUCKY IMPLEMENTATIONS OF GOOD IDEAS!
Inconceivable!
yeah, the only time I ever finished a lego project was when I physically ran out of legos. I would build stuff, and when I was done building it, I would find places to put all those other legos that I had left over - whether they belonged or not.
.
Maybe I was a little obsessive/compulsive. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I generally don't base my VCR (or other equipment) purchases on the quality of a side product.
I don't buy VCRs for their clocks. If the clock sucks, but the VCR is great, then I just won't use the clock.
Except of course that with any modern VCR the time doesn't get reset on power outages, or even an extended unplugged time. Ah well, your loss.
I think it was a Varley short story that I recall where the world is run by a single massive conscious AI that takes care of all of our information needs and is SO GOOD at being a "user interface" that most people treat it as their best friend. Anyway, the thing eventually becomes depressed and by subtlely manipulating people makes them kill themselves. Cool story. Read it like 10 years ago so I don't recall exactly what it was...
STFU about slashdot bias.
This might encourage people to respect copyrights a little more. You won't get the compensation money if it's an unregistered copy.
But it'll never happen anyway. Can you honestly expect a certain large purveyor of desktop operating systems to let this kind of law pass in the US Congress?
...not Michael Lanier, who coined that particular phrase ("virtual reality").
-- Old Man Kensey
I'll buy this "oh, it's not US that makes things suck" argument when nerds agree on whether to use KDE or GNOME.
Please, spare me. Nerds and engineers are just as much to blame as anybody. To use the KDE/GNOME scism as an example, KDE creates an application environment where programmer can share code and rapidly develop applications that can interact (copy-paste functionality, etc. Basically, duplicate the 1984 Macintosh Toolbox, but anyway...)
However, KDE uses Qt. Qt is "evil" because it's not Free. God forbid we spend our effort on convincing TrollTech to "free" Qt -- we start another goddamn widget set with GNOME.
So, while *nix hackers are busily wanking themselves over software licenses and how the bits move in ways that are only interesting to other nerds (a la CORBA), Palm created and fed a market and Microsoft developed the world's best web browser.
Puhleeze -- as much as I love and identify with engineers, don't feed me this sad story. Expand your mind by studying some of the great designers, learn about user interfaces, absorb a little business (so you'll understand where your PHB is coming from) and make the product great yourself -- or stop bitching.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Partially. It's also a function of how software is developed. The process by which a car (or a toaster, or an airplane) is designed, built and assembled is 50 or more years mature. Software (as we know it today, with high-level languages and cheap, ubiquitous hardware) is barely out of it's teens.
It hasn't been until recently that people could sit down and say "Okay, C sucks, but it's the best we've got, so we standardize on C. For scripting, we use Python. We assume Intel processors and we'll use Linux as the base. From this, build me a software factory" and be able to deliver.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Software development can be done like an analog factory. Not all of it, sure -- there is still a need for the lone artist, but certain problems are solvable this way.
At least, I hope so .. otherwise, we're stuck with this ad hockery that we do now...
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Hmm, ok, this confuses me. Not only are a lot of the posters complaining that the power outages make it worthless resetting the clock (power outages? I've had one in the last 18 months) but I thought all videos these days set their own clocks? Certainly the three video players I've bought in the last 5 years have (two have been gifts, all three still work).
Or is that just in the UK?
~Cederic
Actually, the answer to this one is pretty easy... because the extra equipment to receive the signal would cost another USD nn (my guess is 20, which is significant in the low end market),thereby increasing product cost.
And, come to think about it, getting an UPS for everything that stores transient data is probably a general solution to this "problem"...
--
Whenever someone climbed aboard an engine at night and needed some light, he only had to reach up and find by touch a cross-shaped valve handle (others valves handles are round) on the turret (that's an auxiliary steam feed from the boiler to power accessories) which fed steam to the turbogenerator, and voilà, he had light without much hassle...
Perhaps automotive designers oughta be forced to learn running a steam locomotive before being allowed to work...
--
Why can't the VCR set it's own damn clock?
My sony vcr does this actually - just select "Auto" from a menu. Now if it would only watch TV for me, I'd be set!
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
Yes, stability comes at a price but Microsoft is one of the most profitable society, so maybe the price could have been taken on its HUGE benefits and not on the price the end-user pay..
:-)
Time to marcket is another matter, but from Windows 95 up to Windows ME, I haven't seen ANY gain in stability?
Why? Number of functionality over robustness, Microsoft may be one of the greatest software producer, as long as they insists on getting more feature instead of better feature, the situation won't improve.
Still, there is hope: the new Windows XP will be quite stable, at last!
Even if I have to buy another CPU and more memory to make it run, it will be a worthy upgrade.
Propably the last for a looongg time...
How about cars, for instance? I drive mine 1000 miles a week, and with proper maintenence - new tires, oil changes, filter changes, etc..., i've not had one second of unplanned downtime in 2 years. And that's for a piece of machinery with MOVING PARTS... Software doesn't have that, so in actuality, it can almost seem disappointing that you're pleased that a machine with no unmoving parts would give you "only" 438 hours of unplanned downtime per year (an hour and 12 minutes per day)...
After enough planes crashed in the '50s, he points out, investigators stopped blaming it all on pilot error and insisted that designers start making cockpits easier to understand. You'd think we'd learn.
Er... I really thought the reason why less planes crash now was because of technology, not because of "Cockpit ease of use". I mean, they gotta be trained for the cockpit right? And I am not a pilot, but I think the older style airplane controls were simpler. I've seen the cockpit of a modern jet plane and it didn't look simple to me..
Maybe I missed the point, it's happened before.
99 times out of 100, management has to pry the techs' fingers from the code.
I agree with you up to a certain point. I think there are some engineers who will never "finish" a project unless they're given an end time. We've referred to this as the "Lego" problem -- when we were kids and built something with legos it never got "finished" -- there was ALWAYS some kind of further optimization/coolness/whatever changes that could be made. I emphasize COULD -- you can ALWAYS make something better. Even with the geek's favorite, Linux, Linus has to say "CODE FREEZE" in spite of the developers who know that there's further improvement that could be made.
Not to defend meddling marketers too much, but many of them do know that if they don't get some product into the market at a certain point in time it won't sell well enough to provide ROI. If it doesn't provide ROI, then nobody has a job.
Furthermore, we as users are USED to getting slipshod code the first few releases. Be it Windows, Linux, etc -- everybody knows you don't go production in an initial release, you wait until the first patch/service pack (at least).
So are you implying that you were smart enough to choose where you were born, or that you were willing to move to another country in order to enjoy a more reliable electricity supply?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Nobody said government was the be all/end all of anything. It's just a great deal better than anarchy, is all.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Just consider that it may just be too much of a bother. The power goes out every few weeks these days (probably more often this summer) and it's a nuisance to reset the clock. A decent capacitor could hold the time in memory until the power came back on, but most of the VCRs don't bother. If someone had bothered to put any real programming in, they would probably be more than slightly irritated.
Assuming that just because someone doesn't want to bother, that they can't is silly. Assuming that they should is, at best, rude. Why should someone be expected to use a clock that is that poorly designed? Of course, if you look at it it's annoying, but I chalk that up as one more black mark against the designers.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Outside of thinking that's a petty comment...
The power didn't go off every couple of weeks until this year. I don't think I'll give up my health plan just to avoid that. I might get a UPS, but I don't think I would bother to put the VCR on it. That would be silly. Personally, I'd rather just file it away in a closet, but others have other opinions, of course.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
So one should go out and upgrade one's hardware?
It might fix the problems that I know about, at a cost, but I wouldn't know what the new problems would be. One of the problems with the upgrade treadmill is that it's expensive. The other one is that one is continually encountering new problems. I'd prefer to limit that to the computers that I deal with. It's hard to track a lot of different areas in detail (actually, it's impossible), and I'd rather pay attention to what I find important. This is what the techno-blink is about. (See caution below.)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I don't think engineers are to blame, here. I don't think simple idiocy is to blame, either; I suspect that most people who can't seem to program their VCRs are every bit as intelligent as you and me.
:)
I think apathy is to blame.
I think people simply don't try. They poke at their VCR remote for a couple of minutes, then throw up their hands and shout, "It's beyond me!" Seriously - how many times have you tried to solve a problem like this - I mean, REALLY tried, as in, for more than a few minutes, and with some structure to your problem-solving, as opposed to just blundering around - and been totally unable to get anywhere? Probably not very many. I think if these people would get out their manual and sit down and really give it a try, they'd be surprised at how easy it is to set that VCR clock.
Of course, if the problem is that your software doesn't work because it's buggy, it doesn't really matter how hard you try to solve it (unless it's open source).
-Will
All unfair meta-mods are now being meta-meta-modded as retarded.
- He placed a piece of black electricians tape over the clock on his VCR display.
This simple remedy is very fast, and has no brand requirements. It works on every VCR!--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I'm not sure that I completely agree with you. It seems that you're saying that digital devices are incapable of having any degree of tolerance. That's not true. An example is the computer used on the Apollo spacecraft back in the late 60's - early 70's. These computers were incredibly reliable; you could beat the living dog-snot out of them and they'd still chug happily along. They were digital devices with software that had a high degree of tolerance.
Other spacecraft fit that mold as well: Pioneer, Voyager, Cassini, the Shuttle, and Hubble, just to name a few. Each has computers with software that is very capable of tolerating various errors. For that matter, mainframes were (and are) far more robust that what we're stuck with today.
The problem isn't that software is inherently more complex than anything else built by Mankind (a rather arrogant presumption to begin with). The problem is that software engineers do not apply the same level of discipline and procedure into developing software than aeronautical engineers apply to aircraft and spacecraft.
The idea of "push it out the door as fast as we can" has become far too deeply entrenched in the software industry, coupled with the arrogant belief by many software engineers that their code is perfect. This is what needs to change.
I've worked in various software shops. There is no discipline. There are no standards of design and development, beyond the most basic ideas of source-code control. Invariably the process is "here's a neat idea! Let's implement it right now!" There's never any thought as to the ramifications of that "neat idea."
I understand that it is impossible to completely remove every single bug from a program, just as it is impossible to build an airplane that will never crash. But, there are a lot less airplanes falling out of the sky than there are software that doesn't crash. Why? Simple: airplanes are properly engineered, not thrown together in a mad rush to get the product to market.
"The dead do not shoo-bop-aloo-bah." -- Kai, 'Lexx'
Actually, I believe evidence has come to light that indicates the Mars Polar Lander landed properly. No 'deep dull thud.' As for what's wrong with MPL, well, that's anyone's guess right now.
Also, the reference you made to the spacecraft that had the English/metric units fouled up had nothing to do with the software, or with the machine itself. That snafu was the result of engineering teams rushing the damned thing out the door, and not taking the time to double-check themselves. Interesting how that type of screw-up happens somewhat rarely in the aerotech industry, but had become the accepted norm in the software industry.
Like I said before, it's impossible to completely remove all bugs from anything engineered by Man. However, careful review of the design, and attention to discipline and detail can eliminate a large portion of potential errors. The fact that you are espousing the view that we shouldn't even try in the software industry sounds to me that you're just too bloody lazy and narrow-minded to even consider it. There is no excuse for not implementing a regimen of rigorous testing, no matter how complex a system is.
Though you would have us believe otherwise, software is not the most complex thing ever devise by Mankind, and software engineers are not the be-all-end-all of the engineering world.
And if you're curious as to what I consider as the most complex thing ever developed by Man, it's language.
"The dead do not shoo-bop-aloo-bah." -- Kai, 'Lexx'
The 'law' comment was a joke, no sane person would propose such an idea.
The article seems like a rant against progress, I am sure that some one had similar "insight" into earlier attempts at aviation. He fails to recognise the fast changing nature of software, and the need for quick evolution. The difference in software from 1987 and 2001 is much greater in software than many other fields. More important the average user has benefitted quite a bit.
Most users are adults, and should act that way instead of b____ing whenever something goes wrong. If Windows 95 worked fine with AOL DON'T UPGRADE. If you want the next big thing be prepared to live with the consequences of living on the edge. You wish to be the use an email client that runs code, deal with the security flaws.
The problem of software reliability is trivial, use reliable software. my isp and my os coexist without problem, then again i don't use aol or win me.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
I agree... too many stupid people. Stupid people should be forced to wear an "S" on their foreheads, so that the rest of us know to stay the hell away from them!! :)
I was at a Wendy's the other day and the person behind the counter, despite having the cash register telling them SPECIFICALLY, could not give me the correct change. People like that shouldn't be allowed to go out in public! They could hurt somebody! :)
My journal has hot
"This is a stupid user error, not a software error."
A stupid user error is a software error. If the user can't accomplish what they're trying to do because they're stupid and/or won't read the manual, then it's the user's fault. If the software actually crashes, no matter what the user did, I consider it a design failure. A programmer's first duty should be to protect the user from themselves.
-B
I really dislike that car analogy that keeps cropping up over the years. First of all, there are many many people who cannot (and will not!!) drive a clutch. Right there you split the use of cars into distinct categories. Pretty much like a PC and a Mac.
Then consider 18-wheelers - who among us understand how to shift them? Not many. I suppose you could liken them to big UNIX servers.
Then you have motorcycles. Not a lot of people really can drive those well either. A bit like PDA's.
As a last point, there are MANY times when I simply can't find where the headlight switch is in a strange car without some serious searching. Talk about bad UI! It's dark, how am I supposed to find the thing?
So given the million or so things more that computers can do for us than cars, software is looking pretty good next to the pitiful state of all things that drive!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and nobody ever died becuase Windows crashed while they were playing Quake
;)
Oh... Is that what Gates was doing at that demo in Seattle last month. Gee.. guess WindowsXP really WILL take gaming to the next level
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
I have found more times than I care to admit that while I am on the road, I will automatically reach for the Transmission shifter between the seats, only to feel empty air, only to look down sheepishly and find the shifter on the steering column.
I'll usually remember where the lights are, but the windshield wipers? Nah, if it starts raining I usually need to think to find them. The radio, HAH. I've seen more makes of radio, then I have computers (okay, it feels like it though). What do I do? I usually spend at least five minutes when I get into the rental and try to figure out where eveything is THIS time. Usually helps a little, but not much, and that still doesn't keep me from hitting the high beams when I signal a left turn.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
There's nothing wrong with the clock-setting procedure you describe. It sounds complicated when you describe it step by step, but anyone willing to fool around for a few seconds would figure it out without reading the instructions.
You honestly think that the engineers should have added 4 buttons just to set the time of day? Perhaps another 6 for the year, month and day? Maybe three other sets of displays and buttons for different timed recordings? The menu selection style is simple, versatile, and doesn't require extra buttons for every extra feature.
I think the problem here is more one of poor documentation than poor design.
---
The problem is poor buying habits. Good interfaces are passed up in favor of tons of unnecessary functionality. If people actually insisted on being able to understand and use software they buy, it would straighten out pretty quickly. Instead, they assume that new is good and more functionality is better. Instead of ridiculing people who buy incompatible software and send out data in unreadable formats, they ridicule people who haven't "kept up" with the newest software.
Consumers have the bad habit of assuming novelty means progress when they have to encourage progress through intelligent selection.
---
In the article he's referring to, an important point was made:
Suppose you have two makes of car: One is completely and totally unsafe - any impact will cause it to violently explode; the other is completely and totally safe - it doesn't matter how hard you hit something, no damage would result whatsoever.
Now, if you were forced to drive both of these cars for a year, which one would you drive in the safer manner?
as soon as cars have exterior airbags as well as interior, or some kind of force fields or something, then look out, 'cause it's bumper car time and I intend to be a bumping mofo
I see we already have your answer - and it's the same as everyone else's.
So you do believe it, you just don't want to.
BIG DISCLAIMER, this software is AS IS. you can't sue us by clicking on this button or buy opening up the software.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
They talk about this "feature" in the article and about how it seldom seems to work right. As I remember, I had to disable this embedded time sync thing on my Dad's VCR last year so that I could set the time manually since it didn't work automatically.
I recall watching a show on DSC or TLC about the increasing safety of cars causing people to be less worried about being injured in an accident since the airbag would most likely save them.
Sounds like "Crash". The problem is a bit more general, with safety features becoming instead performance benefits.
The ideal car from this POV would be a very safe one which felt highly dangerous.
This article is somewhat similiar in that it forces penalties for bad products. Unfortunately, I think it will take something like what is being proposed to make companies realize that stable software is important.
This article is somewhat similiar in that it forces penalties for bad products.
Problem is that since software is licenced it tends to fall into loopholes in laws covering goods and services.
Seriously, as long as software companies emphasize release date and features over correctness and user testing,
It might be interesting to find out what proportion of these "features" are actually "customer driven". And what proportion are "styling" and about making "this year' model".
The difference between your average car and your average piece of software is that if the car does break in the first couple of years the car maker will fix it for you.
Also if they refused they'd end up minus a lot of money and told by a judge they still had to fix the car.
MENSA is actually suprisingly easy to get into. take the test - you *will* pass. of course i got bored of it after the first yr..and didnt want to pay 44 odd bucks for a quaterly magazine - but its a good social club...especially for geeks.
most of the VCRs sold now automatically set the time from a broadcast signal... Anything over $70(US) should do that...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Wow... I haven't seen a car with a floor headlamp switch since... what was that... a Ram Charger in the early 80's. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
At least two crashes, of Airbus aircraft, were caused, at least in part, by bad UI design. One was the flight at the Paris Air Show (IIRC) that went to do a go around, but the pilot had pressed the wrong button (or forgot to press one) and it bellied into the trees. Another one flew into a mountain after the pilot set the wrong glide slope. He hit the right button but was, as I recall, on the wrong screen of the glass cockpit display.
Best Slashdot Co
It sounds like SOMEONE lost a whole lot of work due to a BSOD.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
The 12:00 problem is a simple matter of proper human interface design. Take the typical VCR for example.
... and so on. that was a couple of paragraphs from the "preparing to set the time" section. There are a couple more pages on actually setting the time, either automatically semiautomatically or manually.
I pulled those from a random manufacturer and a random vcr model's manual which is available as a PDF:
http://aviator.jvcservice.com/books/model.asp?Mod
Now, how about something like this for a replacement:
[Hour +] [Min +]
1 2 : 0 0
[Hour -] [Min -]
The [] symbols indicate a button here. (credit for this layout goes to Jeff Raskin from his book "The Humane Interface." an excellent read.)
You don't even NEED instructions for that.
Must be nice - I've already found two in 8i that were previously unknown (including an ora-370 -
:)
%oerr ora 370
00370, 00000, "potential deadlock during kcbchange operation"
// *Cause: Error code used internally by software. Should never be reported
// *Action: Treat as internal error. See error 600. )
Gotta love error messages that should never be reported
I'm a contractor. I've had something like 50 to 60 clients in the last 9.75 years, on jobs ranging from one day to 8 mos. I consider it "anthropological research."
Maybe I have worked for your company!
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Why on earth does this article pit "engineers" against "people"?
Where do they get off making no mention of the managers who refuse to pay for real QA? Who micromanage their designers? Who insist "make it blue"?
Why is there no mention of designers who seem never to have heard the adage "form follows function"?
I confess more than a little irritation that "engineers" are taking the rap for their PHBs, for the airheads in marketting who care more about releasing a product at the right moment than whether that product is ready for prime time, for designers who care more that there's a cohesive colorscheme than that it presents the user with a compelling metaphor.
It has never been my experience that it was the techs on a project who wanted to get the project done faster rather than better. 99 times out of 100, management has to pry the techs' fingers from the code ("No, really, code freezes NOW.") Similarly, it's not the techs saying "gee, why waste the money on real QA specialists."
In my experience, coders have immense respect for usability (even those who don't know how to make it themselves) and robustness, but are never taken seriously when they say "no, that's not how we should be doing it; it would be better if...". To blame them as a class for the failures in robustness and usability of their code is salt in the wound.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
I keep hearing about how we need all this human factors research to make computers usable, that interfaces must be "intuitive" and, most of all, standardized.
Then I get in my car.
Almost every adult in the USA can operate a car with little difficulty. Yet the interface is not intuitive - press one pedal to make it go, another to make it stop? Turn a vertical wheel to change horizontal direction?
And the interface is not standardized - a car may have from two to five different foot controls (at least gas and brake, maybe also clutch, parking brake, and high-beam switch), the shifter for an automatic transmission can be on the steering column or the floor, the headlight switch can be on the directional signal switch or on the dash...
So how is it that most everyone can drive? (Well, can operate the vechicle. People have many driving problems that have nothing to do with operating the vehicle.)
Partly it's because everyone is familiar with the basics through cultural osmosis - we grow up riding in cars, we see them operated on TV and in movies. And partly we expect and accept that a certain amount of training is needed; few people balk at the idea that a few dozen hours of classroom instruction and supervised driving are a requirement for basic competence.
Why do we expect computer software to be different?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
MENSA members don't watch tv.
They especially don't need to tape it.
They also don't speak in absolutes.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
My problem is not the VCR, what I can't figure out is why I get a hot, fresh pot of coffee every morning at 3:16am, and a loaf of bread at 4:17pm every second tuesday. :)
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Of course, being less worried about being injured does not necessarily encourage people to drive in a reckless manner. Auto accidents of any sort are still for the most part remarkably unpleasant experiences, even setting aside all possibilities of physical injury.
One could even argue that the presence of airbags serves as a safety reminder - maybe it makes people think a little more often about accidents, thus encouraging them to drive carefully.
Or maybe people are a little scared of the airbags themselves - even without the Death Spike, I bet there are a lot of people who think they're scary... again encouraging them to drive carefully.
Now, as soon as cars have exterior airbags as well as interior, or some kind of force fields or something, then look out, 'cause it's bumper car time and I intend to be a bumping mofo. But until then, it's an interesting theory, but I don't think in the real world there's much of a cause-and-effect between increasing safety and driver recklessness.
That also ignores people who (like myself) may have decided that they already too many clocks in their house that need setting after each power outage, and who don't bother programming their VCR's to tape anything, because there's nothing worth taping...
Whatever.
- Mike
Don't buy from software companies with such a discalaimer.
Can you say "Microsoft"? Somehow, I can't see Corporate America dropping MS for that.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Yes, they landed safely, but it was serious enough for them to consider aborting.
And user error shouldn't cause a problem like that!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
JAFR = Just Another Formulaic Rant.
First of all, the blinking "12:00" is the result of a poor user interface -- buttons with hidden functions that aren't immediately obvious, like using the channel up/down buttons to set the hour.
So the writer misses the point on that one.
But what really annoys me is the way the writer trots out the usual suspects: Stewart Brand, Jaron Lanier, Esther Dyson (Negroponte, Joy, and Kurzweil must have been off skiing or something), and adds Through the Looking Glass to show how confoozing this technology stuff is!
I feel like I've read this same piece a hundred times in the last ten years. Okay, let's take it as a given that there's always going to be a gap between humanity and technology, leaving some people frustrated and confused. And move on.
As for that blinking VCR, buy a clock.
Just Another Fucking Rant.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
As long as we're going to bash MS, we might as well bash them for specific faults.
It could similarly be argued that pushing buttons on a digital clock is a perfect metaphor for what is actually going on, the toggling of tiny electrical switches on and off, on and off...
You put half the people in america in a car with a clutch and they'll just sit there staring dumbly.
-- Point? None! Cob.
The difference between your average car and your average piece of software is that if the car does break in the first couple of years the car maker will fix it for you. Microsoft on the other hand, will tell you to live with it or kindly sell you a service pack or SE version of the broken software that makes things worse rather than better.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
However, I don't think that that excuses the extremely poor reliability of the average personal computer (especially the onces that the "average guy" gets at Best Buy). There has to be a reason why software companies never offer a warranty on their product. Most people hold car dealers in pretty damn low regard, but have respect for companies like Microsoft. Why is that? You stand a much better chance of having a car dealer stand behind their product than a software maker.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
And why exactly does a microwave need a clock to operate properly? A VCR only needs a clock if you plan to set the timer to record.
These are *secondary* features. I can make my VCR function "properly" by inserting a tape and pushing play. I don't need to set the clock to accomplish this.
I own quite a few gadgets that don't save the time / date when dealing with more than 24 hours of power failure. The only one that *needs* the current time to function *properly* is my alarm clock.
-----
crazy dynamite monkey
It could be argued that grabbing a tiny little knob on the side of a watch, PULLING IT OUT TO EXACTLY THE RIGHT SPOT, and setting the time by turning it most likely (but not necessarily) clockwise it not intiutitve. Add to this that to set the date, the knob need to be pushed HALFWAY in and not all the way in. Plus, my grandma who has arthritis in her hands has no hope of doing any of this, but can press oversized buttons on a digital clock. Plus there is the matter of being able to easily see a bright LED display.
My only argument here is that what you have described as a good interface, while good for some, is not so good for others. Given that, how does one design a "good" interface for a general purpose item. On the flipside of the coin (and to return to the orignal topic), how could one design an interface for something more targeted like software, but where the end user could range from beginner to expert, and has totally different needs from the software without having to make some sacrifices?
This is not meant as an attack, but just a counterpoint, and I would love it if you responded.
I don't think you understood my point. Drivers and software companies feel safe. The the safer we make cars, the more people feel they can get away with. The same with software companies. They can make crappy products because there is no risk. There is no risk to driving a car that is very safe, and there is no risk in making crappy software. Penalties will enforce people to drive better, and companies to make better software. A spike on the steering wheel of a bad driver is the penalty for poor driving. A $1 fine for every crash is the penalty for every crappy product. Or maybe we could put spikes on the steering wheels of the product managers of the crappy products.
Bringing the two things together, cars and computers work closer and closer together everyday. Cars such as the Corvette us throttle by wire. The gas pedal is no longer mechanical, it is computer controlled. What happens when software in the computers of cars becomes so large and complex that it becomes buggy and the car's computer crashes and the car goes out of control? In a world without penalties, things get chaotic. Just look at the current state of Microsoft products.
Jason
I recall watching a show on DSC or TLC about the increasing safety of cars causing people to be less worried about being injured in an accident since the airbag would most likely save them. A proposal was to put a giant spike on the steering wheel so that if you got into an accident, you were likely to get hurt majorly. Although sadistic, this method would actually work to make people more cautious and safe drivers.
This article is somewhat similiar in that it forces penalties for bad products. Unfortunately, I think it will take something like what is being proposed to make companies realize that stable software is important.
Jason
at $200us windows shouldnt crash
at $20,000+ the average car shouldn't break either...
Unfortunately I've had to install Windows2000 [TM] just to discover that despite of its "unprecedent stability and reliability" it screws up as any other windoze [not TM ;)] does as soon as a bug in a complex application (Maya) freeze the whole thing.
Well, in that occasion I've spent a little time trying to read the EULA I've always heard of.
Micro$oft accept to pay a MAXimum of 5 US$ (yes, five bucks), indipendently of the damage a crash or something like that could damage you.
Is this acceptable in today business world?
Should I trust a company that "washes its hands" (I'm a SPQR) when bad times come?
Should companies that sell physical products like cars or planes follow the same rule (if you want to fly or drive, you've to accept this agreement in which you state that if something goes wrong your family cannot claim more than $2 (perhaps)).
Seeya,
nic
Joe AOL gets a blue screen while simultaneously playing Daikatana and dl-ing pr0n on his Multimedia ready OEM with Intel Pentium processor, 64 megs of ram, unpatched Win98, and three dozen TSR's.
The solution to this problem?
Have John Romero sent to jail hopefully!
If you don't want crappy products (VCRs that don't save the time) then don't buy them. Every time you buy a crappy product you send the company the message "Hey, produce crap. I don't care."
No, it's because they are to stupid. Trust me - 99% of society is alive out of pure luck - not because they are smart.
Sounds like you're buying to many gadgets. If you don't have the time to make them work properly then where do you find the time to use them at all???
It's almost as if their need to own something makes them buy anything without regard for quality, and when that high of owning something new fades away they decide to whine to the heavens about the flaws of technology until they can buy some new item.
It reminds of a little baby crying it's eyes out, receiving a toy that quiets them for a while, then decides it's boring and cries aloud until a new toy is placed in front of them.
99% of people are still alive out of pure luck - they didn't eat at the resturant serving e. coli, they weren't at that intersection when the drunk came barreling through, etc. Nearly everyone bumbles their way through life with narry an understanding of how anything works. And when something they rely on stops working they fly off at the handle, raising hell, looking for someone to blame other than themselves.
It's always easier to cry and whine and blame than it is to research, review and educate.
Beats the hell out of me. I thought the argument here was "I can't learn or be bothered to learn how to set the time."
These are *secondary* features.
If they're so secondary in nature, then just what is all the fuss about? If it isn't important enough to you to spend your time setting or using the feature then why on earth are you demanding that company X fix the feature?
No, nobody said that. But it sure was implied that us peons are only alive and kicking because we have the Great Big Loving Government protecting us.
Will RMS be fined 1$ every time any of the GNU utilities crash, or Linus everytime Linux crashes? Sure it doesn't happen ofter, but with the number of people using it...
I'll stop writing free software the day a law like that passes...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I think the point of this issue is to shift the control and focus of software development from the managers(who try and push things through as fast as possible) to the developers(who want to write good software that works). When you make companies accountable like this, I'm sure we'd see this kind of change because the managers would get in crap everytime there was a problem with software from their department. At the least they'd certainly listen to their programmers more instead of forcing their own deadlines. If the developers get more control because the company would get in big shit for writing crappy software, then that equates to a MUCH better software, and much happier users(me being among those).
-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Damn...
I knew there was a reason that it always seems like the same person volunteers to be the one to show up early and meet the Feild Circus Tech when we have a serious problem with one of our servers.
I gotta start volunteering for those then
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Airplanes are analog devices... they can survive within tolerances.
(You have to read the whole text before yelling "bullshit")
Furthermore, you obviously don't understand complex software. Engineers with the required Basic/Fortran class often mistake their simple assignements for actual, useable, integrated, software.
The software on your PC has more components than the hardware on your 747.
You can still build a "failure mode tree" for a 747... we realized long ago that such analysis of software was futile (you can do it for firmware, control systems, etc... but not integrated applications).
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
>"It's also a function of how software is developed. The process by which a car (or a toaster, or an airplane) is designed, built and assembled is 50 or more years mature."
We've been comparing software development to analog-world development like this for quite a long time, still, no "silver bullet" solutions.
Someday, some conversion of consciousness will make us laugh that we thought the two were relatable. For now, all we can do is take the heat.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
>"I'm not sure that I completely agree with you. It seems that you're saying that digital devices are incapable of having any degree of tolerance. That's not true."
Tell me that "char foo[20]" is +/- 10% of twenty bytes. You step one byte beyond 20, and the OS could come down; as if a 747 would fall from the sky if the hinge on an overhead bin failed.
When an engine fails on a 747, there's three others to take it's place. When Word fails, does it have a backup editor that catches your file and allows you to continue editing? Sometimes we have signal handlers to clean up our mess -- but they often fail in a crisis too.
Software has zero tolerances. It either does what it was told to do, or it fails. You can cover more cases to try to hedge failure, but you simultaneously increase the complexity and the chances for failure.
If you're building software that means life or death, then you keep it small and you do go to the effort of understanding all failure modes, and you don't launch it atop Windows (the FDA wouldn't allow it), and you charge a mint for it. But this isn't typical software, and the effort necessary to apply these concepts to moderately complex applications requires that the effort grow exponentially.
You call me arrogant when you claim you're so much smarter than the rest of the industry and know what the solution is. Reply back in 20 years, once you've found that you don't know all the answers.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
>but because of the robustness of the systems
...and the simplicity of the software.
Was it the Mars Polar Lander that interprteted its' own parachute deploying as having landed, therby turning off the brake thrusters and making a deep dull thud? Or, was it the one that got english/metric units fouled up causing catastrophic failure?
I assure you, the complexity of the software has increased beyond the point of rigorous testing, and that's made all the difference in the world
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
>"Exactly. As an ex-Boeing engineer"
Obviously not a software engineer.
It's the simplicity of the software that allows full path testing. It takes years to test such simple code, and the user pays through the nose; and rightfully so.
Once the software gets complex, pilots & civilians die. There's plenty of examples of software requirements bloat projects in the military and aerospace that get quitely get swepped under the rug.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
>"At least, I hope so .. otherwise, we're stuck with this ad hockery that we do now..."
We've actually been stuck here for quite some time. Long enough to know that the analogy to the analog world makes perfect logical sense, but is nonsense when implemented on an application of modest complexity.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
>"The fact that you are espousing the view that we shouldn't even try in the software industry sounds to me that you're [name calling omitted]"
I don't mean to sound like a totally haphazard approach is best. I do believe in standards and requirements (etc...), but they have diminishing returns: For example: if you spend longer in the design phase, you might save some time in the integration and debugging phases, but it's returns diminish radically as you increase the time spent on design (or requirements). Youthful programmers want to spend eternity in the requirements, design, and coding phase... and have a distaste for integration and debugging. The tools provided for software design analysis are a joke. They create more problems than they solve, and are only cost effective when you really have to show due diligence with software that might kill someone (I know: I've both written and used such software)
In the analog world, a thorough design is measurable, in software, it becomes a black hole.
>"...and software engineers are not the be-all-end-all of the engineering world."
I never said, nor believe, otherwise.
>"And if you're curious as to what I consider as the most complex thing ever developed by Man, it's language."
Isn't it curious how there can be such a wide range of speech that's still intelligible by even the most ignorant human? That's the great thing about the analog world: tolerances.
Any attempt we make at computer based speech recognition (AI or neural nets or even patter matching) becomes bogged down in miles of code when we even begin to tolerate variations. While the increase in code seemingly makes software tolerant, it simultaneously increases the complexity and probability of indirect failure.
When we truly understand analog logic, we'll probably find speech recognition very complex, but not as complex as we made it out to be with digital logic.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
>You can build "tolerance" into software
You need to understand that increasing the volume of software and it's complexity may logically cover the assumed problem space more thoroughly, BUT, it simultaneously increases the probability of indirect program failure. Furthermore, you may think you understand the problem space thoroughly, but you can't guarantee it (how often do we see an exactly accurate computation of the wrong problem, i.e. the Hubble Space Telescope mirror was ground within exacting tolerances of the wrong shape).
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization!"
I first heard this user mantra in `82 with my first programming job -- and they said that was an old adage.
The problem isn't programmers lack of responsiveness to users, as has been suggested for the last 40 years. If that were true, it would have been solved by now.
The true problem is the inhearent complexity of software, where any useful integrated program enters the realm of chaos, and exhibits behavior "as if at random".
It's digital nature makes it more susceptible. While you can plumb a toilet within wide tolerances, software must be exact. Furthermore, a broken toilet doesn't take the city's sewer system down with it.
It's ease of modification makes it even more susceptible. A problem in hardware will be there for years, we'll learn to work around it, and it may become the standard. But with software, the fix (and the next set of bugs) will come with the next upgrade or patch.
The fellows suggestion that "speech recognition will cure this" is another example of how requirements bloat, to solve "the problems of software usability", exacerbates the problem.
Some problems need to be blamed on the programmers and management: the Window's kernel hung around much too long. Microsoft kept adding mounds of complexity with small doses of functionality to keep the ever faster processors busy; it was no wonder you couldn't keep it up.
Open source has been the best solution so far. If it has a problem, the "open hood" policy allows your local mechanic can fix it, or determine what the original programmer wanted the user to do in the first place.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
If you want to hold them accountable, don't give them another $200. And don't scream monopoly, because its the game publishers choosing to release only to windows. Hold them accountable, and don't buy their games either.
t
I think I can speak for many people who have not purchased a VCR since the advent of DVD. Of course mine doesn't blink 12:00 because its unplugged, and in the corner of my room.
t
... And many of them are designing products. Let's take that flashing VCR clock for a second. The US Naval observatory broadcasts the atomically correct time all over america. Why can't the VCR set it's own damn clock? I've got better things to do with my time than fiddle with the VCR every time the power blinks. And maybe it's not so bad, setting the time on one VCR. But then there is the OTHER VCR which is a different brand and has a completely different way of setting the clock. Plus the clock on the Microwave, and the other appliances, etc. It's not that I'm too dumb to handle the technology: I'm not. But after the 50th gadget takes up 'just a few minutes' of my time getting it to work correctly, I've had it. Let the damn VCR blink, my daughter wants to play crazy eights.
While I suppose I don't really qualify as a User Interface expert i do agree with you completely on this. I took a Human-Computer Interaction course in college and was surprised at the relative obviousness of it all... and how so few of my colleagues REALLY got it. My work is mainly involved with User Interfaces in programming environments so I put this kind of stuff to use everyday, and am constantly amazed at the bad interfaces engineers come up with. Ugly is one thing, but many of them seem to get bad design down to an artform.
Macintosh has understood the principles of ease-of-use well, although they're lacking considerably in the power department. Microsoft actually does reasonably well in both categories, whereas Linux and it's ilk seem to ignore usability all together. Once people realize that the interface is just as important as the nifty features hidden underneath, software will be much friendlier for all involved.
Mordred
On another note, it's definitely obvious that we are distributing more complicated products to the masses. The main issue then seems to be UI's , think about it, when you are marketing to the average person, some things have to be dumbed down. Not due to the low intelligence of any specific person, but as method of targetting the least (most) common denominator.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
For almost as long as the average American has been alive, people have been driven nuts by the flashing "12:00" of their videocassette recorder's clock.
I would like to change this to say, "For almost as long as the average American has been alive, stupid people have been driven nuts by the flashing "12:00" of their videocassette recorder's clock."
I have never had any problem setting any vcr's clock. Maybe I'm just a supra-genious, but somehow I doubt it. If I were, at least one of my plans to take over the world should have worked by now. But I digress. My point here is that I think this small change helps to better set the mood of the article, and get a little more insight into the perspective of the author.
Now then. Deliver me 1 mill - er - 100 billion dollars by sundown or I will destroy the city with my fiendishly clever but easily disabled destruction device. MWAHAHAHAHA!
Don't forget feature creep, aka Second System Syndrome. Have you seen that episode of the Simpsons where Homer gets to design a car? And he keeps adding every possible thing he thinks might be a good idea, until the car is a complete mess, and ruins the company? This seems rather absurd on the show, but it's run-of-the-mill for software, and it's never the engineers' idea. We don't want the extra work, we'd rather fix what's already there.
Is it really fair? You can't possibly say your software is 100 percent reliable. No software is. Not even Linux. That's why the Open Source method is so effective. It weeds out the bugs.
No matter what you do, there's always something that will cause software to crash. What happens if someone's CPU fan dies, and their OS has a kernel panic because of it? Does the software company owe money even though it's the CPU fan manufactuer's fault?
Most importantly, where do you draw the line and say, "This is a stupid user error, not a software error." And who makes that call? I certianly would think scandelous home users can't be trusted to do this, nor can big software companies. And what merits a successful recording of crashed software? Logs on a machine that can be altered by the owner? If they couldn't be altered, would you WANT software like that on your PC?
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
I would disagree. It's quite easy to opt out:<br>
<b>Don't buy the technology that offends you.</b> Read consumer-reports types reviews to find out what products won't.<p>
Go ask the former-Soviets how government regulation of science and technology works. They had all the resources the U.S. did except a free market, but look whose technology is more advanced.<p>
And yes, there is the "advanced does not mean better" argument, but if that's what you believe why are you on a computer reading this? Buggy software and VCRs blinking 12:00 are by no means necessary for life, and many do without them.<p>
The thing about computers is that the people who make them think pouring hours of time into using one is <i>fun</i>. The market's response to this was Apple's "Computers for the rest of us" slogan. I'm not sure if they succeeded, though.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
I'm just curious where you got the "Michael" in your mistake... even the article you're pointing to is correct in stating Jaron as his first name, and there is no "Michael" in the article.
Just curious... is there something we don't know?
(people have already pointed out the correction.)
involving the government. riiiiiiight....
Seriously, as long as software companies emphasize release date and features over correctness and user testing, bugginess will be the norm. Financial penalties are warranted and effective for some industries (e.g. automotive, where bugs in the system cause fatalities), but unless the software you're making has life-or-death failure consequences it probably doesn't warrant that level of intervention (and nobody ever died becuase Windows crashed while they were playing Quake).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
If I got paid for my computer crashing I would never use anything other than windows me, netscape, winamp alphas, icq, diviX codecs, and powerDVD.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
In Canada there is a court case going on. The case is about social hosts (anyone who decides to host a party) being responsible for their social guests (anybody who comes to party) not to get into any kind of trouble after they leave the party.
Question:
So imagine - you host a party, 10 people come over, 7 of them drink alcohol, 4 of them really drink alcohol. The party is over, someone who really drunk alcohol starts his/her car and has an accident. Are you responsible?
Canadian court decided you are responsible (the family who is said to be responsible filed an appeal.)
I bet you don't see my point, by now I start doubting. But the point is - we all are looking for someone to blame for our problems. It is possible that your software user gets some kind of a problem using your software - the real problem may not the software itself but a combinations of things that lead to the [problem]. There is so much computer software that is designed to do so many things, and things don't go well (especially different software interacting with each other.) It is unfare to ask a software producer to think about every single usage of their software, about every single interaction that can happen between their package and all the other packages in the world. The real software testing happens when hundreds, thousands of people use it and report various bugs. Functionality today is more important than perfect software tomorrow (I don't even know why this is true)
Anyway, I don't think the software firms will like the government to do something silly like the proposed stuff.
Good luck
You can't handle the truth.
If windows changes how secret interface number 27 works, or one of thier public functions, in a future release of windows and that breaks my code, should I be out a buck?
If someone else releases a piece of software that crashes mine, who owes who a buck, and how would an end user know the difference?
Doesn't this just encourage computer software developers to make thier software fail as silently as possible, which software developers hate?
If you feel you've been ripped off, sue. Sue in small claims if you have to, and if you want revenge more than money, sue the president of the company specifically and drag him personally into it, possibly into the courtroom. We don't need new laws for this. We have too many unused or ignored laws as it is.
(Woah, 0.8 just finished compiling! I can get some work done now!)
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
the problem isn't that the buttons aren't labeled on the faceplate, its that the functions aren't explained in the manual. Manuals, in general, suck about as much as the software does. the manual says something like: "use the channel up, channel down, and mode buttons to set the time" This does no good. How am i supposed to know that you hold down the mode button for 3 seconds, and then use the channel buttons to set the hour, and then hit mode again, and use the channel buttons to set the minute?! I don't care how hard the program first appears, if the documentation is good, people will figure it out.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Because of one important difference: we (engineers) should know better.
The managers may be above the engineers on the org chart; but in practice, that is merely a rough abstraction. The guys in the trenches have enormous influence over how a project develops. Anyone who says the engineers' duty is to rotely carry out the designs and requirements handed to them is either naive or hopelessly jaded. A balanced organizaton includes engineering pushing for technical excellence, and demonstrating that it pays off. In fact, good management wants to trust engineers' judgement, because they have expertise that can't be found elsewhere in the company.
The upshot of this is that engineers do deserve the blunt of the blame for bad software, because we should know better, and we shouldn't allow it. Yes, there are times to compromise in order to get the product into a customers hands. But there are also times to take a stand. And even more important, we should find time on a regular basis to work on things that our managers didn't ask us to do, but will improve software quality. That's not going behind your boss's back, it's part of doing your job. A good manager will respect and appreciate that.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Thousands of people rush out to buy Microsoft Windows ME in a quick "Get Rich" scheme propogated by bill passing the Senate. Yeah I know its a troll but its funny.
But all software companies have this (even Mandrake I noticed yesterday), so who do you buy from?
By imposing the $1 fine, the users of software are saying that they want better software. Fair enough. But wait! There's a reason why they don't have it already! They're willing to buy software that's not quite bug-free as long as it works most of the time. The people who want absolutely bug-free software don't have enough market power to make it worthwhile for the software companies to develop for them, so they seek to artificially inflate their market power through legislation. The $1 fine will increase the cost to software companies, either in development and debugging, or in the fines themselves.
The end result? Increased software prices and fewer software companies. If a software package is too buggy for you, find a different one. If there is no different one, hire a programming team to write one for you and make a fortune off of selling it. If you can't afford to, make do with the buggy one. But don't use the government as a means of coercion because you don't want to pay for something.
You put half the people in America in a car with a clutch and it'll be pretty damned crowded.
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
Got any basis for that cost estimate? I just don't see how it would cost $20. It's basically a radio recveiver and a miniscule amount of electronics. Not exactly high technology here...
--
Dyolf Knip
And the interface is not standardized - a car may have from two to five different foot controls (at least gas and brake, maybe also clutch, parking brake, and high-beam switch), the shifter for an automatic transmission can be on the steering column or the floor, the headlight switch can be on the directional signal switch or on the dash..
Just compare the modern vehicles with the really non-standardized ones from the olden days. Today you have a standard steering wheel, gas pedal always on the right side etc.
Ever tried an old motorcycle which has gas on the left side? Makes riding kind of interesting...
You (or whoever said that) have clearly not had a baby. You really do have to help them along with the concept. Granted it is perhaps 1-5 minutes and then they are good for life but they do have to be taught. Get a copy of "What to expect.." and you will see that I'm right. So all interfaces have to be learned. IMHO the only good interface is one that lets me make it work the way I want to do. But most things are really easy to work around.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
During the high times, the "Dotcom Bubble" if you will, the US government wouldn't dare legislate protection for consumers for fear of slowing the rapid growth and revenue from a seemingly giant potential. Protection for the large businesses in order to ensure jobs, wealth, etc etc.
Now that the industry in general has poo-pooed on itself, government may take steps, to correct the mistakes of late. It probably doesn't look too highly on a pampered industry, who lobbies furiously to protect its intellectual property, but then, at the first sign of potential revenue losses, lays off quite substantial amounts of staff.
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
"Instead of hunting down people who smoke pot," Lanier says, "they'd be hunting down people who sell business software that crashes. They'd owe people a buck or go to jail. That's what Washington should be doing."
Sounds like he came up with this idea when he was high as a kite...
--
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Keyboards, mice.
My friggin microwave and coffee maker.
The milk stirring things at the cheese factory.
The 7-11 video cameras (except when they save 12hrs on video onto a standard tape, and then re-record it...)
Conveyor systems.
Fine, the bindery, those are kinda "fun" to work with, but think about the printing press - I worked at a paper, and the damn thing never died. If there was an error it was a "stupid user" error - i.e. pages stuck together, crap in the spools, etc..
Though calculate the number of magazines that went through the machine successfuly.
You know that software is really sloppy, cause most users are idiots - I don't need to start a discussion on that topic.
BUT, the fact is that most things work at least 95% of the time - in the industry and at home.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Apple does it best with their "Human Interface Guidelines" document.
...Except that Aqua doesn't really follow these guidelines. Sure, it looks awesome, but many will say that it's most prominent feature, the "Dock", is more of a marketing "ooh ahh" then a usable interface.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
We're gonna put Bill Gates in the Poor-house!
NT actually costs $10,000 per user, but they give you a rebate for the number of outstanding bugs.
No innovation, indeed.
Bingo Foo
---
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Do we really want to end up like the car manufacturers, who's idea of development is the cup holder?
Sure computers are difficult to use, because they are some of the most complex machines we have ever built. Why should we expect them to be easy to use? Try picking up a musical instrument and getting a tune out of it without training. Instead you pick up your CD Player.
I predict that high tech stuff will split into two development paths. One focusing on minimum functionality, maximum useability. The other maximum functionality, and the useability can go hang. Both are workable, and profitable, business models.
Actually, isn't that one of the differences between Windows and Linux - except that Microsoft haven't really ever understood useability?
We've arghued this point over and over and over. We run in horror from the prospect of an AOL future.
Problem is that old stories like "The day the machine died" (or was it "stopped" ?) about a whole world that collapses because of the ultimate system crash seems more and more prescient. And the Marketroids will be selling the benefits of that system to us until it reaches that point.
A feature, not a bug, indeed.
but then we do have that problem of people's common misperceptions, in an increasingly illiterate world. The old "Do what I mean not what I say", and, "If what I want is really stupid, don't do it".
What will the AI machines of the future have to say about that?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You nailed it on the head. I very frequently have to deal with programmers who push functionality instead of usability.
Personally, I'd rather have a program that worked properly and easily rather than a high-powered app that requires a PHD to use. That's why I use Adobe apps on the Mac platform. They just work and never crash my machine and the learning curve between apps in minimal. If you know the tool set in one app, you pretty much know the tool set in all the others.
Granted, I use Macromedia products all the time as well because of their capabilities, but I spend much more energy swearing at Flash and Dreamweaver than I do at Photoshop and Illustrator.
I won't even go into the usability of MS' products!
---------------------------
Pooty tweet
Exactly, usability and UI are related but by no means the same issue. A person can become accustomed to a bad UI, but poor usability is much harder to overcome because the design of the software itself is muddled.
Take Lotus Notes for example. It used many of the traditional UI metaphors... tabs, buttons, etc. However, if you press ctrl+N it asks you if you want to create a new database rather than a new email or calendar event. That is a usability problem, not a UI glitch.
And what's with this alt+f4 crap to quit Office apps? What is ctrl+q not good enough for ole MS?
---------------------------
Pooty tweet
Do you think you could take my resume to whomever it is you work for? I'm tired of working for The Man and his 9-5 schedule.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
It's not pure luck, it's government regulation protecting them from themselves and each other.
I beleive anything less than 1:7 will do.
Uh, you use VB. You deserve what you get.
Hmmm. I just bought a VCR last year, I'm pretty sure it suffers from the lost settings problem. Ditto the microwave. I'm just glad my new VCR doesn't have a blinking clock display at all.
Either way, what use to actually spend time setting the clock until you may need to use it? I never set a clock like this until I have a reason to. Along this same line, I won't fiddle with the clock on my work phone or car stereo for daylight savings time. There are just too many clocks in life to get uptight about the ones that don't really matter.
...which reminds me, it's probably time to figure out how to sync the time on my LAN so that my computers all think it's the same time.
I do not have a signature
How do you decide when your product is "dumbed down" enough? Should we be making cool gizmos instantly useable to your average blue collar Joe Schmoe? Or a little more difficult than that? I mean, if learning to set your VCR, or operate your PC, or turn off the god-damned annoying features of MS Office, or whatever it is makes your brain form a couple new synapses, are you really all that much worse off?
If you don't have time to set your VCR's clock (I can do it in well under a minute, I think, though I've never timed it), then you're living your life wrong. I mean, what's wrong with a little time out now and again? (mental note...throw in some quote about sniffing the roses or something).
Wow....I got something marked as insightful for saying there's too many stupid people? That's pretty dumb...
Oh c'mon...does this mean everyone who manages to set their VCR clock is automatically a member of MENSA, and will be among the chosen few whisked off to another planet when humankind dooms itself?
The problem is, as always, just too damn many stupid people.
Why the hell was I moderated down? All I did was sincerely ask a simple question! I am begginning to beleive that Slashdot moderation is broken.
Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
But from a high volume perspective, there are is a lot of equipment that runs and runs without crashing. My television, VCR, telephone, hell, even my car all have bits of electronics and software in them, and they're all pretty damn stable.
The question should really be - show us something as customizable as a computer and see how often it has problems. Back to the car analogy - if you were constantly tweaking your car, adding and subtracting different pieces, you'd expect to have problems.
Not that I think that the software put out by certain organizations doesn't suck. There just almost is a tradeoff between that same customizability and stability...
I can tell that you have never spent $100,000 on software then, if THAT is what you think will happen when the inevitable bugs appear.
--
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
with their "Human Interface Guidelines" document. Call this a troll or flamebait or whatever, but the fact remains that Apple spends good money on making sure that their software is usable.
Usability testing is an important, and highly overlooked aspect of software design. Perhaps this wouldn't even be an issue if we allocated some of our development resources to this highly specialized skill.
Unfortunately, many programmers don't seem to care. I can't count on both hands how many times a programmer at another firm has told me something to the effect that they don't understand colors or graphics. This is entirely obvious when looking at the GUIs that these firms produce. A monkey who calls himself an HTML "designer" doesn't qualify as a usability expert either. There are actually people that are trained in this kind of work, though they are few and far between. Perhaps the real answer lies in colleges. If we teach 'em early on that a product stands a much greater chance for success with good usability, perhaps more students would be interested in the field.
Just my 2 cents.std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Every time I read a story that makes predictions about what life is going to be like in 50 years, much less 'centuries', I think back to some early Heinlein stories. Ole Robert A. was no slouch in the imagination department, but even he had starships producing their computer output on punched cards. I'm not going to give much credence to some newspaper writer who's probably just sore that he couldn't assemble his kid's Big Wheel last Christmas.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
And I whimsically suggest that the plaintiff bar will institute a class-action suit for this very thing within the next few years. Did Word crash and take out your work? You're entitled to damages! Did Photoshop mangle your images? Sue!
Mark my words, this is coming.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
This constant flood of new tech, means that there is lots of good old tech that people want to get rid of, discontinue, etc.. For example, I was part of a WebPlayer co-op to purchase old discontined Virgin WebPlayers for $100/ ea.. Now I don't know about you, but thats not a bad deal for a 200Mhz box with lcd screen and wireless keyboard, you certainly couldn't build this box yourself for that much - the LCD itself would probably cost that, and it makes a great MP3 jukebox, web-browser & Email terminal..
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
Vices - what I lack in originality, I make up for in volume.
If they don't know what time it is, how would they know if they have enough time to set the clock?
I take drugs seriously.
The nice thing about technology is that nobody expects you to know everything. The other nice thing about technology is that once your involved with a section of technology, it's easier to relate that to other areas.
The bad thing is that if your involved in technology, your expected to know everything about everything that plugs into a wall. It may be hard to believe but I don't know why the copier isn't working. Sheeshh.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Take a look at these two quotes:
Computer literacy is an excuse for techies to say, 'I don't want to actually have to think this stuff through.' "
Maybe the answer -- gulp -- is Washington. Perhaps the only way to create plateaus is to mandate them.
Which is scarier? A class of peeps who are afraid of thinking their way through a problem or a gov't doing it for them? His whole argument boils down to those two lines. I'll agree when he says UI's in general are immature. Fine. But the biggest problem is immaturity. Computers as they exist today are in an immature state where they aren't 'obvious' but gov't is as able to grasp these concepts as well as Joe Trailer-Park Sixpack. A voting body as messed up as congress/senate trying to nail down what "good" is scares the living shit out of me.
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!
The difference is that with industrial equipment, if you have a problem, you can usually call the manufacturer, and they'll have somebody out there to fix it within a day. I don't know of a single software company that will do that.
The problem is, as always, just too damn many stupid people
Well, actually, you need to keep SOME stupid people around. Otherwise, who would do menial tasks for us? As long as they're pacified (that's what TV and religion is for), they're very useful. I'm sure as hell not going to dig the foundation for my house. I'll just have some stupid people do it for me.
I also believe that the overwhelming majority of program/computer crashes are due to software bugs. I keep hearing people ask why consumers put up with such shoddy software. The simple answer is because most users blame themselves, not the software, whenever there is a crash. So from my perspective, I think software companies get far less blame than they deserve.
I don't even want to think about how many times I've heard users say things like "What am I doing wrong?" when they should be filling out a bug report.
"No Mrs. Simpson, the computer didn't crash because you used poor grammer in that Word document."
Then again cars essentially perform a single task that hasn't changed in decades. If you exclude the radio and climate control, there are only about a dozen controls I need to worry about, and the most important are quite standard (steering wheel, gas & break pedals, ignition). As for the few remaining controls, most of us have grown up with them and fully understand what they do (lights, wipers etc) even if they aren't in a standard position/configuration.
Now tell me how this compares at all with a computer that performs several different, continuously evolving tasks, using dozens of changing controls (menus, buttons...).
If I had a dollar for every crash, hiccup, and burp that Windows or Windows software had given me, I could swim in my money like Scrooge McDuck!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
< )
( \
X
8====D
I think that the penis bird perfectly expressespeoples thoughts on the situation of technology. It's either a tool, or a toy. No Joe Blow takes it as crucial to life. They either create amusing things like penis birds, or do their work with it.
< )
( \
X
8====D
The truth about Michael
On a serious note, each time a commercial software product screws up, and costs a company money, that company should sue the product's maker for costs, assuming the product's maker didn't inform the customer of any issue. Quantify all of the times my workstation at work has to be rebooted, VB crashes, etc., as work-hours taken from my productive time. All of that, for all of the people at my company, adds up to many man-hours of work. Since it's all quantifiable, and much of it due to undocumented bugs, Microsoft should be sued, at least yearly, for this cost to my company, and every other company should do the same.
Developers: We can use your help.
Don't buy from software companies with such a discalaimer. Would you buy a car from a company that said that? Don't forget there are inherent warranties on products... car lemon laws, guaranteed returns on faulty items...
There was a long time when Oracle paid any customer who found a previously unknown bug in their software a $10,000 "reward". While developing software, I stumbled across an undocumented bug that our DBA then tracked down, and he was awarded the $10K. We need more software companies like that.
Developers: We can use your help.
The regional chain of "Giant Eagle" grocery stores conspired... err... decided to install "automated" check-out lines in their stores. They are of the touch-screen-scanner-scale sort.
I was immensely pleased with the automated lines. I can zip through them much faster than a normal line. But... It seems that I am always stuck behind someone who can't figure the dang things out. Always!
Does this require a variation of Murphy's Law?
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
"Almost every adult in the USA can operate a car with little difficulty. Yet the interface is not intuitive - press one pedal to make it go, another to make it stop? Turn a vertical wheel to change horizontal direction? " you have to have training to drive a car, or teach yourself. intuitive my ass. how is that different than rtfm with a computer or app? no fucking different. i mean jesus, you need to practice to *ride a bicicyle*, let alone drive a car. "we grow up riding in cars, we see them operated on TV and in movies. " and this teaches you how to drive? no more than watching er makes you a doctor by that comparison. growing up riding cars is direct training, not as indirect as you are implying.
Microsoft Corporation [NASDAQ:RPOFF] today went bankrupt after being forced to pay $1 to a customer every time their software crashed. A distraught CEO, William Gates III, was left in shock today. He was quoted as saying "how can $500 billion disappear so fast?" before running and sobbing in a corner.
I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.
if you get prompted for one to get to the Washington post site
cyferpunk
cyferpunk
yer welcome
Of course, the downside of this is that the problems people are having are much more complex in nature!
I may be wrong, but I'm never uncertain.
I should point out, before I get some troll karma-whoring nitpicker on my case, that these figures all come from my personal experience and are not part of any "official" survey.
I may be wrong, but I'm never uncertain.
The original for just penalizes, and makes software busines a more risky, and most people wouldn't even bother with that 1$ payment.
And it should apply only for products released after certain date, after its publiticed.
Better ruling would be,
When a customer of software product finds a bug, that is distinct from any previously found bug the software manufacturer is responcively to pay him 10's the price he paid for the software for the first customer to notify it. The software manufacturer pays there after a weekly x% of the average weekly sales figures of the product of last 2 years for the goverment, until the company has made the bug fix available to all its customers. (Public FTP or HTML page is enough.)
If 3rd party component is found responcible to the bug the 3rd party becomes responcible for tracking the bug, inside the component, the software producer is responcible providing exact discription on what condition the 3rd party component fails. And proof it fails. Any false 3rd party claims, make the company subject to pay both the 3rd party component manufacturer and the goverment the fee. But if the 3rd party component was responcible for the bug, 80% of the fees to goverment are returned to the corporation. (The first 2 weeks are returned fully.)
This is not legalize, but the idea is better,
it tells managers that they are not afford to release too buggy code, (unless free.) And still not penalize the corporation too much of several little failures. The idiot user error... can be detected when the bug is replicated, when the users are asking the money. Well this is for high volume software products, low volume products should have its own system for bug repayments.
And it would most certainly pay back to hunt down those bugs, because those shall eat the profit margins anyway.
JollyFinn
How many Finns are required to stop an entire soviet armoured division?
4000 and half less if they have antitank guns.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
It's not that people are too stupid to do it, they just don't have time. If they really wanted to set the clock, they could.
Even Windows 98 can give you 95% reliability. I have to use it at work, and it doesn't waste 24 minutes of my workday (be it 6-12 hours) with crashes, etc. -- an underpowered database server with insufficient RAM, CPU, or bandwidth is an even greater hindrance on worker productivity than unstable software.
--
I used to work at a print shop -- the kind that produces national magazines, like Time or Fortune. I've been in the pressroom, I've been in the bindery, and all those machines go down several times a day. When hundreds of distinct, interlinked processes are happening at once, the failure of one will often shut down the rest.
I'm sure this applies to factory floors of all kinds, not just the presses, and I might add that most of said equipment costs SIGNIFICANTLY more to purchase and operate.
--
Michael Lanier whimsically suggests that, in exchange for being granted U.S. copyright protection, commercial software publishers should have to pay users $1 every time their product screws up.
Except that then, you'd begin seeing spam mail like MAKE WINDOWS SCREW UP BILLIONS OF TIMES PER SECOND!!!! MAKE $$$ FROM YOUR OWN HOME!!!! Are we willing to put up with that?
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
Jaron Lanier (who some credit with inventing the phrase "virtual reality"), whimsically suggests that, in exchange for being granted U.S. copyright protection, commercial software publishers should have to pay users $1 every time their product screws up.
As much as I prefer Free Software, I think that would only give a predatory government another opportunity to persecute people. I would only support this in cases where the software vendor had given some sort of warantee that the software failed to live up to. In most cases however, software is provided "as is" with no warantee expressed or implied.
I also think that the greatest effect (and a very costly side effect) that will come out of such a law would be the stiffling of innovation since few people or individuals will be willing to produce software in fear of being sued until the cows come home.
I have yet to use OS X (and Aqua), but I can tell you that Apple's interface guidelines have been taking a backseat lately. It began with Quicktime 4, iTunes, etc. These programs were designed without even a second glance at those guidelines. I sincerely hope they develop new standards as OS X grows. I also have to mention the absolutely WORST offender to come out of Apple...their DVD player software! Pure crap!!! It's worse than most MS products...and I am a long-time Mac user.
"War makes me sad." - Me
Using that idea, can you imagine how long development time would be?? Assuming that implementation in today's world takes about 1/10 as long as testing, with this model people would be too scared to do anything less than test for a year =)
Personally, I can live with minor bugs and hiccups in software, given the alternative of waiting an extra 6 months for someone to work out every last bug.
I know this is a little testy topic, pitting Carmacks vs Sweeneys... But you have to admit, software isn't doing to poorly these days, given the amount of complexity we have created for ourselves.
- It wasn't major; it was an occasional "main loop timeout" error flag which indicated that the computer hadn't had time to complete all its assigned tasks during the time-slice.
- It didn't occur often enough to cause problems with the landing.
- The astronauts "didn't know the workaround" because it was their error. They'd left another radar, only used for the rendezvous with the CSM, operating during the landing. This sucked up enough CPU to cause the timeout condition. They'd turned the radar on earlier in the flight and hadn't turned it off; user error.
They got down on the Moon just fine, so it's really hard to consider this a "major bug".--
spam spam spam spam spam spam
No one expects the Spammish Repetition!
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I wish I had a buck for every time Windows crashed.
Maybe the reason that technology will continue to outstrip peoples ability to deal with it is the fact that people should not have to deal with it. If we spent as much time learning about how people interact with technology as we do learning about how to build bigger/faster/better tech, we'd be light years ahead of where we are now. The GUI was the first big step, how about the next one??
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.