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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?
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!
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.
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.
...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
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...
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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).
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.
- 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 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
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
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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.
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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.
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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
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.
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
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.
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)...
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
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.
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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 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
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
>"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!
... 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.
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.)
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).
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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)
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?
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...
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Dyolf Knip
"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...
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
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
NT actually costs $10,000 per user, but they give you a rebate for the number of outstanding bugs.
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"
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?
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
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.
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...
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;
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..
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Vices - what I lack in originality, I make up for in volume.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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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.