Donald Norman On Software And Other Things

small but... writes "New Scientist has published an interview with Donald Norman in which Norman comments on open source (disparagingly), usability (of course), machine 'emotion' (Ha!), and security (Breaking news: social engineering still #1 risk)."

Comments

Nothing more could have been done to prevent S11?

[Woko]

It's hard enough to take his comments about a tyrant producing the best design, but to say that better design could not have at least delayed the collapse of the towers, allowing hundreds more to escape is plain wrong.

Better fireproofing on the steel beams, or even if the rumours are true, absestos fireproofing above the 64th floor could have prevented many deaths.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[evilviper]

Apple got at least this much right -- give them one button, and don't make them push it more than once.

Well, I can tell you've never used a Mac. Double-clicking is required on the mac desktop, and the file manager. That is, until you change that setting. Of course, that same type of change can be made in Windows as well.

Besides that, the Mac equivalent of a right-click is just holding CTRL+Clicking, or clicking and holding the mouse button. Would you like to say that is somehow better than the way Windows does it?

And, that method didn't even start until Win 95. Win 3.1 would give you a menu if you just single-clicked on an icon... So I guess that means Microsoft had it right all along (according to you).

Let users control font size

[sambo99]

I guess New Scientist have not been listening to Neilsen...

Let users control font size :(

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[NDPTAL85]

Educated in freedom? Do I have to remind you what that sounds like? Leftist communist revolutionaries used to say the same exact things about the pampered and comfortable capitalist middle classes. Is this a cultural revolution we're talking about here or everyday computing usage?

I don't know how you can say that XTerms can do "everything" a PC can. Sure if you don't mind slow load times, less software availability and single points of failure. In my company could you find us a XTerm version of the real estate software that we run on client PC's individually? I don't think so.

There's a TON of things that can't be done NOW in free software. Sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "Not true, not true, not true" everytime this is mentioned helps no one, especially not you. VMWare does NOT work for everything and for the things that don't need VMWare they aren't equivalents.

It does not matter if most people " as very expensive, error prone typewriters-cum-calculators.". Those overgrown typewritters are, when running Windows, able to run all the software you could ever possibly need. Freedom? What good is freedom on Linux when you don't have the rest of the software you need? I run Linux at home on one of my machines but for my job in real estate it is absolutely useless. Now I know my industry isn't the only industry in the world but it is one. And it certainly refutes your statement that anything a PC can do, open source can do as well. Educated in freedom. Thats a good one. So what am I supposed to do after I put on my soldiers uniform, march my co-workers into "re-education camps", give them open source software and they STILL ask me why the stuff doesn't "WORK RIGHT NOW"? Should my response each time they ask be, "In due time, at least now you have freedom!"?

I guess I really should have known that you as a Debian user and or coder would approach this issue from a political point of view instead of a common sensical and practical usage one. I had thought you might have been able to rise above it however.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[Tim Browse]

I'm curious - this is different to Windows in what way?

That was evilviper's point, after all. Windows supports double-click, or you can use the Open command on the file menu, or press Return. (Certainly back to Windows 95 - I just checked - thanks VMWare!)

Blaming MS for inventing double-clicking seems harsh at best. It smacks of "Apple invented all the good stuff and Microsoft stole it, except when it's bad, in which case Microsoft invented it, the bozos. Even if it appeared first on the Mac."

I think that's what was bugging evilviper.

Indeed, it was the difficulty and hidden nature of double clicks that led Microsoft to create the Start menu. They watched new users trying to use Program Manager to launch a word processor - the results were that new users don't think of double-clicking - nor they did think of using File-Open. So the Start menu was created, which listed all the programs installed, and allowed them to be started with a single click.

That's also why you get that "Click here to run programs" message bouncing onto the screen the first time you run Windows 95.

Tim

Disclaimer: I use Macs and PCs. Hell, I even used to use Acorn machines.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[leandrod]

> Citrix only works for software which has application server components

Citrix and its little sibling, MS-WTS, work with any application that can be run on a MS-WNT server.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[leandrod]

> Professional printers require CMYK separations.

Old facts die hard, huh?

> where are my multiple master fonts, or fonts with professional ligatures and weighting?

The rest is just more of the same. If just a fraction of what users spend on licensing was directed to create, say, free fonts, then we would have had them for a long time now. But you miss a point: fonts are not software. They can be created with free software, they can be distributed gratis together with free software, but they are, in the end, data. They do not infringe on freedom as much as proprietary software, or rather not at all, as long as the font format in itself remains public.

> You just need to learn C++ and programming with a GUI toolkit, plus a few other things.

Now you are trolling. You know the Gimp can be programmed in Scheme, and that is as easy as it gets short of hiring programmers. Which is what should be done in the first place anyway.