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Why We Love Things We Build Ourselves
RichDiesal writes "The IKEA Effect refers to the tendency for people to value things they have created/built themselves more than if made by someone else – in fact, nearly as much as if an expert with much greater skill had created the same item. Is this the reason that open source software proponents are so 'enthusiastic' about their products while the general market resists them – because those proponents had a hand in developing them?"
Yes.
Sure, the world has it's share of deadbeats but there are plenty of parents out there who would do anything to watch their kids succeed. Isn't that what an application is to its developer?
Maybe its something else though. I know that when i was going through my programming lessons I really wanted to get things done perfectly. Sure, the lessons from the texts were cookiecutter, but i went on to play with the concepts learned from the text. I played with my own small applications and wrote features I thought would be interesting or necessary. It wasn't anything big. It would never be a huge success, but it was mine.
are also more likely to appreciate worthless chipboard so it makes sense that after they put together a worthless disgrace of a table that to gloss over their pathetic nature they react as if they built the empire state building all by their very own selves.
I recently created this piece of css myself:
section#a2footer.grid_24 {
display: none;
}
And I love it! Bye bye slashdot tweet/fb/+1 buttons
A person who has fashioned an item from the start will implicity trust it in operation until proved otherwise, because they saw it's construction. This is true of any tool in any era. That trust is extended to "experts" generally because those are individuals whom other people you trust (that have tools provided by said expert) have recommended for that same "the tool works for me" reason.
Quite why we need to ascribe a brand name to this offends my sensibilities. Not everything requires a brand.
...the most outspoken OSS proponents are in fact the developers of OSS, to the extent that other users are just background noise? If regular users are so silent, then this must mean that the exponential spread of OSS must be due in fact to the developers. Ergo, developers are in fact brilliant marketers. A prime example of this would be the GNU Image Manipulation Program, which succeeds because of its sexy acronym.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
And note the general market is coming around, yo.
For me at least the economic element of building something myself is the driver in the first place. I put in place my kitchen because I was capable and I'd rather have spent the money a fitter would have cost on something else. If I'd been offered the same kitchen same price, fully professionally fitted I'd have taken it.
I could build certain electronic items, however the cost of the components vs the premade version makes it uneconomic. Even at the higher level of this, I used to be able to put together a PC from parts, these days I wouldn't bother.
I'm not sure the open source stuff works, the vast majority of open source users don't have an involvement in writing the software, and the software is largely written by experts anyway. Perhaps there is something in the idea of user customisation, tweaking it to make it just so, but I suspect a large amount of users go for an out of the box configuration of and just add additional software they are interested in. That's no real different to a windows user.
The main reasons for me and people I know are
1) cost effectiveness
2) the option to modify software as needed
3) no fear of lock-in
Also many 'enthusiastic' open source software proponents have never even looked at the code. In academic environments people write/use open source programs without giving much thought to who wrote something. The main points are usability and time requirements. If something is usable and can be used quickly then we use it no matter who wrote it.
I usually like Open Source software but the reason has very little to do with the source being available.
What I really like is projects that are made on hobby basis without an economic driving force behind them.
This is because those things are usually made to solve a problem and do it well.
Once a project goes commercial marketing enters the picture and suddenly the application gets a splash-screen for no apparant reason. Then the buttons grow and become bulky. The interfac will be reworked to be "userfriendly" which is marketing speak for "easy to demonstrate a simple function but if you actually are going to use it you will no longer be able to find the functions you are looking for" or possibly "friendly for beginner but not for users"
I am probably not representative for open source proponents since I don't mind closed source on an ideological basis.
If you build an open source project, you make sure it works for you....
Its all about egos, I've discussed this many times with devs who can't "see" what I'm trying to point out - but who'd build something which they couldn't use / understand / like?
They think its brilliant because it does exactly what THEY expect - however their expections are wildly different to what the outside world expects.
For example I was discussing how to eject a CD on OSX the other day with someone - he couldn't understand the problem with the idea that dragging the CD to the recycle bin isn't something I (A realitively pro computer user) would concider for trying to eject the disk. For him it seemed so simple, so "normal". In open source you find the same, developers make decisions which work for them, but when a user can't understand why, because they haven't gone through the whole process the developer went with the attitude is "well it doesn't work for me".
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Training customers to accept cheap shoddy goods
Trent Reznor does not agree.
If you can't tell the difference between something built by somebody that has more skill than you do, so there is no reason not to be proud of yourself. For entry to moderate level DIY or craft, the main difference between an amateur and a professional is the productivity: i.e. how much time it takes the professional and his consistency in result.
For high level stuff, that is another matter. I can only talk personally, but since I have started metal smithing as a hobby, I value a lot less the average piece you can buy all assembled (not even talking about the mass produced shit). However, I began to be amazed by what master craftman can do. ( and as collateral damage, I have paid price for piece that I would not have considered reasonable before )
Of course we love what we make even if it sucks, but interesting choice of words. "Market" refers to people buying stuff, but OSS isn't necessarily for sale. Nor do people advertise or "sell" as do those who cater towards "markets". Red Hat sells service, not OSS.
So, "resist" is not the reason why OSS isn't selling. The problem is more about the lack of sales and marketing. People need to be told what to buy as with Apple with great ads, or get cornered into it as with Windows pre-installed in everything.
The ecosystem of OSS is what is resisting OSS becoming a market.
If the culture is so "do-it-yourself" why does someone else need to release tracks for others to mix?
So I suppose the twit who dubbed this "the Ikea effect" never heard of this neckbeard from the 19th century and his theory of alienation?
Of course I'm enthusiastic about using software I've contributed to, but remember that the reason I spend time contributing to them is because I was using them in the first place. There's other free software I have nothing to do with, which I'm still very fond of, mostly because they're constantly improving for free (with a few arguable exceptions in Ubuntu's case).
I do agree that the IKEA effect is real but I don't think that FOSS is a pile of crap like the OP hints ... while the general market resists them ... "
from the summary: "
I'm no expert here but I think the general market embraces FOSS software. I mean look at firefox, openoffice, vlc, mpc-hc... and when you get to smaller utilities it is even more open source stuff: ffmpeg (and many other codecs), hundreds of browser plugins, you name it they have it in open source.
If the OP meant FOSS OSs then I partially agree, the genpop is not interested and mainly avoids FOSS OSs but the reason behind it is not the IKEA effect but the "I am afraid to learn new things" effect which has plagued humankind for that best part of last century and the full ongoing one..
just my 2c
-- no sig today
1) Most OSS enthusiasts cannot code. It's unfortunate, but true.
2) The study cited is not publicly available. Psychology studies are often very flawed in various ways and until it becomes freely available and we can be sure that many more eyes, also (or should I say especially) outside the field, have had a look at it.
There is also something asinine about citing a closed paper in an OSS-related article.
I hate assembling IKEA stuff but it's is still much easier than trying to move a prebuilt furniture to the room. First you have to pay extra for delivery as it doesn't fit into a car. Then you need to rearrange your home to make way for it. After that you need two people, who, in perfect unison, try to move it through the house without hitting any lamps or mirrors, painfully forcing it through every door. And if one of your doors is too small, when then you are out of luck.
Indeed. Ikea is a pile of incompatible crap. And frankly, I don't subscribe to that mindset at all. I have enough Ikea crap here to know I don't like Ikea crap. And when it comes to software I write myself vs someone else's who did a better job? I'm going to go with what's better.
My Linux is in primary use by me because it is good. It is used in countless reliable devices because it is good.
The main thing the mainstream has against "alternatives to Windows" is that they can't just get any software to run and most software is for Windows. Apple/Mac users understand this much. And when Windows users try Mac, that's the first thing they realize. It's a huge problem to let go of an entire software ecosystem in favor of a smaller, less known one.
The Ikea effect is a nice idea and might have been more true a decade or more ago, but not so much now.
As far as I can tell, we're hard-wired to derive pleasure from independence and self-reliance, probably because it's an advantageous trait in evolutionary terms.
Many years ago, I was into vintage Volkswagens for a while. As anyone who has owned one of these beasts can tell you, they're extremely unreliable and require more or less constant maintenance to keep running, and unless you're prepared to do it yourself, you'd better have a lot of money to hand to the dwindling number of mechanics who know how to work on the damn things. I had never worked on cars before or been particular interested in doing so, but I adapted to necessity, and after a while, I got good enough at it to keep my ancient VW running most of the time.
On one hand, it was annoying to have the thing break down by the side of the road, but on the other, there was a really quite profound sense of satisfaction in being able to open the engine compartment, figure out what was wrong, fix it, and pull back into traffic. In practical terms, this was pointless, of course -- my time and money would have been better spent on buying something more reliable, which I eventually did -- but the emotional payoff surprised me with its intensity. I've heard similar sentiments come from hobbyists of all kinds, farmers, craftsmen, etc.
All that said, I'm not sure it's the main factor in OSS evangelism. The type of person who programs for fun is generally attracted to exploring complexity and mastering it, and the parallel seems to be more like what puzzle fans of all kinds get out of their hobby. When someone tries to convince someone else to use a complex (if powerful) tool over the droolproof commercial product they're currently satisfied with, it has a lot more in common with trying to turn them on to a favorite hobby than with an expression of self-reliance.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Every man loves the whiff of his own farts.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
The overwhelming proportion of OSS users, and even OSS enthusiasts, never contribute to OSS, so the whole premise of the claim seems flawed to me.
Virtually serving coffee
Quite right. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a damn good song reduced to crap by some muppet "DJ" who should have stuck to spinning the disks rather than trying to make them.
I hand-crafted this comment all by myself and it's worth more than any other on the page. Of course, all the other commenters will disagree...
I agree with the IKEA affect, at some level, but believe people are wrong about what it means. Just because someone has worked on an open source project does not mean they have rose colored glasses and expect it will solve every problem more efficiently than another alternative. In my view, it means that they have a more sophisticated view of what the project actually can do, in part because it is open, and are ready to share that information.
I own an open source company that deals with Drupal and CiviCRM. It is not uncommon to be in a conversation where someone is telling me of course I think Drupal is the greatest thing out there, and assumes I am not well versed in anything else. I can go on about the virtues of Drupal all day long, but that is besides the point. I have an in-depth understanding of Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla (and it's predecessor Mambo), Plone, Xoops, and a number of other open source tools.
I have contributed to each of these platforms at one time or another and understand the way they work in great detail. Compared to Sharepoint, where I don't understand the internals, I am not going to have a lot to say. If you come to me asking what you should be using, I am going to talk about Drupal, but am also going to ask what you currently use.
There are parallels with the automotive industry that can help explain what is going on there.
My mechanic actually makes cars. He purchases transmissions, chassis, all the component parts you need to assemble them. He has a large lot, looks almost like a junkyard on the outside, and he keeps a fleet of jumkers around to restore them and sell them off. On the inside, his shop is a paradise of tools, diagnostic machines and the like.
His obsession with cars extends to his personal life. His house is filled with cardboard boxes that contain custom parts he picked up because he knows what he can do with them. He can explain them in terms of torque, output and a lot of other factors that go beyond my ability to appreciate a car and what it does.
My neighbor is also someone I would call a car guy and drives a german supercar. It was top of the line when he bought it. I mention the car to the mechanic, and he can tell me about every part in it and why it is good or bad. He has strong opinions about the car and why it is poorly designed, with several prognostications about parts that will die prematurely due to flaws.
When I speak to my neighbor about it, all he knows is he has an expensive car. that impresses people. He can talk about all the luxury lines and his knowledge of the component parts extends to the makeup of the interior, the warmth of the seats, the placement of cup holders, and the like. What he really cares about is not under the hood, it's how the car looks to other people.
If you put the question to both of these kind of people about what kind of car to drive, you are going to get very different answers because one understands how cars are built, the other understands what the car means to other people who see it. There is a qualitiative difference there people don't always appreciate between different types of afficinados.
That said, there are ideological zealots out there who will always tell you to use a platform for it's own sake. I don't always get the sense these people always know what they are talking about, and generally get the feeling they cling to one platform due to their ignorance of the benefits of others. They have a tendency to become very defensive when confronted and make very bold assertions in the absence of facts.
This later class of people generally don't have much to do with how the platform is built. They tend to be the ones who are proponents of the platform and have strong opinions based on their participation in the community. While they can be fun to spend time with, there are situations where you get sick of being around them. To be candid, there are a lot of people in open source communities who are like this, and I think that's where the confusion comes from.
But don't mistake them for the people who actually love open source and understand it's benefits and drawbacks in comparion to other platforms.
Women make children and give them birth.
Men cannot, but they find various ways to indirectly compensate for that gap.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Computers only do a very few things that are really different from each other. During the past 30 years I've seen the same things developed over and over and over again. The IKEA effect is strong in every organisation I've ever worked in, at least as much in commercial software as in FOSS, and is the reason for 80% of software development in my estimation. Everyone thinks they can build things better than anyone else and everyone insists that their own solution is better than anything else 'out there'.
Korma: Good
It is funny how some people keep repeating that "the market resists open source" while open source software is taking over bigger and bigger chunks of the market. Currently open source absolutely dominates web server operating systems, and web server software. It mostly dominates web application databases and is invading in the territory of other databases. It is on the way of dominating embedded operating systems including cell phones. It dominates new programming languages.
So yeah, we do not have desktop domination yet, but open source is doing quite well and it is constantly encroaching on new sectors.
Unfortunately many musicians these days don't love music at all, they simply love money and music is nothing more than a means to an end.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Because without opensource, IE6 is all you would have. Love it, it is the only way.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
People value what they spend time doing more than what they don't? Social scientists have been saying that for a long time before IKEA existed. It's why organizations ask you to do something small for them - such as tell your friends about a fundraiser - because you will value the org more because you did something yourself (and probably do more in the future.)
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I love building my own stuff, more than most /.ers. Anything electronic in the house is done my yours truly. As is most cooking. Bicycles I build myself. I even build by own car and I even persuade the dealer to allow me do so.
Building your own stuff is great when your labour results in having stuff finished as it's supposed to be. And here's where IKEA just isn't worth the effort. After huge amounts of labour you almost always wind up with particle board stuff. Ugly, without any personality whatsoever to it and heavy as lead. Ever tried rearranging average IKEA furniture? Ever moved house with IKEA furniture?
A couple of years ago I wanted a sideboard and went through all the alternatives. I decided for Italian design furniture that was double the price of similar IKEA stuff. But altogether I got a much better deal. The sideboard looks stunning, it is made of real wood, it was delivered to my home and was installed by competent people.
An acquaintance of mine with a very comfortable job -he earns shit loads of money- thinks he's a bit of a geek because he buys his furniture at IKEA's. His wife absolutely loathes the protestant furniture, which one way or another is never finished perfectly -unaligned panels and doors, the works. How are you going to die happily when your bank account is full to the brim and you own IKEA furniture?
To me IKEA furniture does not make any sense and certainly does not make you a geek. It shows you generally have no taste and that you are quickly beguiled into buying apparently cheep stuff without considering the bigger picture.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Exactly what are you smoking that makes you think only showing an action once the user has already started it is intuitive?
To help you to understand: If I instruct you to hit the red button and there is only a green button but the green button turns red when you hit it, you are going to complain about that button and me a lot.
UI design mistakes are pretty common, as a designer you try to be original but forget that other people might not have the same mindset as you. It is very sad but either you are pushing things and upsetting people, or keeping people comfortable but always staying the same.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's like the source coming with the software. You can enjoy the original work as it is, but you also have the freedom to adapt it, chop it up and change it into something else.
I think a major barrier to the uptake of OSS in general is training. Most high schools teach MS Office, Flash, and Visual Studio instead of their open counterparts. People like to use what they're familiar with. They may not even know that an OSS alternative is available, let alone that OSS even exists.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Different people are good at different things, even if they're working in the same industry. In the music industry, a sound engineer might not be able to actually play any instruments, but that doesn't mean he can't be great at recording, mixing down volume levels etc.
In the software industry, people build on others' work all the time. If the culture were completely do it yourself, everyone would have to write their own operating system and drivers just to run their application on top of.
which is totally what she said
Interesting. I'm building an arcade cabinet right now. I have some limited skills working with wood, but by no means am I carpenter. I debated buying a kit, but could not find one that I was happy with. So I'm building from scratch.
I have been proceeding very slowly and teaching myself new skills everytime there is something I want to do, but have not done before. I am *very* happy with the results, and there is absolutely no question that I value this piece of work far more than if I had just purchased it. In fact, I've estimated that considering the time and labor I've put into it, I would need to sell it at at least $10,000 to break even. This is far more than I think anyone would be willing to spend; but it is what I think it is "worth".
On the other hand, this cabinet is highly customized. And perhaps this is the the more practical reason why I value it so highly. It's true that I wouldn't pay $10,000 for a "stock" arcade cabinet like the one I built. But if I had gone to a master woodworker and stood over his shoulder directing him to do all of the major and minor tweaks that I did, ask him--mid stream--to throw away assemblies he had done and re-do them in a different way (because I changed my mind after seeing what it looked like), and to have him overbuild and overfinish it in ways users would never see or appreciate; yeah, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if he charged me at least $10,000.
So yes, I think we tend to value things we produce ourselves more highly than those built by others. However, for me in particular, when I really think about it, the reason is less about self-love than it is about customization--and even small customization can have tremendous value if that's the thing that you *need* to make the thing "perfect" for you. The thing I like so much about Open Source is that I can go into it and make those little tweaks that make the software do exactly what I want. A good example of this is Atari800, one of the emulators that I use in the cabinet. I really like this emulator, but it had some annoying (to me) minor issues that made it less than perfect for my application of it. So I contributed fixes for these things to the project. So now my project is perfect. And I value that a lot.
Sure, probably a little bit. You build a shoddy little app and you might have an irrational affinity for it even in the face of substantially more functional stuff. Though when you 'build' something (not assemble, as I would characterize IKEA stuff I've seen), you naturally tailor it precisely to your needs, so it generally isn't quite so irrational. The presumption that the market 'resists open source' is FUD/flamebait.
The question is how do the popular open source projects get there. The answer is that generally commercial products are built using a certain model involving marketing, project managers,testers who frequently don't understand the life of the customer, customers with little to no ability to influence the program, architects who rearely, if ever, touch code, and coders "just doing their job". In some cases this works well or at *least* won't be any better in open source land due to various factors. However, a successful open source project includes has the line blurred between intended endusers, test, and development. This means the users get *precisely* what they wanted when things are done. Even if they are not doing a lot of development, they'll participate in discussions on their favorite feature and steer the conversation correctly whenever they see someone misunderstanding. It's the same basic principle as a designed by-and-for-yourself project, but on a larger scale in a healthy community.
In commercial projects, there is a lot of signal loss as their requirements are taken down by someone not really understanding their needs, being distilled further into a short bullet point list of product requirements that ditches any semblance of the subtleties inherent in the requests, which is in turn interpreted and tested by a group who never uses the product for production and never talks to the customer, and then released to a customer who thinks "what the hell is this and what did it have to do with my requests?".
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
And there are many reasons for project slowdowns and death, ranging from "it was a bad idea to begin with" to "wow, look at that cool stuff over there" and everything in between.
The importance of self-made items is that there's a Darwinian direct benefit. We like them because they're likely customized in a way that more generic items are not. Consider also that if we didn't like them, we would be unlikely to make them, and where would we be now? Ikea has nothing to do with it save you're the screwdriver artist.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Just because you made it yourself doesn't mean it's worse than the proprietary alternative. I'm using the Volti volume control applet in my task bar. Yes, I contributed to it. I'm using it not because of the pride of having contributed to it, but because now that it's patched, it does what I need it to. I've also written HD24tools, of which I *am* proud. That has little to do with me having written it, and more with what I've actually accomplished by doing so: I've got about 3500 users in 70 countries, running a mix of Windows/Mac/Linux, and the owners of the proprietary solution recommend my software over their own. I'd hardly call that being resisted by the market. It just so happens that my software solves a few problems that the proprietary software does not.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
"...(Firefox) is used by a minority of users."
26.7% versus 35.4 for IE is a minority, true, it has 9% less than IE.
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
"OpenOffice is only used by "normal" people to the very small extent it is because it's free."
I use it because it doesn't have a fucking ribbon, I wouldn't use MS office if it gave money on top.
I'm no expert here but I think the general market embraces FOSS software.
No, the general market embraces software which works for them.
No, the general market uses the software that comes with the computer when they buy it, unless it's really bad (like some disk burning utilities, etc).
The software that comes pre-installed on most systems isn't FOSS due to inside bundling deals, not due to the quality of the software.
To me it has always gone the other way - I only bother contributing to the projects I'm already enthusiastic enough about to invest my time into.
Because most "do-it-yourselfers" these days really want someone else to do ALMOST all of the work for them.
The culture isn't really any more DIY oriented than before. The hardcore DIYers are still out there but today there's a large number of pretenders as well. Kind of like geeks.
For the same reason someone needs to make instruments for them to play, and microphones for them to sing into, and provide equipment for them to be recorded on. Nobody can do it all.
Not all musicians are able to do all things all along the track from creation of equipment to releasing the finished song. In fact, nobody can do it all.
To follow your logic, why do singers sing songs that they did not write themselves?
Mixing other work into something new is a musical style. Personally, it does nothing for me, but that does not mean I can dismiss it as worthless to anybody.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
For me personally, I make things myself when I cut costs by doing so.
I couldn't care less if some other person did it for me if it was cheaper and of the same quality, however this is rarely the case.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Indeed. Ikea is a pile of incompatible crap. And frankly, I don't subscribe to that mindset at all. I have enough Ikea crap here to know I don't like Ikea crap.
You're not supposed to like it, you're supposed to buy it. I haven't heard a single person say they buy IKEA stuff for their high quality or elegant design. Yet everyone has enough from IKEA to have something to complain about, what does that say? Mostly that people like to have something to complain about.
P.S. If you complain about assembling things from IKEA, then you haven't tried much of the competition. The product is so-so but their instructions, illustrations and self-assembly methods are much better. Of course things done by a real craftsman would be better, it's something everyone talks about but very few actually buy.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
General population, sure, but Open Source operating systems are doing great in areas where the general public aren't making the decisions, just using the services. See -
Android
NAS firmware
Routers
Enterprise linux servers
The IKEA effect? Are you serious?
I'm from a poor background where we always had cheap crappy furniture we bought at [insert department store] and put together ourselves, this also continued for a bit into my adulthood until I had my career going, and at no point have I ever taken pride in that stuff, and I certainly never valued it more than good hand made furniture.
Is this really happening? Are people really excited that they put pegs into side B and tightened down the lock nut?
Man I think you have to have come from a well off background to think that way in the first place. Either that or this is an entirely made up thing.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Open source I'd say it is they ignore their flaws. It is getting better but Gnome, KDE etc used to be really flaky. The cool features they advertised on each version would be so unstable as to be unusable (at least in the sense of something you'd put infront of your non-technical boss and expect not to here "get this crap off my computer"), and also pretty typically a pretty ugly GUI (Ubuntu Brown anyone?). I can't count how many times I've talked to a open source guy and said this program is a real piece of crap, it is about half way from being useful I don't get why it is released etc. To get the reply 'Oh but it is free, what did you expect you didn't pay for it so don't complain, would you rather give $X to company Y etc'. Free doesn't excuse laziness. If it isn't good enough that someone would pay for it (the bar is pretty low if you look at some of the commercial software out there) it should still be Beta, not in a production distribution system etc.
Lastly what really pisses me off is when something is say 75% good and 25% junk that is often when the developers decide to move on to something else. For commercial software there is an incentive to fix the problems because people come saying 'I'd by it but this needs to work first' not so with free software (I'm equating it with Open Source because the vast majority of Open Source is free). I'm guilty of it too, things I code on for fun I often work on until I prove I can do what my idea was and then stop. Programmed a chess game, programmed Battleship etc, I didn't care to polish it I just wanted to learn a new language/api and do a bit of fun logic. The problem is in the OS community often this crap gets published in the wild and any criticism becomes well if you don't like it you can fix it yourself. I have a life and can't be fixing everyone else's crappy code, my time is worth say $1 a minute to my employer why would I give up that $1 to work on somebodies fun project that might just be a program that would be useful to me but not a program that is interesting (in a development sense) to me?
Even complete projects need periodic code reviews and lib checks. But I understand what you're saying. Some projects are also eclipsed (no pun intended) by new thinking, or project amalgamation-- or funding changes.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The same can be said about commercial software developers. Go ahead...find one company that doesn't say that the software they created is the best tool for the job it's designed for.
The only difference is the general market doesn't 'resist' them. I'd say the general market doesn't 'resist' open source software either...most just don't know about it, or just don't want to put in the time/effort to use it. When any given open source software is appropriate for a particular task, is easy to setup and use, and someone is present to advocate for it, it probably would stand just as much of a chance as any commercial software. But that last ingredient is largely missing in most circumstances.
Alt-PrintScreen copies an image of the active window (ie the whole message box, including title and icons) to the clipboard. Then paste into e-mail, or WordPad or whatever. PrintScreen alone will copy the entire screen - which can sometimes be useful for context
How many out there remember Heathkits? I guess you could call it that theIKEA effect on steroids. Back in the 70's I built my own Heathkit TV. I thought it was the best performing TV set I'd ever seen, and we did look in the stores at sets before buying that one. Many people built their own stereo receivers, portable radios (me too), and television sets from kits by Heath.
Then there was this guy on PBS with a show called the "New Yankee Workshop". Norm Abrams also wrote a few books on furniture construction and offered plans to all of the projects he built on the TV show. I bought some basic wood working power tools (table saw, drills, router, etc) and learned how to use them thanks to Norm's "instruction". I build a number of small furniture items including two chests of drawers that were based on a project from the NYWS. Those two chests are (IMHO) better constructed than anything I could buy (REAL WOOD instead of particle board or cardboard and limited use of plywood).
If you don't want to make your own from scratch, or bolt it together from IKEA there is always "Wood You". Wood You stores sell assembled furniture that is un-finished. They provide you with the materials to fine sand, stain or paint, and finish the product. I've gotten several pieces of furniture from them, and they are quite nice. The money saved on not finishing them allows Wood You to use better materials in construction (REAL WOOD!).
I actually buy from Ikea in large part for their design, and the fact that their furniture is modular. For instance, if I buy a bookcase and decide I don't really want to display my books anymore, I buy a sliding glass door, some stands, and I've turned it into a nice little liquor cabinet/bar. The quality is actually better than much of what you'll get at a "real" furniture store, as well.
My company can't use software that isn't maintained and supported by a "reliable" owner. By reliable I mean we must be able to sue them if it does not perform according to agreement. We do use some open source on stand alone systems, but we will never be able to get it through our system maintainers departments for any of our networks in production.
Sound engineering is one of those rare processes in which everyone thinks they are good at it, and they are almost universally wrong :P
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I view Ikea products as disposable furniture. You buy it when you're a renter, or you want to decorate a child's room on the cheap. It's a decent quality product at a fair price for what it is intended to be. If you want something that will last then you pay for it.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Indeed.
I can program synth patches and pick/adjust samples, I can arrange, I can mix* well enough, and I can do some basic mastering.
But I don't seem to be very good at the raw "creation" - I can't just sit down and tool out a melody that sounds good.
* - By mix, I mean riding faders and such, not "mixing" in the manner of splicing tracks together. I've never actually tried that, but I have no interest in doing so and I think I'd not be much good at it anyway.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The article mentions that cake mix didn't sell in the 50s until they changed it to require the cook to add an egg. The claim is the labor of adding the egg made the result more pleasing. But this ignores the plain fact that you can still get pancake mix with or without the need to add an egg - and the kind that requires a fresh egg tastes better, because a fresh egg tastes better. It's the same difference as between scrambling a fresh egg and reconstituted eggs.
So this whole thing is premised on being insensible to quality. The assumption is that the all-in-one cake mix is just as good, which is an advertising claim, not the truth.
When it comes to aesthetic appreciation of built objects, the experience of construction is itself a dimension of aesthetic appreciation, which conveys real knowledge of form beyond mere appreciation of a finished, static object. Having experienced that dimension, you can no more set it aside than you can the smell of food that's now in your mouth. To do a test where you pretend people can set that aside and claim the results are science is dumb.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Reminds me of an ex-colleague who said his hobby is "building furniture". I thought "Wow! A real craftsman!" until I found out that his definition of building furniture is buying stuff from Ikea and assembling it.
I didn't have the heard to tell him that his efforts would fall under the "cheap, low-skilled labor" category in third world countries. He seemed genuinely proud of the furniture he "built".
Well yeah, it's pretty much an extrapolation of the "not built here" mentality. In business, it's a anti-pattern. An excuse to have some home-brew encryption. But as far as aesthetics and appreciation, hell yeah I prefer the things I made myself. Even if it's uglier. Sometimes even if it doesn't work as well.
If you have to ask why, you're getting into some fundamental psychology/sociology that's really eye-opening to professors and mind-blowingly obvious to everyone else.
I don't think that's very rare to be honest..
which is totally what she said
they are doing this. there are often remix contests for new singles.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
This is not entirely true, or at least there are other motivators as well.
I am passionate about Free and Open Source software and advocate for its use wherever possible. I am not, however, a programer. I'm unable to contribute to the software I use, but I am a major proponent of the concept that the tools I and millions of other people use every day to be productive and creative shouldn't be closed source, expensive, and controlled by anyone with a profit motive.
I think the best example of why we need free and open software is the walled garden of Ipxxx devices created by apple. At first it seems reasonable that they limit and control what can be installed -- hey look, no malware, but then they use that control to also cut down and eliminate competition and deny me access to the full potential of the hardware I paid to own. This is a powerful driver for me -- and I think the people who see the disadvantages of handing control over out ability to create and work with computers are at least as motivated as the designers and coders who put the software together.
-GiH
People get a sense of accomplishment from making things. That provides a psychological boost.
That's all there is to it.
Of course making things isn't the only way to get a sense of accomplishment, but making things does create a physical object that re-enforces that good feeling whenever we see/use it.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
IKEA is more comparable to desklets or plasmoids (or whatever the KDE applets are called these days), though. The basics are done already, so its appeal is accessibility and ease. The real DIY "open source" furniture is more like this stuff. Anyone can do it with simple tools and the right materials, but it still takes some effort. When it's easier to start a project, a steady increase in required effort builds a reluctance to let the initial investment go to waste. The trouble is biting off more than one can chew from the start. I think that is often the case with FOSS.
Donald Knuth
Have his collection on programming, very good stuff. Didn't know about ogg frog, looks a bit like WIP so I think I'll give it some time and check back later.
-- no sig today
The reason we (the humans) need FOSS is because it is in our best interests to be able to keep the information age functional after the Company bites the dust. The one best quality of FOSS is the power to keep a project going long after it's creator gave up on it. The walled garden is just a small tasting of what it means to have your life governed by corporate strategy || it's failings. Look at how that has infuriated people from time to time.
Proprietary software companies are getting too big too quickly and sooner or later will be, in senate, begging for some trillions to not go bust. Just like the automakers and investment Bankers of the USA did a couple of years ago and look how nice that was. Want another example? main population ignores the effect proprietary monopolies have on their lifes because it suits them. That way Bob 6pack won't have to learn one thing more until he dies and he likes that. He ignores the monopolies because it is convenient for him. Now look at all the Greeks and how that worked out for them. Ignoring the doings of their elected officials for personal interest for almost two generations now; Greece has sunk into so much excrement it bankrupt itself and now is threatening to bankrupt the euro-zone aswell.
But yeah as long as the idiot gets health insurance and his cerotic kidney replaced, who cares.
brainless unprovoked rants
-- no sig today
Actually, one of the main reasons I dislike Ikea is the maze I have to walk through to get to anything. That is beyond annoying to me.
The incompatibility thing, which I'm surprised no one has questioned me about, has to do with common sizes of sheets and mattresses and other things. When I discovered that "queen size" isn't "queen size" and so on, I was pretty upset. "...but it's European so it's better" is just ridiculous. We have standards in the US which imported products should conform to. You know, like steering wheels on the left side of the car and stuff like that? This "slightly off sizes" are just vendor lock-in and, I pretty much hate such tactics.
VLC works fine. I never had any problem with it ( something i can't say about other players i've tried ).
The Ogg Frog website has a link to VLC ?
Slipping shoelaces ?
Congress must act now! I propose an immediate ban on some-assembly-required furniture. With fast action, the IKEA disease will only exist in history books.
Different people are good at different things, even if they're working in the same industry. In the music industry, a sound engineer might not be able to actually play any instruments, but that doesn't mean he can't be great at recording, mixing down volume levels etc.
True that, I have one song which I like very much, but if I had source, I could probably do MUCH better mixing, even without professional studio.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Some versions of VLC will also run without installing it locally. I've hooked users of coporate you-cant-admin-this laptops with a copy of VLC that will run from a thumb drive so they can watch DVD's without paying some BS licence or dealing with some BS IT security policy.
[Re: to an extent] this is most assuredly true.
...hence the inherent love a mother typically feels for her [self-built] child(ren).
To
Most of their bookshelves and cabinets and many of their dressers and drawers are particleboard. The extra-thick bookshelf components are actually cardboard honeycomb with laminate.
Yes, there are a selection of products made of solid wood, mostly tables, chairs, and benches. (i.e. stuff that sees harder use) Most of the stained stuff is pine, which dents if you look at it funny. Some of it is birch/beech/oak, which can be decent.
Let's be realistic. Ikea furniture is designed to be disposable. It's not going to be around two hundred years from now. I agree with you though that there is other stuff that is even worse.
If you want to see high quality flat-pack furniture, check out http://www.greendesigns.com/ No, I don't own any of their stuff or work for them. Yes, you'll pay $2000 for a coffee table. But it's solid cherry, made in the USA, with no metal fasteners whatsoever. Everything is sliding dovetails.
The quality is actually better than much of what you'll get at a "real" furniture store, as well.
We must define "real" in terms of furniture much differently. Because my definition of real furniture from a real furniture store does not include any particle board.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Using a smurf-scale hex wrench to coax an incorrect number of bolt-like objects into ultra-cheap particle board certainly didn't make me value the finished product more. Instead, it filled me with rage and curiousity about how long the indentation of the smurf-scale hex wrench would last in my thumb and the crook of my index finger (spoiler: 2 days)...
. . .the real Ikea Effect is the feeling of shame for donating your time and efforts to such a crappy outcome. Perhaps this manifests itself in the form of "pride", but as a defense mechanism.
I might be generalizing here but: if you have been on the Internet you have used at least some part of ffmpeg. If this doesn't apply to You then I'm sorry for your miserable colorless lifestyle. ;-)
also: stop nagging about unrealistic things in a serious manner. Yes, I am talking about your signature.
-- no sig today
Which is why the IKEA example fits, I think.
Not sure why I didn't see this mentioned...
IMO, it's simply an understanding level. Explains Windows and iPod/iPad too.
When you put something together yourself, you'll gain an understanding of said thing. If you understand it, you'll appreciate it more in comparison to a black box.
Lots of people have used Windows enough to have a better understanding of its quirks and how stuff works in the Windows world than they do the unknown of Linux (or Macs, for that matter).
Understanding something rather than just having something takes up a bigger chunk of the brain, so it seems natural that one would have a stronger connection to those things. Doesn't mean you have to build it to gain understanding, but that's one way that'd help.
Quit watching MTV. Those 'musicians' are a tiny minority, played up by the labels to show a grandiose lifestyle, and hardly reflect the wants of 'many' musicians.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
"...(Firefox) is used by a minority of users."
26.7% versus 35.4 for IE is a minority, true, it has 9% less than IE.
Ouch. For the above figures, FF has ~25% fewer users than IE, not 9%.
Take your "real" furniture apart. If you're not spending at least 10x as much as at Ikea, you're going to find particle board or plywood.
Your standard is pretty weak - you care about the material, not the result. I want furniture that won't break in regular use and isn't just overbuilt to cost more. Particle board is bad in some uses, 'solid wood' bad for others.
It sounds like your 'real furniture stores' are just pretentious crap-shacks selling the same lame workmanship but in more expensive materials or they'd have given you better standards.
I can assure you that my furniture is in fact made of actual wood. And yes, imagine that.....you have to pay for quality.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Yes, on my last furniture purchase I should have recognized what a crap-shack that Amish guy was running. The place didn't even have electricity for crying out loud.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Particle board yes, but some form of plywood is used in almost all "real" furniture. We're talking hardwood veneered plywood that you get from a lumber dealer, not the crap you can buy down at Home Depot, but even so, plywood is not synonymous with crappy furniture.
Particle board is bad in almost all cases, but plywood does have very real advantages over solid wood. For instance, plywood is much more stable over time and is not nearly as subject to the expansion and contraction due to changes in humidity as solid wood is. Go to any million dollar home and look at their kitchen cabinets - the faces will be solid wood but the side, top, bottom and back panels will all be plywood. It's more durable and less hassle, it's not used because it costs less, it's used because it's better for that particular purpose.
I'd argue that VLC is used by a large percentage of folks that regularly watch media other than Netflix or Youtube on their PCs. Their interface isn't the best but as far as functionality it can do just about anything you'd want.
Seriously. The icon changes when you push the mouse button to start a drag on any ejectable volume.
Sure, it requires you to have faith that there might be someplace useful to drag it to. Or to be observant when you accicentally hold a click on an ejectable volume.
I suppose you're too much of a purist to ever try dragging a volume. But if you had tried right-clicking on the volume, well, there you have another way.
What you're really complaining about is the lack of that tiny, tiny, "Why should I do anything with that?" triangle about the some place in the MSWindows task bar where the trash icon in the stock dock on the Mac would be, the one you can click on to see and manipulate the status (I guess?) of certain attachable devices. Talk about having to have someone point that one out to me.
But, then, right clicking worked well enough for me.
(And many of my co-workers just pull the USB Flash drive and don't worry about it. Buy a new flash unit when it dies. It's gonna die anyway, as they perceive.)
So, what's your complaint again?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The article offered me a yes/no answerable question and I gave my opinion :-)