One of the biggest problems with the Unix/Linux world is an obsession with "configuration". Most users could care less about "configuration". Most of the things you can "configure" should either be automatic or on-demand.
Printing, for example. You should never have to "configure" a printer. When you try to print something, you should be offered a list of available printers. The system should find them. If the system doesn't have the tools to find printers, why should the user be expected to do it? Maybe you have buttons like "look for more printers", or "ask neighboring machines for help finding printers". But the user should not be typing in IP addresses or installing "drivers".
Yeah, this takes some programming work. But it saves the user work. That's the idea.
This business of "faking emotions" is what robotics people do after they've failed to deal with the physical world. It gets great press, but doesn't do much. Cog at MIT is the most noteable example.
You lose about half a second when the window bar is part of the window. With the Mac's single menu bar, the target is aligned with the top of the screen and easier to hit. If the menu isn't at an edge of the screen, there's a substantial performance penalty.
Microsoft's "Start" button is particularly bad, because it's not quite at the screen corner. If it were, you could click it without looking.
That's not an approach, that's a pep talk that says nothing. "Usability is a relatively new matter for us". Like, hello, Mac programmers have been doing this for two decades. We need to hit the "I am l33t because I can use a command line" people with a clue stick.
Ten things you can do to make your program at least tolerable for end users:
No funny key combinations. Repeat, no funny key combinations. Everything must be accessable through the menus. Yeah, I know you want to be able to bind any control key combination to any function. Don't. It doesn't really speed up use anyway. Read Apple's old studies on this. People blank out on the 500ms they're thinking about the control key combo. And never, ever use keyboard toggles that don't have a permanently visible state on screen.
If it's undoable, you don't need a confirmation dialog. If it's not undoable, you need a confirmation dialog. Make it undoable if at all possible.
Distinguish clearly between severe and non-severe errors. "You are about to change your font to sans-serif" should look very different than "You are about to permanently delete all your files".
The user should never have to tell the computer something it already knows. This is basic, and routinely violated in the Open Source world.
The user should never have to fill in a blank when the computer can find out what goes in that blank.
Offer a choice if necessary. Yes, much of this comes from UNIX's crappy approach to system administration. Work on that.
If you need a database, use a real database.
Flat files are so 1970s. Databases work today.
The most troublesome apps in computing, BIND and Sendmail, are both database apps with a bad homebrew database. Provide for database validation and recovery.
Anything that can get itself into a bad state must be able to get itself out of that state. No more
having to delete "XUL.mfl" every time Mozilla screws up. Anything with cached data must get this right.
If you try to be smart, make sure you're not being stupid. Try entering data into an OpenOffice spreadsheet. If you have something like "12 VDC" somewhere in your spreadsheet, and you type "1", it fills in "12 VDC". Which you have to erase. Every time. Now go try that in Microsoft Excel.
Microsoft's wizards will fight you once, but if you override them, they give up.
Modal dialogs should be short and clear. They consist of a statement of the problem and a suggested corrective action.
Get the subtle stuff right. Grey out the options you can't use now. Show in the menus whether something is off or on.
Be rigorously consistent about how things appear to work, even when it's more work for some cases.
We track this on Downside.
Only two people involved with Enron are in Federal prison right now: Lea Fastow, the CFO's wife, and Andrew Glisan, the corporate treasurer. Andrew Fastow, the CFO, pled guilty and will be going soon, but he's not behind bars as of today. Skilling and Lay have been indicted but not yet tried.
If you haven't been following this, Glisan gave up Fastow, and Fastow gave up Skilling and Lay.
We're waiting to see if Lay gives up Bush.
Inmate Register Number: 20293-179
Name : BEN F GLISAN
Age: 38
Race: WHITE
Sex: MALE
Projected Release Date: 1/17/2008
Location: BASTROP FCI
1341 HIGHWAY 95 NORTH
BASTROP , TX 78602
Phone Number: (512)321-3903
Source: BOP.
Bastrop is a low-security prison, with a plant making bulletproof vests. Houston FDC is an "administrative" facility, for short term prisoners, those in transit, and those with court proceedings nearby.
Consolidated Office Distributors is where Silicon Valley companies go to die. That's where we buy office furniture. Their building looks like the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark, a dimly lit cave of racks and piled furniture covering a city block.
Prices are very good, and very negotiable if you buy in bulk.
Ross-Dove, the auction house, seems to run high on price. I've been to one of their auctions, and everything sold above blue book.
"windowsupdate.com" is a real Microsoft site? The HTML looks like something some dumb spammer would write. There's a NOFRAMES tag, but the page doesn't have frames. There's no BODY tag (which is why the page won't display in Mozilla). There's no CSS. There are no Microsoft Front Page indicators. The domain is in REGISTRAR-LOCK. Yes, the registrant info shows Microsoft's address, but you can put anything in there.
No, the first computer controlled plotter was made from an analog X/Y pen recorder. The analog computer for the Nike missile launch system had one, as did the Atlas missile guidance computer.
There was the Iconarama, which was an Etch-A-Sketch like device attached to a projector. This was the first large-screen computer controlled display, and was used by NORAD in the 1950s. The device scratched transparent areas onto a slide, projecting icons (usually aircraft tracks) on a screen. When the screen became too cluttered, a slide changer loaded a new blank slide. Two complete systems aimed at the same screen were used, to avoid a blank period during slide change and redraw and to provide redundancy.
The Iconarama was one of a long series of early military attempts to build large-screen displays.
There were wall-sized plotters. CRT/film/photo processor/projector combinations. The Eidophor oil-film projector.
Eidophor technology first appeared in 1943, and there are still a few units in use. No other technology until DLP could reach the 4000 lumen light level of an Eidophor unit.
If you want liquid cooling that isn't a joke, get a Shuttle PC.
They've been shipping little breadbox sized machines with heat-pipe cooling for years. We use these in places without air conditioning, and they work fine.
We've had five units for a year, and none have ever failed.
No neon, no overclocking, no extra slots you don't need. Just little machines the work.
The advantage of Pad2Pad is that they don't just make a blank board, like all the other online board shops. They make the blank board, order the parts, place them, and solder the board. This is a huge win, because you can do surface mount jobs.
If only it were real.
I downloaded their program and tried it. Unfortunately, the list of available parts is a joke. There are only a few ICs. It's just a sample. I'd thought the idea was that you could order anything in the Digi-Key catalog, but no. You're limited to one pull-down menu of parts. They don't even have a consistent range of resistor values; there are wierd gaps.
They're expensive, too. I laid out a tiny board with two connectors and a voltage regulator. They want about $100 for the blank board, $50 extra to mount the voltage regulator.
Emachineshop has a neat little CAD program
on
Build Your Robot Online
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
EMachineshop offers a neat little CAD program. What's unusual is that it knows what their shop can manufacture, and enforces design rules. It also prices the job automatically.
Unlike most machine shops, EMachineshop does sheet metal work, with CNC punching and bending. Try it out. Design a sheet metal box.
EMachineshop still has substantial setup costs, but the production costs aren't too bad. Price quantity 1 and quantity 10, and see what you get.
Another useful resource is Front Panel Express, which makes flat panels with holes and lettering.
NASA continues to search desperately for ways to divert attention from their core failure areas.
(No new launchers in 30 years, a space station with no mission, and space shuttles that blow up.) Congress needs to pull the plug on all NASA activities not directly related to putting stuff in space. General R&D funding should be done through the NSF and NIST, which have the charter to do that. NASA does not, and it's not very good at it. NASA is really good at taking credit and putting big color pictures of irrelevant stuff in their PR materials. But as a scientific R&D operation, they're a flop.
*
* WELCOME to the VeriSign Global Registry Service Whois Server.
*
* Sorry, the Whois database is currently down.
*
* Please wait a while and try again. Thanks
*
But at the same time, the new, ad-heavy Verisign Whois page is up.
The judge granted AutoZone an indefinite stay, with 90 day reports, pending the resolution of the copyright claims in the SCO vs. IBM case. Just like SCO has in the Red Hat case. All SCO gets to do is try to show that AutoZone should be temoorarily enjoined against something. (But what?)
And the judge told SCO's lawyers not to try going on a fishing expedition with discovery.
This is a big loss for SCO. Any case they bring against a Linux user is going to end up on hold like this. This totally derails their licensing strategy, because their threat to sue is now empty.
SCO may try harassiing AutoZone with discovery, but it won't work.
Of course, IBM might win its summary judgement on the copyright issue on August 8th. If that happens, the AutoZone and Red Hat cases will be unstayed. Those parties will presumably file for summary judgement and win..
You can't short stocks on the NASDAQ when they're below $5. So all the short sellers have dropped out of the market. Other than them, nobody cares about SCOX any more. SCOX volume is way down, running about a quarter of what it was a few months ago.
Nah. What actually happens in systems like that is that the answer turns out to be encoded into the fitness function and the search algorithm. Read "Why AM and Eurisko Appear to Work", which Doug Lenat wrote in one of his honest moments.
Slashdot Mirror
Printing, for example. You should never have to "configure" a printer. When you try to print something, you should be offered a list of available printers. The system should find them. If the system doesn't have the tools to find printers, why should the user be expected to do it? Maybe you have buttons like "look for more printers", or "ask neighboring machines for help finding printers". But the user should not be typing in IP addresses or installing "drivers".
Yeah, this takes some programming work. But it saves the user work. That's the idea.
Exactly.
Apparently Microsoft fixed that in XP. The left corner of the screen is not active in Windows 2000.
No, that deal fell through. Both of them will be in jail for part of this year.
All surveillance cameras in public places should be on the web.
If you want to see fake talking heads, try Ananova video reports.
The Honda walking robot, though, is for real. They have a clue.
Microsoft's "Start" button is particularly bad, because it's not quite at the screen corner. If it were, you could click it without looking.
Ten things you can do to make your program at least tolerable for end users:
If you haven't been following this, Glisan gave up Fastow, and Fastow gave up Skilling and Lay. We're waiting to see if Lay gives up Bush.
-
Inmate Register Number: 20290-179
-
Inmate Register Number: 20293-179
Source: BOP.Name: LEA W FASTOW
Age: 42
Race: WHITE
Sex: FEMALE
Projected Release Date: 7/10/2005
Location: HOUSTON FDC
1200 TEXAS AVENUE
HOUSTON , TX 77002
Phone Number: (713)221-5400
Name : BEN F GLISAN
Age: 38
Race: WHITE
Sex: MALE
Projected Release Date: 1/17/2008
Location: BASTROP FCI
1341 HIGHWAY 95 NORTH
BASTROP , TX 78602
Phone Number: (512)321-3903
Bastrop is a low-security prison, with a plant making bulletproof vests. Houston FDC is an "administrative" facility, for short term prisoners, those in transit, and those with court proceedings nearby.
Ross-Dove, the auction house, seems to run high on price. I've been to one of their auctions, and everything sold above blue book.
The domain is getting DNS from "MSFT.COM", so it does look it really is hosted by Microsoft. But the HTML is still wierd.
And with Arnold as Governor, we have a green light for unlimited violence in the entertainment industry. So there.
Are you sure that's for real?
There was the Iconarama, which was an Etch-A-Sketch like device attached to a projector. This was the first large-screen computer controlled display, and was used by NORAD in the 1950s. The device scratched transparent areas onto a slide, projecting icons (usually aircraft tracks) on a screen. When the screen became too cluttered, a slide changer loaded a new blank slide. Two complete systems aimed at the same screen were used, to avoid a blank period during slide change and redraw and to provide redundancy.
The Iconarama was one of a long series of early military attempts to build large-screen displays. There were wall-sized plotters. CRT/film/photo processor/projector combinations. The Eidophor oil-film projector.
Eidophor technology first appeared in 1943, and there are still a few units in use. No other technology until DLP could reach the 4000 lumen light level of an Eidophor unit.
WARNING - do NOT click on the link above if you are running Microsoft Internet Explorer with Active-X controls enabled.
No neon, no overclocking, no extra slots you don't need. Just little machines the work.
Without assembly, Pad2Pad is just another online board fab house, and a rather expensive one.
If only it were real.
I downloaded their program and tried it. Unfortunately, the list of available parts is a joke. There are only a few ICs. It's just a sample. I'd thought the idea was that you could order anything in the Digi-Key catalog, but no. You're limited to one pull-down menu of parts. They don't even have a consistent range of resistor values; there are wierd gaps.
They're expensive, too. I laid out a tiny board with two connectors and a voltage regulator. They want about $100 for the blank board, $50 extra to mount the voltage regulator.
EMachineshop still has substantial setup costs, but the production costs aren't too bad. Price quantity 1 and quantity 10, and see what you get.
Another useful resource is Front Panel Express, which makes flat panels with holes and lettering.
NASA continues to search desperately for ways to divert attention from their core failure areas. (No new launchers in 30 years, a space station with no mission, and space shuttles that blow up.) Congress needs to pull the plug on all NASA activities not directly related to putting stuff in space. General R&D funding should be done through the NSF and NIST, which have the charter to do that. NASA does not, and it's not very good at it. NASA is really good at taking credit and putting big color pictures of irrelevant stuff in their PR materials. But as a scientific R&D operation, they're a flop.
This is for the crowd that puts neon lights in their PC. Not the people who buy ECC memory for their desktops.
-
*
But at the same time, the new, ad-heavy Verisign Whois page is up.* WELCOME to the VeriSign Global Registry Service Whois Server.
*
* Sorry, the Whois database is currently down.
*
* Please wait a while and try again. Thanks
*
This is a big loss for SCO. Any case they bring against a Linux user is going to end up on hold like this. This totally derails their licensing strategy, because their threat to sue is now empty.
SCO may try harassiing AutoZone with discovery, but it won't work.
Of course, IBM might win its summary judgement on the copyright issue on August 8th. If that happens, the AutoZone and Red Hat cases will be unstayed. Those parties will presumably file for summary judgement and win..
You can't short stocks on the NASDAQ when they're below $5. So all the short sellers have dropped out of the market. Other than them, nobody cares about SCOX any more. SCOX volume is way down, running about a quarter of what it was a few months ago.
Nah. What actually happens in systems like that is that the answer turns out to be encoded into the fitness function and the search algorithm. Read "Why AM and Eurisko Appear to Work", which Doug Lenat wrote in one of his honest moments.