If it's something aimed at field operatives then it has to be simple enough for a human to decode without needing a computer or a key book or something
Actually, its a simple book cypher using the standard edition of the king james bible as the key, where the first two numbers are the book, the second two are the chapter, and the last three are the word in that chapter. Ever wonder why the bible is the most purchased book in the world? It's because the CIA needs to keep buying it all over the world.
They dont need to worry about the code book being "captured", becuse its hiding in plain sight. If one of their agents is captured with the bible, they just think, "Oh, those durn fanatical amerikanskis" and ignore it.
To call people names simply because they want to get work done - the original intent of computing technology - rather than make it a hobby is pretty arrogant.
People dont make fun of mac users because they "just want to get work done".
People make fun of mac users because the macies rave on about how wonderful their system is... and this is the same system that goes down completely, or locks hard, if an application screws up, or if the system runs out of memory, or....
Happily, 'THe next revision should fix all that';-) But people DO have justification for their macuser humor.
Windows 3.1 is an okay GUI, but an xterm is still much more intuitive.
That sentance is broken. Either you mean "a terminal is more intuitive than windows 3.1" which I suspect you dont:-) OR, you should have written "dtterm is much more intuitive"
There's not a lot intuitive about xterm.
Plonk a newbie in front of an xterm, and say "change the font size". See how long it takes you to give up and scream "CONTROL RIGHT CLICK!!"
Now put them in front of dtterm and ask the same thing. Hmm. 15 seconds, or 30 seconds if they have parkinsons.
A lot of the kids don't give a damn because a lot of the kids don't know how. They don't know how because they're either not shown what that's like, don't have the time to give a damn - taking care of your family because your mother works and/or is an alcoholic and you might as well not have a father....
Yes. All very true. All very sad. But this in no way changes the truth of my original posting, the summary of which is:
SATs are a good indicator of who has both the basic intelligence and the training to be prepared for college.
So your entire rant was irrelevant to the topic.
But just to finish off your little detour: These kids already HAVE people who are trying to make them care. They're called teachers. The kids dont want to listen. So what ya gonna do?
All this just goes to prove the old adage:
You can lead a kid to knowlege, but you can't make him think.
If this this tendency continues soon we'll have a chip named pr0n.
You mean, something like a cpu that has blazing fast jpg and MPG decoding? Maybe even something that could handle decoding TWO mpg streams simultaneously?
Oh wait, we have those already.They're called UltraSparc IIs. Been around for years now.
Oh, wait... What does this say about sparc engineers, and the target market for ultra sparcs?
The simple answer is to keep all choices to be a selector clickiethingie(10% increments), and have javascript either show the running total, or update the "last" one with the percentage remaining.
But DO NOT *REQUIRE* javascript for the damn thing to work!! The stupid people will all hava javascript turned on. The smart people will not.
The point is, how do you give those who've been re legated to the lower-classes because of racism or other factors another shot at bettering themselves if they don't have the same resouces?
They dont need "the same" resources. They need adequate resources. The have them.
PBS
public libraries
teacher tutoring. yes, many public school teachers would be happy to help out kids with some after school help. I know this, because HALF MY FAMILY ARE PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS.
The biggest problem is that the parents dont take advantage of the resources available to them. Some of which isn't exactly their fault, since sometimes, the parents are too busy working 12 hours a day. But the fact remains that the resources ARE there.
The second biggest problem, is that the kids dont give a damn.
In summary, the biggest problems arent learning resource problems, they are social problems.
PS: the big problem for highly qualified asian students having a tough time getting into Berkeley, for example was because of....
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.
Once they did away with affirmative action, and went to a more merit-based system, the percentage of asian students went up. So shove that gripe of yours where the sun dont shine. I'm all for merit based systems.
Oh, and the requirement for a certain score on the SATs? Frankly, the SATs are more a measure of socioeconomic status and ability/training to take the test than of any innate quality of intelligence. The requirement reeks of elitism and discrimination against those who do not have the opportunity to take review courses
Oh, just get over your own lousy scores, why dont you?
Moreover, what precisely does the SAT measure?
It measures two things:
You have learned a certain set of things that high school graduates should have learned
You have enough intelligence to apply those things in a fixed timeframe.
So it is incredibly appropriate as a college entrance test. If the person does not have those two qualities, they do not belong in college. Note that those qualities have nothing to do with color, or any discriminatory stuff. If a poor child spent a lot of time in a library learning the appropriate things, then (assuming average intelligence) they should do just as well as the average middle class whitey who went to a "good" schoo.
The fact that "minorities" and poor folks tend to score poorly, doesn't make it a "biased" test. It makes it an accurate test!!
Of COURSE a majority of those folks are not going to have had decent schooling. Of COURSE on the whole their intelligence would be lower. Because intelligence is largely inherited from the parents, and if the parents were more intelligent, it is less likely that they would be in their current poor position. I'm not saying that the test should be geared to deliberately get that sort of dataset. But the fact that it does get that type of scoring distribution, means it is probably a good test.
You need to stop confusing "Political Correctness" with "Accurate Scientific Testing".
Dude. Stop pressing return all the time, except when you actually want a paragarph. Your 100 line thing there, should be only about 50 lines, if you let slashdot do its thing.
You seem to suggest that a computer that responded to "affective" behaviour (i.e. swearing) would be a better interface for the naive user. I guess you really love the animated paperclip in Word. This is lazy thinking.
I'm not the original writer, but I actually agree with the sentiment: A computer that responded to user swearing, COULD be a better interface.
If a user is banging around completely lost, then a computer that asks in a nice way "I'm sorry. Can I help you out somehow?" would be an EXCELLENT user interface.
Unfortunately, the problems come with how to do this without pissing off the user more, and how to make sure that the help offeredis relevant to what they actually want to do.
Being able to concisely ask the user what they want to do, would be helpful. Understanding [insert human language here] would be even more helpful, of course.
No, steep learning curves *are* best. If the amount of stuff you've learned how to do is on the Y axis and time is, as always, on the X axis, a steep curve indicates very rapid learning.
Try to be more flexible in your thinking next time. Who exactly made a rule, "time is always the X axis"? There is no such rule. The commonly understood meaning of "steep learning curve" means,:difficult to learn".
Therefore, if you were plotting a "learning curve", it should be inferred that
Our goal should be to make several different levels of use into a UI. If you want things simple, then choose the simple user level and the UI will do most everything for you, and prevent you from breaking stuff. More of a power user? Bump up the skill level.
I know it's a simple analogy, but video games let you choose what skill level you're going to play at so you don't get fragged at the start. Why not let the GUI's and UI's act the same way?
You know it's time to be nervous, when your GUI asks you,
Are you
-]]SURE[[- you want to turn safety interlocks off?
(bars are for pushing, handles are for pulling - one way for identifying the correct way to open a door)
Hmm. Originally, I thought by "bar", you meant those wierd horizontal handles. I think that is an example of a poorly designed UI. But perhaps you meant those embedded long things that move into the door about an inch. The problem is,some of those things look grabbable.
The "intuitive" interface for doors, is:
FLAT panels for pushing
Some grabbable thing for pulling
This is the best way to design the door interface, since obviously if there is nothing to grab, the only thing you CAN do, is push. The trouble being when you have some kind of locking mechanism on the door. The ideal mechanism would sense that a "user" was trying to gain access by pushing/pulling, and automatically unlock without further manipulation required.
There's probably an application of the flat-vs-handle principle to UIs. Ah, i think it would be:
Grey out options that are not applicable in the current context.
Unfortunately, the "automatically unlock" part only is applicable when there is one and only one operation. That is almost never true with your average GUI.
1) Seems like a personal preference issue to me. I hate using GUIs which operate the other way around - I can't throw the pointer to right field and keep on working in the front window - which (because I can only type in one thing at a time) is usually the only one I want to look at.
You seem to be assuming that two or more separate functions are irrevokably one single choice. But sensible window managers let you separate:
Click to raise
Click to focus
(and/or autoraise on focus)
if you had a decent GUI environment, you could select "click to focus", but leave "raise on focus", and "raise on click" unselected. So you could click, "throw the mouse to right field", type, and then click in the next window you want to use.
If you wanted a specific window to come to the front, you could then choose from options like "click on window decoration", or press some key bound to "Front".
Also, I particularly like the "right button gives you a menu" paradigm, without having to drag my mouse all the way to the top of the screen.
It is also properly free (last time I looked, MySQL cost money if you made money with it, or used it on Windows), Postgres on the other handis free beer and speech.
Look again. While there is still an appropriate windoze penalty, you can use mySQL for revenue purposes, without giving them money.
The only limitation for real platforms, is that you can't redistribute it for money, i think.
Slashdot Mirror
Which one? Is it available in print now?
Actually, its a simple book cypher using the standard edition of the king james bible as the key, where the first two numbers are the book, the second two are the chapter, and the last three are the word in that chapter. Ever wonder why the bible is the most purchased book in the world? It's because the CIA needs to keep buying it all over the world.
They dont need to worry about the code book being "captured", becuse its hiding in plain sight. If one of their agents is captured with the bible, they just think, "Oh, those durn fanatical amerikanskis" and ignore it.
Actually, OS-9 multi-tasks very well.
MacOS 9, on the other hand, I dunno.
People dont make fun of mac users because they "just want to get work done".
People make fun of mac users because the macies rave on about how wonderful their system is... and this is the same system that goes down completely, or locks hard, if an application screws up, or if the system runs out of memory, or....
Happily, 'THe next revision should fix all that' ;-) But people DO have justification for their macuser humor.
That's ineffective. Start shooting, instead.
It's still a single-button mouse. It just has 4 "convenient" fixed-function macro keys.
That sentance is broken. Either you mean "a terminal is more intuitive than windows 3.1" which I suspect you dont :-)
OR, you should have written "dtterm is much more intuitive"
There's not a lot intuitive about xterm.
Plonk a newbie in front of an xterm, and say "change the font size". See how long it takes you to give up and scream "CONTROL RIGHT CLICK!!"
Now put them in front of dtterm and ask the same thing. Hmm. 15 seconds, or 30 seconds if they have parkinsons.
I've seen the japanese PS2 play fullscreen on HDTV. So you sure about that limitation?
Ummmm.. Einhander is not "import-only". I own a US version :-)
I believe it is also budhism, and a few other religions.
Yes. All very true. All very sad. But this in no way changes the truth of my original posting, the summary of which is:
So your entire rant was irrelevant to the topic.But just to finish off your little detour:
These kids already HAVE people who are trying to make them care. They're called teachers. The kids dont want to listen. So what ya gonna do?
All this just goes to prove the old adage:
You mean, something like a cpu that has blazing fast jpg and MPG decoding? Maybe even something that could handle decoding TWO mpg streams simultaneously?
Oh wait, we have those already.They're called UltraSparc IIs. Been around for years now.
Oh, wait... What does this say about sparc engineers, and the target market for ultra sparcs?
The simple answer is to keep all choices to be a selector clickiethingie(10% increments), and have javascript either show the running total, or update the "last" one with the percentage remaining.
But DO NOT *REQUIRE* javascript for the damn thing to work!!
The stupid people will all hava javascript turned on. The smart people will not.
They dont need "the same" resources. They need adequate resources. The have them.
PBS
public libraries
teacher tutoring. yes, many public school teachers would be happy to help out kids with some after school help. I know this, because HALF MY FAMILY ARE PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS.
The biggest problem is that the parents dont take advantage of the resources available to them. Some of which isn't exactly their fault, since sometimes, the parents are too busy working 12 hours a day. But the fact remains that the resources ARE there.
The second biggest problem, is that the kids dont give a damn.
In summary, the biggest problems arent learning resource problems, they are social problems.
PS: the big problem for highly qualified asian students having a tough time getting into Berkeley, for example was because of....
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.
Once they did away with affirmative action, and went to a more merit-based system, the percentage of asian students went up. So shove that gripe of yours where the sun dont shine. I'm all for merit based systems.
Oh, just get over your own lousy scores, why dont you?
Moreover, what precisely does the SAT measure?
It measures two things:
You have learned a certain set of things that high school graduates should have learned
You have enough intelligence to apply those things in a fixed timeframe.
So it is incredibly appropriate as a college entrance test. If the person does not have those two qualities, they do not belong in college. Note that those qualities have nothing to do with color, or any discriminatory stuff. If a poor child spent a lot of time in a library learning the appropriate things, then (assuming average intelligence) they should do just as well as the average middle class whitey who went to a "good" schoo.
The fact that "minorities" and poor folks tend to score poorly, doesn't make it a "biased" test.
It makes it an accurate test!!
Of COURSE a majority of those folks are not going to have had decent schooling. Of COURSE on the whole their intelligence would be lower. Because intelligence is largely inherited from the parents, and if the parents were more intelligent, it is less likely that they would be in their current poor position. I'm not saying that the test should be geared to deliberately get that sort of dataset. But the fact that it does get that type of scoring distribution, means it is probably a good test.
You need to stop confusing "Political Correctness" with "Accurate Scientific Testing".
Some window systems have more finely tuned mouse configuration options.
So those folks would need something like delayed, yet very high mouse acceleration.
The idea being:
move the mouse a little in a small area = dont move the pointer at all
move the mouse medium amount = move the pointer a little
move the mouse a lot = move the pointer a lot
Dude. Stop pressing return all the time, except when you actually want a paragarph.
Your 100 line thing there, should be only about 50 lines, if you let slashdot do its thing.
use the preview button, ya know?
>I'd also like to perform every operation (except
>text entry) with the mouse.
No, INCLUDING text entry.
What if you're a parapalegic with a trackball mouse and one working finger?
No, linux does not.
Your lame choice of window manager does.
I'm not the original writer, but I actually agree with the sentiment: A computer that responded to user swearing, COULD be a better interface.
If a user is banging around completely lost, then a computer that asks in a nice way "I'm sorry. Can I help you out somehow?" would be an EXCELLENT user interface.
Unfortunately, the problems come with how to do this without pissing off the user more, and how to make sure that the help offeredis relevant to what they actually want to do.
Being able to concisely ask the user what they want to do, would be helpful. Understanding [insert human language here] would be even more helpful, of course.
Try to be more flexible in your thinking next time. Who exactly made a rule, "time is always the X axis"? There is no such rule. The commonly understood meaning of "steep learning curve" means, :difficult to learn".
Therefore, if you were plotting a "learning curve", it should be inferred that
Y = effort put into learning
X = percentage of product learned.
I know it's a simple analogy, but video games let you choose what skill level you're going to play at so you don't get fragged at the start. Why not let the GUI's and UI's act the same way?
You know it's time to be nervous, when your GUI asks you,
Hmm. Originally, I thought by "bar", you meant those wierd horizontal handles. I think that is an example of a poorly designed UI. But perhaps you meant those embedded long things that move into the door about an inch. The problem is,some of those things look grabbable.
The "intuitive" interface for doors, is:
FLAT panels for pushing
Some grabbable thing for pulling
This is the best way to design the door interface, since obviously if there is nothing to grab, the only thing you CAN do, is push.
The trouble being when you have some kind of locking mechanism on the door. The ideal mechanism would sense that a "user" was trying to gain access by pushing/pulling, and automatically unlock without further manipulation required.
There's probably an application of the flat-vs-handle principle to UIs. Ah, i think it would be:
Grey out options that are not applicable in the current context.
Unfortunately, the "automatically unlock" part only is applicable when there is one and only one operation. That is almost never true with your average GUI.
You seem to be assuming that two or more separate functions are irrevokably one single choice. But sensible window managers let you separate:
Click to raise
Click to focus
(and/or autoraise on focus)
if you had a decent GUI environment, you could select "click to focus", but leave "raise on focus", and "raise on click" unselected. So you could click, "throw the mouse to right field", type, and then click in the next window you want to use.
If you wanted a specific window to come to the front, you could then choose from options like "click on window decoration", or press some key bound to "Front".
Also, I particularly like the "right button gives you a menu" paradigm, without having to drag my mouse all the way to the top of the screen.
Look again. While there is still an appropriate windoze penalty, you can use mySQL for revenue purposes, without giving them money.
The only limitation for real platforms, is that you can't redistribute it for money, i think.