HCI has rarely been the first priority of new research organizations
Thats true but the real failing has been its use in industry, HCI is rarely the first priority there either, being often seen as expensive, time consuming and something separate to the traditional design process.
How many projects actually fail because the developers designed the system that the client wanted, not what the users would realistically use on a day to day basis.
The most practical aspects of HCI focus on understanding the user, and most modern software design methodologies take account of this...actual use of HCI in RL is really lacking.
Its one one the main reasons projects fail in the long term, ok poor project management and vague requirements do the most damage but its still pretty important
Wouldn't it block search engine bots like the googlebot as well, if so bang goes all your hard work on SEO...
For instance when you get "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"
turning up in your logs ?
Re:Microsoft - just stop be honest for once
on
XP, Phone Home
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· Score: 1
I was talking about the google toolbar, a browser extension.
Google only collect search data if you install their browser plug-on and select under the privacy options to allow them to collect data about your searches, you can't get much fairer than that.
ok if you use a few features like the page rank and category button you need to allow them to collect data, but you don't really need to use those options anyway
If you were going to trust anyone to use the data in a morally acceptable manner, surely google must be pretty high up on the list ?
Microsoft - just stop be honest for once
on
XP, Phone Home
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Ah Microsoft stop the secrecy.
The actual act of aggregating search engine data itself it not particularly bad, its just the way the have to keep all this stuff secret, even if they're doing something innocent, they make it look sinister and because of their history it looks pretty bad, whatever the real reason for doing this.
For marketing reasons, I can see it being useful information to a lot of companies, if they are strictly aggregating data as they say.
Is this for use on MSN etal, as obviously to sell keywords they need to know generally what words are the most popular, and they can't do that without aggregating data about people search preferances.
Is this any different to say googles toolbar, Ok before I get flamed I know google do it right and gather info on an opt-in basis, but all search engines want to know information about our browsing habits, thy've got to make money some how.
Microsoft don't seem to be doing anything really bad here, its just like their software the problem is with the implementation, if they only made it absolutely explict they were doing this it would not be a problem.
Microsoft you build in cookie management to IE and then build in 'freatures' like this without any opt-out, you're just asking for bad publicity here. Guess it must be the pointy haired marketdroids at work.
Oh don't worry about the moderation, theres always meta-moderation so who's counting
Back to the plot
an individual ("The Mule") was able to cause a significant upset to the plan
The Mule caused a significant upset to the plan, but only in the short term. Between Seldon anticipating his Plan A failing somewhere along the lines, and all the Gaia stuff later on the Mule didn't really upset the applecart.
Of course in RL you're on the right lines.
To add to your statement what applies to groups does not apply to individuals and that individual is sufficiently powerful, then unpredictable events occur.
...Through stupid people unpredictable events occur, as you should never underestimate the power of stupid people in groups.
Remember Asimov's Foundation series where Dr Seldon used mathematics and psychologists to predict and model the behavior of populations and human societies.
Asimov has a habit of predicting scientic advances such as robotics(Everyone know Asimovs laws of robotics ?)
Ok he was basing it on the presumption that you could predict the behviour of very large population (ie whole planets),but the concept was the same
This reminds me of the poem read at a funeral...I wish to wear purple (or some such) suggesting that once old people no longer needed to care for their children they should act like naught children again.
They should spend their last remaining years like overgrown children being silly and having real fun....they should grow old disgracefully not being baby sat by a robot
Why couldn't think organise some real events:
Love ins in the rest homes, even the elderly need sex too. Or failing that at least a T1 connection and free access to porn sites.
Sports events, its not uknown for people even in their 80's to go skydiving for example, they could combine the two...naked granny skydiving that'd scare the neighbours!
Ah I've only seen the price in Europe, perhaps you get a better deal. Here in the UK the XBOX is nearly double the price of the PS2.
As far as consoles go I'm personally biased towards Nintendo, as I like Nintendo's own brand games and RARE games (used to be UPTG)
Yeah you're right a lot of Sony games are proprietary thats just normal business in the console market, they have a huge catalogue of good PS1 games and PS2 games. Oh wait you expected me to say something like Ps2's not open source ?
Before I go on, I was not spouting Anti Microsoft FUD, I've used Macs, Windows, Dos, Amiga, Solaris,HP-UX's enough to compare systems.
Ok I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, the reason being is that I have had to use crappy Microsoft software at various emplyers since the 80's so I have had 'the Microsoft experience' first hand.
On the desktop Microsoft allways favours feature bloat before fixing existing problems (If you've used Word since its inception you'd know what I mean), they're marketing guys may say their focusing on security and stability now but I'll only believe it when I see it.
Microsoft is dominant in the Pc market. But in earlier history Microsoft tried entering the home entertainment market when they backed 2 MSX launches and they died a horrible death.
First Microsoft 'MSX', then 'MSX2' then the XBOX, history could repeat itself. I've seen MSX's before and they were crappy and unreliable.
In defense of Microsoft they have PUBLISHED some decent software but its almost inevitably software they have bought either directly or by buying the company concerned (HALO by Bungie, Dos,Excel, Visio etc)
Ok the PS2 has dropped in price because of the XBOX and Gamecube lauch but its still selling massively.
As for the rest of the comments...
I wouldn't write Nintendo off, as they have huge cash reserves and were even posting profits still on the N64 last year when it was supposedly dying.
Nintendo could survive off Pokemon and Mario alone, without all their 3rd party support for the gamecube I don't think Microsoft is really worrying them.
Sony won't fail as they're bigger than Microsoft and have the all import support of the major software developers. Sure they could fail but its very unlikely....maybe for PS3 as historically there is no stable console market leader for long.
Its funny you mention Enron, they were posting huge profits through creative accounting...kinda similar to Microsoft really,where they count share issues to employees as income!
As soon as the city starts loosing faith in Microsoft, and their share price plummets they will have a mass exodus of staff as most of their developers rely on share options for their income.
Remember when evryone bought big blue and the business world thought IBM was invincible, you don't see many IBM Pc's being bought now.
IBM was the PC, then Microsoft took over the direction of the Pc market, don't think they are invulnerable just because they're Microsoft.
The real question should be why can't Microsoft fail ?
They mainly suceed now soley because of inertia and they're huge cash reserves, but they seem to be falling into the trap of trying to extend into too many markets and lack confidence about their core products (remember when office was supposed to move to subscription only)
I've noticed few if any games having modem to modem multiplayer options anymore. I know the venerable modem is a little long in the tooth but I like playing over one. The lag is virtually non-existant and the bandwidth of the connection is enough to play most types of games
You ought to tryout "Laser Squad Nemesis,a multiplayer only version of Laser Squad (the forerunner of the X-Com series)
Its a strategy e-mail based game designed from the ground up for multiplayer games on slow dial up connections.
Theres a charge of $15 per 6 months (to pay for the usual updates etc), but if you can find someone with a subscription to challenge you to a match, you can get to try it out for free.
Loosen up dude. You're just jealous that he's 38 and retired,and able to go swanning off in his own airplane.
Some of us would be happy to just get a cheap holiday somewhere scenic, away from our wife, children and computers for a while, and rest our tired eyes away from our CRT focused life.
The thought of making that journey sounds cool, you could start you're own web blog about it and really brush up on your photography.
I think having to drive the SUV for a free holiday is a pretty good trade off.
It sure sounds like a good way to spend the summer to me.
Well I've applied and I'm sure he'll get thousands more applicants.
I've seen weider cases...
on
Tool Box PC
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· Score: 3, Funny
If you're on the subject of weird pc cases, then check out the toilet pc, its got to be seen to be believed.
This guy bought a childs 'training toilet and turned it into one weird looking Pc.
Personally, I think it would be inconvenient to make one yourself.
After all that trouble to make a customised case, it would only take one drunken guy to 'christen' the pc case....
I wished I'd learnt C the same way as you, my friends ran Dos or OS/2 whilst I had my Amiga 2000
My introduction to see was for my Amiga, where trying to learn about pointers and the miggies Intuition GUI at the same time led to some very 'interesting' crashes.
This is good news, considering the effort Microsoft went to kill OS/2 when they released Windows 3.0, this is really funny, the thought of OS/2 users being able to run XP without rebooting...priceless.
And lest we forget...
If it wasn't for OS/2 development, the old Amiga would never have had REXX, that was one cool programming language.
OS/2 2.0 was a better Windows than Windows at the time, and using its Virtual Dos Machines it had the most stable version of Dos.
Wouldn't life had been so much easier if Windows had died, an everyone used OS/2, too bad its a legacy system now.
Theres nothing wrong with Rtf pe se, its just that often people save Word documents as 'rtf' that only are only readable to other people with Word.
As of course Microsoft in its infinte wisdom has its own interpretation of Rtf and its not completely compatitble.
I was only arguing for Xml as an example, the problem is Microsofts stranglehold over the file formats.
There should be one format that covers all the basic features required of a word processor that all Word Processors should be able to save to exactly, with no 'adjustments' to the standard (Yes that means you Micro$oft).
The problem is getting everyone to agree to a baseline of features, having them accept a format that will all implement the same (yes even Micro$oft) and having the format agreed and specified without it looking like its been designed by a committee (The Motif syndrome)
I wish that the industry would get together an agree a usable file format that would be supported by all document processors even if they just settled on some SGML based format such as Xml.
Hmm imagine if every word processor used Xml for storage...that would be miles better than having every business use Word.
Look at WordPerfect, look at Lotus Word,they were both excellent word processors and the market leaders and look where it got them...
Microsoft eroded there market share using its by now commonly known tactics.
The problem is, right now we have Word and Pdf as being the only file formats of choice that are universally accepted.
Pdf is ok, but again the file format itself is proprietary
Word is especially bad not so much for its bloat, but for the bugs that never get fixed and worse of all Microsofts habit of changing the format frequently
As it stands at the moment any copy protected cd can be copied, its just a question of how to copy them. (Ie. Cd out to cd in will always work, unless sound cards get DRM or some such)
I bet if they could , they (the RIAA) would fund research for a new form of human hearing with built in DRM, and then patent it.
Before you know it every peice of electronics would require this new 'improved' hearing to listen to anything be it on TV, CD etc.
It sounds like Sci-Fi but as we all know truth can be stranger than fiction, I bet there morals are low enough to try something like that.....
Slashdot Mirror
HCI has rarely been the first priority of new research organizations
Thats true but the real failing has been its use in industry, HCI is rarely the first priority there either, being often seen as expensive, time consuming and something separate to the traditional design process.
How many projects actually fail because the developers designed the system that the client wanted, not what the users would realistically use on a day to day basis.
The most practical aspects of HCI focus on understanding the user, and most modern software design methodologies take account of this...actual use of HCI in RL is really lacking.
Its one one the main reasons projects fail in the long term, ok poor project management and vague requirements do the most damage but its still pretty important
Perhaps they've really found Numenor
IMHO Numenor or Atlantis one is as real as the other
Wouldn't it block search engine bots like the googlebot as well, if so bang goes all your hard work on SEO...
For instance when you get "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"
turning up in your logs ?
I was talking about the google toolbar, a browser extension.
Google only collect search data if you install their browser plug-on and select under the privacy options to allow them to collect data about your searches, you can't get much fairer than that.
ok if you use a few features like the page rank and category button you need to allow them to collect data, but you don't really need to use those options anyway
If you were going to trust anyone to use the data in a morally acceptable manner, surely google must be pretty high up on the list ?
Ah Microsoft stop the secrecy.
The actual act of aggregating search engine data itself it not particularly bad, its just the way the have to keep all this stuff secret, even if they're doing something innocent, they make it look sinister and because of their history it looks pretty bad, whatever the real reason for doing this.
For marketing reasons, I can see it being useful information to a lot of companies, if they are strictly aggregating data as they say.
Is this for use on MSN etal, as obviously to sell keywords they need to know generally what words are the most popular, and they can't do that without aggregating data about people search preferances.
Is this any different to say googles toolbar, Ok before I get flamed I know google do it right and gather info on an opt-in basis, but all search engines want to know information about our browsing habits, thy've got to make money some how.
Microsoft don't seem to be doing anything really bad here, its just like their software the problem is with the implementation, if they only made it absolutely explict they were doing this it would not be a problem.
Microsoft you build in cookie management to IE and then build in 'freatures' like this without any opt-out, you're just asking for bad publicity here. Guess it must be the pointy haired marketdroids at work.
the lego church is astonishing Christened as a monument to dead cats, no less
This may not be made of lego but its one hell of a shrine to dead cats
Oh don't worry about the moderation, theres always meta-moderation so who's counting
Back to the plot
an individual ("The Mule") was able to cause a significant upset to the plan
The Mule caused a significant upset to the plan, but only in the short term. Between Seldon anticipating his Plan A failing somewhere along the lines, and all the Gaia stuff later on the Mule didn't really upset the applecart.
Of course in RL you're on the right lines.
To add to your statement what applies to groups does not apply to individuals and that individual is sufficiently powerful, then unpredictable events occur.
...Through stupid people unpredictable events occur, as you should never underestimate the power of stupid people in groups.
Remember Asimov's Foundation series where Dr Seldon used mathematics and psychologists to predict and model the behavior of populations and human societies.
Asimov has a habit of predicting scientic advances such as robotics(Everyone know Asimovs laws of robotics ?)
Ok he was basing it on the presumption that you could predict the behviour of very large population (ie whole planets),but the concept was the same
Better watch out for the Mule...
This reminds me of the poem read at a funeral...I wish to wear purple (or some such) suggesting that once old people no longer needed to care for their children they should act like naught children again.
They should spend their last remaining years like overgrown children being silly and having real fun....they should grow old disgracefully not being baby sat by a robot
Why couldn't think organise some real events:
Love ins in the rest homes, even the elderly need sex too. Or failing that at least a T1 connection and free access to porn sites.
Sports events, its not uknown for people even in their 80's to go skydiving for example, they could combine the two...naked granny skydiving that'd scare the neighbours!
Who's gonna cheer up the robots?
Thats obvious they'll start up 'Granny Wars' to cheer the robots up.
Instead of DeathMetal they'll be 'DeafZimmer'
Dominator will be replace by 'OneFootInThe Grave'
Razor will be replaced by 'Eyesore'
etc...
WebTV is Dead. Ultimate TV is dying (yes it is), Hailstorm and XBox are stillborn.
Thas just for starters, Microsoft has a history of failed projects:
Xenix died a quick and painfull death
MSX died like the proverbial parrot
MSX2 was pretty much stillborn
MSX3 sorry 'XBOX', is not dead yet, its merely resting.
and not forgeting Microsoft Bob
Ah I've only seen the price in Europe, perhaps you get a better deal. Here in the UK the XBOX is nearly double the price of the PS2.
,where they count share issues to employees as income!
As far as consoles go I'm personally biased towards Nintendo, as I like Nintendo's own brand games and RARE games (used to be UPTG)
Yeah you're right a lot of Sony games are proprietary thats just normal business in the console market, they have a huge catalogue of good PS1 games and PS2 games. Oh wait you expected me to say something like Ps2's not open source ?
Before I go on, I was not spouting Anti Microsoft FUD, I've used Macs, Windows, Dos, Amiga, Solaris,HP-UX's enough to compare systems.
Ok I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, the reason being is that I have had to use crappy Microsoft software at various emplyers since the 80's so I have had 'the Microsoft experience' first hand.
On the desktop Microsoft allways favours feature bloat before fixing existing problems (If you've used Word since its inception you'd know what I mean), they're marketing guys may say their focusing on security and stability now but I'll only believe it when I see it.
Microsoft is dominant in the Pc market.
But in earlier history Microsoft tried entering the home entertainment market when they backed 2 MSX launches and they died a horrible death.
First Microsoft 'MSX', then 'MSX2' then the XBOX, history could repeat itself. I've seen MSX's before and they were crappy and unreliable.
In defense of Microsoft they have PUBLISHED some decent software but its almost inevitably software they have bought either directly or by buying the company concerned (HALO by Bungie, Dos,Excel, Visio etc)
Ok the PS2 has dropped in price because of the XBOX and Gamecube lauch but its still selling massively.
As for the rest of the comments...
I wouldn't write Nintendo off, as they have huge cash reserves and were even posting profits still on the N64 last year when it was supposedly dying.
Nintendo could survive off Pokemon and Mario alone, without all their 3rd party support for the gamecube I don't think Microsoft is really worrying them.
Sony won't fail as they're bigger than Microsoft and have the all import support of the major software developers. Sure they could fail but its very unlikely....maybe for PS3 as historically there is no stable console market leader for long.
Its funny you mention Enron, they were posting huge profits through creative accounting...kinda similar to Microsoft really
As soon as the city starts loosing faith in Microsoft, and their share price plummets they will have a mass exodus of staff as most of their developers rely on share options for their income.
Remember when evryone bought big blue and the business world thought IBM was invincible, you don't see many IBM Pc's being bought now.
IBM was the PC, then Microsoft took over the direction of the Pc market, don't think they are invulnerable just because they're Microsoft.
The real question should be why can't Microsoft fail ?
They mainly suceed now soley because of inertia and they're huge cash reserves, but they seem to be falling into the trap of trying to extend into too many markets and lack confidence about their core products (remember when office was supposed to move to subscription only)
You're right that /.'s are knocking the XBOX because its Microsoft and they want to see it fail.
But there is a genuinely good chance it will fail.
Sony won't fail, and historically there has only been room for two console competitors.
So who would you bet you're money against Nintento or Microsoft ?
Microsoft have too many things against them, for starters:
. The failure of MSX Microsofts last serious attempt at a home entertainment system
. Public worry over the reliability of the XBOX (Problems in Japan with faulty drives, and reported crashes haven't helped)
. Microsoft are heavily relying on marketing to push the XBOX and both Nintendo and Sony have huge cash reserves
. Little 3rd party support (Halo seems to be the only really decent game, and that got that through buying Bungie)
. The XBOX is seriously lacking good games, games sell consoles, not technical superiority
. The XBOX is way overpriced
. Microsoft is politically unpopular outside the US (Notice how sales are only really holding up in America)
Don't forget Microsoft failed before the XBOX with the MSX home computer.
They had the backing of major Japanese companies and still failed miserably.
Worse he was beaten by Sir Clive Sinclair, who although an electronics genius was lousy at marketing.
CS's rival Timex/Sinclair Spectrums were even made out of McDonnel Douglas cast off chips!
C'mon this is one issue near and dear to our hearts.
GeekPAC should be arguing for real geek issues, liking banning clued up sys admins from searching for pr0n directories.
I've noticed few if any games having modem to modem multiplayer options anymore. I know the venerable modem is a little long in the tooth but I like playing over one. The lag is virtually non-existant and the bandwidth of the connection is enough to play most types of games
You ought to tryout "Laser Squad Nemesis,a multiplayer only version of Laser Squad (the forerunner of the X-Com series)
Its a strategy e-mail based game designed from the ground up for multiplayer games on slow dial up connections.
Theres a charge of $15 per 6 months (to pay for the usual updates etc), but if you can find someone with a subscription to challenge you to a match, you can get to try it out for free.
Loosen up dude. You're just jealous that he's 38 and retired ,and able to go swanning off in his own airplane.
Some of us would be happy to just get a cheap holiday somewhere scenic, away from our wife, children and computers for a while, and rest our tired eyes away from our CRT focused life.
The thought of making that journey sounds cool, you could start you're own web blog about it and really brush up on your photography.
I think having to drive the SUV for a free holiday is a pretty good trade off.
It sure sounds like a good way to spend the summer to me.
Well I've applied and I'm sure he'll get thousands more applicants.
If you're on the subject of weird pc cases, then check out the toilet pc, its got to be seen to be believed.
This guy bought a childs 'training toilet and turned it into one weird looking Pc.
Personally, I think it would be inconvenient to make one yourself.
After all that trouble to make a customised case, it would only take one drunken guy to 'christen' the pc case....
I wished I'd learnt C the same way as you, my friends ran Dos or OS/2 whilst I had my Amiga 2000
My introduction to see was for my Amiga, where trying to learn about pointers and the miggies Intuition GUI at the same time led to some very 'interesting' crashes.
This is good news, considering the effort Microsoft went to kill OS/2 when they released Windows 3.0, this is really funny, the thought of OS/2 users being able to run XP without rebooting...priceless.
And lest we forget...
If it wasn't for OS/2 development, the old Amiga would never have had REXX, that was one cool programming language.
OS/2 2.0 was a better Windows than Windows at the time, and using its Virtual Dos Machines it had the most stable version of Dos.
Wouldn't life had been so much easier if Windows had died, an everyone used OS/2, too bad its a legacy system now.
Theres nothing wrong with Rtf pe se, its just that often people save Word documents as 'rtf' that only are only readable to other people with Word.
As of course Microsoft in its infinte wisdom has its own interpretation of Rtf and its not completely compatitble.
I was only arguing for Xml as an example, the problem is Microsofts stranglehold over the file formats.
There should be one format that covers all the basic features required of a word processor that all Word Processors should be able to save to exactly, with no 'adjustments' to the standard (Yes that means you Micro$oft).
The problem is getting everyone to agree to a baseline of features, having them accept a format that will all implement the same (yes even Micro$oft) and having the format agreed and specified without it looking like its been designed by a committee (The Motif syndrome)
I wish that the industry would get together an agree a usable file format that would be supported by all document processors even if they just settled on some SGML based format such as Xml.
Hmm imagine if every word processor used Xml for storage...that would be miles better than having every business use Word.
Look at WordPerfect, look at Lotus Word,they were both excellent word processors and the market leaders and look where it got them...
Microsoft eroded there market share using its by now commonly known tactics.
The problem is, right now we have Word and Pdf as being the only file formats of choice that are universally accepted.
Pdf is ok, but again the file format itself is proprietary
Word is especially bad not so much for its bloat, but for the bugs that never get fixed and worse of all Microsofts habit of changing the format frequently
Ah but what license is you're woody going to be released under?
Can you recompile you're woody after its been 'released' ?
Still confident about releasing you're woody ?
Hadn't you really better wait till you're girlfriend gets home ?
After all you're woody might be up against 'stiff' opposition...
Psionics.
After all direct thought transference has to the perfect email client.
It would be real instant communication and Bill wouldn't be able to tack on propriety extensions to this particular communications protocol.
Its perfect unless someone gets huffy and decides to do a mind blast, then its get ready with your saving throws..
As it stands at the moment any copy protected cd can be copied, its just a question of how to copy them. (Ie. Cd out to cd in will always work, unless sound cards get DRM or some such)
I bet if they could , they (the RIAA) would fund research for a new form of human hearing with built in DRM, and then patent it.
Before you know it every peice of electronics would require this new 'improved' hearing to listen to anything be it on TV, CD etc.
It sounds like Sci-Fi but as we all know truth can be stranger than fiction, I bet there morals are low enough to try something like that.....
They should have just reposted the story on Microsoft focusing on:
/. April Fool
"Security, Security, Security"
That would belatedly be the best
Thats one true story (according to Micro$oft) that sounds like an Aprils Fool....