OS X is simply breaking convention with no good reason.
The way I select a file is not a "bad habit" -- it is simply the way I'm used to selecting my files. My mental model is to see the icon as a "whole", not broken up into "icon" and "filename text" (this is the mental model many other users have too). When I want to drag a file, I just assume I can click anywhere on what I percieve to be its icon and drag it around.
Is this a bad way of thinking about this? Not really... Plus, millions of Windows users already do it (And it's the same under GNOME and KDE). Is being able to rename a file with a single click worth breaking this convention and causing minor frustration and unecessary "relearning" for a whole lot of people? I personally don't think so...
In fact, there's nothing "natural" about being able to rename a file by clicking on its filename... It's just something you learn to do. So I believe there is very little benefit to that particular feature of OS X (e.i. you have to relearn the skill of moving an icon, and then learn another relatively arbitrary feature).
There are tons of usability and HCI improvements in OS X, but I just don't see this as one of them.
Rule #34 of good HCI design: Users cannot use their mouse.
Applied here: The user shouldn't have to constantly remember that when they're dragging a file somewhere, if they click 5 pixels too low, they'll instead be renaming the file.
The first few times I used OS X at a friend's house, I would constantly click/double-click on the filename (that's just how I was used to doing it under Windows), and instead of the app/file opening, the filename would be selected. Annoyed, I pressed ESC or some other "I didn't mean that" button, and instead THE WHOLE FILENAME WAS DELETED. I was pissed. OS X is great in many ways, but that goes against convention a lot of their prospective users are used to.
Gangster rap and violent heavy metal also become popular around the early 90s... Maybe that was it? I'm more inclined to think that teenage killers (esp. minorities) listen to music more often than they play video games.
I don't believe that, of coure, but it makes a convincing argument to the uninformed, doesn't it?
The "what if it was your mother" arguments are the ugliest, stupidest things ever.
What if it was your mother that gets stabbed by a pencil? Is your pleasure of writing on a piece of paper worth even ONE person dying FROM HORRIBLE PENCIL DEATH? I feel sorry for you in that case.
STFU.
[Yea yea, mod me flamebait, but you know I'm right. I won't even AC this.]
At who's expense? The taxpayer in most cases. Where does this stop? If every citizen has an inalienable right to rent books for free, does he also have a given right to health care? Does he have a right to the best doctors and medical facilities? How do we then decide who has access to the best facilities? A lottery? Where does this end? Look, if somebody wants to dump some of their wealth into building a library, it isn't any of my business. But when society raises this type of person and these qualities of self-sacrafice above all others, we have a problem. A couple generations go by and our kids all learn this and guess what? We have a socialist system.
It stops where the taxpayers decide it ends. Libraries and healthcare for the elderly or poor don't spring out from the government fully-formed -- they are programs created by elected officials (or bureaurocrats appointed by them).
You see, the Constitution makes no provisions for free health care, public facilities like libraries, welfare payments, social security, etc. All these programs are driven by forced, excess taxation. Government has three (and only 3) obligations. 1. Provide national defense. 2. Provide a fair and just judicial system 3. Provide police protection. You're just reading the Constitution is a living document that is constantly being reinterpreted to best fit our needs (or should be, were our government not a bunch of power-hungry idiots).
Your "every man for himself" just doesn't make sense. Some of the best things we currently have came from people helping each other. Sure, the USSR and the US reached space independently, but imagine what could have happened it we worked together, pooled our money and brainpower in an intelligent fashion, and had private investors and researchers tackle the problem, all working together?
You know what, if I want to use a library I'll pay to rent books the same way I pay to rent movies. I don't expect anybody regardless of how much money they have to fund building one just so my sorry ass can go get books for free.
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. (a) Free access of public domain information (not just books, either) to anyone, regardless of income or social status is very much responsible for America's current superior economic state. (b) You can absolutely loan videos, DVDs, and other pieces of media from libraries or museums for free. Granted, those are often not as stocked with current, popular releases, but provide a wealth of information nonetheless.
Also, I have no idea why you assume I'm anti-capitalist. I simply think that, given a reasonable definition of "living well", a multi-millionare surpases that lifestyle whether she is worth one hundred million dollars or eighty million dollars (assuming an amazing 20% of worth donation). True, this is biased of me to say, but come on, this isn't a heavy philosophical debate.
Of course Paul is doing a great thing. I want to see affordable, safe, private space flight as much as the next guy (maybe more!), but Paul's contribution is neither a "handout" nor "self-sacrifice". He simply sort of has plenty of money to support interesting and/or humanitarian causes.
?? These people aren't giving out handouts, they're giving money to medical research, or to build public spaces (libraries, concert halls, etc.) Last time I checked buildings didn't build themselves.
Also, there's no "self-sacrifice" when very wealthy individuals give to charity -- you can be sure the money is not making the tiniest dent in their quality of life.
All of that power is being used to make your user-experience easier behind the scenes.
If you compare an old system running Win 3.1 and your current system, I'm sure you'll find that the user experience has improved *substantially* over that time.
I think OS X really shows where all of that computing power could really be put to use -- the eyecandy is not pointless, it really makes the system seem friendlier and easier to use (and of course it is even without that). But you need cycles to make that 'prettiness' go. You need cycles so that when you switch apps the switch is as quick as possible and the mouse doesn't slow down. You need ram and storage so that really complicated object interfaces can make sure you can put images, spreadsheets, god-knows-what into Word, and have all of that be transparent.
I don't think you actually want to see improvement -- rather, you want everything to become more transparent. (Or at least that's what I want to see:-)
Jesus H. Christ, you are an idiot. I feel that so much, I'm not even going to AC this post.
YOU. ARE. AN. IDIOT. Maybe retarded as well. Maybe you just don't understand freedom of expression. I have no idea... but whatever it is, you can fuckin' wear your fuckin' suit, and tie, and suck Bush's cock while you're at it.
I was even going to write an intelligent reply, but on the second thought, this article is waaaay off the front page, so no one will ever bother to read it or mod it.
You clearly don't understand what's wrong with the system, and if you think suits and ties are gonna change it, you've got your head so far up your loose asshole that you will soon cease to exist in this reality.
I have to disagree. If everyone took the time to learn the hell out of everything, fewer new ideas would come about.
For example, my major interests lie in higher-level computer functionality: human-computer interaction, computer-augmented decision making, etc, etc. I don't really care to learn about, for example, low-level networking functionality, or my kernel. When X refuses to start or something like that, for example, I'll learn/google as much as I need to fix the problem, but I won't start digging through its sourcecode and trying to fix problems myself.
That same way I woudn't fix my own plumbing or repair my own car... Why, when someone already has exactly the skills needed to do that? I'll instead use my time to work on or learn something intersting to me, instead of *everything*.
Hell, if you really start learning a topic, say the ins-and-outs of the Linux kernel, it can take you years, if not your whole lifetime to do it... I figure its best to pick a few topics and get to know them thoroughly, picking 1 or 2 as the most important... The other, stuff, well leave it to people who picked *that* as their #1/2 things.
Of course, I don't mean to get into an argument here; clearly we just differ in our philosophy of/to life, which is perfectly good and fine.
A very important trend in Human-Computer Interaction is to create devices that are of dubious practical value, but tell us a lot about the needs/wants/feelings of society. Basically, this device allows people to really think about what they want out a cellphone conversation, to tell stories about themselves, and what telephones mean to them. These stories then go into making real devices with features people *really* need, instead of those that engineers *think* people need.
The article clearly didn't make this clear enough, and even made it sound like they were planning to sell the device. I highly doubt that's the case (the story about the business man in Japan is exactly that - a story about someone with a particular need that may not be met by current technology).
I also suspect this is the fault of the reporter, not the researchers, as the reporter just wanted to make a funny/weird sounding story, and probably missed a lot of what the researchers were saying.
Duh! That's because when you root a Linux server, you're got a real system to play with -- a hacked box and a few perl scripts, and you're on your way! When you hack a Windows box, you've just got any data on it, maybe some websites you can deface, or you need to start writing hardcore C/C++/etc. code to really get something out of it.
They published a super-cool book called New Nomads a few years back where they propose some interesting ideas. The book is reeeeeeally hard to find, [you have to order it directly from 010 Publishing from the Netherlands], but the ideas in it, as well as how it is made is way interesting... It even has a soft, thick, deep purple color... Those crazy designers!
In general though, Phillips Design do great stuff with ubicomp, wearable comp, and other cool futuristic ideas, trying to put those things in a social perspective [lots of S&TS and HCI stuff here].
SoulSeek. Ad/spy-ware free. Lot's of *quality* music, and the "Download Containing Folder" option (basically so you can download a whole album with one command) will make the members of the RIAA collectively shit their pants.
Its a helluva lot easier to get a CD at target for 13 bucks as opposed to hunting on Kazaa for the entire thing in good quality that isnt the chorus repeated over and over and over...
Use SoulSeek. I've never gotten a 'fake' song off of it (except the inevitable poorly-ripped track that pops every now and them), and downloading full albums is a breeze with the "Download Containing Folder" option. Oh, and it's spy/ad-ware free and actually has a lot of *decent* music on it [esp. if you're looking for electronica].
I have very similar, if not exactly the same problems (and I'm a college student too).
Like a lot of others here have said, exercise works well. However, if you're not too squeamish about putting chemicals into your system, have some connections, and a few extra bucks, I'd recomment self-medication with Ritalin or Adderall.
Snorting a pill of Ritalin or half a pill of Adderall (or two pills of Ritalin / whole pill of Adderall -- depending on how adventerous you are;-) does wonders for your ability to do work. For me, it works well only with logical, flow-based work like mathematics, physics, computer science and other ideas where creativity stems from logical application of concepts, not things like writting where speed of thought != productivity.
Of course, it's *very* bad to become dependent on chemicals for your ability to do work (Ritalin isn't particularly habit forming unless you do a *lot* of it, but Adderall is pretty bad since it also gives you a moderate euphoria), and so I wouldn't recommend this solution for than once a week, if that often.
However, when you've got a whole load of problem sets to write up, or a long piece of code to deal with, and caffeine just won't cut it, Ritalin and Adderall will focus you for hours.
Your milage may vary, and check sites like erowid.org before you do anything with chemical you don't feel comfortable with.
Just speculation, but it would make sense for the Federal government to have special agreements with vendors of software of they use to inform them of any potential vulnerabilities as soon as they are discovered, so that the government's SysOps can take proper precautions...
Most people don't need to do anything concievable with their computers... They need to do a small subset of those things that Microsoft predicted they might need to do.
And Microsoft gives them a happy, shiny, easy way to mess just with those things... Most VB coders would fall flat on their face if they had to mess with a large, poorly documented, open source application writen in C/C++/Java/whatever (add to that the fact that many OSS applications are written in esoteric (by VB standards) languages like Python or Lisp)...
Point being that Microsoft gives its customers what they want/need, not *everything*.
Oh, and renaming files according to a regular expression has absolutely nothing to do with having the source code to anything... You simply get a Perl port and hack away.
I have a Dell PII 600 Mhz and a Dell Inspiron laptop with a 2.2 Ghz. One takes almost 1/2 minutes to boot XP or Debian, and other takes ~3 seconds for XP and slightly more for Linux (mostly because A LOT of services get started).
On one Mozilla loads cold within seconds, on the other it takes seconds, even when using the system tray loader.
I notice differences when using my friends' 1.2 Ghz and 1.5 Ghz systems too...
Speed matters! I'd rather be halfway down the/. frontpage 60 seconds after pressing the 'On' button than waiting for 'User settings' to load.
Slashdot Mirror
OS X is simply breaking convention with no good reason.
The way I select a file is not a "bad habit" -- it is simply the way I'm used to selecting my files. My mental model is to see the icon as a "whole", not broken up into "icon" and "filename text" (this is the mental model many other users have too). When I want to drag a file, I just assume I can click anywhere on what I percieve to be its icon and drag it around.
Is this a bad way of thinking about this? Not really... Plus, millions of Windows users already do it (And it's the same under GNOME and KDE). Is being able to rename a file with a single click worth breaking this convention and causing minor frustration and unecessary "relearning" for a whole lot of people? I personally don't think so...
In fact, there's nothing "natural" about being able to rename a file by clicking on its filename... It's just something you learn to do. So I believe there is very little benefit to that particular feature of OS X (e.i. you have to relearn the skill of moving an icon, and then learn another relatively arbitrary feature).
There are tons of usability and HCI improvements in OS X, but I just don't see this as one of them.
Rule #34 of good HCI design: Users cannot use their mouse.
Applied here: The user shouldn't have to constantly remember that when they're dragging a file somewhere, if they click 5 pixels too low, they'll instead be renaming the file.
The first few times I used OS X at a friend's house, I would constantly click/double-click on the filename (that's just how I was used to doing it under Windows), and instead of the app/file opening, the filename would be selected. Annoyed, I pressed ESC or some other "I didn't mean that" button, and instead THE WHOLE FILENAME WAS DELETED. I was pissed. OS X is great in many ways, but that goes against convention a lot of their prospective users are used to.
Correlation is not cause.
Gangster rap and violent heavy metal also become popular around the early 90s... Maybe that was it? I'm more inclined to think that teenage killers (esp. minorities) listen to music more often than they play video games.
I don't believe that, of coure, but it makes a convincing argument to the uninformed, doesn't it?
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWW.
The "what if it was your mother" arguments are the ugliest, stupidest things ever.
What if it was your mother that gets stabbed by a pencil? Is your pleasure of writing on a piece of paper worth even ONE person dying FROM HORRIBLE PENCIL DEATH? I feel sorry for you in that case.
STFU.
[Yea yea, mod me flamebait, but you know I'm right. I won't even AC this.]
Errr: You're just reading the Constitution == You're just reading the Constitution in the strictest way possible. It is [a living document...]
At who's expense? The taxpayer in most cases. Where does this stop? If every citizen has an inalienable right to rent books for free, does he also have a given right to health care? Does he have a right to the best doctors and medical facilities? How do we then decide who has access to the best facilities? A lottery? Where does this end? Look, if somebody wants to dump some of their wealth into building a library, it isn't any of my business. But when society raises this type of person and these qualities of self-sacrafice above all others, we have a problem. A couple generations go by and our kids all learn this and guess what? We have a socialist system.
It stops where the taxpayers decide it ends. Libraries and healthcare for the elderly or poor don't spring out from the government fully-formed -- they are programs created by elected officials (or bureaurocrats appointed by them).
You see, the Constitution makes no provisions for free health care, public facilities like libraries, welfare payments, social security, etc. All these programs are driven by forced, excess taxation. Government has three (and only 3) obligations. 1. Provide national defense. 2. Provide a fair and just judicial system 3. Provide police protection.
You're just reading the Constitution is a living document that is constantly being reinterpreted to best fit our needs (or should be, were our government not a bunch of power-hungry idiots).
Your "every man for himself" just doesn't make sense. Some of the best things we currently have came from people helping each other. Sure, the USSR and the US reached space independently, but imagine what could have happened it we worked together, pooled our money and brainpower in an intelligent fashion, and had private investors and researchers tackle the problem, all working together?
You know what, if I want to use a library I'll pay to rent books the same way I pay to rent movies. I don't expect anybody regardless of how much money they have to fund building one just so my sorry ass can go get books for free.
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. (a) Free access of public domain information (not just books, either) to anyone, regardless of income or social status is very much responsible for America's current superior economic state. (b) You can absolutely loan videos, DVDs, and other pieces of media from libraries or museums for free. Granted, those are often not as stocked with current, popular releases, but provide a wealth of information nonetheless.
Also, I have no idea why you assume I'm anti-capitalist. I simply think that, given a reasonable definition of "living well", a multi-millionare surpases that lifestyle whether she is worth one hundred million dollars or eighty million dollars (assuming an amazing 20% of worth donation). True, this is biased of me to say, but come on, this isn't a heavy philosophical debate.
Of course Paul is doing a great thing. I want to see affordable, safe, private space flight as much as the next guy (maybe more!), but Paul's contribution is neither a "handout" nor "self-sacrifice". He simply sort of has plenty of money to support interesting and/or humanitarian causes.
?? These people aren't giving out handouts, they're giving money to medical research, or to build public spaces (libraries, concert halls, etc.) Last time I checked buildings didn't build themselves.
Also, there's no "self-sacrifice" when very wealthy individuals give to charity -- you can be sure the money is not making the tiniest dent in their quality of life.
All of that power is being used to make your user-experience easier behind the scenes.
:-)
If you compare an old system running Win 3.1 and your current system, I'm sure you'll find that the user experience has improved *substantially* over that time.
I think OS X really shows where all of that computing power could really be put to use -- the eyecandy is not pointless, it really makes the system seem friendlier and easier to use (and of course it is even without that). But you need cycles to make that 'prettiness' go. You need cycles so that when you switch apps the switch is as quick as possible and the mouse doesn't slow down. You need ram and storage so that really complicated object interfaces can make sure you can put images, spreadsheets, god-knows-what into Word, and have all of that be transparent.
I don't think you actually want to see improvement -- rather, you want everything to become more transparent. (Or at least that's what I want to see
Jesus H. Christ, you are an idiot. I feel that so much, I'm not even going to AC this post.
YOU. ARE. AN. IDIOT. Maybe retarded as well. Maybe you just don't understand freedom of expression. I have no idea... but whatever it is, you can fuckin' wear your fuckin' suit, and tie, and suck Bush's cock while you're at it.
I was even going to write an intelligent reply, but on the second thought, this article is waaaay off the front page, so no one will ever bother to read it or mod it.
You clearly don't understand what's wrong with the system, and if you think suits and ties are gonna change it, you've got your head so far up your loose asshole that you will soon cease to exist in this reality.
Ain't no "regular person" in this world ever had his/her mind changed by 'intelligent and rational' arguments.
Impassioned response is what makes most people think.
I have to disagree. If everyone took the time to learn the hell out of everything, fewer new ideas would come about.
For example, my major interests lie in higher-level computer functionality: human-computer interaction, computer-augmented decision making, etc, etc. I don't really care to learn about, for example, low-level networking functionality, or my kernel. When X refuses to start or something like that, for example, I'll learn/google as much as I need to fix the problem, but I won't start digging through its sourcecode and trying to fix problems myself.
That same way I woudn't fix my own plumbing or repair my own car... Why, when someone already has exactly the skills needed to do that? I'll instead use my time to work on or learn something intersting to me, instead of *everything*.
Hell, if you really start learning a topic, say the ins-and-outs of the Linux kernel, it can take you years, if not your whole lifetime to do it... I figure its best to pick a few topics and get to know them thoroughly, picking 1 or 2 as the most important... The other, stuff, well leave it to people who picked *that* as their #1/2 things.
Of course, I don't mean to get into an argument here; clearly we just differ in our philosophy of/to life, which is perfectly good and fine.
You think the RIAA and some legal shit is going to stop P2P?
One word: freenet. Once that thing [finally] gets off the ground, all of this bullshit is going to stop, pronto.
Then there's JXTA, which, if done properly should also be killer.
And last I checked, between KaZaA and SoulSeek, I could find all of the media I wanted [copyrighted or not].
Asking a question like that is like asking whether the War on Drugs will stop people from smoking pot!
A very important trend in Human-Computer Interaction is to create devices that are of dubious practical value, but tell us a lot about the needs/wants/feelings of society. Basically, this device allows people to really think about what they want out a cellphone conversation, to tell stories about themselves, and what telephones mean to them. These stories then go into making real devices with features people *really* need, instead of those that engineers *think* people need.
The article clearly didn't make this clear enough, and even made it sound like they were planning to sell the device. I highly doubt that's the case (the story about the business man in Japan is exactly that - a story about someone with a particular need that may not be met by current technology).
I also suspect this is the fault of the reporter, not the researchers, as the reporter just wanted to make a funny/weird sounding story, and probably missed a lot of what the researchers were saying.
Duh! That's because when you root a Linux server, you're got a real system to play with -- a hacked box and a few perl scripts, and you're on your way! When you hack a Windows box, you've just got any data on it, maybe some websites you can deface, or you need to start writing hardcore C/C++/etc. code to really get something out of it.
Gah! Sorry! The first 2 links should only have 1 'l' not 'll'.
The Design group @ Phillips have been thinking about wearable electronics for a long time. Check out their webpage for it: http://www.design.philips.com/what_we_do/research_ projects/wearable_electronics.asp.
They published a super-cool book called New Nomads a few years back where they propose some interesting ideas. The book is reeeeeeally hard to find, [you have to order it directly from 010 Publishing from the Netherlands], but the ideas in it, as well as how it is made is way interesting... It even has a soft, thick, deep purple color... Those crazy designers!
In general though, Phillips Design do great stuff with ubicomp, wearable comp, and other cool futuristic ideas, trying to put those things in a social perspective [lots of S&TS and HCI stuff here].
SoulSeek. Ad/spy-ware free. Lot's of *quality* music, and the "Download Containing Folder" option (basically so you can download a whole album with one command) will make the members of the RIAA collectively shit their pants.
Its a helluva lot easier to get a CD at target for 13 bucks as opposed to hunting on Kazaa for the entire thing in good quality that isnt the chorus repeated over and over and over...
Use SoulSeek. I've never gotten a 'fake' song off of it (except the inevitable poorly-ripped track that pops every now and them), and downloading full albums is a breeze with the "Download Containing Folder" option. Oh, and it's spy/ad-ware free and actually has a lot of *decent* music on it [esp. if you're looking for electronica].
I have very similar, if not exactly the same problems (and I'm a college student too).
;-) does wonders for your ability to do work. For me, it works well only with logical, flow-based work like mathematics, physics, computer science and other ideas where creativity stems from logical application of concepts, not things like writting where speed of thought != productivity.
Like a lot of others here have said, exercise works well. However, if you're not too squeamish about putting chemicals into your system, have some connections, and a few extra bucks, I'd recomment self-medication with Ritalin or Adderall.
Snorting a pill of Ritalin or half a pill of Adderall (or two pills of Ritalin / whole pill of Adderall -- depending on how adventerous you are
Of course, it's *very* bad to become dependent on chemicals for your ability to do work (Ritalin isn't particularly habit forming unless you do a *lot* of it, but Adderall is pretty bad since it also gives you a moderate euphoria), and so I wouldn't recommend this solution for than once a week, if that often.
However, when you've got a whole load of problem sets to write up, or a long piece of code to deal with, and caffeine just won't cut it, Ritalin and Adderall will focus you for hours.
Your milage may vary, and check sites like erowid.org before you do anything with chemical you don't feel comfortable with.
Just speculation, but it would make sense for the Federal government to have special agreements with vendors of software of they use to inform them of any potential vulnerabilities as soon as they are discovered, so that the government's SysOps can take proper precautions...
Hello, and welcome to The FreeNet Project. Enjoy your stay in our 100% anonymous file-sharing/storage p2p network.
Most people don't need to do anything concievable with their computers... They need to do a small subset of those things that Microsoft predicted they might need to do.
And Microsoft gives them a happy, shiny, easy way to mess just with those things... Most VB coders would fall flat on their face if they had to mess with a large, poorly documented, open source application writen in C/C++/Java/whatever (add to that the fact that many OSS applications are written in esoteric (by VB standards) languages like Python or Lisp)...
Point being that Microsoft gives its customers what they want/need, not *everything*.
Oh, and renaming files according to a regular expression has absolutely nothing to do with having the source code to anything... You simply get a Perl port and hack away.
That's because the companies making these machines undoubtedly make it very *lucrative* for electred officials to push their adoptance.
You are serious? PII 500 Mhz?
/. frontpage 60 seconds after pressing the 'On' button than waiting for 'User settings' to load.
I have a Dell PII 600 Mhz and a Dell Inspiron laptop with a 2.2 Ghz. One takes almost 1/2 minutes to boot XP or Debian, and other takes ~3 seconds for XP and slightly more for Linux (mostly because A LOT of services get started).
On one Mozilla loads cold within seconds, on the other it takes seconds, even when using the system tray loader.
I notice differences when using my friends' 1.2 Ghz and 1.5 Ghz systems too...
Speed matters! I'd rather be halfway down the