I just want to know when I can get to my Yahoo mail and other web pages on TiVo. I've got a broadband connection. TiVo is a linux box, right? I just don't understand why I can't surf the web on it.
As a programmer I can honestly say that I don't think I want to work on an assembly line making solar panels. And, my science training is not at a level where I could work on new ways designing solar panels to be more efficient. I did a science fair project where I used solar energy to heat air, but I don't think anybody would want to buy boxes made of old paneling and filled with black mylar channels through which air passed. Hmmm... Maybe we could think of things that could be done with all the programmers. Surely there have got to be jokes akin to the lawyer jokes that talk about what lawyers are good for. I must admit that I've never heard any though.
I have found things while cleaning up PCs. Things like pictures from pr0n sites and the like. Say you are doing this for a friend or a family member even. What do you do with this kind of information. A certain amount of pr0n may seem healthy, but there is a level that I see as a problem. Does anybody have any advice or experience in this area?
I am sadly shaking my head after reading your review. There are a lot of D&D products out there that run the gamut from excellent to poor. I apreciate the review and I will not be tempted to buy this book.
As an aside, I have to ask about the fourth grade experience. What did the girl look like? Couldn't you have marked a few right anyway to make her feel better?
Usable GUI Design: A Quick Guide for F/OSS Developers
Update: I have read many comments on this article and have written an FAQ responding to some of them Introduction
The Open Source software world is full of excellent software. High-quality F/OSS software is available for virtually any task a computer user could want to do, from word-processing to web-serving. There is one small problem with much of this huge array of software: it is often far more difficult to use than it could be. Professional UI designers tell us that user interfaces should be the first thing designed when we come to develop an application, and that programmers are incapable of doing this kind of design. They say it can only be done by the professional UI experts; OSS projects don't have access to these kind of people, and therefore can never be truly usable.
This doesn't mean we should just give up on UI design. From the quality of many commercial applications' UIs, having usability experts on staff doesn't guarantee a good interface either. Effort, knowledge and thought by any developer can improve the usability of an application greatly. We may only find a local optimum rather than the global, but even that is a step in the right direction.
After years of struggling with these problems, I thought I would write down a short list of five things that we OSS developers should consider when designing our application's GUI. These are drawn from my experience in using and writing OSS software and my reading of a few very interesting books and web sites on the subject. These works are listed in the references -- they are all excellent reading for any developer interested in usability issues.
I have intentionally only mentioned points here which do not require major amounts of work to implement, and about which there is little controversy. Larger "whole-application" issues are beyond the scope of this article. None of these ideas is new or particularly complex, but their effect can be very great. I should also note here that in several of the examples I use, it is possible to fix the problem by changing the application's settings. I have decided to only consider the default settings: presumably, the defaults represent the developer's idea of the most usable design for their application.
Before I start, I should probably make one more point in order to at least mitigate the flames I will receive: although I may sound quite harsh on some applications below, this is in no way meant as anything but constructive criticism. I use most of these applications every day and they are fantastic pieces of work, the product of years of hard work by dedicated developers. I am merely making suggestions of potential improvements; no offence is intended to anybody. The Points 0) The user is not using your application
The most basic point in all computer UI design is that the user does not want to use your application. They want to get their work done as quickly and easily as possible, and the application is simply a tool aiding that. The more you can keep your application out of the way of the user, the better. Effort spent on using your application is effort not spent on the work the user is trying to do. Two key quotes from Alan Cooper's second book, About Face 2.0, summarise this very well:
1. "Imagine users as very intelligent but very busy"
2. "No matter how cool your interface is, less of it would be better"
Points 1 to 4 in this article are really just special cases of this rule. 1) Fitt's Law
This is the most basic and well known of UI design laws. It states that the larger and nearer to the mouse pointer an on-screen object is, the easier it is to click on. That's common sense, yet it is often completely ignored in UI design. Firefox toolbar
Figure 1: Firefox toolbar
Consider, for example, the default Firefox button bar (Figure 1). When web browsing, by far the most common button anyone hits is the Back button. The Back button should therefore
I really don't think that these cards are using RFID. They are probably something like the Philips MIFARE card. The way I understand it, contactless smartcards have a much shorter range than RFID chips (~5 cm) and they can store more data (4KB, 8KB, 16KB).
I believe the player just reads a database that has been prepared by the company and doesn't do any pixel checking. Here's a bit from the article. "Clearplay scans movies for dodgy content, and then programs that data into its system.
Subscribers can then watch standard copies of the 500-or-so films on its list, with the assurance that they will automatically skip over mute anything that children or the squeamish may not like.
The authors of most of the highest rated comments to this story should have kept those comments to themselves. The GRACE project's accomplishments are wonderful. I got a bit choked up reading about her and I'm sure I'm not the only one. They didn't break new ground by devising a new algorithm or technology, they did it in the greatest of scientific tradition by building on the work of many others. I myself created an animated openGL face that could carry on a verbal conversation over a year ago by using ViaVoice, RedHat Linux, an old Eliza program (interfaced also to an infocom interpreter) and some writings on facial animation off the web. (BTW, I'm interested in starting an open source effort in this area. I was amazed at the time that I wasn't hearing about greater efforts to create an artificial person of some sort then. It was such a wonderful thing to read about the GRACE project's efforts. I wish I could see a clip of her in action or meet her in person. I can't wait to see what the future brings us. So many wonderful things.
I can't believe it. Just when I figured out how to use armatures, they go bankrupt again. It's really awful that they shut down the web site. The natural instinct is to go to that site to discuss things with the rest of the blender community, but now all you get is a single page at www.blender.nl/. The trick with the armatures was to create all of them and then to use the join command to put them together, and then parent the mesh to the group of armatures with vertex points named with the same exact names as the bones in the armatures. It is really easy to do once you figure it out.
I use TCM (The Toolkit for Conceptual Modeling). It has UML editors for static structurre diagrams, use-case diagrams, activity diagrams, collaboration diagrams, component diagrams and deployment diagrams, plus a few others that are being implemented. The web address for TCM is www.cs.utwente.nl/~tcm. I don't know too much about UML, but I do enjoy using the diagrams.
I cut my teeth on a TRS-80 Model I with 4k of memory and a tape drive. I really learned to love the Z80 using it. With Level I basic you were pretty limited, but with a copy of ZBUG and a little knowledge of the Z80 and the memory layout of the Model I, you could really work wonders with that thing. And, of course, you could leverage the ROM basic codes and really stretch that 4k to the limit. I still wish I could find a small handheld computer with a Z80 chip in it. It would be a hell of a lot of fun to hack on. I'm getting a palm pilot soon, and I've been wondering about putting a TRS-80 emulator on it. That's been one of my geek dreams is to have a TRS80 I could carry around and put in my pocket.
You see, Whatever created us gave us the ability to create life, and gave us the abilities we have by evolving us.
We have the ability to modify life, not create it.
So anyone here who believes in god but isnt blinded by the bibles description of god, can understand that.
Here you are implying that the Bible is false and that it is contrary to your previous argument, but the Bible admits that God gave us free will. Also, please use capital letters when using the words God and Bible the way you used them, otherwise use a god or a book.
If we program a computer to do something the computer does what its created to do, whatever created us obviously created us to create and to destroy.
God has desires for us, but gave us free will so that we would love him without being programmed to do it. To do good without being forced to.
Thats basically our job.I belive theres supposed to be a balance in creation and destruction but right now we destroy more than we create due to greed.
I agree that both creating and destroying are important. I have learned that out job is to love God.
"I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things [end of the world, etc.] have happened." - Jesus, Luke 21:32, c. 2000 YEARS AGO
You added the [end of the world, etc.] part. That is your interpretation of the previous verses, not what is written there. You are saying it is a sham by saying that the part that you added is a sham. A very easy way of proving your point. The parable right before that is about the fall of Jerusalem, which did happen very shortly after Jesus's death.
Bypassing this security mechanism is stealing, pure and simple. At least that is what some people say. But, when you buy a CPU you are not buying a service. If I want to buy a new car and then bore out the cylinders to get a little more horsepower, it is okay. Why don't car manufacturers put a big padlock on the engine compartment, then they could require you to take it into the dealer when you needed any kind of service. etc. I'm sure the people at AMD would differ with this opinion.
A PDA Like this looks like it could be a real hoot to play with, but I still don't think it compares with the Palm Pilot. And it doesn't seem powerful enough to be the kind of Linux toy that I really want. And these things are never going to reach the price/performance ratio of something like a Gameboy. That is what I would really like is something around the price of a gameboy that runs linux and lets me write fairly simple games for. Or how about something about the size of a tomigachi that you could write games for and easily download them over a serial cable. And maybe access that serial cable from the games so you could interconnect them. Is there something like that available?
I know how to fix this. Have microsoft add an automatic update when connected to the Internet. Any of their OSs would just automatically contact microsoft when online and check for any relevant patches and just apply them automatically. That way dumb users that don't know their butt from a hole in the ground will have microsoft take care of them. In fact, a safer thing for microsoft to do would be to remove the capability of doing this manually. How is a stupid user to know what patches to apply. In fact, I know some stupid sysadmins also. You know, maybe we could all just mail in our root passwords and get it over with?
Slashdot Mirror
I just want to know when I can get to my Yahoo mail and other web pages on TiVo. I've got a broadband connection. TiVo is a linux box, right? I just don't understand why I can't surf the web on it.
As a programmer I can honestly say that I don't think I want to work on an assembly line making solar panels. And, my science training is not at a level where I could work on new ways designing solar panels to be more efficient. I did a science fair project where I used solar energy to heat air, but I don't think anybody would want to buy boxes made of old paneling and filled with black mylar channels through which air passed. Hmmm... Maybe we could think of things that could be done with all the programmers. Surely there have got to be jokes akin to the lawyer jokes that talk about what lawyers are good for. I must admit that I've never heard any though.
I have found things while cleaning up PCs. Things like pictures from pr0n sites and the like. Say you are doing this for a friend or a family member even. What do you do with this kind of information. A certain amount of pr0n may seem healthy, but there is a level that I see as a problem. Does anybody have any advice or experience in this area?
If you had the time and skill, what open-source software would you write and why?
I am sadly shaking my head after reading your review. There are a lot of D&D products out there that run the gamut from excellent to poor. I apreciate the review and I will not be tempted to buy this book.
As an aside, I have to ask about the fourth grade experience. What did the girl look like? Couldn't you have marked a few right anyway to make her feel better?
Usable GUI Design: A Quick Guide for F/OSS Developers
Update: I have read many comments on this article and have written an FAQ responding to some of them
Introduction
The Open Source software world is full of excellent software. High-quality F/OSS software is available for virtually any task a computer user could want to do, from word-processing to web-serving. There is one small problem with much of this huge array of software: it is often far more difficult to use than it could be. Professional UI designers tell us that user interfaces should be the first thing designed when we come to develop an application, and that programmers are incapable of doing this kind of design. They say it can only be done by the professional UI experts; OSS projects don't have access to these kind of people, and therefore can never be truly usable.
This doesn't mean we should just give up on UI design. From the quality of many commercial applications' UIs, having usability experts on staff doesn't guarantee a good interface either. Effort, knowledge and thought by any developer can improve the usability of an application greatly. We may only find a local optimum rather than the global, but even that is a step in the right direction.
After years of struggling with these problems, I thought I would write down a short list of five things that we OSS developers should consider when designing our application's GUI. These are drawn from my experience in using and writing OSS software and my reading of a few very interesting books and web sites on the subject. These works are listed in the references -- they are all excellent reading for any developer interested in usability issues.
I have intentionally only mentioned points here which do not require major amounts of work to implement, and about which there is little controversy. Larger "whole-application" issues are beyond the scope of this article. None of these ideas is new or particularly complex, but their effect can be very great. I should also note here that in several of the examples I use, it is possible to fix the problem by changing the application's settings. I have decided to only consider the default settings: presumably, the defaults represent the developer's idea of the most usable design for their application.
Before I start, I should probably make one more point in order to at least mitigate the flames I will receive: although I may sound quite harsh on some applications below, this is in no way meant as anything but constructive criticism. I use most of these applications every day and they are fantastic pieces of work, the product of years of hard work by dedicated developers. I am merely making suggestions of potential improvements; no offence is intended to anybody.
The Points
0) The user is not using your application
The most basic point in all computer UI design is that the user does not want to use your application. They want to get their work done as quickly and easily as possible, and the application is simply a tool aiding that. The more you can keep your application out of the way of the user, the better. Effort spent on using your application is effort not spent on the work the user is trying to do. Two key quotes from Alan Cooper's second book, About Face 2.0, summarise this very well:
1. "Imagine users as very intelligent but very busy"
2. "No matter how cool your interface is, less of it would be better"
Points 1 to 4 in this article are really just special cases of this rule.
1) Fitt's Law
This is the most basic and well known of UI design laws. It states that the larger and nearer to the mouse pointer an on-screen object is, the easier it is to click on. That's common sense, yet it is often completely ignored in UI design.
Firefox toolbar
Figure 1: Firefox toolbar
Consider, for example, the default Firefox button bar (Figure 1). When web browsing, by far the most common button anyone hits is the Back button. The Back button should therefore
I really don't think that these cards are using RFID. They are probably something like the Philips MIFARE card. The way I understand it, contactless smartcards have a much shorter range than RFID chips (~5 cm) and they can store more data (4KB, 8KB, 16KB).
I believe the player just reads a database that has been prepared by the company and doesn't do any pixel checking. Here's a bit from the article. "Clearplay scans movies for dodgy content, and then programs that data into its system.
Subscribers can then watch standard copies of the 500-or-so films on its list, with the assurance that they will automatically skip over mute anything that children or the squeamish may not like.
"
The authors of most of the highest rated comments to this story should have kept those comments to themselves. The GRACE project's accomplishments are wonderful. I got a bit choked up reading about her and I'm sure I'm not the only one. They didn't break new ground by devising a new algorithm or technology, they did it in the greatest of scientific tradition by building on the work of many others. I myself created an animated openGL face that could carry on a verbal conversation over a year ago by using ViaVoice, RedHat Linux, an old Eliza program (interfaced also to an infocom interpreter) and some writings on facial animation off the web. (BTW, I'm interested in starting an open source effort in this area. I was amazed at the time that I wasn't hearing about greater efforts to create an artificial person of some sort then. It was such a wonderful thing to read about the GRACE project's efforts. I wish I could see a clip of her in action or meet her in person. I can't wait to see what the future brings us. So many wonderful things.
I can't believe it. Just when I figured out how to use armatures, they go bankrupt again. It's really awful that they shut down the web site. The natural instinct is to go to that site to discuss things with the rest of the blender community, but now all you get is a single page at www.blender.nl/. The trick with the armatures was to create all of them and then to use the join command to put them together, and then parent the mesh to the group of armatures with vertex points named with the same exact names as the bones in the armatures. It is really easy to do once you figure it out.
Send me an email. I would love to talk to you about him.
I use TCM (The Toolkit for Conceptual Modeling). It has UML editors for static structurre diagrams, use-case diagrams, activity diagrams, collaboration diagrams, component diagrams and deployment diagrams, plus a few others that are being implemented. The web address for TCM is www.cs.utwente.nl/~tcm. I don't know too much about UML, but I do enjoy using the diagrams.
I cut my teeth on a TRS-80 Model I with 4k of memory and a tape drive. I really learned to love the Z80 using it. With Level I basic you were pretty limited, but with a copy of ZBUG and a little knowledge of the Z80 and the memory layout of the Model I, you could really work wonders with that thing. And, of course, you could leverage the ROM basic codes and really stretch that 4k to the limit. I still wish I could find a small handheld computer with a Z80 chip in it. It would be a hell of a lot of fun to hack on. I'm getting a palm pilot soon, and I've been wondering about putting a TRS-80 emulator on it. That's been one of my geek dreams is to have a TRS80 I could carry around and put in my pocket.
You see, Whatever created us gave us the ability to create life, and gave us the abilities we have by evolving us.
We have the ability to modify life, not create it.
So anyone here who believes in god but isnt blinded by the bibles description of god, can understand that.
Here you are implying that the Bible is false and that it is contrary to your previous argument, but the Bible admits that God gave us free will. Also, please use capital letters when using the words God and Bible the way you used them, otherwise use a god or a book.
If we program a computer to do something the computer does what its created to do, whatever created us obviously created us to create and to destroy.
God has desires for us, but gave us free will so that we would love him without being programmed to do it. To do good without being forced to.
Thats basically our job.I belive theres supposed to be a balance in creation and destruction but right now we destroy more than we create due to greed.
I agree that both creating and destroying are important. I have learned that out job is to love God.
"I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things [end of the world, etc.] have happened." - Jesus, Luke 21:32, c. 2000 YEARS AGO
You added the [end of the world, etc.] part. That is your interpretation of the previous verses, not what is written there. You are saying it is a sham by saying that the part that you added is a sham. A very easy way of proving your point. The parable right before that is about the fall of Jerusalem, which did happen very shortly after Jesus's death.
Did you ever get hurt during filming of the Evil Dead movies?
Bypassing this security mechanism is stealing, pure and simple. At least that is what some people say. But, when you buy a CPU you are not buying a service. If I want to buy a new car and then bore out the cylinders to get a little more horsepower, it is okay. Why don't car manufacturers put a big padlock on the engine compartment, then they could require you to take it into the dealer when you needed any kind of service. etc. I'm sure the people at AMD would differ with this opinion.
A PDA Like this looks like it could be a real hoot to play with, but I still don't think it compares with the Palm Pilot. And it doesn't seem powerful enough to be the kind of Linux toy that I really want. And these things are never going to reach the price/performance ratio of something like a Gameboy. That is what I would really like is something around the price of a gameboy that runs linux and lets me write fairly simple games for. Or how about something about the size of a tomigachi that you could write games for and easily download them over a serial cable. And maybe access that serial cable from the games so you could interconnect them. Is there something like that available?
I know how to fix this. Have microsoft add an automatic update when connected to the Internet. Any of their OSs would just automatically contact microsoft when online and check for any relevant patches and just apply them automatically. That way dumb users that don't know their butt from a hole in the ground will have microsoft take care of them. In fact, a safer thing for microsoft to do would be to remove the capability of doing this manually. How is a stupid user to know what patches to apply. In fact, I know some stupid sysadmins also. You know, maybe we could all just mail in our root passwords and get it over with?