But if cars had been invented after Macintoshes, carmakers would not have bothered to gin up all of these arcane devices. We would have a computer screen instead of a dashboard, and a mouse (or at best a joystick) instead of a steering wheel, and we'd shift gears by pulling down a menu:
PARK
---
REVERSE
---
NEUTRAL
----
3 [...]
This is a bizarre notion. More development in technology provides more choices to designers, not fewer. Fads come and go, but a good interface has lasting power. To claim that a car designer would naturally favor a pull-down menu over, say, a steering wheel, is to belie a horrendous lack of faith in car designers.
A few lines of computer code can thus be made to substitute for any imaginable mechanical interface. The problem is that in many cases the substitute is a poor one. Driving a car through a GUI would be a miserable experience. Even if the GUI were perfectly bug-free, it would be incredibly dangerous, because menus and buttons simply can't be as responsive as direct mechanical controls. My friend's dad, the gentleman who was restoring the MGB, never would have bothered with it if it had been equipped with a GUI. It wouldn't have been any fun.
So - the GUI is an evil, inane creation, because it's replacing every other interface ever designed? That's a spectacular accusation to level at any interface, but it's especially poignant to accuse the GUI. The GUI is a collection of interactive drawings, used to empower people wishing to manipulate pure information, not some physical device like a toaster or a pogo stick.
First, the annotator is apparently unaware that BMW is in fact trying to ram the Windows interface into the driving process via the iDrive system. It has been universally panned by every reviewer and everyone I know unfortunate enough to have used one, but BMW persists. And we all know what happened to user-friendly analog controls on stereos, etc once one manufacturer went down the digital road.
But more fundamental is this: I worked hard on implementing the transition from paper-based and paper-and-green-screen-based business systems to computerized, GUI-based systems in the 1990s. I also helped hundreds of people buy their first Windows and Windows 95 home computers. I now am responsible for a mid-sized business where someone else did the transition.
And guess what? No one understands how their business systems work. No one understands how their desktop business tools works. No one. And just about everyone is frustrated with, and hates, their home computers. Hell, I hate my home computer and I specified it and set it up.
Windows is one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on the human race, and this author has bought into it hook line and sinker.
The real revenge of the Sith would be for noone, and I mean not a single person, to go see that movie when it is released.
sPh
Re:Comprehensive interviews are very important.
on
Defining Google
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
> A company filled with 'A' players will > win every time.
A company bigger than 50 people filled with 'A' players will tear itself to shreds in about 6 months.
sPh
Re:At least that has grounding!
on
Life Interrupted
·
· Score: 1
Pilots multi-task, particularly when flying IFR. A lone pilot typically must monitor the instruments/fly the plane, read the map, monitor 2 or 3 radio frequencies and reply to at least 1, and set the navigation instruments. Some of that is timesliced but the radio monitoring has to be essentially multi-task.
Of course, very few human beings ever try IFR instruction, must less complete it.
[...]The older generations, having grown up in a much slower-paced environment, have difficulty adapting to the rapid change in the information channels available to them.[...]I suppose it's simply that older people, not being used to this mass of information, are not ready to cope with the fact that most information is useless. Part of the ability to accept the input is the ability to filter the wheat from the chaff.[...]
I suppose that is possible.
However, speaking (sadly enough) as a member of the "older generation" who actually implmented some of the changes in technology and communication you discuss in the far-distant 1980s and 90s, let me offer this: I used to work in industrial facilities designed and built in the 1920-1940 time period. Along with my "young people", "progressive" coworkers I spent a lot of time, effort, and money "upgrading" these facilities to what we considered "better" technology. All fully computerized of course.
Looking back on what we did, I now realize that those engineers from the 1940s were a lot smarter than we were, and thought about the problems they were assigned a lot more deeply than we did (you see this all the time in VoIP today). The "improvements" that we installed to replace that "archiac" technology were not, in retrospect, necessarily improvements, and may not have done anyone any good.
E-mail is another good example. I have been using it since the late 1970s. During the 1985-1995 time frame it may have actually been a net productivity gain. Today? Probably the biggest productivity destroyer out there.
Semi-OT, but the only forum I know of that might have the answer: My kids have been bugging me to install Punkbuster so they can log on to better game servers. We are careful about analyzing any software we install to ensure that it is not a trojan or spyware vector. But I cannot find any solid information one way or the other on Punkbuster.
The description of how the software works sounds like a perfect setup for installing spyware, but I cannot find any documented reports.
What has Slashdotters' experience been with this product?
If she wanted creative control, or wanted the big screen, or wanted a certain screenwriter, that all could have been written into the contract.
I would be willing to wager that she signed away the rights at publication time, around 1975 or so. Very few genre authors have any kind of leverage to modify the rights grab by the publishing houses, and certainly not before their first mainstream best-seller.
They're accustomed to fantasy in which the "great evil" consists of some figure standing in a tower and sending out orcs to find some artifact or whatnot. The depiction of this hand-wringing black-clothed figure as being the epitome of evil debases the existance of real evil in the actions of human beings, motivated more often by greed, ambition or some other self-interest than corruption by an artifact in which evil is inherent.
Well, if you read the the whole LotR, including the appendices, I would propose that that is a reasonable interpretation of its theme. Saruon was a personification of evil, but he did not create himself, did not create the ring by himself, was not the only evil thing in the world, and his destruction was a very two-edged sword for all the non-human peoples of the Earth.
If you want to read the Macguffin story it is in there too, and a fine one (plenty of swordfighting in a good production of Macbeth after all), but I would claim it is not the only story.
There are now two different autobiographies. The first is the In Memory Yet Green series, which is filled with facts but exactly as you describe: an effort at misdirection. You have to read some other biographies and autobiographies of SF and science authors and NYC literary people to allow some reading between the lines.
Just a few weeks ago I saw another autobiography, written by Asimov shortly before his death and edited/annotated by Janet. This one seems to be a little more expressive on the human side, although with few facts (natch).
This happened in the Rodney Dangerfield movie "Back to School". Dangerfield's character hires Kurt Vonnegut to write an essay on one of Vonnegut's novels. The professor gives Dangerfield an "F", saying he (Dangerfield/Vonnegut) had no clue what Vonnegut was talking about.
OTOH, Isaac Asimov had essentially the same thing happen to him (slipped in to a lecture hall where his books were being discussed), and the conclusion he came to was that he probably didn't understand the meaning of his own work. Which, given his self-described arrogance, was a very interesting thing for him to say.
>> I seriously doubt Dr. Bernstein is going >> to fail all these students.
> I do too- universities have tough standards for > continued tenure these days.
Bernstein fought an 8 year court battle with the US State and Commerce Depts over the encryption export laws and won. He is also the author of djbdns and qmail, history of which see.
I don't think he cares much about what institutions tell him to do. I hope the students in this class knew that going in.
Horsepuckey. If you (and slashdot) found out MS was running anything else BUT MS products for internal use you'd throw a fit and condemn 'em. And personally, I'd rather use a product that the developer themselves would trust end to end.
Not sure what your reasoning is there dude as I just said exactly the opposite.
Most of the networks I have used/built/operated over the last 18 years have been heterogenous. The one I happen to have right now is Microsoft, Solaris, and Linux. The one before that was Novell, Microsoft, and Linux. That is real life, unless you have totally abandoned your fiduciary duty and given your entire business information system to one vendor.
Given that most networks I have worked with are multi-vendor, and IMHO they should be, why would I criticize Microsoft for testing in that environment?
A few years ago I read an interview with Novell's IT Director. She stated that she had NT, Unix, etc running on her network and when asked why replied that there were two reasons: because she deployed the best application for any purpose regardless of platform, and so that Novell employees would experience what their customers experience.
I know which philosophy I as a customer prefer my vendors have.
sPh
Re:Badass new Cisco router's (presentation include
on
Router Wars
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think the coolest thing to come out with these is going to be the GUI router and PIX config. You can see some screenshots of it in the presentation, its mind-boggling and worth drooling over.
Over the last 12 years I have tried 5 Cisco GUI configuration tools (IIRC). Currently I use the command line, as does everyone I know with moderate-or-above Cisco experience.
Plus, when I go to groups.google.com I see the original Google Groups - contradicting the summary.
Google often releases a change to a subset of its servers, then backs it out later. I assume this is a "live beta" strategy.
Even when Google is implementing a change it can take several days for it to work through the entire server farm. You can refresh 2 or 3 times and get different screens each time.
So, at this point we know that there are 2 Groups interfaces out there, somewhat randomly distributed. We don't know which one will remain the primary interface.
Kudos to the author for using a variety of source sites. I count Grokkaw, SCOfacts, and ip-wars at a minimum. This is an excellent diversity of sources and points to a healthy community of discussion.
I know that ordinary CIA employees have to wait 10 years after leaving the Agency before publishing any books, and that any work they publish (books, magazine articles, etc) has to be approved by CIA censors prior to publication. I don't know if those exact rules apply to the DCI, but I imagine that simiilar ones do. That means anything he says has at least been reviewed by the current Administration. Reviewed does not necessarily mean approved, but it does mean that if it were massively contrary to admin policy it would stand a good chance of being killed.
The Internet is a decentralized, locally configured network of machines with a self-assembled topology.
In its second incarnation it was. USR 2400 baud modem/UUCP anyone?
But today that is no longer true. At a WAG there are less than 50 key nodes and backbones that process 95% of the Internet traffic in North America. Perhaps the distributed network could have scaled up when the big increase in traffic came in the 90s, but it didn't scale fast enough and everything went to collapsed backbones.
The myth of the distributed Internet is just that: a myth. It is centralized and would be easy for the government to control.
He is the FORMER director of the CIA, which means that now he is just a guy with an opinion, just like us
The former head of the CIA is one of a few people on Earth for which this statement is not true: he will never be "just a guy" ever again. Others I can think of are the US President, head of the Russian secret police, a few similar positions in the PRC, maybe a few more. They know too much and have too many contacts to ever be considered ordinary citizens even when they leave those jobs. Everything they say for the rest of their lives has to be analyzed per Frank Herbert's question: "what did he mean by that".
One of the downside of taking one of those jobs, but true nonetheless.
Anyone who didn't see this coming after 11/3 (that's 3 Nov for your EUians) was deluded. Here comes the Big Hammer(tm). Let's see the Internet "route around" this one.
Slashdot Mirror
But more fundamental is this: I worked hard on implementing the transition from paper-based and paper-and-green-screen-based business systems to computerized, GUI-based systems in the 1990s. I also helped hundreds of people buy their first Windows and Windows 95 home computers. I now am responsible for a mid-sized business where someone else did the transition.
And guess what? No one understands how their business systems work. No one understands how their desktop business tools works. No one. And just about everyone is frustrated with, and hates, their home computers. Hell, I hate my home computer and I specified it and set it up.
Windows is one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on the human race, and this author has bought into it hook line and sinker.
sPh
The real revenge of the Sith would be for noone, and I mean not a single person, to go see that movie when it is released.
sPh
> A company filled with 'A' players will
> win every time.
A company bigger than 50 people filled with 'A' players will tear itself to shreds in about 6 months.
sPh
Pilots multi-task, particularly when flying IFR. A lone pilot typically must monitor the instruments/fly the plane, read the map, monitor 2 or 3 radio frequencies and reply to at least 1, and set the navigation instruments. Some of that is timesliced but the radio monitoring has to be essentially multi-task.
Of course, very few human beings ever try IFR instruction, must less complete it.
sPh
However, speaking (sadly enough) as a member of the "older generation" who actually implmented some of the changes in technology and communication you discuss in the far-distant 1980s and 90s, let me offer this: I used to work in industrial facilities designed and built in the 1920-1940 time period. Along with my "young people", "progressive" coworkers I spent a lot of time, effort, and money "upgrading" these facilities to what we considered "better" technology. All fully computerized of course.
Looking back on what we did, I now realize that those engineers from the 1940s were a lot smarter than we were, and thought about the problems they were assigned a lot more deeply than we did (you see this all the time in VoIP today). The "improvements" that we installed to replace that "archiac" technology were not, in retrospect, necessarily improvements, and may not have done anyone any good.
E-mail is another good example. I have been using it since the late 1970s. During the 1985-1995 time frame it may have actually been a net productivity gain. Today? Probably the biggest productivity destroyer out there.
Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.
sPh
Semi-OT, but the only forum I know of that might have the answer: My kids have been bugging me to install Punkbuster so they can log on to better game servers. We are careful about analyzing any software we install to ensure that it is not a trojan or spyware vector. But I cannot find any solid information one way or the other on Punkbuster.
The description of how the software works sounds like a perfect setup for installing spyware, but I cannot find any documented reports.
What has Slashdotters' experience been with this product?
sPh
sPh
If you want to read the Macguffin story it is in there too, and a fine one (plenty of swordfighting in a good production of Macbeth after all), but I would claim it is not the only story.
sPh
Just a few weeks ago I saw another autobiography, written by Asimov shortly before his death and edited/annotated by Janet. This one seems to be a little more expressive on the human side, although with few facts (natch).
sPh
The cuts and character rearrangements to FotR were fine, and Tolkein had anticipated them (see his "Letters" circa 1958).
However, the gratuitous changes to the storyline, key plot elements, and key characterizations were totally unnecessary and unforgivable.
There is no reason _Wizard of Earthsea_ couldn't have been filmed, and successful, more or less as written.
sPh
sPh
You might want to read up on the history of Bernstein vs. {various US Attorneys General, including Ashcroft}.
sPh
>> I seriously doubt Dr. Bernstein is going
>> to fail all these students.
> I do too- universities have tough standards for
> continued tenure these days.
Bernstein fought an 8 year court battle with the US State and Commerce Depts over the encryption export laws and won. He is also the author of djbdns and qmail, history of which see.
I don't think he cares much about what institutions tell him to do. I hope the students in this class knew that going in.
sPh
Most of the networks I have used/built/operated over the last 18 years have been heterogenous. The one I happen to have right now is Microsoft, Solaris, and Linux. The one before that was Novell, Microsoft, and Linux. That is real life, unless you have totally abandoned your fiduciary duty and given your entire business information system to one vendor.
Given that most networks I have worked with are multi-vendor, and IMHO they should be, why would I criticize Microsoft for testing in that environment?
sPh
A few years ago I read an interview with Novell's IT Director. She stated that she had NT, Unix, etc running on her network and when asked why replied that there were two reasons: because she deployed the best application for any purpose regardless of platform, and so that Novell employees would experience what their customers experience.
I know which philosophy I as a customer prefer my vendors have.
sPh
But this one will do the trick!
sPh
"effect" is correct in the sense used.
sPh
Even when Google is implementing a change it can take several days for it to work through the entire server farm. You can refresh 2 or 3 times and get different screens each time.
So, at this point we know that there are 2 Groups interfaces out there, somewhat randomly distributed. We don't know which one will remain the primary interface.
sPh
sPh
sPh
There is also an attempt to smear Al's name going on on various web sites. The root source of this smear campaign is an open and interesting question.
sPh
I know that ordinary CIA employees have to wait 10 years after leaving the Agency before publishing any books, and that any work they publish (books, magazine articles, etc) has to be approved by CIA censors prior to publication. I don't know if those exact rules apply to the DCI, but I imagine that simiilar ones do. That means anything he says has at least been reviewed by the current Administration. Reviewed does not necessarily mean approved, but it does mean that if it were massively contrary to admin policy it would stand a good chance of being killed.
sPh
But today that is no longer true. At a WAG there are less than 50 key nodes and backbones that process 95% of the Internet traffic in North America. Perhaps the distributed network could have scaled up when the big increase in traffic came in the 90s, but it didn't scale fast enough and everything went to collapsed backbones.
The myth of the distributed Internet is just that: a myth. It is centralized and would be easy for the government to control.
sPh
One of the downside of taking one of those jobs, but true nonetheless.
sPh
Anyone who didn't see this coming after 11/3 (that's 3 Nov for your EUians) was deluded. Here comes the Big Hammer(tm). Let's see the Internet "route around" this one.
sPh