Perhaps this could be just like Diamonds. I would have to read more into the industry, but I would think there are only a few select dealers of Titanium just like Debeers is to diamonds.
De Beers managed to increase the preceived value of diamonds though a carefully planned campaign of giving them to female Hollywood stars in the 1940s. Before that they were (rightly, IMO) considered rather boring.
Think of it sure its as cheap to make as aluminium, but diamonds are mined in Zimbabwe by Africans making less than a sweat shop worker in Indonesia.
Yeah, but diamond mining requires moving a huge amount of material to get a few diamonds. Titanium mining requires moving a large amount of material into a smelting facility. This process is not going to substantually change things other than making it cheaper. But it is going to change the lifestyle of titanium salesmen.
The main thing that excites me about this news is the possibility of airplane makers including more titanium in airplanes. That is a good thing. Stronger, lighter planes are always good.
In the research paper, they did indeed find that men had performance anxiety and had to take stimulating drugs.
The couple with the fewest problems were "street acrobats".
If they had received funding for this, they could have hired professionals, like p0rn performers. But then, on the other hand, there's no what they could squeeze Ron Jeremy and anyone else into the middle of an MRI machine.
I think most people understand that Ig Nobel awards are awarded to both pseudoscience and amusing examples of real science.
Thank you. Yes, I do understand that aspect of the awards.
The problem is that combining the two ideas in one award is probably not a good idea, because people may mistake an example of one for another.
Exactly. I find the idea of people fornicating inside of an MRI machine delightful, rather than just amusing. Talk about performance anxiety - trying to keep an erection in the middle of a machine making loud booming noises. No wonder Viagra was necessary.
Getting an award like this will get this research more attention, but I doubt if it will result in making it easier for researchers to conduct more research. No, instead it will result in more restrictions imposed on those with access to the machines by the institutions who own the machines to make sure that nothing happens that could jeopardize donations.
Even if the researchers themselves have a sense of humor it doesn't mean that the politicians who hold the purse strings do.
Right. Anybody remember Sen Proxmire's Golden Fleece awards? He single-handedly killed SETI. Mockery is a powerful tool in the hands of a fool.
I agree with most of the prizes, but awarding the IgNoble for Medicine to the researchers who observed intercourse in an MRI machine just smacks of the same blue-nosed attitude that has been impeding sex research for years. It was serious work about questions that need to be answered. It's not as if the functioning of the sex organs is any less important than the functioning of any other human organ.
But they had to struggle with the fact that nobody would give them funds to use the MRI machine, pay researchers, compensate volunteers and have more freedom. Seriously, this is an activity that (nearly) everyone engages in, yet we have little hard data (no snickering) on how it actually works...just a bunch of conjecture. Even the great Di Vinci was wrong about this.
It's not as if sex researchers like the Kinsey Institute or Masters and Johnson can afford their own MRI machine. For serious research like this to be lumped in with the nutcase who believes that people don't need to eat is shameful, and indicitive of how screwed up our society is.
CEDIA is the show for custom audio-video installers. At least one of the Tivo units will have not one but two DirecTV tuners, so you can watch and record at the same time. And the recording quality is miles ahead of standard Tivo and ReplayTV units, as it records the already compressed MPEG stream as it comes from the satellite. Obviously, the quality of the encoder at the DirecTV head end is far better than the cheap chip in the consumer unit - not to mention that this avoids the awful necessity of decoding and re-encoding an MPEG stream.
But I have to confess that the best picture quality I saw was not from Sony's or Philips's TIVO units, but from the RCA DirecTV box with software from Microsoft. No, I have no idea why MS is wanting to get into this market either, other than to try to get WebTV into more homes.
The most amusing possibility is that someone outside the research community may come up with the answer. As this doesn't involve building apparatus, getting a grant, publishing a paper or anything other than thinking, it's very possible an undergrad or a total amatuer will come up with the answer.
Dr. Sejnowski sounded like sour grapes when he called this an "advertising gimmick". Yeah, that's what Fermat must have been doing. Too often scientists confuse the stuff associated with the practice of science - grants, publishing, peer review, experimental proof - with science. Science is what happens in your brain when you're not doing all that other stuff...usually while taking a shower.
"You've seen them before, the glasses that give you the impression of a 19" monitor several feet in front of your face. InViso's eShades have a nice twist, the lightweight glasses use a standard PC-Card or Flash interface. Plug these bad boys into your YOPY and attract all the babes."
Not to be a cynic, but surely you jest. Maybe it's different out there on the west coast, but here in America's Heartland (read: flyover states) wearing something as geeky as a head-mounted display is a sure method to repel female attention, rather than attract it. Sure, I wish it were different, and maybe it is in some locations. Maybe having enough disposible income to buy things like head-mounted displays is it's own attractor. Ah well...married for 17 years, I'm not in the babe market anyway, so what the hell do I know?
Re:a 30 year old "original video"?
on
The First Mouse
·
· Score: 2
Sure... video on magnetic tape dates from the early sixties, I believe.
From the look of it, it appears to be one of the half-inch, open-reel, monochrome formats (there were over a dozen varients). If it is, it's amazingly well preserved. Most of the tape from that time has degraded horribly. The "binder" used to attach the magnetic particles to the plactic has "gummed up" on a huge number of tapes. People wanting to play those tapes have to bake them in an oven...and then they only get a single chance to play them.
BTW, I was dealing with this problem a few weeks ago, and was wondering if it was possible to read the state of the magnatized particles on the tape without using the original machine? Pass it over a simple, non-rotating head with multiple tracks and re-assemble the signal via digital signal processing? The problem is that the rapidly spinning heads would dig into the tape and cause oxide shedding even on brand new tape.
This is gaining greater impact. In the last year, and group of extreme pro-life (anti-abortion) activists created a website listing abortionists' names & addresses in the Seattle(?) area. They also printed and distributed posters around the area. They were sued, and lost the case. The essential argument was that the doctors listed felt threatened, therefore they were. (anti-flame note: I don't agree with this group's tactics)
Not a flame, but the anti-abortionists went beyond the realm of free speech in that they were doing the equivilant of "inciting to riot". To say "all abortion providers must die" is protected speech. But to say "all abortion providers must die - and here's where you can find them to kill them" crosses the line. Their point ("abortion providers are bad") can be made without providing home addresses, thus their right to express themselves was not constrained.
And that's the crux of the matter. Judge Kaplan's DeCSS decision is a mere pandering to the wishes of influential corporations for whom he used to work and for whom he may well work in the future. Look at the text of his decision: he doesn't base it on sound legal precedent, he bases it on his corporate little notions of economic necessity. Well, my rights aren't subject to economic necessity, "Your Honor," and I spit in your general direction. Any "judge" who disregards Constitutional rights in favor of "corporate necessity" shouldn't be a judge.
As Michael Moore said:
"I've read the Constitution, and the word 'shareholder' isn't in it anywhere."
What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 80? "Your Honor".
My paranoid fantasy is not that Microsoft is holding back IPV6...that the true culprit is Real Networks. They have the most to lose in the world of IP multicasting that IPV6 will usher in. Currently they charge per "stream"...and their revenue model goes out the window when you can feed a multimedia event to the whole world with a single stream.
I'm 41 and my interest in music is still a vital part of my life, so I take exception to that.
No offence intended...I'm eight days away from the big four-oh myself. Any recomendations for what I should do for my mid-life crisis?
Music remains a vital part of my life as well. I have Napster and Scour Exchange running on my system at the moment, and have been using them to find stuff...especially by musicians who do not fall into the limited range of what the major record companies are willing to sell anymore. If an artist doesn't have a million-seller hit with their first album, they're out on their ass. Music sharing programs allow so-called "marginal" artists to continue having careers.
The amount of CD's they have sold proves nothing. The only way to determine whether or not napster had an adverse efect would be to have an alternate universe in which Napster did not exist, measure CD sales there, and then compare it to our world. In absence of that, there is no rational reason to believe that Napster has caused CD sales to rise (by the same token, there is no reason to believe in the converse of that statement either).
While it may not be easy to show that Napster has directly impacted CD sales either positively or negatively, one thing is easy to show; Napster has caused more discussion of music and musicians than any other event in decades. There's not a newspaper, news magazine or TV news program that hasn't done multiple stories on the Napster phenomena.
The demographics for Napster are far wider than what the RIAA has been claiming, 50% of the users are over 40 according to some reports. This is a group that did not, in general, consider music a vital part of their lives anymore. Napster has re-awakened their interest in music.
A completely unscientific observation: I was in a stereo store explaining Napster and MP3 to one of the salesguys I know. Also at the counter was a 60-something black preacher, in buying microphones for his church. The preacher's wife overheard our discussion of Napster and voluntered that she loved Napster, that she used it all the time to music.
This was not the 18 year old anarchist "typical Napster user" the RIAA is tring to sell us. Respectable older people are doing it as well. Bucko, when you can't convince 60 year old, churchgoing black ladies that something is immoral - give it up. It's over.
Well, I'd like to read it and comment on it, but I can't. Does editthispage.com run on IIS? Does anyone have a mirror?
Formats are pigion-holes. I much prefer a more difficult concept called "taste". I like particular artists. I search for more by the same artists. I look at the list of people who have obscure songs by those artists. I notice other artists on the list. These other artists reflect that person's "taste". I'll chat with that person about their "taste" and see how closely it matches my own. In this way, I discover new music.
The CRT looked superb, the plasma looked crap, from any distance.
Decent plasmas are finally coming out, but it will be a while before all the crappy ones are out of the pipeline.
The main problem is that the first and second generation plasmas could not produce 24-bits worth of color. I'm not sure what their actual bit-depth was, but you could see banding everywhere, in every color. Most plasma displays looked like a very bad, 1980s GIF. Overly simple dither patterns didn't really help the second generation sets much.
These sets have never been about quality. They have been for rich people to have something to hang on the wall and impress their friends - like in that idiotic Philips commercial with the hip, young, rich couple holding this very heavy, fragile and expensive thing and moving it all around their apartment before finally hanging it on the ceiling (with a tiny warning telling you not to do that.)
If you want a good picture on a wall, get a projector.
Many thanks for pointing this out. I knew this from my dealings in the consumer electronics industry and from talking to people at trade shows like CES, but I didn't have the exact language.
Please consider rating the article I'm responding to up. Thanks.
The most amazing part to me of this whole thing is that the Judge directly advocated doing something else illegal:
Judge Kaplan addressed that important issue this way: "[A]ll or substantially all motion pictures available on DVD are available also on videotape. In consequence, anyone wishing to make lawful use of a particular movie may buy or rent a videotape, play it, and even copy all or part of it with readily available equipment." THAT'S the solution to the "fair use" issue - use old technology that isn't affected by the DMCA?! Not exactly a graceful way of ducking the issues.
I don't know what planet the Judge is from, but the same DMCA that he was ruling on also made illegal the boxes that he was refering to. Virtually every commercial VHS movie has Macrovision CopyGuard on it, and requires either a specific set of VCRs or a box that explicitly strips off that Macrovision signal. If you wish to express your Fair Use rights, you must violate the DMCA.
I don't want to read a book about how sorry a movie is... I want MST3k dissing it in real time. In a book if you haven't seen the movie... well you're not gonna get it.
What they need to do is take advantage of the multiple audio tracks on DVDs to let the MST3K crew have a crack at it. Take some stink-bomb (like "Mission To Mars") that only did what it did at the box office on sheer inertia. Do the full treatment on it for the people who want to see it straight. Maybe even have a commentary track from the director and stars offering their excuses for the film. The real enjoyment would be on the MST3K audio. They could even do like the Ghostbusters DVD, using the graphic overlay ability to put the silouettes in front. It might be able to sell the otherwise unsellable.
The big test for Vorbis as a viable codec is its inclusion in mainstream encoders, Musicmatch Jukebox, Audiocatalyst, etc. These mainstream encoders account for most of the mp3s on Napster, billing themselves on speed and ease of use. LAME (the preferred Vorbis encoder), despite being arguably the best MP3 encoder out there, is hardly used by the Napster community because it is slower (and generally more accurate), and harder to use (LAME has the command line; MMJB has skins!).
I wouldn't say that. Asking around, it seems like most of the heavy Windows MP3 makers on Napster have moved over to Albert Farber's open-source CDex, which does a better, more reliable job of extraction than the other rippers and uses the LAME encoder in a graphical interface.
Yes, thanks for the correction. I was typing quicker than I was thinking. The Xerox sales force got some fractional percentage of the sale price of the machine for each copy made on that machine. Each machine had a counter, and every month some guy in a crisp white shirt would "read the meter".
Take the Xerox lawsuit. They were sued because they aided in the duplication of copyrighted printed materials.
Historical point? In the early days Xerox was like Napster. They got a percentage of every copy made. It wasn't until the Japanese started making cheap copy machines that Xerox dropped that. See Dealers Of Lightning".
The one problem I have with the current trend of promoting easy-to-use tools to those who need them is that the Internet is being populated by those who do not know what they are doing, are (sometimes) gullible, and cheapen connectivity for the rest of us.
It's far too late to complain about that. I had people complaining about all the clueless newbies when I got on the Net in 1988. Face it - it's september all year round now.
I know many people who think the Internet is America Online.
That's your job, to educate. I've rescued many people from AOL, and gotten them onto free services or with real ISPs. But sometimes they are too far gone, and don't want to abandon their AOL e-mail address. Sort of like the way old prisoners become attached to the prisons they are in.
If you haven't seen it, seek out his classic "The Man In The White Suit". For those who have not seen it, Guinness plays a scientist who invents the ultimate textile - a thread that will never wear out. His bosses oppose his experimenting and the money he's wasting, but he's driven. Not to spoil the film, but he creates enough thread to weave a suit. It's bright white, as it is impervious to dye. It never gets dirty and has to be cut with a blow-torch.
How does everyone react to this wonderful invention? They all hate him! Management figures out (eventually) that they'll sell everyone one suit of clothes and then they're out of business. Labor figures out that they'll make that one suit, and then they'll be out of a job. This wonderful invention has the potential to destroy civilization as we know it.
I have two questions...why is it, that with most of the *Nix community despising Microsoft, that every single new GUI that comes out ends up trying to be just like it?? Let's face it, that whole File View in Nautilus looks almost exactly like Win98/Win2k/IE4's 'Web View', which is a feature that is taken far too little advantage of. KDE has it too. The standard button alignment is also very close to that of Windows....what's the deal here people?? You've got a great product here, but you don't want to distinguish it for itself, or just running out of ideas?
Because of the intended audience. The only operating system the vast majority of potential users have any experience with is Windows. A smaller number has experience with Macs. For better or worse, the pre-existing experiences of these users has to be taken into account. Like it or not, Microsoft has defined the user interface "standard" for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
De Beers managed to increase the preceived value of diamonds though a carefully planned campaign of giving them to female Hollywood stars in the 1940s. Before that they were (rightly, IMO) considered rather boring.
Yeah, but diamond mining requires moving a huge amount of material to get a few diamonds. Titanium mining requires moving a large amount of material into a smelting facility. This process is not going to substantually change things other than making it cheaper. But it is going to change the lifestyle of titanium salesmen.
The main thing that excites me about this news is the possibility of airplane makers including more titanium in airplanes. That is a good thing. Stronger, lighter planes are always good.
If they had received funding for this, they could have hired professionals, like p0rn performers. But then, on the other hand, there's no what they could squeeze Ron Jeremy and anyone else into the middle of an MRI machine.
I agree with most of the prizes, but awarding the IgNoble for Medicine to the researchers who observed intercourse in an MRI machine just smacks of the same blue-nosed attitude that has been impeding sex research for years. It was serious work about questions that need to be answered. It's not as if the functioning of the sex organs is any less important than the functioning of any other human organ.
But they had to struggle with the fact that nobody would give them funds to use the MRI machine, pay researchers, compensate volunteers and have more freedom. Seriously, this is an activity that (nearly) everyone engages in, yet we have little hard data (no snickering) on how it actually works...just a bunch of conjecture. Even the great Di Vinci was wrong about this.
It's not as if sex researchers like the Kinsey Institute or Masters and Johnson can afford their own MRI machine. For serious research like this to be lumped in with the nutcase who believes that people don't need to eat is shameful, and indicitive of how screwed up our society is.
CEDIA is the show for custom audio-video installers. At least one of the Tivo units will have not one but two DirecTV tuners, so you can watch and record at the same time. And the recording quality is miles ahead of standard Tivo and ReplayTV units, as it records the already compressed MPEG stream as it comes from the satellite. Obviously, the quality of the encoder at the DirecTV head end is far better than the cheap chip in the consumer unit - not to mention that this avoids the awful necessity of decoding and re-encoding an MPEG stream.
But I have to confess that the best picture quality I saw was not from Sony's or Philips's TIVO units, but from the RCA DirecTV box with software from Microsoft. No, I have no idea why MS is wanting to get into this market either, other than to try to get WebTV into more homes.
The most amusing possibility is that someone outside the research community may come up with the answer. As this doesn't involve building apparatus, getting a grant, publishing a paper or anything other than thinking, it's very possible an undergrad or a total amatuer will come up with the answer.
Dr. Sejnowski sounded like sour grapes when he called this an "advertising gimmick". Yeah, that's what Fermat must have been doing. Too often scientists confuse the stuff associated with the practice of science - grants, publishing, peer review, experimental proof - with science. Science is what happens in your brain when you're not doing all that other stuff...usually while taking a shower.
Not to be a cynic, but surely you jest. Maybe it's different out there on the west coast, but here in America's Heartland (read: flyover states) wearing something as geeky as a head-mounted display is a sure method to repel female attention, rather than attract it. Sure, I wish it were different, and maybe it is in some locations. Maybe having enough disposible income to buy things like head-mounted displays is it's own attractor. Ah well...married for 17 years, I'm not in the babe market anyway, so what the hell do I know?
From the look of it, it appears to be one of the half-inch, open-reel, monochrome formats (there were over a dozen varients). If it is, it's amazingly well preserved. Most of the tape from that time has degraded horribly. The "binder" used to attach the magnetic particles to the plactic has "gummed up" on a huge number of tapes. People wanting to play those tapes have to bake them in an oven...and then they only get a single chance to play them.
BTW, I was dealing with this problem a few weeks ago, and was wondering if it was possible to read the state of the magnatized particles on the tape without using the original machine? Pass it over a simple, non-rotating head with multiple tracks and re-assemble the signal via digital signal processing? The problem is that the rapidly spinning heads would dig into the tape and cause oxide shedding even on brand new tape.
Not a flame, but the anti-abortionists went beyond the realm of free speech in that they were doing the equivilant of "inciting to riot". To say "all abortion providers must die" is protected speech. But to say "all abortion providers must die - and here's where you can find them to kill them" crosses the line. Their point ("abortion providers are bad") can be made without providing home addresses, thus their right to express themselves was not constrained.
As Michael Moore said:
What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 80? "Your Honor".
My paranoid fantasy is not that Microsoft is holding back IPV6...that the true culprit is Real Networks. They have the most to lose in the world of IP multicasting that IPV6 will usher in. Currently they charge per "stream"...and their revenue model goes out the window when you can feed a multimedia event to the whole world with a single stream.
No offence intended...I'm eight days away from the big four-oh myself. Any recomendations for what I should do for my mid-life crisis?
Music remains a vital part of my life as well. I have Napster and Scour Exchange running on my system at the moment, and have been using them to find stuff...especially by musicians who do not fall into the limited range of what the major record companies are willing to sell anymore. If an artist doesn't have a million-seller hit with their first album, they're out on their ass. Music sharing programs allow so-called "marginal" artists to continue having careers.
Off-topic, but this reminded me of a great bumper-sticker I recently saw:
While it may not be easy to show that Napster has directly impacted CD sales either positively or negatively, one thing is easy to show; Napster has caused more discussion of music and musicians than any other event in decades. There's not a newspaper, news magazine or TV news program that hasn't done multiple stories on the Napster phenomena.
The demographics for Napster are far wider than what the RIAA has been claiming, 50% of the users are over 40 according to some reports. This is a group that did not, in general, consider music a vital part of their lives anymore. Napster has re-awakened their interest in music.
A completely unscientific observation: I was in a stereo store explaining Napster and MP3 to one of the salesguys I know. Also at the counter was a 60-something black preacher, in buying microphones for his church. The preacher's wife overheard our discussion of Napster and voluntered that she loved Napster, that she used it all the time to music.
This was not the 18 year old anarchist "typical Napster user" the RIAA is tring to sell us. Respectable older people are doing it as well. Bucko, when you can't convince 60 year old, churchgoing black ladies that something is immoral - give it up. It's over.
Well, I'd like to read it and comment on it, but I can't. Does editthispage.com run on IIS? Does anyone have a mirror?
Formats are pigion-holes. I much prefer a more difficult concept called "taste". I like particular artists. I search for more by the same artists. I look at the list of people who have obscure songs by those artists. I notice other artists on the list. These other artists reflect that person's "taste". I'll chat with that person about their "taste" and see how closely it matches my own. In this way, I discover new music.
Decent plasmas are finally coming out, but it will be a while before all the crappy ones are out of the pipeline.
The main problem is that the first and second generation plasmas could not produce 24-bits worth of color. I'm not sure what their actual bit-depth was, but you could see banding everywhere, in every color. Most plasma displays looked like a very bad, 1980s GIF. Overly simple dither patterns didn't really help the second generation sets much.
These sets have never been about quality. They have been for rich people to have something to hang on the wall and impress their friends - like in that idiotic Philips commercial with the hip, young, rich couple holding this very heavy, fragile and expensive thing and moving it all around their apartment before finally hanging it on the ceiling (with a tiny warning telling you not to do that.)
If you want a good picture on a wall, get a projector.
Many thanks for pointing this out. I knew this from my dealings in the consumer electronics industry and from talking to people at trade shows like CES, but I didn't have the exact language.
Please consider rating the article I'm responding to up. Thanks.
The most amazing part to me of this whole thing is that the Judge directly advocated doing something else illegal:
Judge Kaplan addressed that important issue this way: "[A]ll or substantially all motion pictures available on DVD are available also on videotape. In consequence, anyone wishing to make lawful use of a particular movie may buy or rent a videotape, play it, and even copy all or part of it with readily available equipment." THAT'S the solution to the "fair use" issue - use old technology that isn't affected by the DMCA?! Not exactly a graceful way of ducking the issues.I don't know what planet the Judge is from, but the same DMCA that he was ruling on also made illegal the boxes that he was refering to. Virtually every commercial VHS movie has Macrovision CopyGuard on it, and requires either a specific set of VCRs or a box that explicitly strips off that Macrovision signal. If you wish to express your Fair Use rights, you must violate the DMCA.
What they need to do is take advantage of the multiple audio tracks on DVDs to let the MST3K crew have a crack at it. Take some stink-bomb (like "Mission To Mars") that only did what it did at the box office on sheer inertia. Do the full treatment on it for the people who want to see it straight. Maybe even have a commentary track from the director and stars offering their excuses for the film. The real enjoyment would be on the MST3K audio. They could even do like the Ghostbusters DVD, using the graphic overlay ability to put the silouettes in front. It might be able to sell the otherwise unsellable.
I wouldn't say that. Asking around, it seems like most of the heavy Windows MP3 makers on Napster have moved over to Albert Farber's open-source CDex, which does a better, more reliable job of extraction than the other rippers and uses the LAME encoder in a graphical interface.
Yes, thanks for the correction. I was typing quicker than I was thinking. The Xerox sales force got some fractional percentage of the sale price of the machine for each copy made on that machine. Each machine had a counter, and every month some guy in a crisp white shirt would "read the meter".
Historical point? In the early days Xerox was like Napster. They got a percentage of every copy made. It wasn't until the Japanese started making cheap copy machines that Xerox dropped that. See Dealers Of Lightning".
It's far too late to complain about that. I had people complaining about all the clueless newbies when I got on the Net in 1988. Face it - it's september all year round now.
That's your job, to educate. I've rescued many people from AOL, and gotten them onto free services or with real ISPs. But sometimes they are too far gone, and don't want to abandon their AOL e-mail address. Sort of like the way old prisoners become attached to the prisons they are in.
If you haven't seen it, seek out his classic "The Man In The White Suit". For those who have not seen it, Guinness plays a scientist who invents the ultimate textile - a thread that will never wear out. His bosses oppose his experimenting and the money he's wasting, but he's driven. Not to spoil the film, but he creates enough thread to weave a suit. It's bright white, as it is impervious to dye. It never gets dirty and has to be cut with a blow-torch.
How does everyone react to this wonderful invention? They all hate him! Management figures out (eventually) that they'll sell everyone one suit of clothes and then they're out of business. Labor figures out that they'll make that one suit, and then they'll be out of a job. This wonderful invention has the potential to destroy civilization as we know it.
Sound like anything you know?
Because of the intended audience. The only operating system the vast majority of potential users have any experience with is Windows. A smaller number has experience with Macs. For better or worse, the pre-existing experiences of these users has to be taken into account. Like it or not, Microsoft has defined the user interface "standard" for a while.