I agree with you - though he does have this at the bottom of the front page: "Not affiliated with the Paul M. Hebert School of Law" I don't think that's enough.
The design of the site isn't amatuer at all (a hell of a lot better than some University sites I've seen) it doesn't have a tag line that would help a random reader understand at first glance. Something like, "An actual student's helpful guide to LSU Law" near the top or something like that would go a long way to avoiding confusion.
Whether it's illegal or not, I don't know, but it doesn't seem like a horrible claim to me.
Dear Editor, The sweat was dripping down my face and into my lap, making my clothes very wet and sticky. I sat there, walking, watching. I was trembling violently as I sat, looking at the small slot, waiting--ever waiting. My nails dug into my flesh as I clenched my hands. I passed my arm over my hot, wet face, down which sweat was pouring. The suspense was unbearable. I bit my lip in an attempt to stop trembling with the terrible burden of anxiety. Suddenly, the slot opened and in dropped the mail. I grabbed at my Eagle and ripped off the wrapping paper.
My ordeal was over for another week!
D. N. Adams (12), Brentwood, Essex, January 23, 1965, Eagle and Boys' World Magazine
[Editor's Note: In the sixties The Eagle was an enormously popular English science-fiction magazine. This letter is the first known published work of Douglas Adams, then age twelve.]
The Voices of All Our Yesterdays
I vaguely remember my schooldays. They were what was going on in the background while I was trying to listen to the Beatles.
When "Can't Buy Me Love" came out, I was twelve. I sneaked out of school during morning milk break, bought the record, and broke into matron's room because she had a record player. Then I played it, not loud enough to get caught, but just loud enough to hear with my ear pressed up against the speaker. Then I played it again for the other ear. Then I turned the record over and did the same for "You Can't Do That." That was when the housemaster found me and put me into detention, which is what I had expected. It seemed a small price to pay for what I nowrealize was art.
I didn't know it was art then, of course. I only knew that the Beatles were the most exciting thing in the universe. It wasn't always an easy view to live with. First you had to fight the Stones fans, which was tricky because they fought dirty and had their knuckles nearer the ground. Then you had to fight the grownups, parents and teachers who said that you were wasting your time and pocket money on rubbish that you would have forgotten by next week.
I found it hard to understand why they were telling me this. I sang in the school choir and knew how to listen for harmony and counterpoint, and it was clear to me that the Beatles were something extraordinarily clever. It bewildered me that no one else could hear it: impossible harmonies and part playing you had never heard in pop songs before. The Beatles were obviously just putting all this stuff in for some secret fun of their own, and it seemed exciting to me that people could have fun in that way.
The next exciting thing was that they kept on losing me. They would bring out a new album and for a few listenings it would leave me cold and confused. Then gradually it would begin to unravel itself in my mind. I would realize that the reason I was confused was that I was listening to Something that was simply unlike anything that anybody had done before. "Another Girl," "Good Day Sunshine," and the extraordinary "Drive My Car." These tracks are so familiar now that it takes a special effort of will to remember how alien they seemed at first to me. The Beatles were now not just writing songs, they were inventing the very medium in which they were working.
I never got to see them. Difficult to believe, I know. I was alive at the time the Beatles were performing and never got to see them. I tend to go on about this rather a lot. Do not go to San Francisco with me, or I will insist on pointing out Candlestick Park to you and bleating on about the fact that in 1966 the Beatles played their last concert there, just shortly before I'd woken up to the fact that rock concerts were things you could actually go to, even if you lived in Brentwood.
A friend of mine at school once had some studio tickets to see David Frost's show being recorded, but we ended up not going. I watched the show that night, and the Beatles were on it playing "Hey Jude." I was ill for about a year. Another day that I happened not to go to London after all was the day they played their rooftop concert in Savile Row. I can't-ever-speak about that.
Well, the years passed. The Beatles passed. But Paul McCart-ney has gone on and on. A few months ago the guitarist Robbie McIntosh phoned me and said, "We're playing at the Mean Fiddler in a few days, do you want to come along?"
Now this is one of the daftest questions I've ever been asked, and I think it took me a few moments even to work out what he meant. The Mean Fiddler, for those who don't know, is a pub in an unlovely part of northwest London with a room at the back where bands play. You can probably get about two hundred people in.
It was the word we that temporarily confused me, because I knew that the band that Robbie was currently playing in was Paul McCartney's, and I didn't think that Paul McCartney played in pubs. If Paul McCartney did play in pubs, then it would be daft to think that I would not saw my own leg off in order to go. I went.
In front of two hundred people in a pub, Paul McCartney stood up and played songs he'd never, I think, played in public before. "Here, There and Everywhere" and "Blackbird," to name but two. I've played "Blackbird" in pubs, for heaven's sake. I spent weeks learning the guitar part when I was supposed to be revising for A-levels. I almost wondered if I was hallucinating.
There were two moments of complete astonishment. One was the last encore, which was an immaculate, thunderous performance of, believe it or not, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." (Remember, this was in a pub.) And the other was one of the world's greatest rock 'n' roll songs, "Can't Buy Me Love," which I had first heard crouching with my ear cupped to the Dansette record player in the school matron's room.
There is a game people like to play that goes, "When would you most like to have lived and why?" The Italian Renaissance? Mozart's Vienna? Shakespeare's England? Personally, I would like to have been around Bach. But I have a real difficulty with the game, which is that living at any other period of history would have meant missing the Beatles, and I honestly don't think I could do that. Mozart and Bach and Shakespeare are always with us, but I grew up with the Beatles and I'm not sure what else has affected me as much as that.
So Paul McCartney is fifty tomorrow. Happy birthday, Paul. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
The [London] Sunday Times, June 17, 1992
Brentwood School
I was at Brentwood School for twelve whole years. And they were, by and large, in an up and downy kind of way, pretty good years: fairly happy, reasonably leafy, a bit sportier than I was in the mood for at the time, but full of good (and sometimes highly eccentric) teaching. In fact, it was only later that I gradually came to realise how well I had been taught at Brentwood--particularly in English, and particularly in Physics. (Odd, that.) However, the whole twelve-year experience is, for me, completely overshadowed by the memory of one terrible, mind-scarring experience. I am referring to the episode of The Trousers. Let me explain.
I have always been absurdly, ridiculously tall. To give you an idea--when we went on school expeditions to Interesting and Improving Places, the form-master wouldn't say "Meet under the clock tower," or "Meet under the War Memorial," but "Meet under Adams." I was at least as visible as anything else on the horizon, and could be repositioned at will. When, in Physics, we were asked to repeat Galileo's demonstration that two bodies of different weight fall to the ground at the same speed, I was the one who was given the task of dropping the cricket ball and the pea, because it was quicker than going to an upstairs window. I always towered over everybody. Right back at the very beginning of my school career, aged seven, I introduced myself to another new boy (Robert Neary) by coming up behind him and, in a spirit of experiment, dropping a cricket ball on his head and saying, "Hello, my name's Adams, what's yours?" This, for Robert Neary, I'm sure was his one terrible, mind-scarring memory.
In the Prep School, where I was for five years out of my twelve, we all wore short trousers: grey shorts with blazers in the summer, and in the winter those pepper-and-salt tweed suits with short trousers. There is of course an extremely good reason for wearing shorts when you're young, even in the depths of an English winter (and they were colder then, weren't they?). According to Wired magazine, we can't expect to see self-repairing fabrics until about the year 2020, but ever since we emerged from whatever trees or swamps we lived in five million years ago, we have had self-repairing knees.
So, shorts made sense. Even though we all had to wear them, it did begin to get a bit ridiculous in my case. It wasn't towering over the other boys I minded so much, it was towering over the masters. Wearing shorts. My mother pleaded with the principal on one occasion to please make an exception in my case and let me wear long trousers. But Jack Higgs, ever fair but firm, said no: I was only six months away from going up to the main school, whereupon I, along with everybody else, would be able to wear long trousers. I would have to wait.
At last I left the Prep School. And two weeks before the beginning of the Michaelmas term, my mother took me along to the school shop to buy--at last--a long-trousered school suit. And guess what? They didn't make them in a size long enough for me. Let me just repeat that, so that the full horror of the situation can settle on you reading this as it did on me that day in the summer of 1964, standing in the school shop. They didn't have any school trousers long enough for me. They would have to make them specially. That would take six weeks. Six weeks. Six minus two was, as we had been so carefully and painstakingly taught, four. Which meant that for four whole weeks of the next term I was going to be the only boy in school wearing shorts. For the next two weeks I took up playing in the traffic, being careless with kitchen knives, and neglecting to stand clear of the doors on station platforms, but, sadly, I led a charmed life, and I had to go through with it: four weeks of the greatest humiliation and embarrassment known to man or, rather, to that most easily humiliated and embarrassed of all creatures, the overgrown twelve-year-old boy. We've all experienced those painful dreams in which we suddenly discover we are stark naked in the middle of the high street. Believe me, this was worse, and it wasn't a dream.
The story rather fizzles out there because a month later, of course, I got my long trousers and was readmitted into polite society. But, believe me, I still carry the scars inside, and though I try my best to bestride the world like a Colossus, writing best-selling books and . . . (well, that's about it, really, I suppose), if I ever come across as a maladjusted, socially isolated, sad, hunched emotional cripple (I'm thinking mainly of Sunday mornings in February, here), then it's those four weeks of having to wear short trousers in September 1964 that are to blame.
Y
"Why" is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it.
The alphabet does not go "A B C D What? When? How?" but it does go "V W X Why? Z."
"Why?" is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you "What's the time?" or "When was the battle of 1066?" or "How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?" The answers are easy and are, respectively, "Seven-thirty-five in the evening," "Ten-fifteen in the morning," and "Don't ask stupid questions."
But when you hear the word "Why?," you know you've got one of the biggest unanswerables on your hands, such as "Why are we born?" or "Why do we die?" and "Why do we spend so much of the intervening time receiving junk mail?"
Or this one:
"Will you go to bed with me?"
"Why?"
There's only ever been one good answer to that question "Why?" and perhaps we should have that in the alphabet as well. There's room for it. "Why?" doesn't have to be the last word, it isn't even the last letter. How would it be if the alphabet ended, "V W X Why? Z," but "V W X Why not?"
Don't ask stupid questions. --From Hockney's Alphabet (Faber & Faber) Copyright 2002 by Douglas Adams
If you don't like cell phones, then go find somewhere that doesn't have them.
You can't escape them, so stop trying...
My great-grandfather was annoyed by cars. My grandfather was annoyed by the TV. He never like it except when he was watching it. My parents are annoyed by call waiting and so I still get busy signals. My wife is annoyed by cell phones. I'm sure my children's mega-PDA-communicator-multimedia-device will get on my nerves too.
Buy you know what? That's technology. Get used to it.
I already HATE Adobe with a passion after the crap they pulled with Dmitri (much more than I dislike Microsoft.) Now they are using the courts yet again trying to shut out competition? They're the worst.
I use almost no Adobe products and recommend to everyone I know and work with that they use other products when possible (Anyone know of a decent PDF reader?) I know a lot of other people that are doing the same.
However, I do use a ton of Macromedia stuff, though not Flash which is in general a waste of brainpower. But Dreamweaver and Fireworks rule- AND both use the same UI as Flash which means they have the customizable tabs too. Even the newest MX versions Are these products going to go away too?
ARRGH, Adobe sucks. I hope Macromedia's counter suits REEM them.
BOYCOTT ADOBE. Send them an economic message that they suck.
2:26 a.m. here in Madrid, Spain by my clock (which is always a bit fast). The fact that I'm even CONSIDERING reading Bill Gates testimony says to me that I need to go take a pill and go to bed.
A co-worker and I stumbled onto a GREAT way to do pair-programming: VNC.
It's awesome, you sit facing each other on your own computers (thus having your personal space) and then you can work together in an instant just by logging on using VNC to see the other programmer's computer. VNC is fully interactive and you both have control of the keyboard/mouse at the same time. It's perfect for pair programming.
There are many times when all you're doing in programming is a bunch of busy work. Copying and pasting fields from a database into get/sets of a Java class or something ridiculous like that that doesn't really need two heads. These can be done solo, but then when you start to get heads down into the business logic, you can just say "Hey, let's work together on this bit," and your coworker just logs on and you start collaboratively working together again.
This way there's no fighting over the keyboard ("Oh, christ! When are you going to learn to touch-type, give me that!", "No! You drive me crazy with your backspacing... I'll drive."). Whoever has the right idea can type just by doing so and the other person can watch for errors, comment on style, etc.
Mark my words, it works really well, it should be part of the XP standard.
Did any graphic designers out there note that the eMac has a different font for its name? Sans-serif instead of the Garamond-derived Apple font. Check out the main Apple home page to see what I mean.
No, when people are offering something that they say is free, but actually has hidden restrictions or responsibilities, it's not free at all.
Here's a lawnmower for you. It's free! But if you use it to cut your lawn, you have to come over to my house and cut my lawn too. Don't complain, it's free, isn't it?
In my humble opinion, these things need to be part of an ebook before they catch on.
COLOR. High resolution. Backlight. Portable (ie lightweight). Long battery life.
Don't get me wrong, ebooks will be a part of all of our lives within the next decade. Kids won't be lugging around text books for much longer. I've read quite a few ebooks on my Palm and it's not great, but shows the concept really well. Especially when I read Spanish eBooks, because I can instantly look up a word that I'm unfamiliar with using a dictionary package without having to grab another book, losing my place, forgetting the word, etc. Copy-paste-lookup-return->keep reading.
I already spend most of my reading time using the web. No more newspapers or magazines except maybe on Sundays... Decent portable readers or even M$ Mira devices will erase these last dead-tree vestiges from my life alltogether. (Horrible as M$ may be, they've got a good idea with Mira.).
That's true... depending on how the submit bin is implemented, it might include the ability to help modify the submission: Correcting factual or errors, adding more background info, etc. I personally like when stories are a bit long and continue onto the comments page and include a lot of background rather than just a link and "this is cool, check it out" type posts.
Okay, so I said push the envelope twice. Sorry. I meant that having users moderate each others was one of those cool "ah-ha" ideas that Slashdot had that most other sites didn't and still don't have. Why not continue that idea to the story selection piece? It's a gamble, but for a little work it could attract subscribers and make readers more happy too...
Slashdot's moderation system is pretty good and pretty unique. How about pushing the envelope a bit further?
How about an option where subscribers can see all the stories submitted and vote on them? The highest moderated stories could the bubble up to a "subscriber selected" page, viewable by all. The editors could then decide if the subscriber selected stories were good enough for the front page mix.
I could expand on this, but I want to post this before the thread runs to 400 posts. You get the idea. Subscribers want control. Push the envelope!
Okay, I was thinking about this offline and I wanted to add that there's a perfect opportunity here for an OSS startup:
Give it a cool name like "SimpleFace" or something non-frightening like that (i.e. real words).
Then this company would do three things (complying to KISS):
1) Create a set of rules and guidelines for GUI applications along the lines of Apple's Human Interface guidelines. Include all of the most recent theories and practice. Publish this online. Use versions so that people can tell what's the latest draft, etc.
2) Certify apps that comply to the SimpleFace rules. Open Source Software gets certified for free. Certify non-free software for a fee. They get to put a SimpleFace smile icon on their web pages or boxes.
3) Create a set of classes - both online and corporate training - based on the guidelines. Some for free, others for a fee.
Once momentum started building on something like this, corporations would be more willing to switch to OSS software if they knew that training was going to be minimized because the apps that use the SimpleFace guidelines would be easy to use for those already familiar with other SimpleFace apps.
SimpleFace could also actively participate in the other projects as a GUI testing center. Whereas the rest of the OSS crowd might not pay attention to usability and design issues, SimpleFace would be there to help out. Providing feedback, suggestions, or even app dev for those interested.
Why am I thinking "startup" and not just "movement" or "organization?" because I think that something like this is needed now before the OSS movement loses any more momentum in the UI race from companies like M$ and Apple. (Under the theory that a startup could move faster than a committee.) How many Unix heads do YOU know that are switching to Mac OSX because their GUI is awesome? Lots.
I 100% agree with this. The QWERTY example is a perfect analogy. We all need something similar to what we work with right now.
I say EMBRACE and EXTEND. Copy Window's UI down to the pixel, get everyone to use *nix and then when M$ changes their UI again, everyone will say "why doesn't Windows work like my Unix box?"
Think about the hardware equivalent of this: Compaq started creating IBM clones which was great, but eventually IBM tried to move to the PS/2 and Microchannel, yet everyone by that time was used to the open architecture and balked at IBMs proprietary play. The same could be done for software, but first you have to make a perfect copy.
As obvious as these sound, here are my rules for a good user interface on the work I do, whether it's a web page or a GUI app:
1) Keep It Simple Stupid 2) Think Like a User (the dumber the user, the better the UI) 3) Make it LOOK better than it WORKS
The last rule is true because if the app looks like crap, no one will be happy, but if it looks GREAT and works so-so people (users, your boss) will be excited and give you more time to get the bugs worked out. This is my main problem with someone like Jakob Nielson's whiny biatching... the app has to be simple, but it's got to have good design too. Colors, buttons, subtle eye-candy, well balanced spaces, etc. Usability is key, but design is always first.
Anyways, many of the people who work on open source software seem like the people who CAN'T STAND USERS. And by users, I mean the stupid, stupid people who might use their software. It seems pretty weird, but it's true... Maybe a little less antipathy for the newbies would go a long way to helping OSS GUI design.
What's the deal with this game. It crashes my Dell Lattitude PIII 650Mhz / ATI RAGE MOBILITY-M1 AGP2X/Win2k machine whenever I try to run it...
I know that Win2k isn't the world's stablest freakin' OS, but it rarely LOCKS UP so hard that I need to unplug it and take the battery out to reboot...
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you - though he does have this at the bottom of the front page: "Not affiliated with the Paul M. Hebert School of Law" I don't think that's enough.
The design of the site isn't amatuer at all (a hell of a lot better than some University sites I've seen) it doesn't have a tag line that would help a random reader understand at first glance. Something like, "An actual student's helpful guide to LSU Law" near the top or something like that would go a long way to avoiding confusion.
Whether it's illegal or not, I don't know, but it doesn't seem like a horrible claim to me.
-Russ
I agree. Please see my
-Russ
Chapter 1
Life
Dear Editor,
The sweat was dripping down my face and into my lap, making my clothes very wet and sticky. I sat there, walking, watching. I was trembling violently as I sat, looking at the small slot, waiting--ever waiting. My nails dug into my flesh as I clenched my hands. I passed my arm over my hot, wet face, down which sweat was pouring. The suspense was unbearable. I bit my lip in an attempt to stop trembling with the terrible burden of anxiety. Suddenly, the slot opened and in dropped the mail. I grabbed at my Eagle and ripped off the wrapping paper.
My ordeal was over for another week!
D. N. Adams (12), Brentwood, Essex,
January 23, 1965,
Eagle and Boys' World Magazine
[Editor's Note: In the sixties The Eagle was an enormously popular English science-fiction magazine. This letter is the first known published work of Douglas Adams, then age twelve.]
The Voices of All Our Yesterdays
I vaguely remember my schooldays. They were what was going on in the background while I was trying to listen to the Beatles.
When "Can't Buy Me Love" came out, I was twelve. I sneaked out of school during morning milk break, bought the record, and broke into matron's room because she had a record player. Then I played it, not loud enough to get caught, but just loud enough to hear with my ear pressed up against the speaker. Then I played it again for the other ear. Then I turned the record over and did the same for "You Can't Do That." That was when the housemaster found me and put me into detention, which is what I had expected. It seemed a small price to pay for what I nowrealize was art.
I didn't know it was art then, of course. I only knew that the Beatles were the most exciting thing in the universe. It wasn't always an easy view to live with. First you had to fight the Stones fans, which was tricky because they fought dirty and had their knuckles nearer the ground. Then you had to fight the grownups, parents and teachers who said that you were wasting your time and pocket money on rubbish that you would have forgotten by next week.
I found it hard to understand why they were telling me this. I sang in the school choir and knew how to listen for harmony and counterpoint, and it was clear to me that the Beatles were something extraordinarily clever. It bewildered me that no one else could hear it: impossible harmonies and part playing you had never heard in pop songs before. The Beatles were obviously just putting all this stuff in for some secret fun of their own, and it seemed exciting to me that people could have fun in that way.
The next exciting thing was that they kept on losing me. They would bring out a new album and for a few listenings it would leave me cold and confused. Then gradually it would begin to unravel itself in my mind. I would realize that the reason I was confused was that I was listening to Something that was simply unlike anything that anybody had done before. "Another Girl," "Good Day Sunshine," and the extraordinary "Drive My Car." These tracks are so familiar now that it takes a special effort of will to remember how alien they seemed at first to me. The Beatles were now not just writing songs, they were inventing the very medium in which they were working.
I never got to see them. Difficult to believe, I know. I was alive at the time the Beatles were performing and never got to see them. I tend to go on about this rather a lot. Do not go to San Francisco with me, or I will insist on pointing out Candlestick Park to you and bleating on about the fact that in 1966 the Beatles played their last concert there, just shortly before I'd woken up to the fact that rock concerts were things you could actually go to, even if you lived in Brentwood.
A friend of mine at school once had some studio tickets to see David Frost's show being recorded, but we ended up not going. I watched the show that night, and the Beatles were on it playing "Hey Jude." I was ill for about a year. Another day that I happened not to go to London after all was the day they played their rooftop concert in Savile Row. I can't-ever-speak about that.
Well, the years passed. The Beatles passed. But Paul McCart-ney has gone on and on. A few months ago the guitarist Robbie McIntosh phoned me and said, "We're playing at the Mean Fiddler in a few days, do you want to come along?"
Now this is one of the daftest questions I've ever been asked, and I think it took me a few moments even to work out what he meant. The Mean Fiddler, for those who don't know, is a pub in an unlovely part of northwest London with a room at the back where bands play. You can probably get about two hundred people in.
It was the word we that temporarily confused me, because I knew that the band that Robbie was currently playing in was Paul McCartney's, and I didn't think that Paul McCartney played in pubs. If Paul McCartney did play in pubs, then it would be daft to think that I would not saw my own leg off in order to go. I went.
In front of two hundred people in a pub, Paul McCartney stood up and played songs he'd never, I think, played in public before. "Here, There and Everywhere" and "Blackbird," to name but two. I've played "Blackbird" in pubs, for heaven's sake. I spent weeks learning the guitar part when I was supposed to be revising for A-levels. I almost wondered if I was hallucinating.
There were two moments of complete astonishment. One was the last encore, which was an immaculate, thunderous performance of, believe it or not, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." (Remember, this was in a pub.) And the other was one of the world's greatest rock 'n' roll songs, "Can't Buy Me Love," which I had first heard crouching with my ear cupped to the Dansette record player in the school matron's room.
There is a game people like to play that goes, "When would you most like to have lived and why?" The Italian Renaissance? Mozart's Vienna? Shakespeare's England? Personally, I would like to have been around Bach. But I have a real difficulty with the game, which is that living at any other period of history would have meant missing the Beatles, and I honestly don't think I could do that. Mozart and Bach and Shakespeare are always with us, but I grew up with the Beatles and I'm not sure what else has affected me as much as that.
So Paul McCartney is fifty tomorrow. Happy birthday, Paul. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
The [London] Sunday Times, June 17, 1992
Brentwood School
I was at Brentwood School for twelve whole years. And they were, by and large, in an up and downy kind of way, pretty good years: fairly happy, reasonably leafy, a bit sportier than I was in the mood for at the time, but full of good (and sometimes highly eccentric) teaching. In fact, it was only later that I gradually came to realise how well I had been taught at Brentwood--particularly in English, and particularly in Physics. (Odd, that.) However, the whole twelve-year experience is, for me, completely overshadowed by the memory of one terrible, mind-scarring experience. I am referring to the episode of The Trousers. Let me explain.
I have always been absurdly, ridiculously tall. To give you an idea--when we went on school expeditions to Interesting and Improving Places, the form-master wouldn't say "Meet under the clock tower," or "Meet under the War Memorial," but "Meet under Adams." I was at least as visible as anything else on the horizon, and could be repositioned at will. When, in Physics, we were asked to repeat Galileo's demonstration that two bodies of different weight fall to the ground at the same speed, I was the one who was given the task of dropping the cricket ball and the pea, because it was quicker than going to an upstairs window. I always towered over everybody. Right back at the very beginning of my school career, aged seven, I introduced myself to another new boy (Robert Neary) by coming up behind him and, in a spirit of experiment, dropping a cricket ball on his head and saying, "Hello, my name's Adams, what's yours?" This, for Robert Neary, I'm sure was his one terrible, mind-scarring memory.
In the Prep School, where I was for five years out of my twelve, we all wore short trousers: grey shorts with blazers in the summer, and in the winter those pepper-and-salt tweed suits with short trousers. There is of course an extremely good reason for wearing shorts when you're young, even in the depths of an English winter (and they were colder then, weren't they?). According to Wired magazine, we can't expect to see self-repairing fabrics until about the year 2020, but ever since we emerged from whatever trees or swamps we lived in five million years ago, we have had self-repairing knees.
So, shorts made sense. Even though we all had to wear them, it did begin to get a bit ridiculous in my case. It wasn't towering over the other boys I minded so much, it was towering over the masters. Wearing shorts. My mother pleaded with the principal on one occasion to please make an exception in my case and let me wear long trousers. But Jack Higgs, ever fair but firm, said no: I was only six months away from going up to the main school, whereupon I, along with everybody else, would be able to wear long trousers. I would have to wait.
At last I left the Prep School. And two weeks before the beginning of the Michaelmas term, my mother took me along to the school shop to buy--at last--a long-trousered school suit. And guess what? They didn't make them in a size long enough for me. Let me just repeat that, so that the full horror of the situation can settle on you reading this as it did on me that day in the summer of 1964, standing in the school shop. They didn't have any school trousers long enough for me. They would have to make them specially. That would take six weeks. Six weeks. Six minus two was, as we had been so carefully and painstakingly taught, four. Which meant that for four whole weeks of the next term I was going to be the only boy in school wearing shorts. For the next two weeks I took up playing in the traffic, being careless with kitchen knives, and neglecting to stand clear of the doors on station platforms, but, sadly, I led a charmed life, and I had to go through with it: four weeks of the greatest humiliation and embarrassment known to man or, rather, to that most easily humiliated and embarrassed of all creatures, the overgrown twelve-year-old boy. We've all experienced those painful dreams in which we suddenly discover we are stark naked in the middle of the high street. Believe me, this was worse, and it wasn't a dream.
The story rather fizzles out there because a month later, of course, I got my long trousers and was readmitted into polite society. But, believe me, I still carry the scars inside, and though I try my best to bestride the world like a Colossus, writing best-selling books and . . . (well, that's about it, really, I suppose), if I ever come across as a maladjusted, socially isolated, sad, hunched emotional cripple (I'm thinking mainly of Sunday mornings in February, here), then it's those four weeks of having to wear short trousers in September 1964 that are to blame.
Y
"Why" is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it.
The alphabet does not go "A B C D What? When? How?" but it does go "V W X Why? Z."
"Why?" is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you "What's the time?" or "When was the battle of 1066?" or "How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?" The answers are easy and are, respectively, "Seven-thirty-five in the evening," "Ten-fifteen in the morning," and "Don't ask stupid questions."
But when you hear the word "Why?," you know you've got one of the biggest unanswerables on your hands, such as "Why are we born?" or "Why do we die?" and "Why do we spend so much of the intervening time receiving junk mail?"
Or this one:
"Will you go to bed with me?"
"Why?"
There's only ever been one good answer to that question "Why?" and perhaps we should have that in the alphabet as well. There's room for it. "Why?" doesn't have to be the last word, it isn't even the last letter. How would it be if the alphabet ended, "V W X Why? Z," but "V W X Why not?"
Don't ask stupid questions.
--From Hockney's Alphabet (Faber & Faber)
Copyright 2002 by Douglas Adams
If you don't like cell phones, then go find somewhere that doesn't have them.
You can't escape them, so stop trying...
My great-grandfather was annoyed by cars. My grandfather was annoyed by the TV. He never like it except when he was watching it. My parents are annoyed by call waiting and so I still get busy signals. My wife is annoyed by cell phones. I'm sure my children's mega-PDA-communicator-multimedia-device will get on my nerves too.
Buy you know what? That's technology. Get used to it.
-Russ
I already HATE Adobe with a passion after the crap they pulled with Dmitri (much more than I dislike Microsoft.) Now they are using the courts yet again trying to shut out competition? They're the worst.
I use almost no Adobe products and recommend to everyone I know and work with that they use other products when possible (Anyone know of a decent PDF reader?) I know a lot of other people that are doing the same.
However, I do use a ton of Macromedia stuff, though not Flash which is in general a waste of brainpower. But Dreamweaver and Fireworks rule- AND both use the same UI as Flash which means they have the customizable tabs too. Even the newest MX versions Are these products going to go away too?
ARRGH, Adobe sucks. I hope Macromedia's counter suits REEM them.
BOYCOTT ADOBE. Send them an economic message that they suck.
-Russ
Beautiful! Whore-away, big guy! That link just got me to a mirror close by with 1.0... Nice. I wouldn't have thought of it myself at all.
Downloading now...
-Russ
Ronald Reagan IS president, or hadn't you noticed?
-Russ
2:26 a.m. here in Madrid, Spain by my clock (which is always a bit fast). The fact that I'm even CONSIDERING reading Bill Gates testimony says to me that I need to go take a pill and go to bed.
Slashdot: The nightime sleep remedy.
-Russ
A co-worker and I stumbled onto a GREAT way to do pair-programming: VNC.
It's awesome, you sit facing each other on your own computers (thus having your personal space) and then you can work together in an instant just by logging on using VNC to see the other programmer's computer. VNC is fully interactive and you both have control of the keyboard/mouse at the same time. It's perfect for pair programming.
There are many times when all you're doing in programming is a bunch of busy work. Copying and pasting fields from a database into get/sets of a Java class or something ridiculous like that that doesn't really need two heads. These can be done solo, but then when you start to get heads down into the business logic, you can just say "Hey, let's work together on this bit," and your coworker just logs on and you start collaboratively working together again.
This way there's no fighting over the keyboard ("Oh, christ! When are you going to learn to touch-type, give me that!", "No! You drive me crazy with your backspacing... I'll drive."). Whoever has the right idea can type just by doing so and the other person can watch for errors, comment on style, etc.
Mark my words, it works really well, it should be part of the XP standard.
-Russ
I don't have either font, but here's the links to the Adobe font pages.
Frutiger
and
Myriad MM
-Russ
Silly me. The front page changes every time... here's a better link. The eMac home page.
-Russ
Did any graphic designers out there note that the eMac has a different font for its name? Sans-serif instead of the Garamond-derived Apple font. Check out the main Apple home page to see what I mean.
Interesting... I wonder why the change?
-Russ
No, when people are offering something that they say is free, but actually has hidden restrictions or responsibilities, it's not free at all.
Here's a lawnmower for you. It's free! But if you use it to cut your lawn, you have to come over to my house and cut my lawn too. Don't complain, it's free, isn't it?
-Russ
Thanks!
We also have a Simpleface Yahoo Group set up as we're getting started and working through the issues. Feel free to join in.
-Russ
Maine Department of Education to provide 36,000 iBook systems to seventh and eighth grade students and teachers across the state
This is just the start...
-Russ
In my humble opinion, these things need to be part of an ebook before they catch on.
COLOR. High resolution. Backlight. Portable (ie lightweight). Long battery life.
Don't get me wrong, ebooks will be a part of all of our lives within the next decade. Kids won't be lugging around text books for much longer. I've read quite a few ebooks on my Palm and it's not great, but shows the concept really well. Especially when I read Spanish eBooks, because I can instantly look up a word that I'm unfamiliar with using a dictionary package without having to grab another book, losing my place, forgetting the word, etc. Copy-paste-lookup-return->keep reading.
I already spend most of my reading time using the web. No more newspapers or magazines except maybe on Sundays... Decent portable readers or even M$ Mira devices will erase these last dead-tree vestiges from my life alltogether. (Horrible as M$ may be, they've got a good idea with Mira.).
Okay, that's it.
-Russ
After 5? Nonononono.
My zone's between 11:00 and 5:00, but think 24 hour time. I go to bed around 6:00 just when the sun's coming up.
-Russ
That's true... depending on how the submit bin is implemented, it might include the ability to help modify the submission: Correcting factual or errors, adding more background info, etc. I personally like when stories are a bit long and continue onto the comments page and include a lot of background rather than just a link and "this is cool, check it out" type posts.
-Russ
Okay, so I said push the envelope twice. Sorry. I meant that having users moderate each others was one of those cool "ah-ha" ideas that Slashdot had that most other sites didn't and still don't have. Why not continue that idea to the story selection piece? It's a gamble, but for a little work it could attract subscribers and make readers more happy too...
-Russ
Slashdot's moderation system is pretty good and pretty unique. How about pushing the envelope a bit further?
How about an option where subscribers can see all the stories submitted and vote on them? The highest moderated stories could the bubble up to a "subscriber selected" page, viewable by all. The editors could then decide if the subscriber selected stories were good enough for the front page mix.
I could expand on this, but I want to post this before the thread runs to 400 posts. You get the idea. Subscribers want control. Push the envelope!
-Russ
"Familiarity breeds contempt?"
Not a new idea...
-Russ
Okay, I was thinking about this offline and I wanted to add that there's a perfect opportunity here for an OSS startup:
Give it a cool name like "SimpleFace" or something non-frightening like that (i.e. real words).
Then this company would do three things (complying to KISS):
1) Create a set of rules and guidelines for GUI applications along the lines of Apple's Human Interface guidelines. Include all of the most recent theories and practice. Publish this online. Use versions so that people can tell what's the latest draft, etc.
2) Certify apps that comply to the SimpleFace rules. Open Source Software gets certified for free. Certify non-free software for a fee. They get to put a SimpleFace smile icon on their web pages or boxes.
3) Create a set of classes - both online and corporate training - based on the guidelines. Some for free, others for a fee.
Once momentum started building on something like this, corporations would be more willing to switch to OSS software if they knew that training was going to be minimized because the apps that use the SimpleFace guidelines would be easy to use for those already familiar with other SimpleFace apps.
SimpleFace could also actively participate in the other projects as a GUI testing center. Whereas the rest of the OSS crowd might not pay attention to usability and design issues, SimpleFace would be there to help out. Providing feedback, suggestions, or even app dev for those interested.
Why am I thinking "startup" and not just "movement" or "organization?" because I think that something like this is needed now before the OSS movement loses any more momentum in the UI race from companies like M$ and Apple. (Under the theory that a startup could move faster than a committee.) How many Unix heads do YOU know that are switching to Mac OSX because their GUI is awesome? Lots.
-Russ
I 100% agree with this. The QWERTY example is a perfect analogy. We all need something similar to what we work with right now.
I say EMBRACE and EXTEND. Copy Window's UI down to the pixel, get everyone to use *nix and then when M$ changes their UI again, everyone will say "why doesn't Windows work like my Unix box?"
Think about the hardware equivalent of this: Compaq started creating IBM clones which was great, but eventually IBM tried to move to the PS/2 and Microchannel, yet everyone by that time was used to the open architecture and balked at IBMs proprietary play. The same could be done for software, but first you have to make a perfect copy.
-Russ
As obvious as these sound, here are my rules for a good user interface on the work I do, whether it's a web page or a GUI app:
1) Keep It Simple Stupid
2) Think Like a User (the dumber the user, the better the UI)
3) Make it LOOK better than it WORKS
The last rule is true because if the app looks like crap, no one will be happy, but if it looks GREAT and works so-so people (users, your boss) will be excited and give you more time to get the bugs worked out. This is my main problem with someone like Jakob Nielson's whiny biatching... the app has to be simple, but it's got to have good design too. Colors, buttons, subtle eye-candy, well balanced spaces, etc. Usability is key, but design is always first.
Anyways, many of the people who work on open source software seem like the people who CAN'T STAND USERS. And by users, I mean the stupid, stupid people who might use their software. It seems pretty weird, but it's true... Maybe a little less antipathy for the newbies would go a long way to helping OSS GUI design.
-Russ
BZFlag sounds cool, if I could only try it...
What's the deal with this game. It crashes my Dell Lattitude PIII 650Mhz / ATI RAGE MOBILITY-M1 AGP2X
I know that Win2k isn't the world's stablest freakin' OS, but it rarely LOCKS UP so hard that I need to unplug it and take the battery out to reboot...
-Russ