I heartily recommend this book. Jef Raskin is a highly misunderstood HCI expert. I say that because about 6 months ago he got a lot of flames for criticizing Apple for continuing to make the mistakes which he preaches against inherent in the WIMP (windows, icons, mouse, pointer) interface. Raskin himself replied and tried to explain some things. He said that to understand him you had to read his book.
I bought the book soon after that, and as I read it, I was blown away. Sometimes when you read a book, it just gets into your head and it's all you can think about. That's how it was for me.
Unfortunately, although it describes many of the principles by which a Humane interface should be designed, there is not a design for a specific kind of interface. Perhaps it's because there is no one single right way to make an interface, but there are many wrong ways. Software producers continue to make the same mistakes about what they think is user-friendly (yes, including GNOME and KDE by following the WIMP example), but Raskin shows that many of the usual assumptions are wrong (pretty much everything we currently understand about user interfaces, e.g. "icons are user friendly").
After reading it, I felt that if I followed the principles of the book, I too could design a radically different yet vastly improved system for beginners and experts alike. I emailed Raskin with my thoughts. The response to the possibility that I could program such a thing was (paraphrased) "You will need a spec, which I am still working on."
I suppose I am still interested in making an interface with the principles outlined in the book, but I think it would require as much work as a GNOME or KDE project (including applications), perhaps even an entire new operating system, depending on how far you wanted to take it.
In high school, I tutored a guy at the New Mexico School for the Visually Handicapped. Actually I was tutoring him in geometry of all things. For problems which required drawings, we'd use thin mylar sheets on a rubber-topped clipboard. You draw with a pencil and it leaves a raised line.
Coincidentally, we were both participating in the NM Supercomputing Challenge (SCC) (which gave us modem access, through NM Technet, to Unicos on Cray computers at Los Alamos National Labs, connected to the internet. This was before the net became widely available: 1991. They weren't happy when I hopped onto #hack on irc but that's another story. Bad memories.)
Anyway, the blind guy had a standard laptop computer which had some kind of speech board added into it, and device drivers for DOS. He had borland c++ which includes command line compilers.
He used edlin as an editor because the speech software reads stuff off the screen as they are printed. You can also move the cursor around the screen in a special mode to inspect it, but it's easier, using edlin (like unix's ed) to print out whichever lines you want, then specify that you want to edit a specific line.
The only problem with that method was that he didn't indent any of his code, which the SCC judges counted against him, since they had trouble understanding it. At any rate, he's the only guy who did any real work on the project.
My DSL provider, Reflex, was a company that decided not to work through the phone company's lines or the cable company's lines like most broadband providers. Instead, it was setting up wireless links to apartment complexes, then running its own lines through the whole apartment block. Then, when it couldn't keep up with the wireless connections started using temporary land lines of some kind. But the temporary land lines for the most part never got converted to wireless. I'm not exactly sure why they went out of business, but they sure seemed to grow fast. My bandwidth was even faster than they guaranteed, mostly reliable (about what you'd expect with DSL), and I had my static IP without NAT which I just loved.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago they let go 250 employees (most of the them) then just recently filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy. In other words the company is going away forever. Too bad for all those apartment complexes advertising DSL, all that dark (unused) wiring, and those 10,000 customers like me suddenly without our ISP.
I had to dig out my 56K (i.e. 40K) modem from my closet. I've been looking around for a good new DSL provider but I wonder if I'm better off just doing without the luxury. I think it would cost my at least $200 just to get hooked up and a ton of cash per month ($60 or more) if I want an ISP with a static ISP.
Unlike Northpoint, when you had Reflex for DSL you also had Reflex as an ISP as part of the regular price which was about $30 for the whole package (the lowest price package).
The 12:00 problem is a simple matter of proper human interface design. Take the typical VCR for example.
Clock Setting
Perform clock setting only if the clock has not been set correctly by the Plug & Play setting or if you use a cable box.
Access the Clock Set screen to perform the Semiauto or Manual Clock Set. Each procedure starts from step 4 after preparation steps below are finished.
If you use a cable box, set the clock manually. (pg. 12)
Preparations
1
Access Main Menu screen
Press MENU.
2
Access Initial Set screen
On the front panel:
Press CH to move the highlight bar (arrow) to "INITIAL SET", then press OK.
On the Remote:
Press SHUTTLE PLUS to move the highlight bar (arrow) to "INITIAL SET", then press OK or SHUTTLE PLUS 3.
3
Select clock set
On the front panel:
Press CH to move the highlight bar (arrow) to "CLOCK SET", then press OK.
On the Remote:
Press SHUTTLE PLUS to move the highlight bar (arrow) to "CLOCK SET", then press OK or SHUTTLE PLUS 3.
"CABLE BOX USERS SET CLOCK MANUALLY"
appears on the screen for about 5 seconds, then
the Clock Set screen appears. Turn on the VCR and the TV, and select the VCR channel 3 or 4 (or AV mode) on the TV.
... and so on. that was a couple of paragraphs from the "preparing to set the time" section. There are a couple more pages on actually setting the time, either automatically semiautomatically or manually.
I pulled those from a random manufacturer and a random vcr model's manual which is available as a PDF:
http://aviator.jvcservice.com/books/model.asp?Mode l=HR-VP48U I was actually looking for a simpler example like 'hold down "STTM" button until hour starts flashing, then press "record" to increase the hours, and "eject" to increase the minutes. If you accidentally go past the time you want go through all the number again to get the one you want.' kind of setting but I see that have outdone me on that one.
Now, how about something like this for a replacement:
[Hour +] [Min +]
1 2 : 0 0
[Hour -] [Min -]
The [] symbols indicate a button here. (credit for this layout goes to Jeff Raskin from his book "The Humane Interface." an excellent read.)
I could guess all the plot "twists", which were really more like 15-degree bends. Is that the contempt of familiarity you spoke of, or am I just sick of the banal "stickin' it to The Man" structure?
Ok. I agree there wasn't much of a coherent plot. If this was what you didn't like, I can't argue with you there.:-) I was guessing it was because the computer details weren't acurate. That's what I meant about familiarity. Usually geeks complain about computer movies because the computer events are not technically accurate.
Fisher Stevens and Matthew Lillard. I kept wishing that the scenery they were chewing was toxic.
I hated Fisher Stevens and the woman he acted with. However, I like Matthew Lillard; I go see movies just because he's in them. If you want to see a movie where his weird personality is actually appropriate to the movie,:-) check out SLC Punk. It's about a punker growing up in Salt Lake City. If you tend to like independent films I think you'll like it. Although since you specifically didn't like Matthew Lillard in Hackers, maybe you won't.:-)
Actually, Hackers is one of my favorite movies. The thing is, it's just an art film. Cool music, clothes, colors, dancing, flashing lights, virtual reality. Lots of different visual and audio techniques to bring it all together (rotating phone booth, interposed video clips, echo effect on a certain typing scene). If it's the realism of the computer technology that bothers you (going out on a limb here) you must realize that they are only abstractions. If it's the "Plague" character that bothers you, then, maybe you have a point. I hate that guy.:-) Funny thing about movies with a certain topic. If it's too close to what you know already, you're not going to be able to suspend your disbelief.
(send me a reply. thanks!)
If Yahoo is feeling the banner pinch, how is slashdot.org dealing with this reality
Target demographics. Right now I'm looking at an ad that says "wanna try out Linux and FreeBSD on Compaq technology? click here www.testdrive.compaq.com. Compaq New Technologies Test Drive Program" You know they are paying prime dollar for the slashdot eyeballs.
Incidentally, one cool PC gaming website I like, www.shacknews.com (formerly shugashack) has started asking for donations so they can make it past tax day, due to a sudden shortfall caused by their banner company (UGO) not paying them since November. Apparently they broke Amazon's donation system due to too much load, but they also use paypal or you can send a check. I'm actually thinking of doing it... A lot of gaming sites are getting screwed over by the situation.
In the future... motherboards may be nothing more than layers of nonconducting materials with thin conductors connecting various chips and sockets (into which other boards can be connected). Imagine the possibilities!
Kurt,
You must think about what advertising is and what advertising is not. Advertising is not a banner ad outside the borders of the content screen. If you want to run ads, I mean real ads for big money, run ads as stories. Make them part of a certain category if you want people to be allowed to disable them (like Katz stories). Allow comments just like regular stories. Then people can flame ads for companies that they don't like, and even negative attention is good attention for advertisers. Or other people can point out more useful insightful information about the thing brought up. Ads of course would have to have some interesting text that gets the message across and not just buzwords or attempts to get click-throughs. The articles would be marked as advertisements.
If you are going to advertise, advertise. Make sure/. gets paid big bucks for it.
Oh, I forgot to mention. No images in the ads! No animation, and no special coloring.
This advice does not apply to kuro5hin of course since articles are chosen by the readers.
(if you object to this idea and not banners, I'd like to know what the difference is)
Java's a lot faster in the newer versions. I can't give a number comparing it to C / C++, but raw speed doesn't matter for many applications anyway. Swing also has become better but there still are some issues. Hardware-accelerated buffering etc. will hopefully solve these problems in 1.4.
Translation: Java is fast. By fast I mean adequate. By adequate I mean slow.
I think the important thing, if you are thinking about falling in love and having a relationship, is to meet them in person, and get the relationship off-line as soon as possible. As long as it's on-line it's too easy to idealize the relationship. I mean really, if you think typing to another person online is a meaningful relationship, that alone is not really true.
Online, the other person appears to us how they think we want them to (and vice versa). The Desert of the Real can be quite desolate in comparison.
(of course the usual cautions about meeting strangers applies, even if you think you know all about them.)
Jef Raskin?
Wow, I can't believe it. I just sent you an email last night. (A long rambling thing about wanting to write a new environment using your ideas.) Then I notice that one of my "old" posts on slashdot went from 7 replies to 8 replies and it was Jef Raskin himself.
(I noticed your posts aren't getting moderated up. On slashdot, if you don't reply to an article right away it won't get noticed, because the moderators' attention goes when they are done with the article and move on to the next. Slashdot doesn't make a good bulletin board, but it does keep the topic moving.)
Hmm, I guess I have nothing interesting to say other than I hope you have a chance to read the email I sent you earlier.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I heartily recommend this book. Jef Raskin is a highly misunderstood HCI expert. I say that because about 6 months ago he got a lot of flames for criticizing Apple for continuing to make the mistakes which he preaches against inherent in the WIMP (windows, icons, mouse, pointer) interface. Raskin himself replied and tried to explain some things. He said that to understand him you had to read his book.
I bought the book soon after that, and as I read it, I was blown away. Sometimes when you read a book, it just gets into your head and it's all you can think about. That's how it was for me.
Unfortunately, although it describes many of the principles by which a Humane interface should be designed, there is not a design for a specific kind of interface. Perhaps it's because there is no one single right way to make an interface, but there are many wrong ways. Software producers continue to make the same mistakes about what they think is user-friendly (yes, including GNOME and KDE by following the WIMP example), but Raskin shows that many of the usual assumptions are wrong (pretty much everything we currently understand about user interfaces, e.g. "icons are user friendly").
After reading it, I felt that if I followed the principles of the book, I too could design a radically different yet vastly improved system for beginners and experts alike. I emailed Raskin with my thoughts. The response to the possibility that I could program such a thing was (paraphrased) "You will need a spec, which I am still working on."
I suppose I am still interested in making an interface with the principles outlined in the book, but I think it would require as much work as a GNOME or KDE project (including applications), perhaps even an entire new operating system, depending on how far you wanted to take it.
Jef Raskin's homepage is here. Be sure to check out the summary of The Humane Interface at least, if you aren't going to read the book.
Great article. Now I actually want to learn lisp.
But I don't expect to convince anyone (over 25) to go out and learn Lisp.
Good thing I have about two weeks before I turn 26. I will have to learn quickly!
In high school, I tutored a guy at the New Mexico School for the Visually Handicapped. Actually I was tutoring him in geometry of all things. For problems which required drawings, we'd use thin mylar sheets on a rubber-topped clipboard. You draw with a pencil and it leaves a raised line.
Coincidentally, we were both participating in the NM Supercomputing Challenge (SCC) (which gave us modem access, through NM Technet, to Unicos on Cray computers at Los Alamos National Labs, connected to the internet. This was before the net became widely available: 1991. They weren't happy when I hopped onto #hack on irc but that's another story. Bad memories.)
Anyway, the blind guy had a standard laptop computer which had some kind of speech board added into it, and device drivers for DOS. He had borland c++ which includes command line compilers.
He used edlin as an editor because the speech software reads stuff off the screen as they are printed. You can also move the cursor around the screen in a special mode to inspect it, but it's easier, using edlin (like unix's ed) to print out whichever lines you want, then specify that you want to edit a specific line.
The only problem with that method was that he didn't indent any of his code, which the SCC judges counted against him, since they had trouble understanding it. At any rate, he's the only guy who did any real work on the project.
...also known as, what's currently in my DVD collection.
(well, almost. I have six of them, and I don't have that many to start with)
Doug Miller deserves your respect ... for telling it like it is ... without a hint of weaseling.
Roblimo, are you sure we read the same interview?
My DSL provider, Reflex, was a company that decided not to work through the phone company's lines or the cable company's lines like most broadband providers. Instead, it was setting up wireless links to apartment complexes, then running its own lines through the whole apartment block. Then, when it couldn't keep up with the wireless connections started using temporary land lines of some kind. But the temporary land lines for the most part never got converted to wireless. I'm not exactly sure why they went out of business, but they sure seemed to grow fast. My bandwidth was even faster than they guaranteed, mostly reliable (about what you'd expect with DSL), and I had my static IP without NAT which I just loved.
s html
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago they let go 250 employees (most of the them) then just recently filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy. In other words the company is going away forever. Too bad for all those apartment complexes advertising DSL, all that dark (unused) wiring, and those 10,000 customers like me suddenly without our ISP.
I had to dig out my 56K (i.e. 40K) modem from my closet. I've been looking around for a good new DSL provider but I wonder if I'm better off just doing without the luxury. I think it would cost my at least $200 just to get hooked up and a ton of cash per month ($60 or more) if I want an ISP with a static ISP.
Unlike Northpoint, when you had Reflex for DSL you also had Reflex as an ISP as part of the regular price which was about $30 for the whole package (the lowest price package).
Article about Reflex going out of business here:
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/business/reflex30.
AH FUCK. Moderate me (and my parent) down... I've been trolled.
You could start by clicking "No Score +1 Bonus"
The 12:00 problem is a simple matter of proper human interface design. Take the typical VCR for example.
... and so on. that was a couple of paragraphs from the "preparing to set the time" section. There are a couple more pages on actually setting the time, either automatically semiautomatically or manually.
I pulled those from a random manufacturer and a random vcr model's manual which is available as a PDF:
http://aviator.jvcservice.com/books/model.asp?Mod
Now, how about something like this for a replacement:
[Hour +] [Min +]
1 2 : 0 0
[Hour -] [Min -]
The [] symbols indicate a button here. (credit for this layout goes to Jeff Raskin from his book "The Humane Interface." an excellent read.)
You don't even NEED instructions for that.
I could guess all the plot "twists", which were really more like 15-degree bends. Is that the contempt of familiarity you spoke of, or am I just sick of the banal "stickin' it to The Man" structure?
:-) I was guessing it was because the computer details weren't acurate. That's what I meant about familiarity. Usually geeks complain about computer movies because the computer events are not technically accurate.
:-) check out SLC Punk. It's about a punker growing up in Salt Lake City. If you tend to like independent films I think you'll like it. Although since you specifically didn't like Matthew Lillard in Hackers, maybe you won't. :-)
Ok. I agree there wasn't much of a coherent plot. If this was what you didn't like, I can't argue with you there.
Fisher Stevens and Matthew Lillard. I kept wishing that the scenery they were chewing was toxic.
I hated Fisher Stevens and the woman he acted with. However, I like Matthew Lillard; I go see movies just because he's in them. If you want to see a movie where his weird personality is actually appropriate to the movie,
Actually, Hackers is one of my favorite movies. The thing is, it's just an art film. Cool music, clothes, colors, dancing, flashing lights, virtual reality. Lots of different visual and audio techniques to bring it all together (rotating phone booth, interposed video clips, echo effect on a certain typing scene). If it's the realism of the computer technology that bothers you (going out on a limb here) you must realize that they are only abstractions. If it's the "Plague" character that bothers you, then, maybe you have a point. I hate that guy. :-) Funny thing about movies with a certain topic. If it's too close to what you know already, you're not going to be able to suspend your disbelief.
(send me a reply. thanks!)
If Yahoo is feeling the banner pinch, how is slashdot.org dealing with this reality
Target demographics. Right now I'm looking at an ad that says "wanna try out Linux and FreeBSD on Compaq technology? click here www.testdrive.compaq.com. Compaq New Technologies Test Drive Program" You know they are paying prime dollar for the slashdot eyeballs.
Incidentally, one cool PC gaming website I like, www.shacknews.com (formerly shugashack) has started asking for donations so they can make it past tax day, due to a sudden shortfall caused by their banner company (UGO) not paying them since November. Apparently they broke Amazon's donation system due to too much load, but they also use paypal or you can send a check. I'm actually thinking of doing it... A lot of gaming sites are getting screwed over by the situation.
Now I'll never figure out who that Major Domo fellow is...
:)
In the future... motherboards may be nothing more than layers of nonconducting materials with thin conductors connecting various chips and sockets (into which other boards can be connected). Imagine the possibilities!
Kurt, You must think about what advertising is and what advertising is not. Advertising is not a banner ad outside the borders of the content screen. If you want to run ads, I mean real ads for big money, run ads as stories. Make them part of a certain category if you want people to be allowed to disable them (like Katz stories). Allow comments just like regular stories. Then people can flame ads for companies that they don't like, and even negative attention is good attention for advertisers. Or other people can point out more useful insightful information about the thing brought up. Ads of course would have to have some interesting text that gets the message across and not just buzwords or attempts to get click-throughs. The articles would be marked as advertisements. If you are going to advertise, advertise. Make sure /. gets paid big bucks for it.
Oh, I forgot to mention. No images in the ads! No animation, and no special coloring.
This advice does not apply to kuro5hin of course since articles are chosen by the readers.
(if you object to this idea and not banners, I'd like to know what the difference is)
ET Message, loud and clear:
Hello gentlemen!!!
All your base are belong to us.
My girlfriend wouldn't let me buy the 1/2 ton VAX for $105 though :(
You let your girlfriend tell you what to do?
"A day without banners is like a day without CowboyNeal"
Man, that Frapazoid guy is annoying. I thought they told him to shut up until the end.
Java's a lot faster in the newer versions. I can't give a number comparing it to C / C++, but raw speed doesn't matter for many applications anyway. Swing also has become better but there still are some issues. Hardware-accelerated buffering etc. will hopefully solve these problems in 1.4.
Translation: Java is fast. By fast I mean adequate. By adequate I mean slow.
(credits to whomever I stole this from.)
promised them $$
Isn't that entrapment?
I never trusted that Wonka fellow. Besides, his factories are unsafe and unsanitary.
:)
Wouldn't that just be MMORTS?
Isn't that a violation of anti-trust laws?
"You stay away from our customers we'll stay off yours."
?
I think the important thing, if you are thinking about falling in love and having a relationship, is to meet them in person, and get the relationship off-line as soon as possible. As long as it's on-line it's too easy to idealize the relationship. I mean really, if you think typing to another person online is a meaningful relationship, that alone is not really true.
Online, the other person appears to us how they think we want them to (and vice versa). The Desert of the Real can be quite desolate in comparison.
(of course the usual cautions about meeting strangers applies, even if you think you know all about them.)
Jef Raskin?
:)
Wow, I can't believe it. I just sent you an email last night. (A long rambling thing about wanting to write a new environment using your ideas.) Then I notice that one of my "old" posts on slashdot went from 7 replies to 8 replies and it was Jef Raskin himself.
(I noticed your posts aren't getting moderated up. On slashdot, if you don't reply to an article right away it won't get noticed, because the moderators' attention goes when they are done with the article and move on to the next. Slashdot doesn't make a good bulletin board, but it does keep the topic moving.)
Hmm, I guess I have nothing interesting to say other than I hope you have a chance to read the email I sent you earlier.
Don Rivers