Personally, more clothing doesn't help the extremities that matter most - my fingers. If I have to spend all day typing and it's cold in my office, I can't put gloves on.
I'd prefer to sit around in my t-shirt and shorts at 28C, but I can compromise and wear a sweater at 24C. At 22C I start to freeze solid.
And I'm Canadian! Ha! (I was born in Singapore, though.:P)
Every time you try to operate one of the weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know youve done it.
I agree with basically everything you've said here. The government has no real business in marriage or sex, as long as all the adult parties involved are conscenting.
Marriage didn't used to entertwine state and church so much. The marriage 'contract' that went to the state used to be signed on the Church steps, because that wasn't a union being recognized by God. The state's business stayed OUTSIDE the church.
In the end, 'marriage' has become a loaded term. I think all anyone wants is legal 'civil unions', but the right to call them 'marriage'.
If you look at this at a very base economic level, it makes a great deal of sense. 3 adults are considerably more capable of raising children than 2. Two incomes and one full-time stay at home parent is an obvious win. The adage 'it takes a village to raise a child' still holds true, but 'the village' doesn't seem to want to do it anymore. Better that we can form our own villages for the benefit of the children.
'I had no intention of buying that CD/Software/thingme in the first place.'
This statement implicitly confirms that you didn't WANT or NEED the services in question. Certainly not enough to pay the money for them. However, many people turn right around and TAKE it anyway, putting a lie to their statement. They DID have intention to buy the product, they just didn't want to pay the price that was being charged.
That ISN'T your decision to make. You ARE costing somebody something, despite your active and inaccurate protestations to the contrary. If you didn't have any plans to buy the thing, you probably don't have any plans to get it through illicit channels, either.
Actually, it sounds like what you need is duplication of the important menu items on BOTH monitors somehow, without being confusing or messing up your menu bar. This is interesting.
Could you do me a small favour and determine approximately how large a menu item is on your screen? I just need a height/width approximation for both OSes. Oh, and the size of your monitors in the same units as those menu items. I'd be interested to do some back of the envelope calculations to see how fast you could THEORETICALLY be getting to menu items.:)
I'll get back to you with the results, if you like.
No, Fitts' law still holds. What you're thinking of is a reduction in the use of muscle memory. However, unless the application name is QUITE large, I find that my attempts to find the menu items largely through automatic muscle memory movement are unaffected.
Some people are unwilling to change. The command line could be considered 'cruft' as well, from certain perspectives. The one-button mouse and trashcan-eject still work well enough, and there are other methods as well. You don't have to rely on them at all.
As for my sig, read my other responses in this thread. I have my reasons. I don't really think it my opinion requires name-calling. To be honest, from this brief interaction with you, you're the reason why I don't think people should have negative mod points.
I disagree. While I agree that some of the moderators may use their points responsibly, I think that most people just waste them doing a job that they shouldn't be allowed to do. I HAVE taken it up with Cmdr. Taco himself, and he doesn't agree with me. This is my form of protest. I think the system is flawed. The practice of karma-bombing is fairly well documented, and this is pretty much the only avenue I have left. It prompts a response from people like you, and even if you disagree with my methods, I've at least gotten the chance to tell you how I think the system is broken. Slowly, I might be able to convince more people, and then maybe the Slashdot editors will listen to us.
I would actually feel much better about the system if it took TWICE as many points to mod negatively as positively. People use the negative points too readily, and it makes my job as a temp moderator harder when I'm trying to look for honestly good material to promote.
I agree with most of your points. Keep in mind that I never looked twice at a Mac until OS X, and I didn't own one until I got my G5.
I know I come across as trying to defend them across the board, but I'm not really trying to. I'm just giving them credit for bothering to have a document that lays out some reasonable guidelines, doing UI usability testing, and generally holding people to high standards. I look at the state of other UIs, and am largely dissapointed in both OSS and commercial attempts to provide a useable, workable interface. Apple currently is the worst of all evils, so I'll throw behind them, and hope that convincing others to at least read the documents they provide will lead to better HCI in the long term.
As I've explained many times, I have my reasons for doing this. Mainly, I don't think the moderation system works. Temporary moderators shouldn't be able to moderate negatively, since they tend to abuse the system. The perma-moderators should do all of that. The rest of us should spend our time moderating comments UP.
Most of the time, negative mod points are used just because people don't like what's being said, not because what's being said is ACTUALLY flamebait, a troll or overrated. 'Overrated' is way too subjective in any case.
I say again, consistency is worth a considerable amount. Even if you find a system subjectively poor (ie. you find it annoying) , it's possible that it's objectively (that is, testably) better to use, just because it's consistent.
Again, Apple doesn't always make the perfect decision, but at least you're basically always sure of what you're getting. In the cases where they're RIGHT (and there are several), you've got a huge win because everyone is doing things right. In the cases where they're doing things wrong, well, it sucks. But you'll never be confused about it, which is better than it sucking, but you're not sure exactly how the system is going to bend you over today.
As for proportional sliders, I don't know. Maybe people didn't really complain. Maybe they tested it in the lab, and people found them easier/faster/better to use. Maybe people didn't like them, but were so used to them that switching didn't seem like a good idea. You'd have to ask Apple.
Not at all. In fact, the problem is seriously and badly amplified with such a large monitor. The elements that you're trying to point to are now even smaller, and you have to go further to get to them. In such an instance, having something that you can throw your mouse pointer up at should be relatively faster, as long as you haven't attempted to eat a rock and set your mouse movement speed or acceleration very low.
An even better system at that point would actually be NeXTStep's implementation of application menus. The application menu sat in the top left corner at all times (though you could move it around, if you wanted to), but right clicking brought a copy of the menu to the mouse pointer. It wasn't contextual - it was a full application menu. Such menus have their drawbacks as well, though.
This may sound lame, but at least they're consistent.:P
I mean, you can get used to stupid things, as long as you have to do them all the time. I agree that those decisions weren't optimal, but they were documented and adhered to. This is in contrast to systems where some applications are well done, and some are brutal, but you never know what you're going to get. Consistency can buy you a lot of leeway - it's something that Microsoft banks on. Their interface is pretty rotten, but there's enough consistency that people now find it familiar, and projects like KDE copy quite a few of the UI elements just for credibility.
So, at least Apple has a document. It means that their boneheaded decisions can be looked at critically and changed for the better. Contrast this with the undocumented or non-existed guidelines that other OSes have, and Apple definitely has a leg up.
There are reasons for the decisions that Apple makes, and a lot of them are documented. You can look at their Human Interface Guidelines here.
To quickly answer why they have the menus at the top of the screen: Fitts' law, which describes the amount of time that it takes to move a mouse pointer to an object on the screen, indicates that it's easier to get to the menu items at the top, since you can move your mouse pointer up with no regard for missing the menu bar. Because you run up against the edge of the screen, that parameter is effectively infinite, and reduces the amount of fine controlling you have to do to select your item.
You can also do further reading about such user interface decisions in the book 'The Humane Interface' by Jef Raskin, one of the orginal developers of the Macintosh and its interface. Their decisions for dragging disks to the trash, and having a one button mouse really DID make sense at the time, but a lot of those decisions are lost on us now, especially if we don't have a long Mac background.
Re:If you are going to Auto-horn-blow...
on
The Long Tail
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Gimme a break. That's not his job. If I write an article and it's crap, and I submit it anyway, it's up to the Moderators to accept or reject it. Somebody decided that it was interesting enough to post - somebody that works for slashdot. If that's not enough of a screening process, then it's not the writer of the article or the editor of the magazine that needs to change, it's the editors of slashdot.
Besides, what would the difference have been if I had seen this article on their website and submitted it and gotten it accepted? Would you be complaining then about his writing credentials?
Where're all the people that come around to say that Nintendo is irrelevant and going out of business? Almost a billion dollars in revenue? I guess they just barely staved off death for one more year.
When I got married, I had my friend do it (at the time, it was possible to get a temporary officiant's license for a day), had two witnesses (and an extra friend) and did it in my living room. Afterwards, we went for an expensive brunch. The whole cost of the wedding was less than $400CDN. I could have afforded more, but neither of us wanted to make a show out of it. We had fun and did what we wanted.
That said, if your idea of a wedding is a more traditional one, go for it.
The click wheel works exactly like the scroll wheel. The only thing that it replaces are the 4 buttons just underneath the screen.
I use my iPod in the car all the time (most of my iPod use is in the car). I find that having a playlist of high-rated songs that are randomly selected tends to cut down on the amount of operation that I need to put in. If I don't like the song, I just hit the 'forward' button, and I'm done with it. For in-car use, pre-generated playlists are the way to go. Otherwise, just wait until a light or a traffic jam.:)
Not so. In Lisa's example, Tigers DO exist. They aren't invented, there just aren't any there.
In situations like this, it's hard to prove causality, and it's all I'm trying to point out. While it's true that there are definitely enemies of the US lurking both outside and inside its borders, there's no guarantee that it's the Bush administration's policies that are keeping them at bay. Perhaps they're working on new strategies for attacking, or perhaps they're waiting for a more strategically advangageous time to attack. Neither of us can know exactly why they're not currently blowing something up, so it's unreasonable to make such assertions.
I was very careful to say that I don't know if Bush has helped or hindered the situation - that's not my place to say.
As for your final analogy, I'm afraid it doesn't work like that with terrorists. You can threaten a country into submission, but by their very nature, Terrorists don't respond well to threats. Anybody that is willing to throwthemselves in the line of fire with a bomb strapped to their body isn't going to pay much attention to the rock that you're brandishing, no matter how large.
Slashdot Mirror
So make a skill testing question or questions to go on the back. Don't award money to people that can't answer the questions.
Personally, more clothing doesn't help the extremities that matter most - my fingers. If I have to spend all day typing and it's cold in my office, I can't put gloves on.
:P)
I'd prefer to sit around in my t-shirt and shorts at 28C, but I can compromise and wear a sweater at 24C. At 22C I start to freeze solid.
And I'm Canadian! Ha!
(I was born in Singapore, though.
Every time you try to operate one of the weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know youve done it.
The story is just a few items down, too. Is there something about THIS announcement of episode one?
Check the first story for a good mirror link.
I agree with basically everything you've said here. The government has no real business in marriage or sex, as long as all the adult parties involved are conscenting.
Marriage didn't used to entertwine state and church so much. The marriage 'contract' that went to the state used to be signed on the Church steps, because that wasn't a union being recognized by God. The state's business stayed OUTSIDE the church.
In the end, 'marriage' has become a loaded term. I think all anyone wants is legal 'civil unions', but the right to call them 'marriage'.
If you look at this at a very base economic level, it makes a great deal of sense. 3 adults are considerably more capable of raising children than 2. Two incomes and one full-time stay at home parent is an obvious win. The adage 'it takes a village to raise a child' still holds true, but 'the village' doesn't seem to want to do it anymore. Better that we can form our own villages for the benefit of the children.
This is what I hate about these arguments.
'I had no intention of buying that CD/Software/thingme in the first place.'
This statement implicitly confirms that you didn't WANT or NEED the services in question. Certainly not enough to pay the money for them. However, many people turn right around and TAKE it anyway, putting a lie to their statement. They DID have intention to buy the product, they just didn't want to pay the price that was being charged.
That ISN'T your decision to make. You ARE costing somebody something, despite your active and inaccurate protestations to the contrary. If you didn't have any plans to buy the thing, you probably don't have any plans to get it through illicit channels, either.
Actually, it sounds like what you need is duplication of the important menu items on BOTH monitors somehow, without being confusing or messing up your menu bar. This is interesting.
:)
Could you do me a small favour and determine approximately how large a menu item is on your screen? I just need a height/width approximation for both OSes. Oh, and the size of your monitors in the same units as those menu items. I'd be interested to do some back of the envelope calculations to see how fast you could THEORETICALLY be getting to menu items.
I'll get back to you with the results, if you like.
No, Fitts' law still holds. What you're thinking of is a reduction in the use of muscle memory. However, unless the application name is QUITE large, I find that my attempts to find the menu items largely through automatic muscle memory movement are unaffected.
Some people are unwilling to change. The command line could be considered 'cruft' as well, from certain perspectives. The one-button mouse and trashcan-eject still work well enough, and there are other methods as well. You don't have to rely on them at all.
As for my sig, read my other responses in this thread. I have my reasons. I don't really think it my opinion requires name-calling. To be honest, from this brief interaction with you, you're the reason why I don't think people should have negative mod points.
I disagree. While I agree that some of the moderators may use their points responsibly, I think that most people just waste them doing a job that they shouldn't be allowed to do. I HAVE taken it up with Cmdr. Taco himself, and he doesn't agree with me. This is my form of protest. I think the system is flawed. The practice of karma-bombing is fairly well documented, and this is pretty much the only avenue I have left. It prompts a response from people like you, and even if you disagree with my methods, I've at least gotten the chance to tell you how I think the system is broken. Slowly, I might be able to convince more people, and then maybe the Slashdot editors will listen to us.
I would actually feel much better about the system if it took TWICE as many points to mod negatively as positively. People use the negative points too readily, and it makes my job as a temp moderator harder when I'm trying to look for honestly good material to promote.
I agree with most of your points. Keep in mind that I never looked twice at a Mac until OS X, and I didn't own one until I got my G5.
I know I come across as trying to defend them across the board, but I'm not really trying to. I'm just giving them credit for bothering to have a document that lays out some reasonable guidelines, doing UI usability testing, and generally holding people to high standards. I look at the state of other UIs, and am largely dissapointed in both OSS and commercial attempts to provide a useable, workable interface. Apple currently is the worst of all evils, so I'll throw behind them, and hope that convincing others to at least read the documents they provide will lead to better HCI in the long term.
As I've explained many times, I have my reasons for doing this. Mainly, I don't think the moderation system works. Temporary moderators shouldn't be able to moderate negatively, since they tend to abuse the system. The perma-moderators should do all of that. The rest of us should spend our time moderating comments UP.
Most of the time, negative mod points are used just because people don't like what's being said, not because what's being said is ACTUALLY flamebait, a troll or overrated. 'Overrated' is way too subjective in any case.
I stand by my sig.
Well, you've got to start somewhere. :P
I say again, consistency is worth a considerable amount. Even if you find a system subjectively poor (ie. you find it annoying) , it's possible that it's objectively (that is, testably) better to use, just because it's consistent.
Again, Apple doesn't always make the perfect decision, but at least you're basically always sure of what you're getting. In the cases where they're RIGHT (and there are several), you've got a huge win because everyone is doing things right. In the cases where they're doing things wrong, well, it sucks. But you'll never be confused about it, which is better than it sucking, but you're not sure exactly how the system is going to bend you over today.
As for proportional sliders, I don't know. Maybe people didn't really complain. Maybe they tested it in the lab, and people found them easier/faster/better to use. Maybe people didn't like them, but were so used to them that switching didn't seem like a good idea. You'd have to ask Apple.
Not at all. In fact, the problem is seriously and badly amplified with such a large monitor. The elements that you're trying to point to are now even smaller, and you have to go further to get to them. In such an instance, having something that you can throw your mouse pointer up at should be relatively faster, as long as you haven't attempted to eat a rock and set your mouse movement speed or acceleration very low.
An even better system at that point would actually be NeXTStep's implementation of application menus. The application menu sat in the top left corner at all times (though you could move it around, if you wanted to), but right clicking brought a copy of the menu to the mouse pointer. It wasn't contextual - it was a full application menu. Such menus have their drawbacks as well, though.
This may sound lame, but at least they're consistent. :P
I mean, you can get used to stupid things, as long as you have to do them all the time. I agree that those decisions weren't optimal, but they were documented and adhered to. This is in contrast to systems where some applications are well done, and some are brutal, but you never know what you're going to get. Consistency can buy you a lot of leeway - it's something that Microsoft banks on. Their interface is pretty rotten, but there's enough consistency that people now find it familiar, and projects like KDE copy quite a few of the UI elements just for credibility.
So, at least Apple has a document. It means that their boneheaded decisions can be looked at critically and changed for the better. Contrast this with the undocumented or non-existed guidelines that other OSes have, and Apple definitely has a leg up.
There are reasons for the decisions that Apple makes, and a lot of them are documented. You can look at their Human Interface Guidelines here.
To quickly answer why they have the menus at the top of the screen: Fitts' law, which describes the amount of time that it takes to move a mouse pointer to an object on the screen, indicates that it's easier to get to the menu items at the top, since you can move your mouse pointer up with no regard for missing the menu bar. Because you run up against the edge of the screen, that parameter is effectively infinite, and reduces the amount of fine controlling you have to do to select your item.
You can also do further reading about such user interface decisions in the book 'The Humane Interface' by Jef Raskin, one of the orginal developers of the Macintosh and its interface. Their decisions for dragging disks to the trash, and having a one button mouse really DID make sense at the time, but a lot of those decisions are lost on us now, especially if we don't have a long Mac background.
Gimme a break. That's not his job. If I write an article and it's crap, and I submit it anyway, it's up to the Moderators to accept or reject it. Somebody decided that it was interesting enough to post - somebody that works for slashdot. If that's not enough of a screening process, then it's not the writer of the article or the editor of the magazine that needs to change, it's the editors of slashdot.
Besides, what would the difference have been if I had seen this article on their website and submitted it and gotten it accepted? Would you be complaining then about his writing credentials?
Where're all the people that come around to say that Nintendo is irrelevant and going out of business? Almost a billion dollars in revenue? I guess they just barely staved off death for one more year.
Hey, no problem. I'm not offended. :)
:D
And I'm sure this is the way she wanted it. If I weren't, I probably wouldn't have married her, eh?
It was more her idea than mine. Neither of us are big on ceremony.
What an entirely anachronistic tradition. :P
When I got married, I had my friend do it (at the time, it was possible to get a temporary officiant's license for a day), had two witnesses (and an extra friend) and did it in my living room. Afterwards, we went for an expensive brunch. The whole cost of the wedding was less than $400CDN. I could have afforded more, but neither of us wanted to make a show out of it. We had fun and did what we wanted.
That said, if your idea of a wedding is a more traditional one, go for it.
The click wheel works exactly like the scroll wheel. The only thing that it replaces are the 4 buttons just underneath the screen.
:)
I use my iPod in the car all the time (most of my iPod use is in the car). I find that having a playlist of high-rated songs that are randomly selected tends to cut down on the amount of operation that I need to put in. If I don't like the song, I just hit the 'forward' button, and I'm done with it. For in-car use, pre-generated playlists are the way to go. Otherwise, just wait until a light or a traffic jam.
Not so. In Lisa's example, Tigers DO exist. They aren't invented, there just aren't any there.
In situations like this, it's hard to prove causality, and it's all I'm trying to point out. While it's true that there are definitely enemies of the US lurking both outside and inside its borders, there's no guarantee that it's the Bush administration's policies that are keeping them at bay. Perhaps they're working on new strategies for attacking, or perhaps they're waiting for a more strategically advangageous time to attack. Neither of us can know exactly why they're not currently blowing something up, so it's unreasonable to make such assertions.
I was very careful to say that I don't know if Bush has helped or hindered the situation - that's not my place to say.
As for your final analogy, I'm afraid it doesn't work like that with terrorists. You can threaten a country into submission, but by their very nature, Terrorists don't respond well to threats. Anybody that is willing to throwthemselves in the line of fire with a bomb strapped to their body isn't going to pay much attention to the rock that you're brandishing, no matter how large.