No, the point is that the vast majority of computer users have more difficulty with icons than text, just as the vast majority of Chinese take-away customers in America have more difficulty with Chinese symbols than with English text equivalents.
You're like the guy who trains himself to recognize hundreds of icons at top speed, and then claims if he can do that, then icons must be superior to text for everybody.
because cameras cannot be converted to terminators
Exactly! Did nobody watch the movie? Cameras are inanimate, and don't travel back in time! Moreover, even if they did, do we really want webcams on tripods with mounted loudspeakers prowling the streets asking "are you Sarah Connor?"
You know your mouse pointer? You know, the one that changes to indicate what
actions are available depending on what you're pointing at? They're icons
too. Icons also take up significantly less space in a toolbar than text, and
are much faster for the human eye to recognise. The world of icons is not
restricted to what litters your desktop.
It's interesting you should mention that. Are icons really faster than text to recognize?
I doubt it. Humans are trained to read text from the time we start school, and we're really good at it for most of us.
In fact, I have no problem claiming we're better at it than recognizing icons. Here's an experiment for you to test this: Go to a Chinese takeaway (maybe not your regular one), and look at the menu. Read the words in English and on a blank piece of paper write down the dishes you remember. Now read the chinese characters, and on a blank piece of paper write down the ideograms you remember, and also the dishes they're associated with. I bet you do much better with the english text than with the chinese icons.
So what's the point of this experiment? Obviously we're more used to text than icons in the western world, so why insist on using icons in computing instead of text? We should play up to our strengths, not go out of our way to makes things more difficult.
Also real work does not always == coding. Icons indicating which tool you
have selected in photoshop (for instance) are most definitely used for 'real
work'.
And as far as a palette or a ribbon of icons for choosing actions in an app like photoshop or word is concerned, let's review the facts where speed really matters: gaming. Do you see a lot of gamers who like to click on large palettes of dozens of icons during their games, or do they generally prefer pressing buttons on the keyboard to change functions when they need it? Gamers care about speed a lot more than photoshop users do, so if your point had merit, why do games continue to emphasize keyboard interfaces?
I think icons sell computers, because they're novel and they look good in showrooms and adverts, and I suspect that's their main function in IT. It's an important function to be sure, since money's involved, but it's just marketing. Except for a few specialized applications, icons don't seem to *functionally* improve on text IMHO.
I've never understood the appeal of icons. I go out of my way to get rid of them on my desktop. I mean, what's the point? As soon as you open a window, they're hidden behind it. If you keep them in a toolbar or a dock instead and you make 'em they stay on top of application windows, now they interfere with the operation of those apps instead.
Moreover, the pictures are too small to contain readable text, and if you want to know what an icon does, you have to hover until the tooltip appears. And that's usually cryptic too.
I can see how icons are an art major's wet dream, but for real work I don't see any point in having them.
You're right, you *should* expect advertisements to probably lie, but you should *also* expect liars that are caught to be severely punished for doing it. Both ideas go together, and shouldn't be separated.
So yes, it's not surprising that Dell did this, but now that they've been caught, they should be accused and punished, so that next time they'll maybe think twice. That's how we train people, and that's how we can train corporations to behave better in society.
Congratulations on a beautiful website. The kids must really get a kick out of the course I bet...
There's an easy technical way for you to include paths without destroying the existing hypertextuality of the material. What you would do is add a sidebar as a separate frame say, with a linear structure. Don't just think of it as a TOC for the wiki material, you could perhaps expand it as a small essay that gives a high level overview of the course, with the supporting wiki pages in the other frame updating as you move through the essay, or the essay scrolling to keep up as you move through the wiki.
You should check out Gravitation by Misner Thorne and Wheeler for a nice example of what you're talking about. Unfortunately, gravitation is still really hard even with that approach, and only a tiny minority of people get beyond the first 300 pages.
Interesting, but I still think the phrase "6 degrees" is strongly associated with the game. As your article points out though, the scientific idea is better described as the small world hypothesis. Incidentally, that idea arises in various other fields too. In mathematics, the Erdos number is similar.
I'm pretty sure the "six degrees" was the average linkage between two people without perfect
information
You're wrong. The six degrees is a trivia game representing the maximum linkage between any one individual and Kevin Bacon. Mathematically, that only implies an upper bound of twelve degrees between any two individuals, using the triangle inequality. But go ahead, make it sound scientific and computer sciency. Bonus points for mentioning Buffy and vampires.
Personal Information: Disclaimer: This page is not created by the "real" Kevin Bacon but is meant as a tribute to him and his work. | Facebook. www.facebook.com/pages/Kevin-Bacon-/59999919189 - Cached - Similar
D'OH, looks like the facebook degrees of separation to the real Kevin Bacon is actually infinite.
FBEngineer1 "Hey guys, I just ran Dijkstra on Kevin Bacon and it says the degree of separation is oo"
FBEngineer2 "Whoa, what's that number 8 doing lying down on its side like that? Hey FBEngineer3, FBEngineer1 says there's 8 links to Kevin Bacon."
FBEngineer3 "That can't be right. Did he count the inlinks and the outlinks together or what? He has to divide by two! Hey, FB Engineer4, there's 4 degs of separation between people on facebook!"
FBEngineer4 "What'd you say? Only 4? Did you add a safety margin? Let's make it 4.74 just in case Zuck gets involved. That's better, it's ready to publish on the web!"
The problem with redefining yourself is, if you can do it once, then you can do it again. Not an argument that inspires confidence in the kind of customers who are worried about fickleness.
What have the human-readable source code to do with that argument? For such a plugin it's actually way easier to analyze byte code
than the source code. As long as the byte code is a standard, which we are talking about the whole time.
Like I said in the other thread, source code ("programming language code") intended for humans is higher level than source code ("bytecode") intended for compilers and VMs. It's just not comparable, but to truly understand that you have to play around with both types of code for a while. Maybe you have and still disagree, but for now I doubt it.
I don't think that the generated HTML code have anything to do with the open nature of the web. It have only to do with one
important fact: that HTML is an open standard. We shouldn't care less if (the tag) or 0x02 (the byte) is used, as long as it's an
open standard.
The C language is an open standard. Programs written in C and compiled into executables have existed for 30 years. Yet nobody (except for hackers who crack games) inspects the machine code in compiled executables.
HTML code is one "view source" button away from being inspected.
Open alone really has nothing to do with it, it's how "high level" the code is that matters (and ultimately how motivated the person - people with average motivation attempt average tasks, people with high motivation attempt more difficult tasks). The jquery example is
somewhere in the middle between fully documented maintainable source code, and bytecode.
Good luck with decompilers. A decompiler can only help with high level patterns that it can identify, but
those patterns are deliberately broken by optimizing compilers as part of the optimization process. Also, different compilers
(and languages) produce slightly different patterns so going the other way you'll need to know something about what language/compiler
created the bytecode.
Incidentally, disassemblers for executable files have existed for many decades on nearly every OS platform, and debuggers can be used to inspect what's going on at that level. It's a popular pastime in the warez scene. But experience shows that just doesn't achieve its potential. "Proper" programming language source code is just an order of magnitude superior and more versatile.
Sort of, like walking in public gives up some privacy because you can be observed at any moment, but it's usually a bunch of people who each only see a tiny fraction of your walk.
In the case of CCTVs, the privacy issue is much more serious, because now one single observer can piece together the full history of your walk if they want.
What makes 1863 such a good time for comparison? Social norms evolve
over time.
In 1863, women didn't have the right to vote,
and one hundred years later blacks still didn't have equal civil
rights.
What might have gotten a death penalty or even a simple
shot in the back yard without trial response in those days is no
longer acceptable today.
Should Manning be crucified today, because it was good enough for Jesus back in Roman times?
As long as the license is open, the original code available, and the common
practice of using minimized JS will increase, I don't see any problem or
difference with byte code.
There are other reasons to prefer source code. Maybe you have a security plugin that flags certain code patterns, maybe you want to undo some types of anti-social behaviour like popups/unders and whatever gets invented by the advertisers in the future.
Open source is great, but its true power is limited if your browser doesn't use it. Alternatively, one could also argue that the open nature of HTML was a kind of forced open source that applied to all web content, with spectacular results.
Did you even visit http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.min.js ?
I would say that's byte code, with just happens to have some ASCII characters
in it, instead of just byte tupels.
Yes I did. Bytecode is a lot worse than that. Try getting rid of
functions, if/else and structured loops of all kinds and replace with
gotos and memory or stack locations. The wikipedia
page has an example of what you can expect in Java for example.
Or start with the page on three address
code.
The jquery example you point out is mainly designed to reduce code
size and bandwidth costs, but if you want to learn how it does something and that file is all you have, then you can start
with a well defined entry point and you can trace what's going on
from there. It's painful sure, but an order of magnitude less painful than
your typical VM bytecode.
Modern bytecodes are designed to be very regular because that actually
helps optimizing compilers do weird transformations and reorderings that straddle several separate
source code statements. If you want the gory details, read the dragon
book.
Slowness is not a real issue, it's merely a symptom of inefficient javascript interpreters and inefficient threading in the browser. Fix the browser, and slowness won't be an problem. Neither is code size, btw. The difference between bytecode and source code isn't noticeable on today's fast network links, especially with all the other crap that's loaded in a modern web page.
The web already exploded. We're now well past that DIY point.
Nonsense. The web exploded a long time ago, but innovative new ideas keep appearing. Remember when Google first unveiled the autocompletion in the search bar? Everyone got excited and went through the javascript source to figure out how they did it, and then it wasn't just copied, but improved and made its way into all sorts of websites.
Innovation doesn't all happen at once, it's a small idea here, a small idea there, and then someone combines several ideas and pretty soon you have a full email app in a browser, etc.
There's a huge difference between reading/understanding bytecode and reading/understanding code written in a programming language. Bytecode is designed for efficiency and for compiler convenience, whereas programming languages are designed for human convenience (except brainfuck;-).
The average code written in a programming language is always going to be better than the average bytecode generated by a compiler, and if it's an optimizing compiler the bytecode will be even harder for a human to understand.
The difference between programming code and bytecode may be subtle in special cases, like the difference between BSD and GPL, but the long term effects are major.
I'd rather have source code than byte code. The web was built on visible code like HTML. Do you think it would have exploded if people couldn't look at the source to figure out how some neat web page was written?
I am the threat these
people always refer to but I am precisely part of the solution only they
refuse to cater to the markets available.
You are not part of the solution. The beancounters estimate the profit of entering new markets before a decision to do so gets made.
In many cases, it isn't worth it for those companies. Not because they could make a tiny amount of money from you, but because everything else, legal issues, tax issues, capital investments, required company resources, opportunity cost from not doing something else instead, even lower prices through increased competition, etc. Call that the inconvenience factor.
That's the problem with capitalism. It isn't about trading with the most number of people, it is about maximizing profit. The fact that you have money to spend is irrelevant if the inconvenience factor is too high. There's a sweet spot at any moment in time, and you're not part of it.
Get over it, and do what you have to do, just like they do what they have to do.
Slashdot Mirror
You're like the guy who trains himself to recognize hundreds of icons at top speed, and then claims if he can do that, then icons must be superior to text for everybody.
Exactly! Did nobody watch the movie? Cameras are inanimate, and don't travel back in time! Moreover, even if they did, do we really want webcams on tripods with mounted loudspeakers prowling the streets asking "are you Sarah Connor?"
It's interesting you should mention that. Are icons really faster than text to recognize? I doubt it. Humans are trained to read text from the time we start school, and we're really good at it for most of us.
In fact, I have no problem claiming we're better at it than recognizing icons. Here's an experiment for you to test this: Go to a Chinese takeaway (maybe not your regular one), and look at the menu. Read the words in English and on a blank piece of paper write down the dishes you remember. Now read the chinese characters, and on a blank piece of paper write down the ideograms you remember, and also the dishes they're associated with. I bet you do much better with the english text than with the chinese icons.
So what's the point of this experiment? Obviously we're more used to text than icons in the western world, so why insist on using icons in computing instead of text? We should play up to our strengths, not go out of our way to makes things more difficult.
And as far as a palette or a ribbon of icons for choosing actions in an app like photoshop or word is concerned, let's review the facts where speed really matters: gaming. Do you see a lot of gamers who like to click on large palettes of dozens of icons during their games, or do they generally prefer pressing buttons on the keyboard to change functions when they need it? Gamers care about speed a lot more than photoshop users do, so if your point had merit, why do games continue to emphasize keyboard interfaces?
I think icons sell computers, because they're novel and they look good in showrooms and adverts, and I suspect that's their main function in IT. It's an important function to be sure, since money's involved, but it's just marketing. Except for a few specialized applications, icons don't seem to *functionally* improve on text IMHO.
I can see how icons are an art major's wet dream, but for real work I don't see any point in having them.
So yes, it's not surprising that Dell did this, but now that they've been caught, they should be accused and punished, so that next time they'll maybe think twice. That's how we train people, and that's how we can train corporations to behave better in society.
I feel old. My quantum physics professor handed out stapled and photocopied pages of his handwritten notes to the class...
There's an easy technical way for you to include paths without destroying the existing hypertextuality of the material. What you would do is add a sidebar as a separate frame say, with a linear structure. Don't just think of it as a TOC for the wiki material, you could perhaps expand it as a small essay that gives a high level overview of the course, with the supporting wiki pages in the other frame updating as you move through the essay, or the essay scrolling to keep up as you move through the wiki.
You should check out Gravitation by Misner Thorne and Wheeler for a nice example of what you're talking about. Unfortunately, gravitation is still really hard even with that approach, and only a tiny minority of people get beyond the first 300 pages.
Interesting, but I still think the phrase "6 degrees" is strongly associated with the game. As your article points out though, the scientific idea is better described as the small world hypothesis. Incidentally, that idea arises in various other fields too. In mathematics, the Erdos number is similar.
You're wrong. The six degrees is a trivia game representing the maximum linkage between any one individual and Kevin Bacon. Mathematically, that only implies an upper bound of twelve degrees between any two individuals, using the triangle inequality. But go ahead, make it sound scientific and computer sciency. Bonus points for mentioning Buffy and vampires.
google kevin bacon facebook
1.Kevin Bacon * | Facebook
Personal Information: Disclaimer: This page is not created by the "real"
Kevin
Bacon but is meant as a tribute to him and his work. | Facebook.
www.facebook.com/pages/Kevin-Bacon-/59999919189 - Cached - Similar
D'OH, looks like the facebook degrees of separation to the real Kevin
Bacon is actually infinite.
FBEngineer1 "Hey guys, I just ran Dijkstra on Kevin Bacon and it says
the degree of separation is oo"
FBEngineer2 "Whoa, what's that number 8 doing lying down on its side
like that? Hey FBEngineer3, FBEngineer1 says there's 8
links to Kevin Bacon."
FBEngineer3 "That can't be right. Did he count the inlinks and the
outlinks together or what? He has to divide by two! Hey, FB
Engineer4, there's 4 degs of separation between people on facebook!"
FBEngineer4 "What'd you say? Only 4? Did you add a safety margin?
Let's make it 4.74 just in case Zuck gets involved. That's better,
it's ready to publish on the web!"
The problem with redefining yourself is, if you can do it once, then you can do it again. Not an argument that inspires confidence in the kind of customers who are worried about fickleness.
Like I said in the other thread, source code ("programming language code") intended for humans is higher level than source code ("bytecode") intended for compilers and VMs. It's just not comparable, but to truly understand that you have to play around with both types of code for a while. Maybe you have and still disagree, but for now I doubt it.
The C language is an open standard. Programs written in C and compiled into executables have existed for 30 years. Yet nobody (except for hackers who crack games) inspects the machine code in compiled executables. HTML code is one "view source" button away from being inspected.
Open alone really has nothing to do with it, it's how "high level" the code is that matters (and ultimately how motivated the person - people with average motivation attempt average tasks, people with high motivation attempt more difficult tasks). The jquery example is somewhere in the middle between fully documented maintainable source code, and bytecode.
Incidentally, disassemblers for executable files have existed for many decades on nearly every OS platform, and debuggers can be used to inspect what's going on at that level. It's a popular pastime in the warez scene. But experience shows that just doesn't achieve its potential. "Proper" programming language source code is just an order of magnitude superior and more versatile.
In the case of CCTVs, the privacy issue is much more serious, because now one single observer can piece together the full history of your walk if they want.
What makes 1863 such a good time for comparison? Social norms evolve over time. In 1863, women didn't have the right to vote, and one hundred years later blacks still didn't have equal civil rights. What might have gotten a death penalty or even a simple shot in the back yard without trial response in those days is no longer acceptable today. Should Manning be crucified today, because it was good enough for Jesus back in Roman times?
There are other reasons to prefer source code. Maybe you have a security plugin that flags certain code patterns, maybe you want to undo some types of anti-social behaviour like popups/unders and whatever gets invented by the advertisers in the future.
Open source is great, but its true power is limited if your browser doesn't use it. Alternatively, one could also argue that the open nature of HTML was a kind of forced open source that applied to all web content, with spectacular results.
Yes I did. Bytecode is a lot worse than that. Try getting rid of functions, if/else and structured loops of all kinds and replace with gotos and memory or stack locations. The wikipedia page has an example of what you can expect in Java for example. Or start with the page on three address code.
The jquery example you point out is mainly designed to reduce code size and bandwidth costs, but if you want to learn how it does something and that file is all you have, then you can start with a well defined entry point and you can trace what's going on from there. It's painful sure, but an order of magnitude less painful than your typical VM bytecode.
Modern bytecodes are designed to be very regular because that actually helps optimizing compilers do weird transformations and reorderings that straddle several separate source code statements. If you want the gory details, read the dragon book.
Slowness is not a real issue, it's merely a symptom of inefficient javascript interpreters and inefficient threading in the browser. Fix the browser, and slowness won't be an problem. Neither is code size, btw. The difference between bytecode and source code isn't noticeable on today's fast network links, especially with all the other crap that's loaded in a modern web page.
Nonsense. The web exploded a long time ago, but innovative new ideas keep appearing. Remember when Google first unveiled the autocompletion in the search bar? Everyone got excited and went through the javascript source to figure out how they did it, and then it wasn't just copied, but improved and made its way into all sorts of websites.
Innovation doesn't all happen at once, it's a small idea here, a small idea there, and then someone combines several ideas and pretty soon you have a full email app in a browser, etc.
The average code written in a programming language is always going to be better than the average bytecode generated by a compiler, and if it's an optimizing compiler the bytecode will be even harder for a human to understand.
The difference between programming code and bytecode may be subtle in special cases, like the difference between BSD and GPL, but the long term effects are major.
I'd rather have source code than byte code. The web was built on visible code like HTML. Do you think it would have exploded if people couldn't look at the source to figure out how some neat web page was written?
That's what a compressed trie effectively does. Knuth, TAOCP III, pp 492ff.
As a grammar Nazi, I request that somebody kill me now, please!
You are not part of the solution. The beancounters estimate the profit of entering new markets before a decision to do so gets made. In many cases, it isn't worth it for those companies. Not because they could make a tiny amount of money from you, but because everything else, legal issues, tax issues, capital investments, required company resources, opportunity cost from not doing something else instead, even lower prices through increased competition, etc. Call that the inconvenience factor.
That's the problem with capitalism. It isn't about trading with the most number of people, it is about maximizing profit. The fact that you have money to spend is irrelevant if the inconvenience factor is too high. There's a sweet spot at any moment in time, and you're not part of it.
Get over it, and do what you have to do, just like they do what they have to do.