The No Original Research clause is pretty clear on the “not already published by reliable sources” part, yet I’ve seen multiple instances of my fellow researchers’ contributions get reverted because they happened to include a paper written by the contributor herself/himself. Never mind that the paper was peer-reviewed by those qualified to do so, and appeared in a reputed conference or journal.
"clumsy user", "clueless user", "semi-rational user", "a sign that the user doesn't know what he is doing",...
If you have ever conducted user studies of browsing behavior, you would see that the tasks that Aza describes are exactly the ones users perform in the real world. Why do you think it's unexpected for a user to pause a current browsing session and look for something unrelated, and wish to keep that search session separate from the previous one?
No, simply a new window would not be sufficient, because pretty soon, you end up with several different windows, and not all of us have the luxury of 30" displays to arrange them on. Yes, this is a window manager built into the browser, because default window managers have been inadequate in coping with the number of browser windows and applications users have open. If they were adequate, tabs would never have been needed in the first place.
From initial design sketches, this does seem like it will contribute its fair share to helping with the information overload problem. The only way to confirm that this is indeed a usable solution is to run it by users in real-world studies. You'd be surprised how much the average user or the power user differs from engineers and developers.
I'm a Ph.D. student in Computer Science. I have been fully funded all through my academic career here in the US at Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech. The same is the case with many (but not 100%) students getting Masters and Ph.D.s in Computer Science that I know of. There usually are a few paid assistantship positions that require security clearance, but most basic and applied research is not confidential.
The funding isn't just a giveaway, of course -- I have to work for it and show results in return for the money from the NSF. As a symbiotic advantage, I get an advanced degree in the process.
Empirical evidence, though, and I don't know where I might find a citation for you.
First off the font system is purely a legacy thing, since Tex predates pretty much all other currently popular font tech. So could LaTeX be retrofitted to use TrueType for everything? Probably. In a 100% backwards compatible way? Only if a genius pulls a freaking miracle out of his butt.
You just described XeTeX. Here's a list of the features, taken from Wikipedia:
XeTeX is a TeX typesetting engine using Unicode and supporting modern font technologies such as OpenType or Apple Advanced Typography. [...] XeTeX has simple font installation and can use any installed fonts in the operating system without configuring TeX font metrics. XeTeX uses AAT when working on Mac OS X using the xdv2pdf driver, or FreeType using dvipdfmx (which is the default on Windows or Linux). As a result, XeTeX can access font features such as alternative glyphs, special ligatures, swashes and variable font weights. Support for OpenType local typographic conventions (locl tag) is also present. XeTeX allows even raw OpenType feature tags to be passed to the the font.
I've written my research proposal using XeTeX and modern typography, and am in the process of typesetting an entire book with the same foundations.
Interface and ease-of-use: Unknown / Revolutionary among mobile phones when it first arrived.
I'm just saying that hardware specs are only part of the picture, and people base their decisions on several other factors which are sometimes more important to them than to us geeks.
Key to Mr. Gates's plan will be for businesses to dedicate their top people to poor issues
You mean, like google.org?
Of course, not to discount the Gates Foundation, but what he's proposing seems closer to the Google.org model than the Gates Foundation model.
[...] I'm not saying that there aren't bugs that I find that are perfectly legit [...]
We in the software industry have taken on a very narrow definition of what constitutes a bug. If it doesn't perform to spec, it's a bug. But the spec is not what drives the software — the user does. Consequently, anything that doesn't work according to the user's expectations is really a bug. The second type of bugs are usability bugs.
[...] when the update prompt came up, they were clicking "Cancel" without even reading the popup message. [...]
Though we wish the popup dialog would be seen and acknowledged by the user, it is often not — that is just human tendency and any software designed to be used by humans must take it into account. Usability practitioners often suggest that undo is better than warning dialogs for precisely this reason. Although it takes more effort for the developer to add undo capability, it is much more effective for the user because she now knows the exact consequences of her past action and an easy way to revert back to a previous known state.
You're exactly right. While thinking about this problem a few weeks ago, I wrote up a detailed description of how your fourth step (and 1 to 3, of course) could be accomplished with existing and evolving standards.
This time, Bill Gates is actually giving away money if you forward messages! I kid you not, they have to pay their customers (well, OK, their customers' favorite charities) to get people to use their software.
These companies are just the big fish. There are numerous smaller companies with even more nefarious modus operandii. What they often do is to hire Indian workers as H1-Bs, and then farm them out to American companies. The role of the middleman is simply to act as an incorporated company that applies for H1-B visas. Note that nowhere in the process is a match between skills and job requirements sought.
These middle-men (called "contractors", counter to the use of the same phrase in American parlance) will often take a chunk of the paycheck. This is also why you will see conflicting reports about whether H1-B workers are paid equal to or less than their American counterparts (the company pays equally; not all employees receive that entire amount.)
Because of this misuse, there are a lot of folks I know who, despite their U.S.-earned Masters and Doctoral degrees, are being denied the possibility of working with a U.S. company, typically those that they have already interned at, and demonstrated their capability as well as irreplaceability w.r.t. the requirements of a particular job.
I totally support an upper limit on the number of H1-B workers a company can hire, expressed as a percentage of the U.S. workers currently on their payroll.
Slashdot Mirror
The No Original Research clause is pretty clear on the “not already published by reliable sources” part, yet I’ve seen multiple instances of my fellow researchers’ contributions get reverted because they happened to include a paper written by the contributor herself/himself. Never mind that the paper was peer-reviewed by those qualified to do so, and appeared in a reputed conference or journal.
"clumsy user", "clueless user", "semi-rational user", "a sign that the user doesn't know what he is doing", ...
If you have ever conducted user studies of browsing behavior, you would see that the tasks that Aza describes are exactly the ones users perform in the real world. Why do you think it's unexpected for a user to pause a current browsing session and look for something unrelated, and wish to keep that search session separate from the previous one?
No, simply a new window would not be sufficient, because pretty soon, you end up with several different windows, and not all of us have the luxury of 30" displays to arrange them on. Yes, this is a window manager built into the browser, because default window managers have been inadequate in coping with the number of browser windows and applications users have open. If they were adequate, tabs would never have been needed in the first place.
From initial design sketches, this does seem like it will contribute its fair share to helping with the information overload problem. The only way to confirm that this is indeed a usable solution is to run it by users in real-world studies. You'd be surprised how much the average user or the power user differs from engineers and developers.
You could try to create eyeballs from scratch, but all you'll end up with is Frankenstein.
+1 for Trepidity.
I'm a Ph.D. student in Computer Science. I have been fully funded all through my academic career here in the US at Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech. The same is the case with many (but not 100%) students getting Masters and Ph.D.s in Computer Science that I know of. There usually are a few paid assistantship positions that require security clearance, but most basic and applied research is not confidential.
The funding isn't just a giveaway, of course -- I have to work for it and show results in return for the money from the NSF. As a symbiotic advantage, I get an advanced degree in the process.
Empirical evidence, though, and I don't know where I might find a citation for you.
American workers take a 25% haircut and become competitive again.
I chopped off my hair to 3/4th of its length, but that didn't help me be competitive.
Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
Oh boy. Talk about a broken window fallacy.
Are we sure it's extinct? It may just be resting. Probably pining for the fjords.
Thank you, and don't forget to tip your server.
I did as you said; it landed with a thud and now it won't reboot.
Actually, Arthur Dent was the original Sandwich Maker. Millions of years ago, on Lamuella. Made from Perfectly Normal Beast.
... Backwards.
It's just so they can strong-ARM Intel in the future.
Maybe they should ask these guys? May I suggest this as an obvious avatar for Pat?
Obligatory reference to Cory Doctorow's Printcrime.
First off the font system is purely a legacy thing, since Tex predates pretty much all other currently popular font tech. So could LaTeX be retrofitted to use TrueType for everything? Probably. In a 100% backwards compatible way? Only if a genius pulls a freaking miracle out of his butt.
You just described XeTeX. Here's a list of the features, taken from Wikipedia:
XeTeX is a TeX typesetting engine using Unicode and supporting modern font technologies such as OpenType or Apple Advanced Typography. [...] XeTeX has simple font installation and can use any installed fonts in the operating system without configuring TeX font metrics. XeTeX uses AAT when working on Mac OS X using the xdv2pdf driver, or FreeType using dvipdfmx (which is the default on Windows or Linux). As a result, XeTeX can access font features such as alternative glyphs, special ligatures, swashes and variable font weights. Support for OpenType local typographic conventions (locl tag) is also present. XeTeX allows even raw OpenType feature tags to be passed to the the font.
I've written my research proposal using XeTeX and modern typography, and am in the process of typesetting an entire book with the same foundations.
And their claim is far from accurate: there have been several systems, home-grown or libre software, before theirs.
Here's mine, for example: laptop theft protector, which has been around for at least an year.
Interface and ease-of-use: Unknown / Revolutionary among mobile phones when it first arrived.
I'm just saying that hardware specs are only part of the picture, and people base their decisions on several other factors which are sometimes more important to them than to us geeks.
... because I haven't seen a similar product on Windows yet. It's not even free (as in beer, or as in freedom) but it gets the job done.
XTabulator
Key to Mr. Gates's plan will be for businesses to dedicate their top people to poor issues
You mean, like google.org? Of course, not to discount the Gates Foundation, but what he's proposing seems closer to the Google.org model than the Gates Foundation model.[...] I'm not saying that there aren't bugs that I find that are perfectly legit [...]
We in the software industry have taken on a very narrow definition of what constitutes a bug. If it doesn't perform to spec, it's a bug. But the spec is not what drives the software — the user does. Consequently, anything that doesn't work according to the user's expectations is really a bug. The second type of bugs are usability bugs.
[...] when the update prompt came up, they were clicking "Cancel" without even reading the popup message. [...]
Though we wish the popup dialog would be seen and acknowledged by the user, it is often not — that is just human tendency and any software designed to be used by humans must take it into account. Usability practitioners often suggest that undo is better than warning dialogs for precisely this reason. Although it takes more effort for the developer to add undo capability, it is much more effective for the user because she now knows the exact consequences of her past action and an easy way to revert back to a previous known state.
You're exactly right. While thinking about this problem a few weeks ago, I wrote up a detailed description of how your fourth step (and 1 to 3, of course) could be accomplished with existing and evolving standards.
The Case for Decentralized Social Networks.
You kid, but lots of the underlying technology in Mac OS X is really named that: Core Image, Core Audio, Core Animation (Leopard only), etc.
My next processor will be a dual Intel Core 2 Duo Twin Pair Duplex Couple.
This time, Bill Gates is actually giving away money if you forward messages! I kid you not, they have to pay their customers (well, OK, their customers' favorite charities) to get people to use their software.
0.5
These companies are just the big fish. There are numerous smaller companies with even more nefarious modus operandii. What they often do is to hire Indian workers as H1-Bs, and then farm them out to American companies. The role of the middleman is simply to act as an incorporated company that applies for H1-B visas. Note that nowhere in the process is a match between skills and job requirements sought.
These middle-men (called "contractors", counter to the use of the same phrase in American parlance) will often take a chunk of the paycheck. This is also why you will see conflicting reports about whether H1-B workers are paid equal to or less than their American counterparts (the company pays equally; not all employees receive that entire amount.)
Because of this misuse, there are a lot of folks I know who, despite their U.S.-earned Masters and Doctoral degrees, are being denied the possibility of working with a U.S. company, typically those that they have already interned at, and demonstrated their capability as well as irreplaceability w.r.t. the requirements of a particular job.
I totally support an upper limit on the number of H1-B workers a company can hire, expressed as a percentage of the U.S. workers currently on their payroll.