this site is loaded with examples of poor UI design. they do a good job explaining exactly whats wrong with each example; its actually quite educational. its mostly windows and mac stuff, but i think i remember one or two examples from linux apps...
Reminds me a lot of computer geeks who insist on using impenetrable command line programs years after better/ more powerful/ more friendly programs come out because they can't be bothered to change their way of working.
*sigh* i dont mean to start a gui-vs-nongui flame war, but perhaps the reason some of the command line geeks you mention choose to be that way are because for them (ie for the tasks they do most often) that way is easier/more efficient/more powerful and they dont want to change.
well, you seem to have read my mind (and the post i had been composing for the past 20 minutes:P), so let me add a few thoughts...
(1) thorough understanding of the [problem] domain i find this quote from Mr. Kurtz rather interesting:
"I worked tech support for 4 years. When I started, I barely knew how to turn a computer on..."
if i were going to run a serious technical company, i would be looking to hire people familiar with either mine or similar products to provide customer support for my product. why should i waste my time and money training someone on the basic workings of pc hardware and windows 9x so that i can then train them in the intricacies of My56kVoiceFaxModem when there are plenty of people already suffieciently knowledgable in the first two areas.
(2) problem analysis skills anyone can go through some huge flow chart of symptoms and possible solutions, but thats not real tech support. thats someone a company hires so that they can have a real live person on the line rather than a phone menu system to which angry customers are less likely to listen (would this be tier 0?). as im sure we all know, not every set of symptoms has a cut and dry set of possible solutions. what if there is more than one underlying problem to be discovered, but one is masked by the others? anyone who has worked with PC hardware should have encountered that at least once...and without being able to thoroughly analize whats going on its hard to get anywhere.
(3) communication skills my experience is that a lot technical people (like myself) have a hard time explaining technical things to non-technical people. its basically a language barrier of sorts. there are some technical people however who are quite good (either naturally or through schooling) at bridging the barrier, and they are the ones who make the best tech support reps.
(4) patience and a sense of humor requirements for any position that requires interaction with customers, not to mention life in general
off on a tangent slightly, i thought this line interesting: "Ultimately, as we continue to move forward, the general public is going to reach the level of computer knowledge that the typical tech currently has." to which i say that may be true, but by then there will be all new systems that a large percentage of people will need but only a small percentage of people will be able to provide support for.
Strictly speaking, under the GPL, wouldn't the cheaters have to make their code changes publicly available?
what makes you think that someone who hacks up their client to give them an advantage is going to want other people to have that same advantage? exactly how do you think this is going to be enforced?
When we all can "cheat" equally, we are again on a level playing field.
what about those of us who WANT to play the game in its original form? i dont want to have to modify gameplay just to compete fairly with some fscker who doesnt want to play fair.
we've got an ide travan drive (Seagate STT8000A (which is really a conner i think)) at work and it gives us trouble all the time. ok, i shouldnt really say that. i mean, the problems could be related to the software we use with it (afbackup, evil in its own special way), but we've also run into problems while just tar'ing to it directly. it could be related to the kernel (2.2.6) i suppose but i dont remember any pressing bugs being brought up since that release. also, mt(1) doesnt seem to like it much but again that isnt necessarily attributed to the drive itself either.
not to mention its other weeknesses, mainly 1) its slow and 2) its loud and obnoxious (if only the server didnt reside 5 feet from my desk!).
personally, if it were up to me, the thing would be in the dumpster and we'd have a shiney new scsi dds-3 drive. *sigh*
well, there are problems with having one source try to explain how distribution A is best for doing x,y,z and distribution B is best for doing n,o,p.
first, as most linux software (including linux itself) is so customizable, any system regardless of which distribution, can be shaped to perform a particular task (ie file sharing) well. secondly, the value of a particular feature differs from person to person. this causes trouble when you say distribution A is best for task Q because of features X,Y,Z because some other person may feel that feature W has far more impact on Q than X,Y,Z. having one or a few people make a guide like this limits the views of the guide to that person or persons. this is why the distribution wars are so heated--because everyone has a different idea of whats more important. this is the fuel behind the flames that would destroy such a guide's usefulness.
probably the place to start trying to figure out which distribution is best for what is at the distributions' web sites. they all should tell you somewhere (emphasis on "should") among the feature lists and such what their developers' goals are. really the best way to learn this kinda stuff (imo) is the hard way: by trying out things that sound interesting.
interesting that there is no such note pointing out that the actual current release of debian is 2.1r3, not 2.1r2. granted the difference in the two releases is mostly fixes, but important fixes none the less...
I don't feel that breaking MS into 3-5 pieces would be sufficient. More than ten would be necessary.
and how do you propose this be accomplished? there has to be some reason behind the partitioning. you cant just break up windows98 and NT into two separate companies; that would be unfair. the 3 major partitions most talked about are OS, apps, and net services. the only other possibility i can think of is their hardware stuff...
Its purpose is to take a list of the inputs and outputs of any unknown function, and find that function given those inputs and outputs.
aka interpolation
I figured it would be interesting to find the equation that maps these numbers: (1,2),(2,3),(3,5),(4,7)... Once an equation like this had been found, anybody could find the xth prime instantly by running x through the equation.
hmm. well, the straightforward way to do this would be to start with the first 50 or so points (1,2),(2,3),(3,5)... and interpolate a function from them. then test the function starting at the 51st point until a result is given that is not prime. then interpolate a new function based on all the points up to but not including the one that produced the non-prime result. repeat until no non-prime results are returned. of course, ive not seen your program so i cant say this is how it works.
the frequency of non-prime results should eventually dwindle down close to 0 as the functions generated become more accurate. aside from the fact that verifying "primality" can take a while for big numbers, the other issue is that theres really no way to tell whether there we'll be no non-prime results for a given equation.
although, even a semi-acurate equation for pi, e, primes, etc would still be interesting (to me anyway).
One license, the GPL, allows anyone to take it and modify it, do whatever, so long as they release source to their mods.
right...and the PHP License requires you to get permission to redistribute php or works derived from it. so...isnt that kinda contradictory to the GPL?
or maybe its only contradictory if both licenses are taken to be "active". the licensing page does say to pick *ONE* license. i guess that would clear things up.
eh...ill bet more info like that will be available off their website in the not so distant future. someone mentioned they were in need of a detailed changes/features list.
- they repeat themselves.
maybe, but they interviewed like a half-dozen developers. and its not like they repeated stuff verbatim; it was more like certain people expanding on some issues. you cant expect everyone's opinions to be mutually exclusive. and its better than half of them just saying stuff like "yeah, what he said"
- they spent too much time on GPL != QPL.
well, it seems to me that licencing is a big issue for any large open source project. with all the wacky stuff going on in the courts, i cant say i blame them for being careful with how they licence stuff. and whenever a large project changes its licencing, theres bound to be a lot of questions from the community.
its properly moderated down because (IMNSHO) its purely argumentative. the author does not attempt to justify his claim that zope is better. the claim by itself contributes nothing to the discussion (other than to possibly motivate responses such as "no, PHP is better" or "you are dumb"), hence the post was moderated down.
you on the other hand have stated two reasons which appear to support the claim. while i have used neither Zope nor PHP, and thus am not in a position to weigh your argument, i can at least say that it has some substance and is relavant to the discussion.
ok...in the linuxpower article, in the question regarding the differences between php3 and php4 licencing, one of the developers states:
"The PHP license used for PHP 4 is actually less restrictive than the PHP 3 license. In PHP 3, commercial companies had to get written permission from us in case they wanted to distribute PHP 3 with their product, we have completely removed this clause from PHP 4."
PHP is distributed under 2 licenses. You are free to choose whichever license suits your requirements best. The first is the traditional GNU GPL (General Public License) and the second is the PHP License. If you wish to include PHP in a commercial product for resale, the PHP license permits it as long as the stated conditions are met.
further investigation of the aformentioned "PHP Licence" indeed shows that permission from the development team is required to include PHP in "...larger works derived from, or which bundle PHP..."
im wondering how a piece of software can be distributed under two licences, where one is the GPL which doesnt explicitly mention anything about companion licences?
ok, forgive me if this has been adressed, or if ive missed something thats blatently obvious. im not trying to dis anyone or point fingers or anything...im just trying to quench my non-lawyer curiosity.
if the system allows an unlimited number of authentication requests to be made without imposing a delay between requests, or if you have the hashed/encrypted string to match against, then yes.
ive found that my memory is just more tuned to remembering numbers, mathimatical formulas, and strings of characters in general than other things like events, people, and conversations. it seems like once ive used a password (or ip address, account number, etc) a few times, i will continue to remember it, as long as i recall it every so often.
i used to be a network admin at an isp. we had one master sheet of paper with all the passwords for servers and NAS's (totalling around 25) that we would keep locked in a safe. i would only have to pull it out when i wanted to get on a box that i hadnt used more than once or twice. i guess my memory is just better at storing arbitrary strings up to around 10 characters.
whats annoying is that usually i can remember whether ive heard a person's name before but i have a very hard time associating their face with the name. i also have a difficult time rememberng all the things im supposed to do during my day. my finance on the other hand can remember conversations from years ago word for word but has to check with me when someone asks for our zip code. i wonder if theres some sort of male/female thing going on...
anyway, one way to make passwords easier is to take a random 4-6 letter word and to convert it to "l33t-speak", and then optionally tack on a random number or non-alphanumeric or two. for example, take the word "fault", change it to "F@u|t", and add a 0 to get "0F@u|t". granted it may not be perfect, but it may be easier to remember than random characters and a bit more secure than just dictionary words. another trick we used at the isp was to make them loosly based on vulgarities--after a while it was almost a contest to see who could thing of the best(or worst depending on your perspective).
still another alternative can be found on freshmeat. theres is at least one program out there that will keep a list of passwords for you. i think theyre stored encrypted, and you only have to remember the one password to open the list. "gpasman" and "kpasman" are two examples...
see-shell tea-see-shell lie-low (pardon my ignorance, but what else is there?) cash til-duh pound (though im trying to move to hash) bang (except when talking to lusers)
how about these less frequently debated: ^... karat &... ampersand |... pipe, i forget the alternatives...anyone? .... dot ().. left/right paren {}.. left/right curly bracket [].. left/right [square] bracket
and finally, are there cleaner, shorter alternatives to "greater-than sign" and "less-than sign"?
"The distribution of programs and databases is controlled by copyright laws, licensing agreements and trade secrets. These must be observed."[1]
"The distribution of copyright protected materials is illegal and is in direct violation of the Computing Code of Ethics." "Users found to be distributing copyrighted music files will have their network connections revoked for not less than one full semester and may be subject to displinary action."[2]
Slashdot Mirror
uh no, try again:
http://www.spec.org/cgi-bin/order/
those dont look like open source prices to me...
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
i think this site was posted as a quickie a while back, but i'll post it here since it applies to this story:
http://www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm
this site is loaded with examples of poor UI design. they do a good job explaining exactly whats wrong with each example; its actually quite educational. its mostly windows and mac stuff, but i think i remember one or two examples from linux apps...
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
Reminds me a lot of computer geeks who insist on using impenetrable command line programs years after better/ more powerful/ more friendly programs come out because they can't be bothered to change their way of working.
*sigh* i dont mean to start a gui-vs-nongui flame war, but perhaps the reason some of the command line geeks you mention choose to be that way are because for them (ie for the tasks they do most often) that way is easier/more efficient/more powerful and they dont want to change.
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
well, you seem to have read my mind (and the post i had been composing for the past 20 minutes :P), so let me add a few thoughts...
(1) thorough understanding of the [problem] domain
i find this quote from Mr. Kurtz rather interesting:
"I worked tech support for 4 years. When I started, I barely knew how to turn a computer on..."
if i were going to run a serious technical company, i would be looking to hire people familiar with either mine or similar products to provide customer support for my product. why should i waste my time and money training someone on the basic workings of pc hardware and windows 9x so that i can then train them in the intricacies of My56kVoiceFaxModem when there are plenty of people already suffieciently knowledgable in the first two areas.
(2) problem analysis skills
anyone can go through some huge flow chart of symptoms and possible solutions, but thats not real tech support. thats someone a company hires so that they can have a real live person on the line rather than a phone menu system to which angry customers are less likely to listen (would this be tier 0?).
as im sure we all know, not every set of symptoms has a cut and dry set of possible solutions. what if there is more than one underlying problem to be discovered, but one is masked by the others? anyone who has worked with PC hardware should have encountered that at least once...and without being able to thoroughly analize whats going on its hard to get anywhere.
(3) communication skills
my experience is that a lot technical people (like myself) have a hard time explaining technical things to non-technical people. its basically a language barrier of sorts. there are some technical people however who are quite good (either naturally or through schooling) at bridging the barrier, and they are the ones who make the best tech support reps.
(4) patience and a sense of humor
requirements for any position that requires interaction with customers, not to mention life in general
off on a tangent slightly, i thought this line interesting:
"Ultimately, as we continue to move forward, the general public is going to reach the level of computer knowledge that the typical tech currently has."
to which i say that may be true, but by then there will be all new systems that a large percentage of people will need but only a small percentage of people will be able to provide support for.
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
heh, did you notice that if you hit the "previous" link to get yesterdays comic you arrive at this invalid url:
:) of course, s/jan00/dec99/ will fix that...
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/00jan/19991231.html
looks like the strip the characters arent the only ones having problems
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
Strictly speaking, under the GPL, wouldn't the cheaters have to make their code changes publicly available?
what makes you think that someone who hacks up their client to give them an advantage is going to want other people to have that same advantage? exactly how do you think this is going to be enforced?
When we all can "cheat" equally, we are again on a level playing field.
what about those of us who WANT to play the game in its original form? i dont want to have to modify gameplay just to compete fairly with some fscker who doesnt want to play fair.
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
we've got an ide travan drive (Seagate STT8000A (which is really a conner i think)) at work and it gives us trouble all the time. ok, i shouldnt really say that. i mean, the problems could be related to the software we use with it (afbackup, evil in its own special way), but we've also run into problems while just tar'ing to it directly. it could be related to the kernel (2.2.6) i suppose but i dont remember any pressing bugs being brought up since that release. also, mt(1) doesnt seem to like it much but again that isnt necessarily attributed to the drive itself either.
not to mention its other weeknesses, mainly 1) its slow and 2) its loud and obnoxious (if only the server didnt reside 5 feet from my desk!).
personally, if it were up to me, the thing would be in the dumpster and we'd have a shiney new scsi dds-3 drive. *sigh*
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
Do we really want everything hooked up to the internet?
um...what? where does it mention anything about hooking the vacuum cleaner up to the net?
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
well, there are problems with having one source try to explain how distribution A is best for doing x,y,z and distribution B is best for doing n,o,p.
first, as most linux software (including linux itself) is so customizable, any system regardless of which distribution, can be shaped to perform a particular task (ie file sharing) well. secondly, the value of a particular feature differs from person to person. this causes trouble when you say distribution A is best for task Q because of features X,Y,Z because some other person may feel that feature W has far more impact on Q than X,Y,Z. having one or a few people make a guide like this limits the views of the guide to that person or persons. this is why the distribution wars are so heated--because everyone has a different idea of whats more important. this is the fuel behind the flames that would destroy such a guide's usefulness.
probably the place to start trying to figure out which distribution is best for what is at the distributions' web sites. they all should tell you somewhere (emphasis on "should") among the feature lists and such what their developers' goals are. really the best way to learn this kinda stuff (imo) is the hard way: by trying out things that sound interesting.
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
interesting that there is no such note pointing out that the actual current release of debian is 2.1r3, not 2.1r2. granted the difference in the two releases is mostly fixes, but important fixes none the less...
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
bleh...you dont need perl for this, just a couple gnu utils:
fwhois @`whois | grep "Whois Server:" | cut -f2 -d':' | tr -d \[:blank:\]`
or
whois -h `whois | grep "Whois Server:" | cut -f2 -d':' | tr -d \[:blank:\]`
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
I don't feel that breaking MS into 3-5 pieces would be sufficient. More than ten would be necessary.
and how do you propose this be accomplished? there has to be some reason behind the partitioning. you cant just break up windows98 and NT into two separate companies; that would be unfair. the 3 major partitions most talked about are OS, apps, and net services. the only other possibility i can think of is their hardware stuff...
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
er...right. thats what i was saying. interpolation may get you something, but never everything.
Mills' Theorem sounds interesting...
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
Its purpose is to take a list of the inputs and outputs of any unknown function, and find that function given those inputs and outputs.
aka interpolation
I figured it would be interesting to find the equation that maps these numbers: (1,2),(2,3),(3,5),(4,7)... Once an equation like this had been found, anybody could find the xth prime instantly by running x through the equation.
hmm. well, the straightforward way to do this would be to start with the first 50 or so points (1,2),(2,3),(3,5)... and interpolate a function from them. then test the function starting at the 51st point until a result is given that is not prime. then interpolate a new function based on all the points up to but not including the one that produced the non-prime result. repeat until no non-prime results are returned. of course, ive not seen your program so i cant say this is how it works.
the frequency of non-prime results should eventually dwindle down close to 0 as the functions generated become more accurate. aside from the fact that verifying "primality" can take a while for big numbers, the other issue is that theres really no way to tell whether there we'll be no non-prime results for a given equation.
although, even a semi-acurate equation for pi, e, primes, etc would still be interesting (to me anyway).
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
One license, the GPL, allows anyone to take it and modify it, do whatever, so long as they release source to their mods.
right...and the PHP License requires you to get permission to redistribute php or works derived from it. so...isnt that kinda contradictory to the GPL?
or maybe its only contradictory if both licenses are taken to be "active". the licensing page does say to pick *ONE* license. i guess that would clear things up.
--Siva (doh...licenSe, not licence)
Keyboard not found.
- they don't get into the details enought...
eh...ill bet more info like that will be available off their website in the not so distant future. someone mentioned they were in need of a detailed changes/features list.
- they repeat themselves.
maybe, but they interviewed like a half-dozen developers. and its not like they repeated stuff verbatim; it was more like certain people expanding on some issues. you cant expect everyone's opinions to be mutually exclusive. and its better than half of them just saying stuff like "yeah, what he said"
- they spent too much time on GPL != QPL.
well, it seems to me that licencing is a big issue for any large open source project. with all the wacky stuff going on in the courts, i cant say i blame them for being careful with how they licence stuff. and whenever a large project changes its licencing, theres bound to be a lot of questions from the community.
i agree though, good overall.
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
Why is this moderated down?
its properly moderated down because (IMNSHO) its purely argumentative. the author does not attempt to justify his claim that zope is better. the claim by itself contributes nothing to the discussion (other than to possibly motivate responses such as "no, PHP is better" or "you are dumb"), hence the post was moderated down.
you on the other hand have stated two reasons which appear to support the claim. while i have used neither Zope nor PHP, and thus am not in a position to weigh your argument, i can at least say that it has some substance and is relavant to the discussion.
--Siva
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Need to say more?
yes. perhaps you could cite some reasons or examples which would serve to reinforce your claim?
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
moo.
ok...in the linuxpower article, in the question regarding the differences between php3 and php4 licencing, one of the developers states:
"The PHP license used for PHP 4 is actually less restrictive than the PHP 3 license. In PHP 3, commercial companies had to get written permission from us in case they wanted to distribute PHP 3 with their product, we have completely removed this clause from PHP 4."
on the main page of www.php.net, it says:
"You can use it for commercial and/or non-commercial use all you want."
yet, http://www.php.net/license.html says:
PHP is distributed under 2 licenses. You are free to choose whichever license suits your requirements best. The first is the traditional GNU GPL (General Public License) and the second is the PHP License. If you wish to include PHP in a commercial product for resale, the PHP license permits it as long as the stated conditions are met.
further investigation of the aformentioned "PHP Licence" indeed shows that permission from the development team is required to include PHP in "...larger works derived from, or which bundle PHP..."
im wondering how a piece of software can be distributed under two licences, where one is the GPL which doesnt explicitly mention anything about companion licences?
ok, forgive me if this has been adressed, or if ive missed something thats blatently obvious. im not trying to dis anyone or point fingers or anything...im just trying to quench my non-lawyer curiosity.
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
if the system allows an unlimited number of authentication requests to be made without imposing a delay between requests, or if you have the hashed/encrypted string to match against, then yes.
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
ive found that my memory is just more tuned to remembering numbers, mathimatical formulas, and strings of characters in general than other things like events, people, and conversations. it seems like once ive used a password (or ip address, account number, etc) a few times, i will continue to remember it, as long as i recall it every so often.
i used to be a network admin at an isp. we had one master sheet of paper with all the passwords for servers and NAS's (totalling around 25) that we would keep locked in a safe. i would only have to pull it out when i wanted to get on a box that i hadnt used more than once or twice. i guess my memory is just better at storing arbitrary strings up to around 10 characters.
whats annoying is that usually i can remember whether ive heard a person's name before but i have a very hard time associating their face with the name. i also have a difficult time rememberng all the things im supposed to do during my day. my finance on the other hand can remember conversations from years ago word for word but has to check with me when someone asks for our zip code. i wonder if theres some sort of male/female thing going on...
anyway, one way to make passwords easier is to take a random 4-6 letter word and to convert it to "l33t-speak", and then optionally tack on a random number or non-alphanumeric or two. for example, take the word "fault", change it to "F@u|t", and add a 0 to get "0F@u|t". granted it may not be perfect, but it may be easier to remember than random characters and a bit more secure than just dictionary words. another trick we used at the isp was to make them loosly based on vulgarities--after a while it was almost a contest to see who could thing of the best(or worst depending on your perspective).
still another alternative can be found on freshmeat. theres is at least one program out there that will keep a list of passwords for you. i think theyre stored encrypted, and you only have to remember the one password to open the list.
"gpasman" and "kpasman" are two examples...
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
first:
... karat ... ampersand ... pipe, i forget the alternatives...anyone? ... dot .. left/right paren .. left/right curly bracket .. left/right [square] bracket
see-shell
tea-see-shell
lie-low (pardon my ignorance, but what else is there?)
cash
til-duh
pound (though im trying to move to hash)
bang (except when talking to lusers)
how about these less frequently debated:
^
&
|
.
()
{}
[]
and finally, are there cleaner, shorter alternatives to "greater-than sign" and "less-than sign"?
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
You Americans are SO DAMN unknowledgeable about the world outside the fast food and coca cola zone...
you seem to be forgetting the 'computing machine technology' zone...
(well what would YOU call it? "computing zone" sounds stupid...)
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
"The distribution of programs and databases is controlled by copyright laws, licensing agreements and trade secrets. These must be observed."[1]
"The distribution of copyright protected materials is illegal and is in direct violation of the Computing Code of Ethics." "Users found to be distributing copyrighted music files will have their network connections revoked for not less than one full semester and may be subject to displinary action."[2]
1. http://www.cmu.edu/co mputing/documentation/unix/Policies.html
2. http://www.net.cmu.edu/docs/gui delines/reshall.html
--Siva (former CMU student)
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right here to be exact, darling ;)
ok...im going to get flamed for posting mushy stuff...:P to you all
*dons asbestos body suit*
--Siva
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