they are perfectly within their rights in having a license for the use of the CueCat.
However, unless you install their software, you never actually see the EULA. So, the question is, how can someone be bound by an agreement that they never even see?
They may say that in the fine print, but it is still not illegal to have differentiated pricing for different customers.
You are absolutely right. Sleazy yes, but illegal, no.
I used to work for a company that handled software company direct mailings (you get a thing in the mail for Quicken for $19 bucks, call this number, blah blah blah). Anyway, marketers (who interestingly are not insects. Technically they are arachnids) do this all the time. You know that "priority code" you're supposed to quote? Generally it tells them which mailing list they got your name from, but often it is used to associate you with the offer you received (as opposed to the guy who was offered Quicken for $9 or $29).
Other approaches are to simply use different 800 numbers for the different ads. The phone rep gets the call and his/her phone indicates which phone number you called, and thus which offer you can receive.
*Note, I never did any business with Quicken, I don't know if they do this. Other companies definitely do. No Quickens were hurt in the making of this post.
It appears that there are more than one version of the CueCat out there.
I've seen at least 2 versions. The Cat. No: 68-1965 and Cat. No: 68-1965A. Haven't had a chance to open the A up yet to see the differences, but it looks like the A has 2 LEDS and the other has only 1. I've listed all the other apparent differences (at least from the outside) Here.
When you fill out the little form at your grocery store to get one of those neat little cards [...] they now know who YOU are, and when they swipe the card and YOU'VE bought a jug of Vodka and a Playboy they know that YOU are the one who bought it......
I've been toying with the idea of setting up an exchange system for those grocery "savings" cards. You could get one (ideally with fake demographic info), then after using it, submit it to a pool and get another one. With enough people, the data would be useless (Well, it looks like 18 year old men are buying lots of maxipads and Cosmopolitans, and 45 year old women are into twinkees, Jolt Cola, and Maxim -- Let's send those ladies some viverin coupons!).
Yeah, but if they have a persistent code that gets sent to them whenever you use the:cue:crap to scan something and query their server, regardless of whether you're using their software or your original registered name, you maintain a trail.
Let's say one day you scan something in the radioshack catalog and you then order it online (or you scan a bar code and you enter a contest or something). You've given RatShack (or DigitalInsurgence or some other partner) your personal info, they share it and all your old and new behavior (remember when you scanned the barcode on a copy of penthouse, just to see what it would do?) is now associated with a name, address, cc#, etc.
Remember, these are not human beings you're dealing with, they're marketing people. Their goal is to capture as much info about your use of their tool as possible, and if they can match things up (a la doubleclick's dream), they stand to gain.
To use their software (which is their goal here), you are supposed to register an email address, they then send you a registration code which is apparently some hash of your email address, because you have to enter the same email address into their program when you enter your registration code. Now, if you use their software even once you've associated the code (your email address) and the serial number.
Interestingly, even if you got the thing at radio shack, and you gave your real name and number they still wouldn't have enough to tie you to the reader, since the radio shack guy scans the barcode on the reader, which is just a generic product upc, with no info about the serial number (using recursion to confirm this is a problem left to the reader;-).
On a somewhat related note, does anyone else have the model 68-1965? Most of the ones I've seen are 68-1965A. The major differences visible outside are:
The A has a dark filter where the cat's "mouth" is, the other one has no filter
The A appears to use 2 LEDs the other one has only 1
the A has 4 small screws, the other one has 2 big screws
The A has a sticker saying 06A00, the other one has no sticker
The A works *much* better than the other one
Haven't had a chance to open the A up yet, so I can't comment on internal comparisons.
wonder if windows users would have trouble reaching web pages if they scanned with their caps lock on then?
On a related note, I don't think it works with a Dvorak layout. If you have the Dvorak drivers loaded instead of the standard qwerty drivers, the scans come out different, and I get network connection(!) errors when I've tried (on someone else's computer of course, I wouldn't agree to the EULA). Of course, the network problem could just be another problem that has happened to co-occur when I've seen it done. Anyone else try this?
The program I wrote (But would never ever distribute, cause I don't want to violate their pseudointellectual property rights...) figures out if its Dvorak or Sholes and handles it appropriately.
The implication is that if you set up some type of cataloging system [...] you can only use one particular scanner to do retrievals unless you take the time to strip out the (seemingly 5) ASCII output characters that are unique to each character.
My cataloging program was written in VB (Shut up, it was fast and easy). It grabs only the bar code info, checks to figure out if it's a book (you can look at the field before the bar code, or just see if it starts with 978) or a CD (all the UPCs I've seen for CDs have a 3 before the check digit). It then hits the barpoint.com database and grabs author/artist and title info. I'm gonna have it grab track info for CDs next, and then maybe a graphic...
Anyway, its trivially easy to do the encoding stuff without having to worry about the serial number.
Isn't there some sort of central repository for bar codes
Yeah, check out <a href="http://www.barpoint.com">Barpoint Systems</a>. Right now you can type in a UPC code and it will give you a product name, and with CD's you are a click away from the song list.
From the scripting news site: Update: They deleted the link, 3:14PM Pacific.
From previous post: (assuming this isn't a hoax)
I'm not really familiar with the scripting news site, are they a reliable source? In the screenshot they included in the story the link in question looks different from the rest of the links shown. Take a look, 3 of the other links are blue underlined, one is gray underlined, and the DeCSS link is maroon and not underlined.
Can anyone else verify having seen the link in the hour between the slashdot posting (5:19pm Eastern) and the alleged removal (3:14pm Pacific)?
An all-in-one handheld device would be the information appliance equivalent to a pocket knife. Yes, having a saw and a screwdriver and a bottle opener handy is *very* useful, but nobody uses a pocket knife when they have "real" tools available. If I have access to a screwdriver, my pocket knife stays in my pocket.
A pda/cellular/mp3 player/digital camera would be cool, and useful, but I'd rather use a "real" camera (digital or otherwise) if I wanted good pictures, a real stereo if I wanted good music, a real phone if I wanted a good connection, and a real... er, well ok the pda is pretty is pretty much as good as a datebook/address book as far as I'm concerned.
Maybe I'm stereotyping here, but right now, I'd say most Linux users read slashdot/Kuro5hin/Freshmeat or something similar, so when someone discovers that you can destroy a Linux box just by connecting on port 7, everybody finds out right away, and can fix it quickly.
If your assertion is right, one of the biggest stregths of the opensource operationg systems will cease to exist as their market share increases. The fact is, a huge proportion of computer users don't, and never will, keep track of security issues.
So, if/when Linux has an 80% market share, any bugs that are discovered are going to remain unpatched unless there is some sort of automated system (which, as you pointed out, is not necessarily very effective).
The problem seems to be with having lots of non-tech savvy users, not necessarily with open/closed source development.
Unlike a lot of people who like to talk about how Dvorak isn't that much better than Qwerty, I actually use Dvorak.
I agree, I'm in the same boat, I know the scientific literature, yet I've chosen to use Dvorak. I do feel better using it, but I'm not sure if that's based on the layout or my own expectations. And of course, the layout acts as sort of an easy security system: nobody tries to use my computer when I'm not around -- cool.
--- Ever notice how at trade shows Microsoft is always giving away stress balls...
The fact is, they designed QWERTY to be slower because back in "the day" people were typing faster that the typewriters could process the info, and they kept jamming. QWERTY forced the users to type slower.
Actually, moving the letters apart wasn't so much about slowing down people, but rather to move frequently co-occuring letters apart. With old typewriters, the arms that flew up and hit the ribbon would be more likely to get jammed if the were close together, but moving the keys far apart made this problem a bit less troublesome.
The scientific literature indicates that Dvorak gives a 5-10% speed advantage, and a small accuracy advantage vs QWERTY. But it doesn't justify the costs of hardware (although these days it would generally mean little stickers for the keyboard rather than a new physical mechanism).
For most people, the bottleneck isn't typing speed it's thinking speed. Unless you are a transcriptionist, most of your typing will probably occur during composition, when you will stop and think of stuff to write, etc... That's what takes time. I conducted a study a while ago that indicated that a 35 wpm typist only typed about 15 wpm when replying to emails, if you included thinking time.
Interesting fact: The R in QWERTY is due to the fact that after the advent of the "Sholes keyboard" (when they reordered the characters) a typewriter company wanted their salesmen to be able to quickly type the word 'typewriter' to impress customers. All the other letters in 'typewriter' are on the top row, so they put the 'r' there too.
--- Ever notice how at trade shows Microsoft is always giving away stress balls...
I'm a psychologist who does HCI work (both academic and industry stuff). Before it was called Human-Computer Interaction (the 'I' usually stands for 'Interaction' when referring to the HCI or CHI field, while it stands for 'Interface' when you are referring to a particular design), it was called Man-Machine Interaction. Now, aside from the obvious gender bias, the concept of interacting with machines (or perhaps more generally, Artifacts) is a better description of the field.
Yes, the WIMP interface is going to be the dominant desktop computer interface for a long time (whether it's due to inertia, lack of cool alternatives, etc). But there are so many new arenas in which new designs can be implemented.
Digital TV for example is an area where there are plenty of problems to overcome, from using remote controls to visualizing the TV schedule, to coming up with a good metaphor for TiVO type systems etc. If you get a chance to check out the General Instrument GTC line of digital cable boxes you'll see some really bad design! For example, if you choose a channel directly from the channel guide, the next time you look at the channel guide it starts at the channel you're on. However, if you change channels without using the channel guide, the next time you pull the guide up it starts on channel 2 rather than showing you what you're watching -- stupid!
Handheld devices like cell phones, and PDAs are different enough from desktop PCs to make them fertile for new designs (which is why microsoft's attempts to port windows to handhelds fail so predictably -- PDAs are more like watches than computers, you use them frequently for short bursts rather than infrequently for long bursts, so interface speed is more important). Speech interfaces are still pretty bad - aside from recognition problems, people have tried pretending that speech is just like a keyboard. Guess what, we don't dictate the same way we compose text at a keyboard or with pen and paper, there are psychological differences in the tasks that make changes necessary.
Anyway, the point is that we aren't going to dramatically improve desktop computer interfaces, but we can make well designed artifacts. Heck, my stove has closed heating elements which don't turn red when they're hot. Burning yourself once, or leaving the stove on when you're finished cooking is enough to tell you that a good interface would have red lights or something on the heating elements to indicate heat... Bad design shouldn't leave scars...
--- Ever notice how at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
Interestingly, perhaps, is the fact that David Boies, who helped smack Microsoft around is the brother of Stephen Boies, a bigwig researcher at IBM Research... Thanks, bro.
--- Ever notice how at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
Maybe something like Ask Jeeves, except that you may want to make yours actually work.
Some companies (including Dell) have systems that reply to email tech support questions based on content. It would be interesting if you could create a general purpose system that chewed on a bunch of old requests and figured out some rules to classify them. It could work on spam too.
--- Have you ever noticed that at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
What does this have to do with handicap access? This is a site that pushes wireless cameras.
X10 is a communications protocol for communicating over 110V wiring. Here's a FAQ. One company that sells X10 compliant equipment (along with wireless cameras) is X10.com.
Regardless of this particular company's advertising methods, the technology is still cool and useful.
--- Have you ever noticed that at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
"Also, given the orbital physics of the GPS's themselves, I would think any regional control would be very course grained. "
Would it be possible for the US Military to simply jam receivers in a specific region by transmitting a strong signal on the same channel as the civilian band, while leaving the military band alone?
Have you ever noticed that at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
I begin to hear more and more AOL Hate stories and see AOL Hate stories popping up in my Newspaper's Tech section. I was amazed that an article that chronicled AOLs growth neglected to mention their PR nightmare when the went to flat rate pricing. Everyone must remember the beating they took when they offered unlimited access but didn't have the hardware to support the crush of users. They were the subject of tons of "hate stories" in the media and by users. Yet they eventually managed to satisfy (at least somewhat) their users and the press, so much so that the episode isn't even mentioned in the CNET piece. So, despite the frequency of hate stories you may be seeing, I'm willing to bet that it won't stop AOLs growth. --- Have you ever noticed that at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
One of the biggest mistakes microsoft has made with their PDAs is to try and make them small versions of desktop computers. This is stupid. People don't use PDAs as they do desktop computers (i.e., a few times a day for long periods of time), they use them more like watches, (i.e., a bunch of times a day for short periods of time).
The key is to make an interface that is *fast* and that minimizes the number of taps needed for an interaction. Palm is great at that, apps come up fast (there's no "hourglass" on the palm), and good programs allow you to do common tasks with very few taps.
It would be stupid if when you wanted to look at your watch you had to give it a couple of seconds to boot up, then click Start, Time, then wait 5 seconds for the time app to load up.
--- Did you ever notice how at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
From one of the authors, Matt Skala's home page (a very good read, BTW):
I did not put any GPL notices on the portions of the package that I wrote, and I did not lie to the plaintiffs about what rights I owned or could assign to them. They have signed a document saying, essentially, that they knew what they were getting from me and were satisfied with it. The settlement document is pretty explicit in saying that they accepted responsibility for knowing all the consequences before agreeing to it. I don't know what the comment about the GPL in Unit1.pas may mean from a legal perspective. It is much less definite than the usual GNU GPL notice. I didn't write that file and never claimed to. I only assigned the rights that were mine to assign. I don't know what Eddy Jansson may have promised to the plaintiffs about the licensing of his portions of the code, or whether he has in fact settled with them at all.
Could someone give me a good example where a couple of hours of time really matters in a situation where I could just get off my lazy ass and just get the same item from a "real" store?
Imagine you've got an account with e-trade and you want to sell some stock that looks like it's gonna drop like a brick and cost you a fortune. You try to log on, but are unable to, thanks to some lazy cracker wants to bomb a site with IP packets.
You lose the money, start drinking, become depressed and easily agitated, yell at your spouse/SO for leaving the cap off the toothpaste, leading the neighbors to call the police, you get arrested, spouse/SO leaves you, you get gang raped in jail, mortgage the house to get out on bail, continue drinking, get fired, spend all remaining money on a lawyer, bank repossesses the house, you're now not only a geek, but a homeless geek with an arrest record, children point at you, John Markoff writes a column calling you the most dangerous homeless person in cyberspace, sells the rights to the movie for $1,000,000, eventually, fed up with the horrific tail spin your life has entered, you decide to kill yourself, however, something goes wrong and instead you become a vegetable, "you" then live out the remainder of your days being fed through a tube in some underfunded hospital while there is just enough neural activity in your otherwise dead brain to cause spasms in your vocal chords that cause your labored breathing to sound like you're saying "sell, sell" over and over, much to the amusement of the night cleaning staff.
IMHO Whats needed is to get some real expertise in man-machine interfaces involved - I am sure there are a great number in the academic community ( psychology / human perception / cybernetics graduates and lecturers ) who I believe would be more than happy to give their input on taking the GUI in a whole new direction, and try and get away from the Desktop interface model entirely.
As one of those people in the academic community, who's also done some usability work for a Big Blue commercial venture, I agree that usability specialists can definitely add to the OSS community.
The current situation reminds me of a saying in the UI field: "Know thy user, for he is not you."
Basically, regardless of whether the project is open or closed-source, programmers shouldn't design interfaces for general users (non programmers) without their input. Usability isn't something that is supposed to get plugged in at the end, ideally (but rarely) it should be an integral part of the development cycle.
One nice thing about big organizations is that, given enough motivation, they have the resources to do real usability testing. Of course, there often isn't enough motivation. As a lone geek programmer or a group of lone geek programmers, focusing on writing a killer app, probably won't write a good interface unless that is a primary goal, and they know how to create/assess good interfaces.
There are a number of innovative interfaces being developed & tested in labs all around the world. Unfortunately, they generally end up as lab toys only, never being implemented in widely distributed (read, Windows Platform) applications. Most wouldn't be useful/effective in real world applications, but some may be. This presents a real opportunity for the OSS community. If a usability movement were undertaken, and an alternate operating system provided usefulness AND usability, novice users would have a reason to pay attention.
As long as programmers write for programmers, programmers (both groups) will be happy. But don't expect the idiots (read, users) to come running.
Slashdot Mirror
However, unless you install their software, you never actually see the EULA. So, the question is, how can someone be bound by an agreement that they never even see?
You are absolutely right. Sleazy yes, but illegal, no.
I used to work for a company that handled software company direct mailings (you get a thing in the mail for Quicken for $19 bucks, call this number, blah blah blah). Anyway, marketers (who interestingly are not insects. Technically they are arachnids) do this all the time. You know that "priority code" you're supposed to quote? Generally it tells them which mailing list they got your name from, but often it is used to associate you with the offer you received (as opposed to the guy who was offered Quicken for $9 or $29).
Other approaches are to simply use different 800 numbers for the different ads. The phone rep gets the call and his/her phone indicates which phone number you called, and thus which offer you can receive.
*Note, I never did any business with Quicken, I don't know if they do this. Other companies definitely do. No Quickens were hurt in the making of this post.
I've seen at least 2 versions. The Cat. No: 68-1965 and Cat. No: 68-1965A. Haven't had a chance to open the A up yet to see the differences, but it looks like the A has 2 LEDS and the other has only 1. I've listed all the other apparent differences (at least from the outside) Here.
I've been toying with the idea of setting up an exchange system for those grocery "savings" cards. You could get one (ideally with fake demographic info), then after using it, submit it to a pool and get another one. With enough people, the data would be useless (Well, it looks like 18 year old men are buying lots of maxipads and Cosmopolitans, and 45 year old women are into twinkees, Jolt Cola, and Maxim -- Let's send those ladies some viverin coupons!).
Damn details...
Yeah, but if they have a persistent code that gets sent to them whenever you use the :cue:crap to scan something and query their server, regardless of whether you're using their software or your original registered name, you maintain a trail.
Let's say one day you scan something in the radioshack catalog and you then order it online (or you scan a bar code and you enter a contest or something). You've given RatShack (or DigitalInsurgence or some other partner) your personal info, they share it and all your old and new behavior (remember when you scanned the barcode on a copy of penthouse, just to see what it would do?) is now associated with a name, address, cc#, etc.
Remember, these are not human beings you're dealing with, they're marketing people. Their goal is to capture as much info about your use of their tool as possible, and if they can match things up (a la doubleclick's dream), they stand to gain.
To use their software (which is their goal here), you are supposed to register an email address, they then send you a registration code which is apparently some hash of your email address, because you have to enter the same email address into their program when you enter your registration code. Now, if you use their software even once you've associated the code (your email address) and the serial number.
Interestingly, even if you got the thing at radio shack, and you gave your real name and number they still wouldn't have enough to tie you to the reader, since the radio shack guy scans the barcode on the reader, which is just a generic product upc, with no info about the serial number (using recursion to confirm this is a problem left to the reader;-).
On a somewhat related note, does anyone else have the model 68-1965? Most of the ones I've seen are 68-1965A. The major differences visible outside are:
- The A has a dark filter where the cat's "mouth" is, the other one has no filter
- The A appears to use 2 LEDs the other one has only 1
- the A has 4 small screws, the other one has 2 big screws
- The A has a sticker saying 06A00, the other one has no sticker
- The A works *much* better than the other one
Haven't had a chance to open the A up yet, so I can't comment on internal comparisons.On a related note, I don't think it works with a Dvorak layout. If you have the Dvorak drivers loaded instead of the standard qwerty drivers, the scans come out different, and I get network connection(!) errors when I've tried (on someone else's computer of course, I wouldn't agree to the EULA). Of course, the network problem could just be another problem that has happened to co-occur when I've seen it done. Anyone else try this?
The program I wrote (But would never ever distribute, cause I don't want to violate their pseudointellectual property rights...) figures out if its Dvorak or Sholes and handles it appropriately.
The implication is that if you set up some type of cataloging system [...] you can only use one particular scanner to do retrievals unless you take the time to strip out the (seemingly 5) ASCII output characters that are unique to each character.
My cataloging program was written in VB (Shut up, it was fast and easy). It grabs only the bar code info, checks to figure out if it's a book (you can look at the field before the bar code, or just see if it starts with 978) or a CD (all the UPCs I've seen for CDs have a 3 before the check digit). It then hits the barpoint.com database and grabs author/artist and title info. I'm gonna have it grab track info for CDs next, and then maybe a graphic...
Anyway, its trivially easy to do the encoding stuff without having to worry about the serial number.
No, but I certainly wouldn't want them putting locks on my door/VCR/etc...
Yeah, check out <a href="http://www.barpoint.com">Barpoint Systems</a>. Right now you can type in a UPC code and it will give you a product name, and with CD's you are a click away from the song list.
Update: They deleted the link, 3:14PM Pacific.
From previous post:
(assuming this isn't a hoax)
I'm not really familiar with the scripting news site, are they a reliable source? In the screenshot they included in the story the link in question looks different from the rest of the links shown. Take a look, 3 of the other links are blue underlined, one is gray underlined, and the DeCSS link is maroon and not underlined.
Can anyone else verify having seen the link in the hour between the slashdot posting (5:19pm Eastern) and the alleged removal (3:14pm Pacific)?
An all-in-one handheld device would be the information appliance equivalent to a pocket knife. Yes, having a saw and a screwdriver and a bottle opener handy is *very* useful, but nobody uses a pocket knife when they have "real" tools available. If I have access to a screwdriver, my pocket knife stays in my pocket.
A pda/cellular/mp3 player/digital camera would be cool, and useful, but I'd rather use a "real" camera (digital or otherwise) if I wanted good pictures, a real stereo if I wanted good music, a real phone if I wanted a good connection, and a real... er, well ok the pda is pretty is pretty much as good as a datebook/address book as far as I'm concerned.
If your assertion is right, one of the biggest stregths of the opensource operationg systems will cease to exist as their market share increases. The fact is, a huge proportion of computer users don't, and never will, keep track of security issues.
So, if/when Linux has an 80% market share, any bugs that are discovered are going to remain unpatched unless there is some sort of automated system (which, as you pointed out, is not necessarily very effective).
The problem seems to be with having lots of non-tech savvy users, not necessarily with open/closed source development.
Unlike a lot of people who like to talk about how Dvorak isn't that much better than Qwerty, I actually use Dvorak.
I agree, I'm in the same boat, I know the scientific literature, yet I've chosen to use Dvorak. I do feel better using it, but I'm not sure if that's based on the layout or my own expectations. And of course, the layout acts as sort of an easy security system: nobody tries to use my computer when I'm not around -- cool.
---
Ever notice how at trade shows Microsoft is always giving away stress balls...
The fact is, they designed QWERTY to be slower because back in "the day" people were typing faster that the typewriters could process the info, and they kept jamming. QWERTY forced the users to type slower.
Actually, moving the letters apart wasn't so much about slowing down people, but rather to move frequently co-occuring letters apart. With old typewriters, the arms that flew up and hit the ribbon would be more likely to get jammed if the were close together, but moving the keys far apart made this problem a bit less troublesome.
The scientific literature indicates that Dvorak gives a 5-10% speed advantage, and a small accuracy advantage vs QWERTY. But it doesn't justify the costs of hardware (although these days it would generally mean little stickers for the keyboard rather than a new physical mechanism).
For most people, the bottleneck isn't typing speed it's thinking speed. Unless you are a transcriptionist, most of your typing will probably occur during composition, when you will stop and think of stuff to write, etc... That's what takes time. I conducted a study a while ago that indicated that a 35 wpm typist only typed about 15 wpm when replying to emails, if you included thinking time.
Interesting fact: The R in QWERTY is due to the fact that after the advent of the "Sholes keyboard" (when they reordered the characters) a typewriter company wanted their salesmen to be able to quickly type the word 'typewriter' to impress customers. All the other letters in 'typewriter' are on the top row, so they put the 'r' there too.
---
Ever notice how at trade shows Microsoft is always giving away stress balls...
I'm a psychologist who does HCI work (both academic and industry stuff). Before it was called Human-Computer Interaction (the 'I' usually stands for 'Interaction' when referring to the HCI or CHI field, while it stands for 'Interface' when you are referring to a particular design), it was called Man-Machine Interaction. Now, aside from the obvious gender bias, the concept of interacting with machines (or perhaps more generally, Artifacts) is a better description of the field.
Yes, the WIMP interface is going to be the dominant desktop computer interface for a long time (whether it's due to inertia, lack of cool alternatives, etc). But there are so many new arenas in which new designs can be implemented.
Digital TV for example is an area where there are plenty of problems to overcome, from using remote controls to visualizing the TV schedule, to coming up with a good metaphor for TiVO type systems etc. If you get a chance to check out the General Instrument GTC line of digital cable boxes you'll see some really bad design! For example, if you choose a channel directly from the channel guide, the next time you look at the channel guide it starts at the channel you're on. However, if you change channels without using the channel guide, the next time you pull the guide up it starts on channel 2 rather than showing you what you're watching -- stupid!
Handheld devices like cell phones, and PDAs are different enough from desktop PCs to make them fertile for new designs (which is why microsoft's attempts to port windows to handhelds fail so predictably -- PDAs are more like watches than computers, you use them frequently for short bursts rather than infrequently for long bursts, so interface speed is more important). Speech interfaces are still pretty bad - aside from recognition problems, people have tried pretending that speech is just like a keyboard. Guess what, we don't dictate the same way we compose text at a keyboard or with pen and paper, there are psychological differences in the tasks that make changes necessary.
Anyway, the point is that we aren't going to dramatically improve desktop computer interfaces, but we can make well designed artifacts. Heck, my stove has closed heating elements which don't turn red when they're hot. Burning yourself once, or leaving the stove on when you're finished cooking is enough to tell you that a good interface would have red lights or something on the heating elements to indicate heat... Bad design shouldn't leave scars...
---
Ever notice how at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
Interestingly, perhaps, is the fact that David Boies, who helped smack Microsoft around is the brother of Stephen Boies, a bigwig researcher at IBM Research... Thanks, bro.
---
Ever notice how at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
Maybe something like Ask Jeeves, except that you may want to make yours actually work.
Some companies (including Dell) have systems that reply to email tech support questions based on content. It would be interesting if you could create a general purpose system that chewed on a bunch of old requests and figured out some rules to classify them. It could work on spam too.
---
Have you ever noticed that at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
X10 is a communications protocol for communicating over 110V wiring. Here's a FAQ. One company that sells X10 compliant equipment (along with wireless cameras) is X10.com.
Regardless of this particular company's advertising methods, the technology is still cool and useful.
---
Have you ever noticed that at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
"Also, given the orbital physics of the GPS's themselves, I would think any regional control would be very course grained. "
Would it be possible for the US Military to simply jam receivers in a specific region by transmitting a strong signal on the same channel as the civilian band, while leaving the military band alone?
Have you ever noticed that at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
argh, my lovely formatting!
The first line was quoted from the previous message. hopefully it makes sense now...
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Have you ever noticed that at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
I begin to hear more and more AOL Hate stories and see AOL Hate stories popping up in my Newspaper's Tech section. I was amazed that an article that chronicled AOLs growth neglected to mention their PR nightmare when the went to flat rate pricing. Everyone must remember the beating they took when they offered unlimited access but didn't have the hardware to support the crush of users. They were the subject of tons of "hate stories" in the media and by users. Yet they eventually managed to satisfy (at least somewhat) their users and the press, so much so that the episode isn't even mentioned in the CNET piece. So, despite the frequency of hate stories you may be seeing, I'm willing to bet that it won't stop AOLs growth. --- Have you ever noticed that at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
One of the biggest mistakes microsoft has made with their PDAs is to try and make them small versions of desktop computers. This is stupid. People don't use PDAs as they do desktop computers (i.e., a few times a day for long periods of time), they use them more like watches, (i.e., a bunch of times a day for short periods of time).
The key is to make an interface that is *fast* and that minimizes the number of taps needed for an interaction. Palm is great at that, apps come up fast (there's no "hourglass" on the palm), and good programs allow you to do common tasks with very few taps.
It would be stupid if when you wanted to look at your watch you had to give it a couple of seconds to boot up, then click Start, Time, then wait 5 seconds for the time app to load up.
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Did you ever notice how at trade shows Microsoft is always the one giving away stress balls...
I did not put any GPL notices on the portions of the package that I wrote, and I did not lie to the plaintiffs about what rights I owned or could assign to them. They have signed a document saying, essentially, that they knew what they were getting from me and were satisfied with it. The settlement document is pretty explicit in saying that they accepted responsibility for knowing all the consequences before agreeing to it. I don't know what the comment about the GPL in Unit1.pas may mean from a legal perspective. It is much less definite than the usual GNU GPL notice. I didn't write that file and never claimed to. I only assigned the rights that were mine to assign. I don't know what Eddy Jansson may have promised to the plaintiffs about the licensing of his portions of the code, or whether he has in fact settled with them at all.
So, what did he have the right to sign over?
Imagine you've got an account with e-trade and you want to sell some stock that looks like it's gonna drop like a brick and cost you a fortune. You try to log on, but are unable to, thanks to some lazy cracker wants to bomb a site with IP packets.
You lose the money, start drinking, become depressed and easily agitated, yell at your spouse/SO for leaving the cap off the toothpaste, leading the neighbors to call the police, you get arrested, spouse/SO leaves you, you get gang raped in jail, mortgage the house to get out on bail, continue drinking, get fired, spend all remaining money on a lawyer, bank repossesses the house, you're now not only a geek, but a homeless geek with an arrest record, children point at you, John Markoff writes a column calling you the most dangerous homeless person in cyberspace, sells the rights to the movie for $1,000,000, eventually, fed up with the horrific tail spin your life has entered, you decide to kill yourself, however, something goes wrong and instead you become a vegetable, "you" then live out the remainder of your days being fed through a tube in some underfunded hospital while there is just enough neural activity in your otherwise dead brain to cause spasms in your vocal chords that cause your labored breathing to sound like you're saying "sell, sell" over and over, much to the amusement of the night cleaning staff.
IMHO Whats needed is to get some real expertise in man-machine interfaces involved - I am sure there are a great number in the academic community ( psychology / human perception / cybernetics graduates and lecturers ) who I believe would be more than happy to give their input on taking the GUI in a whole new direction, and try and get away from the Desktop interface model entirely.
As one of those people in the academic community, who's also done some usability work for a Big Blue commercial venture, I agree that usability specialists can definitely add to the OSS community.
The current situation reminds me of a saying in the UI field: "Know thy user, for he is not you."
Basically, regardless of whether the project is open or closed-source, programmers shouldn't design interfaces for general users (non programmers) without their input. Usability isn't something that is supposed to get plugged in at the end, ideally (but rarely) it should be an integral part of the development cycle.
One nice thing about big organizations is that, given enough motivation, they have the resources to do real usability testing. Of course, there often isn't enough motivation. As a lone geek programmer or a group of lone geek programmers, focusing on writing a killer app, probably won't write a good interface unless that is a primary goal, and they know how to create/assess good interfaces.
There are a number of innovative interfaces being developed & tested in labs all around the world. Unfortunately, they generally end up as lab toys only, never being implemented in widely distributed (read, Windows Platform) applications. Most wouldn't be useful/effective in real world applications, but some may be. This presents a real opportunity for the OSS community. If a usability movement were undertaken, and an alternate operating system provided usefulness AND usability, novice users would have a reason to pay attention.
As long as programmers write for programmers, programmers (both groups) will be happy. But don't expect the idiots (read, users) to come running.