I'm doing contract work right now... no perks and I take care of my own health insurance. (Though I do work from home, which is nice.) I'll be hiding from the real world in grad skool for the next 5-7 years, and hopefully by the time I emerge 1)the job market won't suck 2)I'll be badass enough to be worth wooing.
But you know what? I'm not going to particularly care about free beer (though I do like beer), or a foosball table, or free dinner. The kind of "perk" I want is not having to have my dinner there. Good maternity (and paternity) leave. Flexible hours. Maybe day care. I want to work at the kind of place where it's OK for me to bring well-behaved kids into the office if I need to. Where it's OK for me to be part-time for a year. I don't want my career to suffer unduly if I think my family is important. I don't want to work long hours until I burn out.
And as I'm writing this, I wonder what the hell is wrong that I regard this sort of basic sanity and moderation as a "perk". The perks of the dot-com boom were great fun for self-absorbed twenty-somethings... which is what I am now, but I won't be forever.
That jacket is pretty cool (that display actually looks pretty good for being so tiny)... but it still leaves me computer-less May through September. Can you imagine only using your laptop 6 months out of the year?
A pair of pants would be great because I could wear those just about any time, but then you have the issue of frequent washing. (OK, well maybe not everyone on/. has that issue, but I do.:P) Having to dry clean the thing would be a show-stopper, I wouldn't buy it. I think it may be entirely possible to make wearable computers washable with the removal of a few components, so I'd rather go the pants route than get a jacket I'll only use sometimes.
Ideally, I want body jewelry with processing power. It comes in the shower with you, but that's probably less damaging than being thrown around in a washing machine... and you'll always be wearing it. I can't wait until my cell phone consists of an earring and a lip librette.
For those who are not so punk, how about belts that sync when you hang them on your belt rack? That way you can always accessorize well without sacrificing your computing needs.
I just want to point out that wearable computing will not catch on with women until they start offering products that match our nail polish and make our butts look good.
So I saw the prototype of the new Sidekick last night. The keys glowed pink, but in the real version they'll be yellow.
Well, as far as I know, SSH works on the sidekick, but not for customers. I think they use it internally. They WANT to give it to customers, but they have to deal with TMobile moving much slower than they would like. So my guess is it won't happen soon, but may happen eventually.
Re:but it's more humane!
on
Chicken Run
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· Score: 3, Funny
I had a friend who used to have to collect bull semen. Part of the process involves stimulating its prostate with a cattle prod. Think about that for a second. Think about where that cattle prod has to go. That's a pretty scary job.
For those who are too lazy to click on the link, here is the relevant info:
Integrate critical business information into electronic workflows with FlowPort. Enable the integration of paper documents with groupware, e-mail/messaging and document management systems. Leverage network digital devices, such as digital copiers and Internet fax machines.
FlowPort(TM) features a unique user interface that gives users the capability to access and control documents without using a PC. FlowPort(TM) is Xerox's answer to being limitless, not paperless.
Oh, and blue lasers were also developed at PARC. Excerpt from the page: The shorter wavelengths of blue lasers are ideal for achieving high resolution in printing systems and high density in optical storage.
It's a cute myth that PARC never did anything relevent to Xerox's core business. But it's a myth.
The salient part was not so much the leg as that it was done over christmas when everyone else was watching Charlie Brown specials. The glyphchess thing was supposed to be just gravy. Besides, someone posted a comment further up detailing some of the actual useful stuff they got out of it... it actually helped them debug the dataglyphs toolkit, and makes a nice demo to show to people who might want to give us money for that toolkit.
I don't get why people get pissy about cool hacks like this being "useless". Art is also useless. Sitting around watching The Bachelor is useless. Getting a PhD in math is useless. People do this kind of thing because it's fun to them. What's the big deal?
Well, first of all, he started the project over christmas since he was laid up with a broken leg, and not actually expected to do any useful work.
Second of all, his manager seemed to think so.
Thirdly, most research looks "useless" at first glance. PARC is a research place. If people like you were running it, I guess ethernet and GUIs would never have been invented.
Now if only we could figure out how to profit on any of those cool useless inventions.
These may give you an idea of the state of the U.S. Patent system. It seems your idea doesn't have to be original, or non-obvious, or at all useful. I suppose I'm preaching to the choir by saying this, but here are a couple ridiculous patents for your amusement:
US Patent 6,368,227: Method of Swinging on a Swing I truly don't know how they didn't get busted for prior art on this, or obvousness. According to patent lawyers I know, the guy got away with it because it's an exceptionally well-written patent.
I really really want a dog sled pulled by like a hundred Aibos. They would look so cute in snow shoes.
skipping radio ads would be great
on
TiVo For Radio?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
In fact, skipping radio ads would be even better than skipping TV ads. It must be something about the medium.... while I see the occasional entertaining television ad, I've never heard an ad on the radio that didn't make me want to stick a sharpened pencil in my eye just to distract myself from how obnoxious the ad is.
I almost never listen to the radio. I might if I could essentially tivo it.
I get sort of fed up hearing people say things "XYZ isn't art" when what they really mean is "XYZ is BAD art". Mustard and bananas between two slices of bread is still a sandwich, even if it is a disgustingly bad sandwich. Whether art is good or bad is entirely a matter of taste, though there seems to be quite a bit that a lot of people can agree on. Whether something IS or IS NOT art seems to be a different question altogether. Basically as far as I'm concerned, if you're trying to communicate something to other people, it's probably some form of art. This is a really broad definition, but I do still know the difference between good art (which communicates the artist's ideas successfully) and bad art.
You made the point I was planning to make, geddes. I gotta wonder whether that guy knew what he was talking about.
To add to what you said, something as "inherently democratic" as google can suffer tyranny of the majority -- the majority being composed of geeks who blog and read/. as opposed to people who read the NYT -- which seems to be what is happening here. "Tyranny" is probably too weighted of a term to use when you're referring to search results, but you get what I mean.
I'll cut him a little slack because he's from the Bay Area, but he needs to calm down for a minute and realize that the rest of the world doesn't get all their information from Google.
This guy talks about an "ad-supported player" as the replacement for selling music in album form. He gives you broadcast TV and radio as similar models for content distribution. What he's kind of forgetting is that people really hate ads. We'll pay extra to avoid them. That's why TiVo exists, that's why premium cable exists, that's why sites like Salon try to annoy you into buying a subscription by showing the most irritating possible ads. Paying for a $250 player, and then being subjected to advertisement in order to listen to music... i'd rather buy cd's.
Furthermore, his payment model is pretty much based on ratings. In a system like that, good content won't win out any more (maybe less) than it does now. (Which does bring up the question: is the stuff on TV crappier than the music being sold in stores? On the one hand we have Joe Millionaire. On the other we have Christina Aquilera. But you can still find some pretty good CDs if you look for them.) Lots of promotion will still make artists more money than good songs.
So... I don't think I like the "future of music" any better than the present.
If you've got multiple symbols on a crowded display, how do you make particular features stand out
Aye, there's the rub. Making small symbols distinguishable is important, but I don't know any easy-to-follow rules on how to do it. I haven't heard about the effect of amount of visual arc before, but I am still wary of using color (without redundant indicators), because you can very easily make things confusing for people who are colorblind. I've read some of Tufte's stuff on color, and I'm starting to think it's often used inappropriately: for example to indicate ordering by hue, when there's really no natural ordering to it. (ROYGBIV, of course, but that is not an internalized, intuitive ordering for most people. using brightness/darkness might work ok.) I've seen people use color to indicate magnitude, and that's not the greatest idea because a linear increase in, say, the amount of green or saturation or brightness, isn't going to be perceived linearly. You'd have to use a perceptual color space like CIELAB of CIECAM... and most designers and engineers aren't color vision nerds enough to do it. I'm not saying you can't do very good things with color -- you certainly can. But it's hard, while it's very easy to do bad things with color.
There's a lot of sciency cognitive psych knowledge required to do truly good User Interface design (of which icon design is a subset, I suppose). Unfortunately, there is no unified science of UI design, and most of us are stumbling around half-blind and just doing the best we can.
Sorry this is a bit off-topic. But, kris lang, i'd love to know a bit more about CIELAB and stuff, because I've forgotten most of what I learned about it. If you get a chance, can you send some references my way? (my yahoo messaging id is available in my user info i think.)
Are bitter almonds edible? I've read (in Guns Germs and Steel if you're interested) that almonds in their pre-domesticated wild form actually have enough cyanide in them to be really poisonous. Domesticating them would have involved somehow finding some mutant almonds that didn't kill you, and breeding them for generations until they got some non-poisonous almond trees that would reliably breed more non-poisonous almond trees. I guess it's not so much that cyanide smells like almonds as that almonds smell like cyanide.
I would hate to be the quality assurance person on the almond domestication project.
I used to design icons (still do sometimes) so feel free to regard my reply as a little bit biased.
A poorly made set of icons can indeed be worse than text. I think the really crucial element is whether different icons or wordcons are easily distinguishable. Your brain can easily pick out unique features. for example:
notice how that T is much easier to spot that that Q? Icons that all look similar will be more difficult to pick out than words. However, to some extent, text looks like text looks like text, and a set of icons that have been designed to be easily distinguishable from each other will be easier for most people to pick out than a bunch of wordcons. Yes, there is a learning curve where you have to figure out what the icons mean, but I typically learn that pretty fast, and then I process icons faster than text. I would say that once they are learned, you're stripping away a "level of indirection". After all, kids who haven't learned to read yet can process pictures... you learn how to do that very early.
As an aside, people read lowercase, serifed fonts faster than uppercase sans-serif fonts because uppercase sans-serif fonts have fewer distinguishing features for each letter. Your speed of reading, or your speed of picking out icons, doesn't happen on a conscious level. Even if you're annoyed by icons, they might be helping you anyway.
Your point about the trashcan icon is kind of interesting, and true. The point of an icon is that it evokes a general concept. A trashcan icon that is too detailed can make you think of a particular trash can, or a particular type of trashcan -- a simple one should just make you think of the platonic form of trashcan. It should work sort of like the word "trashcan", except that you can read it faster, and tell it apart from other icons more easily. (That's why the simplicity of Kare's icons is so awesome.) So yes, it would work much better if it's appearance were consistent across OS's.
The idea of trying to pick a tool in photoshop using printed names -- "paintbrush, history brush, pencil" -- instead of icons makes me shudder.
Slashdot Mirror
But you know what? I'm not going to particularly care about free beer (though I do like beer), or a foosball table, or free dinner. The kind of "perk" I want is not having to have my dinner there. Good maternity (and paternity) leave. Flexible hours. Maybe day care. I want to work at the kind of place where it's OK for me to bring well-behaved kids into the office if I need to. Where it's OK for me to be part-time for a year. I don't want my career to suffer unduly if I think my family is important. I don't want to work long hours until I burn out.
And as I'm writing this, I wonder what the hell is wrong that I regard this sort of basic sanity and moderation as a "perk". The perks of the dot-com boom were great fun for self-absorbed twenty-somethings... which is what I am now, but I won't be forever.
I set up my own soapbox so I don't have to compete with 400 other posts. Because I'm conceited like that. But if you're interested do take a look.
A pair of pants would be great because I could wear those just about any time, but then you have the issue of frequent washing. (OK, well maybe not everyone on /. has that issue, but I do. :P) Having to dry clean the thing would be a show-stopper, I wouldn't buy it. I think it may be entirely possible to make wearable computers washable with the removal of a few components, so I'd rather go the pants route than get a jacket I'll only use sometimes.
Ideally, I want body jewelry with processing power. It comes in the shower with you, but that's probably less damaging than being thrown around in a washing machine... and you'll always be wearing it. I can't wait until my cell phone consists of an earring and a lip librette.
For those who are not so punk, how about belts that sync when you hang them on your belt rack? That way you can always accessorize well without sacrificing your computing needs.
I just want to point out that wearable computing will not catch on with women until they start offering products that match our nail polish and make our butts look good.
So I saw the prototype of the new Sidekick last night. The keys glowed pink, but in the real version they'll be yellow. Well, as far as I know, SSH works on the sidekick, but not for customers. I think they use it internally. They WANT to give it to customers, but they have to deal with TMobile moving much slower than they would like. So my guess is it won't happen soon, but may happen eventually.
I had a friend who used to have to collect bull semen. Part of the process involves stimulating its prostate with a cattle prod. Think about that for a second. Think about where that cattle prod has to go. That's a pretty scary job.
For those who are too lazy to click on the link, here is the relevant info:
Integrate critical business information into electronic workflows with FlowPort. Enable the integration of paper documents with groupware, e-mail/messaging and document management systems. Leverage network digital devices, such as digital copiers and Internet fax machines.
FlowPort(TM) features a unique user interface that gives users the capability to access and control documents without using a PC. FlowPort(TM) is Xerox's answer to being limitless, not paperless.
Oh, and blue lasers were also developed at PARC. Excerpt from the page: The shorter wavelengths of blue lasers are ideal for achieving high resolution in printing systems and high density in optical storage.
It's a cute myth that PARC never did anything relevent to Xerox's core business. But it's a myth.
I don't get why people get pissy about cool hacks like this being "useless". Art is also useless. Sitting around watching The Bachelor is useless. Getting a PhD in math is useless. People do this kind of thing because it's fun to them. What's the big deal?
Well, first of all, he started the project over christmas since he was laid up with a broken leg, and not actually expected to do any useful work.
Second of all, his manager seemed to think so.
Thirdly, most research looks "useless" at first glance. PARC is a research place. If people like you were running it, I guess ethernet and GUIs would never have been invented.
Now if only we could figure out how to profit on any of those cool useless inventions.
US Patent 6,368,227: Method of Swinging on a Swing I truly don't know how they didn't get busted for prior art on this, or obvousness. According to patent lawyers I know, the guy got away with it because it's an exceptionally well-written patent.
and US Patent 3,216,423: APPARATUS FOR FACILITATING THE BIRTH OF A CHILD BY CENTRIGUGAL FORCE, which I think is actually very non-obvious, and I doubt there's much prior art on it. But I'm not surprised it was never productized.
I really really want a dog sled pulled by like a hundred Aibos. They would look so cute in snow shoes.
I almost never listen to the radio. I might if I could essentially tivo it.
I get sort of fed up hearing people say things "XYZ isn't art" when what they really mean is "XYZ is BAD art". Mustard and bananas between two slices of bread is still a sandwich, even if it is a disgustingly bad sandwich. Whether art is good or bad is entirely a matter of taste, though there seems to be quite a bit that a lot of people can agree on. Whether something IS or IS NOT art seems to be a different question altogether. Basically as far as I'm concerned, if you're trying to communicate something to other people, it's probably some form of art. This is a really broad definition, but I do still know the difference between good art (which communicates the artist's ideas successfully) and bad art.
sorry, this got a bit off topic.
2D barcode art can indeed be done
To add to what you said, something as "inherently democratic" as google can suffer tyranny of the majority -- the majority being composed of geeks who blog and read /. as opposed to people who read the NYT -- which seems to be what is happening here. "Tyranny" is probably too weighted of a term to use when you're referring to search results, but you get what I mean.
I'll cut him a little slack because he's from the Bay Area, but he needs to calm down for a minute and realize that the rest of the world doesn't get all their information from Google.
Furthermore, his payment model is pretty much based on ratings. In a system like that, good content won't win out any more (maybe less) than it does now. (Which does bring up the question: is the stuff on TV crappier than the music being sold in stores? On the one hand we have Joe Millionaire. On the other we have Christina Aquilera. But you can still find some pretty good CDs if you look for them.) Lots of promotion will still make artists more money than good songs.
So... I don't think I like the "future of music" any better than the present.
Aye, there's the rub. Making small symbols distinguishable is important, but I don't know any easy-to-follow rules on how to do it. I haven't heard about the effect of amount of visual arc before, but I am still wary of using color (without redundant indicators), because you can very easily make things confusing for people who are colorblind. I've read some of Tufte's stuff on color, and I'm starting to think it's often used inappropriately: for example to indicate ordering by hue, when there's really no natural ordering to it. (ROYGBIV, of course, but that is not an internalized, intuitive ordering for most people. using brightness/darkness might work ok.) I've seen people use color to indicate magnitude, and that's not the greatest idea because a linear increase in, say, the amount of green or saturation or brightness, isn't going to be perceived linearly. You'd have to use a perceptual color space like CIELAB of CIECAM... and most designers and engineers aren't color vision nerds enough to do it. I'm not saying you can't do very good things with color -- you certainly can. But it's hard, while it's very easy to do bad things with color.
There's a lot of sciency cognitive psych knowledge required to do truly good User Interface design (of which icon design is a subset, I suppose). Unfortunately, there is no unified science of UI design, and most of us are stumbling around half-blind and just doing the best we can.
Sorry this is a bit off-topic. But, kris lang, i'd love to know a bit more about CIELAB and stuff, because I've forgotten most of what I learned about it. If you get a chance, can you send some references my way? (my yahoo messaging id is available in my user info i think.)
I would hate to be the quality assurance person on the almond domestication project.
I used to design icons (still do sometimes) so feel free to regard my reply as a little bit biased.
O OOTOOOOOOO
A poorly made set of icons can indeed be worse than text. I think the really crucial element is whether different icons or wordcons are easily distinguishable. Your brain can easily pick out unique features. for example:
OOOOOOOOOOOOOQOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
notice how that T is much easier to spot that that Q? Icons that all look similar will be more difficult to pick out than words. However, to some extent, text looks like text looks like text, and a set of icons that have been designed to be easily distinguishable from each other will be easier for most people to pick out than a bunch of wordcons. Yes, there is a learning curve where you have to figure out what the icons mean, but I typically learn that pretty fast, and then I process icons faster than text. I would say that once they are learned, you're stripping away a "level of indirection". After all, kids who haven't learned to read yet can process pictures... you learn how to do that very early.
As an aside, people read lowercase, serifed fonts faster than uppercase sans-serif fonts because uppercase sans-serif fonts have fewer distinguishing features for each letter. Your speed of reading, or your speed of picking out icons, doesn't happen on a conscious level. Even if you're annoyed by icons, they might be helping you anyway.
Your point about the trashcan icon is kind of interesting, and true. The point of an icon is that it evokes a general concept. A trashcan icon that is too detailed can make you think of a particular trash can, or a particular type of trashcan -- a simple one should just make you think of the platonic form of trashcan. It should work sort of like the word "trashcan", except that you can read it faster, and tell it apart from other icons more easily. (That's why the simplicity of Kare's icons is so awesome.) So yes, it would work much better if it's appearance were consistent across OS's.
The idea of trying to pick a tool in photoshop using printed names -- "paintbrush, history brush, pencil" -- instead of icons makes me shudder.