This just occured to me. If the file system is to be seen as a file cabinet full of files - then how can there be subdirectories at all? If root is the filing cabinet, then the directories in root are the drawers. Inside the drawers, there are files. How can there be subdirectories inside the drawers? Drawers inside drawers? Entire filing cabinets inside drawers? No matter how you look at it, the metaphor doesn't hold. So the argument of making it "just like real life" is just plain wrong.
Spatial Nautilus is trying to force users to go with a real life metaphor because supposedly, this is good for them. Though I am not a GNOME user myself, it seems to me that even inside GNOME, this argument doesn't hold as there are other places where there is no resemblance of real life and nobody seems to complain.
Take, for example, the start menu. If something that has no resemblance of real life is so evil, why has this not long disappeared from the GNOME desktop? Well, because it works and it's the way people launch teir programs. It actually improves upon reality.
Another example I can think of is the single menu bar at the top of the screen. How can it be that if I switch applications, the menu bar changes? In real life, each application's menu bar would be separate and attached to that application. So, there should be a menu bar for each app and the option to switch to a single one should be well-hidden somewhere in gconf. But it isn't. Why? Because it works well for many users this way and they are happy.
Just let the users choose. Choice is good. That's what OSS is all about.
Part of the idea behind using real world analogies is, of course, that newbie users should get a better understanding of what is happening based on their previous experiences in the real world. But from my own experience, it doesn't seem to work this way for most users. When they first start using computers, everything is new and they learn by observing and reading about how things are done. They don't think in analogies. It's all strange and new. That might mean it takes them a while longer to grasp the ideas, but it also means that they are no longer confined by the way things are done in real life.
I have never met a single person who didn't love tabbed browsing once they were told how it works. They don't give a damn about the analogies behind it or what its recommended uses may be. They check it out, see what it can do for them and once they have figured it all out, they use it in the manner that seems most efficient to them.
I absolutely don't see why it would be good to force people to think about the real world analogies behind a new technology and to tell them that whatever they can't do in real life, they shouldn't even try with this new technology.
This dog actually seems to be understanding quite a bit of what he is going on. It's not just a matter of finding an object he has learned to associate with a particular sound. There was a show on tele earlier today about this dog and they showed an experiment that went something like this:
The dog has a collection of roughly 200 toys, each of which he knows by name. When told a toy's name, he'll go and fetch the toy. That's not really impressive, that's what most dogs do. Now comes the cool part though. They added a new toy - one the dog had never seen before. The toy was added to the collection while the dog wasn't in the room, so he didn't see the toy being added. Then they told him to get this new toy. Simply by telling him the new toy's name, which he had never heard before of course. Now, the dog went to his toy room. He found all the old toys and the new one. Since none of his old toys matched the name he had been told, he figured that they what they meant must have been this new toy he just discovered.
This is really the reasoning part. You don't need to tell the dog what the toy's name is - the dog will figure it out himself. If you tell him to look for something he's never heard of, he will have a look around and if there's something new and unusual, he will guess that's what you meant. Isn't that sort of the way humans learn? At least it's certainly not the way dogs are normally trained.
Actually, for 'mergemaster -p' to do what it's intended to do, you need to have the current source code downloaded already. So, you would need to exchange the order of this command and 'make update':
alias rebuild 'cd/usr/src && make update && mergemaster -p && make world && make kernel && mergemaster'
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This just occured to me. If the file system is to be seen as a file cabinet full of files - then how can there be subdirectories at all? If root is the filing cabinet, then the directories in root are the drawers. Inside the drawers, there are files. How can there be subdirectories inside the drawers? Drawers inside drawers? Entire filing cabinets inside drawers? No matter how you look at it, the metaphor doesn't hold. So the argument of making it "just like real life" is just plain wrong.
Spatial Nautilus is trying to force users to go with a real life metaphor because supposedly, this is good for them. Though I am not a GNOME user myself, it seems to me that even inside GNOME, this argument doesn't hold as there are other places where there is no resemblance of real life and nobody seems to complain. Take, for example, the start menu. If something that has no resemblance of real life is so evil, why has this not long disappeared from the GNOME desktop? Well, because it works and it's the way people launch teir programs. It actually improves upon reality. Another example I can think of is the single menu bar at the top of the screen. How can it be that if I switch applications, the menu bar changes? In real life, each application's menu bar would be separate and attached to that application. So, there should be a menu bar for each app and the option to switch to a single one should be well-hidden somewhere in gconf. But it isn't. Why? Because it works well for many users this way and they are happy. Just let the users choose. Choice is good. That's what OSS is all about.
Part of the idea behind using real world analogies is, of course, that newbie users should get a better understanding of what is happening based on their previous experiences in the real world. But from my own experience, it doesn't seem to work this way for most users. When they first start using computers, everything is new and they learn by observing and reading about how things are done. They don't think in analogies. It's all strange and new. That might mean it takes them a while longer to grasp the ideas, but it also means that they are no longer confined by the way things are done in real life.
I have never met a single person who didn't love tabbed browsing once they were told how it works. They don't give a damn about the analogies behind it or what its recommended uses may be. They check it out, see what it can do for them and once they have figured it all out, they use it in the manner that seems most efficient to them.
I absolutely don't see why it would be good to force people to think about the real world analogies behind a new technology and to tell them that whatever they can't do in real life, they shouldn't even try with this new technology.
I didn't know that they did it this way. I am not as impressed as I was before.
That's just what they did for the tele. At the Max Planck Institute, they will have probably done some little more involved tests.
But still, the dog is able to associate an unknown name with an unknown object. I don't think your average dog will be able to do that.
This dog actually seems to be understanding quite a bit of what he is going on. It's not just a matter of finding an object he has learned to associate with a particular sound. There was a show on tele earlier today about this dog and they showed an experiment that went something like this:
The dog has a collection of roughly 200 toys, each of which he knows by name. When told a toy's name, he'll go and fetch the toy. That's not really impressive, that's what most dogs do. Now comes the cool part though. They added a new toy - one the dog had never seen before. The toy was added to the collection while the dog wasn't in the room, so he didn't see the toy being added. Then they told him to get this new toy. Simply by telling him the new toy's name, which he had never heard before of course. Now, the dog went to his toy room. He found all the old toys and the new one. Since none of his old toys matched the name he had been told, he figured that they what they meant must have been this new toy he just discovered.
This is really the reasoning part. You don't need to tell the dog what the toy's name is - the dog will figure it out himself. If you tell him to look for something he's never heard of, he will have a look around and if there's something new and unusual, he will guess that's what you meant. Isn't that sort of the way humans learn? At least it's certainly not the way dogs are normally trained.
Actually, for 'mergemaster -p' to do what it's intended to do, you need to have the current source code downloaded already. So, you would need to exchange the order of this command and 'make update':
/usr/src && make update && mergemaster -p && make world && make kernel && mergemaster'
alias rebuild 'cd