Maybe there could be a system that experts on a subject review articles and add a tag, "this version of this article was checked for correctness by E. X. Pert, who is a Professor of Subject in Some University". It would add some credibility. I don't know if enough experts would volunteer, but at least it's less work to check an article for correcness than volunteer to write one.
Just about every word I've tried appears somewhere within the contents of 67,000 spams...
This is probably because spammers put random words from dictionary into the messages to make spam detection harder. Thus, with enough spam, you get every word in the dictionary.
On our "Usability 101" course at university, we were taught this process: figure out a set of goals that users have with the software; prioritize them and desing the application to make it as easy as possible to meet the goals. The whole visible structure and workflow is based on the goals. The set of goals must be complete enough to cover all uses, but should not have repetition. There might be different kinds of users who have different goals.
Details such as good menu labels are just that, details. They have to be worked out, but first the structure of the program must support the goals.
Usability testing is a fairly good way to spot errors in desing, but tends to bring up problems in learning the program. It doesn't need to be fancy, get a user and ask him/her to accomplish some goals. We practived it with videotaped paper simulation. No large numbers of test users are needed. After 5-10 users (even less for small applications), the problems that are brought up start looking the same.
The are design patterns such as "give user an idea of the whole when looking at a part of a document (or whatever)", an example being the scrollbar that hints about the current position and the length of a document. A good book would cover these.
Designing good UI is not something that can be learned in 5 hours. I agree some good free (as in beer) book would be good. I think usability is a problem for open source, because even if an "expert" would give usability comments on a project, there is no guarantee anything significant will happen (and restructuring a program is significant). OSS people generally don't like to be told, "look, you have to code like this". I think the expert should be prepared to code himself, or better, that leading OSS developers would themselves be educated on usability and able to desing good software from the beginning.
I also point out it's not easy for painters either. A (beginning) hobby painter has painted/is painting a portait of me (from a photograph): it's been through several iterations and never looks more than 90% like me. Sometimes it looks a bit scary. I hear the eyes are particularly difficult: even slight mistakes stand out.
It's not that portaits always have to look 100% like the model, though. Van Gogh painted a young lady and she thought the picture didn't look like her... but 50 years later, she though it (still) looked exactly like her!
To me the shirt doesn't look fake, but rather out of focus. A large/medium-format camera with a shallow depth of field could produce something like this - although not exactly.
One example of not-quite-there is to take a face photo (of yourself or someone you know) and replace the left side with the mirror of the right side (or the other way around). It's quite creepy unless the face is almost perfectly symmetric, which most faces aren't.
Who said you shouldn't have your leg in the photo? Rule #1: there are no rules. Also, it's good to have a series rather than mere single photos; single photos have to be really great to be interesting on their own, but a selection of photos on a common theme is usually more interesting.
I don't have leg shots but do have quite a few shadow shots (my shadow showing in the picture). They say the shadow of the photographer shouldn't be visible... bah. Of course, it all depends on the situation.
The quality of a photo is how well it serves its purpose. Memory shots are of good quality if they bring back the memories. "Art" or creative photos have different criteria: they usually should be enjoyed by other people than the photographer and his friends.
I find this paranoia about images of bills strange. In some countries it's illegal to have any image of a bill, no matter how small... I for one have had legitimate use for a digital image of a (Euro) bill. I was making a CD-ROM presentation with animations, speech, text and such, and used an animated 100(?) Euro bill to symbolize the transfer of money in a business context. I didn't scan the bill, though, but copied it from a EU web site. And while IANAL, the person I was working for/with is a lawyer (it was a law firm).
I remember reading that SMS messages are transmitted on the air during idle periods; it puts little additional strain to the phone->link tower network. And when the message is on the backbone, its size probably gets lost in the noise. Then there are message centers that process the messages, but they can't cost that much. So, physical transmission of SMS should cost next to nothing.
"160 bytes should be enough for everyone", eh! It's funny that nowadays phones enable longer text messages, but they are transmitted as several 160 B messages and you have to pay double-triple cost, at least in here.
Just point your camera at the nearest government building, bridge or other terrorist target, and after the police has shown up and searched you for paper knives and other terrorist equipment, ask them "by the way, which way is the airport?" or whatever you need to know.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe there could be a system that experts on a subject review articles and add a tag, "this version of this article was checked for correctness by E. X. Pert, who is a Professor of Subject in Some University". It would add some credibility. I don't know if enough experts would volunteer, but at least it's less work to check an article for correcness than volunteer to write one.
Yeah, but you could remote login to the Linux remote controller from your laptop, which would have wireless LAN.
This is probably because spammers put random words from dictionary into the messages to make spam detection harder. Thus, with enough spam, you get every word in the dictionary.
Details such as good menu labels are just that, details. They have to be worked out, but first the structure of the program must support the goals.
Usability testing is a fairly good way to spot errors in desing, but tends to bring up problems in learning the program. It doesn't need to be fancy, get a user and ask him/her to accomplish some goals. We practived it with videotaped paper simulation. No large numbers of test users are needed. After 5-10 users (even less for small applications), the problems that are brought up start looking the same.
The are design patterns such as "give user an idea of the whole when looking at a part of a document (or whatever)", an example being the scrollbar that hints about the current position and the length of a document. A good book would cover these.
Designing good UI is not something that can be learned in 5 hours. I agree some good free (as in beer) book would be good. I think usability is a problem for open source, because even if an "expert" would give usability comments on a project, there is no guarantee anything significant will happen (and restructuring a program is significant). OSS people generally don't like to be told, "look, you have to code like this". I think the expert should be prepared to code himself, or better, that leading OSS developers would themselves be educated on usability and able to desing good software from the beginning.
It's not that portaits always have to look 100% like the model, though. Van Gogh painted a young lady and she thought the picture didn't look like her... but 50 years later, she though it (still) looked exactly like her!
One example of not-quite-there is to take a face photo (of yourself or someone you know) and replace the left side with the mirror of the right side (or the other way around). It's quite creepy unless the face is almost perfectly symmetric, which most faces aren't.
I don't have leg shots but do have quite a few shadow shots (my shadow showing in the picture). They say the shadow of the photographer shouldn't be visible... bah. Of course, it all depends on the situation.
The quality of a photo is how well it serves its purpose. Memory shots are of good quality if they bring back the memories. "Art" or creative photos have different criteria: they usually should be enjoyed by other people than the photographer and his friends.
I find this paranoia about images of bills strange. In some countries it's illegal to have any image of a bill, no matter how small... I for one have had legitimate use for a digital image of a (Euro) bill. I was making a CD-ROM presentation with animations, speech, text and such, and used an animated 100(?) Euro bill to symbolize the transfer of money in a business context. I didn't scan the bill, though, but copied it from a EU web site. And while IANAL, the person I was working for/with is a lawyer (it was a law firm).
"160 bytes should be enough for everyone", eh! It's funny that nowadays phones enable longer text messages, but they are transmitted as several 160 B messages and you have to pay double-triple cost, at least in here.
Just point your camera at the nearest government building, bridge or other terrorist target, and after the police has shown up and searched you for paper knives and other terrorist equipment, ask them "by the way, which way is the airport?" or whatever you need to know.