And for that reason you gave, I think we have to conclude that computer UIs suck for security. Absolutely, yes.
Also, most GUIs won't give you a clue about the data/executable status of a given file (unless you keep opening the properties/info window). So we get lots of trojans posing as jpeg files and proliferating like mad. OSes are only now starting to (inelegantly) deal with this problem. Yes, this is a major problem I wrote about last year. It's the confusion between data and code. Originally, we thought a user shouldn't have to care. We learned the hard way that he needs to.
The real problems are, in no particular order: The real problem, in no particular order:
1) Most people doing IT security are arrogant techofreaks with absolutely no understanding of HCI, usability or users in general.
If the people who built our cars were equally arrogant, ignorant bastards, you'd have to have a diploma in engineering to start it, it would look like an airplane cockpit, and every time you open the door you'd have to fill in a questionare saying that you're really sure and you absolve the manufacturer of any responsibility.
Oh, and they'd come with a 50-page sale contract that says you can't sue the manufacturer every, for anything, and the car doesn't really belong to you, you only get a limited license to use it. But that's a different topic.
As much as I respect Bruce, but here he's got it the wrong way around.
If people can't cope with the way something works, then are the people at fault, or the way we built that thing? Or, in more practical terms: Which part can we change? So where should we direct our energy and creative thinking?
Humans are the way they are. The way to change them is called education, takes several generations for any major change, and is fairly uncertain and not yet fully understood.
Dude, I didn't miss the point at all, OSX was my first Mac OS and it being (almost) Unix was one very convincing reason to this Linux/Solaris/etc. guy.
But, some people still care about Unix, POSIX, RFCs and aall this other "useless paperwork" or "silly certifications". Fortunately, many of them are developers of the core components your other stuff relies upon. You know The Open Group isn't a marketing firm, it's a standards consortium.
Public transportation you say? Is an option if you live near the station, but only then. Public transport has, unfortunately, been all but demolished in many parts of Europe. The German government, for example, is currently busy selling 50% of the train system - estimated worth: 100 billion Euros. Ask price for half of that: 6 billion Euros. If that isn't a fire-sale, I don't know what is. We'll probably find a good part of that government with lucrative positions in certain corporations once their careers are over.
Why do I mention this? Because it's been going on for about 10 years, and all those years train service in Germany has gone down. Remember when the Germans were famous for being punctual? One thing Germany was famous for was how its trains ran on the minute. If it said 8:52 on the time table, it would be there at 8:52 and not 8:53 (or somewhere between 8:45 and 9:00, like almost everywhere else). Those times are over. Train delays have become so common that they're a running gag.
You're assuming that people actually care about a lot of these differences. Correct, that is the assumption.
I don't see this, people buy the iMac because it's an Apple machine, not because it's an all-in-one form-factor. Which is exactly what I said. All-in-one is not a unique feature (though rare), but it is part of an overall design that appeals to the target audience. The beauty of Mac is that the design doesn't end at the case (there are quite a few wonderful PC cases out there), but goes from hardware to operating system to application software. And that is what people are very willing to pay a premium for, because you just can't get it anywhere in the PC market.
they generally are looking at the cheapest option No, they aren't. That's a myth from Economics 101 that is being debunked in Economics 303 (or so), just like your college physics taught you that Newton's mechanics is actually wrong, but a fairly good approximation at scales we on earth care about.
Price is one of many variables people consider when buying something. Most people who even consider an iMac know well that there are considerable differences between it and the Dell next door. Sure they consider both options and compare them - just like you would when you decide whether the next family car is going to be a limousine or a SUV. But you'd never forget that comparing them on price alone, or any other single variable, doesn't give you the whole picture.
And the "desktop iMac" alreay happened. It's called the Mac Pro. Yes, again a different target audience. You might have noticed Apple doesn't target the "low-cost consumer mainstream". I think that's ok. Not everyone is microsoft and absolutely has to own every corner of every market.
Once you expand out your options like the typical buyer will, the iMac starts becoming more and more expensive. Yes, because you compare it with things that are different. If I'm out shopping for a sports car, telling me that both the Porsche and the Ferrari are really expensive compared to the VW Beetle will get you a laugh, at best. Yes, that is exageration, but the iMac is not the same product as any no-name desktop PC. It isn't in the same market, it doesn't have the same target audience. It doesn't compete. People who wanted some desktop PC won't consider an iMac, and people who want an iMac won't consider a grey Dell box a competitor or alternative.
Dude, it isn't the size (there are notebooks smaller than the MBP, there are desktop PCs smaller than the iMac). It's the engineering that goes into putting everything together. Size is just one of the engineering feats.
But, and that's what Apple also "gets" and Bill Gates never did: There is more to quality and computing than the pure engineering. Heck, I've been a Linux and commandline fanatic until a year or so ago when I bought my first Mac. But there is something to say for user interface design as contrasted to cobbling together any UI element you think cool (i.e. the Linux and windos way).
That extends to the hardware as well. An iMac is something you can put into your living room without looking like a dork. Sure a grey box could be cobbled together for less, but Apple is specifically not about cobbling something together.
And I quite like that. It means whatever they give has some serious thought put into it, from the engineering to the UI side. And I'm willing to pay extra for that - and millions of others feel the same. So where, exactly was the problem you were trying to solve?:-)
Apple understands that quality has a price. Really, the iMac is very competitively priced. There are very few comparable systems and they are all in the same price range (and no, comparing the iMac with a desktop or mini tower doesn't count).
Offering a cheap, crap machine would be the worst move imaginable.
Never trust statistics you didn't fake yourself. Regarding market share, there are other numbers out there that are very interesting. For example that if you substract the corporate market (which has sold its collective soul to MS by investing heavily in legacy apps and simply can't change its computing platform at the speed consumers can), then the Apple market share has been growing faster and has been in the double-digits for quite a while.
Why not consider the iPhone one way into the corporate market? It's definitely a toy a CEO or someone like that would like to have. And then he'll get a Mac because all the synching works good and besides he's seen them at the Apple store when he brought in his iPhone so someone could explain Google maps to him. And a month later, he'll tell his IT that he wants a Mac in his office.
Vista's honestly not that bad. Even then, it's still a scam and a disappointment because it was sold as the next generation, second coming, next revelation and revolution of computing as we know it.
I checked, but TFA really is from this quarter. Has anyone told these guys that Leopard is, in fact, on its way to the stores?
And for the delays - one, they are much less than anything we're used to from MS (six months instead of a year or more) and two, I'd rather have them ship a good product then one that requires the first patch as soon as you come home (as has become standard with most games nowadays).
I agree if we can agree on using "measure" in the sense of "quantify". And you can certainly quantify complexity, if all else fails by enumeration.
Regarding the science aspects, the whole area is fairly new and possibly in a pre-scientific phase if you put it bluntly, but then so are many other areas, like computer security or user interface studies. Nevertheless it is scientific in principle - which according to my understanding requires only two basic essentials: Hypotheses being stated and studies, experiments or other suitable activities being done to examine and disprove or verify these.
Ah yes, the usual strawman. Dawkins does a very good job debunking that in his book, I couldn't put it any better, so I won't. It's a bullshit argument.
That's an interesting reply, and different from what I expected. I wonder how inaccuracies in the scripture will convince you that the whole god thing is a scam, but you said it so let's roll with that. (Then again, Paul the Apostle wrote to his friends in Corinth that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, their faith was in vain, so you follow him in that.)
I'm by far not a bible expert, so I'll pick one where I happen to be a little familiar with the topic: The gospels.
It's very common knowledge that the four gospels included in the NT were hand-picked from a much larger number. Several of the non-canonical gospels include versions of Jesus' life story that differ considerably. The total number of gospels is quite impressive.
The rediscovery of the gospel of Judas sheds considerable doubt on the objectivity of the canonical gospels. It makes it clear that they are witness reports, and from witnesses with limited information. Also, remember that there are no non-christian sources from the time who document the resurrection, which - if it happened - was certainly newsworthy. A list of authors who we would expect to mention this event can be found at the end of this article, which also gives evidence near the start that at least the earliest gospel was altered after the fact.
There's also a longer discussion about the resurrection thing, and I'll leave the topic with that because I wanted to write about the gospels.
Regarding altering of the gospels, christians don't call it that way, the proper term appears to be "harmonizing". It's been going on for a long time, too. this article puts it nicely:
"To bring the different stories into agreement, the church often modified or even rewrote the scriptures. Tatian, a disciple of Justin, tried to solve the problem by writing the "Diatessaron", a composite of the stories of matthew, mark, luke and john. "
It also contains the following claim, unfortunately without mentioning the source:
""the most radical alterations", writes Kronos, "date from the nicene Council and were motivated by the understanding between Pope Damasus I and Emperor Constantine. It was on this occasion that the oldest Gospels, Notably the Gospel of the Hebrews(the original Gospel of Mathew) were declared to be hidden (apokruphos == Apocryphal). Furthermore additions, ommissions, and alterations were made in the four remaining Gospels. St Jerome, who had been commissioned to translate them into latin, was surprised by this."
So let's move away from the sceptics, here is the Catholic Encyclopedia, and it says:
"Another factor which contributed to the alleged distortion of the Gospel story was the necessity imposed on primitive Christianity of altering, if it were to last, the conception of the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus in person. On His lips, it is said, the Gospel was merely a cry of "Sauve qui peut" addressed to the world which He believed to be about to end. Such was also the persuasion of the first Christian generation. But soon it was perceived that they had to do with a world which was to last, and the teaching of the Master had to be adapted to the new condition of things. This adaptation was not achieved without much violence, done, unconsciously, it is true, to historical reality, for the need was felt of deriving from the Gospel all the ecclesiastical institutions of a more recent date. Such is the eschatological explanation propagated particularly by J. Weiss, Schweitzer, Loisy; and favorably received by Pragmatis
Ah, so your "faith" can be examined, tested and falsified? That's an interesting variation. Let's jump right in: What would you accept as definite falsification of your faith?
Complexity, by definition, is not one quantity, but rather a meta-measurement of the number of quantities, qualities and interconnections between those. It's not the same as a glass of water, say. More like H2O - which is not water, but an abstract description of same.
In that sense, it is similar to entropy, but entropy can be measured (in theory), while complexity can be counted. Close, but not quite the same thing.
For practical purposes, I'd say take the number of different parts and the number of connections between parts and you have a pretty good measurement of the complexity of a system.
How funny that the poor, poor religious people tout the "help, I'm being prosecuted" line everytime they get challenged.
Then again, they probably know all about prosecution. Centuries of experience hunting, torturing and killing everyone who dares to have a different favourite book, calls his god a different name, or just simply picked the wrong set of rules within the same religion.
So get off the high horse. If 10% of the carnage that religion has dealt on mankind would be dealt back, you'd all be killed ten times over. Fortunately for you, some atheists are brutal in their choice of words, but you can't show me an atheist inquisition, crusade or suicide bomber, can you?
So what you're saying is that if god had gone away, died, dissolved or otherwise ceased to exist five minutes after the "creation", everything would still be the same because what he created was so great that it works without him?
Slashdot Mirror
The only problem being that finding the source is two thirds of the problem.
1) Most people doing IT security are arrogant techofreaks with absolutely no understanding of HCI, usability or users in general.
If the people who built our cars were equally arrogant, ignorant bastards, you'd have to have a diploma in engineering to start it, it would look like an airplane cockpit, and every time you open the door you'd have to fill in a questionare saying that you're really sure and you absolve the manufacturer of any responsibility.
Oh, and they'd come with a 50-page sale contract that says you can't sue the manufacturer every, for anything, and the car doesn't really belong to you, you only get a limited license to use it. But that's a different topic.
As much as I respect Bruce, but here he's got it the wrong way around.
If people can't cope with the way something works, then are the people at fault, or the way we built that thing? Or, in more practical terms: Which part can we change? So where should we direct our energy and creative thinking?
Humans are the way they are. The way to change them is called education, takes several generations for any major change, and is fairly uncertain and not yet fully understood.
Am I in the wrong movie? That's exactly what I was talking about three posts upwards.
Dude, I didn't miss the point at all, OSX was my first Mac OS and it being (almost) Unix was one very convincing reason to this Linux/Solaris/etc. guy.
But, some people still care about Unix, POSIX, RFCs and aall this other "useless paperwork" or "silly certifications". Fortunately, many of them are developers of the core components your other stuff relies upon. You know The Open Group isn't a marketing firm, it's a standards consortium.
Then you're back at Leopard as well, because only Leopord is really "Unix" and not "*nix". :-)
Why do I mention this? Because it's been going on for about 10 years, and all those years train service in Germany has gone down. Remember when the Germans were famous for being punctual? One thing Germany was famous for was how its trains ran on the minute. If it said 8:52 on the time table, it would be there at 8:52 and not 8:53 (or somewhere between 8:45 and 9:00, like almost everywhere else). Those times are over. Train delays have become so common that they're a running gag.
Actually, you can do that already, for a few Euros, but only if you're quick (the journey takes about two minutes or so):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Elbe_Tunnel
That's a tunnel from 1911, and it has car lifts on both sides of it.
Price is one of many variables people consider when buying something. Most people who even consider an iMac know well that there are considerable differences between it and the Dell next door. Sure they consider both options and compare them - just like you would when you decide whether the next family car is going to be a limousine or a SUV. But you'd never forget that comparing them on price alone, or any other single variable, doesn't give you the whole picture.
And the "desktop iMac" alreay happened. It's called the Mac Pro. Yes, again a different target audience. You might have noticed Apple doesn't target the "low-cost consumer mainstream". I think that's ok. Not everyone is microsoft and absolutely has to own every corner of every market.
Dude, it isn't the size (there are notebooks smaller than the MBP, there are desktop PCs smaller than the iMac). It's the engineering that goes into putting everything together. Size is just one of the engineering feats.
:-)
But, and that's what Apple also "gets" and Bill Gates never did: There is more to quality and computing than the pure engineering. Heck, I've been a Linux and commandline fanatic until a year or so ago when I bought my first Mac. But there is something to say for user interface design as contrasted to cobbling together any UI element you think cool (i.e. the Linux and windos way).
That extends to the hardware as well. An iMac is something you can put into your living room without looking like a dork. Sure a grey box could be cobbled together for less, but Apple is specifically not about cobbling something together.
And I quite like that. It means whatever they give has some serious thought put into it, from the engineering to the UI side. And I'm willing to pay extra for that - and millions of others feel the same. So where, exactly was the problem you were trying to solve?
Apple understands that quality has a price. Really, the iMac is very competitively priced. There are very few comparable systems and they are all in the same price range (and no, comparing the iMac with a desktop or mini tower doesn't count).
Offering a cheap, crap machine would be the worst move imaginable.
Never trust statistics you didn't fake yourself. Regarding market share, there are other numbers out there that are very interesting. For example that if you substract the corporate market (which has sold its collective soul to MS by investing heavily in legacy apps and simply can't change its computing platform at the speed consumers can), then the Apple market share has been growing faster and has been in the double-digits for quite a while.
I don't think that way.
Why not consider the iPhone one way into the corporate market? It's definitely a toy a CEO or someone like that would like to have. And then he'll get a Mac because all the synching works good and besides he's seen them at the Apple store when he brought in his iPhone so someone could explain Google maps to him. And a month later, he'll tell his IT that he wants a Mac in his office.
And it turned out to be essentially XP SP3.
I checked, but TFA really is from this quarter. Has anyone told these guys that Leopard is, in fact, on its way to the stores?
And for the delays - one, they are much less than anything we're used to from MS (six months instead of a year or more) and two, I'd rather have them ship a good product then one that requires the first patch as soon as you come home (as has become standard with most games nowadays).
I agree if we can agree on using "measure" in the sense of "quantify". And you can certainly quantify complexity, if all else fails by enumeration.
Regarding the science aspects, the whole area is fairly new and possibly in a pre-scientific phase if you put it bluntly, but then so are many other areas, like computer security or user interface studies. Nevertheless it is scientific in principle - which according to my understanding requires only two basic essentials: Hypotheses being stated and studies, experiments or other suitable activities being done to examine and disprove or verify these.
Ah yes, the usual strawman. Dawkins does a very good job debunking that in his book, I couldn't put it any better, so I won't. It's a bullshit argument.
That's an interesting reply, and different from what I expected. I wonder how inaccuracies in the scripture will convince you that the whole god thing is a scam, but you said it so let's roll with that. (Then again, Paul the Apostle wrote to his friends in Corinth that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, their faith was in vain, so you follow him in that.)
I'm by far not a bible expert, so I'll pick one where I happen to be a little familiar with the topic: The gospels.
It's very common knowledge that the four gospels included in the NT were hand-picked from a much larger number. Several of the non-canonical gospels include versions of Jesus' life story that differ considerably. The total number of gospels is quite impressive.
The rediscovery of the gospel of Judas sheds considerable doubt on the objectivity of the canonical gospels. It makes it clear that they are witness reports, and from witnesses with limited information.
Also, remember that there are no non-christian sources from the time who document the resurrection, which - if it happened - was certainly newsworthy. A list of authors who we would expect to mention this event can be found at the end of this article, which also gives evidence near the start that at least the earliest gospel was altered after the fact.
There's also a longer discussion about the resurrection thing, and I'll leave the topic with that because I wanted to write about the gospels.
Regarding altering of the gospels, christians don't call it that way, the proper term appears to be "harmonizing". It's been going on for a long time, too. this article puts it nicely:
"To
bring the different stories into agreement, the church often modified
or even rewrote the scriptures. Tatian, a disciple of Justin, tried to
solve the problem by writing the "Diatessaron", a composite of the
stories of matthew, mark, luke and john. "
It also contains the following claim, unfortunately without mentioning the source:
""the most radical alterations", writes Kronos, "date from the
nicene Council and were motivated by the understanding between
Pope Damasus I and Emperor Constantine. It was on this occasion
that the oldest Gospels, Notably the Gospel of the Hebrews(the
original Gospel of Mathew) were declared to be hidden (apokruphos
== Apocryphal). Furthermore additions, ommissions, and alterations
were made in the four remaining Gospels. St Jerome, who had been
commissioned to translate them into latin, was surprised by this."
So let's move away from the sceptics, here is the Catholic Encyclopedia, and it says:
"Another factor which contributed to the alleged distortion of the Gospel story was the necessity imposed on primitive Christianity of altering, if it were to last, the conception of the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus in person. On His lips, it is said, the Gospel was merely a cry of "Sauve qui peut" addressed to the world which He believed to be about to end. Such was also the persuasion of the first Christian generation. But soon it was perceived that they had to do with a world which was to last, and the teaching of the Master had to be adapted to the new condition of things. This adaptation was not achieved without much violence, done, unconsciously, it is true, to historical reality, for the need was felt of deriving from the Gospel all the ecclesiastical institutions of a more recent date. Such is the eschatological explanation propagated particularly by J. Weiss, Schweitzer, Loisy; and favorably received by Pragmatis
Ah, so your "faith" can be examined, tested and falsified? That's an interesting variation. Let's jump right in: What would you accept as definite falsification of your faith?
Complexity, by definition, is not one quantity, but rather a meta-measurement of the number of quantities, qualities and interconnections between those. It's not the same as a glass of water, say. More like H2O - which is not water, but an abstract description of same.
In that sense, it is similar to entropy, but entropy can be measured (in theory), while complexity can be counted. Close, but not quite the same thing.
For practical purposes, I'd say take the number of different parts and the number of connections between parts and you have a pretty good measurement of the complexity of a system.
How funny that the poor, poor religious people tout the "help, I'm being prosecuted" line everytime they get challenged.
Then again, they probably know all about prosecution. Centuries of experience hunting, torturing and killing everyone who dares to have a different favourite book, calls his god a different name, or just simply picked the wrong set of rules within the same religion.
So get off the high horse. If 10% of the carnage that religion has dealt on mankind would be dealt back, you'd all be killed ten times over. Fortunately for you, some atheists are brutal in their choice of words, but you can't show me an atheist inquisition, crusade or suicide bomber, can you?
So what you're saying is that if god had gone away, died, dissolved or otherwise ceased to exist five minutes after the "creation", everything would still be the same because what he created was so great that it works without him?
So what makes you think he's still around?