A real-life metaphor is only a starting point. Clearly you can't take it very far, but as an analogy in a disucssion it might be more helpful.
Again, you describe implementation details for a feature that some people might find useful. It does not demonstrate that the model as it stands is "bankrupt" -- whatever that was supposed to mean. But really, it's "tedious" to spend a few seconds arranging windows? On the scale of tedious things I have to deal with, this is notably low.
Of course people don't consciously use mnemonics once they get used to an interface, but they have a great deal to do with how people learn the shortcuts in the first place. Yes, the some of the standard edit shortcuts appear to break this, but they don't really. "C" is reasonable for "Copy". "X" physically resembles the mark you make to indicate content you want removed. "V" resembles the caret used to indicate insertions. "Z" may not be obvious for Undo, but once you remember that, "Y" is easy to remember for Redo. Then again, I'm speaking in generalities. There are always exceptions.
I have no idea what these are in other languages -- but deciding on them is not necessarily the responsibility of the programmer. Hard-coding them is poor practice and is rarely done. Again, if you want it to be something other than the default arrangement in whatever languages you use, you can almost always change it. That LCD keyboard someone mentioned might be the thing, to indicate shortcuts across languages regardless of what mnemonics are useful in them individually. Time was when many word processors came with (or had available) a set of keycaps you could install in your keyboard so as to keep track of all the function keys. This was before GUIs, when menus weren't so easily implemented or useful, which meant that all functionality required what we now call a "shortcut". Part of the point of a GUI was to get away from such things. I think an unexpected benefit of the GUI was the standardization we now see (at least in English) of the more common of those function keys that remained.
Spacing between paragraphs isn't a matter of English composition, but of proper XHTML use. Enclose paragraphs in <p></p> pairs to get it to work properly.
Looking at my screen right now, I see precious little space that's not being used either for content or for useful spacing. I don't know how you normally set up your desktop, but it must be vastly different from mine.
I agree with you about the redundant widgets, of course. I wonder if it's not too much to ask for a little programmer discipline when it comes to these things.
It may well be possible now to implement smooth scrolling and other smooth transitions in such a way as to encourage acceptance. But remember that until relatively recently, computers generally didn't have much power to spare, and that even the graphics operations required for windows to be usable required what was, at the time, specialized hardware. It's certainly possible now, but implementation will have to wait until someone feels like doing it.
"Obvious"? What does that mean? How's the computer supposed to know which of the many open windows on your desktop are the ones you want to be working with?
Thanks for pointing that out! I was wishing there was something like this. You, and others who have pointed the same thing out, are perfectly correct that a smooth scroll ought to be the behavior with the mouse wheel.
You make some interesting suggestions, but there are practical issues.
Take your example of a stovetop. Your observation is a fairly obvious one, but the obstacle is that there isn't room for the knobs to be placed in a square, due to other overriding design considerations. That's why almost no one does that. There is instead a conventional arrangement that is the same from stove to stove, so you only have to learn it once.
That's one reason the current arrangement of shortcuts would be difficult to change. Everyone knows that <ctrl-o> is Open, <ctrl-s> is Save, etc. If someone decided to do it differently, he'd be bucking the trend of literally thousands of applications and is not likely to be successful. He'll probably just piss off his users instead.
You dismiss the non-intuitive aspect of this with a simple "but", but I assure you that intuitiveness is very important to users. They prefer intuitive over rational every time, and they don't want to have to be "power users" to take advantage of what should be a simple feature.
Your idea about the numbers will not only not work for menus with more than 10 items, it would be very annoying for the many applications where the menus are user configurable. Every menu rearrangement would also change the shortcuts. I can't see anyone being happy with that. However-- please note that where you can customize menus, you can also customize shortcuts. Why not do that if you're unhappy with the default arrangement?
But mapping shortcuts graphically in any meaningful sense obviously can't be done. At that point it's no longer a shortcut -- it's the GUI you were trying to short-circuit with the shortcut in the first place! The fact is there must be some mnemonic or some other very easy-to-remember system, or it simply won't get used. Users always take the simplest path. A shortcut is supposed to be simpler for often-repeated tasks once you're only moderately well-versed in the software. Make it too complex, and it will no longer be simpler than selecting from a menu with a mouse.
I think a more sensible hand-balancing arrangement for alt-tab would be to keep the key combination with the left side and let you select one of the windows with the right. It surprised me trying it just now (it hadn't occurred to me before) that Windows will not allow you to do this even though you get something that looks like a box full of icons to pick. I seriously doubt most people are interested in (or able to unless they're twitch gamers) to "instantly" hit a number key on being presented with an entirely novel menu. In any event, there's no reason to free up the mouse cursor for repositioning since the most likely target (the window you're trying to switch to) won't be available until the switch is actually made. There's no place to move it to.
So pay attention to your HCI class. I never took one myself. I'm just speaking from about 20 years' experience in writing apps for users who are often sitting in the same office. When they don't like something about the UI (graphic or otherwise), I get instant feedback.
On 2 -- there's no reason for shortcuts to be the same across languages, and I don't believe it's generally the case that they are. At least not the way one normally does this kind of thing in Motif; I don't work in Windows much so I don't know. These are not programmed in, but exist in a separate resource file. But I thought that was his exact complaint. makes little sense for "open" in a language where that word doesn't begin with O. So if you switch from English to Portugese, your is now (or should be) and your automatic action to open a file no longer works.
But yeah, he could have meant it as you read it. He wasn't terribly clear.
On 3 -- In my experience, a well-designed widget set is perfectly adequate for most user interaction. The only seem inadequate if the programmer is trying to force non-standard behavior. Sometimes this is justified, but mostly it isn't, and I have rarely felt the need. The times I ever strongly felt Motif 1.2 was lacking was when I wanted a a combo box, and when I wanted to specify colors in compound strings. These have both been addressed since.
I'd rather have reference available too. The problem is one of real estate. It's hard to fit everything you need to on a screen and still have it readable. You stack papers on your desk for the same reason -- that's what happens on my desk, anyway. You can pull two to the top in the latter case because there's room on the "top layer" for both, but this isn't necessarily true on a computer screen. If it is, then there's nothing to stop you. You still have to put the windows (papers) in an arrangement personally convenient for you. It may or may not be possible to do this automatically.
Ironic that I killed one of my own points in part through clicking on the wrong button. As a point of design, the "Preview" and "Submit" buttons on/. are rather too close together.
Overlapping windows are used to make more information available to the user than can be displayed on the available screen real estate. The RL metaphor is a collection of papers on a desk. You can't see every paper all at once, but you bring to the top of the pile those which you need. You do this for your own benefit, based on the needs of the moment, not for that of the desk -- or the computer. The whole point is that the space isn't tiled. I don't like working that way personally, and I suspect the reason we've moved away from that model is because most people don't. Remember the early Windows versions?
You asked how much of the screen was empty space and therefore wasted? Very little of it, most likely. Very little of mine is as I type. Space with no content in it is not necessarily wasted. In fact, it most likely isn't. Space is crucial to how our brains orgainize what we see. If every square inch of space on the screen was being used, we'd see it as a jumbled mess. The best and most eye-pleasing data presentation use of designs very carefully balance empty space against that occupied by content. Take, for example, your original post against my reply. See how I create spaces between my paragraphs with properly structured P tags? See how much more readable that is?
I agree that some programs are badly designed and make poor use of the model. That doesn't mean the model itself is broken.
Yes, it would be nice for those very particular about their screen arrangements if they could save state between sessions and recover it immediately when they start back up again. This is an implementation issue 00 remembering, of course, that most people prefer not to tile.
Yes they're shortcut symbols really, but people have a hard time remembering arbitrary symbols. That's why we employ mnemonics, which naturally relate to the language of the interface. For example, it's easy to remember the shortcut to open a file in most word processors (ctrl-O) because "O" is the first letter in the word "open". It's not reasonable to expect such mnemonics, input through an alphanumeric keyboard, to work any other way -- unless you can think of a better one where alphanumeric input is both easy to remember and language-independent. Good luck.
This is not an inherent fault in the model, but is a failure across an industry to standardize. In my own GUI design work in Motif, this is why I use the default behavior of the default widget set as much as possible. The users most often know exactly what to expect then.
I remember when some word processors and the like included a "smooth scrolling" option. No one used it. It turned out that most people wanted the screen to scroll quickly instead.
"Funny"? Mods on crack again. This is "Insightful". I was just about the make the same observation about "The Obsessive" myself. It seems the author just selected the most sensationalist interpretations of the data he could.
Oh, and let's throw in Wikipedia while we're at it.
No need. Wikipedia articles consistently come out at the top of Google searches, especially if your search term is an article title. Next time Wikipedia is having a fundraiser, Google should just give them as much money as they're looking for, which is typically pocket change as far as Google is concerned. I'd bet they drive a great deal of traffic Wikipedia's way, and are therefore responsible for much of their server load.
It's probably not a good idea to drop crumbs all over your laptop anyway. My wife was going through a keyboard a year until I got her to stop eating at her desk. This coincided with the moment when I got tired of buying her "nice" keyboards all the time and just picked up whatever they had on sale for $5 at Fry's. The damn thing lasted until she got a new machine.
Back in the day, when my only home "online" connection was through GEnie, which my wife used to keep in touch with the SF writing community, I used to subscribe to The Nation, American Spectator, Utne Reader, and Reason, besides reading the local newspapers. I got a reasonably balanced perspective that way, I think.
But I don't think mere bias is anything like faking a picture. That's like fabricating a quote, or outright lying.
Asteroid, Battlezone, and Tempest used vector graphics, which is a radically different method of placing an image on a screen. The CRT is not even the same as for the more common raster graphics. If you're playing them on a GBA, then not only the processor has to be emulated, but the display hardware as well. While I seem to recall the occasional clipping error in those games, if they're much buggier than that you may have a buggy emulator.
I don't remember any bugs in Missile Command or Centipede, and I've played them recently. What's there that escaped my notice?
I think you have put your finger on the problem. We remember the great games of the past when we get nostalgic, for the very reason that they have enduring value. Of course a merely average modern game doesn't stack up, even if that game is superior to an average older game.
I play a lot of games via MAME and enjoy them a great deal -- but I don't play every game I can find. I don't want to. Most of them weren't that good. Still, I think TFA overstated the case.
I think the metaphor is an apt one. If there's a serious problem and harm is taking place, does it really matter what you call it?
Well, yes, if you want to do the right thing about it. If a car is on fire it does you no good to call it a bad perm and try to give it a haircut. It's not even wise to treat it as you would some other kind of fire; since what's burning is petroleum you need the correct technique for extinguishing it.
So this is a problem, yes. Is it an addiction? Can you treat it as one with reasonable success? What kind of addiction? A habit, a psychological dependency, a physical dependency? These all need different approaches.
Whether or not he's capable of adult behavior, my point stands. His parents had good reason to be afraid of him. Handling him may well not have been as simple as you'd have liked, and are insisting it would have been. The 6-year-old was a different story.
Although experts are still debating whether excessive game playing counts as an addiction, Mr Bakker has no doubt that the symptoms are the same. "If we see a car burning outside, we don't sit around wondering what to call it," he said.
Am I the only one who finds that metaphor a bit puzzling? Maybe it works better in Dutch or something.
Child? That's kind of the wrong word for a 130 kg (285 lb) 21-year-old. It makes sense to be apprehensive over how an addict that size might react when you take away his addiction.
More to your point would have been the 6-year-old whose parents could do nothing but have a "chat" with him.
This proposal assumes that electing the President by a more "democratic" process is a good thing. Have the authors not read The Federalist? How do they reply to the reasons for the present system -- which is already sufficiently subverted so as to allow all the problems the Electoral College was supposed to avoid in the first place.
The better solution would be to return to using the system as designed. But there's very little chance of that as long as "democratic" retains its incantatory power.
Sally Ride indeed "was American" but she wasn't the first woman in space. That would be Valentina Tereshkova, who orbited the earth 20 years earlier. Sally Ride wasn't the second woman either. That was Svetlana Savitskaya, a year prior. Ride was in fact the third woman in space, albeit the first American woman.
It is, however, true that no Soviet probes successfully landed on Mars. It's not true that they never launched. They launched 9 of them. Two failed to reach Earth orbit, two failed while in Earth orbit, one was lost en route, one missed. One made it into Martian orbit and sent back a number of images before failing. One lander crashed on the surface, the next and last separated early and didn't encounter the surface at all. The Viking missions were the first probes to successfully land on the planet and return data.
RTFA, please. There were, and still are, huge chunks of glass found in the Sahara. The article has a picture of a guy holding one. The jewel in question was carved from the glass.
"Structures" weren't affected because there were no structures at the time, unless it happened during the Neolithic subpluvial when there might have been some nearby settlements. But there was savannah then. I don't know if glass wuold have formed as readily.
have to agree with a previous poster, for me it would just be to get the letters MA to use after my name (whilst not feeling as silly as the people who use BA but not as good as the people who get phd).
If you want to feel silly, try carrying around the initials you get with a Bachelor of Science degree.
Most people are approaching this question the wrong way, I think. There are other reasons to study a subject than looking forward to the salary your earned degree will get you. Why would anyone get a PhD if he didn't have a burning interest in his subject, and an irresistable compulsion to investigate some question in it?
Slashdot Mirror
A real-life metaphor is only a starting point. Clearly you can't take it very far, but as an analogy in a disucssion it might be more helpful.
Again, you describe implementation details for a feature that some people might find useful. It does not demonstrate that the model as it stands is "bankrupt" -- whatever that was supposed to mean. But really, it's "tedious" to spend a few seconds arranging windows? On the scale of tedious things I have to deal with, this is notably low.
Of course people don't consciously use mnemonics once they get used to an interface, but they have a great deal to do with how people learn the shortcuts in the first place. Yes, the some of the standard edit shortcuts appear to break this, but they don't really. "C" is reasonable for "Copy". "X" physically resembles the mark you make to indicate content you want removed. "V" resembles the caret used to indicate insertions. "Z" may not be obvious for Undo, but once you remember that, "Y" is easy to remember for Redo. Then again, I'm speaking in generalities. There are always exceptions.
I have no idea what these are in other languages -- but deciding on them is not necessarily the responsibility of the programmer. Hard-coding them is poor practice and is rarely done. Again, if you want it to be something other than the default arrangement in whatever languages you use, you can almost always change it. That LCD keyboard someone mentioned might be the thing, to indicate shortcuts across languages regardless of what mnemonics are useful in them individually. Time was when many word processors came with (or had available) a set of keycaps you could install in your keyboard so as to keep track of all the function keys. This was before GUIs, when menus weren't so easily implemented or useful, which meant that all functionality required what we now call a "shortcut". Part of the point of a GUI was to get away from such things. I think an unexpected benefit of the GUI was the standardization we now see (at least in English) of the more common of those function keys that remained.
Spacing between paragraphs isn't a matter of English composition, but of proper XHTML use. Enclose paragraphs in <p></p> pairs to get it to work properly.
Looking at my screen right now, I see precious little space that's not being used either for content or for useful spacing. I don't know how you normally set up your desktop, but it must be vastly different from mine.
I agree with you about the redundant widgets, of course. I wonder if it's not too much to ask for a little programmer discipline when it comes to these things.
It may well be possible now to implement smooth scrolling and other smooth transitions in such a way as to encourage acceptance. But remember that until relatively recently, computers generally didn't have much power to spare, and that even the graphics operations required for windows to be usable required what was, at the time, specialized hardware. It's certainly possible now, but implementation will have to wait until someone feels like doing it.
"Obvious"? What does that mean? How's the computer supposed to know which of the many open windows on your desktop are the ones you want to be working with?
Thanks for pointing that out! I was wishing there was something like this. You, and others who have pointed the same thing out, are perfectly correct that a smooth scroll ought to be the behavior with the mouse wheel.
You make some interesting suggestions, but there are practical issues.
Take your example of a stovetop. Your observation is a fairly obvious one, but the obstacle is that there isn't room for the knobs to be placed in a square, due to other overriding design considerations. That's why almost no one does that. There is instead a conventional arrangement that is the same from stove to stove, so you only have to learn it once.
That's one reason the current arrangement of shortcuts would be difficult to change. Everyone knows that <ctrl-o> is Open, <ctrl-s> is Save, etc. If someone decided to do it differently, he'd be bucking the trend of literally thousands of applications and is not likely to be successful. He'll probably just piss off his users instead.
You dismiss the non-intuitive aspect of this with a simple "but", but I assure you that intuitiveness is very important to users. They prefer intuitive over rational every time, and they don't want to have to be "power users" to take advantage of what should be a simple feature.
Your idea about the numbers will not only not work for menus with more than 10 items, it would be very annoying for the many applications where the menus are user configurable. Every menu rearrangement would also change the shortcuts. I can't see anyone being happy with that. However-- please note that where you can customize menus, you can also customize shortcuts. Why not do that if you're unhappy with the default arrangement?
But mapping shortcuts graphically in any meaningful sense obviously can't be done. At that point it's no longer a shortcut -- it's the GUI you were trying to short-circuit with the shortcut in the first place! The fact is there must be some mnemonic or some other very easy-to-remember system, or it simply won't get used. Users always take the simplest path. A shortcut is supposed to be simpler for often-repeated tasks once you're only moderately well-versed in the software. Make it too complex, and it will no longer be simpler than selecting from a menu with a mouse.
I think a more sensible hand-balancing arrangement for alt-tab would be to keep the key combination with the left side and let you select one of the windows with the right. It surprised me trying it just now (it hadn't occurred to me before) that Windows will not allow you to do this even though you get something that looks like a box full of icons to pick. I seriously doubt most people are interested in (or able to unless they're twitch gamers) to "instantly" hit a number key on being presented with an entirely novel menu. In any event, there's no reason to free up the mouse cursor for repositioning since the most likely target (the window you're trying to switch to) won't be available until the switch is actually made. There's no place to move it to.
So pay attention to your HCI class. I never took one myself. I'm just speaking from about 20 years' experience in writing apps for users who are often sitting in the same office. When they don't like something about the UI (graphic or otherwise), I get instant feedback.
On 2 -- there's no reason for shortcuts to be the same across languages, and I don't believe it's generally the case that they are. At least not the way one normally does this kind of thing in Motif; I don't work in Windows much so I don't know. These are not programmed in, but exist in a separate resource file. But I thought that was his exact complaint. makes little sense for "open" in a language where that word doesn't begin with O. So if you switch from English to Portugese, your is now (or should be) and your automatic action to open a file no longer works.
But yeah, he could have meant it as you read it. He wasn't terribly clear.
On 3 -- In my experience, a well-designed widget set is perfectly adequate for most user interaction. The only seem inadequate if the programmer is trying to force non-standard behavior. Sometimes this is justified, but mostly it isn't, and I have rarely felt the need. The times I ever strongly felt Motif 1.2 was lacking was when I wanted a a combo box, and when I wanted to specify colors in compound strings. These have both been addressed since.
I'd rather have reference available too. The problem is one of real estate. It's hard to fit everything you need to on a screen and still have it readable. You stack papers on your desk for the same reason -- that's what happens on my desk, anyway. You can pull two to the top in the latter case because there's room on the "top layer" for both, but this isn't necessarily true on a computer screen. If it is, then there's nothing to stop you. You still have to put the windows (papers) in an arrangement personally convenient for you. It may or may not be possible to do this automatically.
Ironic that I killed one of my own points in part through clicking on the wrong button. As a point of design, the "Preview" and "Submit" buttons on /. are rather too close together.
I disagree.
Overlapping windows are used to make more information available to the user than can be displayed on the available screen real estate. The RL metaphor is a collection of papers on a desk. You can't see every paper all at once, but you bring to the top of the pile those which you need. You do this for your own benefit, based on the needs of the moment, not for that of the desk -- or the computer. The whole point is that the space isn't tiled. I don't like working that way personally, and I suspect the reason we've moved away from that model is because most people don't. Remember the early Windows versions?
You asked how much of the screen was empty space and therefore wasted? Very little of it, most likely. Very little of mine is as I type. Space with no content in it is not necessarily wasted. In fact, it most likely isn't. Space is crucial to how our brains orgainize what we see. If every square inch of space on the screen was being used, we'd see it as a jumbled mess. The best and most eye-pleasing data presentation use of designs very carefully balance empty space against that occupied by content. Take, for example, your original post against my reply. See how I create spaces between my paragraphs with properly structured P tags? See how much more readable that is?
I agree that some programs are badly designed and make poor use of the model. That doesn't mean the model itself is broken.
Yes, it would be nice for those very particular about their screen arrangements if they could save state between sessions and recover it immediately when they start back up again. This is an implementation issue 00 remembering, of course, that most people prefer not to tile.
"Funny"? Mods on crack again. This is "Insightful". I was just about the make the same observation about "The Obsessive" myself. It seems the author just selected the most sensationalist interpretations of the data he could.
Oh, and let's throw in Wikipedia while we're at it.
No need. Wikipedia articles consistently come out at the top of Google searches, especially if your search term is an article title. Next time Wikipedia is having a fundraiser, Google should just give them as much money as they're looking for, which is typically pocket change as far as Google is concerned. I'd bet they drive a great deal of traffic Wikipedia's way, and are therefore responsible for much of their server load.
It's probably not a good idea to drop crumbs all over your laptop anyway. My wife was going through a keyboard a year until I got her to stop eating at her desk. This coincided with the moment when I got tired of buying her "nice" keyboards all the time and just picked up whatever they had on sale for $5 at Fry's. The damn thing lasted until she got a new machine.
Back in the day, when my only home "online" connection was through GEnie, which my wife used to keep in touch with the SF writing community, I used to subscribe to The Nation, American Spectator, Utne Reader, and Reason, besides reading the local newspapers. I got a reasonably balanced perspective that way, I think.
But I don't think mere bias is anything like faking a picture. That's like fabricating a quote, or outright lying.
Asteroid, Battlezone, and Tempest used vector graphics, which is a radically different method of placing an image on a screen. The CRT is not even the same as for the more common raster graphics. If you're playing them on a GBA, then not only the processor has to be emulated, but the display hardware as well. While I seem to recall the occasional clipping error in those games, if they're much buggier than that you may have a buggy emulator.
I don't remember any bugs in Missile Command or Centipede, and I've played them recently. What's there that escaped my notice?
I think you have put your finger on the problem. We remember the great games of the past when we get nostalgic, for the very reason that they have enduring value. Of course a merely average modern game doesn't stack up, even if that game is superior to an average older game.
I play a lot of games via MAME and enjoy them a great deal -- but I don't play every game I can find. I don't want to. Most of them weren't that good. Still, I think TFA overstated the case.
This is a splendid example of a statement that's perfectly true, yet utterly unhelpful.
I think the metaphor is an apt one. If there's a serious problem and harm is taking place, does it really matter what you call it?
Well, yes, if you want to do the right thing about it. If a car is on fire it does you no good to call it a bad perm and try to give it a haircut. It's not even wise to treat it as you would some other kind of fire; since what's burning is petroleum you need the correct technique for extinguishing it.
So this is a problem, yes. Is it an addiction? Can you treat it as one with reasonable success? What kind of addiction? A habit, a psychological dependency, a physical dependency? These all need different approaches.
The actions of an addict, when you take away the object of his addiction, are often unpredictable even if he's normally even-tempered.
Whether or not he's capable of adult behavior, my point stands. His parents had good reason to be afraid of him. Handling him may well not have been as simple as you'd have liked, and are insisting it would have been. The 6-year-old was a different story.
From TFA:
Am I the only one who finds that metaphor a bit puzzling? Maybe it works better in Dutch or something.
Child? That's kind of the wrong word for a 130 kg (285 lb) 21-year-old. It makes sense to be apprehensive over how an addict that size might react when you take away his addiction.
More to your point would have been the 6-year-old whose parents could do nothing but have a "chat" with him.
This proposal assumes that electing the President by a more "democratic" process is a good thing. Have the authors not read The Federalist? How do they reply to the reasons for the present system -- which is already sufficiently subverted so as to allow all the problems the Electoral College was supposed to avoid in the first place.
The better solution would be to return to using the system as designed. But there's very little chance of that as long as "democratic" retains its incantatory power.
Sally Ride indeed "was American" but she wasn't the first woman in space. That would be Valentina Tereshkova, who orbited the earth 20 years earlier. Sally Ride wasn't the second woman either. That was Svetlana Savitskaya, a year prior. Ride was in fact the third woman in space, albeit the first American woman.
It is, however, true that no Soviet probes successfully landed on Mars. It's not true that they never launched. They launched 9 of them. Two failed to reach Earth orbit, two failed while in Earth orbit, one was lost en route, one missed. One made it into Martian orbit and sent back a number of images before failing. One lander crashed on the surface, the next and last separated early and didn't encounter the surface at all. The Viking missions were the first probes to successfully land on the planet and return data.
RTFA, please. There were, and still are, huge chunks of glass found in the Sahara. The article has a picture of a guy holding one. The jewel in question was carved from the glass.
"Structures" weren't affected because there were no structures at the time, unless it happened during the Neolithic subpluvial when there might have been some nearby settlements. But there was savannah then. I don't know if glass wuold have formed as readily.
You're confusing real history with Stargate fanboy "humor".
have to agree with a previous poster, for me it would just be to get the letters MA to use after my name (whilst not feeling as silly as the people who use BA but not as good as the people who get phd).
If you want to feel silly, try carrying around the initials you get with a Bachelor of Science degree.
Most people are approaching this question the wrong way, I think. There are other reasons to study a subject than looking forward to the salary your earned degree will get you. Why would anyone get a PhD if he didn't have a burning interest in his subject, and an irresistable compulsion to investigate some question in it?