So you are limited to a physical medium when you "have a life"?
Let me respond to this with a question: do you really think that you can have as fulfilling a relationship online as you can in real life? Now you personally might be able to, but I'd say that's a sad commentary on your interpersonal relationship skills. And I don't mean this as a burn. Let's just look at it in terms of data. How much information can you convey with just text? How much with text and photos? How much with text, photos, and video? How about adding audio?
I'm not trying to say that meatspace is the only thing that matters. There is genuine content to relationships even when they are restricted to nothing more than plain text IMs and a few emoticons. But if you're trying to tell me that you can get as much social interaction in a chatroom as at a party, then I just don't buy it. Not even a little bit.
We're still physical beings, and I don't think that's a draw back. From the subtleties of facial expression and body language that no amount of pixels can replicate to the sound of a voice to the smell of perfume to the sheer physical presence of another human being, meatspace offers more potential for human interaction than cyberspace.
Your reduction to "only mising touch, smell and taste" is infantile. Are you trying to tell me that watching football on TV - even in high def - is the *same experience* as watching it in person? Personally, I'd rather watch it on TV. Better viewing angle. But the point is it's different. This is one of those things that's so blindingly obvious it's hard to prove. I'll try just one more small example.
It's pretty much well known that, if you are going to break up with a girl, there's an inherent ranking in how you should do it. From worst to best:
1. post it 2. email 3. letter 3. phone message 4. phone call 5. face to face
Sure the exact ordering is up for grabs, and you can always concoct some exceptional hypothetical, but it comes down to the fact that we are social animals and you simple can't convey the data through your cable modem that you can from actually being with someone. Even when you're not saying anything at all, just sitting next to a good friend can be extremely meaningful.
Because you need to have a life to get social networking sites.
I don't mean to be harsh, and I'm not looking to get modded a troll, but most people who enjoy using social sites over the long-term (in my opinion) have a lot of friends they actually care to keep in contact with. I'm a big Facebook user. It helps me keep up with my two sisters away at college as well as a lot of old friends of mine from high school and from college that I actually care to keep up with.
This is very different from internet-based relationships. (And that's where "have a life" may be harsh.) If you're into EVE Online or whatever, that's great. But your relationship with those people is, fundamentally, based in a digital medium. Sometimes MMO players get together in real life, sometimes really tight messageboard communities do the same thing. But that's the exception rather than the norm. The norm is for users brought together by a common interest to have little interest in maintaining relationships with those people in the absence of the common interest.
I played Planetside for a while. Not really an MMORPG, but certainly an MMO back in its day. I had an outfit (Guild, if you will) and several people that I considered friends in my Planetside world. Not only were they in my outfit, but we worked well together, laughed at each others jokes, and generally enjoyed playing together. That was the extent of it, however. I'm not saying I would not have cared to know how their day was outside of Planetside, or how their relationship was going. I may have cared, but that would have been a different kind of relationship. It would have been, for lack of a less-harsh term, caring about their real life and not just the game life.
American culture is more mobile than ever. It's normal go to high school in one city, go to college in another city, and get a job in a third city. And even if you don't move around that much, some of your friends certainly will. It's precisely these 18 - 25 year olds who use these sites. They are trying to find a kind of stability in their ever-changing world. If your entire circle of friends is cycled at least every 4 years, you may want to find a way to combat that social churn and get a more stable set of friends. A sense of permenance and community.
As far as the original question about portability goes, I don't think it's that much of an issue. I chose Facebook precisely because it's not MySpace. I have no desire to be a part of the MySpace community, or any other community. If I do want to join another community, then I think re-entering my data would be a minimal issue. Some data portability would be nice, but hardly required. And in any case, functional data portability (e.g. not just my personal stats, but my friends) is really difficult without creating semi-official digital selves or using a lot of personally-identifiable data. Either of these options result in serious privacy concerns, so I'll trade a little re-keying for a new social cite to keep my data relatively anonymous.
I respectfully disagree you with respect to Aristotle: actions emerge from thoughts, but this is not a grounds for concluding that a specific thought must lead to a specific action.
It's not deterministic, it's stochastic. Watching child porn does not guarantee you will rape a child, or even try to. But it does make that more likely (in my opinion and according to my own reading of Aristotle).
The human mind is what it is and we barely understand ourselves; you would trust others to police yours?
This is not policing of the mind! I don't care what people think about. I'll fight any law that tries to legislate thoughts. No matter what those thoughts are. We're talking about making and distributing child porn, not just thinking about it. It's like the difference between fantasizing about how to blow up the Statue of Liberty and actually developing a specific plan that would work and publishing it on the Net. Te act is bad either way, but we can only legislate the latter and not the former.
In fact, child pornography wasn't illegal in the US until 1977, and in Europe, a few years later, so apparently not only did the founding fathers "not think of it", neither did two centuries of their descendants.
Are you so sure they even were really aware of child porn? I haven't brought up this statistic so far because I've been unable to track the source down, but I'm confident that I read an article that stated that before the internet child porn was virtually stamped out. Now it's much, much more prevalent than it was 20 years ago because of the accessibility. I believe - although I admit I don't have the facts yet - that a similar thing happened earlier in the 20th century. There was no child porn until technology made it accessible (ability to develop your own photos, copy VHS tapes). So no law was required before then. Child porn finally makes it on the radar, public outcry results in a crack-down, and it's reigned in. Enter the internet, and it's on the rise again.
I'm all for another crack down. I'll be honest - I think all porn is sick. But I have no interest in outlawing porn made with adults. I don't watch it, but you can. When it comes to child porn, however, I think we need to put the rights of children ahead of the rights of perverts. And yes, I think children are endangered even by porn that does not involve actual children in the filming.
This may be true, but the thrill you get from killing the bad guy is very real. You experience the joy of the bad guy's death.
Yeah, but killing bad guys isn't evil. That's the point. There's nothing wrong with identifying with the victim, or with empathizing with the hero who kills the bad guy. There's not a problem with empathizing with bad characters either. But when you identify with a child molester, I think there are moral ramifications and psychological ones.
It's not about suggestion. It's not even just role-playing. Otherwise being the Sith in star wars would be immoral (and I don't think it is). The feelings of killing jedi or prostitutes are not actual feelings of committing murder. The feelings of watching porn stimulate the actual biological response of sexual stimulation. That makes it quantifiably different than the other things you mention.
But if you get a sexual arousal out of the _thought_ of these things, I feel I cannot judge you. You are entitled to your thoughts, no matter how horrible they are. Ever have a bad breakup where you fantasized about killing the person? Ever pictured an especially bad coworker or boss had a serious accident, or that you got to hurt them yourself?
First of all, know. I've never fantasized about killing someone even after my worst break up, and I've never pictures a bad coworker or boss in a serious accident. I've *joked* about such things, but fantasizing about it would strike me as seriously disturbed. But *not* illegal! I wold never try to ban what someone thinks. We're talking about more than thinking, however. There's no proposed law against fantasizing about raping children (and I would campaing against one if there were). There's a proposed law against turning those thoughts into videos/pictures and distributing them. That's more akin to making a serious depiction of killing someone after you break up and spreading it around. Even *that* is not necessarily illegal, however. Porn is different for the reasons stated above.
Kiddie porn is horrible, but I will not be party to imprisoning those that merely depict their feelings or thoughts of it. As long as no one is harmed in order to make it, there must be no limitations on the expressions of our ideas.
Smoking marijuana is illegal, but possession of these posters is not.
Yes, but you're ignoring the function of porn. A t-shirt of marijuana will not give you a buzz by itself. Neither will a poster. But the entire point of porn is to make you feel as if the action were really happening. So that's a little different, don't you think? Porn is *not* just a form of expression, it is fundamentally different than the other forms of expression you mention.
I imagine if they didn't want free speech protections to apply to porn, they could have said so.
Either that or that it was so obviously not within the realm of the intentions that it didn't occur to them to specify. In any case, they might have been a little busy with the business of not losing a war or two and trying to keep a new nation afloat to specify, don't you think?
Oh come on. The point of a horror novel is to scare you. The point of a murder drama is to empathize with the victim. The point of trash-mafia books it to make you feel like you are in the gangster culture-- to feel what it's like to be a thug.
Your first example (horror) is flat-out not what you want to say. It's an example of what I'm saying. That when we watch most depictions of evil violence the intent is for us to empathize with the victim. This makes watching horror the opposite of watching porn, not the same thing! Regarding "what it's like to be a thug", I have to wonder if you seriously believe that. There's a difference between "playing the bad guy", which usually doesn't involve any actual evil intent, and actually wanting to get the real feeling of smashing another human beings face in. I don't believe that you really think trash-mafia books are ways for people to get a "hit" of sadism or socio-pathic criminal behavior.
Yes books always draw you in. But there's a difference between empathizing with a character and actually acting out the same impulses of the character. The point of porn - and this is biologically obvious - is to stimulate erotic behavior as if we were involved. When this involves legal sexual behavior - no matter how weird - then fine. But when it involves mimicry of child-molestation than I have a serious issue.
The simple point is that, as I believe Aristotle observed, character emerges from actions, and actions emerge from thoughts. When you play Halo I don't think you actually have thoughts of murder and combat. When you play GTA I think you probably do, but I don't think it's clear-cut enough to warrant a ban. I would just rather not play the game myself. But when it gets to the point where people are not only observing child molestation, but actually acting it out in their minds, then I say we've got a serious problem even if the porn was created without using actual children.
On a final thought - if child porn is not a type of communication not covered by free speech, then it's hard to imagine any type of communication not covered by free speech.
A) Horror films invoke fear, and many depictions of murder are designed to give the viewer a viceral charge, espcecially of revenge. Clearly fictional works of violence work very hard to arouse the emotions of the viewer.
You missed the point. Horror films arouse feelings of fear. They depict murder, rape, torture, but the point is not to engender the feeling of torturing someone else, is it? You don't watch Saw III to experience the feeling of killing people. At least I certainly hope you don't. So yes a feeling is illicited by horror, but not the feeling we want to discourage. The point of a depiction of murder is not to make us feel like we're murdering people. The point of porn, on the other hand, is to make us aroused in sympathy with the actions portrayed on screen.
B) So what if someone gets aroused by a cartoon depiction of kiddie porn? "No child was harmed in the creation of this film." I abosolutly have no tolerance or empathy with child pornographers. I loathe them as the lowest form of existance. But that's because they hurt kids. If no kids are harmed, I don't really care how you get your jollies.
There are two arguments against kiddie porn. The first is that it's directly abusive of children. Clearly this applies only to real child porn. The second is that it leads to deviant behavior. If this idea has scientific merit, than it doesn't really matter if the images are from real people or not, does it?
Indeed -- argued both ways, no less! It could alter the behavior by making them want to act on their urges with real children more, or it could alter the behavior by satisfying their urges so they no longer feel the need to go after real kids.
This sounds like the kind of wishful-thinking with which most Slashdot readers react to anti-porn news of any kind.
Our experience in the investigation of these crimes also signals a strong correlation between child pornography offenders and molesters of children. In Operation Candyman, for example, of the 90 people arrested thus far for their participation in the child pornography e-group, 13 of them who chose to make inculpatory statements admitted to molesting a combined total of 48 children
Child porn does not sate a desire to molest children, it inculcates this desire. If banning artificial child porn makes child porn hard to come by and thereby dampens the demand for the real thing (or molestation), then it's a great idea. Even if it doesn't, I'm a little tired of this idea that free speech extends to pornography. Somehow I doubt that was original intent of the Founding Fathers.
I don't mean this as a blanked defense of the proposed law by any means. I do, however, think it's a fallacy to compare reading/viewing sexual child abuse to reading/viewing a murder, theft, or other crime. In the case of other crimes, the depiction is entirely separate from the depicted. Reading about a bank robber does not make you a thief.
Pornography is a little different, however, in that it exists as the interaction between the subject and the material. The whole point of pornography is to not just be a depiction of some sexually-arousing act, but to actually arouse.
To make you analogy work, we should put separate depictions of porno in the same category as depictions of murder, rape, theft, vandalism, whatever and put actual porno in a different category. Not neccessarily a criminal category, but certainly a category in which the consumption of the media is the act in question.
Once again, you think that knowing the definition of a word is the same thing as knowing a persons opinion.
OK, I think I'm starting to see the source of some of the confusion. You seem to be laboring under the false impression that a definition is something that has an objective truth value. You think you can separate "what a word really means" from "what people think the word means" and label one a fact and the other an opinion. The trouble with this is that "what a word really means" depends entirely on "what people think the word means". In this case the opinions of people ARE the objective truth. (A truth that, as I've already covered, as admittedly dynamic and non-specific).
While I understand your point that saying "X is simple" is an opinion, the particular attributes that make something simple are ALSO a matter of opinion. They are not a matter of DEFINITION, as much as you'd like to claim they are.
The real problem is that you think there's a difference between OPINION and DEFINITION when it comes to what words mean. There is not. If.05% of the world is of the opinion that "large" means "having to do with flatulence" their opinion is wrong NOT because there's some ultimate authority that provides a definition, but because the opinion of the other 99.95% of the population thinks "large" means "really big". There simply is no objective definition to appeal to.
Regarding the definitions, you're simply asking for too much. I didn't say that the definition was the "same thing". In fact you didn't even use the phrase "same thing" the first time, you said: Neither of these are mentioned or alluded to So now "mentioned" or "alluded to" has been replaced with "same thing". Move the goal posts much?
I would never try to argue that simple is the "same thing" as clean interface. Simple is a much broader term, and it means different things in different contexts. My argument has never mean that simple necessarily means "clean interface", merely that from a user standpoint "simple" is associated with a clean interface. You can provide exceptions, and that's fine, but my point has been that in general if you think an application as being simple (from a user-standpoint) then it is more likely than not to have a clean interface.
And so, back to the definition, I'm merely saying that "clarity of expression" is related to simplicity, not that they are the same thing (or that it "alludes to" simplicity, to use your original goal posts). If the app GUI has "clarity of expression" that element will contribute to making the app simple (from user standpoint). Again, a plain interface is going in the way of simplicity. It's possible to have an interface be both non-sparse (cluttered) and simple to use, but it's also possible for someone only 5'11" to play in the NBA. That doesn't mean that height is not a general advantage in getting into the NBA or that a sparse interface is not a general advantage towards getting a simple interface.
The author brings-up three possible definitions of 'simplicity.' You simply dismiss what he said by claiming that you have intimate knowledge of what the vast majority of people consider 'simplicity.' This is B.S. and I'll stand by that. The actual truth is you're GUESSING. You're guessing the opinions of everyone and passing that off without qualifying it as a guess. You dressed your opinion up as fact.
No. If I said "the majority of people think that X is simple" I would, in fact, be guesssing (and would need statistics or a poll if it's not commonly acccepted knowledge). If I said "X is simple" I would be referring to a subjective judgement (and then your "so-and-so is beautiful" example would apply). I did not say either of these things. What I did say was that "the majority of people think simplicity means/includes at least some of the following..." In other words, I merely gave what I considered to be the commonly accepcted defintion of a plain English (non-technical word).
(And this: And you used my broadband remark as a support of your argument that you CAN indeed know such things was NEVER relevant to my point here.)
I say you CAN indeed know such things because knowing such thing is a prerequisite to using the English language. If you don't know what the vast majority of people think a word means then you can't speak the language When I learned Hungarian it was a process of finding out what the vast majority of Hungarians thought a word like "megyek" meant. If I don't in fact know what the vast majority of Hungarians think "megyek" means than I'm not a very good speaker of Hungarian, am I? That's the entire point of human communication: we have a shared repository of words and we all know what everybody thinks they all mean (in general). This isn't complicated, and it stuns me that after writing both a long, detailed post about it, and then my recap where I broke it down to basic logic, you're still not getting it. I'll try to state it one more time:
Not only do I know what the vast majority of people think "simplicity" means, I know what the vast majority of people think the vast majority of the words in the English language mean. I know what they think "boot", "scum", "toast", "conflagaration", and "queen" mean. I know what they think "complex", "simple", and "not" mean. Do I need to go on? Not only to I know this, but anyone who stops to think about it does. We all know what words mean. That's why language works..
What's more, the actual definition of simplicity doesn't even back you up. The two definitions of simplicity that you offer-up as the opinion of the majority is "ease of use" and "clean interface." Neither of these are mentioned or alluded to in the definition:
What - are you blind? You don't think 2. Absence of luxury or showiness; plainness. is a pretty close approximation to "clean interface"? What about a. Clarity of expression. or b. Austerity in embellishment.? Anyone involved in GUI design would say that a clean interface should be both spare ("austerity in embellishment", "absence of... showiness") and easy to understand ("clarity of expression"). These definitions are dead-on.
And for the record, calling your argument "long-winded and nonsensical" was not a straw man.
I didn't say it was. And you're right, it wasn't. It was the "xkcd attack". Which is not the same thing. The straw man attack was where you put something in quotes that I never said either word-for-word or at all.
I hope that you will finally understand what I'm saying here. You may view my posts as long-winded, but that's because I consider important the fine distinctions you completely miss. "X is simple" is not the same type of statement as "the vast majority of people think X is simple" which is not the same type of statement as "people think simplicity means Y". It takes time to make these distinctions, but they are important to make.
Uh... no. I thought it was actually a pretty good representation of what you did to me. Rather than respond to what I write, you just sort of dismiss what I'm saying in a way calculated to malign my statements without actually addressing them. Conveniently enough, you did the same thing subsequent to posting this. Now I can provide a concrete example:
That was a very long-winded and nonsensical answer.
It would have been perfect, actually, if instead of just calling my answer long-winded and nonsensical you'd just told me "I'm not really into Pokemon." In any case the strategy is identical. Ignore the content of what I'm saying, and just reply with something demeaning.
But the idea that Yahoo has some huge usability inferiority to Google I think is false.
I'm not interested in comparing usability of the two systems. I'm more interested in using the systems of examples of philosophies and talking about those.
I think the sparse google page made more sense during the dial-up days, but those are largely gone. The vast majority of people have broadband now (you like that?).
You keep doing this weird thing where you say something that proves my point. I'm completely OK with you saying the vast majority of people have broadband. I happen to think you're wrong in this instance, but it would never occur to me say that you're somehow not allowed to even make that type of claim. If I wanted to disprove this, I would question the content of the claim you're making, not the structure of the claim.
If you take the graphical ads off Yahoo.com, that page is more usable than Google.
meh.
I mean, if Google added DMOZ-ish directory below their current search box, would that somehow diminish the value of said box?
Again, I'm more interested in a discussion of design philosophy than trying to compare specifics. In this case, however, yeah, I think it would diminish the value of the box. It's wise of them to keep "www.google.com" separate from, say, "www.gmail.com". They shouldn't add anything to Google.com. It's an exercise in the design philosophy we have been discussing - context-based - and I think they should continue the work rather than settle for compromise.
I don't know how else to put this: when something appears nonsensical, it's either really nonsensical, or you just didn't understand it. In this case, I think it's the latter.
Recap:
I made the claim that the vast majority of people think that simplicity includes ease-of-use.
You responded that this was stupid, and you later clarified that it is stupid because you can't ever know what the vast majority of people think without taking a poll. You basically said that there is no X such that I can say "the vast majority of people think X means..." (without taking a poll).
I responded to that claim in two ways.
1. I disproved your negation by providing an example of an X for which we can, in fact, say "the vast majority of people think X". This counter-example was simple: the English language. The fact that language works proves that when words are concerned, we can in fact confidently assert "the vast majority of people think X means..." That is my logical refutation of your claim.
2. I went further and engaged in a demonstration of the fact that by engaging in use of the English language you have already implicitly demonstrate that you do not believe what you say you do. This wasn't really logically relevant, but I felt it was a strong rhetorical point.
So that's where we are. I made a claim, you made a counter-claim, and I disproved your counter-claim.
Anyway, I may as well finish with a treatment of your current post:
So to say "this is my definition of simplicity,... , ergo it's shared by the vast majority" is just bullshit my friend.
Agreed. Which is why I never said that. And now you've got yourself a working example of a straw man attack. And now I'm getting back, ironically enough, to my statistics homework.
What the heck does "safety in numbers" have to do with a "straw man"?
Safety in numbers: when you assert that you're right because everyone else says so to. (I assume this isn't controversial enough to warrant a link.)
Straw man: when you intentionally misconstrue an argument in order to make it more vulnerable to attack, and then attack the surrogate as though you were attacking the original. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)
The combination doesn't really make sense. Straw man arguments are not false arguments that you propose yourself, they are imitations of arguments you want to attack.
Seriously, though: claiming something like the "vast majority..." is just idiotic.
In most cases, you are right. If the vast majority of people think the earth is flat - who cares? There's an objective truth to be had. However in discussing the meaning of words what the "vast majority" thinks is not only relevant - it is the objective truth
There is obviously no way you actually know what the vast majority of people think about anything. So why say it? The only reason is to add weight to what you're saying.
I anticipated this entire line of reasoning. It's frustrating that you skipped my pre-placed rebuttal. Now I have to re-type it. Look, first of all define 'know'. I'm serious. If you mean 'know' as in "complete epistemological certainty" then - thanks to Descartes - you're right. I can't know what the vast majority of people think. But I also can't know anything at all other than the fact of my own existence (cogito, ergo sum - but where do we go from there?). So I doubt that's the version of 'know' you mean.
Setting aside solipsism our next hurdle is statistics. Even if we assume you can theoretically ask the vast majority of people what their opinion is, there's no practical way to pull this off. So you have to take random sample. But the random sample doesn't provide logical certainty - just a probability. That's what my p-value question was about. So we've already moved down the scale from "complete epistemological certainty" to a "probability". And is there a relatively decent probability that I can know what the vast majority of people think a word means? Of course there is! I speak the same damn language, don't I? English - all human languages - work and thus provide irrefutable evidence that you are wrong (in the general case). In the everyday, practical sense of the word, I know what the vast majority of people mean by the core 10,000 - 20,000 words in the English vocabulary and I rely on this knowledge whenever I open my mouth or write a note.
[Note: I said "in the general case". You are wrong to say I can't know what the vast majority of people think about anything. I have not at this point actually proved that my definition of "simplicity" was right, however. Those are separate issues.]
Of course the definition of a word is not static. I realize it's not all as cut and dry as this. Furthermore, definitions are fuzzy (unless you're in the realm of math, logic, etc.). I realize this. That is why I my argument is not so much "your definition is wrong, mine is right, neener neener" as it is "great - now we've got a steaming pile of semantic crap instead of a decent argument". My chief complaint with Joel's article is that it's so linguistically flawed as to, without providing definitions of our own, render rational discussion of the topic at hand utterly impossible.
If you're going to claim the vast majority of anything, you better have polling number from a random sample, margin of error, confidence levels, supplied demo multipliers, and, when possible, a linear regression analysis of the data.
Yeah, right. I'd like to see said statistics for every single word in your post. Because, after all, you're implicitly assuming that I and the "vast majority" of English speakers have the same definition when you write them with the clear expectation that I and the rest of the Slashdot readers will understand them. Of course it gets even trickier than just polling people for the odd-hundred words you used. How are you supposed to poll these people about the words without using the words themselves? Good luck with that. Your actions contradict your assertions.
Otherwise, stick to speaking for yourself
Look, I don't want to be harsh. I realize that your criticism: "You can avoid defending your point by dressing it up as a common, well known fact. It's a common technique here at Slashdot, but that doesn't make it any better." are well intentioned. But you've noticed a similarity between my argument and the arguments you deplore and assumed they are in fact the same. Closer inspection, as I hope I've provided, reveals that they are not.
I don't think your "human language" analogy was particularly apt. Humans have many ways of communicating. Computers have just two.
The medium of communication is pretty irrelevant to the analogy. I don't care how the information is communicated, just what information is transmitted. The point is that, using contextual clues, humans can short-circuit a lot of the meta-data that you have to specify when (say) doing a search. The contextual clues can be situationally based, culturally-based, etc., but the point comes down to just "what info is transmitted" not "what channels are used for information transmission".
But the idea that to get a map of the United States it's easier to type "Map of the united states" instead of clicking on a link that says "Maps" is silly to me.
You're missing the point. It's not Option A: type "map of the united states", Option B: select "maps". It's Option A: context-based search box, Option B: a crap-load of menus. Do you see the difference? When you can get context-based searching to work (and Google has a long way to go but it's clearly their intended direction) you can type "map of the united states" or "picture of Hillary Duff" or "directions to the baseball diamond" or "definition of simplicity" or "where to buy mac mini" or "scholarly articles on user interfaces" or "sample source code for java radio button" etc. You've replaced what - 7 top-level menu items? - with a simple search-menu box that's context sensitive. In any given discrete case you can say it's easy to have a clearly-labeled tool, but the result of having a tool for everything is clutter! You have to look beyond the "how to make one tool easy to use" to see the "how to make the entire application/process" easy to use.
Put another way: the strategy of labeling tools clearly (overt information) scales horribly.
But to use your analogy again, think of it like this. If I go to some guy on the street and I say "I need my dry cleaning. Here's my ticket" I'll get a No Results Returned error. Or if I go to my boss and say "I'd like a large pizza with extra cheese" again, no results returned. First, I need to select "Dry Cleaners" from my interface, and then ask for my clothes. Or I need to select "Luigis Pizza" from the list and then place an order.
Yeah, that is how it works in real-life. But I think this example works against you, not for you. In real life if you want your dry-cleaning, you do have to go to the dry cleaners. And thus having to get the appropriate menu item is more closely analogous to real life. But, from a strict convenience/simplicity of use viewpoint, wouldn't it be better to be able to order a pizza from whoever was closest? Wouldn't it be better to just find the first random stranger and know that, regardless of the stranger, they could order your pizza/deliver your laundry/etc. Why would we want to mimic 'real life' in this case?
but I've hated that "More" thing on the google page since the first time I saw it. More Clicks = Bad. I think the goal should be "Give me what I want with as little humancomputer interaction as possible"
I agree 100% I think the "More" thing is an inferior solution. But right now you have two schools of thought. You either have a "more" button (Google) or you have every feature available stuck in front of you (Yahoo). I'm not arguing that Google's "More" button is superior. I'm arguing that what they are trying to do is find a hybrid. As I suggested in another post, consider their personalized home-page (which Yahoo! may also offer) as a guide. Instead of just being able to place a few widgets, they would allow you to add menu items for all the functionality that you wanted where ever you wanted. More clicks is bad, yes. But more clutter is also bad.
In any case my central point is that the simplicity we care about is the simplicity of user experience. This is enhanced by providing the user with exactly the right tool set (or as close as
Sixth, I didn't attack him. I was just being honest.
That's priceless. It's not an ad hominem attack! He really is a jackass!
I'm not really offended or anything. I've certainly been called worse. I'm just not sure how to react to such blatant intentional obtuseness. If you think I'm not warranted in saying what the "vast majority" of people think about a word in this specific case, you should give me a reason. If you think I'm not warranted in saying what the "vast majority" of people think in general than I'd like some kind of explanation for this odd belief. Do you really stop everyone who says "most people think..." all the time and say "where's your statistical evidence?" I mean, if I make the claim "most people think that getting knee-capped is painful" - are you going to demand a study? If I say "most people think that the word xerox, when used as a verb, is a generic term for making a photocopy" are you going to demand a study of that too? And, if I may ask, what's your p-value? What would you accept as the significance level?.01?.05?.1? Do you have a reason for picking it?
You see your attack was just not very well-formed. So there wasn't much for me to say.
Furthermore, you completely ignored the other arguments that I did make and still making. If I make a few points and someone responds by taking a single quote and saying "everything you said boils down to this", why should I respond? They, like you, would have proven themselves so overly eager to stick words in someone else's mouth that debate would clearly be futile. You can't have a rational argument with someone who insists on telling you what you're saying. Said person is really just having an argument with themselves. Which might make you wonder: who really likes to hear themselves talk?
Are you suggesting that HIDDEN FUNCTIONALITY is more usable than OVERT FUNCTIONALITY?
Of course it is. "Hidden functionality", as you put it, is the way humans work. You don't go up to someone and say "Hey, how do I get to 3d Street Diner?" And then add "Please give me the instructions" or "and I mean spatially, not philosophically". We humans are good at picking up context and as a result we don't have to specify very often. We don't have a "language for asking directions" and a "language for asking about stats". Obviously this creates problems because sometimes there are ambiguities that need to be cleaned up. The same principles apply with code. The ideal program would have very, very few tools because it would just figure out what you wanted to do from context.
Context-based menus/toolbars etc. are not new or rocket science. They are just not very well-implemented because the context available to a computer is a tiny fraction of the context available to humans.
There is a downside to "hidden functionality", of course. You have to know what is possible to do first. The trouble with your assumption that we should make all functionality overt is that once you know a function is there, making it overt becomes a liability, not an asset. Apples does a good job not because they make grippers that everyone can see, but because they do a good job of making those grippers both functional and unobtrusive. They are minimizing the clutter of having grippers around when, to anyone with even passing familiarity with Apple, those grippers are purely superfluous. Still - they don't really cover anything else up so there's not much harm done.
It just highlights the fact that you're looking at this the wrong way. Apple doesn't score points for putting a giant billboard on every window that says "Instructions on how to resize the window!". They get points for making overt functionality as subtle as possible, so that people can get on with the hidden functionality the way we live the rest of your lives.
Users don't just divine what Google does. If a user is going to the page and wants a map, how do you assume that they just know to search for it?
OK OK, we get it. There's a "start up" cost. Once you know that you can type "define:word" in Google's search bar, you have an incredibly simple way to look up the definition of a word. But should the google search bar have instructions pasted just below it with every possible usage? You think that would be an improvement? The Google strategy is clearly to try and make the search functions so powerful that you no longer need instructions. You don't need a list of functionality. If you want to search for something, you just type it into the search bar and it figures it out for you. The ultimate goal is HIDDEN FUNCTIONALITY: it's making human-computer interactions as context-sensitive as human-human interactions.
His verdict is that we rather talk about simple products than use them. Arguing that if you would build products as simple as possible, you might very well go out of business. Marketing in their featuritis might for once be correct. His punchline tells all Yes, we want simplicity, but we dont want to give up any of those cool features. Simplicity is highly overrated.
I really don't feel like I'm missing anything here. I will take your advice and read them again in a day or so, but for the present my reaction is that - no matter how brilliant or respected this guy may be - he's making a rather banal argument on two levels.
Mistake #1: Mis-apprehending "simplicity"
No one jettisons features for the sake of getting rid of features. No one seriously thinks that making a product less capable will make it sell better by virtue of the lack of capability. People jettison features because we don't like cluttered applications. And "clutter" is any feature you don't need that is taking up real estate. So the idea of simplicity is to remove clutter - *not* to just remove features for the sake of it. I can't state it more plainly: Feature-stripping is not, nor will it ever be, an end in itself.
Once you realize this, you realize how assinine it is to predicate an argument on the notion that simplicity means excising features. That's like saying dentistry is about how many teeth you can pull out of someone's mouth. Well, of them. But then they can't chew, can they?
Mistake #2: Making things more complicated than they have to be
Because he's using such a cumbersome and weird definition of simplicity, he ends up with this weird and contradictory idea that there's some kind of self-defeating behavior in our desire for clean interfaces. He thinks people want simplicity (aka less features) but this is against their desire to have functional programs. It's an entirely unnecessary paradox. If you instead say people want simplicity (aka just the right features) then the whole weird "we want it, but really we don't" dynamic disappears. As it should.
Conclusion: Google IS Simple
So if we go with the rational definition of simple: containing only the features we want and none that we don't, then we see that Google (not the search, the other stuff) is simple for exactly the reason that I have expressed (and that Norman completely fails to grasp): they allow you to create your own suite of tools. Want to use Google Calender in addition to GMail? It's one click away. Don't want to use it? You'll hardly ever notice it's there.
Allowing users to cherry pick their features and apps is the perfect blend of simplicity (everyone gets to toss extra features overboard) and functionality (everybody gets to keep the features they use). It is the hallmark of Google that you can have this control. The lack of simplicity in Google's products comes from the fact that the products are BETAs. The integration is not complete. It has nothing to do with inherent design. Yahoo!, on the other hand, throws everything including the kitchen sink at you. Which is why I ditched it.
No, I don't. I noticed some other books on his blog that looked interesting, but I'm writing based specifically on this article. Not on prior achievements.
Perhaps his motives are not the typical "drive traffic here" or, more generally, "hey look at me!". I'm skeptical. Even an otherwise rational, academic type is as likely as the next guy to do something purely for self-aggrandizement now and then.
In any case, it's a poorly thought-out article regardless of his intentions.
Slashdot Mirror
So you are limited to a physical medium when you "have a life"?
Let me respond to this with a question: do you really think that you can have as fulfilling a relationship online as you can in real life? Now you personally might be able to, but I'd say that's a sad commentary on your interpersonal relationship skills. And I don't mean this as a burn. Let's just look at it in terms of data. How much information can you convey with just text? How much with text and photos? How much with text, photos, and video? How about adding audio?
I'm not trying to say that meatspace is the only thing that matters. There is genuine content to relationships even when they are restricted to nothing more than plain text IMs and a few emoticons. But if you're trying to tell me that you can get as much social interaction in a chatroom as at a party, then I just don't buy it. Not even a little bit.
We're still physical beings, and I don't think that's a draw back. From the subtleties of facial expression and body language that no amount of pixels can replicate to the sound of a voice to the smell of perfume to the sheer physical presence of another human being, meatspace offers more potential for human interaction than cyberspace.
Your reduction to "only mising touch, smell and taste" is infantile. Are you trying to tell me that watching football on TV - even in high def - is the *same experience* as watching it in person? Personally, I'd rather watch it on TV. Better viewing angle. But the point is it's different. This is one of those things that's so blindingly obvious it's hard to prove. I'll try just one more small example.
It's pretty much well known that, if you are going to break up with a girl, there's an inherent ranking in how you should do it. From worst to best:
1. post it
2. email
3. letter
3. phone message
4. phone call
5. face to face
Sure the exact ordering is up for grabs, and you can always concoct some exceptional hypothetical, but it comes down to the fact that we are social animals and you simple can't convey the data through your cable modem that you can from actually being with someone. Even when you're not saying anything at all, just sitting next to a good friend can be extremely meaningful.
Have we forgotten this?
-stormin
Because you need to have a life to get social networking sites.
I don't mean to be harsh, and I'm not looking to get modded a troll, but most people who enjoy using social sites over the long-term (in my opinion) have a lot of friends they actually care to keep in contact with. I'm a big Facebook user. It helps me keep up with my two sisters away at college as well as a lot of old friends of mine from high school and from college that I actually care to keep up with.
This is very different from internet-based relationships. (And that's where "have a life" may be harsh.) If you're into EVE Online or whatever, that's great. But your relationship with those people is, fundamentally, based in a digital medium. Sometimes MMO players get together in real life, sometimes really tight messageboard communities do the same thing. But that's the exception rather than the norm. The norm is for users brought together by a common interest to have little interest in maintaining relationships with those people in the absence of the common interest.
I played Planetside for a while. Not really an MMORPG, but certainly an MMO back in its day. I had an outfit (Guild, if you will) and several people that I considered friends in my Planetside world. Not only were they in my outfit, but we worked well together, laughed at each others jokes, and generally enjoyed playing together. That was the extent of it, however. I'm not saying I would not have cared to know how their day was outside of Planetside, or how their relationship was going. I may have cared, but that would have been a different kind of relationship. It would have been, for lack of a less-harsh term, caring about their real life and not just the game life.
American culture is more mobile than ever. It's normal go to high school in one city, go to college in another city, and get a job in a third city. And even if you don't move around that much, some of your friends certainly will. It's precisely these 18 - 25 year olds who use these sites. They are trying to find a kind of stability in their ever-changing world. If your entire circle of friends is cycled at least every 4 years, you may want to find a way to combat that social churn and get a more stable set of friends. A sense of permenance and community.
As far as the original question about portability goes, I don't think it's that much of an issue. I chose Facebook precisely because it's not MySpace. I have no desire to be a part of the MySpace community, or any other community. If I do want to join another community, then I think re-entering my data would be a minimal issue. Some data portability would be nice, but hardly required. And in any case, functional data portability (e.g. not just my personal stats, but my friends) is really difficult without creating semi-official digital selves or using a lot of personally-identifiable data. Either of these options result in serious privacy concerns, so I'll trade a little re-keying for a new social cite to keep my data relatively anonymous.
-stormin
Seriously. And I want my jetpack.
-stormin
I respectfully disagree you with respect to Aristotle: actions emerge from thoughts, but this is not a grounds for concluding that a specific thought must lead to a specific action.
It's not deterministic, it's stochastic. Watching child porn does not guarantee you will rape a child, or even try to. But it does make that more likely (in my opinion and according to my own reading of Aristotle).
The human mind is what it is and we barely understand ourselves; you would trust others to police yours?
This is not policing of the mind! I don't care what people think about. I'll fight any law that tries to legislate thoughts. No matter what those thoughts are. We're talking about making and distributing child porn, not just thinking about it. It's like the difference between fantasizing about how to blow up the Statue of Liberty and actually developing a specific plan that would work and publishing it on the Net. Te act is bad either way, but we can only legislate the latter and not the former.
-stormin
In fact, child pornography wasn't illegal in the US until 1977, and in Europe, a few years later, so apparently not only did the founding fathers "not think of it", neither did two centuries of their descendants.
Are you so sure they even were really aware of child porn? I haven't brought up this statistic so far because I've been unable to track the source down, but I'm confident that I read an article that stated that before the internet child porn was virtually stamped out. Now it's much, much more prevalent than it was 20 years ago because of the accessibility. I believe - although I admit I don't have the facts yet - that a similar thing happened earlier in the 20th century. There was no child porn until technology made it accessible (ability to develop your own photos, copy VHS tapes). So no law was required before then. Child porn finally makes it on the radar, public outcry results in a crack-down, and it's reigned in. Enter the internet, and it's on the rise again.
I'm all for another crack down. I'll be honest - I think all porn is sick. But I have no interest in outlawing porn made with adults. I don't watch it, but you can. When it comes to child porn, however, I think we need to put the rights of children ahead of the rights of perverts. And yes, I think children are endangered even by porn that does not involve actual children in the filming.
-stormin
This may be true, but the thrill you get from killing the bad guy is very real. You experience the joy of the bad guy's death.
Yeah, but killing bad guys isn't evil. That's the point. There's nothing wrong with identifying with the victim, or with empathizing with the hero who kills the bad guy. There's not a problem with empathizing with bad characters either. But when you identify with a child molester, I think there are moral ramifications and psychological ones.
It's not about suggestion. It's not even just role-playing. Otherwise being the Sith in star wars would be immoral (and I don't think it is). The feelings of killing jedi or prostitutes are not actual feelings of committing murder. The feelings of watching porn stimulate the actual biological response of sexual stimulation. That makes it quantifiably different than the other things you mention.
But if you get a sexual arousal out of the _thought_ of these things, I feel I cannot judge you. You are entitled to your thoughts, no matter how horrible they are. Ever have a bad breakup where you fantasized about killing the person? Ever pictured an especially bad coworker or boss had a serious accident, or that you got to hurt them yourself?
First of all, know. I've never fantasized about killing someone even after my worst break up, and I've never pictures a bad coworker or boss in a serious accident. I've *joked* about such things, but fantasizing about it would strike me as seriously disturbed. But *not* illegal! I wold never try to ban what someone thinks. We're talking about more than thinking, however. There's no proposed law against fantasizing about raping children (and I would campaing against one if there were). There's a proposed law against turning those thoughts into videos/pictures and distributing them. That's more akin to making a serious depiction of killing someone after you break up and spreading it around. Even *that* is not necessarily illegal, however. Porn is different for the reasons stated above.
Kiddie porn is horrible, but I will not be party to imprisoning those that merely depict their feelings or thoughts of it. As long as no one is harmed in order to make it, there must be no limitations on the expressions of our ideas.
I'm not so sure no one is harmed...
-stormin
Smoking marijuana is illegal, but possession of these posters is not.
Yes, but you're ignoring the function of porn. A t-shirt of marijuana will not give you a buzz by itself. Neither will a poster. But the entire point of porn is to make you feel as if the action were really happening. So that's a little different, don't you think? Porn is *not* just a form of expression, it is fundamentally different than the other forms of expression you mention.
-stormin
I imagine if they didn't want free speech protections to apply to porn, they could have said so.
Either that or that it was so obviously not within the realm of the intentions that it didn't occur to them to specify. In any case, they might have been a little busy with the business of not losing a war or two and trying to keep a new nation afloat to specify, don't you think?
-stormin
Oh come on. The point of a horror novel is to scare you. The point of a murder drama is to empathize with the victim. The point of trash-mafia books it to make you feel like you are in the gangster culture-- to feel what it's like to be a thug.
Your first example (horror) is flat-out not what you want to say. It's an example of what I'm saying. That when we watch most depictions of evil violence the intent is for us to empathize with the victim. This makes watching horror the opposite of watching porn, not the same thing! Regarding "what it's like to be a thug", I have to wonder if you seriously believe that. There's a difference between "playing the bad guy", which usually doesn't involve any actual evil intent, and actually wanting to get the real feeling of smashing another human beings face in. I don't believe that you really think trash-mafia books are ways for people to get a "hit" of sadism or socio-pathic criminal behavior.
Yes books always draw you in. But there's a difference between empathizing with a character and actually acting out the same impulses of the character. The point of porn - and this is biologically obvious - is to stimulate erotic behavior as if we were involved. When this involves legal sexual behavior - no matter how weird - then fine. But when it involves mimicry of child-molestation than I have a serious issue.
The simple point is that, as I believe Aristotle observed, character emerges from actions, and actions emerge from thoughts. When you play Halo I don't think you actually have thoughts of murder and combat. When you play GTA I think you probably do, but I don't think it's clear-cut enough to warrant a ban. I would just rather not play the game myself. But when it gets to the point where people are not only observing child molestation, but actually acting it out in their minds, then I say we've got a serious problem even if the porn was created without using actual children.
On a final thought - if child porn is not a type of communication not covered by free speech, then it's hard to imagine any type of communication not covered by free speech.
-stormin
A) Horror films invoke fear, and many depictions of murder are designed to give the viewer a viceral charge, espcecially of revenge. Clearly fictional works of violence work very hard to arouse the emotions of the viewer.
You missed the point. Horror films arouse feelings of fear. They depict murder, rape, torture, but the point is not to engender the feeling of torturing someone else, is it? You don't watch Saw III to experience the feeling of killing people. At least I certainly hope you don't. So yes a feeling is illicited by horror, but not the feeling we want to discourage. The point of a depiction of murder is not to make us feel like we're murdering people. The point of porn, on the other hand, is to make us aroused in sympathy with the actions portrayed on screen.
B) So what if someone gets aroused by a cartoon depiction of kiddie porn? "No child was harmed in the creation of this film." I abosolutly have no tolerance or empathy with child pornographers. I loathe them as the lowest form of existance. But that's because they hurt kids. If no kids are harmed, I don't really care how you get your jollies.
There are two arguments against kiddie porn. The first is that it's directly abusive of children. Clearly this applies only to real child porn. The second is that it leads to deviant behavior. If this idea has scientific merit, than it doesn't really matter if the images are from real people or not, does it?
-stormin
Indeed -- argued both ways, no less! It could alter the behavior by making them want to act on their urges with real children more, or it could alter the behavior by satisfying their urges so they no longer feel the need to go after real kids.
0 102.htm
This sounds like the kind of wishful-thinking with which most Slashdot readers react to anti-porn news of any kind.
Our experience in the investigation of these crimes also signals a strong correlation between child pornography offenders and molesters of children. In Operation Candyman, for example, of the 90 people arrested thus far for their participation in the child pornography e-group, 13 of them who chose to make inculpatory statements admitted to molesting a combined total of 48 children
http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress02/heimbach05
Child porn does not sate a desire to molest children, it inculcates this desire. If banning artificial child porn makes child porn hard to come by and thereby dampens the demand for the real thing (or molestation), then it's a great idea. Even if it doesn't, I'm a little tired of this idea that free speech extends to pornography. Somehow I doubt that was original intent of the Founding Fathers.
Very well. Commence flaming.
-stormin
I don't mean this as a blanked defense of the proposed law by any means. I do, however, think it's a fallacy to compare reading/viewing sexual child abuse to reading/viewing a murder, theft, or other crime. In the case of other crimes, the depiction is entirely separate from the depicted. Reading about a bank robber does not make you a thief.
Pornography is a little different, however, in that it exists as the interaction between the subject and the material. The whole point of pornography is to not just be a depiction of some sexually-arousing act, but to actually arouse.
To make you analogy work, we should put separate depictions of porno in the same category as depictions of murder, rape, theft, vandalism, whatever and put actual porno in a different category. Not neccessarily a criminal category, but certainly a category in which the consumption of the media is the act in question.
-stormin
Once again, you think that knowing the definition of a word is the same thing as knowing a persons opinion.
.05% of the world is of the opinion that "large" means "having to do with flatulence" their opinion is wrong NOT because there's some ultimate authority that provides a definition, but because the opinion of the other 99.95% of the population thinks "large" means "really big". There simply is no objective definition to appeal to.
OK, I think I'm starting to see the source of some of the confusion. You seem to be laboring under the false impression that a definition is something that has an objective truth value. You think you can separate "what a word really means" from "what people think the word means" and label one a fact and the other an opinion. The trouble with this is that "what a word really means" depends entirely on "what people think the word means". In this case the opinions of people ARE the objective truth. (A truth that, as I've already covered, as admittedly dynamic and non-specific).
While I understand your point that saying "X is simple" is an opinion, the particular attributes that make something simple are ALSO a matter of opinion. They are not a matter of DEFINITION, as much as you'd like to claim they are.
The real problem is that you think there's a difference between OPINION and DEFINITION when it comes to what words mean. There is not. If
Regarding the definitions, you're simply asking for too much. I didn't say that the definition was the "same thing". In fact you didn't even use the phrase "same thing" the first time, you said: Neither of these are mentioned or alluded to So now "mentioned" or "alluded to" has been replaced with "same thing". Move the goal posts much?
I would never try to argue that simple is the "same thing" as clean interface. Simple is a much broader term, and it means different things in different contexts. My argument has never mean that simple necessarily means "clean interface", merely that from a user standpoint "simple" is associated with a clean interface. You can provide exceptions, and that's fine, but my point has been that in general if you think an application as being simple (from a user-standpoint) then it is more likely than not to have a clean interface.
And so, back to the definition, I'm merely saying that "clarity of expression" is related to simplicity, not that they are the same thing (or that it "alludes to" simplicity, to use your original goal posts). If the app GUI has "clarity of expression" that element will contribute to making the app simple (from user standpoint). Again, a plain interface is going in the way of simplicity. It's possible to have an interface be both non-sparse (cluttered) and simple to use, but it's also possible for someone only 5'11" to play in the NBA. That doesn't mean that height is not a general advantage in getting into the NBA or that a sparse interface is not a general advantage towards getting a simple interface.
-stormin
The author brings-up three possible definitions of 'simplicity.' You simply dismiss what he said by claiming that you have intimate knowledge of what the vast majority of people consider 'simplicity.' This is B.S. and I'll stand by that. The actual truth is you're GUESSING. You're guessing the opinions of everyone and passing that off without qualifying it as a guess. You dressed your opinion up as fact.
No. If I said "the majority of people think that X is simple" I would, in fact, be guesssing (and would need statistics or a poll if it's not commonly acccepted knowledge). If I said "X is simple" I would be referring to a subjective judgement (and then your "so-and-so is beautiful" example would apply). I did not say either of these things. What I did say was that "the majority of people think simplicity means/includes at least some of the following..." In other words, I merely gave what I considered to be the commonly accepcted defintion of a plain English (non-technical word).
(And this: And you used my broadband remark as a support of your argument that you CAN indeed know such things was NEVER relevant to my point here.)
I say you CAN indeed know such things because knowing such thing is a prerequisite to using the English language. If you don't know what the vast majority of people think a word means then you can't speak the language When I learned Hungarian it was a process of finding out what the vast majority of Hungarians thought a word like "megyek" meant. If I don't in fact know what the vast majority of Hungarians think "megyek" means than I'm not a very good speaker of Hungarian, am I? That's the entire point of human communication: we have a shared repository of words and we all know what everybody thinks they all mean (in general). This isn't complicated, and it stuns me that after writing both a long, detailed post about it, and then my recap where I broke it down to basic logic, you're still not getting it. I'll try to state it one more time:
Not only do I know what the vast majority of people think "simplicity" means, I know what the vast majority of people think the vast majority of the words in the English language mean. I know what they think "boot", "scum", "toast", "conflagaration", and "queen" mean. I know what they think "complex", "simple", and "not" mean. Do I need to go on? Not only to I know this, but anyone who stops to think about it does. We all know what words mean. That's why language works..
What's more, the actual definition of simplicity doesn't even back you up. The two definitions of simplicity that you offer-up as the opinion of the majority is "ease of use" and "clean interface." Neither of these are mentioned or alluded to in the definition:
What - are you blind? You don't think 2. Absence of luxury or showiness; plainness. is a pretty close approximation to "clean interface"? What about a. Clarity of expression. or b. Austerity in embellishment.? Anyone involved in GUI design would say that a clean interface should be both spare ("austerity in embellishment", "absence of... showiness") and easy to understand ("clarity of expression"). These definitions are dead-on.
And for the record, calling your argument "long-winded and nonsensical" was not a straw man.
I didn't say it was. And you're right, it wasn't. It was the "xkcd attack". Which is not the same thing. The straw man attack was where you put something in quotes that I never said either word-for-word or at all.
I hope that you will finally understand what I'm saying here. You may view my posts as long-winded, but that's because I consider important the fine distinctions you completely miss. "X is simple" is not the same type of statement as "the vast majority of people think X is simple" which is not the same type of statement as "people think simplicity means Y". It takes time to make these distinctions, but they are important to make.
-stormin
Uh... no. I thought it was actually a pretty good representation of what you did to me. Rather than respond to what I write, you just sort of dismiss what I'm saying in a way calculated to malign my statements without actually addressing them. Conveniently enough, you did the same thing subsequent to posting this. Now I can provide a concrete example:
That was a very long-winded and nonsensical answer.
It would have been perfect, actually, if instead of just calling my answer long-winded and nonsensical you'd just told me "I'm not really into Pokemon." In any case the strategy is identical. Ignore the content of what I'm saying, and just reply with something demeaning.
-stormin
But the idea that Yahoo has some huge usability inferiority to Google I think is false.
I'm not interested in comparing usability of the two systems. I'm more interested in using the systems of examples of philosophies and talking about those.
I think the sparse google page made more sense during the dial-up days, but those are largely gone. The vast majority of people have broadband now (you like that?).
You keep doing this weird thing where you say something that proves my point. I'm completely OK with you saying the vast majority of people have broadband. I happen to think you're wrong in this instance, but it would never occur to me say that you're somehow not allowed to even make that type of claim. If I wanted to disprove this, I would question the content of the claim you're making, not the structure of the claim.
If you take the graphical ads off Yahoo.com, that page is more usable than Google.
meh.
I mean, if Google added DMOZ-ish directory below their current search box, would that somehow diminish the value of said box?
Again, I'm more interested in a discussion of design philosophy than trying to compare specifics. In this case, however, yeah, I think it would diminish the value of the box. It's wise of them to keep "www.google.com" separate from, say, "www.gmail.com". They shouldn't add anything to Google.com. It's an exercise in the design philosophy we have been discussing - context-based - and I think they should continue the work rather than settle for compromise.
-stormin
I don't know how else to put this: when something appears nonsensical, it's either really nonsensical, or you just didn't understand it. In this case, I think it's the latter.
... , ergo it's shared by the vast majority" is just bullshit my friend.
Recap:
I made the claim that the vast majority of people think that simplicity includes ease-of-use.
You responded that this was stupid, and you later clarified that it is stupid because you can't ever know what the vast majority of people think without taking a poll. You basically said that there is no X such that I can say "the vast majority of people think X means..." (without taking a poll).
I responded to that claim in two ways.
1. I disproved your negation by providing an example of an X for which we can, in fact, say "the vast majority of people think X". This counter-example was simple: the English language. The fact that language works proves that when words are concerned, we can in fact confidently assert "the vast majority of people think X means..." That is my logical refutation of your claim.
2. I went further and engaged in a demonstration of the fact that by engaging in use of the English language you have already implicitly demonstrate that you do not believe what you say you do. This wasn't really logically relevant, but I felt it was a strong rhetorical point.
So that's where we are. I made a claim, you made a counter-claim, and I disproved your counter-claim.
Anyway, I may as well finish with a treatment of your current post:
So to say "this is my definition of simplicity,
Agreed. Which is why I never said that. And now you've got yourself a working example of a straw man attack. And now I'm getting back, ironically enough, to my statistics homework.
-stormin
Nitpick:
What the heck does "safety in numbers" have to do with a "straw man"?
Safety in numbers: when you assert that you're right because everyone else says so to. (I assume this isn't controversial enough to warrant a link.)
Straw man: when you intentionally misconstrue an argument in order to make it more vulnerable to attack, and then attack the surrogate as though you were attacking the original. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)
The combination doesn't really make sense. Straw man arguments are not false arguments that you propose yourself, they are imitations of arguments you want to attack.
-stormin
Seriously, though: claiming something like the "vast majority..." is just idiotic.
In most cases, you are right. If the vast majority of people think the earth is flat - who cares? There's an objective truth to be had. However in discussing the meaning of words what the "vast majority" thinks is not only relevant - it is the objective truth
There is obviously no way you actually know what the vast majority of people think about anything. So why say it? The only reason is to add weight to what you're saying.
I anticipated this entire line of reasoning. It's frustrating that you skipped my pre-placed rebuttal. Now I have to re-type it. Look, first of all define 'know'. I'm serious. If you mean 'know' as in "complete epistemological certainty" then - thanks to Descartes - you're right. I can't know what the vast majority of people think. But I also can't know anything at all other than the fact of my own existence (cogito, ergo sum - but where do we go from there?). So I doubt that's the version of 'know' you mean.
Setting aside solipsism our next hurdle is statistics. Even if we assume you can theoretically ask the vast majority of people what their opinion is, there's no practical way to pull this off. So you have to take random sample. But the random sample doesn't provide logical certainty - just a probability. That's what my p-value question was about. So we've already moved down the scale from "complete epistemological certainty" to a "probability". And is there a relatively decent probability that I can know what the vast majority of people think a word means? Of course there is! I speak the same damn language, don't I? English - all human languages - work and thus provide irrefutable evidence that you are wrong (in the general case). In the everyday, practical sense of the word, I know what the vast majority of people mean by the core 10,000 - 20,000 words in the English vocabulary and I rely on this knowledge whenever I open my mouth or write a note.
[Note: I said "in the general case". You are wrong to say I can't know what the vast majority of people think about anything. I have not at this point actually proved that my definition of "simplicity" was right, however. Those are separate issues.]
Of course the definition of a word is not static. I realize it's not all as cut and dry as this. Furthermore, definitions are fuzzy (unless you're in the realm of math, logic, etc.). I realize this. That is why I my argument is not so much "your definition is wrong, mine is right, neener neener" as it is "great - now we've got a steaming pile of semantic crap instead of a decent argument". My chief complaint with Joel's article is that it's so linguistically flawed as to, without providing definitions of our own, render rational discussion of the topic at hand utterly impossible.
If you're going to claim the vast majority of anything, you better have polling number from a random sample, margin of error, confidence levels, supplied demo multipliers, and, when possible, a linear regression analysis of the data.
Yeah, right. I'd like to see said statistics for every single word in your post. Because, after all, you're implicitly assuming that I and the "vast majority" of English speakers have the same definition when you write them with the clear expectation that I and the rest of the Slashdot readers will understand them. Of course it gets even trickier than just polling people for the odd-hundred words you used. How are you supposed to poll these people about the words without using the words themselves? Good luck with that. Your actions contradict your assertions.
Otherwise, stick to speaking for yourself
Look, I don't want to be harsh. I realize that your criticism: "You can avoid defending your point by dressing it up as a common, well known fact. It's a common technique here at Slashdot, but that doesn't make it any better." are well intentioned. But you've noticed a similarity between my argument and the arguments you deplore and assumed they are in fact the same. Closer inspection, as I hope I've provided, reveals that they are not.
-stormin
I don't think your "human language" analogy was particularly apt. Humans have many ways of communicating. Computers have just two.
The medium of communication is pretty irrelevant to the analogy. I don't care how the information is communicated, just what information is transmitted. The point is that, using contextual clues, humans can short-circuit a lot of the meta-data that you have to specify when (say) doing a search. The contextual clues can be situationally based, culturally-based, etc., but the point comes down to just "what info is transmitted" not "what channels are used for information transmission".
But the idea that to get a map of the United States it's easier to type "Map of the united states" instead of clicking on a link that says "Maps" is silly to me.
You're missing the point. It's not Option A: type "map of the united states", Option B: select "maps". It's Option A: context-based search box, Option B: a crap-load of menus. Do you see the difference? When you can get context-based searching to work (and Google has a long way to go but it's clearly their intended direction) you can type "map of the united states" or "picture of Hillary Duff" or "directions to the baseball diamond" or "definition of simplicity" or "where to buy mac mini" or "scholarly articles on user interfaces" or "sample source code for java radio button" etc. You've replaced what - 7 top-level menu items? - with a simple search-menu box that's context sensitive. In any given discrete case you can say it's easy to have a clearly-labeled tool, but the result of having a tool for everything is clutter! You have to look beyond the "how to make one tool easy to use" to see the "how to make the entire application/process" easy to use.
Put another way: the strategy of labeling tools clearly (overt information) scales horribly.
But to use your analogy again, think of it like this. If I go to some guy on the street and I say "I need my dry cleaning. Here's my ticket" I'll get a No Results Returned error. Or if I go to my boss and say "I'd like a large pizza with extra cheese" again, no results returned. First, I need to select "Dry Cleaners" from my interface, and then ask for my clothes. Or I need to select "Luigis Pizza" from the list and then place an order.
Yeah, that is how it works in real-life. But I think this example works against you, not for you. In real life if you want your dry-cleaning, you do have to go to the dry cleaners. And thus having to get the appropriate menu item is more closely analogous to real life. But, from a strict convenience/simplicity of use viewpoint, wouldn't it be better to be able to order a pizza from whoever was closest? Wouldn't it be better to just find the first random stranger and know that, regardless of the stranger, they could order your pizza/deliver your laundry/etc. Why would we want to mimic 'real life' in this case?
but I've hated that "More" thing on the google page since the first time I saw it. More Clicks = Bad. I think the goal should be "Give me what I want with as little humancomputer interaction as possible"
I agree 100% I think the "More" thing is an inferior solution. But right now you have two schools of thought. You either have a "more" button (Google) or you have every feature available stuck in front of you (Yahoo). I'm not arguing that Google's "More" button is superior. I'm arguing that what they are trying to do is find a hybrid. As I suggested in another post, consider their personalized home-page (which Yahoo! may also offer) as a guide. Instead of just being able to place a few widgets, they would allow you to add menu items for all the functionality that you wanted where ever you wanted. More clicks is bad, yes. But more clutter is also bad.
In any case my central point is that the simplicity we care about is the simplicity of user experience. This is enhanced by providing the user with exactly the right tool set (or as close as
Sixth, I didn't attack him. I was just being honest.
.01? .05? .1? Do you have a reason for picking it?
That's priceless. It's not an ad hominem attack! He really is a jackass!
I'm not really offended or anything. I've certainly been called worse. I'm just not sure how to react to such blatant intentional obtuseness. If you think I'm not warranted in saying what the "vast majority" of people think about a word in this specific case, you should give me a reason. If you think I'm not warranted in saying what the "vast majority" of people think in general than I'd like some kind of explanation for this odd belief. Do you really stop everyone who says "most people think..." all the time and say "where's your statistical evidence?" I mean, if I make the claim "most people think that getting knee-capped is painful" - are you going to demand a study? If I say "most people think that the word xerox, when used as a verb, is a generic term for making a photocopy" are you going to demand a study of that too? And, if I may ask, what's your p-value? What would you accept as the significance level?
You see your attack was just not very well-formed. So there wasn't much for me to say.
Furthermore, you completely ignored the other arguments that I did make and still making. If I make a few points and someone responds by taking a single quote and saying "everything you said boils down to this", why should I respond? They, like you, would have proven themselves so overly eager to stick words in someone else's mouth that debate would clearly be futile. You can't have a rational argument with someone who insists on telling you what you're saying. Said person is really just having an argument with themselves. Which might make you wonder: who really likes to hear themselves talk?
-stormin
I dub this: the xkcd attack. (http://xkcd.com/c178.html)
Are you suggesting that HIDDEN FUNCTIONALITY is more usable than OVERT FUNCTIONALITY?
Of course it is. "Hidden functionality", as you put it, is the way humans work. You don't go up to someone and say "Hey, how do I get to 3d Street Diner?" And then add "Please give me the instructions" or "and I mean spatially, not philosophically". We humans are good at picking up context and as a result we don't have to specify very often. We don't have a "language for asking directions" and a "language for asking about stats". Obviously this creates problems because sometimes there are ambiguities that need to be cleaned up. The same principles apply with code. The ideal program would have very, very few tools because it would just figure out what you wanted to do from context.
Context-based menus/toolbars etc. are not new or rocket science. They are just not very well-implemented because the context available to a computer is a tiny fraction of the context available to humans.
There is a downside to "hidden functionality", of course. You have to know what is possible to do first. The trouble with your assumption that we should make all functionality overt is that once you know a function is there, making it overt becomes a liability, not an asset. Apples does a good job not because they make grippers that everyone can see, but because they do a good job of making those grippers both functional and unobtrusive. They are minimizing the clutter of having grippers around when, to anyone with even passing familiarity with Apple, those grippers are purely superfluous. Still - they don't really cover anything else up so there's not much harm done.
It just highlights the fact that you're looking at this the wrong way. Apple doesn't score points for putting a giant billboard on every window that says "Instructions on how to resize the window!". They get points for making overt functionality as subtle as possible, so that people can get on with the hidden functionality the way we live the rest of your lives.
Users don't just divine what Google does. If a user is going to the page and wants a map, how do you assume that they just know to search for it?
OK OK, we get it. There's a "start up" cost. Once you know that you can type "define:word" in Google's search bar, you have an incredibly simple way to look up the definition of a word. But should the google search bar have instructions pasted just below it with every possible usage? You think that would be an improvement? The Google strategy is clearly to try and make the search functions so powerful that you no longer need instructions. You don't need a list of functionality. If you want to search for something, you just type it into the search bar and it figures it out for you. The ultimate goal is HIDDEN FUNCTIONALITY: it's making human-computer interactions as context-sensitive as human-human interactions.
-stormin
(PS - I thought I was cantankerous!)
His verdict is that we rather talk about simple products than use them. Arguing that if you would build products as simple as possible, you might very well go out of business. Marketing in their featuritis might for once be correct. His punchline tells all Yes, we want simplicity, but we dont want to give up any of those cool features. Simplicity is highly overrated.
I really don't feel like I'm missing anything here. I will take your advice and read them again in a day or so, but for the present my reaction is that - no matter how brilliant or respected this guy may be - he's making a rather banal argument on two levels.
Mistake #1: Mis-apprehending "simplicity"
No one jettisons features for the sake of getting rid of features. No one seriously thinks that making a product less capable will make it sell better by virtue of the lack of capability. People jettison features because we don't like cluttered applications. And "clutter" is any feature you don't need that is taking up real estate. So the idea of simplicity is to remove clutter - *not* to just remove features for the sake of it. I can't state it more plainly: Feature-stripping is not, nor will it ever be, an end in itself.
Once you realize this, you realize how assinine it is to predicate an argument on the notion that simplicity means excising features. That's like saying dentistry is about how many teeth you can pull out of someone's mouth. Well, of them. But then they can't chew, can they?
Mistake #2: Making things more complicated than they have to be
Because he's using such a cumbersome and weird definition of simplicity, he ends up with this weird and contradictory idea that there's some kind of self-defeating behavior in our desire for clean interfaces. He thinks people want simplicity (aka less features) but this is against their desire to have functional programs. It's an entirely unnecessary paradox. If you instead say people want simplicity (aka just the right features) then the whole weird "we want it, but really we don't" dynamic disappears. As it should.
Conclusion: Google IS Simple
So if we go with the rational definition of simple: containing only the features we want and none that we don't, then we see that Google (not the search, the other stuff) is simple for exactly the reason that I have expressed (and that Norman completely fails to grasp): they allow you to create your own suite of tools. Want to use Google Calender in addition to GMail? It's one click away. Don't want to use it? You'll hardly ever notice it's there.
Allowing users to cherry pick their features and apps is the perfect blend of simplicity (everyone gets to toss extra features overboard) and functionality (everybody gets to keep the features they use). It is the hallmark of Google that you can have this control. The lack of simplicity in Google's products comes from the fact that the products are BETAs. The integration is not complete. It has nothing to do with inherent design. Yahoo!, on the other hand, throws everything including the kitchen sink at you. Which is why I ditched it.
-stormin
You do know who Don Norman is, do you?
No, I don't. I noticed some other books on his blog that looked interesting, but I'm writing based specifically on this article. Not on prior achievements.
Perhaps his motives are not the typical "drive traffic here" or, more generally, "hey look at me!". I'm skeptical. Even an otherwise rational, academic type is as likely as the next guy to do something purely for self-aggrandizement now and then.
In any case, it's a poorly thought-out article regardless of his intentions.
-stormin