1) The assumption that people's wishes and needs line up along geographic boundaries. No matter if it's 2, 30,000 or 700,000 people in a district. 2) First past the pole systems. People can't be divided into two groups. In my country we for example have 9 major political parties with each different combination of the following: [liberal vs. conservative, religious vs. atheist, socialist vs. capitalist, enviromentalist vs. industrialist].
It means that government happens by coalition, which means that the compromises are made between parties, instead of between groups within parties (tea party anyone?). I think it's a more transparent process.
I feel it also gives a lot more power to significant minorities as long as they're willing to compromise.
Next to that it allows for more rejuvenation in the political system, as even a relatively small group can get a foothold and grow from there into replacing established groups.
If you run a lot of #2, you'll generally benefit from the fact that there's a very high probability that the systems that the open community software have primarily been tested on are RHEL-like systems.
We used to run SLES and OpenSuse on our old cluster, and switched to Ubuntu for our new one. We had several reasons for that: 1) We found that most developers are on a flavour of Ubuntu. It's really become the nr1 desktop distro. 2) We made an inventory of what was available though rpm and though apt, and a lot of packages that our users needed were available though apt but not rpm. 3) CentOS and Scientific Linux were also considered, but seemed to be lagging behind Ubuntu in what versions of packages were supported.
The problem seem to have, that's apparently less in some other research projects, is that the developers are using a lot of relatively new packages and libraries, and therefore need quite up-to-date distros. Reason 2 meant that if we went with an rpm based distro, we would need to build much more packages from source, which would mean a lot of work for the support department.
We've only had one real problem with Ubuntu: GRID doesn't support it, so it took a lot of time to get that running.
Our cluster is ~3200 cores, so not really big, but not tiny either.
I open a blank page and search on google and hope my search term works the next time?
I can understand Chrome going this direction. It gives Google more information what pages people are visiting.
Myself, I prefer keeping the URL bar. I use it quite often, and have for the last 17 or so years. It either means I'm getting old, or that this is just a stupid idea. It's one of the few features in any webbrowser that's always there. So when a family member phones me up with some problem, I can always tell them to type something in the address bar, even if it's just 10.11.12.13 to get to their router to reset it.
There's one on the backside of the Moon* and one on the Mid Atlantic ridge, about halfway between Iceland and the Azores. There's probably also one east of Powderville, MT and one west of Spencer, ID. The last one is almost completely underground.
*) The Space Shuttles are being shelved because the military has something much better.
That exactly shows what's wrong with Apple support: It doesn't support the laptops. If an IMac breaks, they'll come and fix it, if you have the right level of Apple Care. But for a Macbook (Pro), you can't get that level of service, you're expected to bring it to the shop. 90% of the Mac's where I work (including mine) are laptops. They are really nice machines. Until they break. (Which some will, if you have several hundred users).
There is definitely a difference in the level of support for Apple and Dell. Especially on laptops. I'm very happy with my Macbook Pro. The only thing that came close, is a Thinkpad I used before. But I really hope it never breaks.
You can get a support contract on iMacs, where they'll come and fix it at the office, but not for their Macbooks, those you have to bring to the shop. Dell on the other hand doesn't care if it's a desktop or laptop.
Our IT department really doesn't like the lack of professional support from Apple.
Meh, in the Netherlands none of those work, not on Windows, Mac, or iOs either. "This content is not available in your country"
Well, if nobody is selling it to me, then I have only two options left, either not watch it, or "find it". If I'm lucky there might be a Region 2 DVD release at some point. I really don't understand these guys.
If you don't know what a Runge-Kutta solver is, then you should probably not be listening to the presentation in the first place.
I agree a lot of CS students have poor presentation skills though, as do their professors. It seems to be a general trait shared by a lot of people CS and related fields.
But then that would need to be translated into X languages. And have have controls that adjust to the size of the words in different languages. Internationalization is what makes icons so attractive. And of course that you can fit more in a small space, of known size, so use pixels for something else.
With touch screens & other GUIs: Making the on screen controls visually and/or spatially distinct can help to mitigate the "single function knob" confusion -- (eg: change the color of the UI element depending on its function)
I think that this is one of the big advantages that iOS and similar interfaces have over the traditional computer interfaces. They can get much closer to the "Single Function knob" paradigm, because each application can completely redefine the UI. The current limitation is screen size.
I think it also has to do with older people having poorer eyesight, less mobility in their neck and thus not as easily able to look over their shoulder, and modern cars blocking much more of your view in the name of safety. (well really old cars were even worse).
Until you want to sell your phone to someone who's not a native English speaker, or *gasp* lives in a different country.
The you get into all kinds of internationalization issues. If you have a button big enough for "Add Alarm" (already a challenge on a smartphone), then is it big enough for "Wekker toevoegen" as well?
This is non-trivial. Apple tried to avoid it by using symbols wherever they could. But as someone else pointed out, that gives new problems, for example in Spanish, where "+" means "sum" not "add".
Seriously though, you don't know what snow is? That's just silly.
I used to live in the tropics until I was nine, and have lived in the Netherlands since. And I can confirm that this is indeed something that would not be obvious. I knew the concept of snow, and that it turns things white and you can make snowmen out of it. What people didn't tell me, is that it consists of snowflakes, and more importantly, that it is cold. The first time it snowed after I moved to the Netherlands, and I picked some of it up, I was shocked how cold it was.
I think you exactly point out where the problem lies.
The reason for icons, is that otherwise they would have to make lot's of different versions for different languages. Some countries in Europe even speak multiple languages. Next to that words with the same meaning have different sizes in different languages. This leads to issues with designing the UI, not just in cars, but on computers as well. For example, a lot of people here say to just use "Add" instead of the [+] that iOS uses, but in my native Dutch, it would become "Toevoegen", which would require a much larger button.
The problem with symbols is that they are culture specific too, but designers often don't realise that.
I've written programs for users in multiple countries, and getting internationalization right it very very hard. And We only had customers in some European countries.
The other solution, that manufacturers would make a specific version for each culture and language is probably not feasible either.
I have an iPhone. And there is no Add. There is [+]. Apparently you have used the iPhone enough to interpret that as Add. Next to that you also recognize that you are presented with a list of alarms. To someone new to the iOS interface, neither might be apparent. This is what TFA tries to point out.
The problem is that they are trying to set an alarm before understanding the iOS interface, and thus don't realise they need to add an alarm instead of setting it.
The problem with interfaces in Plain Fucking English is, that most of the world can't read it. So as soon as you go from symbols to words, you need to know the language of the person looking at the screen. Next to that internationalization brings all kinds of issues, as words with the same meaning have different length in other languages. This means that your UI elements either need to be big enough for the largest possible variant, or need to change size dynamically. Both options are a pain on a computer screen, even more on a smaller device like an MP3 player or smartphone.
Plain Fucking English would work if our screens were much bigger.
So Plain Fucking English isn't as easy as you might think. That an iPod doens't work without iTunes inexcusable though. But it would be an empty iPod, with no music on it.
And so the problem in the article is that the users haven't learned the function of this element yet. That and they are expecting an alarm that needs setting, not a list of calendar type events. So they aren't looking for something to "Add a new event", but want to "change the alarm".
Because in the Dutch version it would have to be labelled "Toevoegen", in other languages maybe even longer words. As soon as you use a word instead of a symbol, you get into all kinds of nasty internationalization issues.
What I also notice, is that it often has to do with the frequency at which we use things. A lot of things I use at least once a month, my mom uses once every 2-3 years. By then she has forgotten what she did last time and has to relearn.
I think your rm example shows exactly what the problem is. The line between relatively harmless and very destructive is often very thin and crossing it, doesn't give a lot more warnings all of a sudden. rm/* should give some kind of warning like: "this will remove important system files and make the systems inoperative, are you sure you want to continue?", while the rm ~/* should not.
But older tools, like rm, don't have that level of sophistication, so make it too easy to break things without realising you're going to do something wrong.
The least useful warning is "are you sure? [y/n]"
The problem is that there is no clear sandbox. No demarcation between what is and is not dangerous to meddle with. The only other complex system most people know is a car. And there the distinction is clear. What's on the dashboard is ok, what's under the hood should only be messed with by an expert.
The problem with computers is that the dashboard includes things that can make you lose files or create other problems. Next to that, it contains a lot of concepts that are not very obvious and confuse people easily.
I think UIs are all about managing expectation. They work if they show what the user expects. The problem comes with different users expecting different things.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there are two big flaws in the US system:
1) The assumption that people's wishes and needs line up along geographic boundaries. No matter if it's 2, 30,000 or 700,000 people in a district.
2) First past the pole systems. People can't be divided into two groups. In my country we for example have 9 major political parties with each different combination of the following: [liberal vs. conservative, religious vs. atheist, socialist vs. capitalist, enviromentalist vs. industrialist].
It means that government happens by coalition, which means that the compromises are made between parties, instead of between groups within parties (tea party anyone?). I think it's a more transparent process.
I feel it also gives a lot more power to significant minorities as long as they're willing to compromise.
Next to that it allows for more rejuvenation in the political system, as even a relatively small group can get a foothold and grow from there into replacing established groups.
If you run a lot of #2, you'll generally benefit from the fact that there's a very high probability that the systems that the open community software have primarily been tested on are RHEL-like systems.
We used to run SLES and OpenSuse on our old cluster, and switched to Ubuntu for our new one. We had several reasons for that:
1) We found that most developers are on a flavour of Ubuntu. It's really become the nr1 desktop distro.
2) We made an inventory of what was available though rpm and though apt, and a lot of packages that our users needed were available though apt but not rpm.
3) CentOS and Scientific Linux were also considered, but seemed to be lagging behind Ubuntu in what versions of packages were supported.
The problem seem to have, that's apparently less in some other research projects, is that the developers are using a lot of relatively new packages and libraries, and therefore need quite up-to-date distros. Reason 2 meant that if we went with an rpm based distro, we would need to build much more packages from source, which would mean a lot of work for the support department.
We've only had one real problem with Ubuntu: GRID doesn't support it, so it took a lot of time to get that running.
Our cluster is ~3200 cores, so not really big, but not tiny either.
I open a blank page and search on google and hope my search term works the next time?
I can understand Chrome going this direction. It gives Google more information what pages people are visiting.
Myself, I prefer keeping the URL bar. I use it quite often, and have for the last 17 or so years. It either means I'm getting old, or that this is just a stupid idea.
It's one of the few features in any webbrowser that's always there. So when a family member phones me up with some problem, I can always tell them to type something in the address bar, even if it's just 10.11.12.13 to get to their router to reset it.
Shrug. Most of the current fans weren't around when David and Freddie did their thing. (or Boy George, Madonna, Prince, etc.)
It's new to them, and GaGa is basically the only one doing it now.
My mom always tells me that fashions have a 30 year cycle. If that's the case, Lady GaGa might be the first of many.
There's one on the backside of the Moon* and one on the Mid Atlantic ridge, about halfway between Iceland and the Azores. There's probably also one east of Powderville, MT and one west of Spencer, ID. The last one is almost completely underground.
*) The Space Shuttles are being shelved because the military has something much better.
That exactly shows what's wrong with Apple support: It doesn't support the laptops. If an IMac breaks, they'll come and fix it, if you have the right level of Apple Care. But for a Macbook (Pro), you can't get that level of service, you're expected to bring it to the shop. 90% of the Mac's where I work (including mine) are laptops. They are really nice machines. Until they break. (Which some will, if you have several hundred users).
There is definitely a difference in the level of support for Apple and Dell. Especially on laptops.
I'm very happy with my Macbook Pro. The only thing that came close, is a Thinkpad I used before.
But I really hope it never breaks.
You can get a support contract on iMacs, where they'll come and fix it at the office, but not for their Macbooks, those you have to bring to the shop. Dell on the other hand doesn't care if it's a desktop or laptop.
Our IT department really doesn't like the lack of professional support from Apple.
Meh, in the Netherlands none of those work, not on Windows, Mac, or iOs either. "This content is not available in your country"
Well, if nobody is selling it to me, then I have only two options left, either not watch it, or "find it". If I'm lucky there might be a Region 2 DVD release at some point. I really don't understand these guys.
If you don't know what a Runge-Kutta solver is, then you should probably not be listening to the presentation in the first place.
I agree a lot of CS students have poor presentation skills though, as do their professors. It seems to be a general trait shared by a lot of people CS and related fields.
The tattoo on Tyson is probably his, but the design might not be.
But then that would need to be translated into X languages. And have have controls that adjust to the size of the words in different languages.
Internationalization is what makes icons so attractive. And of course that you can fit more in a small space, of known size, so use pixels for something else.
With touch screens & other GUIs: Making the on screen controls visually and/or spatially distinct can help to mitigate the "single function knob" confusion -- (eg: change the color of the UI element depending on its function)
I think that this is one of the big advantages that iOS and similar interfaces have over the traditional computer interfaces. They can get much closer to the "Single Function knob" paradigm, because each application can completely redefine the UI. The current limitation is screen size.
But I see it as a step in the right direction.
I think it also has to do with older people having poorer eyesight, less mobility in their neck and thus not as easily able to look over their shoulder, and modern cars blocking much more of your view in the name of safety. (well really old cars were even worse).
Until you want to sell your phone to someone who's not a native English speaker, or *gasp* lives in a different country.
The you get into all kinds of internationalization issues. If you have a button big enough for "Add Alarm" (already a challenge on a smartphone), then is it big enough for "Wekker toevoegen" as well?
This is non-trivial. Apple tried to avoid it by using symbols wherever they could. But as someone else pointed out, that gives new problems, for example in Spanish, where "+" means "sum" not "add".
Seriously though, you don't know what snow is? That's just silly.
I used to live in the tropics until I was nine, and have lived in the Netherlands since. And I can confirm that this is indeed something that would not be obvious. I knew the concept of snow, and that it turns things white and you can make snowmen out of it. What people didn't tell me, is that it consists of snowflakes, and more importantly, that it is cold.
The first time it snowed after I moved to the Netherlands, and I picked some of it up, I was shocked how cold it was.
I think you exactly point out where the problem lies.
The reason for icons, is that otherwise they would have to make lot's of different versions for different languages. Some countries in Europe even speak multiple languages. Next to that words with the same meaning have different sizes in different languages. This leads to issues with designing the UI, not just in cars, but on computers as well.
For example, a lot of people here say to just use "Add" instead of the [+] that iOS uses, but in my native Dutch, it would become "Toevoegen", which would require a much larger button.
The problem with symbols is that they are culture specific too, but designers often don't realise that.
I've written programs for users in multiple countries, and getting internationalization right it very very hard. And We only had customers in some European countries.
The other solution, that manufacturers would make a specific version for each culture and language is probably not feasible either.
I have an iPhone. And there is no Add. There is [+]. Apparently you have used the iPhone enough to interpret that as Add. Next to that you also recognize that you are presented with a list of alarms. To someone new to the iOS interface, neither might be apparent. This is what TFA tries to point out.
The problem is that they are trying to set an alarm before understanding the iOS interface, and thus don't realise they need to add an alarm instead of setting it.
The problem with interfaces in Plain Fucking English is, that most of the world can't read it. So as soon as you go from symbols to words, you need to know the language of the person looking at the screen. Next to that internationalization brings all kinds of issues, as words with the same meaning have different length in other languages. This means that your UI elements either need to be big enough for the largest possible variant, or need to change size dynamically.
Both options are a pain on a computer screen, even more on a smaller device like an MP3 player or smartphone.
Plain Fucking English would work if our screens were much bigger.
So Plain Fucking English isn't as easy as you might think. That an iPod doens't work without iTunes inexcusable though. But it would be an empty iPod, with no music on it.
And so the problem in the article is that the users haven't learned the function of this element yet. That and they are expecting an alarm that needs setting, not a list of calendar type events. So they aren't looking for something to "Add a new event", but want to "change the alarm".
Because in the Dutch version it would have to be labelled "Toevoegen", in other languages maybe even longer words. As soon as you use a word instead of a symbol, you get into all kinds of nasty internationalization issues.
What I also notice, is that it often has to do with the frequency at which we use things. A lot of things I use at least once a month, my mom uses once every 2-3 years. By then she has forgotten what she did last time and has to relearn.
I think your rm example shows exactly what the problem is. The line between relatively harmless and very destructive is often very thin and crossing it, doesn't give a lot more warnings all of a sudden. rm /* should give some kind of warning like: "this will remove important system files and make the systems inoperative, are you sure you want to continue?", while the rm ~/* should not.
But older tools, like rm, don't have that level of sophistication, so make it too easy to break things without realising you're going to do something wrong.
The least useful warning is "are you sure? [y/n]"
The problem is that there is no clear sandbox. No demarcation between what is and is not dangerous to meddle with. The only other complex system most people know is a car. And there the distinction is clear. What's on the dashboard is ok, what's under the hood should only be messed with by an expert.
The problem with computers is that the dashboard includes things that can make you lose files or create other problems.
Next to that, it contains a lot of concepts that are not very obvious and confuse people easily.
Because they're (relatively) cheap. Cheap things used to be simple.
I think the key word is expected. People have trouble with UIs if they don't do what they expect.
I think UIs are all about managing expectation. They work if they show what the user expects. The problem comes with different users expecting different things.