3 Oct
2010
3 Oct
'10
7:52 a.m.
On 1 October 2010 19:58, Jules Richardson <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> wrote:
Yeah, aside from the copyright issue, it's finding the time to sift through
everything and make sure there's nothing *really* sensitive there - e.g.
some of the data came from employee desktop machines, which means that
there's personal data on there as well as corporate stuff.
Ah. Snag. Also, possibly, a lot of consent to be sought?
Urgh :-( I did wonder, but the ads and corporate blurb all go one about them
being bladeless when what they really mean is 'no visible blades'
Yup. Sad, really.
http://www.reghardware.com/2010/06/23/review_gadgets_dyson_air_multiplier/p…
Quote:
?
Dyson is slightly deceptive with its marketing, claiming the fan has
"no blades". This is like hiding the wheels of a car behind a low body
and claiming it hovers. There are blades - you just can't see them.
?
True.
Also true, but it seems to work for some hifi companies.
Yes, but an infinite number of buttons with poor feedback :-) Humans like
audible and tactile responses, just as they like visual ones.
A telling point!
Well, that is exactly what Apple's efforts do.
I know what you mean, and yet, I worked quite happily in computer labs
in the 1980s.
Oh, it's coming. Much argument over techniques and standards. They'll
squabble for a while then make it work.
I seem to recall ads for some wireless phone charger here in the US a year
or two ago, but then it all went quiet. Not sure why - maybe their tech just
didn't work, or maybe people just didn't believe that it was real.
Palm offered it with the Pr? as an optional extra.
Aha! I think this particular one is a relative youngster, from 1993.
Mine's so ancient that it doesn't even have the status LEDs on it. I do
kind-of miss a caps-lock LED - one of my tests for an apparently-hung system
was always to hit the caps-lock and see if the LED lit; invariably it
wouldn't if the machine had gone completely loopy.
Yes, me too. Also, wow, that's an oldie!
--
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Liam Proven wrote:
Ouch. That sounds unpleasant to navigate. The sort of bright idea a
programmer has that makes life difficult for thousands of ordinary
users.
On 30 September 2010 14:47, Jules Richardson
<jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> wrote:
I don't think it was quite as smooth as Acorn's implementation. I think
there was also functionality in some setups where the amount that the window
scrolled by on a left or right click was dependent on how close to the top
or bottom (or left/right) the mouse pointer was on the window's scrollbars -
but that was a pretty awful feature (because it was hard to judge exactly
how much the window would scroll by for a particular mouse position)
Hmm, I think X windows had something similar at one time - middle button
to
drag the bar, left button to automatically go up and page and right
button
to go down a page (if I remember right, it did jump by a screenful,
rather
than smaller increments)
Interesting. I have played with a fairly primitive X setup, no modern
window managers and so on, and yes, it did some of that, but I'd not
registered the direction-switching bit, which (for my money) is the
core usability feature. ISTR going "ooh, it's like RISC OS", playing
to see if the features I liked were there, and being disappointed -
but I might have missed it. I've got some internal Acorn emails from that era
related to their UI
design
- one day I'll have to see about 'releasing' them. It's interesting
reading,
seeing their thoughts about what features they should implement, and
their
analysis of what the competition was up to.
Oh, that would be cool! Hmm, those Dyson bladeless fans, maybe? (No idea how
that technology
works,
or if it needs a minimum size to do so effectively).
They cheat. It does have conventional fans, with blades, they're just
concealed within the base. No whizzy electrostatic impellers or
anything here. Nothing to see, move along. :?) But like it or
not, the PC is moving toward being a consumer
appliance, like TVs or phones. There are no commercial TV or phone
repairmen around any more; the PC will go the same way.
The question is, will they do it well or not?
I'd put my money on not. Nobody gives a crap about quality any more :-( And if the big
players don't, is there room for a small company to
make money doing it right?
Maybe, but it's difficult. A small company won't have the marketing budget,
which means they have to rely far more on word of mouth - and it's difficult
these days to survive long enough to establish a reputation. Once you're
there, not so bad, but getting to that point is the problem. What I
really dislike are mice that try to be too ergonomic (OK if you have an
average hand size and are right-handed, bad for everyone else) or which
have
too many unnecessary buttons (3 is good, more is pointless)
Entirely agree. But no buttons is also an infinite number of buttons,
in a way. Apple /were/
right, like it or not - there are abundant
figures to prove it. 1 button *is* the easiest for novices.
I agree - but I think it's also a hindrance for more experienced users.
Maybe we need 3-button mice, but an OS that can run in 'single button mode'
for novices, where they don't have to worry about which mouse button they
have to press :-) Mind you, come
to that, as ordinary user PCs migrate to being
multi-touch-operated slates, it could be that mice will disappear
altogether. Keyboards too, when the speech recognition gets good
enough.
I think a lot of the reason that the entire world isn't using Model M's is
the noise factor, though - I'm not sure I could handle an office full of
people babbling away at their computers :-) Maybe 50 years from now we'll be able to control
computers via thought -
that would get rid of a lot of the bottlenecks (I can think far faster than
I can type or speak) and would be silent...
The best computer interface I've ever read of was in an Isaac Asimov
novel, way back when. One of the later /Foundation/ books, I think. It
was in the master stateroom of a private "space yacht".
You sat at a table, put your hands on two lighted handprints, and
*suddenly got smarter*. You knew the exact positions of all the nearby
stars, could do extremely complex math instantly in your head, had
perfect recall and an innate sense of local conditions in space.
No awareness of any interface whatsoever is surely the best possible interface.
I want the
thing to have a damned cable, though, not a wireless
transciever and batteries.
Yes, me too - I like the reliability of cables. There was a lot of
hoo-hah
about wireless charging a couple of years ago, but that seems to have
gone
quiet for the moment (it'd at least solve the battery swap problem) It doesn't seem unreasonable to have a mouse mat
that doubles as a charging
pad, though.
I am not sure I want a mouse mat that I have to plug in, nor one
cluttered with charging devices... :?)
As for
keyboards, well, some of my Model Ms are now pushing 25, so I
am not worried about their longevity. :?)
Yes, this one turns 25 next year :-)