Seth Nickell’s point about the distinction between what people will do with a computer, versus what they could do is the perfect antidote to the endless “they crippled my window manager” arguments. The arguments seem to have lessened thanks to stern management of GNOME’s goals, but Seth’s thermostat example is a classic if needed for …
Continue reading ‘What will people do with this computer?’ »
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Dan Gillmor says he’s considering turning off comments on his blog because of comment spam. Further evidence of the damage a small group of the amoral can do to the commons.
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With further assistance from Hallski, my RSS feed now should have a “read more” liink for those really long posts.
I see on Footnotes that a new free software package, LiarLiar, has been released that claims to use “Voiice Stress Analysis” to detect lying. The blurb is carefully written to suggest that it’s something short of a lie detector – “Stress can be one indicator of whether or not a person is being truthful in …
Seth Nickell on bad ATM user interfaces: Despite the fact that most ATMs only handle money in multiples of $20, they still require you to enter the “cents”. So asking for $40 entails the button sequence 4-0-0-0. I almost always withdraw $40, so I perform this series of presses without a lot of higher brain …