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| Stop the next war before it starts End the Occupation |
| last updated:23 Jul 2003 08: 56 Webword time, or 23 Jul 2003 13:56 UK time |
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| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 20 Jul 2003) | View Other Weeks |
| The "grey digital divide": Perception, exclusion and barriers of access to the Internet for older people | Mon 14 Jul |
| (First Monday) The article argues that for the elderly Internet usability is based upon more than availability of technology. Instead a lack of Web skills among the elderly leads to an opinion that information and communication technologies are for the young, leading to a long-term damage lack of interest in using the Internet. |
| Tue 15 Jul 18:41 | Anonymous | Some of the first users online were the elderly: tracing family roots, trading knitting, quilting, etc patterns. Mostly the 'net offers more to the younger user, and so they tend to use it more. |
| Sun 20 Jul 11:53 | Peter Millward | I was not aware that the some of the first people 'online' were older people, however I certainly understand your general point i.e. that the Internet offers more to younger users. I think that this highlights a crucial point which emerged from the research, that people surf for their own interests and this partially emerged with the 'holiday' site issue. However, sadly due to the overwhelming opinion from the survey respondents, which showed that the Web was perceived to be for the young, as well as not consuming the websites, older people were also not generally producing them. Without wanting to paint a picture of the over fifty-fives as a homogeneous group (which they certainly aren't!)there are patterns which suggest that there are common interests and needs to many members of any age group. Websites serving these interests are usually made by people with an active enthusiam for the topic. This means that websites for older people are not being produced, possibly because the potential site creators (i.e. older people) do not have the web skills to do so. Thus I think the 'second level' digital divide is again, the crucial issue. Thanks for your comment though. Peter Millward |
| Why No One Lives Forever | Sun 20 Jul |
| We should not pursue life extension in and of itself. That, in my opinion, is a potential disaster. If all youre doing is extending life without improving the quality of life, the price we may pay is an increase in frailty and disability. Wed essentially be making ourselves older, longer. I cant think of anything worse. |
| Sun 20 Jul 10:33 | daniel szuc | Laughter probably helps some where along the line ... |
| Does IT really matter anymore? | Thu 17 Jul |
| (The Age) Carr argues that Information Technology - like the steam engine and electricity before it - has made the transition from strategic opportunity to commodity input. All the pieces are standardising, becoming interoperable and becoming public. When everyone can see how things are done in IT, he argues, no one can use IT to gain a strategic advantage. |
| Thu 17 Jul 13:10 | Anonymous | The discussion seems to be confusing technology for the information it is supposed to produce. Electricity becomes ubiquitous, yet the machines using it are arranged in the same way they were in the steam age. Standardization (few people recall the AC versus DC, etc, standards wars) mean the new way of thinking *about everything hooked into to it* can start. So it can be argued that yes, IT doesn't matter in a certain sense. |
| Thu 17 Jul 14:27 | Amy | Or it is crucial but adds no competitive advantage. Imagine if we were trying to do business without electricity. |
| Sun 20 Jul 09:22 | Lyle Kantrovich | Bricks and cement are also 'commodity inputs' now. It's where you put them and how you use them that become a competitive advantage. Also no one stopped at steam engines - jets and rockets came later. Any usability person working on technology projects should realize that just having a web site or database (commodity?) doesn't mean a company can match the competition online. |
| Engineering Centred Vs User Centred | Wed 16 Jul |
| How many buttons do you really use on your remote at home? |
| Wed 16 Jul 21:52 | Anonymous | Baloney. The user-centered remote lacks vertically stacked channel up/down buttons. Are we supposed to use the next/previous or rewind/forward buttons? Next/previous work for horizontal relationships. Channels are ordered by number and have institutionally been engrained in us with an up/down relationship. If channels were assigned letters of the alphabet, like Channel A, Channel B, etc. then next/previous would work. I absolutely do not want that user-centered remote. The remote also lacks a 'last channel visited' button, which is highly popular among some segments of the TV viewing public. Has the author, perhaps, been spending too much time with digital cable TV menus? Most people do not subscribe to digital cable. |
| Wed 16 Jul 22:55 | daniel szuc | Ah yes ... a usability review blog in action on webword. |
| Wed 16 Jul 23:06 | daniel szuc | Get us out of remote control hell! - http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2914044,00.html |
| Thu 17 Jul 16:15 | Ron Zeno | 'This is PART 1 of an ongoing fun series to demonstrate user centred design and thinking.' 'Note: The remotes have not been formally Usability Tested with participants.' Not much of demonstration then, is it? |
| Fri 18 Jul 05:32 | Mac | Engineering Centred Vs User Centred vs Human Centred No way to go through life, son At first he couldn't exercise at all, but he took the batteries out of his remote control and started walking over to change the channels on the TV. And he'd go upstairs to get things he needed instead of sending his children. Smaller portions, bigger baloney Recall remote controls: They are unsafe. They make people sit around and eat big Oreos. When I was a kid, I walked 10 feet on shag carpet to turn the dial. Think of the exercise we'll get now that there are 200 channels! Years of bad habits weigh heavily on health Elevators, escalators, remote controls and dishwashers also contribute to the obesity epidemic, according to the CDC. Americans don't have to physically move as much as they used to in order to clean their home, change a channel or walk through an airport or mall. American Obesity Association For example, escalators, elevators and remote-control appliances make us less physically active. Why we're getting fatter The remote control, video games, the automobile, television, and to some extent the computer are all part of the toxic environment because they discourage people from being physically active. Obesity The factors which account for obesity are the shift to high carb diets, and low levels of activity. Couch potatoes no longer need to walk to the TV to change channels, only click a button on the remote control. |
| Fri 18 Jul 07:55 | daniel szuc | I love it Mac!! You are a gem!! LOL :) |
| Fri 18 Jul 08:10 | Mac | Daniel, can I get permission to re-use your images (any my doctored one) on a new UsabilityMustDie page called 'Usability Review of a Remote Control'. It would be a companion page to 'Usability Review of a VCR' ? |
| Fri 18 Jul 09:44 | Mac | Usability Review of a Remote Control |
| Fri 18 Jul 10:23 | daniel szuc | Of course Mac! Like it and nice to pour some humour into what is sometimes an all too serious world. |
| The browser is not important anymore | Sun 13 Jul |
| I think that Microsoft is phasing out the development of the browser because they think it is no longer important for them as makers of a front end platform, and a back end platform. (Comments: Interesting thought, but too discrete. The web browser will be important for a very long time. However, it might become less important over time. It might gradually go away or die, but that time is not now. Oh, and for what it is worth, most people are clueless about Longhorn, RSS, .Net, Mozilla, CSS, and so forth. Buzzwords. Technosalad.) |
| Mon 14 Jul 04:59 | Matt Round | Microsoft is easing off on browser development because it's vitally important to them. They bundled a decent enough browser to see off the Netscape threat, but despite IE's huge lead and tempting proprietary features supported by FrontPage, Hotmail, Visual Studio etc., the web's still a fairly open place mostly free from Microsoft tolls. They saw off the competition but then realised they hadn't locked everyone into their systems in quite the way they'd hoped. So it's time for another go. They'll tie the next browser into .NET web services, Palladium 'trusted computing' and DRM, and throw as much cash as it takes at getting developers and large organisations to use the new features. Developers will be an easy sell - most love .NET, and those who work exclusively with MS products are rarely concerned about producing IE-only systems. Expect to see online banking services lured in first (despite MS's appalling record with security), along with online media, then business-to-business, followed by a push into e-commerce and government services. If they succeed, they'll have the kind of control over much of the commercial web that they can currently only dream about. |
| Mon 14 Jul 05:24 | Mac | Browser Wars II: The Saga Continues by By Peter-Paul Koch on evolt.org |
| Mon 14 Jul 19:15 | Anonymous | Microsoft is easing off on browser development because there is no competition. |
| Mon 14 Jul 23:52 | Robert Neville | You'll have to pry my web browser from my cold, cumulative trauma disordered, dead hands! |
| Tue 15 Jul 06:20 | Sam | Why did you post this twice, one after the other? |
| Tue 15 Jul 12:40 | Ralph | I'll also have to come down on the paranoid side of this. We'll just have to wait for the pendulum to swing away from the widespread willingness to depend totally on Microsoft. I have the feeling that the whole government action against them failed miserably, and MS is very close to usrurping the web completely by totally obfuscating what was once a wonderful thing that was basically understandable to the layman. Now they are getting back to the priesthood in a big way. All I think of when I hear .NET and MSN passport, etc., is RUN! |
| Wed 16 Jul 17:27 | Wolf | There are places where you can opt out of passport; just saw one today at the Adobe site, where you can register the Reader and use the new eBook functionality even _if_ you don't want to use passport. Don't know where this'll bite me later, though. We'll have to see. |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 13 Jul |
| How you define something is critical. If I call Jakob Nielsen a liar and a fool that establishes a certain position in a debate. If I call him a hero and role model, well, that generates still another context. The best way to get people to hate something is to give it a bad name. Politicians and the military do this kind of demonizing all of the time. Name the enemy. Indeed, creating an evil name is a top priority. People rely on such names all the time. For example, if I say Nazi most people instantly think evil. How convenient! Now, in light of this posting on naming and definitions, why on Earth did Daniel C. Dennett and his pals decide use the term bright to define atheists? (OK, maybe they arent the same thing, but close enough.) First of all, does Dennet think atheist is a bad term? What does bright add to the story that atheist does not? Does he like it because it is fresh and new? (My guess is yes.) Second, the term bright really is a folly because it slants people to think, not open and enlightened, but closed and elitist. I cant help but think that bright is just plain stupid. If someone told me they were a bright, Id just laugh. Id think they werent smart enough to know about atheism. Bright = same old atheism story. If I am wrong, tell me. Otherwise, let us just walk away from the term bright. It adds no value, provides no new context, and seems to be new just for the sake of being new. |
| Mon 14 Jul 05:08 | Mac | This is elitist clap-trap that reminds me of 'Wings Over The World', and makes me a bit ashamed to be an atheist. I might have to go back to being a green satanist instead. H G Wells 'Things To Come' He represents an enlightened society of scientists and engineers, Wings Over the World, and is scouting the war-ravaged land to assess the savage tribal communities that have replaced civilization. Cabal promises the people a new, superior civilization 'of law and sanity' that needs no Bosses or independent sovereign states, but only if the people put their faith in Science rather than in The Boss and his kind. |
| Mon 14 Jul 16:35 | Anonymous | Faulting atheists is a mighty double standard. I've never met a person of faith who didn't look down on, or 'pity,' atheists. Hell, half the time Christians in the U.S. look down on other U.S. Christians who come from other denominations. This is not an atheist issue. |
| Mon 14 Jul 20:16 | Morris Cox | This reminds me of when the word gay became to refer to a homosexual, thereby perverting (no pun intended) the original word. The word bright means: Glorious, splendid, full of promise and hope, auspicious, happy, cheerful, animatedly clever, intelligent. I don't see the correlation. Are they claiming to be more intelligent than others because they choose not to believe in a Supreme Being or God? And despite them saying 'Don't confuse the noun with the adjective', I think that that will happen. Eventually, a person will be unable to say that they are a bright person without being accused of being an atheist. (Try listening to the theme song for the Flintstones or watch some of the old movies or read an old book.) I'm (as I've stated before) a Mormon, but I have a lot of friends who are not. And Clarence Darrow is one of my 'heroes' (Think the 'monkey' Scopes trial). His biography is worth reading. An agnostic who defended the rights of millions of people, and spent his life true to his beliefs and convictions. I'm more interested in how a person lives his life and treats others. |
| Mon 14 Jul 20:16 | Morris Cox | This reminds me of when the word gay became to refer to a homosexual, thereby perverting (no pun intended) the original word. The word bright means: Glorious, splendid, full of promise and hope, auspicious, happy, cheerful, animatedly clever, intelligent. I don't see the correlation. Are they claiming to be more intelligent than others because they choose not to believe in a Supreme Being or God? And despite them saying 'Don't confuse the noun with the adjective', I think that that will happen. Eventually, a person will be unable to say that they are a bright person without being accused of being an atheist. (Try listening to the theme song for the Flintstones or watch some of the old movies or read an old book.) I'm (as I've stated before) a Mormon, but I have a lot of friends who are not. And Clarence Darrow is one of my 'heroes' (Think the 'monkey' Scopes trial). His biography is worth reading. An agnostic who defended the rights of millions of people, and spent his life true to his beliefs and convictions. I'm more interested in how a person lives his life and treats others. |
| Mon 14 Jul 23:47 | Anonymous | I can't read the article because it's locked behind a registration page, but OK, so the author is cynically calling atheists bright? It's true. The higher the IQ and education level, the more likely you are to be atheist. The guy is really just calling religious people dumb. How insulting! |
| Tue 15 Jul 11:09 | daniel szuc | From Morris: 'I'm more interested in how a person lives his life and treats others.' Good call! |
| Tue 15 Jul 15:42 | leon | Morris has the right angle with 'labeling' a previously negative trait, action or people group with a currently positive one. Happens quite frequently. Regarding athiesm, I've always found it odd that one of their primary arugments is burden of proof. But why should a believer in God have to carry that burden and not the other way around? Theodore Drange said it like this: 'Some methodological atheists formulate the principle by saying that the burden of proof is always on any person making an existence claim, since, from a logical point of view, existence claims are only capable of proof, not disproof. No one has ever proven the nonexistence of Santa Claus, or elves, or unicorns, or anything else, simply because the very logic of an unrestricted existential proposition prohibits its disproof. It is impossible to go all over the universe and show that, for example, there are no elves anywhere. For this reason, rational methodology calls for us to deny the existence of all those things which have never been shown to exist. That is why we all regard it rational to deny the existence of Santa Claus, elves, unicorns, etc. And since God is in that same category, having never been shown to exist, it follows that rational methodology calls for us to deny the existence of God.' |
| Tue 15 Jul 20:13 | Morris Cox | Clarence Darrow (who became somewhat of a socialist and considered himself an agnostic), 'felt that if every man could be acquainted with every other man's religion, visit his church, understand his view, the fear, suspicion, fear and dislike would melt away. ---------- Before the freethinkers of America he committed the heresy of insisting that if they wished to remain freethinkers they had to make constant explorations into the realm of the spirit and that they had to build their freethinking on the hypothesis that they might be wrong. When the Atheists' Society invited him to lecture he dressed them down for being as arrogant and prejudiced as the church: religion insisted that there absolutely was a God, heaven and hell; the atheists insisted there absolutely was no God, no heaven and no hell, and neither could prove their point. ---------- That's from the book _Clarence Darrow for the Defense_ by Irving Stone. |
| Wed 16 Jul 10:57 | leon | My point was that the burden of proof should not rest on believers to prove that God exists because they can't, but neither can athiests prove that He doesn't. That is the point of Darrow's quote. |
| Wed 16 Jul 10:58 | leon | I'm sorry, I meant Drange's quote. |
| Wed 16 Jul 15:34 | leon | fyi http://www.the-brights.net/ |
| Usability sights you seldom see | Tue 15 Jul |
| (Inspired by Leonardos Laptop) One idea would be to encourage software suppliers to provide a one-dollar reward for reporting your software crashes or a dime for dialog boxes you dont understand. |
| Tue 15 Jul 18:37 | Anonymous | Yes, because software developers are tripping over themselves to fix the least little bug (feature) now, and need to offer an incentive to have something to do. |
| Mandatory Legalese in E-mail Signatures: Seeking Perspective | Mon 14 Jul |
| I just got this in my in box, with instructions from my division chair that all faculty members are henceforth to paste the following block of legalese into their e-mail signatures... |
| Tue 15 Jul 00:34 | Ron Zeno | I ignore legalese placed at the end until I reply or forward the message. Then I treat it as fine print - skim it quickly for anything out of the ordinary that might want to make me reconsider what I'm doing with the message. When I find the legalese above the signature, I treat it completely differently. I read it carefully, and if there is anything in the least bit inappropriate for the type of discussion, I cut off all electronic communication with the person and do with the message as I please. (e.g. If I'm discussing details of a business agreement, I give a large degree of latitude to what's appropriate. If I'm in an informal discussion, I give almost no latitude at all.) |
| Tue 15 Jul 10:49 | Antoine Valot | I agree. But please remember that my agreement is solely my opinion and may not be the opinion of Immedient Corporation, its subsidiaries, partners, vendors, janitors, and customers, and you are not allowed to actually believe anything in this response, or quote anything in it, or even allude to its existence, because if you do, Immedient or its agents or cronies might decide to sue you if they want, although they don't have to, and don't you be saying otherwise. Oh, and you better not even think about duplicating this message, or forwarding it on to anyone, or even downloading it to your brain, under pain of fines and prison and sexual enslavement and removal of the aforementioned words from your brain in very very painful ways. We Appreciate Your Business(R). |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 13 Jul |
| A while back Metafilter uncovered the Kaycee hoax. Perhaps that isnt exactly the way to explain what happened, but the core idea is that the several people came together through the web to uncover a hoax. So, here is an idea. Why cant we come together to track down Saddam Hussein? Why cant we come together to track down Osama bin Laden? These are just some examples of things people could do collectively via the web. The larger question is this: Why dont these investigations happen more often? Why dont more people come together (spontaneously?) to solve problems? What made the Metafilter mob come together to hunt down the details of the hoax? What is the tipping point for this activity and how do we even get people started in that direction? Heres what I propose. Lets create a web site dedicated to hunting down information, ideas, hoaxes, and so forth. The whole idea is to work together to figure stuff out just for the sake of doing it. I think it might be possible to really make a difference. The web site would pose questions (e.g., Has George W. Bush had anything to drink while in office?) and then have people hunt down answers. I believe that such a web site could operate on simple Darwinian principles. Any registered user could pose a question yet only the most interesting and invigorating questions would draw answers. Does this sound interesting enough to put together? (Is it already being done? If yes, where?) Talk about it. |
| Mon 14 Jul 11:08 | Bill Brown | The difference that you're missing is that Kaycee existed primarily in cyberspace while Saddam Hussein et al have a very limited cyberspace presence. This means that exposing Kaycee is much easier than locating the other two. If someone wanted to locate me, they could type my name into Google and there I am in the second result. From there, they could glean useful information that would enable them to track my movements throughout cyberspace and create a profile. Now try that with Saddam Hussein. It also doesn't help that any site that would be remotely useful in finding him would be in a language that the majority of Web users wouldn't understand. |
| Mon 14 Jul 12:22 | Wolf | According to this: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/overview/microchip/names2h27.html Saddam Hussein has been sent into space. ;) Osama Bin Laden still at large. |
| Building Accessible Websites | Mon 14 Jul |
| (via Accessify.com) The true reason to design for accessibility is greed. Quite simply, I want it all, and so should you. Give us everything you’ve got. Give us everything there is to give. |
| Mon 14 Jul 11:47 | Joshua Kaufman | Yay! I'm already digging into it! It was very big of Joe Clark to put the entire book on the web, accessible free of charge. Thanks for the link. |
| The Technology Terminology and Complexity Test | Sat 12 Jul |
| (www.amd.com) The AMD GCAB invites the public to take the Terminology and Complexity Test. Test your knowledge of technology terms against others from around the world! (Daniels Comments: Should everyday consumers know these terms anyway?) |
| Mon 14 Jul 11:43 | Wolf | This test was even easier than the last, given that one answer was clearly inadequate, one was clearly wrong, so process of elimination gives up the right answer. In spite of the fact that the technologies tested were more progressive, you'd think you knew more, rather than had just reasoned it out. |
| MyOrigo motion control smartphone | Mon 14 Jul |
| (The Register) Dial up a page and MyDevice displays its top-left hand corner. Tilting the device to the right scrolls over to the top-right hand corner; tilt it in another direction and the page flows past accordingly. Its a little odd at first, but it works. |
| Mon 14 Jul 11:25 | Antoine Valot | It's nice to see someone thinking out of the box! Thanks for this link. |
| We love technology — until it refuses to cooperate | Sun 13 Jul |
| (USA Today) The instruction manual was incomprehensible, she says, and the customer-service phone number was like a black hole. She shelved the camera. A few months later, she broke the camera trying to use it. Her photos were never downloaded. Shes shopping for another camera. |
| Mon 14 Jul 06:38 | daniel szuc | Enjoyable read. I like the guys who come out to your house to help you understand technology. Fantastic! |
| Starved for cash on my ATM diet | Sun 13 Jul |
| You say, So what? ATMs are convenient! But in the first week of my ATM diet I realized that these seemingly insignificant withdrawals $20 here, $40 there take quite a bite out of your budget. The “extra” cash gives you license to spend a fallacy which becomes abundantly clear when you’re working with a finite amount. (Comments: Interesting perspective on convenience. The logic seems to flow like this: (1) ATMs are convenient, (2) Things that are convenient can be evil, (3) ATMs are convenient, ergo, ATMs can be evil. The trick is to fight the evil side of convenience.) |
| Mon 14 Jul 05:39 | daniel szuc | I think this is true of mobility and value added services. These can be served up as convenient, but can sting you in the long run as they add up. I am certainly finding this with www.applemusic.com - all too easy to download albumns and songs. Convenience at the right price can also be deadly. |
| The far horizon | Mon 30 Jun |
| The key question: If you reach age 65, what are the chances youll live to 85? Barely one in three realized the odds are 50-50 today that youll live another 20 years if you reach your 65th birthday. Only 23 percent correctly identified longevity risk the likelihood youll outlive your savings as the biggest financial risk that retirees face. (Comments: It is all about perspective, no?) |
| Mon 14 Jul 01:23 | latha | home workers needed! full training provided, no previous experience is necessary. Home Mailers, Home Typists, Staple Booklets and More. Full or part time positions available. Visit Us at: http://www.homeexecutives.com/members/latvij/ email to:latvij@homeexecutives.com |
| Mon 14 Jul 01:36 | Anonymous | home workers needed! full training provided, no previous experience is necessary. Home Mailers, Home Typists, Staple Booklets and More. Full or part time positions available. Visit Us at: http://www.homeexecutives.com/members/latvij/ email to:latvij@homeexecutives.com |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 13 Jul |
| Greg dancing. Excellent! |
| Mon 14 Jul 01:12 | Thag Kline | Per John's request. As Jack Horkheimer says, keep looking up! |