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GeekNights 20100301 - New HTPC and People Don't Read
Tonight on GeekNights we talk about Scott's new HTPC and people not reading the words on their computer screen. In the news Wikipedia vandalism detection.
Comments
There are people out there who stuck with AOL as an email service when everyone who knew anything were going to Yahoo! mail circa 2000. There are people who stuck with Yahoo! mail when everyone who knew anything were going to Gmail circa 2005. One feature of these old services is that they increasingly filled your screen with flashing ads. Their users have a choice of either going insane or putting blinders on and ignoring everything but the middle of the screen. I even remember that RealPlayer, which wasn't a really intelligent choice of a media server, tended to put a blinking icon on the task bar, just to annoy you about paying for an upgrade. I also remember RealPlayer once streaming ads when I simply used it to play an audio CD.
One is tempted to associate intelligence with failure to clue-in to the best services. At least, we can say that the person connected to tech-savvy crowds is going to hear about the better services that come available. But I do think there's also a political philosophy behind how you respond to criticism of corporations. I have one Capitalist (Capitalism-ism-ist!) friend who instinctively isn't going to jump on any bandwagon (linux, google, etc.) that involves calling any businessman's free action in the marketplace "evil"-- he bought a Zune and i's on Yahoo! Mail.
Could someone find an example of Linux calling Microsoft's business practices evil outside of the patent shenanigans? Specifically a Linux company; Nut-job fanboys will say anything.
I also think this guy has a pretty mal-formed view of what capitalism entails.
Capitalism and free markets are good things. But there have been folks who thought that defending capitalism means refuting claims that industrial pollution can cause problems like ozone depletion or global warming. The science of climate change, per se, is no threat to the wisdom of libertarianism or free markets, but it can threaten certain militantly anti-communitarian moral philosophies. And there are different corporate responses to these problems. You have the US Chamber of Commerce and industry groups like the late Global Climate Coalition who took a staunch anti-communitarian response to enviro problems (to the point of disinformation), and successful, Fortune 500 Capitalists who quit these industry groups specifically because of their brownwashing.
Folks with this anti-communitarian worldview aren't going to be swayed to Linux by a speech by RMS, for one thing.
As for the ION, running 1080p, H.264 video and barely taxing the CPU is very attractive and I'm sure that it can emulate all of the simpler consoles (PlayStation and earlier). Without being able to play something like Red Faction Guerilla or Half-Life 2 at acceptable framerates though, I can't do anything with it.
I really need to emphasize here, I named Half-Life 2 specifically because of a review of the original ION hardware's difficulty with that title. The ION 2 hardware probably screams with it, but I'm not as interested in Half-Life 2 as I am games like Red Faction Guerrilla, Prototype, Street Fighter IV, or other console- (read:gamepad-) centric titles. A real proc with a real video card is necessary to get what I want out of games that recent, and that hardware will also perform the emulation tasks I require. Thanks for your suggestions, though!
As far as I can tell, the "not seeing words on the screen" is an example of a psychological phenomenon called inattentional blindness, and it's something that everyone does. If you want a simple demonstration just watch this video and follow the instructions. There are many more videos on the subject, and on the related subject of change blindness here.
I think that the best solution to the problem is to raise the base level of computer competence across the board. Only when people learn how computers work and know how to look for these messages will the problem go away completely.
The solution is indeed just teaching people how to work with a computer though, agree on that.
The best low profile ready video card I could find was this
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187098&Tpk=sparkle%20250
that's a pretty damn fast card even better than the 5570 and keep in mind there's micro atx boards that have Crossfire/SLI capabilities so you can just stick 2 compatible low profile boards (this particular one doesn't support SLI) to make it a lot faster, the 5570 would probably be a good bet.
Anybody wanting a nice XFI based card in a low profile casing check this sound card out
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156010&Tpk=azuntech%20forte
It's based off Creative XFI Titanium line using the same chipset but with better drivers not provided by Creative themselves.
As for that sound card, it's basically useless in my setup. It only has one TOSLink. My Creative X-Fi has two, one in and one out.
The GT 240, HD 5670, and HD 5750 are more powerful than the HD 5570 without excessive power consumption, but I haven't seen low-profile versions of any of those cards.
Cognitive psychologist Donald Norman talks about the emotional response that communication elicits falling into distinct categories: I think that for a lot of tech-savvy people, obviously including many of the people in this forum, the concept of error messages were introduced in an environment that required problem solving on a personal level. You were forced to engage with the reflection that the error message required, and doing so helped develop that interaction as part of your "computer ritual." The next time you engaged an error, it was already part of the ritual. You knew what it was, and at least the beginning steps to deal with it.
A lot of people don't have that experience. They either were never forced to take or never sought out the self-reliant path. There was always a friend, a co-worker, a customer service rep that could help them out. At the very least, the system allows them to ignore it. Troubleshooting forever remains an intersection with their regular ritual of computer use that they can simply ignore or push off onto someone else. That pushing off itself cements itself as part of their ritual, until it becomes a subconscious act like everything else they wok through. I think that's the easy solution, and to a lot of tech-savvy people, the "obvious" one. It's hard to perceive how one method of operating can be so ingrained when your way of operating feels so natural and easily learned.
I also think it's the lazy, and frankly, sloppy answer to the issue. It's essentially saying that a problem that a huge mass of consumers are having with interfaces and products is their problem, not the problem of the interfaces and products themselves. It's the antithesis of modern ergonomics, and in a lot of similar cases, it doesn't work. Just like encouraging literate children requires the fostering of an environment the rewards the independent engagement of literature, I think the answer to this sort of interface illiteracy requires interfaces that foster a sense of engagement and self-reliance.
I say the key is to establish self-troubleshooting as an integral part of the computer experience that's introduced early on. By all means make it an easy and guided experience, but make sure it's a necessary one. People are forced to engage, they're forced to learn and incorporate these behaviors into their routine, and the world is better for it.
You need to have some way to do diagnostic work; you can't build a perfect machine, because people will always find a way to make it crash. Either make error logs more comprehensive, or work on your GUI design in error reporting. The BSoD is probably the best example of "shit error reporting no one wanted to look at."
Even if you were able to make the ideal Steve Jobs device, with no crashing or errors ever, it presents an ethical conundrum. While supposedly being easier for these non-reading users, Apple products have extremely limited functionality compared to the alternatives.
Here's a good analogy. Let's say Steve Jobs is an automatic transmission and Linux is a manual. Imagine if radios and air conditioning were only available in cars with manual transmissions. Is that right? Should people be forced to learn to drive stick just to have the comfort of air conditioning and music? The Linux people would put in an automatic if they could, but nobody has the design skills to figure it out. Apple could easily add the radio and air conditioning, but they refuse. When people try to open their cars and put it in themselves, Apple fights them.
There's currently a dichotomy where people are forced to choose between a computer with a good UI and a computer that can actually do all the things it is capable of doing. It's a true dichotomy in that it does currently exist in the world. It's a false dichotomy in that it doesn't have to exist.
Most cars in the world would be windows cars, which offer the best of both worlds between apple and Linux; a Flappy Paddle sequential manual. Also, all windows cars come with A/C, though some people might want to add a little extra charge to their freon tank.
Which means that, if the user isn't even capable of READING, a computer that is limited in its functionality is probably the best bet for sales. If people could read error messages and manually manage programs so multitasking doesn't bog the phone down completely, the iPhone could probably get by with true multitasking. But the iPhone developers knew that most people couldn't cope with such a phone, so multitasking wasn't an option.
Scott, you continually overestimate what the average user wants from a phone or computer, and the average user is where these companies make the most money.