Is User-Friendly the Way to Go?

Everything in the computer world: search, social networking, operating systems, even system administration, is going towards user-friendliness. User-friendliness is the carrot used by various manufacturers to lure consumers towards their products. It relies on humans' inherent laziness: if you can do something more easily, why do it the hard way?

That is also a good argument for user-friendliness: why expend effort (i.e. incur costs) learning how to do things the hard way when the same things can be done the easy way (i.e. at lower cost)?

But there is a hidden cost. It is hidden in the words "same things" above. I think there are things that cannot be done without using more sophisticated methods than the basic, user-friendly, point-and-click methods. How would you rename all files in your system with the extension ".bin" to ".exe" in a user-friendly fashion? This is just an example of a common task. If people could all write basic code, there would be a lot of advanced tasks that would become common. This would lead to greater complexity in the use of computers, and hence faster innovation.

As an analogy: It takes more effort to learn 5th grade math than to learn 1st grade math. 1st grade math is more user-friendly than 5th grade math. But you can do more with 5th grade math than with 1st grade math. Everyone should learn 5th grade math. However, only specialists need to learn masters-degree level math.

So the question is: where are consumer digital products currently poised? If they are poised at the 10th or 12th grade level, there is no need to educate people any more; only specialists need to learn anything more from this point on. If they are poised at the 1st or 5th grade level, people should be expected to learn more; that will lead to more effective use of digital resources.

Open Source versus Innovation?

I'm reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, and he asks a question about open source that really made me think. What is the motivation for innovation if everybody gives their innovations away for free and nobody gets paid for their innovations, which is what open source seems to suggest?

I don't have a good answer, but it seems to work. As Friedman himself points out, many important innovations have come out of open source, including the Apache web browser. I would go so far as to say that most innovations in the field have come from not-for-profit efforts. Google's entire search infrastructure runs on Linux; Amazon's entire web presence runs on Apache. It's as real as it gets.

The question is tied to (and perhaps motivated by) statements from Microsoft bigwigs. Here is one that Friedman quotes (the inserts are his):

You need capitalism [to drive innovation.] To have [a movement] that says innovation does not deserve an economic reward is contrary to where the world is going. When I talk to the Chinese, they dream of starting a company. They are not thinking, 'I will be a barber during the day and do free software at night.'... When you have a security crisis in your [software] system, you don't want to say, `Where is the guy in the barbershop?' -- Bill Gates

But Bill Gates is hardly in a position to talk of innovation. Microsoft has not made any significant technical innovations in the last 10 years. Windows Vista's UI is (feature-wise) just a bloated version of Windows 95, with some bling. Microsoft's innovations are almost entirely on the business end: it has figured out effective ways to stifle innovation by competitors. So Bill Gates talking about what drives innovation is like a thief lecturing about honesty.

Gates' comment about security is even more perplexing in light of the extensively poor track record Microsoft has in security. Open source alternatives are far more secure in every way than anything Microsoft has. Maybe the reason you don't want the guy in the barbershop is if you know there's something wrong with the security, it's probably the Microsoft guy who's responsible.

But what Gates says is not really relevant here. None of this actually answers the question: how can you justify, theoretically, the claim that innovation can be sustainably executed within Open Source frameworks?

I don't have a good answer.

PGF and TikZ

I guess I'm just completely out of touch, but there's an excellent package that allows you to draw sophisticated graphics within LaTeX (using a graphics programming language) I hadn't heard of till recently.

It's called PGF, and the component you use in your LaTeX/TeX source code is called TikZ. You enter simple LaTeX-style commands to tell it what to draw, in an environment right in your (La)TeX code, and it does the job for you. The excellent user manual can be found here, including instructions for installing and a tutorial. (If you're a Ubuntu user, of course, there's already a package you can install with a few clicks.) Great examples can be found here. Wow! What a package.

Emacs Word Wrap

Real word wrapping in emacs isn't automatic, but here's how it can be done. I found these instructions at http://lispy.wordpress.com/2007/07/12/dark-secrets-of-emacs-word-wrapping/. It's not perfect; despite the comments on that website, I don't yet know how to make word-wrap work after vertical splitting. First, get longlines.el and put it somewhere. Then, add the following lines to your .emacs:

(load "/path/to/longlines.el" t t)
(autoload 'longlines-mode "longlines.el" "Minor mode for editing long lines." t)
;; Uncomment the next line to wrap by default in text mode
;;(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'longlines-mode)

To activate manually, do M-x longlines. More info at http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/LongLines.

Adding An Emacs Menu

Here's some template code for adding a menu item to the main emacs menu bar. I don't know hos this works; I just use it as a template!

;;;;;;; Add items to menu bar
(modify-frame-parameters (selected-frame) '((menu-bar-lines . 2)))
;; Make a menu keymap (with a prompt string)
;; and make it the menu bar item's definition.
(define-key global-map [menu-bar MyMenu] (cons "MyMenu" (make-sparse-keymap "MyMenu")))
;; Define specific subcommands in this menu.
(defun MyMenu-linkify() (interactive) (replace-regexp "^\\(.*\\)$" "\\1
"))
(define-key global-map
  [menu-bar MyMenu linkify]
  '("Linkify" . MyMenu-linkify))
(define-key global-map
  [menu-bar MyMenu truncate]
  '("Truncate em" . toggle-truncate-lines))

Linux Brain Games

These involve the mind in some way... I like to do Blinken and Gnomine.

Chess. These engines are way too hard for me.

1. Gnuchess
2. Crafty
   

Memory

1. Blinken

Quick Thinking

1. Gnomine
2. KSirtet
3. Tetravex
4. Gnome Sudoku

Uncategorized

1. gtans (Tangrams)
2. Code Breaker / Gnomermind (Mastermind clones)
3. Klotski/Gnome Klotski

Free Online

1. Happy Neuron free games
2. MyBrainTrainer has a test and one free puzzle every month
   

Commercial

1. The Amazing Brain Train (has a demo)
   

I Love Evince!

Evince, the Gnome document viewer under Ubuntu 7.10 and up, is simply a great piece of software. It has some simple features which enhance its usefulness for academic work.

Incremental search instead of boring-old-search make evince my favourite viewer for almost any type of document it supports.

The extra feature I use most often is "Open a Copy" in the File menu. This opens up another instance of evince displaying the same file, very useful when you need several different pages of the document open at the same time.

Another useful related feature is, if you click using the middle button while following a PDF link, the link opens up in a new window (just like in Firefox). That way you don't lose the original page.

Of course, evince could be made better. Here's my wish-list:

1. Add a cycle-through-bookmarks feature for the cases when I want quick browsing in one window instead of many
2. Add an "Open a Copy" toolbar button
   
3. The version of evince I'm using on Ubuntu 7.10 doesn't work at all with the print server CUPS; maybe this is already fixed in the newer versions
4. DVI files are blurred (or maybe over-antialiased)
5. We need browser-style back and forward buttons in addition to the page back and page forward buttons, so we can follow links more easily
6. Would be nice to be able to place two arbitrary (not just adjacent) pages side-by-side.
   
7. Alternatively, allow left-right split window with synchronized scrolling made possible (i.e. scrolling one scrolls the other by the same amount)
8. Add a "search for full word only" option to the incremental search
   
9. More when I think of it!