User Hostile

Pleasure Island

I woke up in the Universal City Hilton (nestled between Hollywood and Burbank) one morning. This hotel's staff and management are caught between invasions of idle poor from Hollywood, and depredations of idle rich from Beverly Hills. I somehow allowed this posh 4-star hotel to constantly rub me the wrong way. (My daughter Ashley gasped, "Only 4-star?! Why did we come here??" Someone needs to cut back on their Style Channel consumption...)

I don't have UncleBob's super-human negotiating skills, or PeterMerel's pharmacopeia, required to get VeryGoodSeats in these situations...

All I wanted to do was program on my notebook (now running UbuntuLinux! for free free free!) while my females did the tourist thing. So I try to get into the elegant gourmet buffet breakfast, complete with edible flowers, at exactly 9:10 am. The maitre d' disdainfully sniffs that if I seat now I will have to also pay for "brunch", which starts at 9:30 am. I tell her the polite equivalent of, "Screw it! and give me a table near a power outlet in case I run both my batteries out."

Always go to the enlisted troops first, not the officers. I quietly let my waiter know I needed to noodle on my notebook, and she politely told me the equivalent of, "we'll cover for you."

Then my females cell-phoned to say they wanted to have breakfast here, instead of somewhere out in jungleland. I told them to show up, found the maitre d', and told her to expect two peruana, and to take them to me.

After a while (and about 6 UnitTests), I noted they had not arrived. So I called them, and discovered they had hit the road anyway. "Oh, I asked the waitress, and she said that if we came in we would have to pay twice, once for breakfast and again for 'brunch'".

AAAAUUUGGGHH! My wife is sometimes totally crafty, and sometimes completely naive.

So I spend all day locked in the Iron Maiden of the Hilton's legendary hospitality. My females come back from their tourist loop with their swag, and we drive from Hollyweed to Anaheim for dinner.

We went to "Taco de Anda", http://www.taqueriadeanda.com/ , a grubby but sweet little corner restaurant. They serve little street-vendor style tacos, with a citrus-based marinade. You typically order a plate of 2 or three, eat them like candies, and go back and order more. This establishment always sports a crowd of neighborhood regulars from the North Anaheim barrio.

I asked Ashley, "which is more UserFriendly, the Universal City Hilton, or Taqueria de Anda?" I'm so proud of mi hijita she answered correctly ;-)

-- PhlIp

This is a nice parable comparing the flexibility of UpFront? vs. Iterative planning.

Ah, but the gourmet breakfast (and brunch) at the Hilton are all-you-can eat. While at Taco de Anda, you pay USD$ 0.98 for each taco. Paying per item at the Hilton would be absurd. The PointyHairedBoss effect kicks in when they start ripping you off using the standard excuse they are preventing you from ripping them off. Yes, I had some of the brunch items - the ones that were out before 9:15. Then I didn't have any more. The Hilton is _supposed_ to be at the "experience economy" level of the scale at TransformationEconomy, so the Goods are supposed to be _free_. They are for everyone except if you arrive at 9:10 exactly.

So when the Hiltons read this, they'll probably sack the waitress and promote the maitre d'. I can see where Paris gets her infinite grace and charm...

The Conveniences You Demand Are Now Mandatory

Next we decry the hostility of computers who have lost their ability to install new software (or in some cases to function at all) without a connection to the InterNet.

We start our survey with UbuntuLinux. I run it on a Dell Latitude, and I can put either a battery or a CD player into my Latitude's right bay. Ubuntu automatically mounts new CDs, unlike some Linuces I could mention. So then I can easily install Ubuntu's Debian packages by hand with dpkg. All without any 'net.

To install packages smartly, with automatic dependency & upgrade checking, I can use a very nice program called SynapticPackageManager?. However, this program refuses to work without a link to all its registered sources - both on the InterNet and in my CD ROM.

Because I'm a naive user, I can't figure out how to turn off this option. I'm sure there's a menu somewhere, or a config file. Then, I wouldn't turn it off without assurance that I could turn it back on.

And because I'm a programmer, I know which stinking package I want without automated intervention to ensure I get the latest one. So this feature has achieved the UserHostile rating listed at ViSucks - it is hostile to both newbies and proficient users.

We all know that a monolithic Desktop, from a unified and commanding vendor with a critical mass of users to satisfy, will generally provide a more consistent usability envelop. So we turn our attention to Windows XP, the Desktop where windows all generally use similar keystrokes to do similar things.

I unplugged my Windows XP clone from my Canon LiDE 20 scanner, moved them to a new site, plugged them back together, and tried to scan a belated ZeekLand.

WindowsXp swore on a stack of CharlesPetzold?'s Windows Programming Bibles that it had never seen this LiDE 20 before, and did not want me sticking unidentified hardware into its USB port.

The most infuriating thing about this situation: The driver DLLs for the LiDE 20 were obviously still somewhere in the OS's ample bowels. If I knew the exact registry configuration I could have simply typed it back in and scanned.

Instead, Windows displays its "New Hardware Detected" wizard. This can't find the LiDE 20 in its built-in lists. And because I didn't have an InterNet connection yet, I could not let the Wizard scan the internet. I also could not download and install the drivers myself from Canon's driver repository. When later I restored the 'net, the Wizard could not get to the drivers anyway, and I had to download them myself.

But when I was just trying to scan a ZeekLand, I turned to my UbuntuLinux. I plugged in the LiDE 20, and typed xsane. It told me "Scanning for devices...", and then instantly presented a full-featured GUI exposing every aspect of my LiDE 20.

If there's a lesson here (besides test your usability without the 'net and your CDs), it might be to treat high-level and low-level peripherals differently. Both WindowsXp and Linux treat a UniversalSerialBus plug as a low-level thing with hardware ports, interrupts, etc. But a scanner only needs a protocol on top of that port. So if Windows does not poke hardware when it drives a scanner, why does it treat the scanner's driver as a UserHostile hardware driver?

Sane (ScannerAccessNowEasy?) simply kept its own list of protocols, and did not squeeze these through Linux's driver system.

-- PhlIp

Who mourns for Clippy

Executives often must promote bad technology on behalf of the greater good. For example, an executive might sign off on a feature that they themselves are too smart to enjoy, but which the great washed masses must surely adore. Maybe if they like it enough, we will have enough motivation to perfect its ArtificialIntelligence, and then everyone will love it.

Before MicrosoftCorporation failed in this strategy, and turned the infamous Clippy off by default in MicrosoftOffice, I once collaborated with a Russian colleague over an MS Word front-end. He started the session by saying "can we turn thees leettle f---er off?" I naturally assented.

Eventually I performed an advanced operation in a couple of keystrokes. My colleague asked, "How did you learn to do that?"

"Before you turned it off, I asked the leettle f---er."

-- PhlIp