My taskbar... seriously

I'm using Windows XP on my laptop at home. This is what my taskbar sometimes looks like. Is Windows trying to tell me something about my network connection?

GUI Blooper: Windows Calculator

It just occurred to me this afternoon that Window's standard calculator application has a "GUI blooper". Can you spot it? Hint: It has something to do with multiplication.

The blooper is the use of the asterisk (*) symbol for multiplication instead of the traditional x symbol. Look at any calculator, physical or virtual, and you'll always see the x symbol used. My guess is very few non-technical people know * stands for multiplication, and the only way they figure it out is by process of elimination.

So why does Windows use *? Practically every programming language out there uses * for multiplying, thanks to the yahoos who forgot (chose not) to include a multiplication symbol in ASCII. So to the programmers who wrote the Windows calculator, using * seemed only natural. I just wonder how this got past their usability experts.

Update on 4/28/08:

Dustin makes a good point in the comments below that Microsoft was likely just mapping the symbols from the number pad. Consistency is a key to good UI design. But, I think the carrying the limitation of the keyboard into the GUI isn't the best decision. It would be like only allowing the OS to have 12 major functions because there are only 12 function (F) keys on the keyboard.

More Vista surprises

Can you guess what this is?
a) A beautiful piece of art work.
b) What the screen looks like when I'm up with Ethan at 5am.
c) Internet Explorer on crack.
d) All of the above.

The answer is D. I saw this marvelous window yesterday when IE decided it would no longer respond to commands. When I would minimize windows that were in front of the non-responsive IE window, it would leave a trail behind. For my GUI students, this is an excellent example of an application that is no longer processing paint messages. It's also an excellent example of why you hear me scream and kick my office wall periodically.

Fav5

My pick of the week's top 5 items of interest:

1. When you make a closed system, you are basically inviting every hacker out there to break it open. Just a few days ago, some college-bound kid posted on his blog how to "unlock" the iPhone (use another cell phone provider besides AT&T). Wish Apple would have saved him the trouble in the first place.
   


2. This is a little odd: The Perverted Justice group is calling Wikipedia a "Corporate Sex Offender". Apparently someone from PJ was getting a little out of hand on Wikipedia and got banned and is now overreacting. What in the world is a corporate sex offender anyway?


3. Researchers at MIT have developed a clutter detector, a method for reducing the clutter from visual displays. My wife would love to have one of these for the house.


4. Here's something my wife would really love: an automated essay grading system.


5. Justice is finally served: Linux felon forced to install Windows.
   

Fav5

My pick of the week's top 5 events, articles, or items of interest:

1. Researchers at Harvard have developed a robotic fly which could some day be used for spying, detecting harmful chemicals, or just annoying families out picnicking.


2. What comes next after Vista? Windows 7.
   
   
3. Here's an interesting article about Luis von Ahn's latest foray into utilizing humans for AI. The reCaptchas project is brilliant, but what caught my eye was a new game he is developing called Matchin' which enlists humans to rate the attractiveness of people's photos. The results could be used to make image archives searchable by attractiveness. Sorry bon Ahn, but I think this has already been done.


4. A new search engine called Lexxe is using natural language technology to answer user's queries (think Ask Jeeves). I tried the query "why should I use lexxe instead of google?" and got my answer on the first result. Not bad.


5. Becky finally joined Facebook this week. I'm a little jealous though because I've been on there for several months, but she already has more friends than I do. Just a thought, but why does Facebook limit you to just "friends"? What about "casual acquaintances" or "person I saw on the bus"? I guess it's up to me to invent the next Web 6.0 social networking site.

Fav5

My pick of the week's top 5 events, articles, or stories:

1. The CACM has several excellent articles on the science of gaming. Once of the articles discusses Carnegie Mellon's masters degree in video games which sounds like something I would leap at in a heartbeat if I was a graduating senior. I also enjoyed Kelleher and Pausch's article on Storytelling Alice which I would seriously like to investigate using at Harding in the near future.


2. While on the subject of gaming, who is preserving our video games for future generations? An interesting article in the Guardian laments the fact that, besides a few game archives (like the new one at Univ of Texas), there is no industry initiative to preserve video games and consoles like the Amiga CD32, Pioneer LaserActive, and Bandai Playdia. The article concludes with a statement that may have been tongue-in-cheek, but there's some truth to it:
   

   The Virtual PC thing is worthy, but are you really telling me that the preservation of obscure census data is more important than saving the software catalogue of the Sega Dreamcast?
   

3. I stumbled across a link to Pagefactor while scanning the Wikipedia article on link rot this week. Pagefactor is attempting to use humans to locate pages that disappear. I'm not sure if the approach is going to work (hmmm... I can't find the web page I'm looking for, oh now I found it, and now I'll go do some work to let others know the new location), but it's interesting nonetheless.
   


4. Six months into Vista, and users are still griping. So am I. I got a new PC in June loaded with Vista, and although I have enjoyed the much improved graphics and speed, I've been annoyed by two blue screens of death, video that won't play smoothly in QuickTime, and constant pop-ups asking if I really meant to do what I asked the computer to do. So why don't I give up and buy a Mac? To quote For Your Consideration:

   You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater because then all you have is a wet, critically injured baby.

   Actually there are two main reasons: 1) I've invested an incredible amount of time learning Windows and don't want to start over, and 2) I want to be running what most people are running. It's embarrassing be asked a computer question (by family, friends, or students) that I know nothing about. And as a CS faculty member, I should be very familiar with how the majority of the world is interacting with their computer.
   


5. This week some masked bandits cracked a safe and stole $12,000 with the help of Google. After struggling with opening a safe for over an hour, the buglers went to a nearby PC and Googled "safe-cracking" which led them to an article on "How to Open Safes". Soon they were in and left with $12,000.
   

Be afraid, be very afraid

Hey, Windows user- if you haven’t made sure you’re running the latest version of Internet Explorer, do it now. If you’re lacking the motivation, take a look at this video that shows just what might happen to you if you were to misspell google.com. Scary. (See a blog posting about this video here. Note that the link to the video on that site is currently broken.)

You also can't always trust websites that you normally trust. A few days before the Super Bowl, the official website of Dolphin Stadium was hacked (that's where the Super Bowl was held). Website visitors running Windows might have been infected with a Trojan keylogger/backdoor if they hadn't already installed a couple of Windows security patches.

And if you’re thinking you’re safe from attack just because you’re running some other OS, take a look at this recent report: Some researchers set up 4 Linux boxes and watched as the servers were attacked on average once every 39 seconds. The hackers most often attempted to access the machines with user names of "root" and "admin" using passwords which were variations of the user name or "123." Man, I thought I was the only one using 123...

Another recent study states that 70% of websites are at immediate risk of being hacked! Well, maybe that number is a little high. But the point is, if you are on the Internet, you better watch out. Have a nice day.

Hasta la Vista

Microsoft finally released Windows Vista yesterday. Robert Vamosi has written about the Five reasons to love (and hate) Windows Vista, and Joel Spolsky has written an interesting bit about the complexity of the Vista's off button.

I’m looking forward to giving Vista a try, but not anytime soon… my current laptop runs like a dog with XP, much less with Vista. Better to purchase a new computer in 2007 with the OS already installed.