To improve the usability of an application it is important to have a well designed interface. Shneiderman's "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design" are a guide to good interaction design. They are listed below, do you think VS fulfills them? the best way to make this evaluation is to log out and assume you are a new user entirely, in fact I was struck by how much different the site looked when I was not logged in. Discuss.
1 Strive for consistency. Consistent sequences of actions should be required in similar situations; identical terminology should be used in prompts, menus, and help screens; and consistent commands should be employed throughout.
2 Enable frequent users to use shortcuts. As the frequency of use increases, so do the user's desires to reduce the number of interactions and to increase the pace of interaction. Abbreviations, function keys, hidden commands, and macro facilities are very helpful to an expert user.
3 Offer informative feedback. For every operator action, there should be some system feedback. For frequent and minor actions, the response can be modest, while for infrequent and major actions, the response should be more substantial.
4 Design dialog to yield closure. Sequences of actions should be organized into groups with a beginning, middle, and end. The informative feedback at the completion of a group of actions gives the operators the satisfaction of accomplishment, a sense of relief, the signal to drop contingency plans and options from their minds, and an indication that the way is clear to prepare for the next group of actions.
5 Offer simple error handling. As much as possible, design the system so the user cannot make a serious error. If an error is made, the system should be able to detect the error and offer simple, comprehensible mechanisms for handling the error.
6 Permit easy reversal of actions. This feature relieves anxiety, since the user knows that errors can be undone; it thus encourages exploration of unfamiliar options. The units of reversibility may be a single action, a data entry, or a complete group of actions.
7 Support internal locus of control. Experienced operators strongly desire the sense that they are in charge of the system and that the system responds to their actions. Design the system to make users the initiators of actions rather than the responders.
8 Reduce short-term memory load. The limitation of human information processing in short-term memory requires that displays be kept simple, multiple page displays be consolidated, window-motion frequency be reduced, and sufficient training time be allotted for codes, mnemonics, and sequences of actions.
So after 2 years of hibernating... I mean working in Kuwait am moving back to the heathen west. I will be in London pursuing a program at Uni. I hope to meet some of the UK sifters and put some faces to the names, have chips, beer and possibly rape you.
posted by Farhad20003 months 2 weeks ago • 274 views
SOCIALISM:
You have 2 cows and you give one to your neighbour.
COMMUNISM:
You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and gives you some milk.
FASCISM:
You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and sells you some milk.
NAZISM:
You have 2 cows. The Government takes both and shoots you.
BUREAUCRATISM:
You have 2 cows; the Government takes both, shoots one, milks the other and throws the milk away…
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow dropped dead.
A FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are.
You break for lunch.
A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
A SWISS CORPORATION:
You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them.
You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You worship them.
A BRITISH CORPORATION:
You have two cows. Both are mad.
AN IRISH FARMER:
You have two cows. You claim government subsidies for eight cows.
This is one of the best albums I heard in a long time. From Ninja Tune mixing dancehall, dub and dubstep all in one bass thumping package. Hear it. Buy it. Steal it.
posted by Farhad20007 months 1 week ago • 597 views
A compilation of my favorite spacey tracks from my vast collection of music. It's a mix of electronica, minimal techno, ambience, dark ambience, and some dub. This time I kept all the files apart. Tracklisting below the fold.
It's up on Mediafire. So should be okay for downloading. Click the Cosmonaut to go to the Mediafire page. Enjoy.
posted by Farhad20007 months 1 week ago • 672 views
I love finding songs that sound one way but inherently have a different meaning altogether, kind of like when I went to da club once and all white trash girls were going skeet skeet skeet without knowing what it means. Here's one I came across recently a disco classic that has a far more serious social overtone through it's lyrics, it also happens to sound awesome.
Machine - There By The Grace Of God
Lyrics ->
Carlos and Carmen Vidal just had a child
A lovely girl with a crooked smile
Now they gotta split 'cause the Bronx ain't fit
For a kid to grow up in
Let's find a place they say, somewhere far away
With no blacks, no Jews and no gays
Chorus:
There but for the grace of God go I
Poppy and the family left the dirty streets
To find a quiet place overseas
And year after year the kid has to hear
The do's the don'ts and the dears
And when she's ten years old she digs that rock 'n' roll
But Poppy bans it from home
Chorus
Baby, she turns out to be a natural freak
Popping pills and smoking weed
And when she's sweet sixteen she packs her things and leaves
With a man she met on the street
Carmen starts to bawl, bangs her head to the wall
Too much love is worse than none at all
- Transcripts emerged from a March 6 radio appearance by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele in which he discussed climate change.
“We are cooling,” explained Steele. “We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about.”
- Turkish police dispersed protesters at a global water-shortage summit in Istanbul by spraying them with water cannons.
posted by Farhad20009 months 1 week ago • 1038 views
In my previous Blog about MTV Arabia I mentioned how they really nail the clash of cultures that the youth of the middle east is going thorugh via their short MTV Skits. These are two more that recently started airing.
The first one is called Saudi Mortal Kombat/Street fighter. All the behaviours and words spoken by each fighter is such typical arabic fighting shit, like using your shoe or the getra as a weapon. But most of all the last segment, when the guy calls his friends - "Shaba! Ta'al!" I laughed so hard at that I feel off my couch because this is exactly what people do when I had fights back in High school.
The second one is called "Pimp my Thobe", is more comedic dance off battle, between an Arabi dude and someone who is all hip hop, both winning and losing in their successive styles of dancing, eventually the Arab dude starts to appreciate the music and seemingly converts to hip hop. The funniest for me is when the arabi dude starts dancing and pwns the dude with his Arab style, notice how he tries to keep his outfit tidy, a very common cultural thing where the men take extreme care in their clothes. At 1:58, you can see a maid complaining about all the clothes she has to clean up speaking of the huge amount of maids in the GCC.
It was a slow weekend, I decided to make a mix tape of some songs I really like. It's all female singers so I pretentiously called it Voice Femme.
It's up on RapidShare, but it said it could only be downloaded 10 times, if anyone grabs it and likes it enough please re-upload it on MediaFire or another host.
I put it up on Media Fire now.
A few of the songs people might have heard before, a few maybe not. Its one long mixed file. I was thinking of posting names but leaving it up to discover seems more interesting! Kudos to anyone who will guess them all I added the tracklist below!
Click foxxy girl pic to go to the Rapidshare Media Fire download.
If people dig it I will make another one but this time using spacey/trippy stuff I have collected over the years.
Tracklist - In true VS stlye most names link to videos in Youtube or on VS.
posted by Farhad200010 months 2 weeks ago • 1449 views
These are some of the films I enjoyed recently, rather then taint them in any way through my own preceptions, I simply would like to recommend them to you all in Poster form
posted by Farhad200011 months 1 week ago • 1015 views
Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed. It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut. A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily. Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.
So what does a TraceRt from Kuwait look like for Videosift.com?
Tracing route to www.videosift.com
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 53 ms 99 ms 100 ms dsldevice.lan
2 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 62.150.xxx
3 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 62.150.xxx
4 10 ms 10 ms 9 ms jun-skb.qualitynet.net
5 334 ms 377 ms 421 ms if-14-3.core1.RSD-Riyad.as6453.net
6 1044 ms * 488 ms if-13-1-1.core1.S9R-Singapore.as6453.net
7 490 ms 490 ms * if-15-0-0-953.core2.S9R-Singapore.as6453.net
8 661 ms 624 ms 616 ms if-14-0-0-954.core1.TV2-Tokyo.as6453.net
9 * 678 ms * if-0-0-0-736.mcore3.LAA-LosAngeles.as6453.net
10 692 ms 693 ms 693 ms 0.so-0-0-0.BR2.LAX7.ALTER.NET
11 * 679 ms 680 ms 0.so-2-2-0.XT1.LAX7.ALTER.NET
12 693 ms * 695 ms 0.so-2-0-0.XL1.SDG2.ALTER.NET
13 699 ms * * POS6-0.GW1.SDG2.ALTER.NET
14 * 702 ms 702 ms castleaccess-gw.customer.alter.net
15 687 ms * 690 ms ge1-1-6509-a.castleaccess.com
16 691 ms * 692 ms 69.43.138.12
17 691 ms * * 69-55-231-118.in-addr.arpa.johncompanies.com
18 * 689 ms 689 ms 69-55-231-118.in-addr.arpa.johncompanies.com
Trace complete.
You read that right. The internet has been rerouted, so it goes from Kuwait - Riyad - Singapore - Tokyo - LA to the VS servers in 18 hops! Suprisingly this is not as bad as www.google.com
Tracing route to www.l.google.com
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 47 ms 99 ms 99 ms dsldevice.lan
2 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms 62.150.xxx
3 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms 62.150.xxx
4 9 ms 10 ms 10 ms jun-skb.qualitynet.net
5 43 ms 43 ms 42 ms if-14-3.core1.RSD-Riyad.as6453.net
6 488 ms 489 ms 488 ms if-13-1-1.core1.S9R-Singapore.as6453.net
7 479 ms 480 ms 479 ms if-11-0-0-735.core2.S9R-Singapore.as6453.net
8 562 ms 562 ms 562 ms if-14-0-0-954.core1.TV2-Tokyo.as6453.net
9 675 ms 674 ms 674 ms if-6-0-0-737.mcore4.LAA-LosAngeles.as6453.net
10 679 ms * 676 ms Vlan77.icore1.LAA-LosAngeles.as6453.net
11 670 ms 674 ms 723 ms 4.68.63.65
12 676 ms 685 ms 672 ms vlan79.csw2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net
13 693 ms * 692 ms ae-73-73.ebr3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net
14 * 754 ms 765 ms ae-4.ebr4.Washington1.Level3.net
15 766 ms 757 ms 758 ms ae-74-74.csw2.Washington1.Level3.net
16 * 755 ms 755 ms ae-72-72.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net
17 903 ms 903 ms 902 ms ae-43-43.ebr2.Paris1.Level3.net
18 * 832 ms 831 ms ae-2-2.ebr1.Frankfurt1.Level3.net
19 910 ms 903 ms 903 ms ae-81-81.csw3.Frankfurt1.Level3.net
20 956 ms 962 ms 912 ms ae-3-89.edge3.Frankfurt1.Level3.net
21 907 ms 907 ms 907 ms 212.162.24.14
22 912 ms 934 ms * 209.85.249.178
23 908 ms 908 ms 848 ms 209.85.254.112
24 834 ms 832 ms 923 ms 209.85.254.126
25 831 ms 830 ms 830 ms fx-in-f99.google.com
Trace complete.
It goes from Kuwait - Riyad - Singapore - Tokyo - LA - Washington - Frankfurt - L Servers Google in 25 Hops. Basically it goes around the world to reach Europe!
They said it will be fixed by 31st December 2008. This is the second time this year this has happened.
Makes you realize how fragile the physical connectivity of the Internet really is... check out this map put out by Telegeography of the Internet 2009.
One fun fact from that Internet map is that 45% of traffic is web and 25% is P2P!
posted by Farhad200011 months 1 week ago • 866 views
Someone working at the US embassy invitied me to a USMC party, they requested I send in my information like civil ID for the usual security clearance.
I do so and recieved the GO a day later.
The day before they tell the person who invited me that I have NO AUTHORIZATION to even enter the US Embassy. My friend told me that they didn't really clarify a reason, he said it could be because am from Uzbekistan (former USSR satelliate) or have a job listing of computer programmer (I might hack their NOC list).
Either way I wasn't overly suprised. I mean really this kinda of shit would probably make me a terrist
It seems really funny, US is so strange and hypocritical when it comes to dealing with my nation, they rented out our airbase North of Afghanistan, used our oppressive special forces to torture captured fighters so they could keep their own hands clean, then later criticized our presidency for being too dictatorial. Our president got pissed with the US State Department telling him if he could or could not oppress his people and kicked them all out.
posted by Farhad200011 months 1 week ago • 1246 views
MTV Arabia was launched in the
GCC region quite recently in November of 2007, it is the newest addition to the
MTV networks. As a Free to air channel it has been a huge success, not surprising
given that almost every GCC nation has large youth populations that lack representation
and something of their own.
The channel has been very sensitive to the region, Isreal doesn't exist as a nation when signing up on their website, raunchy videos are not screened at all, the channel had a complete music blackout during the month of Ramadan, various graphics always try and include kids in traditional islamic or arab dress.
It has been interesting to watch
this channel launch and more importantly try to appeal through branding and
promos to a society that is clashing with the modern and ancient, between young
and old at the same time always appealing to an Arab cultural background. I
think they have done an outstanding job via their promos.
This promo is of an Oud player losing it while in the middle of a very classical type of performance much of the middle east would have seen in the past. Taking the old and remixing it with the modern, a theme alot of these promos follow.
This is the same case in this following promo, Dabkeh, an arab like dance performance that gets jazzed up through modern twists.
The following is the funniest and most relational to arab life, the typical scenario of trying to impress girls by performing stunts via cars or any means, and finally ending with a vain attempt to exchange numbers. This acutally is how its mostly done in the middle east given the social norm of not having men and women freely associate, applicable most of all to Saudi Arabia.
Lebanese dudes chilling at a street corner snacking on pumpkin seeds, another cultural stereotype that identifies the channels audience perfectly. I love the bit where he harasses the girl and she smacks him.
The launch of MTV Arabia is a good step in the passive acuturilization this region is going through in the long run. The plan of the channel is to foster a growing hip hop and r&b scene locally something not at all covered by the other music stations in the middle east most of which transmit a very commercial and old style of music.
posted by Farhad200011 months 3 weeks ago • 693 views
Two weeks ago, Ayn Rand aficionado Alan
Greenspan admitted to a House subcommittee that his libertarian
economic worldview had been shaken by events on Wall Street; last week,
Governor Paterson approvingly cited Rand’s advocacy of stout
individualism, which he says citizens of New York State will need
during the budget crisis. Meanwhile, on TheAtlasphere.com, a dating
site, Rand fans are just looking for love; below, excerpts from user
profiles.
siftbot: Farhad2000 entered the lounge at November 8th, 2008 9:37pm PST
Farhad2000: I see my sworn enemy is here.
Farhad2000: Your political views and assumptions are intellectually bankrupt legacy0100
legacy0100: whut!
Farhad2000: You know this is the truth.
legacy0100: I see a defeated man here to reconfirm his noted wrongs!
Farhad2000: I see a man trapped in his delusions and illusions unable to face cold hard fact and reality.
Farhad2000: Do not be afraid.
legacy0100: only if your claims were true, perhaps then it may be less pathetic to see you constantly lying to your own self!
Farhad2000: Your views are so fringe they are considered queer and foreign like a boil that was allowed to grow for too long.
Farhad2000: Its time to lance it and end this depravity you call your political and socioeconomic views.
legacy0100: face it child, you are lost. Let your angered soul be guided towards the light. Do not refuse what is already proven to be CORRECT!
Farhad2000: Your machinations fail to chink the glorious armour that is my soul and heart. This only deepens your envy.
legacy0100: a time to know what has been done, and proven! Blinded by your own zeal you cannot see the worried faces surrounding you!
Farhad2000: Alas you must face the truth, that your words are simply the subconscious views of yourself, a mirror being held up for the truth is too hard to process and swallow by your fragile state of mind and possibly wandering sexuality.
legacy0100: Ha! curs like you needn't be reasoned. The only truth you may accept is by constant correction, by force!
Farhad2000: Your petty views are not surprising, given your adoration for Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and others of small mind and heart who can only wave and scream in angry in the face of illuminated truth that shines forth like a beacon in the cesspit that you call your dwelling
legacy0100: it is YOU who are too feeble to size upto my proud manhood, thus always rallying upto mention about my unhindering sexual appetite!
Farhad2000: For small dogs and estranged children of the third world? It is deprave and beneath any man. But you, you wallow in this, your adoration for Asian nations shows this.
legacy0100: the stench of which you smear out from your own dungeon of defecation, piled with brainless optimism in times of stern reality check, sickens me to the very core
Farhad2000: Am surprised you actually have a core to sicken, given your prostitute like allegiance for any flavor of the month political ideologue.
legacy0100: perhaps it is easy to have such unshaken views of the most outrageous claims, for it has detatched itself so far from reality that no one knows what to make of such foolish claims!
legacy0100: a beast entrails covered in its own unholy business still may look more appetizing than to watch your lips move about, spewing away such loathsome ideas and corrupting the very sense of sanity in this world!
Farhad2000: My words just sicken you because they illuminate and deconstruct your petty ideologies piece by piece; you resist too much, protest too much, but know deep inside that I am right. Wetting your bed nightly while weeping into your cheap Ikea purchased pillows.
legacy0100: say now, defender of ridicule, champion of idiocy, you claim blasphemy, you idolize ludicrous. I need not resist such things, I merely avoid them, like I would from a heap of excrement, a diseased harlot, to save myself
Farhad2000: Strange you should protest so much about avoiding diseased harlots given your constant presence in the foulest brothels of the land dipping your insignificant member into a porridge that has been stirred thrice over. You represent a sickness of the mind, a petty man who only dares follow in the shadows of men greater then him, rattling your saber and tongue only by putting forward views of those who came before you.
legacy0100: oh, you poor thing, it is no longer anger i possess in me against your lunacy, it is pity. It is pity I feel compassion for you, for you are truly lost. And I, your hope of redemption and guide, you cannot recognize. My poor child, I feel sorry for you, tisk tisk.
Farhad2000: Your pity is a check your soul cannot cash. You say words that stem from a deep set feeling of envy, for I am a freeman, but a free man is an abomination to you, one whose views sicken you so much you can only but shout and scream in rage, only because such a man is represents your inadequacy, your failure, your insignificance.
legacy0100: and know this that my grand ideas of which you cannot possibly fathom with your unfortunate cranial capacity is of my very own. A man of my own being, perhaps it is you who are walking amongst the generous shadows of which shelters you from the burning rays of sun called Reality
Farhad2000: Your ideas are so ill-informed and simplistic that any grown man would think they were put together by chimps flinging poo and editions of Nietzsche, The Fountain Head and Mein Kampf at one another.
Farhad2000: The sun you call reality is simply your overgrown cancerous ego in which you hide and bask stroking yourself like some teenager who has discovered sexual pleasure for the first time, trapped in your own silly world. A sight that has the populace shaking their heads in apathetic disgust.
legacy0100: such candor can be had from the most dazzling pace of words. You are making mountains made of clouds called fantasies and claim it will last for generations. But did you already forget that inside it is nothing but a dream wrapped in fluffy air?
Farhad2000: Unfounded claims put forward like the last screechings of a man who knows he has been defeated. All your idols and ideas have been brushed aside in all history because of their failure. Yet you proclaim that you represent reality? Reality has done away with your foolish ideas like a grown man who has given up childish things, sweeping them under the carpet trying to forget earlier naivety and foolishness.
legacy0100: A teenager, am I? Then perhaps one would know from experience, that when one is young and clueless, falls in love for the first time, but then the love you experience is different from one you have fathomed inside your young imaginations. Hence you go about labeling it that it is wrong, that you are the only one correct. Such immaturities can only be acceptable when mind is so young.
legacy0100: pity, that your should be acting a bit, older. *chuckles*
Farhad2000: Should you really be talking about emotions and feelings you can only dream to possess? The cheap diseased prostitutes you purchase do not love you, each one would rather ingest poison that would result in a horrific death rather then ever love you, why do you think they drink so much before getting into the vat of shit and decay that you somehow refer to as a bed.
Farhad2000: I need not even talk about your immaturity, given that your record would only speak for itself each comment, each posting another septic tank of rational and intellectual murder.
legacy0100: How the young and confused get away with such murder! They do not understand, thus they deny it, refuse it, hate it, even. And when facing the facts, they insinuate, attack, never do realizing that the very things they describe, is merely the reflection of their own stupidity and confusion.
legacy0100: farhad, I love to go on forever, but i'm starting to get sleepy, and I have to pee xD
legacy0100: and my toes are getting numb lol
Farhad2000: Backing out are we? Admission of defeat? No wonder you choose to finally characterize yourself in that last deluge of shit one can hardly call comphresenive sentences.
legacy0100: fine fine, you got it this time... but only by technicality!!
Farhad2000: Your ideas slam against the very fabric of reality, like an animal rushing towards a concrete wall endlessly too unable too obtuse and stubborn to realize its own error.
legacy0100: .......... Farhad has smelled blood... He wouldn't stop!!
legacy0100: I must leave, before I am mangled!
legacy0100: Fairwell, for a promise of another fight!
legacy0100: Ciao! xD GOod night gentlemen
Farhad2000: Run! run you heathen! Away with you!
siftbot: legacy0100 left the lounge at November 8th, 2008 10:35pm PST
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