Re: aggressive computers (was: Word Processors)

[Rebecca Ore <rebecca ore op net>]

David Jeske writes:
 > On Fri, Sep 18, 1998 at 12:07:45PM -0400, Warren Baird wrote:
 > > I am fully in favour of having assistants and of having them on by default,
 > > as long as it's easy to turn them off (and that they never voluntarily come
 > > back after being turned off).
 > 
 > I'm all for this as well. However, I think we should learn one thing
 > from MS and make them non-modal. All the Word assistants pop up and
 > start yelling at you, and you have to dismiss them before you can go
 > back to what you were doing. I've seen this confuse many beginning
 > users (i.e. "why can't I type anymore?") and it definetly annoys me.
 > 

   Many good short tutorials.

   While still half-sleep I posted from my other program which had a
different email address and which will probably bounce.  I'll repeat.
In ten years or less, we're unlikely to have the same kinds of naive users
than we have now unless we're used in grade schools.

     I suspect that clever bored office workers already play very
amusing games with the paperclips, seeing what dumb advice they can
trick it into giving.  Why don't we put in some Easter egg games
instead.

     Document structuring -- yes.

     Apropos help -- yes.

     Enough AI to usefully guess what the user really wants -- arrgh.

-- 
Rebecca Ore