From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Fri May 14 2004 - 18:30:57 CDT
> jameskass@att.net a écrit :
>
> >Dean A. Snyder wrote,
> >
> >>The issue is not what we CAN do; the issue is what will we be FORCED to
> >>do that already happens right now by default in operating systems,
> >>Google, databases, etc. without any end user fiddling?
The trend for such systems is to build in generic, default
behavior (for collation or for other aspects of localizable
information), to support a number of high visibility and
high demand particular behaviors "out of the box" and then
to open the systems to end-user customization of particular
combinations of behavior.
The IT industry is, of course, a long way away from perfection
here, in part because the entire field of internationalization of
software is considered bizarre geekiness even among your
run of the mill programming geeks. But the globalization of
information technology is inevitable, in my opinion, and as
that globalization proceeds, the inevitable tension between
central control and end user demand will play itself out in
ways that make the technology eventually more flexible and adaptive.
People complaining about software now need to take occasional
reality breaks and remind themselves of what things were like
in the 1970's, when you still typed in your Fortran programs on
punchcards, fed in your decks, and then waited 2 hours for
the computer operator to deliver your line printer output
to get a list of the syntax errors in your program.
> >
> >That's the question.
> >
> >Since search engines like Google survive based on their ability to serve
> >users' wants and find what users seek, why wouldn't Google make such
> >a tailoring?
Google is on the frontline for this stuff:
https://services.google.com/tcbin/tc.py?cmd=status
The applicable model is to *distribute* the work of adaptation to
the people who understand it best -- the people who have the
requirements and the knowledge of what they want and the means
to specify the local behavior.
In this particular case, we are talking about translation of
UI into dozens of languages, rather than end-user specification
of search criteria. But in principle the concept of distributed
definition of string filtering or string matching criteria for
a search could also be implemented. If not Google, then somebody
else, will come up with a way to do this and let the users devise
their own criteria for how they search into the massive internet
(and other) databases involved.
Patrick responded:
> Because the Phoenician user community is very very small ? Same goes for
> Microsoft on some collations already mentioned (French Canadian sorting,
> Khmer) and those are much larger communities.
And the answer is to democratize the approach. One shouldn't be
demanding that The Borg centrally define and implement all uses
for all users, so that users simply dial Channel 621 and then
sit there passively assimilating and get dished up their content.
Instead, the users should demand of The Borg that user-definable
requirements be supported actively, so that the *people* get
to define what they do and how it is done at the point they
interact with the software.
--Ken
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri May 14 2004 - 18:32:13 CDT