Exactly right. It's similar to the situation we have with recent automobile designs, where all kinds of sensors are in place to detect potential engine problems. I have nothing against these sensors being there if it helps consumers realize something is wrong before serious damage occurs, but sometimes the sensors fail, and all you have to go by is the "Check Engine" light. A previous car of mine had a faulty sensor that would constantly trigger the engine light, and even though there was nothing else wrong with the car, it wouldn't pass smog as long as the light was on, which was most of the time. After spending way more money than I had ever intended to, both in attempts to get the car smogged and taking it to mechanics who simply plugged in a computer and "diagnosed" the problem the sensor was erroneously reporting, I actually ended up taking it to a mechanic who was nice enough to reset it for free, giving me enough time to take it across the street to get it smogged before the light came back on. It wasn't until later that I learned the sensor itself was the culprit.

Has it occurred to anyone that this paper isn't the "PC Brigades"? I'd be willing to be most of you haven't even bothered to read it.

Nobody is asking anyone to fill a quota. Minorities and women are underrepresented in games for the same reason that they were underrepresented in film and television for so long (and still are in many ways)...because they are socially marginalized. It's more a reflection of the state of our culture than anything else. You're probably not old enough to remember it, but if you look back just 30-40 years, it's hard to even find movies that are shown from a woman's point of view -- one of the biggest critiques of film by early feminists was the way in which female characters were often passive objects, plot devices or romantic interests of the male leads at best. Social researchers are interested in the way our culture reflects the biases we have.

You probably don't care, and that's fine. Nobody in the game industry is going to read this study any more than the slashcrowd, and if they did it's not going to cause them to rethink their plans. They make the games that sell, just like the moviemakers of yesteryear made the hero worshiping, male-centric films that audiences loved. Games, film and other cultural artefacts will continue to mirror the social gestalt, social change will be gradual, and most people won't notice. Social theorists and scientists (you can put scare quotes around it if you like) will continue to pay attention to these things, because they think, quite rightly, that having a pulse on our culture is a good thing.

The rejections weren't nonsensical, you just didn't agree with them. Apple's guidelines are freely available and fairly clear (even if they appear to give a a fair amount wiggle room). The fact that you attempted to re-submit a reworked version of your app, all while knowing that it still failed to comply with Apple's rules, is particularly telling. Don't like the fact that you're not supposed to link to 3rd party libraries? Do you think it's silly that they don't want the app's charity focus announced in the store? Well, too bad. There are plenty of other mobile platforms with far less traction that would love to have your half-assed product. This isn't Open Source, and you don't get to just take other people's hard work, make some little throwaway project, refuse to play by the rules, and then throw a hissy fit when things don't go your way.

For the record, I do iPhone development, and though there are some lovely interface concepts on the device, the overall state of UI design in many iPhone apps is typically lacking. But that said, if a fresh look at UI design is what you're after, you probably won't find it on Linux. There are just far too many ego-inflated power nerds who think they're good at everything, and engineers who couldn't give less of a damn about usability. Or worse, the occasional hotshot engineer with an artistic streak that assumes, obnoxiously, that UI design is the same thing as "skinning".

I mean, if UI quality were judged in the number and variety of themes available, we'd all be running Englightenment! Right guys? The really annoying thing about it is that this information is out there, and despite the fact that UI improvements have taken a back seat in recent years, any software developer could head on down to a decent library and learn at least a little of what makes an interface work (or better yet, learn that UI design is not a computer-specific domain, that sure would be a mindfuck). That is, if he wanted to.

That doesn't mean the rest of us need to give a $@*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_use_in_Iraq

White Phosphorus burns to the bone when it comes in contact with skin, and water makes it worse. The use of White Phosphorus as an incendiary weapon in Fallujah (and for that matter Gaza) constitutes deliberate killing of civilians. Any weapon that is used as a blanket over a wide area is, by definition, incapable of distinguishing between combatant and non-combatant.

While this is a good point, your analysis (and in fact, every single Slashdot headline about HCI) assumes that interaction design is limited to designing interfaces that are intended as replacements for generic, everyday data manipulation, such as mice/keyboards/etc. The real assumption we should be confronting is the notion that interface design is like a diagram of human evolution, or that innovations should necessarily replace everything that have come before them.

Siftables, for instance, make little sense as an interface for graphic designers working in Photoshop, but might make a fabulous specialized interface for young children, who primarily learn through direct physical interaction with their environment. Todd Oppenheimer's book "The Flickering Mind" points out some of the issues that can arise from young children spending too much time with traditional computer interfaces â" by bypassing a child's need for direct, physical interaction you can actually end up stunting her intellectual development. In other words, sometimes a "practical" (i.e. efficient, sufficiently abstract) interface isn't what you want.

This is partly symptomatic of Slashdot's demographic, and also a byproduct of the sort of hype associated with digital media departments, and the kind of language they have to construct in order to attract funding. Mega-nerds don't usually think of technology except in the abstract and functional, and tend to regard inefficient or unusual interaction systems as a waste of time and resources (why would I want to stand there flailing my arms in the air when I could just write a shell script?). Academics tend to use overblown language to justify their work â" blanket statements about the way new digital technologies are "forever changing our world" are commonplace. Somewhere in between is the realization that we ought not only to rethink our one-size-fits-all perspective on technology, but that we should also keep in mind the way new technologies affect the meaning of interaction.