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My favorite progress bar was on the early Internet Explorer browser.
You go to a site and the progress bar would go to 30% and then report that the site was unreachable.
IE lied like a rug.
I now wish I had an app that I could use this information on
Our increasing National Deficit could be shown with such a “progress” illusion bar. And yet we are all supposed to be hailing Obama for a great job. One: he is increasing the debt with only the pretense of job stimulus, and two: he’s not prosecuting the criminals that brought us to this point including “captains of industry,” Congresscreeps, and past Admin Honcho’s.
“… he’s not prosecuting the criminals that brought us to this point including “captains of industry,” Congresscreeps, and past Admin Honcho’s.”
Bobbo, I’m sure you realize that there isn’t a politician alive (or unborn) in a democratic (cough) society that would do that. That kind of justice might happen in China (government assisted suicide). But in reference to your analogy, the Obama illusion bar would be sort of the mirror image of those in the video… illusion of moving to the right while barely perceptively moving to the left.
Progress bars are like poiticians’ lips:
if they’re moving, they’re lying.
@bobbo @Skeptic @Animby
Only on Dvorak Uncensored would progress bars devolve into politics. You gotta love this site.
Well Skeptic==During the Savings and Loan debacle which was a 20 foot tall neon lit sign telling us to RE-REGULATE AND REREGULATE FAST before this happens again, the Regan Adminstration prosecuted several hundred of financial types. True, the Congress Creeps avoided retribution but a few admin types resigned. I think one person has gone to jail in the past two years–a carry forward from Bush no doubt.
So we got nuttin.
Nate: the question was posed “what app could this be used on?” and Politics is only one. What do you think of when “Illusion” and “progress” are linked like that?? anything more important???
You spend your disposable income on computers/internet but its politics that is going to “constrain” your life.
Sadly, not all things are political, its just that politics ultimately affects all things.
And so it goes. Animby hitting a home run every time. ((That was a placebo!–Ha, ha.))
Say Counterweight==I thought of a book plot: This special forces doc without a border saves the life of a War Lord by using a Placebo. He is promoted and given accolades and given an assignment of choice: of course, a Thailand E/R serving as a base for him to go all over the Far East. But then, our Hero secretly gives a Placebo to a local big Shot who dies from unrelated issues but our Doc gets blamed for it and ends his life like Charlie Wrangle. High drama? Shakesperian? Or you could reverse the order showing he was convinced and ultimately vindicated for lying when prudent. I think your background really is RICH with dramatic conflict.
I wish I was you, so I could be me.
Ha, ha.
Write-ON! Merry Xmas.
I think we should rename this blog “John C Dvorak’s Test for Really Short Attention Spans…”
The comments are getting more and more off the mark.
WTF was that comment (#8) supposed to be about “bobbo, it takes two fools to have an argument’?
Now back to the topic: I prefer “count down progress bars” where the time remaining is decremented. (And not in Microsoft seconds either. Those clocks just stall, skip and reset all on their own.)
The rest is eye candy and of no consequence.
msbpodcast, moderators, ed’s, and the DU Community==I apologize for allegedly going off the mark. Course, as everything is connected to everything else differing only by degree, I must demur that Counterweight could very well take my post as an “argument” having only the backwards illusion of a plot progression. Or just the opposite. Depends on your personal politics.
I will admit in the spirit of post #10 and the invitation of a fool, that said comment is off topic as well, related only by degrees of separation. The topic is how there is an illusion when a bar proceeds at a steady pace but is animated by internal gradients that appear to make it speed up or slow down. Who cares what msbocast might prefer otherwise? How is that relevant?? I prefer a digital progression count going forward AND a digital counting down. I prefer the progression to be in a green hue, with the count down to be in shades of magenta. Who cares?
I found the optical illusion to be fascinating but doesn’t the presentation say it all thus inviting the tangential? I think so.
Having no choice in the matter, I will suffer the slings and arrows that come my way.
Yea, Verily.
LOL, I knew someone would mention Obama somewhere in this comment thread. Some people on this blog are really nuckin’ futs.
#8 – I don’t like biographies.
(PS – I was a Ranger not SpecFarces)
#9 msbpodcast : That was pretty obnoxious of you. Bobbo took nothing from you and gave me, and possibly a couple of others, a little cheer. We all go off topic from time to time. Bobbo only made an aside that was unlikely to lead the thread off into the netherworld of off-topic posts. But you have appointed yourself the moderator Nazi and, of course, have left yourself wide open for reproach the next time you stray. Tch. Tch. Have another egg nog – virgin, I presume?
Yes. Definitely an illusion on my lovely, but Flash un-blighted iPad. All I see is a big white hole in the page…
#15 Petros – isn’t that big white hole the Apple trademark?
Progress bars are all very nice, but they actually can slow the whole process down. I remember a development discussion where we had looked at this.
If processing power is being used to tell you how something is doing, less is being used on actually doing it.
For those who lowered this to a political discussion, the more time spent on telling you about Obamas religion, birthplace, smoking habits etc the less time he has to spend on what he thinks he is there for.
In the end we decided to keep the progress bars because some users would be prone to rebooting the PC if they didn’t have a pretty picture in front of them!
# 17 Holdfast ‘Progress bars are all very nice, but they actually can slow the whole process down.’
I don’ know nuthin ’bout birthin no babies Mizz Scarlet but I wonder can a progress bar truly slow down the process perceptibly? It’s a simple arithmetic formula: we know how big the file is, we know how much we’ve got, some simple division and we know what percentage we’ve got. With the CPU turning a couple billion operations per second, would that simple number crunch and the consequent graphing really take a noticeable portion of the processing power? Maybe if the time remaining is thrown into the mix. Let’s see – I’ve got a 5MB file and I’m getting 150 kB per second so it ought to take… oh, hell, that’s too much math for me.
Counterweight–if the character is “not this” and “not that” then how would it be a biography? I would have thought the notion that the main character was a “Hero” would have clued you in the book wasn’t about you. How egotistical!
msbpodcast–see, its only the “illusion” of a biography. You think you are making progress, but its really fiction. Amusing?–or are your gradient lines always going forward?
It takes two fools to have an argument. Everyone here is sooooo smart, or too dumb. Amusing how that works.
If the bar rapidly flickers while it is moving, and then it seems 11% faster than it really is, should we paint road centre lines shorter and closer together to reduce driver speeds in approaches to intersections?
#6, “Only on Dvorak Uncensored would progress bars devolve into politics.”
It’s like Godwin’s Law in more modern days. Shall we call it Dvorak’s Law?