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on-line advertising and the power switch on the new Macintoshes
``` I've enclosed two messages from the latest edition of the excellent Risks Digest. For a sample copy, including subscription information, send a message that looks like this:
To: rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: archive send risks
While I'm at it, let me mention two new files with information about Caller Number ID (CNID), the FCC-imposed privacy-jeopardizing implementations of which I have been complaining about on the net recently:
To: rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: archive send peterson-cnid
and
To: rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: archive send risks-cnid
Residents of the United States: Have you sent your letter to the FCC and your state attorney general yet?
Phil
Encl:
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 94 17:15:19 PDT
From: RISKS Forum
RISKS-LIST: RISKS-FORUM Digest Monday 24 October 1994 Volume 16 : Issue 49
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Date: 24 Oct 1994 11:39:19 -0400 From: jfurr@acpub.duke.edu (Joel K. Furr) Subject: The FTC wades in
From: Don.Blumenthal@wpo.ftc.gov
FOR RELEASE: SEPTEMBER 14, 1994
FTC TARGETS ADVERTISING ON "INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY": Credit repair co. urged consumers to falsify data, FTC Charged
In its first case targeting advertising on the "information superhighway," the Federal Trade Commission has charged a Sacramento, California, man with making false claims in the course of promoting his credit-repair program on an on-line computer service. The FTC alleged that Brian Corzine, doing business as Chase Consulting, promoted his $99 program on America Online. The program allegedly advises consumers to take illegal steps in order to repair their credit records, while representing that it is "100% legal." At the FTC's request, a federal district court has ordered a temporary halt to the alleged deceptive promotion, and frozen Corzine's assets to preserve any funds for consumer redress.
"As these computer networks continue to grow, we will not tolerate the use of deceptive practices here any more than we have tolerated them on other recently-emerged technologies for marketing products and services to consumers," said FTC Chairman Janet D. Steiger in announcing the case.
In its complaint detailing the charges in the case, the FTC alleged that Corzine (also known as Brian Chase) advertised his credit program on America Online, instructing consumers to contact Chase Consulting through the computer service. Corzine allegedly enticed consumers to do so by using statements such as:
-- "FOR JUST $99.00 WE WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO CREATE A BRAND NEW CREDIT FILE AT ALL 3 OF THE MAJOR CREDIT BUREAUS...100% LEGAL AND 200% GUARANTEED."
Consumers who contacted Chase Consulting by computer received a three-page description of the program instructing them to obtain a "taxpayer identification number" from one of a few specific Internal Revenue Service regional centers and then to use this number in place of their Social Security number on credit applications. The complete "file segregation" program included a booklet which further instructed consumers to obtain two new addresses: one for use on their driver's licenses and one for use on credit applications. Corzine allegedly represented that the program is legal. But consumers who falsify statements on certain loan and credit applications or falsify their Social Security number would violate one or more federal criminal statutes, the FTC said.
The FTC has asked the federal district court to issue a permanent injunction against Corzine prohibiting him from engaging in these kinds of practices in the future, and ordering him to pay consumer redress.
The FTC vote to file the complaint was 3-0, with Commissioner Dennis A. Yao not participating. It was filed under seal in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, in Sacramento, on Sept. 12, 1994. The seal was lifted late yesterday.
NOTE: The Commission files a complaint when it has "reason to believe" that the law has been or is being violated, and it appears to the Commission that a proceeding is in the public interest. The complaint is not a finding or ruling that the defendant has actually violated the law. The case will be decided by the court.
Copies of the complaint and free FTC brochures for consumers titled "Credit Repair Scams," "A New Credit Identity: A New Credit Repair Scam," and "How to Dispute Credit Report Errors," which offer tips on avoiding these types of schemes and correcting your own credit record, are available from the FTC's Public Reference Branch, Room 130, 6th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580; 202-326-2222; TTY for the hearing impaired 202-326-2502. # # #
MEDIA CONTACT: Bonnie Jansen, Office of Public Affairs 202-326-2161 bonnie.jansen@wpo.ftc.gov
STAFF CONTACT: Bureau of Consumer Protection David Medine, 202-326-3224 david.medine@wpo.ftc.gov
Jeffrey S. Markowitz, 202-327-2460 jeffery.markowitz@wpo.ftc.gov
(FTC File No. 9423295) (Civil Action No. CIV-S-94-1446 (DFL)) (chase)
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Date: Sun, 23 Oct 1994 10:39:00 -0700 From: dnorman@apple.com (Don Norman) Subject: That Macintosh Power Switch
Suddenly RISKS has become concerned over the placement of the power switch on the on a model of the Mac. Sigh. The concern is justified, but the solution not quite so apparent.
Would RISK readers be reassured or appalled to discover that several months ago I thrust myself into the battle and now am in charge of solving the problem? Ah, a simple problem, one I thought would offer some relief from the more substantive issues I normally grapple with. All I had to do was find a consistent logical spot to put the power switch, and do it right, once and for all.
Wrong. Now several months later, after numerous meetings and roughly ten draft proposals, meeting with roughly 30 people from several divisions of the company, we are perhaps near a solution. Perhaps, but hardly a week ago a new problem arose that, as yet, does not have a solution.
Let me tell you, it isn't easy to do a consistent policy on power switches. The proposal, plus justification is 21 pages. First of all we have an incredible variety of machines, from those used as high power workstations, to servers (which need protected power switches), to office, home, and educational machines. And portables. Some machines are placed on the desk, often with the monitor on top. Some are placed on the floor. Some are rotated to stand on their side. Some would seem to require clearly marked, easily accessible switches. Some need switches out of reach.
On top of these problems, we don't even want people to use the power switch: it invariably leads to damage. We prefer them to use the shutdown menu which can do a neat, orderly quitting of applications and safe shutdown. Under normal conditions, it would be best not to have a power switch at all. But sometimes it is necessary to disconnect power. And I have even heard it claimed that our software sometimes crashes (really?), so that a soft, graceful shutdown isn't possible. In this case, some sort of shutdown switch is required, one that bypasses system software.
Some otherwise simple solutions are ruled out by cost considerations. In the low-end market, where cost dominates and the profit margins are negligible, even a very slight extra cost can disrupt product sales, so if we want a uniform policy for all machines, it has to be one acceptable to the most cost-conscious product.
Finally, we must satisfy international safety requirements, have a solution that works across the world with a variety of languages and cultural expectations, and that can be used by people with a variety of disabilities. It has to be readily understood by first-time users, people who may never have used a Mac before, but not annoy our skilled, power users. Moreover, the problems are tightly coupled with the need to reboot occasionally, and programmers need a way of getting into the debug state. And as I said, the solution has to work for both the normal situation and the case where the system software is no longer responding. The power switch problem therefore also becomes the problem of providing capabilities to "reboot," to do an "emergency power down," and to get access to the "debug state." Not to mention labeling the power key.
You wouldn't believe how much time we spent on the problem of appropriately labeling the switch. The left-facing triangle on the keyboard switch is there because it doesn't mean anything. (Honest.) The earlier symbol (vertical line inside a circle) was not permitted because the European standards people wouldn't let us use it -- that symbol was reserved for hard power switches. The triangle has no meaning, so it didn't violate any standards. Mind you, the legal symbols are just as non-meaningful to most people. Few -- European or American -- are confident about the meaning of the vertical bar and circle (on and off, respectively), let alone bar inside of circle (a toggled on/off), or vertical bar inside broken circle (toggled soft-power), but the European standards committee is very strict. There are safety risks associated with thinking a shutdown switch removes all power from the machine when it doesn't. (Today, many electronic devices never have all power removed. The "power" button on the television remote does not do a hard shutdown, nor does the "shut down" menu choice on the Mac. After all, if they really shut down all power, the TV remote wouldn't be able to turn the power back on, nor would the Mac's keyboard turn on the machine. Your clock radio, for example, is not really off when you turn "off" the power. If it were off, how would the clock be powered?)
So, what seemed to be a very simple task, one that would remove all the confusions of our power switch locations, to say nothing of the infamous problem newly discovered by RISKS readers (but well known within Apple) where the keyboard can accidentally hit the power switch (nobody in RISKS commented on that -- you guys are slipping!) turned out to be incredibly complex. Yes, people turn off the power thinking they are pushing the diskette eject button. Macs don't have a diskette eject button -- we eject disks gracefully, under program control -- which is why the designers failed to note this problem prior to manufacture: it is users of non-Mac machines that have this problem. This is not justification, but I am continually amazed by the number of usage combinations that have to be tested -- it feels infinite -- so no matter how thorough the user testing, new situations arise after the product is shipped, situations that the bystander thinks so obvious that the designers must have been stupid not to have noticed (ah, that famous paper again: hindsight is not equal to foresight).
(By the way, you can't have a warning message come up when the power switch is hit for several reasons, the simplest being that if the software has crashed, you can't guarantee that the message would be displayed or the response attended to -- you need some way of forcing a shutdown when everything else has failed.)
(And while I am at it, don't suggest that our job would be simpler if we simply made software that never crashed. Or that we could use a watchdog timer to do automatic reboots.Yes, but ... .)
So what will we come up with? Can you live without a power switch on the CPU box, assuming all other cases have been dealt with? Assuming the system were protected against accidents. What if the switch were only in the rear? (Remember, we don't want people to use it under normal circumstances.)
Will my committee actually be able to find a common proposal that all the divisions of the company can accept? Who knows? Will the solution we are close to adopting solve all problems? Almost definitely not. Will it be an improvement over the current solution? Absolutely. Could we have done better? Maybe, but if we knew how, we would.
Whew: look how long this simple note has become, just to clarify the nature of the problem. Symptomatic.
(As for Calling Number Identification: once the power switch task is finished, it will be a relief to turn to something easy.)
Don Norman (severely chastened design critic and practitioner). User Experience Architect. Apple Computer. Cupertino, CA USA. dnorman@apple.com
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End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 16.49
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