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Sad day. I enjoyed the fiction and the Byte column, despite him being a jerk sometimes.

Anyone interested in science fiction should read at least The Mote in God's Eye.

My favourite bit of design advice is for when a program is about to delete a lot of user data.

The program should require cognizant confirmation:

  Are you sure you want to destroy 5 days' work? Type DESTROY 5 DAYS' WORK to confirm.

I tried to stick to (old) Apple interface guidelines for a long time. Eventually I realised, for instance, that only tiny numbers of people need to be taught how to use a mouse.

Thank you for scanning and posting this. I have a copy kicking about and keep meaning to share.

Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a magical level of reliability.

Priest, like Aldiss, is a favourite writer of mine. I especially enjoyed reading Inverted World as a teenager.

Upvoting your comment. I hope you won't minding me suggest you update the first line to read Clarke rather than Clark. Perhaps I'm tired, but it took me a minute to figure out who you meant.

I think he was pretty constructive about it, by HN standards.