Almost all of the current process scheduling algorithms which are used in modern operating systems (OS) have their roots in the classical scheduling paradigms which were developed during the 1970's. But modern computers have different types of software loads and user demands. We think it is important to run what the user wants at the current moment. A user can be a human, sitting in front of a desktop machine, or it can be another machine sending a request to a server through a network connection. We think that OS should become intelligent to distinguish between different processes and allocate resources, including CPU, to those processes which need them most. In this work, as a first step to make the OS aware of the current state of the system, we consider process dependencies and interprocess communications. We are developing a model, which considers the need to satisfy interactive users and other possible remote users or customers, by making scheduling decisions based on process dependencies and interprocess communications. Our simple proof of concept implementation and experiments show the effectiveness of this approach in the real world applications. Our implementation does not require any change in the software applications nor any special kind of configuration in the system, Moreover, it does not require any additional information about CPU needs of applications nor other resource requirements. Our experiments show significant performance improvement for real world applications. For example, almost constant average response time for Mysql data base server and constant frame rate for mplayer under different simulated load values.
Windows @cite_7 also uses windows system input focus'' as a measure of user interaction and it increases the priority of a process which has the input focus. Using input focus may help to improve interactivity performance but has several problems. If a user is running multiple interactive programs, for example an audio player and a web browser, while he she is browsing the web and input focus is on the web browser, the user still wants the audio player to play the music well. Input focus mechanism also might not be usefull if a user interacts with the system through the network.
@cite_7
1968954610 2009127721 2158378644 1830858207
Desktop operating systems such as Windows and Linux base scheduling decisions on CPU consumption; processes that consume fewer CPU cycles are prioritized, assuming that interactive processes gain from this since they spend most of their time waiting for user input. However, this doesn't work for modern multimedia applications which require significant CPU resources. We therefore suggest a new metric to identify interactive processes by explicitly measuring interactions with the user, and we use it to design and implement a process scheduler. Measurements using a variety of applications indicate that this scheduler is very effective in distinguishing between competing interactive and noninteractive processes. This paper examines the hypothesis that information flow, from device to user, is a vital part of skilled activity in human-computer interaction. Two studies are reported. The first study questions users of keyboard-driven word processors about the effects of cursor-movement, finding and word-deletion commands in various contexts. The second study questions users of the Apple Macintosh-based systems, MacWrite and Microsoft Word, about the behaviour of the menu-driven find command. In both studies it is discovered that users often do not know the precise effects of frequently-used actions, such as the final position of the cursor, even though these effects are vital for future planning. It is concluded that even experienced users must acquire the information they need from the device's display during interactions, and that they do not necessarily remember regular details that are available in this way. This conclusion conflicts with those current models of user psychology that assume routine skill relies on complete mental specifications of methods for performing tasks. Existing information-visualization techniques that target small screens are usually limited to exploring a few hundred items. In this article we present a scatterplot tool for personal digital assistants that allows the handling of many thousands of items. The application's scalability is achieved by incorporating two alternative interaction techniques: a geometric-semantic zoom that provides smooth transition between overview and detail, and a fisheye distortion that displays the focus and context regions of the scatterplot in a single view. A user study with 24 participants was conducted to compare the usability and efficiency of both techniques when searching a book database containing 7500 items. The study was run on a pen-driven Wacom board simulating a PDA interface. While the results showed no significant difference in task-completion times, a clear majority of 20 users preferred the fisheye view over the zoom interaction. In addition, other dependent variables such as user satisfaction and subjective rating of orientation and navigation support revealed a preference for the fisheye distortion. These findings partly contradict related research and indicate that, when using a small screen, users place higher value on the ability to preserve navigational context than they do on the ease of use of a simplistic, metaphor-based interaction style Author(s): Kaczmarek, T; Kobsa, A; Sy, R; Tsudik, G | Abstract: User errors while performing security-critical tasks can lead to undesirable or even disastrous consequences. One major factor influencing mistakes and failures is complexity of such tasks, which has been studied extensively in prior research. Another important issue which hardly received any attention is the impact of both accidental and intended distractions on users performing security-critical tasks. In particular, it is unclear whether, and to what extent, unexpected sensory cues (e.g., auditory or visual) can influence user behavior and or trigger mistakes. Better understanding of the effects of intended distractions will help clarify their role in adversarial models. As part of the research effort described in this paper, we administered a range of naturally occurring -- yet unexpected -- sounds while study participants attempted to perform a security-critical task. We found that, although these auditory cues lowered participants' failure rates, they had no discernible effect on their task completion times. To this end, we overview some relevant literature that explains these somewhat counter-intuitive findings. Conducting a thorough and meaningful study on user errors requires a large number of participants, since errors are typically infrequent and should not be instigated more than once per subject. To reduce the effort of running numerous subjects, we developed a novel experimental setup that was fully automated and unattended. We discuss our experience with this setup and highlight the pros and cons of generalizing its usage.