Vice versa

In the Pirates of Silicon Valley, Bill is shown the first mouse. "But how does the mouse control the cursor on the screen?", He asks. "It's vice versa", he answered, and Steve interrupts the speech.

Everything indeed work vice versa: the mouse itself does not control the cursor: this computer polls the mouse through the mechanism of so-called interrupts, in which direction and how far it has moved.

In the lesson of geography we are told: "The length of the equator of the Earth is 40 thousand kilometers". In the physics lesson, we learn that everything is vice versa. In fact, the meter is one forty millionth part of the equator. Hence a neat round number.

Lightning beats from a thundercloud to the ground? Nope, it works vice versa: on slow motion it is clear that the second, the brightest path, comes from the Earth.

The electrician tries to change the wiring and gets an electric shock. How is this possible? He himself clicked the switch. Vice versa: the wires were mixed and the switch was put on the neutral wire instead of the phase.

Well, electrician is a stupid example.

This article is about the following. In the design of interfaces, and indeed in life, it is sometimes very useful to look at things from a different angle: to imagine that they work vice versa.

If you do this, then sometimes very interesting things are found out. The buttons for controlling the window, for example, should be on the left, closer to the menu. It turns out that the wheel of the mouse and the scrolling on the touchpad should work on the contrary. That the letters on the racing car should be tilted in the opposite direction. Here also appears Upside Down World Map. Well, even the Earth starts to rotate around the Sun!

If you can not understand the principle of the work of a thing: from the card focus to the space-time continuum — it is quite possible that they just work vice versa.