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Go ahead and refactor; but for god's sake, don't dump & rewrite! Look at this for further explanation

being the first one to prosecute against the right to innovate, but _OUTSIDE_Microsoft? :]

btw, Joel Spolky makes some good comments about non-compete clauses here (<- i mean, there).

pS: I wonder if the Crossgain crew wear these neat t-shirts.

To further enhance the connections, I created the LinkBack program, to help independent websites see when someone has linked to them.

Much of what Katz said is essentially true, though I believe he really belabored the point. We've been using message boards in one form or another for the past 20 years, and we can all see how well that works. Perhaps a different approach altogether is what is called for.

To further enhance the connections, I created the LinkBack program, to help independent websites see when someone has linked to them.

Much of what Katz said is essentially true, though I believe he really belabored the point. We've been using message boards in one form or another for the past 20 years, and we can all see how well that works. Perhaps a different approach altogether is what is called for.

Check out this story about rewriting software.

http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$1 90

I got my TiVo about two weeks ago. It's absolutely fantastic. I hope that this means that TiVo is doing well. If you'd like to get a TiVo for free, they've got an essay contest going on right now, just write 250 words at this site, they give away at least 10 per day. I know four people who have won.

If you're interested, you can also read my review of my TiVo. I'm seriously thinking about putting in a bigger drive, my weenie 14 hour model simply isn't big enough to cover me being gone for 4 days at a time. Everyone who I've let play with my TiVo said "This is cool, I have to get one". It's one of those devices that is hard to explain in 30 seconds to a non-technical user, but let them play with it for a bit, and they realize the possibilities.
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I couldn't find one single idea that could actually be implemented in a software product in that entire white paper.

.NET is proof that the marketroids have taken over Microsoft.

Linked of the article. Funny article by a former Micro$oft employee saying that .NET is vapourware. Worth a look here.

.

This shows that Buchanan's results in Palm beach were indeed an anomoly

In case you missed the link at the bottom of the page, look at this article by "Joel" called 'Microsoft Goes Bonkers":

http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$1 33

It gives a wonderful insight into the inner-workings of Microsoft from a former employee who worked there for three years.

There is also an (anonymous) reply from a current Microsoft employee who backs up pretty much everything Joel says:

http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$1 37

Definitely worth a click.

In case you missed the link at the bottom of the page, look at this article by "Joel" called 'Microsoft Goes Bonkers":

http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$1 33

It gives a wonderful insight into the inner-workings of Microsoft from a former employee who worked there for three years.

There is also an (anonymous) reply from a current Microsoft employee who backs up pretty much everything Joel says:

http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$1 37

Definitely worth a click.

I pretty much agree with you, but statistics like this are hard to ignore. Obviously something was amiss. There have already been lawsuits filed so this thing will drag for a bit. Either way it is going to paint the winner in a negative light (Gore, whining and sueing to win; Bush, winning without popular vote and because of screwy ballots).
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Go to the graph at A Curmudgeon Teaches Statistics and choose Nader as the Y variable, now the top point with X as Gore, Bush or Buchannan is Pinellas! I see another conspiracy!

The percentage of votes for Buchannan in Palm Beach is not the highest percentage in the state of Florida, Baker county has a higher percentage. The percentage for Buchannan in Calhoun is more than twice that in Palm Beach!

Given that the percentage of votes for Bush is almost the lowest in the state, I think that the poor voters who choose Buchannan actually meant to choose Bush! Bush -vs- Buchannan...logical mistake! You Decide!!

It isn't confusing at all. Not at all. The only people who are responsible for the problem are the people who couldn't follow simple instructions and take the time to look at what they were doing.

So you say. Expert testimony says otherwise. Jakob Nielsen:

The Florida ballot clearly had usability problems, caused by the attempt to map a two-column set of labels onto a one-column action area. A direct mapping between two single-column areas would have been much less error-prone.

Nielsen doesn't go so far as to say that this is specifcally what cost Gore the election, but with 19K incorrectly filled out ballots in two counties, I'd say it's a pretty fair guess.

Additionally, from Dan Bricklin:

You can see pictures of the ballot on the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Election's web site ... What isn't obvious from these pictures is exactly how the ballots aligned with the holes in real machines. Boston.com has an AP picture that shows one situation without the card but a real holder. The artist's conception many others are showing doesn't look as realistic.

Take a look at the interactive graph here to see a how the votes break down by county.
Try different candidates on the x-axis, and leave Buchanan on the y.

I think it's clear that there were definitely people confused, and it could well have changed the outcome of the national election (though we'll have to wait for the overseas ballots to get a better idea of that.) Yet, I don't think there was any fraud or illegal action here, everything followed the legal procedures of designing and verifying a "fair" ballot, and there are no provisions to vote again. Especially after knowing the importance in a clearly Gore county, the people in that county will be hugely influenced by their heightened effect on the election.

Now, if blacks were obstructed from voting at all, (or dead people did vote) that's a totally different matter, and very illegal, though I'm not sure what the law dictates as the correct way to deal with it.

In any case, I don't think we should be ale to just make up what we think is a good remedy now. We have laws, we should figure out how they apply and live by them. If we don't like it, then let's change them, but we can't just ignore them when we don't like them!

Here's a plot of the distribution of votes in the relevant Florida precincts.

Joel Spolsky also writes on these same issues: interviewing programmers, hiring programmers, user interface design for programmers, functional specifications, as well as productive software schedules.

Joel Spolsky also writes on these same issues: interviewing programmers, hiring programmers, user interface design for programmers, functional specifications, as well as productive software schedules.

Joel Spolsky also writes on these same issues: interviewing programmers, hiring programmers, user interface design for programmers, functional specifications, as well as productive software schedules.

Joel Spolsky also writes on these same issues: interviewing programmers, hiring programmers, user interface design for programmers, functional specifications, as well as productive software schedules.

Joel Spolsky also writes on these same issues: interviewing programmers, hiring programmers, user interface design for programmers, functional specifications, as well as productive software schedules.

Joel Spolsky also writes on these same issues: interviewing programmers, hiring programmers, user interface design for programmers, functional specifications, as well as productive software schedules.

Subject: [CTA] :CueCat Reader for Mac
From: "Dan Fisher"
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 08:13:39 +1100

Hey Guys,

There's a really neat little product being pushed (FOR FREE) by RadioShack called the :CueCat Reader. There is a Mac version of the software in development, and they're gauging the response on their website with a form for Mac users to sign up if they're interested. Let's show them we want this! Go read up on it at the site, it's basically a barcode scanner that launches websites of the products or books, CDs, DVDs, whatever you scan into it.

http://www.crq.com/mac.html

Dan

Personally, I agree with Joel On Software -- I can't imagine why I would want one of these, regardless of whose software it runs.

Does DC have a right to dictate the use of a product that was given away for free? Did the product come with a disclaimer that stated how it was to be used? I don't believe that by giving someone a product without prior consent that you can legally dictate how they use it. Does DC have the right to sue if I decide to trash, break, or burn the product?

They're sore because there lame marketing idea has found a better purpose and all that money has gone to waste.

The article points out that, as designed, the :CueCat is a solution in search of a problem, and DigitalConvergence.com (where the hell does the silly colon go in their name anyway?) must have an unbelievable burn rate at the moment. The latter factor could explain why the DC people are so anal about people fooling around with the Cats in "unauthorized" ways even though the number of people doing so is undoubtedly a tiny percentage of the people who actually have the devices...

Eric
--

Actually, when this came up on kde-devel, instead of a flamewar it generated a patch for klipper's faulty handling of the $47 in the URL.

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Here is a good article pointing out their flawed business model.

• from the windows-help.net web site...
• According to Microsoft, Office 10 will also offer significant new security features, including a central security panel; advanced password encryption; higher default security settings for Excel and PowerPoint; the option to not install Visual Basic for Applications with Office; and the functionality of the Outlook Email Security Update

The central point in Mr. Curry's article is that formats, essentially radio stations buying playlists from a market research firm rather than trusting the taste of their DJs, are what is good and pure about radio today, and that we should spread the white light of formats to Napster and Gnutella.

Formats have destroyed the creativity and the variety in radio. It is now possible to drive cross-country listening to the radio and not hear one new song. I'm sorry, Mr. Curry, but some of us don't want to listen to the same Top 3 song at the top of every hour. Some of us would like to have radio introduce us to exciting new artists, not to rehash the same tired old songs that every other radio station plays. The tragedy of this practice is that most of the DJs at these boring radio stations are people who feel passionate about music, people whose taste I would love to explore, if they were only given the opportunity to express that taste. But they are not given that opportunity. Rather, they are forced to play a bland repetition of songs that no doubt bores them as much as it bores me.

Those who seek something new and different from music have either turned to college or public radio, or have found their way to Napster and internet music. Napster is refreshing precisely because it does not have formats. Once can download whatever music they like to their hard disk, create a huge playlist, and random play to their hearts content. Napster provides depth, so that one can listen to Cat Power and Erik Satie and Black Flag back-to-back, should the mood strike you.

It is a characteristic of old-school people who find themselves in a new paradigm to attempt to clothe their previous medium in the new technology and to pretend that they are modern. WorldClassRock is a great example of this. Los Angeles is a vast, diverse radio market provided with an abyssmal selection of radio stations. Channel 101.9, and later channel 103.1, were a brief break from this monotony. In both cases, though, they could not establish a profitable presence on the dial. My own theory is that they were killed by their own playlist. The listeners of those radio stations truly wanted the "world class rock" that the stations claimed to have, and were instead provided with playlist rock. For a while it was a different playlist, and was a novel break, but soon other radio stations copied their format enough to make their station sound old and tired. One had hoped that going online would allow the radio statio to take advantage of the novel features that the internet provides. Throw out the playlist! Listen to your DJs! Perhaps support real-time user rating of the songs you play. Or support two parallel streams at the same time, so that if a person doesn't like what is on one stream, they could listen to the other. The internet, after all, does not have the same limitations on the available number of frequencies that broadcast radio has. Alas, so far it appears that WorldClassRock is the same old playlist, the same old commercials, and the FM stations offered, just broadcast over a different medium, but perhaps it is too early to tell. One can still hold out hope that their true spirit will emerge in time.

I do, however, hold out some hope for SonicNet, which allows users to tailor their music feed in much the same way that My Yahoo! allows user to select the news articles they want to see. The selection is still a bit limited, but what is encouraging is that SonicNet is trying to do something different and creative with the technology rather than pushing the same thing threw new wires.

The nerds on the internet in general have very good taste in music. We want the same variety and creativity from our music that we put into our own work. Mainstream radio hasn't given this to us, they've given us Brittany Spears and Third Eye Blind played over and over and over, and we've gone to Napster. Those who escape from the roof will think twice before coming in through the front door again. I'm sure that Mr. Curry means well, but I'm afraid he simply doesn't Get It.

dmp

I think one cannot look to institutions, commercial or otherwise, to look after one's own interest. To do so is to invite totalitarianism. From a certain point of view, what we are seeing is just natural progression of society from a paternal state to one in which people have to take more personal responsibility for their own well-being.

Of course, that doesn't mean it's acceptable for companies to outright deceive the public - such as the case of rBGH milk. But I think that is a sympton of the fact that we are in a transitional period from a paternal state to a personal society - the counter-acting mechanism is yet to be formed. Some people would say that's what the government/the press are for. But I disagree.

Most people expect their government to look out for their well-being, based on a deep seated belief about what civilized society is all about. But things change, human civilization evolve. What we've been taught to believe is 'right' is just that, a belief. That doesn't make it 'real' or 'right'. The fact of the matter is, the insitutions (government, press, church, etc) we came to rely upon no longer work.

Once we realize that there is no going back to the past, instead of trying to fix these institutions, perhaps we should concentrate on inventing new ways of safeguarding our own lives. After all, what's the point of all the supposed education people get these days if they can't be bothered thinking? According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. So I don't believe 'busy lifestyle imposed by modern society' is a very good excuse.

Right now, we have more free time and resource than ever before in human history. The average middle-class individual in the Western World now has more power at his/her disposal than ever before. But one cannot have true Freedom and Power without Responsibility. Every social change brings about disruption and sometimes genuine misery. But if one step back and look at the big picture I think it would be obvious that life is good and as a whole, things have never been better.

Three options I can think of are

1. Digital Creations' Zope
2. UserLand's Frontier.
3. Apple's WebObjects

Zope and Frontier are similar tools, giving you both very powerful behind-the-scenes scripting and database access and customizable easy-to-use frontends.

Frontier started as a scripting environment for the Macintosh, evolved into a great tool for designing complex static Web sites, and is now a full-blown HTTP server with very powerful database features. It's very XML-enabled (UserLand is active in the XML developer community, and is a co-author of SOAP). Manila gives you Web-based editing capabilities. See the EditThisPage Top 100 for some examples of what people are doing with Manila.

There are three main downsides to Frontier from my perspective that may not be an issue for your company:

1. It's expensive. US$899 per copy (basically per machine), with volume discounts for five or more licenses.
2. At the moment, it only runs on Windows (2000 and NT, of course, but also 95 and 98) and Macintosh. There is supposed to be a port to Linux underway, but the last time I heard anything, that port was going to be using WINE, and so would be x86-only.
3. It's proprietary. As a commercial product, the source is closed. It has a powerful scripting language called UserTalk that can allow you to do amazing things, but I don't know how easy it would be to write extensions.

Zope is a lot like Frontier, but free. It's written in Python, making it easier to write extensions, and is open source. It should run on any platform that can host a Python interpreter (Unix, Windows, Mac, for sure, but also BeOS and some others). The big downside to Zope is that it has virtually no useful ``getting started'' documentation right now (although an O'Reilly book is forthcoming). As a result, I suspect you'd have to do a fair amount of handholding to get people started.

WebObjects is a pretty high-end solution for building Web applications. It's been around for a while, and has a pretty good reputation, but it's definitely not for amateurs. It's now actually cheaper than Frontier (US$699 per copy). It runs on Mac OS X Server, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000, Solaris 2.6 and 2.7, and HP-UX 11. (The development tools run on Mac OS X Server and Windows NT and 2000.) Programmable using Java, Objective C, or WebScript. WebObjects is definitely more oriented toward centralized control, and doesn't (by default) provide support for individual webmasters to run their own sites within its aegis.

I hope that gives you some ideas.

First of all, the #1 cardinal criteria for getting hired at PaxDigita:

Smart, and
Gets Things Done.

That's it. That's all we're looking for. Memorize that. Recite it to yourself before you go to bed every night. Our goal is to hire people with aptitude, not a particular skill set. Any skill set that people can bring to the job will be technologically obsolete in a couple of years, anyway, so it's better to hire people that are going to be able to learn any new technology rather than people who happen to know SQL programming right this minute....

This is pretty interesting, but the successful implementation of what I'm calling the potlatch protocol will succeed due to it's clone-ability; it's adaptability which equals its adoptability. In other words, it needs to exist now, not in December, and it needs to use the existing plumbing. It's likely that Freenet or something like it will define the future evolution of this new/old economic form, but we gotta be here now kiddies!

Here's something now: a programmable radio station, built with PHP, MySQL and icecast (source code included): spinsystem lets you vote for the next song.

I'll be folding this feature into the next rev. of radio potlatch, but right now I'm at a cabin up the coast, watching the tide come in over the oyster beds and I think I need to go read a book in the sun now...

Although I should probably be talking about this over on the Mozilla thread, you really gotta wonder why them folks didn't take more of a KDE approach to building a browser. Consider for a moment some of the reasons why Konqueror was able to get out the door so quickly. They took an existing shell, then concentrated their efforts towards the rendering engine.

On the other hand, Netscape also had a functional shell. They decided to drop all of the 5+ years of development on it to start over from scratch. I personally have trouble believing that 99% of the 4.x code was so dinked that it couldn't have been salvaged to at least encapsulate the Gecko engine that's been collecting dust for over a year now.

The lesson to be learned here is to very loudly kill the idiot who suggests taking a market leading piece of software and re-write it from scratch. Afterwards, place that person's skull atop a stick as folks are walking to their cubicles as a reminder. Joel Spolsky (as linked from that Suck article) has a great run down on this.

Much to the credit of KDE, they didn't get sucked into the notion of rebuilding from nothing. Certainly much of their code has been re-worked, but this didn't mean throwing everything out and starting over. As a result, I fully expect to see a functional KDE 2.0 in September. Mozilla should be out some time after IE 7.0.

"My suggestion is to use an aggregate payment system tied in to a database which allows registered members to exchange credits or points on the system - In other words, you charge up your account ... and can then distribute "points" to anyone else on the system." (From this thread at Hack the Planet)

Confirmation once again that like causes produce like effects, and that all events are products of their times. And what times? An historical inflection point, year zero of a new phase in human society. These ideas are everywhere now, "in everyone's heads". A crucial point: systems like this can only work if they are built on open and non-proprietary foundations, (ie. "platforms without the platform vendors" ie. nobody owns it) So all of these similar initiaves need to become interoperable.

"My suggestion is to use an aggregate payment system tied in to a database which allows registered members to exchange credits or points on the system - In other words, you charge up your account ... and can then distribute "points" to anyone else on the system." (From this thread at Hack the Planet)

Confirmation once again that like causes produce like effects, and that all events are products of their times. And what times? An historical inflection point, year zero of a new phase in human society. These ideas are everywhere now, "in everyone's heads". A crucial point: systems like this can only work if they are built on open and non-proprietary foundations, (ie. "platforms without the platform vendors" ie. nobody owns it) So all of these similar initiaves need to become interoperable.

Sure, today they're only adding links, but on the basis of all the arguments saying Deja.com is doing an OK thing, what's to stop them from doing more?

Deja.com has moved from being an internet service, archiving Usenet posts, to an Internet parasite, illegally modifying other people's post to further their own economic well being. Yes, links are a form of communication! What else are they? By adding in the links they are changing the message of the poster, and that is not just illegal but immoral and unethical.

This is a major violation of the free speech rights of Usenet posters. What good is free speech if just any old person can change what you said before it arrives to a listener? This is a form of censorship, and it doesn't matter if it's a "little" or a "lot"... it's wrong and should be fought.

There are no excuses sufficient to justify this without asking permission from every single poster of the message. Yes, that burden is impossible; that's why they shouldn't be doing this.

For an interesting take on "rewrite it from scratch" software development, check this out:

http://joel.editthispage.com/st ories/storyReader$47

Talks about Mozilla, Borland, and other projects that have had serious problems rewriting from scratch. Also,

http://joel.editthispage.com/2000/05/26 (scroll down)

A great quote from Lou Montulli of the original Netscape team.

For an interesting take on "rewrite it from scratch" software development, check this out:

http://joel.editthispage.com/st ories/storyReader$47

Talks about Mozilla, Borland, and other projects that have had serious problems rewriting from scratch. Also,

http://joel.editthispage.com/2000/05/26 (scroll down)

A great quote from Lou Montulli of the original Netscape team.

Corporate tax contribution to the US Budget
Pre World War II: ~15%
Today: ~10%

Personal income tax contribution to the US budget
Pre World War II: ~15%
Today: ~45%

You can see the full graph here

Source:Executive Office of the President of the United States - Office of Management and Budget

Editthispage.com is an example of what your looking for. It uses a program called Manilla. Editthispage.com

Some dude named Joel has a series of great articles at joel.editthispage.com on UI design. His latest installment has some horror stories about the Juno software, making some very good points in the process.

Some dude named Joel has a series of great articles at joel.editthispage.com on UI design. His latest installment has some horror stories about the Juno software, making some very good points in the process.

Here is an online book entitled "User Interface Design for Programmers" that gives an opinion on the question "What is Important in a User Interface?".

Maybe if we had a few more details on the type of project you're working on we'd be able to better reccomend some stuff. You mention a web based project. Pyra might be a good one to take a look at. It lets you set up a tree like hierarchy assigning tasks to multiple users and set different permissions to modify items to different users. Pyra is in beta and I've had one glitch with it though. From Webapps comes ITeamWork and MediaLot. I haven't checked them out but they look promising. You might look at Zaplets. While heavily hyped, this looks a little too consumer oriented to me. The PHP Projects site mentions some task management systems. You could probably easily customise these to fit your needs. Zope might also be worth checking out if you want to customise something. Their Squishdot (Slashdot clone) is easy to set up and might be appropriate for your needs. And there might be other more appropriate Zope modules available for project management.

but this (workspot.com) requires no d/l (at least not yet), making it more useful [for me].

and w/ more powerful apps included (not just a notebook or calendar or whatever), I could see getting some real work done (given bandwidth). I can't wait to investigate this a bit further ;)

An example of this product in practice is at: http://www.editthispage.com/

Personal income taxes in the US fund over 40% of the government's budget, while corporate taxes contribute only about 10%.

If the states want more tax money, they should increase the tax rate for corporate profits. Don't ask me to subsidize billion-dollar businesses!

To get the whole picture check out US Budget Receipts by Source