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I found today's User Friendly on the subject to be particularly appropriate :).

Alex Bischoff
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http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010216& mode=classic

(assuming we define usable as meaning capable of displaying a Slashdot page reasonably correctly )

no no no NO!

Sorry, but not Slashdot. Slashdot produces the most disgusting, broken, brain-dead, horrible HTML imaginable. It's nearly as bad as things produced with FrontPage. As long as soi-disant Web designers can rely on browsers tolerating their incompetence, we'll have incompetent Web designers. What we need is a browser which, when fed crud, throws an exception. This may sound extreme but it's the only way we can get a half-decent Web.

Canada, application is here

If you think this bad, check out this letter to Iambe. Our industry has its rotten spots alright.
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Remove the rocks to send email

Has anybody else been reading User Friendly's recent satire of Hollywood thought suppression? Good stuff, and I'm glad to see the Lessig interview for a serious look at the same subject.

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don't you mean...

no-one can afford to support every possible platform and configuration.

If you stick to the published specifications, you automatically support every conforming browser out there and it costs much less. This is obvious, really, to everyone except Web designers

The worst tech job has to be Being In Charge Of Feeding Pitr

When a while ago we approached an accountant with our business plan for an online health site (not the site linked in teh .sig below) he asked us to consider micropayments as an alternative to the revenue models we had proposed (ie. instead of subscriptions and advertisements and the-like).

The concept of micropayments is really old - Newspapers have been working along the same principle for ages (sell many, cheap - read Terry Pratchett's "Truth" =)). No-one is handling it in the transparent, single click (uh oh, Amazon =)) way he mentioned due to the problems with security. We probably need a form of PKI infrastructure that could identify us for - but in a way that the privacy is retained. And more then likely that would need to be free/cheap to gain a large following.

Companies like pay-pal are doing ok but when I remember the hoops I had to jump though to buy The Satori Effect (A good read btw) it was everything but transparent, certainly not single click (not David Pesci's fault - PayPals).

It would be interesting to hear from those guys and compare for example David Pesci's experience to the "Ad powered" ones like userfriendly and (my favourite "site support" comic) helpdex
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>Anyone who thinks that a good website should depend on a plugin/javascript/animated graphics/java/images with no tags/frames/ or overdesigned pages that take forever to load on a 14.4 connection deserves the complaints from users they will get at the email address listed under 'feedback' on their page.

...assuming that they can see the "feedback" link without the required plugin =)

I agree that it is cool if a site works on Lynx, but you can't really use it to read User Friendly or Dilbert where graphics equals content.

http://mp3.com/jje

Learn from AJ from User Friendly: when communicating with her online, it's "I love you", not "ILOVEYOU". =)
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"Finally, in 1999, Intel killed off the slower more expensive Pentium II by introducing the "new" Pentium III. Which for all intents and purposes is simply a Pentium II with a higher number to justify the higher cost relative to the Celeron."

This comment reminded me of this

Contrary to popular rumour, that's not him in the current User Friendly storyline.

Right?

dude, Homer wrote the Iliad. Illiad writes some lame-ass tech support cartoon.

Be sure to have a cartoonist hang around and document the interaction.

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Guillaume

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All men are great
before declaring war

I actually remember seeing this a few months ago, linked from UserFriendly, but it's still a very cool link.

I wonder how long it would take to run a program of any decent length. Wasn't it like, 7,000 generations for one step, or something?
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Matthew Walker
My DNA is Y2K compliant

For better laughs get a copy of Complete Guide to Guys, read the section on exploding vacuum cleaners.

The Exploding Hoovers would make an excellent name for a band.

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well... if this is true, I wouldn't want to be seen using bsd...

//rdj

Foreseeing the flod of Americans wanting to move to Canada we've created a form that you can fill in before you arrive.

It can be downloaded here.

kc.

user friendly carnivore

Userfriendly hase more info... the card runs linux and uses the Transmeta Crusoe chip.

Sid from User Friendly will be devastated!

Sid from User Friendly will be devastated!

wish i could do like pitr in userfriendly

Linux is flexible as hell, like other free OS's. It's also popular and available at major chain stores.. a semi-frightening thought. (I actually saw SuSE 7.0 Personal and Professional at Best Buy. No upgrade though.. I'm going to wait a while so I can get a 2.4 kernel, a slightly more stable KDE 2, and X Free 4.0.x. ) Now, what I want to see is someone successfully hack a PlayStation2 (since the other PS/2 runs it just fine) to run Linux. Maybe.. a distributed.net or Mersenne prime client? The CPU's really crank!

> a handheld scanner fetchingly shaped like a cat

...and, remembering what the CueCat's shaped like, you wonder how a word like "felchingly" got past CNet's censors...

You got that right

Might I Suggest Colombia Internet....The most Reliable ISP arround.... http://www.userfriendly.org ________________________________________________

Oh look, there are a couple - here and here.

Oh look, there are a couple - here and here.

Seeing articles like this, i believe if you'd change that to read "with above-congressman-average intelligence" then we could make a committee of Eliza, SHLRDU, Pitr's AI. Throw in an Abio and Sid's AI if you want more than 3.

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Seeing articles like this, i believe if you'd change that to read "with above-congressman-average intelligence" then we could make a committee of Eliza, SHLRDU, Pitr's AI. Throw in an Abio and Sid's AI if you want more than 3.

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You mean like this?

You read too much User Friendly (Sid Dabster thread)

Somebody dust off the steel cage... :)

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Okay, let's say AJ, Miranda, Pitr, the Dust Puppy, and the rest of the gang are all hanging out. The clique problem involves finding how many different ways they can segregate themselves into discrete groups such that everyone feels that the other groups are somehow less cool than they themselves.

User Friendly
But imo Waiting for Bob is funnier.

I've had an epiffinay.. what if the so-called 'trolls' are nothing more then users who don't have the experience/knowledge that we do, and therefore have to ask questions/post comments that, to us, appear to be nothing more then an attempt to goad us into an argument, but for them is a legitimate comment?

Or, maybe they're just this guy. =)


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CitizenC

This situation kinda reminds me of this cartoon. Substitute your favorite four letter acronym ending with "AA" at your leisure.

KDE team, read my lips:

Pleasink to be stoppink gettink ideas from UserFriendly

Sure it would be might be a bit cheaper to build one up yourself, but to have a one off MB made would cost a hefty premium over mass production units. I have actually been looking at maybe trying to grab an iMac used for running YellowDog, or maybe even a couple of them.

I dunno if it is appropriate to do this...but there were a coupla comments replying to the first post that got modded down to a -1...I think it was somewhat unfairly......so..here is the UF link that might put these two in perspective so it makes sense and people realize that the reply was not "flamebait" but it sorta made sense.... comic about ******* passwords

thanks.

Or, if it's [a] somewhat controlled course, put the gps in the third or forth bucket, and require map/compass/altimeter to find it.

Hey, cool idea! I wish I'd thought of that. 8')

Another thought. It seems that orienteering would be a perfect activity to get computer nerds outside. Math and problem solving. Seems like the natural outdoor sport of geeks.

Plus, cool electronic toys. ;}

I think you're on to something here. I wonder if User Friendly would sponsor such a geek orienteering contest. There was a series of strips there on the gang heading outdoors, but for the love of Dust Puppy, I can't find it again. Geez ....

Or, if it's [a] somewhat controlled course, put the gps in the third or forth bucket, and require map/compass/altimeter to find it.

Hey, cool idea! I wish I'd thought of that. 8')

Another thought. It seems that orienteering would be a perfect activity to get computer nerds outside. Math and problem solving. Seems like the natural outdoor sport of geeks.

Plus, cool electronic toys. ;}

I think you're on to something here. I wonder if User Friendly would sponsor such a geek orienteering contest. There was a series of strips there on the gang heading outdoors, but for the love of Dust Puppy, I can't find it again. Geez ....

Or, if it's [a] somewhat controlled course, put the gps in the third or forth bucket, and require map/compass/altimeter to find it.

Hey, cool idea! I wish I'd thought of that. 8')

Another thought. It seems that orienteering would be a perfect activity to get computer nerds outside. Math and problem solving. Seems like the natural outdoor sport of geeks.

Plus, cool electronic toys. ;}

I think you're on to something here. I wonder if User Friendly would sponsor such a geek orienteering contest. There was a series of strips there on the gang heading outdoors, but for the love of Dust Puppy, I can't find it again. Geez ....

When I read this article, I thought of this User Friendly episode.

But seriously, wouldn't it be cool to be racking up frequent flyer miles and frags at the same time?

Did you find the Crud Puppy in there?
:-P

With all due credit to UF.
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