Oh definitely. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and even those of us in the design field can have strong design skills in one area, and horrific skills in others. I absolutely suck with illustration and bezier tools. The difference, however, is that I know I suck and I can deconstruct WHY something sucks. I don't fall back on the usual slashdot mantra of "good taste is relative", because frankly, it really isn't as relative as most would like to think. When you don't understand something, you are more apt to not realize how bad you are at it, so you can blow it off by saying, "oh, it's all relative". You may LIKE something that is in bad taste, but you aren't going to convince anybody with good taste that it isn't anything but bad taste. We all like things in bad taste...they are called guilty pleasures. The difference is, some of us realize just how bad our guilty pleasures really are;-)
Actually, Clarkson et. al. love the Euro-civic. I can't remember for sure, since I moved back to the US two years ago, but I think it won their car of the year. But as a huge Clarkson fan myself, I would have half-expected my comment to have come from him too--just surprising that he actually loves the Civic and hates the BMW M5 (role-reversal)
I'm not convinced by your argument. Like you said, it is relative. However, using the argument "you can't get that in the US so it doesn't matter" is just a cop-out and only justifies the low standards many of our industries hold. This is supposedly and increasingly global economy, so making stuff 'good enough for the US market because they won't know any better' doesn't cut it.
By no means am I inferring that the iPhone holds low standards, however.
De gustibus non est disputandum: Latin for âoeThereâ(TM)s no disputing about taste.â Another version of this saying is âoeThereâ(TM)s no accounting for taste.â
So adding "Bad" in there makes my version indeed a cutesy, wannabe-clever spin on the original. That makes me wrong twice this morning. Bad day for me.
I'm not convinced I misquoted anything, since I can't find a definitive quote either way (with or without the BAD). It's just a saying. I will give you my take on the "taste is relative" argument however: people with bad taste don't know they have bad taste. You can quote me on that one, since it is mine, although borrowed heavily from "stupid people don't know they are stupid, or they'd stop being stupid" quote.
If the statement "good taste is relative" were an absolute, then there'd not be an entire industry and entire higher-education programs devoted to design.
Well, in my field, the saying goes, "no accounting for BAD taste", because no matter how well designed something is, the common guy will choose the Rebel-Flag/velvet-Elvis every time. Elite much? Sure. Doesn't make it any less true.
Ok, here's the deal on the Euro Civic SI....they love it (at least the auto journalists and tv shows do)! But man, is that car not every Japanese electronic stereotype ever rolled into one?
I suppose you are right on the "kiddies". I haven't been a kiddie for a long time (39 now) and can only judge the "hot hatch" market based on perusing the auto-rags at the bookstore (and my research before buying my MS3). It seems the VW GTI is definitely waaaaaaaay out of the average kiddie's league. I actually narrowed my choices down to the GTI and the MS3 and went with the "more bang for the buck" over the supposed refinement of the GTI.
Ok, I love car talk so here goes. First, the iDrive is optional, whereas Japanese glitz usually isn't. The iDrive knob is hardly a high-techy eye sore either, even if the whole notion of the iDrive is pretty stupid.
Second, I was thinking more along the lines of a Euro-spec'd Civic SI compared to a VW GTI. Thirdly, if you think the street racing crowd has no room for GTIs, then you haven't been paying attention. You should really check out the Euro-Civic SI hatchback dash...completely different car than the US market.
Ok, time to be truthful. I drive a Japanese car. It's a Mazdaspeed3 and I most certainly didn't buy it for it's Japanese-styled interior. Besides, it could be worse, I could be driving a Chevy Cobalt!!!
Japanese products have been so over-the-top and over-engineered for the past 25 years, this hardly comes as any surprise. I mean, just take a look at the current Honda Civic dashboard and compare it to a German car's dashboard. The Honda is all gadget-y and digital-y and the German car is just, well, Teutonic-ly svelte. Maybe the saying "there's no accounting for bad taste" doesn't ring true in Japan.
Man, what a great rant! I expect most people to dismiss your claims as "anecdotal", but people are lying to themselves if they claim to have installed Windows without at least ONE video/NIC/sound card/etc. driver issue.
1. The/. crowd thinks that Apple rocks for updating OS X 5 times in about 5 years even though they charged for all but one of the updates.
Yeah, I spoke with my pocketbook too. Most of those updates where substantial upgrades and well worth every penny. Interestingly enough, I think I can still run X.2, but each upgrade since then has been compelling enough to shell out $129.
People use Windows, not because they like it, because often times that's all they know even exists. People also use what is cheap. WinXP on a generic $400 box is cheap. That by no means infers that people actually LIKE using cheap crap--only that they are willing to.
As far as I can tell, there is nothing in the story to warrant a conversation about DRM. He/she was most likely modded troll because there is no need to yell "DRM!" in this conversation. The automatic assumption of DRM + - evil company name here - makes me cringe and adds little value to the conversation at hand, unless it actually were a conversation about DRM.
The Process and Product Quality Assurance process area supports all process areas by providing specific practices for objectively evaluating performed processes, work products, and services against the applicable process descriptions, standards, and procedures, and ensuring that any issues arising from these reviews are addressed.
While "evaluating work products" certainly SOUNDS like this means QA is software testing, it is far from it. It means something completely different when you complete the sentence..."evaluating work products against the applicable process descriptions". Thus, it is QAs job to ensure the software test engineers are doing the job the way the process states they should be, not conducting any sort of software tests themselves.
So no, somebody in QA doesn't say, "hey, this button doesn't work". Instead, they say, "hey, Bob the software tester didn't follow process 4a" and because of that, nobody caught the fact that button didn't work. Then QA tells you your processes suck and makes you write new ones (even thought that's their job).
And yes, I realize my expertise in CMMI fully qualifies me to be a great Dilbert character.
True, but you have to understand the nature of software test engineering. Test engineers follow well-thought out test procedures that uncover software bugs that can not be ignored. Beta tests are a free-for-all-bitch-fest that have more value as an advertising tool than they do identifying software bugs. As my PM likes to say, there are "nice-to-have" features and then there is shit-hits-the-fan-broken-ass-code. Guess which gets fixed first.
Also, it is nice to solicit feedback, but it is impossible to act on most of it (or any of it, depending on how far in the development cycle you are). If anything, those comments might stick in the back of some developers head for the next prototype.
Microsoft doesn't really care what a bunch of 'Joe plumbers' have to say about their OS. They have a QA department for that.
QA doesn't do software testing.--Microsoft has a Software Test Engineering department for that. QA just makes sure every group in the company follows the right processes.
According to Sinofsky, it's impossible to keep everyone happy. That's partly because there are only so many changes Microsoft can make to the system and still finish it, and partly because in many cases testers often have opposing views about a feature."
That is the first smart thing I've heard anybody from Microsoft say in a long, long time.
Call me pedantic, but if she got banned for saying she's a lesbian, that's discrimination and a civil suit should follow. But... If she used the word "lesbian" in her profile, and that is considered to be against the terms of acceptable language, then she's SOL. Nobody has the right to ban you because they don't like who you are, but they do have the right to ban you for using words they don't allow on their service.
Microsoft sells mostly software which runs on PCs manufactured by other companies - even if they do sell games machines as well.
And mice, and keyboards, and headsets and MP3 players, and..
Trying to twist the data to fit your prejudice will not make it so.
I'm not twisting any data. You are denying the existence of data by diminishing the impact of Apple's software division and Microsoft's hardware division. They aren't small peanuts, and they don't exist solely to push the sales of other divisions, like most cynical slashdotters seem to to think.
You're wrong, Apple is in the business to sell hardware. Apple's software exists to sell hardware.
No, I'm not wrong--I merely take offense to the oversimplification and cynicism that Apple half-asses some software just to sell hardware.
You can twist your logic however you like, such as, Apple's hardware exists to sell it's OS. It's whatever perspective you want to take--unless you are in on business development meetings, you simply can't say.
I've owned Macs long before FCP and Aperture came out. There was no need to go out and buy a Mac to run those programs, because I already owned one anyways.
You can be as anti-capitalist and cynical as you like, but I tend to see it a different way. Apple created FCP and Aperture to support the existing Mac user and creative industry base. The fact that FCP and Aperture *might* draw in new customers (not very likely, since high end video production is niche, and Photo editors are a dime a dozen), where's the harm in that strategy?
The bulk of Apple's business is built around selling hardware. The bulk of Microsoft's business is built around selling software. That's just the way it is.
True statement, but you can't dismiss either company as JUST a software company or JUST a hardware company, when they both obviously do pretty well in both.
For some perspective, my company makes ONE piece of software for the Department of Defense. We are a multi-million dollar company with state-of-the-art facilities and top quality engineers. We have over 300 employees on site. We provide good salaries for hundreds of people for ONE piece of software. So even if Apple only makes Final Cut Pro for Macs, they still sell a crap load more licenses than my company could only dream to (at about $500 per license more, to boot). Diminishing the importance of Apple Final Cut Pro and Aperture (to a lesser degree) by saying they only make that stuff to sell Macs is an over-simplification.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh definitely. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and even those of us in the design field can have strong design skills in one area, and horrific skills in others. I absolutely suck with illustration and bezier tools. The difference, however, is that I know I suck and I can deconstruct WHY something sucks. I don't fall back on the usual slashdot mantra of "good taste is relative", because frankly, it really isn't as relative as most would like to think. When you don't understand something, you are more apt to not realize how bad you are at it, so you can blow it off by saying, "oh, it's all relative". You may LIKE something that is in bad taste, but you aren't going to convince anybody with good taste that it isn't anything but bad taste. We all like things in bad taste...they are called guilty pleasures. The difference is, some of us realize just how bad our guilty pleasures really are ;-)
Actually, Clarkson et. al. love the Euro-civic. I can't remember for sure, since I moved back to the US two years ago, but I think it won their car of the year. But as a huge Clarkson fan myself, I would have half-expected my comment to have come from him too--just surprising that he actually loves the Civic and hates the BMW M5 (role-reversal)
I'm not convinced by your argument. Like you said, it is relative. However, using the argument "you can't get that in the US so it doesn't matter" is just a cop-out and only justifies the low standards many of our industries hold. This is supposedly and increasingly global economy, so making stuff 'good enough for the US market because they won't know any better' doesn't cut it.
By no means am I inferring that the iPhone holds low standards, however.
De gustibus non est disputandum: Latin for âoeThereâ(TM)s no disputing about taste.â Another version of this saying is âoeThereâ(TM)s no accounting for taste.â
So adding "Bad" in there makes my version indeed a cutesy, wannabe-clever spin on the original. That makes me wrong twice this morning. Bad day for me.
I'm not convinced I misquoted anything, since I can't find a definitive quote either way (with or without the BAD). It's just a saying. I will give you my take on the "taste is relative" argument however: people with bad taste don't know they have bad taste. You can quote me on that one, since it is mine, although borrowed heavily from "stupid people don't know they are stupid, or they'd stop being stupid" quote.
If the statement "good taste is relative" were an absolute, then there'd not be an entire industry and entire higher-education programs devoted to design.
Well, in my field, the saying goes, "no accounting for BAD taste", because no matter how well designed something is, the common guy will choose the Rebel-Flag/velvet-Elvis every time. Elite much? Sure. Doesn't make it any less true.
Ok, here's the deal on the Euro Civic SI....they love it (at least the auto journalists and tv shows do)! But man, is that car not every Japanese electronic stereotype ever rolled into one?
I suppose you are right on the "kiddies". I haven't been a kiddie for a long time (39 now) and can only judge the "hot hatch" market based on perusing the auto-rags at the bookstore (and my research before buying my MS3). It seems the VW GTI is definitely waaaaaaaay out of the average kiddie's league. I actually narrowed my choices down to the GTI and the MS3 and went with the "more bang for the buck" over the supposed refinement of the GTI.
Ok, I love car talk so here goes. First, the iDrive is optional, whereas Japanese glitz usually isn't. The iDrive knob is hardly a high-techy eye sore either, even if the whole notion of the iDrive is pretty stupid.
Second, I was thinking more along the lines of a Euro-spec'd Civic SI compared to a VW GTI. Thirdly, if you think the street racing crowd has no room for GTIs, then you haven't been paying attention. You should really check out the Euro-Civic SI hatchback dash...completely different car than the US market.
Ok, time to be truthful. I drive a Japanese car. It's a Mazdaspeed3 and I most certainly didn't buy it for it's Japanese-styled interior. Besides, it could be worse, I could be driving a Chevy Cobalt!!!
Well, the saying didn't come from me, but I do find lots of truth in it. Been to a Wal-mart lately? I suppose "kitsch" isn't a real word either?
Japanese products have been so over-the-top and over-engineered for the past 25 years, this hardly comes as any surprise. I mean, just take a look at the current Honda Civic dashboard and compare it to a German car's dashboard. The Honda is all gadget-y and digital-y and the German car is just, well, Teutonic-ly svelte. Maybe the saying "there's no accounting for bad taste" doesn't ring true in Japan.
Man, what a great rant! I expect most people to dismiss your claims as "anecdotal", but people are lying to themselves if they claim to have installed Windows without at least ONE video/NIC/sound card/etc. driver issue.
1. The /. crowd thinks that Apple rocks for updating OS X 5 times in about 5 years even though they charged for all but one of the updates.
Yeah, I spoke with my pocketbook too. Most of those updates where substantial upgrades and well worth every penny. Interestingly enough, I think I can still run X.2, but each upgrade since then has been compelling enough to shell out $129.
people use what they like and are familiar with
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHHHAHAHAHAH!
People use Windows, not because they like it, because often times that's all they know even exists. People also use what is cheap. WinXP on a generic $400 box is cheap. That by no means infers that people actually LIKE using cheap crap--only that they are willing to.
So you are better than your mother, or is there some other lesson in there?
As far as I can tell, there is nothing in the story to warrant a conversation about DRM. He/she was most likely modded troll because there is no need to yell "DRM!" in this conversation. The automatic assumption of DRM + - evil company name here - makes me cringe and adds little value to the conversation at hand, unless it actually were a conversation about DRM.
According to the CMMI process http://www.sei.cmu.edu/pub/documents/06.reports/pdf/06tr008.pdf (p.63):
The Process and Product Quality Assurance process area supports all process areas by providing specific practices for objectively evaluating performed processes, work products, and services against the applicable process descriptions, standards, and procedures, and ensuring that any issues arising from these reviews are addressed.
While "evaluating work products" certainly SOUNDS like this means QA is software testing, it is far from it. It means something completely different when you complete the sentence..."evaluating work products against the applicable process descriptions". Thus, it is QAs job to ensure the software test engineers are doing the job the way the process states they should be, not conducting any sort of software tests themselves.
So no, somebody in QA doesn't say, "hey, this button doesn't work". Instead, they say, "hey, Bob the software tester didn't follow process 4a" and because of that, nobody caught the fact that button didn't work. Then QA tells you your processes suck and makes you write new ones (even thought that's their job).
And yes, I realize my expertise in CMMI fully qualifies me to be a great Dilbert character.
Yes, really. Try http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/ . They are far more authoritative on QA processes than monster.com
True, but you have to understand the nature of software test engineering. Test engineers follow well-thought out test procedures that uncover software bugs that can not be ignored. Beta tests are a free-for-all-bitch-fest that have more value as an advertising tool than they do identifying software bugs. As my PM likes to say, there are "nice-to-have" features and then there is shit-hits-the-fan-broken-ass-code. Guess which gets fixed first.
Also, it is nice to solicit feedback, but it is impossible to act on most of it (or any of it, depending on how far in the development cycle you are). If anything, those comments might stick in the back of some developers head for the next prototype.
Microsoft doesn't really care what a bunch of 'Joe plumbers' have to say about their OS. They have a QA department for that.
QA doesn't do software testing.--Microsoft has a Software Test Engineering department for that. QA just makes sure every group in the company follows the right processes.
According to Sinofsky, it's impossible to keep everyone happy. That's partly because there are only so many changes Microsoft can make to the system and still finish it, and partly because in many cases testers often have opposing views about a feature."
That is the first smart thing I've heard anybody from Microsoft say in a long, long time.
Call me pedantic, but if she got banned for saying she's a lesbian, that's discrimination and a civil suit should follow. But... If she used the word "lesbian" in her profile, and that is considered to be against the terms of acceptable language, then she's SOL. Nobody has the right to ban you because they don't like who you are, but they do have the right to ban you for using words they don't allow on their service.
Microsoft sells mostly software which runs on PCs manufactured by other companies - even if they do sell games machines as well.
And mice, and keyboards, and headsets and MP3 players, and..
Trying to twist the data to fit your prejudice will not make it so.
I'm not twisting any data. You are denying the existence of data by diminishing the impact of Apple's software division and Microsoft's hardware division. They aren't small peanuts, and they don't exist solely to push the sales of other divisions, like most cynical slashdotters seem to to think.
You're wrong, Apple is in the business to sell hardware. Apple's software exists to sell hardware.
No, I'm not wrong--I merely take offense to the oversimplification and cynicism that Apple half-asses some software just to sell hardware.
You can twist your logic however you like, such as, Apple's hardware exists to sell it's OS. It's whatever perspective you want to take--unless you are in on business development meetings, you simply can't say.
I've owned Macs long before FCP and Aperture came out. There was no need to go out and buy a Mac to run those programs, because I already owned one anyways.
You can be as anti-capitalist and cynical as you like, but I tend to see it a different way. Apple created FCP and Aperture to support the existing Mac user and creative industry base. The fact that FCP and Aperture *might* draw in new customers (not very likely, since high end video production is niche, and Photo editors are a dime a dozen), where's the harm in that strategy?
So what, exactly, does Safari sell?
The bulk of Apple's business is built around selling hardware. The bulk of Microsoft's business is built around selling software. That's just the way it is.
True statement, but you can't dismiss either company as JUST a software company or JUST a hardware company, when they both obviously do pretty well in both.
For some perspective, my company makes ONE piece of software for the Department of Defense. We are a multi-million dollar company with state-of-the-art facilities and top quality engineers. We have over 300 employees on site. We provide good salaries for hundreds of people for ONE piece of software. So even if Apple only makes Final Cut Pro for Macs, they still sell a crap load more licenses than my company could only dream to (at about $500 per license more, to boot). Diminishing the importance of Apple Final Cut Pro and Aperture (to a lesser degree) by saying they only make that stuff to sell Macs is an over-simplification.