Well, the New York Times is not in charge of the Gundam...
There's a loooooooong way between a crush on an animated character and falling in love with someone. Crushes are all about hawtness. They won't get you through the lean times in a very-long-term relationship.
For me, a necessary prerequisite to love is respect for the other person. Can you respect a device that doesn't have independent thought - or which is simply emulating independent thought?
People are already having sex with machines - and have been since at least the 1800s.
Any engineer-type has already had a crush on a machine; it doesn't even have to be human-shaped. How many of you guys got wood for an Altair 8800b (or even its ugly sister the 8800)? Howsabout for an Aston Martin DB-9?
If you're talking about crushes or sex, well OK, but that's not news.
You want to love - really love - a robot? Really? I think it's a stretch. OTOH, the summary says "humans" - not how many of them. Maybe some of this crowd are doing this already so...
Not sure, but I think parent's point was that the <div>s aren't actually doing the layout - in fact, they're containing (and thus identifying) certain desired blocks of content. You're applying layout with CSS, not with divs, and with CSS, you're applying layout to <div>s, <p>s, <h1>s and the rest...
I'll never forget the experience...I'd just arrived in Atlanta in 1994, and I was in a Marietta CompUSA. I'd asked the CompUSA staffer about a particular accessory for my Power Macintosh 7100/66.
"A Mac? Get a real computer!"
I thought: "I'm a multimedia developer trying to buy one of your highest-margin products, and you're working a crappy retail job. Will getting a real computer skyrocket me to the corridors of power you walk? I hope not..."
Over the years, I've only visited CompUSA out of sheer desperation, and the typical experience there was that I went in, looked for what I'd come for, found nothing I could use and left.
Has anyone walked into a CompUSA in the last 5 years and been anything but baffled at the retail experience they were trying to pull off? It's like they stopped focusing on computer equipment at all, but tried to display consumer electronics in the manner of an office-supply store. WTF? It's like the Anti-Apple Store, Anti-Gap approach to merchandising.
So they're fallen overboard. I'd be happy to toss 'em an anchor!
To anyone out there who wants to visit "a real computer store", I'd take a Microcenter or a Fry's over a CompUSA any day.
N.B. - Spell-check is warning me that "CompUSA" is misspelled. Thought for a second about adding it to the dictionary for future use, then realized that it's probably not too important to do so...
It's actually IMPORTANT to open the algorithm. An open algorithm is open to analysis for how well it performs its job, and for any bugs or short-circuits, any methods of recovering the input data from the hash. It's provably secure or insecure. You can analyze an open hash algorithm mathematically to determine how likely it is that two given input data items will evaluate to the same hash.
With a closed algorithm, you can't perform this analysis. In the related discipline of encryption, this has tainted the reputation of the closed-algorithm Skype uses for its VOIP encryption. Skype can say its encryption is secure and free of backdoors all day long, but you'd be well advised not to believe this if its algorithm is not open for inspection.
An open algorithm is ONLY secure if an attacker can know the entire algorithm and STILL not turn the hash back into the input data or engineer a hash collision in a reasonable amount of time even with, say, a huge bot farm. A closed algorithm may have any number of compromises, may not be secure in any real sense. The closed algorithm is protected only by the thin veil of obscurity.
This one appears to behave nicely, is liquid, and while it DOES use the IE 5 stylesheet hack, that offends my sensibilities less than the overbroad hack that is table-based layout.
Didn't really take personal offense at the "elitist" term - I've been in enough fora where there's more heat than light that I recognize the attitude you're describing.
Where I'd suggest you go with the situation if you want to move forward is to stop thinking about <div> tags as layout tools and instead think of them as containers for a block of content. Once you get there, you're on the way to thinking about what's IN the containers and what semantic sense they make on the page. When you think about layout, think about moving the containers around with CSS, not using the containers for the layout directly. The CSS should hold the layout details.
I'd warn off delivering necessary functionality with Javascript as well. Here's a particularly ugly case from my office:
The corporate web team decide that they'll write the <title> tag at page-load time with javascript. The JSP that creates the page writes what the title should be into the javascript statement (yes, this is unbelievably ugly to start, but it gets worse). By default, the page template has a <title> that says something like "Product Detail Page". At page-load time, the browser overwrites this with whatever the JSP has written into the page.
The problem here is that our Google Search Appliance doesn't do javascript as it spiders the page, and reads the actual <title> of the page. So now I have 100 or so products all named "Product Detail Page" when they show up in search results. Beautiful.
And FWIW, I'm not a professional web designer either. I instead focus on connecting the business and the technical people in our company with web solutions that will work for them. About half the time, I'm a translator at best. But I have to be quite conversant with the technology, and that means for me that I get my hands dirty with it, do self-assignments, do code repair and critique, try and stamp out problems in legacy sites. Unfortunately, it also means failing sometimes when the mountain is too big to move. I'm currently trying to get changes made to an Intranet which serves thousands of employees that's completely polluted with badly-done tabled layout. (honestly, well-done tabled layout would be an improvement...). Can't boil the ocean, y'know?
More importantly, WHERE did the data come from? Did Radiohead/W.A.S.T.E. provide it? Was Comscore paid to track the release? Or are they making a guess?
Is there a non-elitist reason to not use tables for a layout?
There are many. Let's try a few:
Semantic, linear structure of the page. When one forces a layout into a table, almost invariably the "reading order" of the page gets fouled up. Text content that probably should be readable in top-to-bottom order gets split up into left-to-right cells (in page-load order). This plays havoc with the ability to repurpose the page for mobile devices, pdfs and screen readers, and (perhaps more importantly to the folks signing the checks) makes the page harder for search engines to understand, potentially lowering your page rank. By creating a page that makes semantic sense and using <div> tags and other parts of HTML properly (parts like <h1>, <p>, <ul>, etc.) you help convey to the search engine what the page is about.
Ease of updating. When you need to change the layout of a page created in tables, you have to reconfigure all the tabled content, moving some from cell to cell, changing colspans, etc. If instead you've made semantic sense of the content, you can move the content around the page with CSS, never having to touch the HTML. You can even do things like change lists of links from vertical nav trees to horizontal tabs without changes to HTML.
Ease of creating printable pages. When you lay out in tables, you may be able to "hide" display of the tables in the print style sheet, but browser problems may push content around the page anyway (have been struggling with this in a poorly-designed page this week). With tableless layout, it's easy to hide the elements on the page you don't want to see in the printout, set size and margins for the elements you do, then do a window.print()
Separation of content from presentation. When tables are in use, typically related content is plunked into adjacent cells (image slicing anyone?). When this happens, the presentation (layout) is tangled up with the content. This is difficult to maintain. The developer and the designer have to touch the same page for different reasons. When the page has to be edited for layout, the designer has to know enough about the table code to do things like remove or insert colspans, when in fact there are no columns of tabular data.
You get to break out of the grid and use flexible (even liquid) layout. You can move things around, put 'em in front of or in back of other items, never having to worry about running out of cells or keeping colspans straight.
When all else fails in trying to make a table layout do something it was never intended to do, designers make "pictures of type" so the layout observes their wishes. This is a huge mistake for searchability and accessibility. The search engines can't read the pictures any better than the blind can.
Table-based layouts typically get really, really screwed up when the user resizes the fonts in her browser. Trust me: I'm doing this all the time 'cause I don't want to bother with reading glasses.
Layout is not tabular data. It's just not. Tables work great for tabular data, and they have many features to render spreadsheet-like pages with clarity.
It's a misuse of a feature of the language. You might think this is elitist, but would you also imply that the suggestion that someone stop using a Crescent wrench as a hammer is elitist? Or might you instead think: "there's a better tool for that job - one that's designed to do it well".
It's the right thing to do for the disabled. Not bothering to lay out the page well so the visually impaired can read it could be interpreted as elitism on the part of the sighted.
Is that good for a starter? I'm about out of time to spend on this...
I don't think that browser support for tableless layout is perfect. It's awful in older browsers, but getting better all the time.
In any case, it's the browser's job to render the standard properly, not yours to break the code for the browser. I find the middle-ground is to keep the layout pretty basic to get broadest browser support, and tolerate browser differences. I'd never promise pixel-for-pixel cross-browser support. HTML isn't designed to do that.
I say having my laundry looked over is a small price to pay to fly 3000 miles in 6 hours to visit some friends.
And my problem with that attitude is this: I wouldn't mind that you're so willing to give up your freedom from unjustified search, your privacy, your status as a person innocent until proven guilty, if it wasn't for the fact that you want to give up MINE at the same time!
If there is demand, people will try to fill that demand, because doing so will profit them personally. Conversely, people who try and fill a non-existent demand will be punished by the market, shuffled into a crappy job.
Dunno about that. All the tests I took, all the counselors I knew said I'd be ideal for a Computer Science career near the end of my High School days (the late '70s). After a year of the CS program at my university, unable to see the way that microcomputers would reshape the landscape (there were no true PCs at the time, just wonderful hobbyist machines in the Altair, IMSAI, Sol molds), I figured I'd spend a working lifetime writing boring accounting software and I got out.
I moved into creative work. Video, audio, multi-image (computer-driven slide show and lighting extravaganzas), animation, eventually interactive media and finally web work.
My Dad's sage friends assured him that this was a mistake, but no worry, I'd get tired of it, wash out, forget about the whole thing in a couple years. There were just too many people that wanted to do the work and all the jobs were crappy. "Freelancing" when I'd do it, was "a synonym for unemployement".
Fact of the matter is that I've had fascinating work for going on 30 years now. I could well have ridden the back of the computer boom, but in doing so would probably have mainly experienced the mainstream of computer work. It would've been a pretty plain vanilla time.
As it stands, I've gotten to integrate computers and information systems into my work at levels from working the best nonlinear editing and effects tools out there as an end-user to programming motion-control language on a computer-driven animation stand and programming multi-image shows to writing my own custom device drivers for using a touchscreen on an Amiga way back when. This week I'm helping my employer differentiate between multiple high-end web content management systems.
If you're good, and you can specialize, moving away from the herd can be the smartest move you can make. In my case, it's certainly been a fulfilling path.
As far as usability goes, any flavor of OS X is a definite downgrade over OS 9.
As far as stability goes, OS 9 is to laugh at.
Me, I needed a new Mac and unfortunately had to hold my nose on the usability front.
I have no problem with new technologies, no problem with shifting to the fastest, most power-efficient mobile processor available, but don't think it's being a crank to complain about losing the primary significant feature of the Macintosh: an extremely usable operating system and UI.
What's more, over-the-air digital TV KICKS ASS on the stepped-on crap that trickles down your cable or satellite feed. NBC's 1080i OTA signal is INCREDIBLE.
My dual-core Athlon MythTV server uses 95 watts at the peak use I'm making of it. Start up current spike is pretty high, but the "costs more to run it than to power it on" line is complete BS. I can measure - don't have to assume.
Running my server 24x7 would be like powering a 100 watt light bulb 24x7. It's not a perfect analogy - the server uses energy in a much more complex way than the simple resistive load of a light bulb - but it is a USEFUL analogy. Gets you to the right order of magnitude.
BTW, this 95w figure for the MythTV box encouraged me to move my only 24x7 app - mt-daapd music server - to a Linksys Slug running Debian and a USB hard disk with spindown. The Slug and USB drive use 6 watts when running, 1.5 watts when inactive. Much better than 95 for the MythTV box.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the New York Times is not in charge of the Gundam...
There's a loooooooong way between a crush on an animated character and falling in love with someone. Crushes are all about hawtness. They won't get you through the lean times in a very-long-term relationship.
For me, a necessary prerequisite to love is respect for the other person. Can you respect a device that doesn't have independent thought - or which is simply emulating independent thought?
If you're talking about crushes or sex, well OK, but that's not news.
You want to love - really love - a robot? Really? I think it's a stretch. OTOH, the summary says "humans" - not how many of them. Maybe some of this crowd are doing this already so...
Not sure, but I think parent's point was that the <div>s aren't actually doing the layout - in fact, they're containing (and thus identifying) certain desired blocks of content. You're applying layout with CSS, not with divs, and with CSS, you're applying layout to <div>s, <p>s, <h1>s and the rest...
All you need is a suitable improbability generator - say, a nice hot cup of tea - and a piece of fairy cake...
I'll never forget the experience...I'd just arrived in Atlanta in 1994, and I was in a Marietta CompUSA. I'd asked the CompUSA staffer about a particular accessory for my Power Macintosh 7100/66.
"A Mac? Get a real computer!"
I thought: "I'm a multimedia developer trying to buy one of your highest-margin products, and you're working a crappy retail job. Will getting a real computer skyrocket me to the corridors of power you walk? I hope not..."
Over the years, I've only visited CompUSA out of sheer desperation, and the typical experience there was that I went in, looked for what I'd come for, found nothing I could use and left.
Has anyone walked into a CompUSA in the last 5 years and been anything but baffled at the retail experience they were trying to pull off? It's like they stopped focusing on computer equipment at all, but tried to display consumer electronics in the manner of an office-supply store. WTF? It's like the Anti-Apple Store, Anti-Gap approach to merchandising.
So they're fallen overboard. I'd be happy to toss 'em an anchor!
To anyone out there who wants to visit "a real computer store", I'd take a Microcenter or a Fry's over a CompUSA any day.
N.B. - Spell-check is warning me that "CompUSA" is misspelled. Thought for a second about adding it to the dictionary for future use, then realized that it's probably not too important to do so...
Might've been "a ballpoint pen"
You are being paranoid.
It's actually IMPORTANT to open the algorithm. An open algorithm is open to analysis for how well it performs its job, and for any bugs or short-circuits, any methods of recovering the input data from the hash. It's provably secure or insecure. You can analyze an open hash algorithm mathematically to determine how likely it is that two given input data items will evaluate to the same hash.
With a closed algorithm, you can't perform this analysis. In the related discipline of encryption, this has tainted the reputation of the closed-algorithm Skype uses for its VOIP encryption. Skype can say its encryption is secure and free of backdoors all day long, but you'd be well advised not to believe this if its algorithm is not open for inspection.
An open algorithm is ONLY secure if an attacker can know the entire algorithm and STILL not turn the hash back into the input data or engineer a hash collision in a reasonable amount of time even with, say, a huge bot farm. A closed algorithm may have any number of compromises, may not be secure in any real sense. The closed algorithm is protected only by the thin veil of obscurity.
Well, yeah, I guess that's a short haircut, but really, isn't the name "Gigi" kind of a giveaway?
You could always use "the Google" to find some...
This one appears to behave nicely, is liquid, and while it DOES use the IE 5 stylesheet hack, that offends my sensibilities less than the overbroad hack that is table-based layout.
Here is another. There are others.
Two other words:
"Mattress Tag"
Glad to inform.
Didn't really take personal offense at the "elitist" term - I've been in enough fora where there's more heat than light that I recognize the attitude you're describing.
Where I'd suggest you go with the situation if you want to move forward is to stop thinking about <div> tags as layout tools and instead think of them as containers for a block of content. Once you get there, you're on the way to thinking about what's IN the containers and what semantic sense they make on the page. When you think about layout, think about moving the containers around with CSS, not using the containers for the layout directly. The CSS should hold the layout details.
I'd warn off delivering necessary functionality with Javascript as well. Here's a particularly ugly case from my office:
The corporate web team decide that they'll write the <title> tag at page-load time with javascript. The JSP that creates the page writes what the title should be into the javascript statement (yes, this is unbelievably ugly to start, but it gets worse). By default, the page template has a <title> that says something like "Product Detail Page". At page-load time, the browser overwrites this with whatever the JSP has written into the page.
The problem here is that our Google Search Appliance doesn't do javascript as it spiders the page, and reads the actual <title> of the page. So now I have 100 or so products all named "Product Detail Page" when they show up in search results. Beautiful.
And FWIW, I'm not a professional web designer either. I instead focus on connecting the business and the technical people in our company with web solutions that will work for them. About half the time, I'm a translator at best. But I have to be quite conversant with the technology, and that means for me that I get my hands dirty with it, do self-assignments, do code repair and critique, try and stamp out problems in legacy sites. Unfortunately, it also means failing sometimes when the mountain is too big to move. I'm currently trying to get changes made to an Intranet which serves thousands of employees that's completely polluted with badly-done tabled layout. (honestly, well-done tabled layout would be an improvement...). Can't boil the ocean, y'know?
More importantly, WHERE did the data come from? Did Radiohead/W.A.S.T.E. provide it? Was Comscore paid to track the release? Or are they making a guess?
Kind words - thanks.
;)
Now that I've set up the plan, you'll execute on it and have the web free of table-based layout by close-of-business Monday, right?
Is there a non-elitist reason to not use tables for a layout?
There are many. Let's try a few:
Is that good for a starter? I'm about out of time to spend on this...
I don't think that browser support for tableless layout is perfect. It's awful in older browsers, but getting better all the time.
In any case, it's the browser's job to render the standard properly, not yours to break the code for the browser. I find the middle-ground is to keep the layout pretty basic to get broadest browser support, and tolerate browser differences. I'd never promise pixel-for-pixel cross-browser support. HTML isn't designed to do that.
If you're using for non-tabular data, you're part of the crowd perpetuating the problem, not driving the solution.
Wanna do more than dream? Leave <tables> behind. Unless you're displaying tabular data, of course.
I say having my laundry looked over is a small price to pay to fly 3000 miles in 6 hours to visit some friends.
And my problem with that attitude is this: I wouldn't mind that you're so willing to give up your freedom from unjustified search, your privacy, your status as a person innocent until proven guilty, if it wasn't for the fact that you want to give up MINE at the same time!
Why not try the NSA?
Heck, they already know you're a mathematician!
If there is demand, people will try to fill that demand, because doing so will profit them personally. Conversely, people who try and fill a non-existent demand will be punished by the market, shuffled into a crappy job.
Dunno about that. All the tests I took, all the counselors I knew said I'd be ideal for a Computer Science career near the end of my High School days (the late '70s). After a year of the CS program at my university, unable to see the way that microcomputers would reshape the landscape (there were no true PCs at the time, just wonderful hobbyist machines in the Altair, IMSAI, Sol molds), I figured I'd spend a working lifetime writing boring accounting software and I got out.
I moved into creative work. Video, audio, multi-image (computer-driven slide show and lighting extravaganzas), animation, eventually interactive media and finally web work.
My Dad's sage friends assured him that this was a mistake, but no worry, I'd get tired of it, wash out, forget about the whole thing in a couple years. There were just too many people that wanted to do the work and all the jobs were crappy. "Freelancing" when I'd do it, was "a synonym for unemployement".
Fact of the matter is that I've had fascinating work for going on 30 years now. I could well have ridden the back of the computer boom, but in doing so would probably have mainly experienced the mainstream of computer work. It would've been a pretty plain vanilla time.
As it stands, I've gotten to integrate computers and information systems into my work at levels from working the best nonlinear editing and effects tools out there as an end-user to programming motion-control language on a computer-driven animation stand and programming multi-image shows to writing my own custom device drivers for using a touchscreen on an Amiga way back when. This week I'm helping my employer differentiate between multiple high-end web content management systems.
If you're good, and you can specialize, moving away from the herd can be the smartest move you can make. In my case, it's certainly been a fulfilling path.
As far as usability goes, any flavor of OS X is a definite downgrade over OS 9.
As far as stability goes, OS 9 is to laugh at.
Me, I needed a new Mac and unfortunately had to hold my nose on the usability front.
I have no problem with new technologies, no problem with shifting to the fastest, most power-efficient mobile processor available, but don't think it's being a crank to complain about losing the primary significant feature of the Macintosh: an extremely usable operating system and UI.
Unfortunately, Tiger's a big downgrade from Panther for my money. I'd love for Leopard to just reinstall Panther on my machine.
What's more, over-the-air digital TV KICKS ASS on the stepped-on crap that trickles down your cable or satellite feed. NBC's 1080i OTA signal is INCREDIBLE.
Kicking, screaming Gucci little piggy...
Get a WattsUp? Pro (from think geek...).
My dual-core Athlon MythTV server uses 95 watts at the peak use I'm making of it. Start up current spike is pretty high, but the "costs more to run it than to power it on" line is complete BS. I can measure - don't have to assume.
Running my server 24x7 would be like powering a 100 watt light bulb 24x7. It's not a perfect analogy - the server uses energy in a much more complex way than the simple resistive load of a light bulb - but it is a USEFUL analogy. Gets you to the right order of magnitude.
BTW, this 95w figure for the MythTV box encouraged me to move my only 24x7 app - mt-daapd music server - to a Linksys Slug running Debian and a USB hard disk with spindown. The Slug and USB drive use 6 watts when running, 1.5 watts when inactive. Much better than 95 for the MythTV box.
Love my WattsUp? Pro, and my Slug.
Ballmer's comment seems really prick-like to me.
He's hoping to be tapped as a Vice Presidential candidate for '08
We'll all turn into those butt-headed guys from Star Trek in no time, right?
I bid 500 quatloos on the off-worlder!
This started happening on my Powerbook G4 right after upgrading to OS X 10.4.10 - never had trouble before.