That's actually not too bad compared to everything else I've read about life in Silicon Valley. Almost sounds palatable. Unfortunately, housing costs are supposed to be the pits around there. I knew some people who took jobs there years ago (mid-to-late '80s) and it wasn't unusual for 3-4 guys with Masters degrees (and the salaries to go with them) having to share an apartment because of the disgustingly high rents. I can't imagine the housing situation's gotten any better. Any info on that? I knew of people who were living in some place like Fremont and commuting to Mountain View because that's the only place that they could afford.
``Personly I'd rather have 4+ weeks of paid time off (like in Europe) than a "free" lunch.''
Same here. I often skip lunch (I'm usually on a roll and don't want to stop) so a lot of good a catered lunch'd do me.
``...all of those perks by working at home, if you've got the right spouse (24/7 massage availiability) and make enogh money from there;). Plus, there's noone to complain about the music...''
Agreed about massages but I can't get the 24/7 availability. Are you a polygamist or what? (With your "masseuses sleeping in shifts?) And, likewise, the music complaints aren't usually a problem when I'm working at home except late at night (tends to wake up the little ones). I'm lucky enough to have a wife that enjoys most of the music that I like (somewhat surprising given my lean toward stuff which has a decidedly low-commercial-potential/fringe aspect to it).
``provides on site dry cleaning pick up, haircuts etc. free sodas & catered lunch every day, and a Concierge service for various errands...
...the employees end up being more productive''
I.e., "You don't have to have a life! We'll have it for you!"
I'll bet you friend has to use those "perks" because he doesn't have any spare time outside of work. Oh but he's being so much more productive.
I'd much rather work for a company that has some perks that I want to use. Like vacation time I can actually take. Like some flexibility in my hours so I can attend some of my children's school functions. etc.
Don't let your employer rob you of your life like this. You're only allotted one, you know.
``My wife and I had to make that choice with our kids. We chose to send them to a private school where they get a very good education, as opposed to the 'best' public schools in the area, where they would get a mediocre one at best. If the public schools were doing a good job, they would be going there, but they aren't. Wasting money on a bad education is not a good thing''
But the local government and education infrastructure are still wasting your money. I doubt you are exempt from the local taxes that support the mediocre public school you chose not to send your children to.
My wife and I are looking to move to an area where the grade schools are better. Several people we know ahve already done this. The local school officials don't want the parent's input or involvement in the education system. In fact, some parents that have tried to push the issue have been threatened with having the police called if they show up at the grade schools. So, we're looking to either move or, if my income increases sufficiently in the next couple of years, send the girls to a private school. I'll still wind up paying for the local crappy public grade school system, however.
``Well, mostly in the US federal taxes are used for two things. 1) pork barrel projects; and 2) to blackmail the states. Almost every federal dollar has a string attached.''
A couple of intersting news items I saw in the last couple of weeks regarding the Feds and spending. 1.) Congress rips the DoD for spending several million dollars on a new fighter plane being developed to supercede older fighters after Congress told them they (the DoD) can't spend money on it. 2.) Congress tells the DoD they must spend money on older, more expensive cruise missles that the DoD doesn't want as newer models are more precise and less expensive. (Three guesses as to what the relationship is between the company building the older cruise missles and the senator/representative who sponsored the bill that mandates the construction of those same cruise missles.)
Yep. Our Congress knows how to spend our money appropriately... NOT! This is the sort of thing that burn the collective butts of Americans who see through the charade of the Govt. doing what's best for the people.
``The plan was created in response to a Presidential directive in May 1998 requiring the Executive Branch to review the vulnerabilities of the Federal Government's computer systems in order to become a "model of information and security."
In a cover letter to the draft Clinton writes: "A concerted attack on the computers of any one of our key economic sectors or Governmental agencies could have catastrophic effects."''
Oh, I see. The Government finally realizes that it's got to do something about the security of their computer systems and in order to make themselves more secure, the Government has to monitor all citizen's network traffic.
Where can I get encryption software (like that in Cryptonomicon) that allows 4096-bit keys????
...the movie ``The Quiet Earth'' in which, if memory serves, a similar system was being implemented and nearly everyone on Earth was killed.
Just repeat: It was only a movie. It was only a movie.
Seriously, this'll have an impact on aircraft flight plans. Hope they're taking that into account in their design. They should consider some sort of beacon system that alerts pilots what they're about to enter into a zone where they could get parboiled.
``For one thing, classified information is almost never on computers connected to public networks.''
... made me think to myself:
Who is the real criminal here: A)the cracker who breaks into a computer containing classified information that's connected to a public network or B) the jerk who allow the computer to be connected to the public network in the first place.
While the former is usually going to be found guilty of some sort of computer crime, IMHO, the latter is a clear violation of the regulations of any level of security clearance that I've heard about and is, I think, a felony. If any govt. agency allows this to happen and go unpunished or is stupid enough to not have a policy in place to guard against such a situation, that agency deserves to have information stolen.
Yah, yah, yah... I know. Just because the door isn't locked isn't an invitation to come in and vandalize the place. But how would you feel about a bank that left the vault unlocked? Would you have real pity for a jewelry store whose employees left the place unlocked while they went out to lunch?
Been there... done that. Best Buy's OK for some things. They used to have a decent jazz section but they seem to have pretty much phased that out. About all I'd buy from them now is a CD version of an old album that I like.
I judge a music store by the artists that they see fit to make a plastic divider for. It's not a perfect method but it tells me something about the music they choose to stock. If I don't see dividers for artists that I like I look for the "miscellaneous" dividers like "Rock - A", etc. If they don't see fit to stock artists that I would want to buy under either of those categories then they're probably not worth wasting the time looking for anything. Life's too short to keep returning to a store that thinks that what everyone wants to buy is the Back Street Boys and N'Sync. Maybe I'm too harsh on Best Buy but they haven't been stocking anything that I'd be interested in spending money on (although I did stumble upon a re-release of Henry Cow's first recording) and their clerks are fairly clueless. True story: Teenage kid (holding up a copy of "Dark Side of the Moon"): Is this good? Best Buy droid: "Oh Yah! That's their first CD."
Maybe I've just known too many folks who've actually owned record stores and really gave a damn about what they stocked and really knew about the music to tolerate outfits like this that couldn't even be bothered to hire people who knew what they were selling.
``Tower used to have great prices''
Agreed. Tower prices are getting out of hand. What ruined Tower for me, before their prices got jacked up, was the narrowing selection. If they carry an artist it's usually just the latest couple of releases and that bothers me. One of the Towers in the Chicago area used to be a place called Rose Records. Before Tower bought them out, they were the best place to find a great selection. That used to have a really cool method of stocking their records. You looked up the artist in one of the dozens of Schaum (sp?) catalogs that were scattered around the store (attached to strings with masking tape - really high-tech) and looked up the recording by the label and the record label's stock number. It was wierd that you'd be going through the racks and find some really strange artists in the same bin.
This'll make filtering software work a little easier, eh? Why is allowing dirty domain names such a big deal. I've always thought that the porn sites could then practice a more little truth-in-advertising when setting up sites.
This reminded me of the time when our IT manager decided that the company's web use was needed web filtering and logging software (all because someone in a remote office was offended when she mistyped a website name and got some oral sex site -- we, of course, had to verify this). To express our disgust at this, myself and the other system and network administrators nearly collected enough money to register the domain "www.nakedpeopledoingthenasty.com", create some simple-minded joke website, and then setting up several systems inside the firewall to hit the site about 50,000 times a day. (The fact that this was supposed to go into effect around April 1 had more than a little to do with it as well.) Then we'd wait to see what happened when the web tracking reports came out. As a side benefit, it would have been fun to watch the NT admin try to figure out why disks were filling up with log files.
...when I first read the "headline" that one of my favorite groups in college was recording again. That'd be Epitaph that made "Outside the Law" on Billingsgate. Too bad.
BTW, to keep this slightly on topic: My $0.02 is that MP3 is a great idea for making samples of each song on a CD available. Long gone are the days when radio stations used to play most of the songs on an album/CD. Now you just get the bit hit single ("With a bullet? With a bullet!"). Not enough for me anyways in order to make the decision to buy a CD.
I'd like to know where the poster who said he was paying US$15 for CDs was buying them. The last few times I've looked in a music store at the local mall the average price was in the $18-$19 range. Last time I paid as low as $15 was when I bought a CD that Richard Pinhas was selling at his show in Chicago. I actually prefer buying them that way; at least I know that the artist is getting the lion's share of the money and it's not going for lights and floor space rental at a megamall. Mail order CDs are usually a much better buy as well (but you gotta know what you're looking for).
``We have to remember that many features in GNOME and KDE are designed to be ripoffs of Microsoft interfaces. Screensaver, background, taskbar, start button (emphasis mine), control panel settings, system sounds, and many other applets were copied from Microsoft products.''
I hadn't heard that before. You mean Gnome and KDE have a ``Start'' button? I think I'll stick with Afterstep.
I wasn't aware (or at least don't remember) any Russian cosmonauts dying in space. There were at least one instance of cosmonauts being killed during their return. Remember that the Russians didn't have access to any large bodies of water -- at least none that weren't filled with nasty ice floes -- and landed on land. Now that's an engineering feat I'm not sure I'd like to experience.
``...launch of the SST Challenger, and that...''
BTW, that's STS Challenger, not SST. The STS carries astronauts into space; the SST carries rich people between New York and Paris.
``having every launch visible from several nearby cities (like Orlando, only 50 miles away) makes it hard to have a launch no one knows about''
From all the accounts I've read, a Saturn rocket launch sounded something like a volcanic eruption what with the noise and the ground shaking. I doubt any clandestine launches would be possible.
I walked into one of those chain "record" stores at the mall last weekend. I hardly ever do this since they rarely carry any music that I'd consider listening to but there was a mildly interesting CD that I wanted to check out. Seeing that the average price for CDs has gotten into the $18-$19 range I turned around and walked out.
I guess I'll go back to ordering through Wayside. I'll save tons-o-money and find the music I enjoy all at the same time.
...like the latest ``inventions'' that employ some aspect of the Internet/WWW are a lot like the ridiculous junk that was being produced after electricity became widely available?
Back then someone would come up with something bizaare like electric pens, electric forks, electric-everything. It was a fad. If it used electricity it was deemed modern and, for some reason, an important invention.
Look at some of the crap that's being trotted out lately. Look at some of the stupid stuff that's getting patented lately. Oooh! It's new! It's hip! It uses the Web!
``even today, the careful use of ALT tags can make a page more readable for speaking browsers, but almost never actually do so!
Sad but true.''
Sad but true even, I've noticed, on Slashdot. As an aside, I thought that ALT was an argument/option to the IMG tag. OK... Just me being picky before I've had my morning coffee.
I'm sure that a lot of the reason is HTML editors especially the GUI variety. Pointing and clicking to create Web pages doesn't (easily) allow for entering customized text for a ALT option. And I doubt that people using a GUI Web page designer are going to fire up a text editor to add the ALT descriptions afterwards.
I want to see the impact that the U.S. Govt's standards for Web pages is going to have on a lot of sites. For example, tables are not to be used for layout control, pages shouldn't override fonts, etc. It'd put to rest one of the major complaints that a lot of people have about the quality of a lot of Web design. (Now before someone gets all upset about the Feds trying to throw their weight around try to remember that they pushing these standards to help the deaf and blind gain access to the Web and the standards are supposed to apply only to those companies that are doing business directly with the govt. If they start trying to set standards for content that's another matter. If I run across the link again that describes the proposed standards I'll put it up here.)
Another point: Do the people that come up with these hare-brained devices ever stop to consider the network bandwidth requirement for something like this to work effectively, if at all? And the impact it has on people who are just trying to load a page of text? This tactile mouse idea may work great in the lab but I suspect it's going to flop, big time, in the real world.
``there isn't even rumors of any kind of high speed access in my area yet''
I know exactly what you're going through. I live in a suburb of Chicago (about a 45 minute drive to the heart of the Loop) and our town has no high speed net access. I don't even think that cable modems are available (I haven't checked as I'm looking for non-dialup access to be able to connect a server). If you don't live in certain areas within the Chicago city limits or a very small number of suburbs directly West of the city technology like DSL is not available.
Ameritech, who I assume owns the local copper, doesn't seem to be interested in providing any improvements to their COs in the area. Everything I receive in the mail or the phone calls I receive from these bozos is for cellular services, paging, voice mail, caller ID, etc. I've started looking at these offers carefully so I can call the numbers where you can get additional information. And the information I request is ``when will high speed network access be available in my town''.
Seems that Ameritech and SBC are spending all their time trying to merge into Gigundophonecorp rather than providing services to their customers.
Does Mr. Siegel really expect everyone to alter several of their browser settings to satisfy his idea of how you're supposed to view his page? Why not just force the font, background color, and link style like so many other web sites (that suck, IMHO) do today?
I think I'll find Greenspun's attitude toward web page design more to my liking. I haven't read his book yet but plan to pick up a copy soon.
...as a result of this acquisition decide to change the format of Slashdot. I can't count the sites that were once useful but decided that they needed a ``facelift'' and, as a result, looked glitzier but became almost totally unuseable. IMHO, recent examples of sites that made this boneheaded mistake are InfoWorld and DejaNews.
Slashdot is one of the sites that I visit daily (at a minimum) for my Linux (and other operating system) news and those semi-off-the-wall articles that you don't find anywhere else. I don't want to have to remove Slashdot from my bookmarks web page; it'd be a while before I could find another site that I'd find as interesting and amusing.
``NT Boxes don't crash often at all unless you have shitty hardware.''
Heh heh heh. I'll call the NT admin where I used to work and tell him that the HP Netservers that they bought to run NT were ``shitty hardware''. He couldn't even get NT installed without it bluescreening.
``Least they coulda done was knick the telnet client code too. Someone please tell me that win2000 has a better default telnet built in''
I wouldn't count on it if I were you. Any telnet implementation is better than the horrorshow that's shipped with Windows-95/98/NT. Gotta love a telnet that won't let you use vi because, apparently, Win-telnet can't deal with cursor positioning, won't let you use emacs because you can't get out (^X-anything can't get past the XOFF you just typed), features a vertical scroll bar that doesn't work. This was put in Windows merely to satisfy someone's requirements checklist. I can't believe this software was actually evaluated for it utility.
``AGAIN. ESR HAS MADE A MOMENTOUS CONTRIBUTION TO THE LINUX "COMMUNITY"... [snip]... YOU DUMB, PATHETIC, POOR-ASSED, AMD-USING FAGGOTS.''
Hey! Look! Somebody's managed to get an original Teletype to work with the Web!!!
Oh and BTW Mr. Anonymous Coward, I have several Linux systems running at home that do not have any DOS-related partitions on them. I doubt very seriously that I'm alone in doing this.
My understanding is that a lot of the Mozilla code looks fairly awful to someone who didn't grow up with it but that it's not as bad as NT's code is reputed to be. If that's really the case, since the Mozilla source code doesn't seem to be inspiring hordes of OSS programmers taking the source under their collective wings and making it into something incredible, what chance do we have of the OSS community doing something incredible with the plateful of NT spaghetti code?
MS might release NT code as OSS and just might score some brownie points with the media, but I don't think it's going to do much more than that.
``the people at Mindcraft are just about as childish as the people who sent those emails''
IMHO, I'm not sure I'd label them childish. Based on
the ``success'' that Mindcraft had in obtaining help from the internet community following their rather naive attempts (again, IMHO) prior to the first benchmark and
Their reaction to a mailbox full of flaming e-mails.
I would say that Mindcraft doesn't understand the how an internet community sometimes reacts to controversial issues. I doubt that they've spent any time in any Usenet newsgroups otherwise they wouldn't be so thin-skinned.
OTOH, for the Linux community to mail bomb somebody like old Bruce is pretty out of line though. After reading in a recent Salon article how he was reacting to anyone that he felt was slighting his reputation (``You are challenging my integrity.'') it's obvious that he has absolutely little to no tolerance for anybody that disagrees with him. If people continue to e-mail him flames he'll continue to react in the self-righteous, pompous way he did... he'll post the e-mails to show how superior he is.
BTW, Don't bother to flame me on my opinion. I've been flamed by Carl Lydick in comp.os.vms and once you've been flamed by the best...
Slashdot Mirror
That's actually not too bad compared to everything else I've read about life in Silicon Valley. Almost sounds palatable. Unfortunately, housing costs are supposed to be the pits around there. I knew some people who took jobs there years ago (mid-to-late '80s) and it wasn't unusual for 3-4 guys with Masters degrees (and the salaries to go with them) having to share an apartment because of the disgustingly high rents. I can't imagine the housing situation's gotten any better. Any info on that? I knew of people who were living in some place like Fremont and commuting to Mountain View because that's the only place that they could afford.
Same here. I often skip lunch (I'm usually on a roll and don't want to stop) so a lot of good a catered lunch'd do me.
Agreed about massages but I can't get the 24/7 availability. Are you a polygamist or what? (With your "masseuses sleeping in shifts?) And, likewise, the music complaints aren't usually a problem when I'm working at home except late at night (tends to wake up the little ones). I'm lucky enough to have a wife that enjoys most of the music that I like (somewhat surprising given my lean toward stuff which has a decidedly low-commercial-potential/fringe aspect to it).
I.e., "You don't have to have a life! We'll have it for you!"
I'll bet you friend has to use those "perks" because he doesn't have any spare time outside of work. Oh but he's being so much more productive.
I'd much rather work for a company that has some perks that I want to use. Like vacation time I can actually take. Like some flexibility in my hours so I can attend some of my children's school functions. etc.
Don't let your employer rob you of your life like this. You're only allotted one, you know.
But the local government and education infrastructure are still wasting your money. I doubt you are exempt from the local taxes that support the mediocre public school you chose not to send your children to.
My wife and I are looking to move to an area where the grade schools are better. Several people we know ahve already done this. The local school officials don't want the parent's input or involvement in the education system. In fact, some parents that have tried to push the issue have been threatened with having the police called if they show up at the grade schools. So, we're looking to either move or, if my income increases sufficiently in the next couple of years, send the girls to a private school. I'll still wind up paying for the local crappy public grade school system, however.
A couple of intersting news items I saw in the last couple of weeks regarding the Feds and spending. 1.) Congress rips the DoD for spending several million dollars on a new fighter plane being developed to supercede older fighters after Congress told them they (the DoD) can't spend money on it. 2.) Congress tells the DoD they must spend money on older, more expensive cruise missles that the DoD doesn't want as newer models are more precise and less expensive. (Three guesses as to what the relationship is between the company building the older cruise missles and the senator/representative who sponsored the bill that mandates the construction of those same cruise missles.)
Yep. Our Congress knows how to spend our money appropriately... NOT! This is the sort of thing that burn the collective butts of Americans who see through the charade of the Govt. doing what's best for the people.
Oh, I see. The Government finally realizes that it's got to do something about the security of their computer systems and in order to make themselves more secure, the Government has to monitor all citizen's network traffic.
Where can I get encryption software (like that in Cryptonomicon) that allows 4096-bit keys????
...the movie ``The Quiet Earth'' in which, if memory serves, a similar system was being implemented and nearly everyone on Earth was killed.
Just repeat: It was only a movie. It was only a movie.
Seriously, this'll have an impact on aircraft flight plans. Hope they're taking that into account in their design. They should consider some sort of beacon system that alerts pilots what they're about to enter into a zone where they could get parboiled.
... made me think to myself:
While the former is usually going to be found guilty of some sort of computer crime, IMHO, the latter is a clear violation of the regulations of any level of security clearance that I've heard about and is, I think, a felony. If any govt. agency allows this to happen and go unpunished or is stupid enough to not have a policy in place to guard against such a situation, that agency deserves to have information stolen.
Yah, yah, yah... I know. Just because the door isn't locked isn't an invitation to come in and vandalize the place. But how would you feel about a bank that left the vault unlocked? Would you have real pity for a jewelry store whose employees left the place unlocked while they went out to lunch?
``Try Best Buy, if you have one in your area.''
Been there... done that. Best Buy's OK for some things. They used to have a decent jazz section but they seem to have pretty much phased that out. About all I'd buy from them now is a CD version of an old album that I like.
I judge a music store by the artists that they see fit to make a plastic divider for. It's not a perfect method but it tells me something about the music they choose to stock. If I don't see dividers for artists that I like I look for the "miscellaneous" dividers like "Rock - A", etc. If they don't see fit to stock artists that I would want to buy under either of those categories then they're probably not worth wasting the time looking for anything. Life's too short to keep returning to a store that thinks that what everyone wants to buy is the Back Street Boys and N'Sync. Maybe I'm too harsh on Best Buy but they haven't been stocking anything that I'd be interested in spending money on (although I did stumble upon a re-release of Henry Cow's first recording) and their clerks are fairly clueless. True story: Teenage kid (holding up a copy of "Dark Side of the Moon"): Is this good? Best Buy droid: "Oh Yah! That's their first CD."
Maybe I've just known too many folks who've actually owned record stores and really gave a damn about what they stocked and really knew about the music to tolerate outfits like this that couldn't even be bothered to hire people who knew what they were selling.
Agreed. Tower prices are getting out of hand. What ruined Tower for me, before their prices got jacked up, was the narrowing selection. If they carry an artist it's usually just the latest couple of releases and that bothers me. One of the Towers in the Chicago area used to be a place called Rose Records. Before Tower bought them out, they were the best place to find a great selection. That used to have a really cool method of stocking their records. You looked up the artist in one of the dozens of Schaum (sp?) catalogs that were scattered around the store (attached to strings with masking tape - really high-tech) and looked up the recording by the label and the record label's stock number. It was wierd that you'd be going through the racks and find some really strange artists in the same bin.
But then isn't this quite the thread fork...
This'll make filtering software work a little easier, eh? Why is allowing dirty domain names such a big deal. I've always thought that the porn sites could then practice a more little truth-in-advertising when setting up sites.
This reminded me of the time when our IT manager decided that the company's web use was needed web filtering and logging software (all because someone in a remote office was offended when she mistyped a website name and got some oral sex site -- we, of course, had to verify this). To express our disgust at this, myself and the other system and network administrators nearly collected enough money to register the domain "www.nakedpeopledoingthenasty.com", create some simple-minded joke website, and then setting up several systems inside the firewall to hit the site about 50,000 times a day. (The fact that this was supposed to go into effect around April 1 had more than a little to do with it as well.) Then we'd wait to see what happened when the web tracking reports came out. As a side benefit, it would have been fun to watch the NT admin try to figure out why disks were filling up with log files.
...when I first read the "headline" that one of my favorite groups in college was recording again. That'd be Epitaph that made "Outside the Law" on Billingsgate. Too bad.
BTW, to keep this slightly on topic: My $0.02 is that MP3 is a great idea for making samples of each song on a CD available. Long gone are the days when radio stations used to play most of the songs on an album/CD. Now you just get the bit hit single ("With a bullet? With a bullet!"). Not enough for me anyways in order to make the decision to buy a CD.
I'd like to know where the poster who said he was paying US$15 for CDs was buying them. The last few times I've looked in a music store at the local mall the average price was in the $18-$19 range. Last time I paid as low as $15 was when I bought a CD that Richard Pinhas was selling at his show in Chicago. I actually prefer buying them that way; at least I know that the artist is getting the lion's share of the money and it's not going for lights and floor space rental at a megamall. Mail order CDs are usually a much better buy as well (but you gotta know what you're looking for).
I hadn't heard that before. You mean Gnome and KDE have a ``Start'' button? I think I'll stick with Afterstep.
I wasn't aware (or at least don't remember) any Russian cosmonauts dying in space. There were at least one instance of cosmonauts being killed during their return. Remember that the Russians didn't have access to any large bodies of water -- at least none that weren't filled with nasty ice floes -- and landed on land. Now that's an engineering feat I'm not sure I'd like to experience.
BTW, that's STS Challenger, not SST. The STS carries astronauts into space; the SST carries rich people between New York and Paris.
From all the accounts I've read, a Saturn rocket launch sounded something like a volcanic eruption what with the noise and the ground shaking. I doubt any clandestine launches would be possible.
I walked into one of those chain "record" stores at the mall last weekend. I hardly ever do this since they rarely carry any music that I'd consider listening to but there was a mildly interesting CD that I wanted to check out. Seeing that the average price for CDs has gotten into the $18-$19 range I turned around and walked out.
I guess I'll go back to ordering through Wayside. I'll save tons-o-money and find the music I enjoy all at the same time.
...like the latest ``inventions'' that employ some aspect of the Internet/WWW are a lot like the ridiculous junk that was being produced after electricity became widely available?
Back then someone would come up with something bizaare like electric pens, electric forks, electric-everything. It was a fad. If it used electricity it was deemed modern and, for some reason, an important invention.
Look at some of the crap that's being trotted out lately. Look at some of the stupid stuff that's getting patented lately. Oooh! It's new! It's hip! It uses the Web!
Sad but true even, I've noticed, on Slashdot. As an aside, I thought that ALT was an argument/option to the IMG tag. OK... Just me being picky before I've had my morning coffee.
I'm sure that a lot of the reason is HTML editors especially the GUI variety. Pointing and clicking to create Web pages doesn't (easily) allow for entering customized text for a ALT option. And I doubt that people using a GUI Web page designer are going to fire up a text editor to add the ALT descriptions afterwards.
I want to see the impact that the U.S. Govt's standards for Web pages is going to have on a lot of sites. For example, tables are not to be used for layout control, pages shouldn't override fonts, etc. It'd put to rest one of the major complaints that a lot of people have about the quality of a lot of Web design. (Now before someone gets all upset about the Feds trying to throw their weight around try to remember that they pushing these standards to help the deaf and blind gain access to the Web and the standards are supposed to apply only to those companies that are doing business directly with the govt. If they start trying to set standards for content that's another matter. If I run across the link again that describes the proposed standards I'll put it up here.)
Another point: Do the people that come up with these hare-brained devices ever stop to consider the network bandwidth requirement for something like this to work effectively, if at all? And the impact it has on people who are just trying to load a page of text? This tactile mouse idea may work great in the lab but I suspect it's going to flop, big time, in the real world.
I know exactly what you're going through. I live in a suburb of Chicago (about a 45 minute drive to the heart of the Loop) and our town has no high speed net access. I don't even think that cable modems are available (I haven't checked as I'm looking for non-dialup access to be able to connect a server). If you don't live in certain areas within the Chicago city limits or a very small number of suburbs directly West of the city technology like DSL is not available.
Ameritech, who I assume owns the local copper, doesn't seem to be interested in providing any improvements to their COs in the area. Everything I receive in the mail or the phone calls I receive from these bozos is for cellular services, paging, voice mail, caller ID, etc. I've started looking at these offers carefully so I can call the numbers where you can get additional information. And the information I request is ``when will high speed network access be available in my town''.
Seems that Ameritech and SBC are spending all their time trying to merge into Gigundophonecorp rather than providing services to their customers.
Agreed... Read the first few paragraphs and then go to http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/begin.htm and see what it has to say.
Does Mr. Siegel really expect everyone to alter several of their browser settings to satisfy his idea of how you're supposed to view his page? Why not just force the font, background color, and link style like so many other web sites (that suck, IMHO) do today?
I think I'll find Greenspun's attitude toward web page design more to my liking. I haven't read his book yet but plan to pick up a copy soon.
...as a result of this acquisition decide to change the format of Slashdot. I can't count the sites that were once useful but decided that they needed a ``facelift'' and, as a result, looked glitzier but became almost totally unuseable. IMHO, recent examples of sites that made this boneheaded mistake are InfoWorld and DejaNews.
Slashdot is one of the sites that I visit daily (at a minimum) for my Linux (and other operating system) news and those semi-off-the-wall articles that you don't find anywhere else. I don't want to have to remove Slashdot from my bookmarks web page; it'd be a while before I could find another site that I'd find as interesting and amusing.
Heh heh heh. I'll call the NT admin where I used to work and tell him that the HP Netservers that they bought to run NT were ``shitty hardware''. He couldn't even get NT installed without it bluescreening.
I wouldn't count on it if I were you. Any telnet implementation is better than the horrorshow that's shipped with Windows-95/98/NT. Gotta love a telnet that won't let you use vi because, apparently, Win-telnet can't deal with cursor positioning, won't let you use emacs because you can't get out (^X-anything can't get past the XOFF you just typed), features a vertical scroll bar that doesn't work. This was put in Windows merely to satisfy someone's requirements checklist. I can't believe this software was actually evaluated for it utility.
Wouldn't more people benefit from MS management seeing to it that some QA/testing people get hired?
How about fewer new "features" and better implementation of those that are already there?
Hey! Look! Somebody's managed to get an original Teletype to work with the Web!!!
Oh and BTW Mr. Anonymous Coward, I have several Linux systems running at home that do not have any DOS-related partitions on them. I doubt very seriously that I'm alone in doing this.
Geez!
My understanding is that a lot of the Mozilla code looks fairly awful to someone who didn't grow up with it but that it's not as bad as NT's code is reputed to be. If that's really the case, since the Mozilla source code doesn't seem to be inspiring hordes of OSS programmers taking the source under their collective wings and making it into something incredible, what chance do we have of the OSS community doing something incredible with the plateful of NT spaghetti code?
MS might release NT code as OSS and just might score some brownie points with the media, but I don't think it's going to do much more than that.
I'd be happy to be proved wrong, though!
IMHO, I'm not sure I'd label them childish. Based on
I would say that Mindcraft doesn't understand the how an internet community sometimes reacts to controversial issues. I doubt that they've spent any time in any Usenet newsgroups otherwise they wouldn't be so thin-skinned.
OTOH, for the Linux community to mail bomb somebody like old Bruce is pretty out of line though. After reading in a recent Salon article how he was reacting to anyone that he felt was slighting his reputation (``You are challenging my integrity.'') it's obvious that he has absolutely little to no tolerance for anybody that disagrees with him. If people continue to e-mail him flames he'll continue to react in the self-righteous, pompous way he did... he'll post the e-mails to show how superior he is.
BTW, Don't bother to flame me on my opinion. I've been flamed by Carl Lydick in comp.os.vms and once you've been flamed by the best...