The typical engineering geek response is that it's "shiny," "pretty," and just skin deep. But in reality what it is, is consistency, a carefully considered experience that starts with design first - not colours and gradiants, but design elements and human factors - and fit the features to that. Read some Raskin, for example, to understand.
Until the software developers starts respecting designers and stops being a bunch of alpha monkeys talking about what they decided to code up that day for themselves, Apple will continue to lead in this area. And I'm not even an Apple fanboy, but it is the truth.
Excuse me, I need to stop laughing. Ok. Could you please explain to me what sort of code base could be 12 million lines of Java code? I assume you are excluding generated code, included comments, white space, etc.
What about accessibility? That's a pretty huge gap. You're excluding a lot of users just to have whizzy controls, and for some industries it's the law that you have to have accessible Web pages.
Making a second set of pages for accessibility is a poor choice. And as a benefit of making pages accessible, they usually work well in mobile browsers.
This is why I don't use a comprehensive framework like GWT, aside from the lack of ultimate control over layout and functionality.
That's documentation, not an API. In typical Drupal fashion, they've fudged terms. With the system of hooks, they've basically turned everything upside down, so everything becomes recursive (ones of those things people try to avoid in programming) and there is nothing like a simple oo or functional application programming interface. Most of the time when you're programming in Drupal, you're programming in a switch, which is another thing programmers like to avoid.
And it's true they have been releasing long lists of changes between releases (it's amazing how much they change between every single version), but as I said, with no real API, using an untyped language, and no unit tests, you're basically relying on eyeballing your code to make sure it's ok.
The whole problem with Drupal (well, the main problem, every popular software of any size is going to have lots of problems) is the project leads' refusal to make any kind of real API. With every major release of Drupal, modules become orphaned and existing sites get harder to support or upgrade. Because Drupal uses a "hook" system, and PHP (with no data typing), and there are no unit tests, it's really, really, really difficult to tell when things are broken. I've seen evidence of this again and again as even core functions aren't properly upgraded, with only passing warnings letting users know something is terribly wrong.
At least if they'd use an API for core functions this problem would be partially mitigated. They've been talking about an API for years, but no one wants to do it, and to be honest I think this suits the people at the top of Drupal (as opposed to everyone else) just fine - it's certainly not a high priority for them.
Interesting nobody even refers to design (as in functional and visual). Just do design at the last second and expect software lines that are really consistent to use and look good. Heh.
It's more than just features, it's their bottom up attention to detail and design. Look at Samsung as an opposite, I had their Q1 Ultra, it had every feature under the sun, but was an unusable piece of trash. Apple would have gotten rid of most of the features and made the ones that remained work well.
I'm no Apple fanboy, I had a Macbook Pro but sold it 'cause it was just too sleek for me (and I hate the whole Apple gated community feel), but they do deserve credit for being about the only company with this fanatical level of attention to detail that actually includes design (integrated form & function) right from the early stages. It seems like most companies are engineer driven, if someone thinks it's cool they'll include it, or marketing driven, or reactive. Apple raises the bar, without them we'd still be entirely using 1995 style user interfaces (instead of the half hearted grafted-on inconsistent UI companies are grafting on these days to try to compete with Apple, but they'll never be able to because design is an afterthought for them).
I've been trying to make this point on gadget blogs for a while. In fact, I would suggest calling MS Vista "MS Gavage," what MS wanted everyone to do is switch to Vista immediately and XP to become a memory, never mind most hardware isn't ready for Vista (and lighter alternatives will always run faster/have better battery life). Yay for open and free operating systems.
Speaking of which, the new netbooks are nice, more than decent for what most people need, but they mostly have low memory limits, which is strange considering how cheap memory is and how much of a performance boost it can bring. I can understand only including 512MB or a GB, but why not allow more?
Battery life also sucks, give me a netbook with an option for 7 hour life please, good enough for all day.
where's that edit button! (where's that coffee.. actually, too much coffee is the problem).
I just wish all these systems (Joomla, Drupal, etc, etc, etc) had not abducted the term "CMS." It used to refer to a large scale system used to integrate common data in heterogeneous computing environments. Now it means a self contained front end to some Web based views and forms. Granted lately systems like CCK are moving in on true CMS ground, but it would be more honest to call them app frameworks, portals etc. But then the trend is for someone to "invent" some great new system in a burst of energy, people glom onto it and start spreading the word basically with misinformation, usually aimed at uninformed organizations that can genuinely benefit from lightweight systems without marketing through misinformation or outright lies.
I just wish all these systems (Joomla, Drupal, etc, etc, etc) had not abducted the term "CMS." It used to refer to a large scale system used to integrate common template in heterogeneous computing environments. Now it means a self contained front end to some Web based views and forms. Granted lately systems like CCK are moving in on true CMS ground, but it would be more honest to call them app frameworks, portals etc. But then the trend is fro someone to "invent" some great new system in a burst of energy, people glom onto it and start spreading the word basically with misinformation, using aimed at uninformed organizations that can genuinely benefit from lightweight systems without marketing through misinformation or outright lies.
I appreciate your consideration for cultural differences, but don't think it is appropriate or desirable for entities such as the NYT to not introduce these perspectives. And the perspective in this case is largely benign, compared to Tibet for example.
I would not expect an individual or entity to only be focused on the actual rescue unless that is what they were presently engaged in, everyone else should keep doing their jobs with contemporary topics, political newspaper columns included.
As well, I do casually monitor Chinese news sources (http://english.people.com.cn and topix China), and often see willingness to jump on issues real time for the purposes of spin from the Chinese side. It's only natural.
Funny, I didn't get that at all. I just got that China's authoritarian government is learning and moderating itself, and there may be advantages to an authoritarian government - a statement I think can be made without consideration of other factors.
Democracy has to keep trying harder in the face of this 'competition' for the best system to serve masses and individuals.
By the way, in case it's not obvious, I accidentally posted the link starting from page 2. Go to page 1 for the quote and the majority of the story.
Chinese Web sites remain heavily censored, and a brief flirtation with openness and responsiveness does not mean that China is headed toward Western-style democracy. On the contrary, if China manages to handle a big natural disaster better than the United States handled Hurricane Katrina, the achievement may underscore Beijingâ(TM)s contention that its largely nonideological brand of authoritarianism can deliver good government as well as fast growth.
The following paragraphs provide some good contrasts with "democratic" governments.
Hmm? Alfresco is totally Open Source as far as I know, with commercial support options. Another alternative is Jahia, though some of the more important bits are closed.
But in my case, since my app wasn't mainly a CMS, I ended up going with a collection of about 30 open source Java libraries which I find quite nice. Instead of hoping Drupal would do what I want and hacking it (in the bad sense of the word) in the meantime, it gives a lot of control, and I get very fine grained best of breed approaches to each problem.
I'm afraid what I'm working on doesn't really relate to general CMS requirements, though I'd be interested in a focus on the best solution. The fact is many "enterprise" CMSs are very heavy, and that's why organizations go with solutions like Drupal, since it's simple and self contained.
I wish all these web systems hadn't abducted the term CMS. It used to mean something that provided very fine grained control for different types of "enterprise" (in the truest meaning of the word - big organizations with heterogeneous systems and requirements) uses. Since these Web CMSs came along the term has been significantly diluted.
Compare the feature set of Drupal to something like Alfresco for anything past Web based content - polls and blog posts - and you'll see what I mean (Dries, the founder of Drupal, admitted this).
Anyway, I used Drupal for some projects at version 4.something. It's success is undeniable and many large sites are using it, but I think if you're not a core developer and need anything outside of what the core provides, you're in for a world of sorrow and pain, aka hacks and patches and blatant disregard. Among other things, PHP just isn't a good language to develop a large stable API in, and Drupal's systems of "hooks" just makes things all the more confusing.
The fact that the core developers intentionally disregard compatibility between even point releases means most modules and customizations get orphaned quickly.
I've since moved on to Java based systems, it's not for every use, but there are plenty of high quality mid level libraries that give you a good mix of control and re-use, and at least I can tell if something is outright broken after a release, know if a function is dealing with the right kind of data, and do refactoring. As well, the community is often more professional, though there is certainly a lot more up front learning and design required.
You are completely right, I was just responding to the narrow point of view that somehow lions eating gazelles means that's what we must do as well, the whole tone of "Force them to watch the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet nature shows." Actually, my post was meant to be funny/insightful, but it came off as virtriolic, perhaps because of the experience of sitting down with so many meat eaters for a shared meal, and them just having to get some stupid predictable joke in like it's the funniest thing in the world.
Anyone reading my comments could see I am not taking a very radical point of view, I would not argue against the origins of meat eating, occasional meat consumption and hunting for food, unfortunately discussion on Slashdot is more likely to lead to polarization than anything.
In the end it's just a personal choice and I can't do much about other people's choice but discuss them, maybe the trends will back me up, if not, there's always vat grown meat.
This has nothing to do with guilt, the post, the subject or anything. You did not answer the question, you dodged it because you know you can't answer it without making yourself a liar.
You must be a pedant, obsessed with definitions rather than having any understanding of conversations. Your tactic is to drill down on one topic where you can shrilly accuse someone of being a "liar" (when unresponsive, contradictory, evasive, or simply not engaging on one topic I feel I've adequately addressed - my reasons for not eating meat and why I think if many others ate less meat it would be a good thing) and ignore other themes.
NO IT DOESN'T. It makes the point that the benefits of vegetarianism ARE JUST AS EFFECTIVELY ACHIEVED WITHOUT ANYVEGETARIANISM AT ALL. Your reading comprehension sucks.
My statement:
It does make the point that vegetarianism/may/ not have a profound effect on the health of the environment
The article's statement:
A widely adopted vegetarian diet, in and of itself, may not have profound effects on the health of the environment.
I guess you're complaining because I didn't focus on exactly your point.
If you are incapable of even discussing this subject without overtly lying about what you've said, I can't see any reason to continue.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, I was just using the vernacular.
The typical engineering geek response is that it's "shiny," "pretty," and just skin deep. But in reality what it is, is consistency, a carefully considered experience that starts with design first - not colours and gradiants, but design elements and human factors - and fit the features to that. Read some Raskin, for example, to understand.
Until the software developers starts respecting designers and stops being a bunch of alpha monkeys talking about what they decided to code up that day for themselves, Apple will continue to lead in this area. And I'm not even an Apple fanboy, but it is the truth.
Maybe you should work on reducing your LOC. :)
Excuse me, I need to stop laughing. Ok. Could you please explain to me what sort of code base could be 12 million lines of Java code? I assume you are excluding generated code, included comments, white space, etc.
OK, you care about SOME users then.
Assuming you'd typed the spacer after 2.0., [esc]dFW would be faster, but you'd have to press a afterward. OK, it's just NERDier.
What about accessibility? That's a pretty huge gap. You're excluding a lot of users just to have whizzy controls, and for some industries it's the law that you have to have accessible Web pages.
Making a second set of pages for accessibility is a poor choice. And as a benefit of making pages accessible, they usually work well in mobile browsers.
This is why I don't use a comprehensive framework like GWT, aside from the lack of ultimate control over layout and functionality.
See my reply to ben there (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=620663&cid=24284241)
That's documentation, not an API. In typical Drupal fashion, they've fudged terms. With the system of hooks, they've basically turned everything upside down, so everything becomes recursive (ones of those things people try to avoid in programming) and there is nothing like a simple oo or functional application programming interface. Most of the time when you're programming in Drupal, you're programming in a switch, which is another thing programmers like to avoid.
And it's true they have been releasing long lists of changes between releases (it's amazing how much they change between every single version), but as I said, with no real API, using an untyped language, and no unit tests, you're basically relying on eyeballing your code to make sure it's ok.
The whole problem with Drupal (well, the main problem, every popular software of any size is going to have lots of problems) is the project leads' refusal to make any kind of real API. With every major release of Drupal, modules become orphaned and existing sites get harder to support or upgrade. Because Drupal uses a "hook" system, and PHP (with no data typing), and there are no unit tests, it's really, really, really difficult to tell when things are broken. I've seen evidence of this again and again as even core functions aren't properly upgraded, with only passing warnings letting users know something is terribly wrong.
At least if they'd use an API for core functions this problem would be partially mitigated. They've been talking about an API for years, but no one wants to do it, and to be honest I think this suits the people at the top of Drupal (as opposed to everyone else) just fine - it's certainly not a high priority for them.
Interesting nobody even refers to design (as in functional and visual). Just do design at the last second and expect software lines that are really consistent to use and look good. Heh.
It's more than just features, it's their bottom up attention to detail and design. Look at Samsung as an opposite, I had their Q1 Ultra, it had every feature under the sun, but was an unusable piece of trash. Apple would have gotten rid of most of the features and made the ones that remained work well.
I'm no Apple fanboy, I had a Macbook Pro but sold it 'cause it was just too sleek for me (and I hate the whole Apple gated community feel), but they do deserve credit for being about the only company with this fanatical level of attention to detail that actually includes design (integrated form & function) right from the early stages. It seems like most companies are engineer driven, if someone thinks it's cool they'll include it, or marketing driven, or reactive. Apple raises the bar, without them we'd still be entirely using 1995 style user interfaces (instead of the half hearted grafted-on inconsistent UI companies are grafting on these days to try to compete with Apple, but they'll never be able to because design is an afterthought for them).
I've been trying to make this point on gadget blogs for a while. In fact, I would suggest calling MS Vista "MS Gavage," what MS wanted everyone to do is switch to Vista immediately and XP to become a memory, never mind most hardware isn't ready for Vista (and lighter alternatives will always run faster/have better battery life). Yay for open and free operating systems.
Speaking of which, the new netbooks are nice, more than decent for what most people need, but they mostly have low memory limits, which is strange considering how cheap memory is and how much of a performance boost it can bring. I can understand only including 512MB or a GB, but why not allow more?
Battery life also sucks, give me a netbook with an option for 7 hour life please, good enough for all day.
I had a headache, took some herbal medicine (aspirin), a few minutes later my headache was gone.
Explain that!
where's that edit button! (where's that coffee.. actually, too much coffee is the problem).
I just wish all these systems (Joomla, Drupal, etc, etc, etc) had not abducted the term "CMS." It used to refer to a large scale system used to integrate common data in heterogeneous computing environments. Now it means a self contained front end to some Web based views and forms. Granted lately systems like CCK are moving in on true CMS ground, but it would be more honest to call them app frameworks, portals etc. But then the trend is for someone to "invent" some great new system in a burst of energy, people glom onto it and start spreading the word basically with misinformation, usually aimed at uninformed organizations that can genuinely benefit from lightweight systems without marketing through misinformation or outright lies.
I just wish all these systems (Joomla, Drupal, etc, etc, etc) had not abducted the term "CMS." It used to refer to a large scale system used to integrate common template in heterogeneous computing environments. Now it means a self contained front end to some Web based views and forms. Granted lately systems like CCK are moving in on true CMS ground, but it would be more honest to call them app frameworks, portals etc. But then the trend is fro someone to "invent" some great new system in a burst of energy, people glom onto it and start spreading the word basically with misinformation, using aimed at uninformed organizations that can genuinely benefit from lightweight systems without marketing through misinformation or outright lies.
I appreciate your consideration for cultural differences, but don't think it is appropriate or desirable for entities such as the NYT to not introduce these perspectives. And the perspective in this case is largely benign, compared to Tibet for example.
I would not expect an individual or entity to only be focused on the actual rescue unless that is what they were presently engaged in, everyone else should keep doing their jobs with contemporary topics, political newspaper columns included.
As well, I do casually monitor Chinese news sources (http://english.people.com.cn and topix China), and often see willingness to jump on issues real time for the purposes of spin from the Chinese side. It's only natural.
Funny, I didn't get that at all. I just got that China's authoritarian government is learning and moderating itself, and there may be advantages to an authoritarian government - a statement I think can be made without consideration of other factors.
Democracy has to keep trying harder in the face of this 'competition' for the best system to serve masses and individuals.
By the way, in case it's not obvious, I accidentally posted the link starting from page 2. Go to page 1 for the quote and the majority of the story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/world/asia/14response.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&hp
The following paragraphs provide some good contrasts with "democratic" governments.
http://us.shuttle.com/KPC/
I like to point out that rather than being "communist," open source software is the most competitive software possible. Don't you agree?
Hmm? Alfresco is totally Open Source as far as I know, with commercial support options. Another alternative is Jahia, though some of the more important bits are closed.
But in my case, since my app wasn't mainly a CMS, I ended up going with a collection of about 30 open source Java libraries which I find quite nice. Instead of hoping Drupal would do what I want and hacking it (in the bad sense of the word) in the meantime, it gives a lot of control, and I get very fine grained best of breed approaches to each problem.
I'm afraid what I'm working on doesn't really relate to general CMS requirements, though I'd be interested in a focus on the best solution. The fact is many "enterprise" CMSs are very heavy, and that's why organizations go with solutions like Drupal, since it's simple and self contained.
I wish all these web systems hadn't abducted the term CMS. It used to mean something that provided very fine grained control for different types of "enterprise" (in the truest meaning of the word - big organizations with heterogeneous systems and requirements) uses. Since these Web CMSs came along the term has been significantly diluted.
Compare the feature set of Drupal to something like Alfresco for anything past Web based content - polls and blog posts - and you'll see what I mean (Dries, the founder of Drupal, admitted this).
Anyway, I used Drupal for some projects at version 4.something. It's success is undeniable and many large sites are using it, but I think if you're not a core developer and need anything outside of what the core provides, you're in for a world of sorrow and pain, aka hacks and patches and blatant disregard. Among other things, PHP just isn't a good language to develop a large stable API in, and Drupal's systems of "hooks" just makes things all the more confusing.
The fact that the core developers intentionally disregard compatibility between even point releases means most modules and customizations get orphaned quickly.
I've since moved on to Java based systems, it's not for every use, but there are plenty of high quality mid level libraries that give you a good mix of control and re-use, and at least I can tell if something is outright broken after a release, know if a function is dealing with the right kind of data, and do refactoring. As well, the community is often more professional, though there is certainly a lot more up front learning and design required.
You are completely right, I was just responding to the narrow point of view that somehow lions eating gazelles means that's what we must do as well, the whole tone of "Force them to watch the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet nature shows." Actually, my post was meant to be funny/insightful, but it came off as virtriolic, perhaps because of the experience of sitting down with so many meat eaters for a shared meal, and them just having to get some stupid predictable joke in like it's the funniest thing in the world.
Anyone reading my comments could see I am not taking a very radical point of view, I would not argue against the origins of meat eating, occasional meat consumption and hunting for food, unfortunately discussion on Slashdot is more likely to lead to polarization than anything.
In the end it's just a personal choice and I can't do much about other people's choice but discuss them, maybe the trends will back me up, if not, there's always vat grown meat.
You must be a pedant, obsessed with definitions rather than having any understanding of conversations. Your tactic is to drill down on one topic where you can shrilly accuse someone of being a "liar" (when unresponsive, contradictory, evasive, or simply not engaging on one topic I feel I've adequately addressed - my reasons for not eating meat and why I think if many others ate less meat it would be a good thing) and ignore other themes.
My statement:
The article's statement:
I guess you're complaining because I didn't focus on exactly your point.
OK then.