Sometimes I really do wonder about people with allegedly advanced educations. Political systems set the base for the functionality of society, and all the rest follows. Meaning that ulitmately everything is political.
Almost all of the controversey surrounding digital music involves copyright infringement (*sigh*duh). Those were legislative decisions made by politicians. Ultimately those people will decide all of our crucial issues.
Quit dissing politics. It's the way this society makes the rules. Either take up arms or work within the system. Or ignore the politicians at your very great peril. They're easily bought--who has more money, the Napsterites or the RIAA?
Sapere Aude!
Re:Every technilogical breakthrough is like this
on
Frankenstein Time
·
· Score: 1
Gimme a break. Designing a better wheel or an engine without cams is not the same as engineering genes. The potential for harm in the Human Genome Project is far greater than mechanical engineering feats.
I wrote a short story once about a colony of planets that embraced genetic engineering. Predicitably, they were though of as freaks by the rest of their planetary neighbors. Whenever they found one off-planet they killed them as soon as possible. They were too smart, too capable, and too dangerous.
Either you let everybody be engineered or engineer no one. I don't doubt that the human capacity for envy and jealously could cause very serious problems for those who were engineered and then started to compete/survive along with non-engineered humans.
~jwa
Re:It's the business model, stupid!
on
Boo No More
·
· Score: 1
Levi's didn't stay with their net strategy because they've been clobbered in the teen and tween market by other brands and wanted to try and get that market share back. They din't want to use their resources to try something new if they they weren't going to have much of a market anyway.
Which is a shame, because they had a winner. They already cut their jeans with machines, and it would have been a do-able project to integrate a database through the web for each individual customer. That way each customer could customize each pair of jeans bought and the machine would cut them out of the dimensions in the database. Always tailored jeans.
One of the lessons to learn here is that although the site spents gobs on technology, there was very little spent to ensure that the customer experience was personal is some way, and that there was always somebody to talk to. If there was any lesson worth remembering from the Cluetrain Manifesto, it was that the market is made up of human voices, talking to each other and to the company. If the comapny can't speak and interact well with customers then it won't make it.
If there was ever a recipe for success using that formula then it would have to be tailored jeans for every customer through the web. It doesn't have to be jeans--the first site that figures out how to cleany and quickly tailor each shopping experience with customer database data will kick some ass. The grocery sites do this to some extent--they rememeber what you bought before--but when customers can set their own specs and always have someone to talk to, then we'll all wonder how we ever survived without e-commerce.
~jwa perl rox
What am I supposed to do? THIS:
on
An MP3 Update
·
· Score: 1
Go to any Gnutella download site and get the absurdly small program (http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/nndata/gnutella_top .html). This just happens to be the first one that popped up on a major search engine, but there's lots more.
It's not as intuituve as Napster, but in some ways it's better and it's still easy to use.
Or try Scour, which unfortunately is pretty clunky and mainstream: http://www.scour.com/
Or try ICQ--I've never done it but there's a way to download music through that system. There should be a great community resource through ICQ if you're willing to invest a little time & effort.
Most of all, you're supposed to keep up the corporate fuck-you spirit of open source. I read in the NYT's yesterday that a Brit team is developing a share program a la Napster that forever cloaks your IP adr. They'll never ban you again. Search the archives in the NYT's, download it, and then email the RIAA what you've done. After they figure that one out--it will take a long time, unfortunately--maybe we can get back to our code instead of all these MP3 download workarounds.
Creativity is not the act of being innovatively spontaneous. It is literally the ability to create, not doing something new or different.
So your post was of course creative. But you'll never be able to do it if in the future if Andover decides that well, these slashdotters congregate for a useful marketing strategy, but when we aquire such-and-such company six months from now that marketing tack will no longer work, so we'll shut \. down.
Rob Malda has sworn it will never happen. Of course it won't under his watch--they'll fire him first and then do it. For the sake of Andover Corp.
There goes your creativity, home. I'm not trying to contradict you, only point out that the very act of your post is in fact under the watchful eye of American Corporatism, and they can eliminate it in seconds. I have to go, but you're more than welcome to email me to contine this discussion. It's strange to me to see so many Anonymous Cowards on \. All we have against the forces we disagree with is our human voice, and yet all these people choose to cloak it.
Or just take the files you share in that folder and continually move them to another folder on the hard drive. Napster thinks you've got very little to share and hardly anybody uploads from you.
Write to the North Carolina Sate Board of Education for being such doofus' in abdicating their responsibility and subverting the constitution (4th Amendment).
The reason a lot of people don't listen to Jesfferson anymore is that while he wrote the Declaration of Independence he was a slaveowner.
Then in the only book he wrote he described blacks as having, among other sub-human characterisitics, as being more smelly because they secreted more fluids through their glands rather than the bladder.
I not only don't listen to him, but I don't quote him, either.
Fossil checking in here. Meaning I actually do remember a time long, long ago in a place far away when Play that Funky Music, White Boy was on the radio. Some other fossils are smiling right now--this one knows HTML, programs in Perl and can do anything with an image. Take off, eh?
Anyway, that song used to be played and we sorta enjoyed it, but couldn't dream of buying it--allowance was fifty cents a week. It was a radio song, and everyone has scores of them in their heads that they knew they'd only ever hear at the whim of some rebellious dj not playing the corporate list on a classic station.
But the fossils mainlining memories on Napster didn't forget Funky Music, White Boy. Turns out a guy named George Clinton wrote and played it, a distant cuz of the prez. Funky Music, White Boy got ripped and copied and grew like corporate lawyers at a DeCSS site on Napster and spread like fire all over the country.
Now sagging hips all over the country do mirror time to Funky Music, White Boy while the subwoofer pulses that sound in a way we'd never imagined in that time long ago when it was broadcast mono on the AM band. And that song has a whalin' git solo I'd forgotten about.
I Wonder what George Clinton thinx of this. People stopped generating royalty income for him with Funky Music, White Boy eons ago, but his art and his voice now actively crackle the nuerons of countless people who never would have heard that song again had it not been for the free sharing on Napster.
I'm going to find him and find out. I bet he's thrilled with it, and probably okay with resisting the corporate forces alligned against Napster. Perl ROX
I am a Perl programmer and web developer by default. Meaning that when I graduated with my liberal arts degree I couldn't get squat for a job, and just then happened to fall in love with the Net. One thing led to another with the amatuer work I did at home and all of a sudden I was interesting to recruiters.
That liberal arts degree was in Political Science. I was initially struck by how contemptuous the web community was to politics, the utter scorn directed to those idiots in Washington or Sacramento who could never figure out what the net was or how to do anything relevant concerning the net community(s).
Of course, the commercial interests in this country have long ago learned never to ignore the political process--indeed, it was their duty to contribute to it with lots of annual cash. Even Micorsoft, so contemptuous of all politics, suddenly learned two years ago what certain politicians had the potential to do them, and has since increased their political cash donations tenfold.
The DMCA is the direct result of corporate intests channelling legislation directly benefical to them and harmful to others. In this specific case it's the music/video entertainment industry maintaining distributive controls while screwing the average consumer and artists who can't presently get into their channels.
What course do netizens have to combat it? Presently it amounts to Linnux activists handing out flyers on street corners in NYC, urging most clueless citizens to get concerned about the arrest of a young hacker for posting DeCSS. What chance does that have of succeeding against corporate interests who annualy donate millions of dollars annualy to politicans and who hire very good lobbyists? Zero.
Sometime soon the free source movement is going to have to fund a lobbying presence at the federal level to look out for its interests. Relying on writers like Katz, Leonard, and Gilmore to stir agitation long after legislation has passed and flyer campaigns just doesn't work. It's a lot easier to stop a bad law before it becomes one rather than try to overturn it in the judicial system.
I'm quite sure the net will always carry out guerrilla campaigns against whatever corporate interests try to do against them. It's a poor rationalization for maintaining contempt of the political process. It would be much better to legally, openly post DeCSS software than to furtively mirror it.
The old crowd I ran with is petrified of John McCain because he's ardent supporter campaign finance reform. It's a direct attack on the monied establishment being able to greatly influence the political process. The fear is based upon the obstruction of being able to buy legislation like the DMCA. They know that the issue has deep resonance within American culture and think McCain would win the election with it. He won't be nominated becuase too much of the Republican elective body feeds and depends off corporate cash. That's why ony 4 of his republican senator colleagues support McCain--he's too threatneing.
Maybe the open source movement could have helped him, since a lot of what they do is a direct threat against monied interests. Or at least have pushed a legistlative agenda that made it onto a candidate's platform.
Open source can organize/lobby or simply be run over. It's not hard to do and there's a lot of players out there with tons of cash who would love to do it. A free press and Slashdot threads won't do a thing.
I'm quite sure that if one told 1,000 ordinary Americans that John Katz wrote his columns in Word, 999 would look at you quizically and say "So?"
Eventually some ivory tower researcher would look at the archives of Slashdot threads, find the one above and use it an example of Net distortion, geek isolation/rebelliousness/angst/arrogance, and further proof how too much computer technology degenerates the human mind.
Most of the fear and uncertainty surrounding new technology stems precisely from the sort of individual above who can't distinguish the utterly inconsequential method of presenting an idea from the idea itself. If this is the Net, what good could it possibly be? According to this guy, the Ten Commandments couldn't be any good because they were written in stone, not plain text.
I fervently believe the Net can be a good, if not great, place. That potential can be partly found in threads on Slashdot. It's completely wasted by posters who actually claim to hate legitimate, thoughful authors becaue they use Word. I'm sick of them, flame wars be dammned. I am a courteous, kind person, but I'm not going to stand around here and let some fool set the tone for a thread.
Believe me, posters like Bowie are genuinely feared, even by a great number of net users. If I flame him, will he shut down my mailbox or attack my web server? Will he keep me on a list an keep me from getting hired in the future?
The response to this fear is to stay away, to stifle the human capability for reasonable discussion, exchange of ideas, and creativity. I know there are extremely insightful, funny, innovative thinkers out there who read this column who will never, ever join (or even read) a thread because they don't want to soil their minds with the utterly irrational venom. We'll never get to know those minds because of the fear.
I know how they feel, 'cuz right now I feel filthy, and I probably won't ever post to Slashdot again. I don't need the hatred, I do need a shower from it, and I've got far more productive, progressive things to do.
All because Katz writes in Word. None of these posts even remotely relates to the column itself. It's really very sad.
I looked a few times on this win95 NS4.6 platform and didn't see any pull down menus for the top nav bar. It's probably an image map like the bottom one but I can't be sure 'cause-a the DHTML,(IMG SRC="/graphics/navmap_0799.gif" USEMAP="#nav_map_0799" BORDER=0 WIDTH=515 HEIGHT=31 alt="Site Navigation"BR clear="all" ) but I am sure there's no javascript there to generate a pull-down.
All you'd be able to see with the dynamic code is is a simple j-script saying basically "load sections 3, 4.."which pop in the html and j-script. They're just navigations numbers. If you had them you could re-arrange the site, that's all. Not missing much.
I wish I could test on different platforms. If it's true that the site is inaccessible or loads differently for different platforms then it really is inexcusable and a total joke. If.
This site was made with an editor, most likely Dreamweaver 2. I'm a little surprised at that; for the hard-core taggers that will earn instant scorn and no votes. There are ways to hide that, but evidently they don't know it. Yet.
Generally I think of DHTML frame sites as a stupid web trick--the app is truly approporiate only for huge content sites that really do fill the frames with relevant content links--see the LA Times. They've locked in their design scheme for the rest of the year, and they'll be constrained in customizing certain sections, because once they change that section it will be loaded all over the site with DHTML, which they won't want. Stupid.
Site design & code: C-. An essay on open source with a red-hot animated link by Gore would be much better than that semi-hokey comment in the HTML.
I read the article and missed the part about him not finishing college. I'm sorry.
Please provide any other writers you know, with url's please, who approach technical issues with the same perspective as Katz. I'd like to read them.
I suspect there's a great deal of unappreciation for the difficulty in writing at the rate that Katz attempts. It's extremely difficult. What you consider trite is probably clear text that all can understand. If you're so good why haven't we heard from you? If you can be profound, clear, insightful, innovative, and widely read then quit your job and become a very rich writer very quickly.
I mean no disrespect. Some perl gave me fits all day and then I did my taxes--I owe $3,000. I'm not myself and I wish you well. Please take care.
I first became aware of John Katz from a promo on Amazon, What We're Reading, on his latest book, Running to the Mountain. It's a very good book, but not on my top 10 by any means. It did lead, however, to the present theme of my homepage, Dare to Know. http://www.jarrieta.com/sapere.htm I read Dan Gilmore of the San Jose Mercury News, where I first heard about Slashdot, and was pleasantly surprised to find John Katz.
John Katz is an experienced, insightful, funny, provacative writer. His greatest strength, I think, is that he is passionately interested in technology while being generally clueless to how it actually works, but still trying to fit technology's implications into how we work, play, distribute power, and weave the moral fabric of our lives.
We desparately need such writers. For far too many years as long as technology made money then it must be okay, never mind the environmental, human, or moral costs. I'm not railing against technology at all, just making the point that technology without environmental, moral, and power guidance is just poorly conceived/implemented technology. Katz understands this extremly well and always eloquently places these themes in his ideas, positions and writing.
He's earned the right to do so. He made it through college, been married for a long time, raised a child, changed careers, made money as a writer (a feat 99% of the Slashdot community could never, ever do)and worked hard all his life. He's a balanced, multi-faceted individual. The flamers against him can code, but they can't come close to this man's long list of impressive accomplishments.
Even if I didn't like Katz, I'd never flame him or denigrate him just for thoughtfully expressing an opinion. I'm constantly dismayed by the boorish, off-the-cuff flaming and seeming hatred of him. I fundamentally don't get that behavior. What good is it if you can code or be a super-geek if you can't be tolerant of all people? Those flamers have a long way to go in being whole, balanced people.
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes I really do wonder about people with allegedly advanced educations. Political systems set the base for the functionality of society, and all the rest follows. Meaning that ulitmately everything is political.
Almost all of the controversey surrounding digital music involves copyright infringement (*sigh*duh). Those were legislative decisions made by politicians. Ultimately those people will decide all of our crucial issues.
Quit dissing politics. It's the way this society makes the rules. Either take up arms or work within the system. Or ignore the politicians at your very great peril. They're easily bought--who has more money, the Napsterites or the RIAA?
Sapere Aude!
Gimme a break. Designing a better wheel or an engine without cams is not the same as engineering genes. The potential for harm in the Human Genome Project is far greater than mechanical engineering feats.
I wrote a short story once about a colony of planets that embraced genetic engineering. Predicitably, they were though of as freaks by the rest of their planetary neighbors. Whenever they found one off-planet they killed them as soon as possible. They were too smart, too capable, and too dangerous.
Either you let everybody be engineered or engineer no one. I don't doubt that the human capacity for envy and jealously could cause very serious problems for those who were engineered and then started to compete/survive along with non-engineered humans.
~jwa
Levi's didn't stay with their net strategy because they've been clobbered in the teen and tween market by other brands and wanted to try and get that market share back. They din't want to use their resources to try something new if they they weren't going to have much of a market anyway.
Which is a shame, because they had a winner. They already cut their jeans with machines, and it would have been a do-able project to integrate a database through the web for each individual customer. That way each customer could customize each pair of jeans bought and the machine would cut them out of the dimensions in the database. Always tailored jeans.
One of the lessons to learn here is that although the site spents gobs on technology, there was very little spent to ensure that the customer experience was personal is some way, and that there was always somebody to talk to. If there was any lesson worth remembering from the Cluetrain Manifesto, it was that the market is made up of human voices, talking to each other and to the company. If the comapny can't speak and interact well with customers then it won't make it.
If there was ever a recipe for success using that formula then it would have to be tailored jeans for every customer through the web. It doesn't have to be jeans--the first site that figures out how to cleany and quickly tailor each shopping experience with customer database data will kick some ass. The grocery sites do this to some extent--they rememeber what you bought before--but when customers can set their own specs and always have someone to talk to, then we'll all wonder how we ever survived without e-commerce.
~jwa
perl rox
Go to any Gnutella download site and get the absurdly small program (http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/nndata/gnutella_top .html). This just happens to be the first one that popped up on a major search engine, but there's lots more.
It's not as intuituve as Napster, but in some ways it's better and it's still easy to use.
Or try Scour, which unfortunately is pretty clunky and mainstream: http://www.scour.com/
Or try ICQ--I've never done it but there's a way to download music through that system. There should be a great community resource through ICQ if you're willing to invest a little time & effort.
Most of all, you're supposed to keep up the corporate fuck-you spirit of open source. I read in the NYT's yesterday that a Brit team is developing a share program a la Napster that forever cloaks your IP adr. They'll never ban you again. Search the archives in the NYT's, download it, and then email the RIAA what you've done. After they figure that one out--it will take a long time, unfortunately--maybe we can get back to our code instead of all these MP3 download workarounds.
Good luck. ~jwa
Creativity is not the act of being innovatively spontaneous. It is literally the ability to create, not doing something new or different.
So your post was of course creative. But you'll never be able to do it if in the future if Andover decides that well, these slashdotters congregate for a useful marketing strategy, but when we aquire such-and-such company six months from now that marketing tack will no longer work, so we'll shut \. down.
Rob Malda has sworn it will never happen. Of course it won't under his watch--they'll fire him first and then do it. For the sake of Andover Corp.
There goes your creativity, home. I'm not trying to contradict you, only point out that the very act of your post is in fact under the watchful eye of American Corporatism, and they can eliminate it in seconds. I have to go, but you're more than welcome to email me to contine this discussion. It's strange to me to see so many Anonymous Cowards on \. All we have against the forces we disagree with is our human voice, and yet all these people choose to cloak it.
Or just take the files you share in that folder and continually move them to another folder on the hard drive. Napster thinks you've got very little to share and hardly anybody uploads from you.
Think, man!
Write to the North Carolina Sate Board of Education for being such doofus' in abdicating their responsibility and subverting the constitution (4th Amendment).
The email adr is: jworsham@dpi.state.nc.us
I gotta go and write those hosers.
Perl rox
The reason a lot of people don't listen to Jesfferson anymore is that while he wrote the Declaration of Independence he was a slaveowner.
Then in the only book he wrote he described blacks as having, among other sub-human characterisitics, as being more smelly because they secreted more fluids through their glands rather than the bladder.
I not only don't listen to him, but I don't quote him, either.
Perl rox
Fossil checking in here. Meaning I actually do remember a time long, long ago in a place far away when Play that Funky Music, White Boy was on the radio. Some other fossils are smiling right now--this one knows HTML, programs in Perl and can do anything with an image. Take off, eh?
Anyway, that song used to be played and we sorta enjoyed it, but couldn't dream of buying it--allowance was fifty cents a week. It was a radio song, and everyone has scores of them in their heads that they knew they'd only ever hear at the whim of some rebellious dj not playing the corporate list on a classic station.
But the fossils mainlining memories on Napster didn't forget Funky Music, White Boy. Turns out a guy named George Clinton wrote and played it, a distant cuz of the prez. Funky Music, White Boy got ripped and copied and grew like corporate lawyers at a DeCSS site on Napster and spread like fire all over the country.
Now sagging hips all over the country do mirror time to Funky Music, White Boy while the subwoofer pulses that sound in a way we'd never imagined in that time long ago when it was broadcast mono on the AM band. And that song has a whalin' git solo I'd forgotten about.
I Wonder what George Clinton thinx of this. People stopped generating royalty income for him with Funky Music, White Boy eons ago, but his art and his voice now actively crackle the nuerons of countless people who never would have heard that song again had it not been for the free sharing on Napster.
I'm going to find him and find out. I bet he's thrilled with it, and probably okay with resisting the corporate forces alligned against Napster. Perl ROX
I am a Perl programmer and web developer by default. Meaning that when I graduated with my liberal arts degree I couldn't get squat for a job, and just then happened to fall in love with the Net. One thing led to another with the amatuer work I did at home and all of a sudden I was interesting to recruiters.
That liberal arts degree was in Political Science. I was initially struck by how contemptuous the web community was to politics, the utter scorn directed to those idiots in Washington or Sacramento who could never figure out what the net was or how to do anything relevant concerning the net community(s).
Of course, the commercial interests in this country have long ago learned never to ignore the political process--indeed, it was their duty to contribute to it with lots of annual cash. Even Micorsoft, so contemptuous of all politics, suddenly learned two years ago what certain politicians had the potential to do them, and has since increased their political cash donations tenfold.
The DMCA is the direct result of corporate intests channelling legislation directly benefical to them and harmful to others. In this specific case it's the music/video entertainment industry maintaining distributive controls while screwing the average consumer and artists who can't presently get into their channels.
What course do netizens have to combat it? Presently it amounts to Linnux activists handing out flyers on street corners in NYC, urging most clueless citizens to get concerned about the arrest of a young hacker for posting DeCSS. What chance does that have of succeeding against corporate interests who annualy donate millions of dollars annualy to politicans and who hire very good lobbyists? Zero.
Sometime soon the free source movement is going to have to fund a lobbying presence at the federal level to look out for its interests. Relying on writers like Katz, Leonard, and Gilmore to stir agitation long after legislation has passed and flyer campaigns just doesn't work. It's a lot easier to stop a bad law before it becomes one rather than try to overturn it in the judicial system.
I'm quite sure the net will always carry out guerrilla campaigns against whatever corporate interests try to do against them. It's a poor rationalization for maintaining contempt of the political process. It would be much better to legally, openly post DeCSS software than to furtively mirror it.
The old crowd I ran with is petrified of John McCain because he's ardent supporter campaign finance reform. It's a direct attack on the monied establishment being able to greatly influence the political process. The fear is based upon the obstruction of being able to buy legislation like the DMCA. They know that the issue has deep resonance within American culture and think McCain would win the election with it. He won't be nominated becuase too much of the Republican elective body feeds and depends off corporate cash. That's why ony 4 of his republican senator colleagues support McCain--he's too threatneing.
Maybe the open source movement could have helped him, since a lot of what they do is a direct threat against monied interests. Or at least have pushed a legistlative agenda that made it onto a candidate's platform.
Open source can organize/lobby or simply be run over. It's not hard to do and there's a lot of players out there with tons of cash who would love to do it. A free press and Slashdot threads won't do a thing.
Perl ROX
I'm quite sure that if one told 1,000 ordinary Americans that John Katz wrote his columns in Word, 999 would look at you quizically and say "So?"
Eventually some ivory tower researcher would look at the archives of Slashdot threads, find the one above and use it an example of Net distortion, geek isolation/rebelliousness/angst/arrogance, and further proof how too much computer technology degenerates the human mind.
Most of the fear and uncertainty surrounding new technology stems precisely from the sort of individual above who can't distinguish the utterly inconsequential method of presenting an idea from the idea itself. If this is the Net, what good could it possibly be? According to this guy, the Ten Commandments couldn't be any good because they were written in stone, not plain text.
I fervently believe the Net can be a good, if not great, place. That potential can be partly found in threads on Slashdot. It's completely wasted by posters who actually claim to hate legitimate, thoughful authors becaue they use Word. I'm sick of them, flame wars be dammned. I am a courteous, kind person, but I'm not going to stand around here and let some fool set the tone for a thread.
Believe me, posters like Bowie are genuinely feared, even by a great number of net users. If I flame him, will he shut down my mailbox or attack my web server? Will he keep me on a list an keep me from getting hired in the future?
The response to this fear is to stay away, to stifle the human capability for reasonable discussion, exchange of ideas, and creativity. I know there are extremely insightful, funny, innovative thinkers out there who read this column who will never, ever join (or even read) a thread because they don't want to soil their minds with the utterly irrational venom. We'll never get to know those minds because of the fear.
I know how they feel, 'cuz right now I feel filthy, and I probably won't ever post to Slashdot again. I don't need the hatred, I do need a shower from it, and I've got far more productive, progressive things to do.
All because Katz writes in Word. None of these posts even remotely relates to the column itself. It's really very sad.
I looked a few times on this win95 NS4.6 platform and didn't see any pull down menus for the top nav bar. It's probably an image map like the bottom one but I can't be sure 'cause-a the DHTML,(IMG SRC="/graphics/navmap_0799.gif" USEMAP="#nav_map_0799" BORDER=0 WIDTH=515 HEIGHT=31 alt="Site Navigation"BR clear="all" ) but I am sure there's no javascript there to generate a pull-down.
All you'd be able to see with the dynamic code is is a simple j-script saying basically "load sections 3, 4.."which pop in the html and j-script. They're just navigations numbers. If you had them you could re-arrange the site, that's all. Not missing much.
I wish I could test on different platforms. If it's true that the site is inaccessible or loads differently for different platforms then it really is inexcusable and a total joke. If.
This site was made with an editor, most likely Dreamweaver 2. I'm a little surprised at that; for the hard-core taggers that will earn instant scorn and no votes. There are ways to hide that, but evidently they don't know it. Yet.
Generally I think of DHTML frame sites as a stupid web trick--the app is truly approporiate only for huge content sites that really do fill the frames with relevant content links--see the LA Times. They've locked in their design scheme for the rest of the year, and they'll be constrained in customizing certain sections, because once they change that section it will be loaded all over the site with DHTML, which they won't want. Stupid.
Site design & code: C-. An essay on open source with a red-hot animated link by Gore would be much better than that semi-hokey comment in the HTML.
Went to the site 02/19/00 1948.23 PST to see the code myself and the freakin' sit is down, has been for the last 10 minutes! Way to go!
I read the article and missed the part about him not finishing college. I'm sorry.
Please provide any other writers you know, with url's please, who approach technical issues with the same perspective as Katz. I'd like to read them.
I suspect there's a great deal of unappreciation for the difficulty in writing at the rate that Katz attempts. It's extremely difficult. What you consider trite is probably clear text that all can understand. If you're so good why haven't we heard from you? If you can be profound, clear, insightful, innovative, and widely read then quit your job and become a very rich writer very quickly.
I mean no disrespect. Some perl gave me fits all day and then I did my taxes--I owe $3,000. I'm not myself and I wish you well. Please take care.
I first became aware of John Katz from a promo on Amazon, What We're Reading, on his latest book, Running to the Mountain. It's a very good book, but not on my top 10 by any means. It did lead, however, to the present theme of my homepage, Dare to Know. http://www.jarrieta.com/sapere.htm I read Dan Gilmore of the San Jose Mercury News, where I first heard about Slashdot, and was pleasantly surprised to find John Katz.
John Katz is an experienced, insightful, funny, provacative writer. His greatest strength, I think, is that he is passionately interested in technology while being generally clueless to how it actually works, but still trying to fit technology's implications into how we work, play, distribute power, and weave the moral fabric of our lives.
We desparately need such writers. For far too many years as long as technology made money then it must be okay, never mind the environmental, human, or moral costs. I'm not railing against technology at all, just making the point that technology without environmental, moral, and power guidance is just poorly conceived/implemented technology. Katz understands this extremly well and always eloquently places these themes in his ideas, positions and writing.
He's earned the right to do so. He made it through college, been married for a long time, raised a child, changed careers, made money as a writer (a feat 99% of the Slashdot community could never, ever do)and worked hard all his life. He's a balanced, multi-faceted individual. The flamers against him can code, but they can't come close to this man's long list of impressive accomplishments.
Even if I didn't like Katz, I'd never flame him or denigrate him just for thoughtfully expressing an opinion. I'm constantly dismayed by the boorish, off-the-cuff flaming and seeming hatred of him. I fundamentally don't get that behavior. What good is it if you can code or be a super-geek if you can't be tolerant of all people? Those flamers have a long way to go in being whole, balanced people.