Although Jon Katz probably doesn't seem to realize it, MOST of us don't live in big cities like LA, New York, or San Fransisco. We live in places like Santa Maria, CA, where local websites are a joke. Am I seriously supposed to look for a used car, an apartment, or look up local news on a website? Yeah right! I'd be surprised if Santa Maria residents know what the web IS, much less how to put important information up on there.
Also, newspapers are a great filtering method. If I wanted to check up, say, the international news for the day, I'd be inundated with a flood of information. Yeah, CNN.com and other places do a great job, but newspapers provide an alternate source from a viewpoint that has at least a few hours to think about the story before posting it, and they know that it'll be almost 24 hours till anyone reads the story, so they don't jump to conclusions the same way TV news or web news often does.
And then of course there's the simple fact that it's much easier to lounge around the living room couch with a newspaper and breakfast than it is to do so with a computer.
Newspapers may change their format (Daily to weekly, more local news, etc), but they aren't going away anytime soon.
Dude, you guys gotta play Asheron's Call.. yeah, yeah.. it's published by Microsoft, and you gotta use the MSN Gaming Zone, but Turbine (the software company that programs Asheron's Call) is really great. I could go into reasons why it's better, (Don't lose everything when you die/FAR less camping/no nerfing/etc)
Anyway, if you guys want to play, I'm "Porom" on Harvestgain, and I could get you to lvl 4 in a weekend, easily..
Boys are wilder and more aggressive. So when there is computer time available, they will push the girls off. If teachers and parents don't do something about that, the girls won't fight back.
I don't know what to say....does this sound really ridiculous to anyone else?
I agree.. it's ridiculous. I can't recall a single time throughout my school career where I was "pushed" off the computer by a boy, or someone even attempted to. In grade school when there wasn't enough computers, the teachers had us team up with a friend to work on the computers (so it ended up being fairly equal boy/boy combos and girl/girl combos). In Jr. High and highschool when there were a lot of computers but nobody was using them me and my female friends were all *encouraged* to hang out in the computer lab and play educational games.
And today schools are getting more and more computers, so I'd find it hard to believe that there would be such a dearth of computers that an elementary school class that boys and girls had to fight it out to be able to use them at all, and the teachers would stand for that kind of thing. (even if they had to split the class in half and even then have the students share computers like in my elementary school.. there still isn't a problem)
The only thing that this constant "where are the women"-type discussions on slashdot is doing is trivializing the women who ARE here. Sometimes I get so annoyed when everytime a story that asks "where are all the female geeks?" gets dozens of women essentially responding 'I'm here! I'm here!'.. only to be ignored.. and then ignored again the next week when a similar conversation comes about.. and again.. and again.. I've almost given up on posting my opinion on stories like this because I'm always ignored.
On an entirely different note.. I honestly don't think we need to push women into computer science who don't want to be there. Many men LIKE spending all their time geeking in front of a computer, but unlike myself, most women DON'T.. and if forced into a career that they really don't want to do means they will be just unhappy in the future. (or will end up quitting their job to raise their snot nosed rugrats) I believe if you poll a group of computer science majors, many of the men will get into computer science because they like computer, or they're really geeks at heart, whereas most women will get into it to make money or for some other trivial reason.. but obviously NOT because they like computers. (Take the girl in front of me in Linear Algebra.. she spends all her time dressing slutty and acting stupid.. why the heck is she in Computer Science?)
Another incredibly annoying result of trying to push more women into computer science is that the general opinion of male geeks about female computer science students goes right down the tube. More and more women are seen as "just not geeky enough", which really pisses at least this geeky person off. I've read several statements so far saying that women in CS don't know computers.. or have to take "beginners" courses, or need constant help from the teacher.. and I have to agree.. it's true. Call me selfish, or whatnot, but if I wanted to take classes with 95% women I'd major in business or marketing. I knew what I was getting into when I decided to major in computer science.. and I like it that way.
Am I the only one who thinks that part of the "interview" should have been marked "Flamebait"?
It really shows Katz's true colors.. that he really does believe ONLY HE knows Slashdot's TRUE audience, and because he gets 200-300 emails a day he is the Expert On Everything Slashdot.
I personally thought Q*Bert's post was just as valid and non-flamey as any other post, but Katz jumped all over him for no reason.
Ummmm... no, I don't agree with you. I think the subtext of this message isn't about how dumb I am, but how smart you think you are.
I must have been away when you were elected mayor of Slashdot, and spokesperson for the community.
You also are wantonly inaccurate about Slashdot's audience, which is considerably wider than you seem to grasp
It's not a matter of it being "inappropriate". When I was a 13 year old girl I was a heavy Sci-Fi reader, and my parents let me read ANYTHING that I picked up off the library shelves (The teachers, that's another story)..
Many of those books had so-called "adult" themes. Yes, I read about sex, drugs, violence, and death when I was 11, 12,..13 and on, and the fact of the matter was I just didn't "get it". The books weren't enjoyable because none of it made sense.
Fareinheit 451, the later Rama series, and many, many more just don't make sense to a 13 year old girl, and even at 19 I still don't understand some of it just because they were/are almost always written by older men with a totally different viewpoint. I don't know how many books for me just seemed dumb because the author had most/all his female characters walking around totally naked most/some/all of the time for whatever reason. "Like, I'm so sure!"
Personally, I say go with the classics. Jules Verne, HG Wells, Asimov, and most Clarke... just going through those huge collections will take quite a while.. even for heavy readers;D
Save Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy (Why bother reading when half the jokes don't make sense?) Heinlen, Herbert (I read Dune in 8th grade and loved it, but the sequels.. ehhh..) and cyberpunk for later.
Leave kids' options open, and allow them to read anything they want, but recommend ones you think they would enjoy, rather than disallowing ones you think they wouldn't.
Hey, why don't some women prove Jon Katz wrong and voice their opinions? What games do _you_ want to play?
I haven't played video games much since the demise of my family's last Commodore 64 (I spent many an hour playing Montezuma's revenge, jumpman, Pit Stop, MULE, and others) but I did have fun for a time playing Sim City 2000, had a short stint with Myst (was given to me) as well as Star Wars Pod Racer. Just a few weeks ago I got Asheron's Call and have been enjoying the hell out of myself (Porom on Harvestgrain, BTW) (it's got the beat up big monsters thing that generally appeals to males, and the interact with real people thing that generally appeals to females, although I like both aspects)
Other women I know play Hearts and Solitare and such till their mouse clicking fingers will bleed, but unfortunatley those games aren't very profitable to make. However, games like Asheron's Call, EverQuest, Myst, Riven, Sim City, and others CAN be profitable AND can be (IMHO) successfully marketed to women.
Some more comments after reading Strangers In the "Myst" of Video Gaming: Ethics and Representation
she's going on about how there's no good female role models in video games.. but then she says there's Lara Croft.. but THEN she say girls don't play video games so it doesn't matter if there's a good role model because the girls will never see it.
but she didn't say that before going on about how since lara croft has big boobs, she must just be a sex object and is a bad role model.
in this they convniently ignore almost all video games that have good female role models and focus on the games they see when first walking into a video game store and then assuming all video games are like that. Take RPG's - although there is usually a male lead in RPG's, there are plenty of strong women, from Rinoa in Final Fantasy to Vandal Hearts II, which has roughly equal male to female ratio in your party, and all the women start off as straight out fighters.
But of course male to female ratios in computer games has NOTHING to do with how many females are in tech industries - people who play video games don't necessarily go on to learn more about computers (how much computer knowledge do you REALLY need to use the N64?) nor do people in the computer industry always play computer games (I don't - but with my significant other working for RPGamer.com and all I know enough about video games to prove my point)
I'm a female geek myself, and the reason there are so few women in the tech fields is not that they're discouraged or gender roles or glass ceiling or anything like that, it's just they don't want to. How many people REALLY want to spend all their time sitting in front of a computer banging out code - something most people find incredibly boring?
There are two types of people in the computer industry: People who are there so they could make lots of money, and people who are there because they 'identify' in an odd way with computers. they feel they BELONG with computers. Going back to the columbine thread a long time ago.. why do people identify with computers? because they were social outcasts! I was a social outcast as a kid, but most girls don't experience being an outcast the way most boys do, and thus they never will turn to computers and develop the interest that leads them into a career in computers.
If we assume this is true, it'll take a MASSIVE social shift before women will become equally represented in the computer industry. We can throw millions of dollars at the 'problem', and although it may encourage a few women to become techies, for the most part it will be a failure.
I believe this is the worst time of year to be boycotting an online business such as amazon.com. Why? Right before christmas is when normal, non computer types are all over amazon.com buying their DVD players, their patty potty doll, their Backstreet Boys CD's, and their children's books. Amazon.com is getting so many orders right now that they'd NEVER notice a dent in sales, and even if they did hear about the boycott, they're too busy to care.
What should have been done is wait a month so christmas is no longer an issue. THAT is the time when they rely on geeks who will shop online year round, and THAT's when they might actually do something about it. Alternatley, the boycott could have been started before christmas buying season got into swing, right about when Amazon decided to sue, and then there would have been time to get the word out to more people before christmas, but it's too late for that now.
Wow. I think I just had a zen moment.
on
Interface Zen
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· Score: 3
early in the morning, listening to some heavy industrial, I start reading a slashdot article. I begin to slip into a transcendendal state.. and then I realize that I haven't suddenly jumped out of time.. I'm just reading the same few paragraphs over and over.
damnit.
Companies actually get asked this.. not as a joke
on
Having Fun with Y2K
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· Score: 2
I work for Helical Products Company, Inc., Manufacturer of flexible couplings, u-joints, and machined springs. what does this mean? We make little bendy things out of metal. That's it.
According to our receptionist and head of technology, we've feilded hundreds of questions as to whether our products are y2k compliant.
here is an article I wrote about how schools (at least here in California) waste all the money they get for technology.
it's not a lack of money, it's a lack of effort and desire. Sure, there are a few good teachers out there, but do you really think most teachers teach because they really want to? No, they teach because it's a secure, relativley high paying (after tenure.. and that takes only a few years) job where they get summers and all holidays off, and only have to "work" (if you consider setting up a audiobook or a video and sleeping during class work) from 8am to 3pm. Ever heard the saying "Those who can, can, those who can't, teach?" It's the truth. Sure, we could spend millions subscribing every teacher to the latest technology magazines, but they'll go unread. We can spend millions taking our teachers to technology training courses, but even if they learn anything, they won't implement any of it.
As a host on C|Net's Builder Buzz I'm not exactly an employee, but I do spend a lot more time around C|Net and C|net folk than I'm sure most/. readers except the employees and I have to say with the "Top Ten Subversive Hacks", or "Top Ten Things that scare Web Builders" they're not trying ot be frightening or sensationalist, they're more trying to be interesting and a little funny.
When they did their "Top Ten Clients from Hell" on builder.com they had goofy little graphics on those too, as they do most of their articles. It should be obvious to most of you (esp. the web builders) that they're not saying these types of clients ARE literally from hell (Just as Back Orifice isn't literally "terrifying), they're just trying to give all of us who have GONE THROUGH that kind of thing a little laugh and some help for dealing with these people.
You guys take C|Net too seriously, and I don't think they deserve the criticism you give them.
This is slightly offtopic, but I'm sure very helpful for some of the geeks/geek's families out there.. these are some good coupon codes for different online stores.
office max.com has a $20 off a purchaseo f$20 deal, click Here and use the code YES1CFNH2H
Barnes and Nobel (bn.com) has these $10 off $10 codes: CZVRCH7, CBN2222, COSHARE, and CTREATS. Amazon.com has these $10 off $25: FIRSTGIFT and AMZNPRESENT2
CDNow has these $10 off $14.99 codes: here and here
Last but not lease (see links below for more) Buy.com has $20 off for first time customers. Click Here to get it.
1. Older browsers can't see them, and if someone's been ignoring those "Upgrade Your Browser So You Can See My Site!" noframes notices for this long, they're certainly NOT going to upgrade just for you.
2. Most search engine robots can't go through frames sites. If they can't go through, you can't get indexed. If you can't get indexed, nobody finds your site.
3. Bookmarking, Bookmarking, Bookmarking. You want people to bookmark your site, right? Do you really expect them to bookmark the first page of your site and THEN go surfing to the correct page every time they want to see something? Alternatley, if they DO know about the right-click bookmark frame page trick, you're going to have to have ALL the navigation you had frames to take care of on each one of those pages so people can get around if they're going to a single bookmarked/linked page.
4. Many many people find those scrollbars everywhere incredibly annoying. You can't use ANY kind of tiled background (when you scroll, the background doesn't match up, looks dumb..but so do tiled backgrounds)
Okay. Now, the reasons people use frames.
1. Ease of navigation. If your site depends on frames to give it good navigation, you need help. It's NOT that hard to implement a good table-based navigation scheme that doesn't have the problems of the frames-based design.
2. Pages don't have to reload. Yes, it will speed up your current site, but if you REALLY need frames to give it that extra little speed increase you really need to learn image optimization and alternate ways of doing design that don't involve huge graphics.
3. Can change one frame file and all the pages are changed. This can be also done with SSI, CGI, ASP, or Front Page Includes. There's no reason why you SHOULDN'T be able to use any of these methods, and you will often find these are MORE useful for frames (Can change copyright info, etc.)
There we go. If you want a more in-depth discussion of frames, point your browser over to C|Net's Builder Buzz and do a search for "Frames"
Frankly, I have to say I'm tired of hearing things like this. Yes, there is hunger, war, and other problems in the world, and yes, we should try to do something about it. However, don't be insinuating that I'm an evil person because I'm not devoting my life to helping that starving peasant in Korea and instead I'm helping to move technology forward. It's a logical fallacy to be saying that because there are bigger problems in the world we shouldn't be trying to fix the smaller ones. Like the animal rights activist who is accused of not caring about people because she's trying to prevent cruelty to animals.
I'm sorry, I guess this test doesn't seem as "deep" to me.. it's main purpose is to try to make those of us who use technology feel guilty/because/ we use technology.
I'm a webmaster myself, and it's frankly BS to say that you have to choose one browser over the other, and just give up the other one as a lost hope. It's very easy to make a site that works in both browsers if you know what you're doing.. and although there are extra features like DHTML that aren't consistent between browsers, you CAN find code that works in both, or at least code that degrades gracefully so other browsers can still see it. There's elements of my site that only work in IE, but the site still functions perfectly in Netscape.. netscape users just can't see some of the extra unnecessary glitter.
As for MS owning 99% of the browser market as mentioned in the feature, I'll check my server stats. http://www.heli-cal.com from last Tuesday got 112 hits from people using IE, 109 using Netscape, and about 200 using something else (mostly search engine bots). This site is a perfectly typical business site.
The truth, plain and simple, is that if people rely on features unique to only one browser for their site to work, they're lazy, unprofessional, and shouldn't be in the web design business.
And if Mr. Whitinger's wife really wants windows, let her have it. After about a week of using Windows and IE she'll realize that only a small handful of Netscape crashes in the last couple months is nothing at all.
In most areas, raising the price by too much when it's hotter wouldn't work. Why? Because all someone would have to do would be walk a couple more feet and find another vending machine that doesn't do that. (I prefer those $.25 sodas they sell outside of grocery stores)
Unfortunatley, one large market where Coke has the monopoly is high schools and colleges. All they have to do is donate a scoreboard for the women's softball team and poof, they're the only ones selling soda on campus. When this happens, they can do whatever the hell they want to.. they COULD raise it to $20 even on cold days and since most students don't have that much time to run off of campus between classes (if they even can in the case of high schools) they either fork over the cash or suffer with the metallic tasting drinking fountain water.
My old high school just bought a dozen brand new $2000 laptops for use by students in PE who don't dress out. Yes, you don't get changed.. and instead of running, you sit around and play solitaire. After sitting in storage for about 6 months, they're currently sitting in the PE teacher's office.
The school my mother works at is a continuation high school, with a very small student body. they got a very large Digital High School grant, and instead of upgrading the old 486's the students use for the plato software, they bought/two/ color laser printers for use by the secretaries and spent money on very expensive desks and blinds.
There are hundreds more examples just like this in just this one high school district. They have plenty of money, but the schools buy stuff they don't need and don't use for the staff while they're still using Apple II's in the science classroom.
Slashdot Mirror
Although Jon Katz probably doesn't seem to realize it, MOST of us don't live in big cities like LA, New York, or San Fransisco. We live in places like Santa Maria, CA, where local websites are a joke. Am I seriously supposed to look for a used car, an apartment, or look up local news on a website? Yeah right! I'd be surprised if Santa Maria residents know what the web IS, much less how to put important information up on there.
Also, newspapers are a great filtering method. If I wanted to check up, say, the international news for the day, I'd be inundated with a flood of information. Yeah, CNN.com and other places do a great job, but newspapers provide an alternate source from a viewpoint that has at least a few hours to think about the story before posting it, and they know that it'll be almost 24 hours till anyone reads the story, so they don't jump to conclusions the same way TV news or web news often does.
And then of course there's the simple fact that it's much easier to lounge around the living room couch with a newspaper and breakfast than it is to do so with a computer.
Newspapers may change their format (Daily to weekly, more local news, etc), but they aren't going away anytime soon.
Dude, you guys gotta play Asheron's Call.. yeah, yeah.. it's published by Microsoft, and you gotta use the MSN Gaming Zone, but Turbine (the software company that programs Asheron's Call) is really great. I could go into reasons why it's better, (Don't lose everything when you die/FAR less camping/no nerfing/etc)
Anyway, if you guys want to play, I'm "Porom" on Harvestgain, and I could get you to lvl 4 in a weekend, easily..
I agree.. it's ridiculous. I can't recall a single time throughout my school career where I was "pushed" off the computer by a boy, or someone even attempted to. In grade school when there wasn't enough computers, the teachers had us team up with a friend to work on the computers (so it ended up being fairly equal boy/boy combos and girl/girl combos). In Jr. High and highschool when there were a lot of computers but nobody was using them me and my female friends were all *encouraged* to hang out in the computer lab and play educational games.
And today schools are getting more and more computers, so I'd find it hard to believe that there would be such a dearth of computers that an elementary school class that boys and girls had to fight it out to be able to use them at all, and the teachers would stand for that kind of thing. (even if they had to split the class in half and even then have the students share computers like in my elementary school.. there still isn't a problem)
The only thing that this constant "where are the women"-type discussions on slashdot is doing is trivializing the women who ARE here. Sometimes I get so annoyed when everytime a story that asks "where are all the female geeks?" gets dozens of women essentially responding 'I'm here! I'm here!'.. only to be ignored.. and then ignored again the next week when a similar conversation comes about.. and again.. and again.. I've almost given up on posting my opinion on stories like this because I'm always ignored.
On an entirely different note.. I honestly don't think we need to push women into computer science who don't want to be there. Many men LIKE spending all their time geeking in front of a computer, but unlike myself, most women DON'T.. and if forced into a career that they really don't want to do means they will be just unhappy in the future. (or will end up quitting their job to raise their snot nosed rugrats) I believe if you poll a group of computer science majors, many of the men will get into computer science because they like computer, or they're really geeks at heart, whereas most women will get into it to make money or for some other trivial reason.. but obviously NOT because they like computers. (Take the girl in front of me in Linear Algebra.. she spends all her time dressing slutty and acting stupid.. why the heck is she in Computer Science?)
Another incredibly annoying result of trying to push more women into computer science is that the general opinion of male geeks about female computer science students goes right down the tube. More and more women are seen as "just not geeky enough", which really pisses at least this geeky person off. I've read several statements so far saying that women in CS don't know computers.. or have to take "beginners" courses, or need constant help from the teacher.. and I have to agree.. it's true. Call me selfish, or whatnot, but if I wanted to take classes with 95% women I'd major in business or marketing. I knew what I was getting into when I decided to major in computer science.. and I like it that way.
It really shows Katz's true colors.. that he really does believe ONLY HE knows Slashdot's TRUE audience, and because he gets 200-300 emails a day he is the Expert On Everything Slashdot.
I personally thought Q*Bert's post was just as valid and non-flamey as any other post, but Katz jumped all over him for no reason.
Obviously, Katz knows more about us than we do.
It's not a matter of it being "inappropriate". When I was a 13 year old girl I was a heavy Sci-Fi reader, and my parents let me read ANYTHING that I picked up off the library shelves (The teachers, that's another story)..
;D
Many of those books had so-called "adult" themes. Yes, I read about sex, drugs, violence, and death when I was 11, 12,..13 and on, and the fact of the matter was I just didn't "get it". The books weren't enjoyable because none of it made sense.
Fareinheit 451, the later Rama series, and many, many more just don't make sense to a 13 year old girl, and even at 19 I still don't understand some of it just because they were/are almost always written by older men with a totally different viewpoint. I don't know how many books for me just seemed dumb because the author had most/all his female characters walking around totally naked most/some/all of the time for whatever reason. "Like, I'm so sure!"
Personally, I say go with the classics. Jules Verne, HG Wells, Asimov, and most Clarke... just going through those huge collections will take quite a while.. even for heavy readers
Save Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy (Why bother reading when half the jokes don't make sense?) Heinlen, Herbert (I read Dune in 8th grade and loved it, but the sequels.. ehhh..) and cyberpunk for later.
Leave kids' options open, and allow them to read anything they want, but recommend ones you think they would enjoy, rather than disallowing ones you think they wouldn't.
I haven't played video games much since the demise of my family's last Commodore 64 (I spent many an hour playing Montezuma's revenge, jumpman, Pit Stop, MULE, and others) but I did have fun for a time playing Sim City 2000, had a short stint with Myst (was given to me) as well as Star Wars Pod Racer. Just a few weeks ago I got Asheron's Call and have been enjoying the hell out of myself (Porom on Harvestgrain, BTW) (it's got the beat up big monsters thing that generally appeals to males, and the interact with real people thing that generally appeals to females, although I like both aspects)
Other women I know play Hearts and Solitare and such till their mouse clicking fingers will bleed, but unfortunatley those games aren't very profitable to make. However, games like Asheron's Call, EverQuest, Myst, Riven, Sim City, and others CAN be profitable AND can be (IMHO) successfully marketed to women.
no thanks, I already ate (:
Some more comments after reading Strangers In the "Myst" of Video Gaming: Ethics and Representation
she's going on about how there's no good female role models in video games.. but then she says there's Lara Croft.. but THEN she say girls don't play video games so it doesn't matter if there's a good role model because the girls will never see it.
but she didn't say that before going on about how since lara croft has big boobs, she must just be a sex object and is a bad role model.
in this they convniently ignore almost all video games that have good female role models and focus on the games they see when first walking into a video game store and then assuming all video games are like that. Take RPG's - although there is usually a male lead in RPG's, there are plenty of strong women, from Rinoa in Final Fantasy to Vandal Hearts II, which has roughly equal male to female ratio in your party, and all the women start off as straight out fighters.
But of course male to female ratios in computer games has NOTHING to do with how many females are in tech industries - people who play video games don't necessarily go on to learn more about computers (how much computer knowledge do you REALLY need to use the N64?) nor do people in the computer industry always play computer games (I don't - but with my significant other working for RPGamer.com and all I know enough about video games to prove my point)
I'm a female geek myself, and the reason there are so few women in the tech fields is not that they're discouraged or gender roles or glass ceiling or anything like that, it's just they don't want to. How many people REALLY want to spend all their time sitting in front of a computer banging out code - something most people find incredibly boring?
There are two types of people in the computer industry: People who are there so they could make lots of money, and people who are there because they 'identify' in an odd way with computers. they feel they BELONG with computers. Going back to the columbine thread a long time ago.. why do people identify with computers? because they were social outcasts! I was a social outcast as a kid, but most girls don't experience being an outcast the way most boys do, and thus they never will turn to computers and develop the interest that leads them into a career in computers.
If we assume this is true, it'll take a MASSIVE social shift before women will become equally represented in the computer industry. We can throw millions of dollars at the 'problem', and although it may encourage a few women to become techies, for the most part it will be a failure.
*sniff* Taco with a girlfriend and Hemos getting married? *sob* My little geeks are all grown up!
I believe this is the worst time of year to be boycotting an online business such as amazon.com. Why? Right before christmas is when normal, non computer types are all over amazon.com buying their DVD players, their patty potty doll, their Backstreet Boys CD's, and their children's books. Amazon.com is getting so many orders right now that they'd NEVER notice a dent in sales, and even if they did hear about the boycott, they're too busy to care.
What should have been done is wait a month so christmas is no longer an issue. THAT is the time when they rely on geeks who will shop online year round, and THAT's when they might actually do something about it. Alternatley, the boycott could have been started before christmas buying season got into swing, right about when Amazon decided to sue, and then there would have been time to get the word out to more people before christmas, but it's too late for that now.
early in the morning, listening to some heavy industrial, I start reading a slashdot article. I begin to slip into a transcendendal state.. and then I realize that I haven't suddenly jumped out of time.. I'm just reading the same few paragraphs over and over.
damnit.
I work for Helical Products Company, Inc., Manufacturer of flexible couplings, u-joints, and machined springs. what does this mean? We make little bendy things out of metal. That's it.
According to our receptionist and head of technology, we've feilded hundreds of questions as to whether our products are y2k compliant.
Some people just don't get it.
here is an article I wrote about how schools (at least here in California) waste all the money they get for technology.
it's not a lack of money, it's a lack of effort and desire. Sure, there are a few good teachers out there, but do you really think most teachers teach because they really want to? No, they teach because it's a secure, relativley high paying (after tenure.. and that takes only a few years) job where they get summers and all holidays off, and only have to "work" (if you consider setting up a audiobook or a video and sleeping during class work) from 8am to 3pm. Ever heard the saying "Those who can, can, those who can't, teach?" It's the truth. Sure, we could spend millions subscribing every teacher to the latest technology magazines, but they'll go unread. We can spend millions taking our teachers to technology training courses, but even if they learn anything, they won't implement any of it.
As a host on C|Net's Builder Buzz I'm not exactly an employee, but I do spend a lot more time around C|Net and C|net folk than I'm sure most /. readers except the employees and I have to say with the "Top Ten Subversive Hacks", or "Top Ten Things that scare Web Builders" they're not trying ot be frightening or sensationalist, they're more trying to be interesting and a little funny.
When they did their "Top Ten Clients from Hell" on builder.com they had goofy little graphics on those too, as they do most of their articles. It should be obvious to most of you (esp. the web builders) that they're not saying these types of clients ARE literally from hell (Just as Back Orifice isn't literally "terrifying), they're just trying to give all of us who have GONE THROUGH that kind of thing a little laugh and some help for dealing with these people.
You guys take C|Net too seriously, and I don't think they deserve the criticism you give them.
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Another coupon message board
1. Older browsers can't see them, and if someone's been ignoring those "Upgrade Your Browser So You Can See My Site!" noframes notices for this long, they're certainly NOT going to upgrade just for you.
2. Most search engine robots can't go through frames sites. If they can't go through, you can't get indexed. If you can't get indexed, nobody finds your site.
3. Bookmarking, Bookmarking, Bookmarking. You want people to bookmark your site, right? Do you really expect them to bookmark the first page of your site and THEN go surfing to the correct page every time they want to see something? Alternatley, if they DO know about the right-click bookmark frame page trick, you're going to have to have ALL the navigation you had frames to take care of on each one of those pages so people can get around if they're going to a single bookmarked/linked page.
4. Many many people find those scrollbars everywhere incredibly annoying. You can't use ANY kind of tiled background (when you scroll, the background doesn't match up, looks dumb..but so do tiled backgrounds)
Okay. Now, the reasons people use frames.
1. Ease of navigation.
If your site depends on frames to give it good navigation, you need help. It's NOT that hard to implement a good table-based navigation scheme that doesn't have the problems of the frames-based design.
2. Pages don't have to reload.
Yes, it will speed up your current site, but if you REALLY need frames to give it that extra little speed increase you really need to learn image optimization and alternate ways of doing design that don't involve huge graphics.
3. Can change one frame file and all the pages are changed.
This can be also done with SSI, CGI, ASP, or Front Page Includes. There's no reason why you SHOULDN'T be able to use any of these methods, and you will often find these are MORE useful for frames (Can change copyright info, etc.)
There we go. If you want a more in-depth discussion of frames, point your browser over to C|Net's Builder Buzz and do a search for "Frames"
Since the transmeta page was already running slow when I visited even BEFORE the /. story I've provided a mirror
I'm not too big of a fan of mac's myself, but the new iMacs no longer have fans in them and supposedly run very quietly.
Frankly, I have to say I'm tired of hearing things like this. Yes, there is hunger, war, and other problems in the world, and yes, we should try to do something about it. However, don't be insinuating that I'm an evil person because I'm not devoting my life to helping that starving peasant in Korea and instead I'm helping to move technology forward. It's a logical fallacy to be saying that because there are bigger problems in the world we shouldn't be trying to fix the smaller ones. Like the animal rights activist who is accused of not caring about people because she's trying to prevent cruelty to animals.
/because/ we use technology.
I'm sorry, I guess this test doesn't seem as "deep" to me.. it's main purpose is to try to make those of us who use technology feel guilty
I'm a webmaster myself, and it's frankly BS to say that you have to choose one browser over the other, and just give up the other one as a lost hope. It's very easy to make a site that works in both browsers if you know what you're doing.. and although there are extra features like DHTML that aren't consistent between browsers, you CAN find code that works in both, or at least code that degrades gracefully so other browsers can still see it. There's elements of my site that only work in IE, but the site still functions perfectly in Netscape.. netscape users just can't see some of the extra unnecessary glitter.
As for MS owning 99% of the browser market as mentioned in the feature, I'll check my server stats. http://www.heli-cal.com from last Tuesday got 112 hits from people using IE, 109 using Netscape, and about 200 using something else (mostly search engine bots). This site is a perfectly typical business site.
The truth, plain and simple, is that if people rely on features unique to only one browser for their site to work, they're lazy, unprofessional, and shouldn't be in the web design business.
And if Mr. Whitinger's wife really wants windows, let her have it. After about a week of using Windows and IE she'll realize that only a small handful of Netscape crashes in the last couple months is nothing at all.
In most areas, raising the price by too much when it's hotter wouldn't work. Why? Because all someone would have to do would be walk a couple more feet and find another vending machine that doesn't do that. (I prefer those $.25 sodas they sell outside of grocery stores)
Unfortunatley, one large market where Coke has the monopoly is high schools and colleges. All they have to do is donate a scoreboard for the women's softball team and poof, they're the only ones selling soda on campus. When this happens, they can do whatever the hell they want to.. they COULD raise it to $20 even on cold days and since most students don't have that much time to run off of campus between classes (if they even can in the case of high schools) they either fork over the cash or suffer with the metallic tasting drinking fountain water.
I say name him Ray.
In honor of Ray Bradbury.
Alternatley, they could name him after one of the characters in the book.
Oh, schools have plenty of money, trust me.
/two/ color laser printers for use by the secretaries and spent money on very expensive desks and blinds.
They just blow it all.
My old high school just bought a dozen brand new $2000 laptops for use by students in PE who don't dress out. Yes, you don't get changed.. and instead of running, you sit around and play solitaire. After sitting in storage for about 6 months, they're currently sitting in the PE teacher's office.
The school my mother works at is a continuation high school, with a very small student body. they got a very large Digital High School grant, and instead of upgrading the old 486's the students use for the plato software, they bought
There are hundreds more examples just like this in just this one high school district. They have plenty of money, but the schools buy stuff they don't need and don't use for the staff while they're still using Apple II's in the science classroom.