Yes, MA works in pretty much the same way. There are five campuses all called UMass: Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and the medical school in Worcester. Amherst is the "flagship" campus, and the one that most people mean when they say UMass without specifying a city name. Then there are 9 other state colleges (including some specialty schools that focus on the arts, liberal arts, and marine science and business), and 15 community colleges.
After quite a bit of consideration over the last few years, I finally decided that it wasn't my job, as a Web site maker, to protect my users from themselves. If someone wants to read 12-point type at 1200 pixels across, it's their eyesight, not mine.
Doing this freed me of all sorts of other nasty little concerns, too. People with vision problems may have a virtual screen size set intentionally large, and be zoomed in on a small part of it. When I want to use a projection system to show a site to a room full of people, I don't end up with one- and two-word lines or worse--text that makes me scroll horizontally.
I do, however, prefer to make things that degrade gracefully. If at all possible, I don't require anything to be wider than about 540 pixels (== 72 pixels per inch * 7.5 inches for 0.5" margins when printed). Slashdot, as one other post noted, is a fairly good example of this in practice. When visual arrangement or appearance really is earth-shatteringly important, I use graphics.
Admittedly, I work mostly on information-intensive sites. I put things on the web because I see a need to share information, not to make an attractive piece of multimedia. Art, it turns out, is often less efficient at conveying important information, even though it might be more fun.
When my conscience really flares up about destroying people's vision or wasting reams of paper so they can print something they ought to be able to read onscreen, I've been known to include a reminder on text-intensive pages that they're often easier to digest with a narrower window and/or a larger font size.
Wake up and smell the roses.
on
GEEK Unions?
·
· Score: 1
Disturbingly, most of the negative comments I just read seemed to convey no idea of how modern unions work. I suppose I'm a rare beast around here--a geek that's already a member of a union (a branch of the AFL-CIO even: Service Employees International Union, Local 509).
I work for a company in which there are (if I remember) five separate unions and a "non-union bargaining unit". Everyone here has a contract. We don't all get paid the same, and in fact, there are merit-based bonuses and raises about every 6 months, and guaranteed cost-of-living adjustments. Our dental and vision care is covered. Our employer pays 85% of health insurance costs, for several plans at any of half a dozen providers. When I see phrases like "corrupt union leaders" tossed about casually, I wonder if these people are victims of corporate propaganda or just misanthropic cynics. It's my first real experience with a union, but I'd call it favorable.
There's also a little group called the Communication Workers of America you might've heard about. 630,000 people can be wrong, but since they include the ones laying the fiber we all use, the likelihood of that is decreasing.
Is a traditional union the best idea for geeks? Probably not. Managing or organizing geeks, as I'm sure we all know, is rather like herding cats.
On the other hand, when have we ever done anything traditionally? In the last few years, we've made significant progress in reinventing the press, commerce, and we're even scratching at government. It sounds to me like Katz has pulled the best leadership trick there is: find out where people are going and get in front.
So what are a bunch of otherwise reasonably intelligent geeks to do? Our interests aren't represented in the government, and they're only just starting to be noticed by the traditional media (still vastly dominant in most parts of the world). I have to agree with Katz on this one: let's figure out a way to make some advantage of the fact that we're keeping their toys working without getting any deeper than necessary into sticky issues like "who's in charge" or "how much will this cost each of us".
Most of us like what we do already (if we didn't, we could certainly pursue other opportunities in today's job market). Take a break, and think about whether educated consumers and less-meddlesome managers might help us enjoy it more. If they're unwilling to cooperate, are you willing to like what you do on someone else's time?
I have a tremendous amount of respect for RMS. He's an amazing coder, and he's committed and passionate about his beliefs in an industry where loyalty is all too often sold to the highest bidder. I've read his work; I've heard him speak; I've even been cornered by him face-to-face at a reception.
RMS represents the (legal) extreme on the spectrum of freedom in software. As I examine my own values, coloured with mainstream coverage (i.e. not/.), I'm left with the same conclusion as ESR: the world isn't ready for RMS, regardless of whether he's morally right.
This is a huge industry, and it's growing faster every day; there's room for more than one leader with slightly different goals (especially if neither of them is Steve Ballmer). If I understand the terms correctly, it's tough for open source software to exist without some measure of freedom (not as much as RMS' ultimate goal, but better than nothing), and it's at least as difficult for free software to fail to qualify as open source.
Has it occurred to anyone that maybe they have exactly the same goal, but that ESR is simply trying to make it more palatable by feeding it to the world in small doses?
I don't think the computer industry's momentum can or should be redirected as quickly as RMS does, so I support the idea of steering carefully and meaningfully away from the freedomless culture it could become. Pick the path that you like, and encourage the people around you to evaluate their beliefs and make a similarly informed decision.
I don't agree with Katz on many issues, but I almost always enjoy reading his work because it's substantive enough to make me think about issues I might not have considered.
I was disappointed with the article in the Village Voice because it didn't do that for me. While my experiences in high school weren't as bad as many of Katz' correspondents, I refuse to have my own sour memories and mild but still perhaps too-lingering resentment caricatured like I'm in a John Hughes film.
There are sick people out there. What are we going to do about it? Try to "profile" them so we can head them off, and catch mostly well-adjusted (or at least non-threatening) people in the process? Pretend to restrict access to media (when does an 'R' rating actually stop a 16-year-old)? Pretend to restrict access to firearms? Hasn't society learned yet? There are no easy answers, but it's a good step in the right direction to just start being nice to each other.
The Hellmouth series didn't solve the problem, and I don't think that's really what it was for. It gave me an important insight, though. The system is not merely damaged; it's broken. Katz is significant simply because he opened a discussion on a large scale that didn't previously exist, and perhaps, by opening that discussion, he has contributed to helping thousands or millions of people realise they're not alone. Jane Dark didn't seem to be blaming guns (or worse, pictures of guns), so it's all the more frustrating that on so many levels, she seems to have missed the point.
Humans are not constrained to finite compassion. We can care about white, middle-class, teenage boys and still care about malnourished children around the world. They're both symptoms indicitave of broken systems, that is, sets of values that cannot survive in a world that's changing as rapidly as ours. Ms. Dark's article is a symptom, too, that the problem is more pervasive than we might've hoped. It's my responsibility--my moral obligation--as an adult that survived at least one of those situations (hint: I had plenty of food), to try to fix things. I have accepted that most of my attempts will fail. That's okay. I don't have to be successful every time--just once will do.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, MA works in pretty much the same way. There are five campuses all called UMass: Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and the medical school in Worcester. Amherst is the "flagship" campus, and the one that most people mean when they say UMass without specifying a city name. Then there are 9 other state colleges (including some specialty schools that focus on the arts, liberal arts, and marine science and business), and 15 community colleges.
Not quite. I think you meant
e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0
(to get both the additive and multiplicative identities in there).
After quite a bit of consideration over the last few years, I finally decided that it wasn't my job, as a Web site maker, to protect my users from themselves. If someone wants to read 12-point type at 1200 pixels across, it's their eyesight, not mine.
Doing this freed me of all sorts of other nasty little concerns, too. People with vision problems may have a virtual screen size set intentionally large, and be zoomed in on a small part of it. When I want to use a projection system to show a site to a room full of people, I don't end up with one- and two-word lines or worse--text that makes me scroll horizontally.
I do, however, prefer to make things that degrade gracefully. If at all possible, I don't require anything to be wider than about 540 pixels (== 72 pixels per inch * 7.5 inches for 0.5" margins when printed). Slashdot, as one other post noted, is a fairly good example of this in practice. When visual arrangement or appearance really is earth-shatteringly important, I use graphics.
Admittedly, I work mostly on information-intensive sites. I put things on the web because I see a need to share information, not to make an attractive piece of multimedia. Art, it turns out, is often less efficient at conveying important information, even though it might be more fun.
When my conscience really flares up about destroying people's vision or wasting reams of paper so they can print something they ought to be able to read onscreen, I've been known to include a reminder on text-intensive pages that they're often easier to digest with a narrower window and/or a larger font size.
Disturbingly, most of the negative comments I just read seemed to convey no idea of how modern unions work. I suppose I'm a rare beast around here--a geek that's already a member of a union (a branch of the AFL-CIO even: Service Employees International Union, Local 509).
I work for a company in which there are (if I remember) five separate unions and a "non-union bargaining unit". Everyone here has a contract. We don't all get paid the same, and in fact, there are merit-based bonuses and raises about every 6 months, and guaranteed cost-of-living adjustments. Our dental and vision care is covered. Our employer pays 85% of health insurance costs, for several plans at any of half a dozen providers. When I see phrases like "corrupt union leaders" tossed about casually, I wonder if these people are victims of corporate propaganda or just misanthropic cynics. It's my first real experience with a union, but I'd call it favorable.
There's also a little group called the Communication Workers of America you might've heard about. 630,000 people can be wrong, but since they include the ones laying the fiber we all use, the likelihood of that is decreasing.
Is a traditional union the best idea for geeks? Probably not. Managing or organizing geeks, as I'm sure we all know, is rather like herding cats.
On the other hand, when have we ever done anything traditionally? In the last few years, we've made significant progress in reinventing the press, commerce, and we're even scratching at government. It sounds to me like Katz has pulled the best leadership trick there is: find out where people are going and get in front.
So what are a bunch of otherwise reasonably intelligent geeks to do? Our interests aren't represented in the government, and they're only just starting to be noticed by the traditional media (still vastly dominant in most parts of the world). I have to agree with Katz on this one: let's figure out a way to make some advantage of the fact that we're keeping their toys working without getting any deeper than necessary into sticky issues like "who's in charge" or "how much will this cost each of us".
Most of us like what we do already (if we didn't, we could certainly pursue other opportunities in today's job market). Take a break, and think about whether educated consumers and less-meddlesome managers might help us enjoy it more. If they're unwilling to cooperate, are you willing to like what you do on someone else's time?
I have a tremendous amount of respect for RMS. He's an amazing coder, and he's committed and passionate about his beliefs in an industry where loyalty is all too often sold to the highest bidder. I've read his work; I've heard him speak; I've even been cornered by him face-to-face at a reception.
/.), I'm left with the same conclusion as ESR: the world isn't ready for RMS, regardless of whether he's morally right.
RMS represents the (legal) extreme on the spectrum of freedom in software. As I examine my own values, coloured with mainstream coverage (i.e. not
This is a huge industry, and it's growing faster every day; there's room for more than one leader with slightly different goals (especially if neither of them is Steve Ballmer). If I understand the terms correctly, it's tough for open source software to exist without some measure of freedom (not as much as RMS' ultimate goal, but better than nothing), and it's at least as difficult for free software to fail to qualify as open source.
Has it occurred to anyone that maybe they have exactly the same goal, but that ESR is simply trying to make it more palatable by feeding it to the world in small doses?
I don't think the computer industry's momentum can or should be redirected as quickly as RMS does, so I support the idea of steering carefully and meaningfully away from the freedomless culture it could become. Pick the path that you like, and encourage the people around you to evaluate their beliefs and make a similarly informed decision.
I don't agree with Katz on many issues, but I almost always enjoy reading his work because it's substantive enough to make me think about issues I might not have considered.
I was disappointed with the article in the Village Voice because it didn't do that for me. While my experiences in high school weren't as bad as many of Katz' correspondents, I refuse to have my own sour memories and mild but still perhaps too-lingering resentment caricatured like I'm in a John Hughes film.
There are sick people out there. What are we going to do about it? Try to "profile" them so we can head them off, and catch mostly well-adjusted (or at least non-threatening) people in the process? Pretend to restrict access to media (when does an 'R' rating actually stop a 16-year-old)? Pretend to restrict access to firearms? Hasn't society learned yet? There are no easy answers, but it's a good step in the right direction to just start being nice to each other.
The Hellmouth series didn't solve the problem, and I don't think that's really what it was for. It gave me an important insight, though. The system is not merely damaged; it's broken. Katz is significant simply because he opened a discussion on a large scale that didn't previously exist, and perhaps, by opening that discussion, he has contributed to helping thousands or millions of people realise they're not alone. Jane Dark didn't seem to be blaming guns (or worse, pictures of guns), so it's all the more frustrating that on so many levels, she seems to have missed the point.
Humans are not constrained to finite compassion. We can care about white, middle-class, teenage boys and still care about malnourished children around the world. They're both symptoms indicitave of broken systems, that is, sets of values that cannot survive in a world that's changing as rapidly as ours. Ms. Dark's article is a symptom, too, that the problem is more pervasive than we might've hoped. It's my responsibility--my moral obligation--as an adult that survived at least one of those situations (hint: I had plenty of food), to try to fix things. I have accepted that most of my attempts will fail. That's okay. I don't have to be successful every time--just once will do.