I dunno. A few years back it was clear that the media had no real understanding about what's going on. Today I have to think that what the media doesn't understand, the general public doesn't understand. And there's less and less that we, the slashdotters understand, that the media doesn't at least have a little grasp of.
The popularizing of the net means that the waves seem to be following the general public, not the nerds any longer. Yesterday that new Fox show "Grounded for Life" used AOL IM integrally in a major plot point. With Napster, a new approach arrived and within three months my dentist (!) was asking me how to convert MP3 to WAV.
I have to think that the media understands about the market as much as we understand about the market. I have to think that after reporting the tech slump, the anchors go back to their desks and reply to their emails and search the net for new stories.
Maybe the time has come to shake them up a little by holding back on the Next Big Thing until it's really ready.
It doesn't double as a deli slicer, scraping the living $h!t out of your knuckles, fingertips, wrist, arm, etc. every single goddamn time you open it.
If you drop a screw into the case, it rattles around like a pachinko machine and comes out in a tray at the bottom after ringing a little bell.
USB, joystick, mouse, keyboard ports in front; video, parallel, serial ports in back.
The critical side slides up like a roll-top desk to get to the slots, memory, and CPU.
The front bays remove to install additions -- without opening the rest of the case and without screws.
There's a washable dust filter, removable from the front panel, and it automatically tells you when it's dirty.
Cable routing -- one unit smarter than "stuff it all in there and hope it doesn't touch the CPU fan".
I can't even get item #1 in any case I've ever owned. There's more flesh than components in some of the cases I've had. It's like the metal from computer cases comes from recycled cheese graters. These things should come with a coupon for a free tetanus shot.
Within the last few months we've had "stories" concerning Roblimo's idea of what kind of women make good geek wives and several movie reviews from Jon. Since these did not serve to improve the community, were downright poor if they were considered to be editorials, I wonder if there is a/. editorial board or whether you would consider forming one.
Other folks have written about editorial independence and about the quality of the stories; this is an entirely different question. A related question would be: could you perhaps identify more clearly which items are news, which are columns, which are editorials, and which are fluff? Traditional (i.e., "dead") media is adept at giving this kind of context to their stories, and it would be most helpful to your readers.
I can't remember the exact term (maybe that's it), but beyond the constitutional argument, regulations should not correct your actions and police cannot charge you on the *assumption* that you will commit a crime.
The bigger problem is that as technology improves, of course, it will be possible to monitor us in more and more ways -- possibly even to lock us down or punish us without proof. And as society ebbs and flows, you can bet that at one time or another the public sentiment wil favor this sort of government control, and that once put in place the controls will not be voted out or removed. It's important to be against these things every time, *in principle*, or we are inevitably doomed to a sort of pseudo-fascism whereby "the people" control most of what we do, say, or even think.
I know, I know, I'm a troll - but I have a point
on
Holiday Movie Thread
·
· Score: 3
Every writer that watches a file, listens to a CD, attends a play or goes to an exhibition, will desperately want to write a review afterwards.
Mr. Katz has one advantage over all those other writers: he has the power to publish immediately. Apparently there is no editorial review, or if there is, it's amateur.
I'm not a Katz basher; I've enjoyed almost all his previous columns. It bothers me that I have to become a Katz nay-sayer. But I have to say it; after this second batch of reviews, and pending the third batch, these review columns are inappropriate and unnecessary.
They detract from Slashdot's strengths, fail to give any insight, and draw large amounts of flamage. I would probably even excuse it all if they served to build community, but they do not.
At the very least, create another topic for these sorts of things so that advanced users can skip them. I do want to read about things like Toy Story and digital projection systems, so I don't want to skip the "movies" category. Maybe there should be a topic called "off-topic" or perhaps "diversions", specifically not relating to News for Nerds?
Imagine all the venture capitalists discussing what they're going to fund next. One of them looks at Jim's concept. "Hey, this one sounds like a good idea -- on paper..."
In fact, it's probably a Good Thing that so many sites are unable to get it right. This is a better differentiator than who has the patent of the month: who can design a good and highly usable site, provide you with the information you want and need, and handle the transactions smoothly.
It's still so early on in the Internet Revolution. While the web as we know it today is, for all practical purposes, about four years old, the concept of ecommerce was still a glint in most people's eyes three years ago, and the necessary evolution of seat-of-the-pants standards such as the shopping cart metaphor, broad acceptance of cookies, etc. is maybe one-two years old. Next we need to wait for all those users - even the dummies - to learn and understand these common concepts, and for coders to develop tools to put them into use, etc.
"As long as they are going to steal software we want them to steal ours."
Then, March of this year:
We are a very global company, and we've made huge investments in some of these developing markets. Over 4 million PCs a year are sold in China. Now, we don't make so much revenue off of those PCs, because of the software piracy there. If we could raise the money we get per PC in China to be even half of what it is in the United States, that would be hundreds of millions of dollars for us. And so as piracy goes down, as that market grows, it's going to be a fantastic thing, and that's what justifies the attention we put in there, and those levels of investment.
Clearly Gates had a seat-of-the-pants plan on China... allow the piracy to continue, and then call them on it and make them pay. The monkey wrench of Linux in China could mean the loss of more revenues for MS than almost any other single event.
(Grown breasts are worth waiting for.) For some of us, yes. Others could care less. Remember, some of this is personal preference. Being offended by someone's personal preference is usually idiotic.
I definitely have a preference for breast size - I won't mention what it is. But my favorite breasts are my wife's. Not because they're large, medium, or small, but because they're HERS. Take hers and put them on someone else, and in the long run they're not interesting to me.
The point is that, if we're thinking, feeling people, we look beyond the superficial and fall in love with the REAL PERSON. We value who they are, and what they look like becomes less and less important, only important in that it is a part of them.
Believe me, I'm not offended by Robin's preferences. I'm offended that he considers them so important that, in an essay on what to look for in a relationship, he made them the subject of over half of what he wrote. And in that particular case, he was basically saying that you should be nice to the ugly, not because you should be nice in general, but because they might someday be good-looking. His reasoning follows that if you knew in advance that they'd still be ugly in ten years, you'd have no reason to be nice to them.
I got news for ya. In the long run, we're ALL ugly. In 10 years, 20 years, 30 years YOU will be the ugly one. After 20 years of gravity and infant feeding, those breasts won't be so pretty. If we're lucky, the majority of our lives will not be spent looking young and beautiful. If we're wise, those ugly years will still be meaningful, and we will not spend our time pining for the beautiful days.
Anyway, I guess you haven't been on a college campus and met those women looking for their "MRS". But that's basic biology and you don't seem to like that.
Not only have I been on a college campus and met those women, I've seen the result of those sorts of marriages in the long term. The current film "American Beauty" sums those marriages up extremely well -- full of empty accomplishments, missing most of what's really important in life.
To say that husband-hunting is the result of basic biology -- that's even more offensive than Roblimo, who simply took his personal preferences and assumptions about the world and applied them to everyone. To you, the MRS women aren't merely trying to satisfy a societal preference, they're hard-wired to do so. Doesn't it bother you that that very thinking has been used to excuse the very worst of all human behaviors in history?
Geek girls are incapable of being loving and considerate, and unloving and inconsiderate geek guys have to avoid that.
The ideal woman is one who selflessly meets your every needs.
The proper role for the woman is that of handservant, who considers running your bathwater to be part of a "mutually beneficial" relationship.
One way to evaluate a woman is to take off her clothes and makeup.
In bars, the females that are unattainable are called "women" while the ones that you are supposed to go after are called "girls".
If a woman finds you unattractive, dump her as quickly as possible.
Grown breasts are worth waiting for.
Be nice to geeky looking girls, just in case they grow up and look good.
In spite of all of the above, imperfections are to be overlooked.
All women are looking for a man to fill the empty void in their lives.
If you're not having any success, find someone like Roblimo, considers himself an expert at picking up chix and is ready to dispense a handful of advice because he has a pleasant and apparently subservient wife who meets his needs.
Disregarding the Netscape/Mozilla disconnect, what about bookmarking in IE is better than Netscape 4? I personally hate IE's treatment, which seems to alphabetize when you don't want it to. That's a usability error IMO, because things aren't where you originally put them, nor where you really want them to be.
Also, if you put a folder of bookmarks into the personal toolbar (just called "Links" in IE), and IE is not your default browser, and you then attempt to use a link in one of those folders, your default browser will be started and the bookmark used in that browser. That's f*cked up.
No matter what your *own* views are about the bravery of saying that you "won't pee in a jar", the reality is that such language will result in you not even being considered for a job. Many of these decisions are made by human resource personnel who have no clue about your viewpoint, and nor do they give a damn.
Yes, and you will get those jobs over me, without a doubt. And then you will be the one stuck in these ridiculous organizations that don't give a damn about you. The day I put my life back in the hands of HR is the day I decide my life isn't worth much.
Maybe you're young, and maybe some day you will apply to a really different job 20 years from now. These things may come back to haunt you at that point, and you may not want it if you have kids and a wife and mortgage payments.
I'm there already. It took a wife and mortgage payments to make me realize some of what is important in life. Safety and security is over-rated, and worry is a contributor to almost all major health problems.
I always use my real name. I understand why some people wouldn't, but I'm ready to do the battle of defending my own rights, and as such, everyone else's rights as well.
I'm also the one who won't pee in a jar for anyone. I'm the one who won't give out my social security number to get a driver's license. I'm the one who won't work for a racist boss, even if it benefits me.
I'm not saying these things to be self-righteous. I'm saying these things because I hope everyone will come to their senses. Who wants to live a life of cowardice? Who wants guaranteed safety? What will you have gained by living such a life?
When the tanks roll through the square, I'll be under one, not in one. If enough of you join me, we won't have anything to worry about. They won't put our names in the history books, but we will be the true heroes of our time.
The X factor here: clearly the Yanks have a TON of money to spend.
The Philadelphia Eagles site is just as colorful, just as information-heavy, and loads in a tenth of the time. It's almost as full-featured without having as many gadgets. And I'll bet the Eagles website budget was about one-fifth the Yanks website budget, just in thinking about how the organizations operate.
Of course, I'm biased since I work on the Eagles site. But I wouldn't say that just to name-drop, no sir I wouldn't.
You do not have a Constitutional right to freedom from taxation. Right to free speech? Check. Protection from unreasonable searches? Check. Right to not be taxed? Not in there.
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
I'm buying Nickel Metal Hydride batteries for my brand-spankin' new digital camera... last much longer than alkalines, can be recharged in an hour, and they have no "charge memory" so you can recharge them at any time. The only hassle is that they lose their charge if they're just sitting around, so you have to keep them in a trickle charger if you want some handy on the spot.
I just hadda include that headline after your Supreme Court Headline. But just in case someone bothers to read this post, the all-time best Point-Counterpoint was "Humidity", debated between a humidifier and a de-humidifier.
Content is king, but things like eye travel are heavily studied (there's an entire science to Computer-Human Interaction). Sites designed for high usability ARE better. Poor eye travel makes some sites practically unreadable (see Suck). Bad decisions about interactivity make you re-learn how to use the web every time you visit a new site. Stuff like Flash wrecks the standard conventions of how you normally interoperate with the web. Long load times make you lose interest in content before it even arrives.
You take cues from design every day; you just don't know it. You decide whether things are too cheap or too expensive based on what fonts and colors are used in their packaging. You instinctively use roads and walkways according to how they are designed.
You would complain if the "up volume" button on your remote control was far away from the "down volume" button. If you got into a car, and the gas pedal and brake pedal were reversed, you could die. If someone gave you a business card that was 8 1/2" by 11", you'd throw it away in disgust. If you came across a parking lot with no lines, you probably wouldn't be able to get your car in or out.
So why complain about quality design and usability choices on the web? Sorry, it's because you don't know any better.
Re:I don't know if I like the new format
on
Return of The Onion
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, this is a blown redesign for certain.
It looks like they did it to get more play for the AV Club, but that requires you to open your browser past 800 wide. That causes the Onion stories to be too wide, which is bad for eye travel.
As the browser wars rage on, Netscape dump support for their Proprietary DOM and a few million web developers stare, perplexed, at their "best viewed in Netscape" badges -- now rendered redundant.
Uh, yeah, as if 0.1% of those ridiculous, tacky-ass badges ever represented anything actually Netscape-specific other than the ancient blink tag.
You can call support for those questions. Here are the questions you can't call support for, and there's no O'Reilly title covering these:
When your boss's boss doesn't allocate enough funds to your department, your boss doesn't pay for enough gear to run proper backups or UPSes, and accounting blames YOU for losing data after multiple power outages during a three-day ice storm, who do you blame?
Your dim cow-orker can't program his way out of a paper bag. You rescue his ass by taking four hours out to write something for him to show him what he should be doing. Then there's an emergency bug in what you've written. Do you fix it (risking your own project) or let him rot (risking political problems)?
Payroll asks you to stay late just in case there's a problem printing payroll checks. You aren't obliged to do it, and you have much better things to do, but you wonder whether your check is going to be one of the checks they have problems with. Do you stay?
Operations is blaming your department for a lot of troubles going on in the company. One day they make a huge mistake, develop problems with some of their data and ask you to work overtime to restore data from a previous day. Do you?
Management demands a Microsoft solution that you know is ridiculous and will risk the entire operation. Do you grit your teeth, smile, and implement; do you caution against it, knowing full well that you'll be overridden and your opionion held against you; or do you steadfastly refuse to use your powers for evil?
Slashdot Mirror
The popularizing of the net means that the waves seem to be following the general public, not the nerds any longer. Yesterday that new Fox show "Grounded for Life" used AOL IM integrally in a major plot point. With Napster, a new approach arrived and within three months my dentist (!) was asking me how to convert MP3 to WAV.
I have to think that the media understands about the market as much as we understand about the market. I have to think that after reporting the tech slump, the anchors go back to their desks and reply to their emails and search the net for new stories.
Maybe the time has come to shake them up a little by holding back on the Next Big Thing until it's really ready.
Good idea. Have you gotten any unexpected results from this?
http://zerodefect.net/123
Don't tell the lawyers.
- It doesn't double as a deli slicer, scraping the living $h!t out of your knuckles, fingertips, wrist, arm, etc. every single goddamn time you open it.
- If you drop a screw into the case, it rattles around like a pachinko machine and comes out in a tray at the bottom after ringing a little bell.
- USB, joystick, mouse, keyboard ports in front; video, parallel, serial ports in back.
- The critical side slides up like a roll-top desk to get to the slots, memory, and CPU.
- The front bays remove to install additions -- without opening the rest of the case and without screws.
- There's a washable dust filter, removable from the front panel, and it automatically tells you when it's dirty.
- Cable routing -- one unit smarter than "stuff it all in there and hope it doesn't touch the CPU fan".
I can't even get item #1 in any case I've ever owned. There's more flesh than components in some of the cases I've had. It's like the metal from computer cases comes from recycled cheese graters. These things should come with a coupon for a free tetanus shot.Other folks have written about editorial independence and about the quality of the stories; this is an entirely different question. A related question would be: could you perhaps identify more clearly which items are news, which are columns, which are editorials, and which are fluff? Traditional (i.e., "dead") media is adept at giving this kind of context to their stories, and it would be most helpful to your readers.
The bigger problem is that as technology improves, of course, it will be possible to monitor us in more and more ways -- possibly even to lock us down or punish us without proof. And as society ebbs and flows, you can bet that at one time or another the public sentiment wil favor this sort of government control, and that once put in place the controls will not be voted out or removed. It's important to be against these things every time, *in principle*, or we are inevitably doomed to a sort of pseudo-fascism whereby "the people" control most of what we do, say, or even think.
Mr. Katz has one advantage over all those other writers: he has the power to publish immediately. Apparently there is no editorial review, or if there is, it's amateur.
I'm not a Katz basher; I've enjoyed almost all his previous columns. It bothers me that I have to become a Katz nay-sayer. But I have to say it; after this second batch of reviews, and pending the third batch, these review columns are inappropriate and unnecessary.
They detract from Slashdot's strengths, fail to give any insight, and draw large amounts of flamage. I would probably even excuse it all if they served to build community, but they do not.
At the very least, create another topic for these sorts of things so that advanced users can skip them. I do want to read about things like Toy Story and digital projection systems, so I don't want to skip the "movies" category. Maybe there should be a topic called "off-topic" or perhaps "diversions", specifically not relating to News for Nerds?
Imagine all the venture capitalists discussing what they're going to fund next. One of them looks at Jim's concept. "Hey, this one sounds like a good idea -- on paper..."
It's still so early on in the Internet Revolution. While the web as we know it today is, for all practical purposes, about four years old, the concept of ecommerce was still a glint in most people's eyes three years ago, and the necessary evolution of seat-of-the-pants standards such as the shopping cart metaphor, broad acceptance of cookies, etc. is maybe one-two years old. Next we need to wait for all those users - even the dummies - to learn and understand these common concepts, and for coders to develop tools to put them into use, etc.
"As long as they are going to steal software we want them to steal ours."
Then, March of this year:
We are a very global company, and we've made huge investments in some of these developing markets. Over 4 million PCs a year are sold in China. Now, we don't make so much revenue off of those PCs, because of the software piracy there. If we could raise the money we get per PC in China to be even half of what it is in the United States, that would be hundreds of millions of dollars for us. And so as piracy goes down, as that market grows, it's going to be a fantastic thing, and that's what justifies the attention we put in there, and those levels of investment.
Clearly Gates had a seat-of-the-pants plan on China... allow the piracy to continue, and then call them on it and make them pay. The monkey wrench of Linux in China could mean the loss of more revenues for MS than almost any other single event.
I definitely have a preference for breast size - I won't mention what it is. But my favorite breasts are my wife's. Not because they're large, medium, or small, but because they're HERS. Take hers and put them on someone else, and in the long run they're not interesting to me.
The point is that, if we're thinking, feeling people, we look beyond the superficial and fall in love with the REAL PERSON. We value who they are, and what they look like becomes less and less important, only important in that it is a part of them.
Believe me, I'm not offended by Robin's preferences. I'm offended that he considers them so important that, in an essay on what to look for in a relationship, he made them the subject of over half of what he wrote. And in that particular case, he was basically saying that you should be nice to the ugly, not because you should be nice in general, but because they might someday be good-looking. His reasoning follows that if you knew in advance that they'd still be ugly in ten years, you'd have no reason to be nice to them.
I got news for ya. In the long run, we're ALL ugly. In 10 years, 20 years, 30 years YOU will be the ugly one. After 20 years of gravity and infant feeding, those breasts won't be so pretty. If we're lucky, the majority of our lives will not be spent looking young and beautiful. If we're wise, those ugly years will still be meaningful, and we will not spend our time pining for the beautiful days.
Anyway, I guess you haven't been on a college campus and met those women looking for their "MRS". But that's basic biology and you don't seem to like that.
Not only have I been on a college campus and met those women, I've seen the result of those sorts of marriages in the long term. The current film "American Beauty" sums those marriages up extremely well -- full of empty accomplishments, missing most of what's really important in life.
To say that husband-hunting is the result of basic biology -- that's even more offensive than Roblimo, who simply took his personal preferences and assumptions about the world and applied them to everyone. To you, the MRS women aren't merely trying to satisfy a societal preference, they're hard-wired to do so. Doesn't it bother you that that very thinking has been used to excuse the very worst of all human behaviors in history?
Also, if you put a folder of bookmarks into the personal toolbar (just called "Links" in IE), and IE is not your default browser, and you then attempt to use a link in one of those folders, your default browser will be started and the bookmark used in that browser. That's f*cked up.
Yes, and you will get those jobs over me, without a doubt. And then you will be the one stuck in these ridiculous organizations that don't give a damn about you. The day I put my life back in the hands of HR is the day I decide my life isn't worth much.
Maybe you're young, and maybe some day you will apply to a really different job 20 years from now. These things may come back to haunt you at that point, and you may not want it if you have kids and a wife and mortgage payments.
I'm there already. It took a wife and mortgage payments to make me realize some of what is important in life. Safety and security is over-rated, and worry is a contributor to almost all major health problems.
I'm also the one who won't pee in a jar for anyone. I'm the one who won't give out my social security number to get a driver's license. I'm the one who won't work for a racist boss, even if it benefits me.
I'm not saying these things to be self-righteous. I'm saying these things because I hope everyone will come to their senses. Who wants to live a life of cowardice? Who wants guaranteed safety? What will you have gained by living such a life?
When the tanks roll through the square, I'll be under one, not in one. If enough of you join me, we won't have anything to worry about. They won't put our names in the history books, but we will be the true heroes of our time.
That part was a joke.
The Philadelphia Eagles site is just as colorful, just as information-heavy, and loads in a tenth of the time. It's almost as full-featured without having as many gadgets. And I'll bet the Eagles website budget was about one-fifth the Yanks website budget, just in thinking about how the organizations operate.
Of course, I'm biased since I work on the Eagles site. But I wouldn't say that just to name-drop, no sir I wouldn't.
The GD library has been updated to work with PNGs instead of GIFs, so some of that information is probably still useful.
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
I'm buying Nickel Metal Hydride batteries for my brand-spankin' new digital camera... last much longer than alkalines, can be recharged in an hour, and they have no "charge memory" so you can recharge them at any time. The only hassle is that they lose their charge if they're just sitting around, so you have to keep them in a trickle charger if you want some handy on the spot.
I just hadda include that headline after your Supreme Court Headline. But just in case someone bothers to read this post, the all-time best Point-Counterpoint was "Humidity", debated between a humidifier and a de-humidifier.
You take cues from design every day; you just don't know it. You decide whether things are too cheap or too expensive based on what fonts and colors are used in their packaging. You instinctively use roads and walkways according to how they are designed.
You would complain if the "up volume" button on your remote control was far away from the "down volume" button. If you got into a car, and the gas pedal and brake pedal were reversed, you could die. If someone gave you a business card that was 8 1/2" by 11", you'd throw it away in disgust. If you came across a parking lot with no lines, you probably wouldn't be able to get your car in or out.
So why complain about quality design and usability choices on the web? Sorry, it's because you don't know any better.
It looks like they did it to get more play for the AV Club, but that requires you to open your browser past 800 wide. That causes the Onion stories to be too wide, which is bad for eye travel.
They need some pro help. (Slashdot does too.)
Uh, yeah, as if 0.1% of those ridiculous, tacky-ass badges ever represented anything actually Netscape-specific other than the ancient blink tag.