I vote for BZFlag...a game which, by the way, is open source, multi-platform, and is badly in need of developers, since the current ones don't seem to have a lot of time on their hands. Check out the bzflag site on sourceforge: http://bzflag.sourceforge.net/
Re:what the electoral college REALLY means...
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 2
The number of electoral votes is based on the census results - which are ten years out of date (2000 EC #s based on 1990 census). My state (Washington) is horribly underrepresented population-wise in this. A lot has happened here in the last ten years.
As for moving power from the national level to the state level - why is this inherently a good thing? I think this argument is nonsense. State borders are artificial, and have little to do with individual communities' needs in the modern age. See one of my messages in this thread for more info on that point.
Also, as I've said before, the President represents us all, therefore should be elected by ALL, not by the States. Representation of the States is accomplished by our State Representatives & Senators.
Re:what the electoral college REALLY means...
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 2
Your view of how the EC works seems obsolete. Yes, that's how it originally worked, but no longer.
The EC currently _automatically_ gives their votes to the highest popular vote-winner in their state, so that is no longer a valid reason for the continuation of the EC system. The EC 'representatives' don't do anything nowadays other than announce on tv who got all their EC 'votes' (determined by the popular vote in that state).
The only valid _CURRENT_ reason I know of is to help give the smaller states (population-wise) more of a say. My opinion is that they already get two senators no matter how big or small they are to help REPRESENT THEIR STATE. The President represents the ENTIRE NATION, and thus should, in my opinion, be based purely on the national popular vote results.
A fairly-good compromise I've heard of (and how I think Maine does it already) is to split the EC votes according to popular vote in that state - thus ensuring the smaller states still get their inflated value, yet matching the REAL will of the 'People'.
Also, keep in mind the President is not a dictator - someone who wins the Presidency still has to deal with both houses of Congress. Checks and balances, ya know?
And just because the original founding fathers may have thought something was a good idea doesn't make it so, and certainly doesn't mean a good idea over 200 years ago is a good idea today. Lots of them owned slaves, too. They also weren't full-time politicians, much less politicians for life. Things are _vastly_ different in the modern world, in case you haven't noticed.
Another thing - the value of 'statehood' is pretty much gone in the modern USA - back when the country was formed, the individual states were generally communities of similarly-minded folk. With all the influx of immigrants and migration, and population expansion (thus ensuring communities mixed), this is hardly the case anymore. I live in Seattle, and I can tell you that for all intents and purposes, Western Washington has MUCH more in common with Western Oregon, than it does with Eastern Washington. I used to live in Kansas City, MO - and worked across the border in Kansas City, KS. The Kansas City area is one area with a common set of circumstances. KC, MO is virtually the same as KC, KS, and has little to do with St. Louis, MO. State boundaries are completely obsolete, as well, and serve no real useful function in my mind, other than to help collect & redistribute resources.
what the electoral college REALLY means...
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 2
...is that the vote of someone who lives in a less-populated state is WORTH MORE than someone who lives in a more-populated state. How is this fair?
The States get their increased representation via two Senators for every state, no matter how large or small. The Presidential election is _national_, and should have nothing to do with the invididual states - only the population.
The easy (and likely) compromise - allow all states to split their electoral votes according to the popular vote.
Okay, each location that has to be able to authenticate you can combine a GPS with biometric security & an atomic-clock-syncronized timestamp. You put whatever bodypart needs to be authenticated (or multiple ones), the thing recognizes you. Then it checks the GPS location & combines that with the verified time. Voila. The information can then be transmitted security to wherever it needs to be via encrypted means.
We'd have more to worry about than being heavier, to put it mildly. First off, those of us who don't die by freezing on the dark side, or frying on the light side, will probably have to deal with flooding from the now-deeper oceans. I don't know what effect this would have on tides & plate tectonics, but I bet it might not be too pretty. Sure would make for a stronger human after several generations, though, I bet!:^)
I'd say web developers (like myself) have a better perspective on what's what than the programmers of the mozilla project. We're the ones whose jobs depend on this stuff working right - and we'll be stuck with having to code to that platform for _YEARS_ to come. Any flaws in the platform are ours to deal with for a very long time, as opposed to the programmers who can simply upgrade their browser whenever they want. Web developers have to code to every piece of junk put out by the 'big two' (MS & Netscape) for the past 2 years, so we're understandably more concerned than most about standards-compliance and common-sense layout.
I've submitted my share of bugs for Mozilla (along with test cases to demonstrate them) - and some of them _WON'T_ be fixed 'due to compatibility' reasons. "It's always been done that way," they say. "Use CSS to fix that," they say. "Other browsers do it that way," they say.
See, here's the deal - they SAY they're going to make it 'standards compliant', yet that isn't always the case, depending on which person gets your bug report. If their 'mind'set is as quoted above, then you can forget standards compliance and commonsense layout. Unfortunate, to say the least. The big reason why I want to move to full Flash display ASAP. HTML will be quite useful and stable as a Flash-delivery framework. *not kidding* Check out the features of Flash 5 - it's gettin' scary. Detailed scripting, form fields (as of v4), etc. The.swf spec is even 'open' (unfortunately the.fla spec is not). Combine that with Flash Generator, and voila - see ya, HTML, wouldn't wanna be ya.
On the flip side - I'd STILL rather use a slightly-less compliant browser (Nav 6) than use a browser imbedded into Windows. The reason? Quite simple (for those simpletons out there) - when Navigator (any version) crashes - it takes itself out. When IE crashes (even as late as v5.5), it usually takes out the whole OS (Win 98SE or Win2K - happens with both).
The 'standards compliance' (such as it is) in Navigator 6 will be plenty good enough for me as long as it doesn't take out the OS with it when it crashes (don't be a fool and think "it won't crash"). My real concern isn't with whether it'll crash a lot or be 100% standards compliant (it'll crash some, and it won't be 100% compliant), but how buggy the implementation of JavaScript, CSS, and the DOM will be. Too many bugs in these (especially CSS) are what have prevented wide-spread implementation thus far (that and users who don't understand the concept of 'upgrade').
Okay, enough ranting. I gotta stop making websites for a living. *sigh*
You should know what you're comparing. CAS3 PC133 will be slow as hell compared to a PC2100 CAS2.5 (I don't think the CAS2 DDR modules are out yet).
Another alignment table
on
D&D Trailer
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· Score: 2
Lawful Good: Doesn't watch the movie because of Time-Warner. Also pickets the movie.
Lawful Neutral: Talks friend into buying their ticket, doesn't buy snacks (where the cinema _really_ makes its money).
Lawful Evil: Tricks a Time-Warner employee into paying for their ticket to see the movie. Snacks, too.
Chaotic Good: Downloads a copy of the movie from the Net, watches it on an open source-based machine. If they like it, they'll pay to see it, or buy it when it comes out on video.
Chaotic Neutral: Whatever the most convenient method is.
Chaotic Evil: Kills someone who reports on Aint-It-Cool-News and assumes their identity. Uses that person's ID to get into the sneak preview of the movie. Dislikes the movie, and murders everyone who had a hand in making the movie, and eats their livers with fava beans and fine Chianti.
Neutral Good: Sneaks into the movie, writes an accurate review for Aint-It-Cool-News.
True Neutral: Steals money from Time-Warner employee to pay for movie tix & snacks. Brings a date.
Neutral Evil: Steals money from friends to get ticket to movie & pay for snacks. Frames Time-Warner execs for theft.
I'd rather use a host that offers PostgreSQL instead of MySQL - anyone know of any? Preferrably running on OpenBSD, and with SSH-type access, plus the latest PHP4 & Apache?
1) Online Credit Card processing for non-US is often much more expensive, if it's even available at all. Blame the CC processors.
2) Shipping. Hey, it costs more - that's the way it is.
3) Taxes, customs, etc.
These are all issues to take into account.
It's hard enough to start up a business in ONE country (any country), without the added expenses of dealing with clients in multiple countries. Being online doesn't make that any easier. I doubt the true value of free trade will be realized until all countries participate equally and fairly . And that isn't going to happen any time soon, if at all. *sigh*
I'm not sure you're getting the type of case-insensitivity I'm meaning.
It's like on (dare I say it) a Windows system, sorta. When you name a file, the case that appears to you maintains the case you originally specified. When you create or refer to a file, though, it's normalized to lower case.
Thus, case IS maintained, because it would still have all it's uppercase characters when doing a directory listing, etc. I'm not sure your 'indirect stability' is much of an argument.
As for flexibility - when doing searches, just like you should have in programs now, you'd have the option of case sensitive or case insensitive search, there would be no difference at ALL in searches, etc, because the code that would effect this would be in the file system - the normalization of allowed filenames in a given directory would determine what can and cannot be created, and when you're looking for something, the filesystem would match it correctly if you said "gimme foo", and there was only "FOO" in the directory - you'd get "FOO". When you edit FOO, foo is edited and updated correctly.
If you rename "FOO" to "foo", it would then appear as "foo" in directory listings.
So, case IS preserved, it's just how case is being used in the INTERFACE of the system that is being effected, and is what my entire point is all about.
It seems most people participating in this little subtopic seem to agree with me, others don't understand how it would work, and it _seems_ that the ones who understand yet still disagree are only worried about the programming complexity involved.
All I can say to that last point is - if Mac & Windows can do it, it can't be all _that_ terrible difficult, now can it?
If we want Linux and the BSDs to become acceptible to desktop users, this may become a BIG sticking point, IMO.
> There is nothing that prevents someone from
> having all of their files in one case. If all of
> the files are in one case, then how can anyone
> complain?
It's not just the files that I create, though, is it? I don't create every file and program on my system. I get files from elsewhere - and there are a zillion programs that come with a Linux distribution that have mixed-case names for no good reason.
And the GUI argument doesn't make sense, either - if you wind up with a directory of stupidly-named files using case to differentiate them, it's going to take awhile even in a GUI to figure out what's what. There's no reason to have that feature other than to be obtuse, as far as I can figure out. Noone in this conversation has come up with an answer that's sufficient to put this kind of burden on the user. No wonder people hate the command line!
And if, as you say, we're all moving to the lowercase roman alphabet anyway in the future due to unicode, we might as well start altering the file system now, huh? That way we'll be unicode-ready that much sooner.
I've never understood why so many UNIXheads think case-sensitivity is a GOOD thing. Yes, I'd like the files to have upper and lower case in them for the sake of appearance, but I'd rather NOT have it case-sensitive for matching, etc.
Does anyone have a GOOD reason to have a case-sensitive file system? If so, please enlighten me...
>Hm. I'd have to say that once you get above
>1024x768, it's a little silly to be running most
>standard applications fullscreen
I'd have to say that you don't understand one of the best benefits to running at a super-high resolution. If you also then increase your font size, you get some really crisp text on your screen. Check it out if you have the video equipment - it's a brave new world.;)
I'm not sure using colours and fonts and font sizes is all that bad for accessibility. People who complain about that seem to forget they can override the settings on their browsers for colours and fonts and font sizes. But this is only a general thing - you can take it too far pretty easily.
I've worked on a huge variety of sites and site designs. I've even done an ADA-compliant (Americans with Disabilities Act - they've a set of guidelines) website (it was an earlier incarnation of the Gates Library Foundation website - the current one isn't mine). To do that site, we made everything high contrast (dark links on white/light background), larger font sizes (default or -1 only (that's font size 3 or 2, depending on how you look at it), the table of contents was horizontal, across the top, not vertical. This was because of how screen-readers for the blind work (or, worked at the time - this was a few years ago - they are hopefully better by now) - they work(ed) reading left to right across the screen, and gawd help you if you're using frames - it'll still read right to left, right into the next frame. But that was awhile ago - hopefully that's changed. Anyway, we also used an early version of Bobby to check our site - it finally passed with no complaints (whew!). It took a while to get everything that way.
Some guidelines, off the top of my head - I'm not posting this after a lengthy composition like normal:
1) High contrast on all links - dark text on light, light text on dark, whatever, as long as it's consistently that way. Don't make one area dark on light and another light on dark.
2) If you're controlling the font size in some way (be it through - or + font sizes, fixed font sizes, CSS or not), make them as large as your design lets you get away with.
3) Take a cue from Nielsen - he's got a lot of goofy ideas, but some of his ideas are gems - particularly in the area of page density. In print, lots of white space is good for readability. According to Nielsen's research, the OPPOSITE is true on the web! So, if you're presenting information, organize it very very well - lots of bulleted/numbered lists, etc. Indent things where appropriate, etc.
4) The Web is NOT print (nor is it TV or like a computer program). Font sizes, graphics, dpi, everything is different on the Web than in how print, tv, and regular computer programs work. Everything is relative. You don't control the resolution or size on someone's monitor, nor do you control what colour depth their monitor is in, or if it's been colour-calibrated (the vast majority have not). Colours are darker on PCs than on Macs. People connect at different speeds, and even if they didn't, there's Internet traffic to consider - the fastest T1 can seem like a 56K connection if a link somewhere along the line is flooded. All these things and more must be taken into account when developing a site. Don't make the mistake of thinking you can address all these challenges perfectly - it's just not possible with a realistic budget. Think carefully about each of these points, and come up with a reasonable target audience. If your website is about photography, don't worry about access for blind people, capiche? Likewise, you might also want to consider making your site a bit more usable for those with better-than-average access - I run at 1600x1200 now that I have a 21" monitor and a nice new graphics card. Lots of site developers that have repeating background graphics forget that those background graphics repeat horizontally as well as vertically - so I often cannot see something that's on the page if the contrast between the background graphic conflicts with the foreground, because they never envisioned someone having more than 1024x768 graphics viewing the site.
5) Sound on websites are bad. BAD. MIDI especially. If you're about to use MIDI on a site, don't. Think about it, then don't. If your client insists on it, kill them. There's no excuse for MIDI sound on a website. EVER. Remember: Guns don't kill people - people who run into websites with MIDI background sounds on them kill people! The only good uses of sound I've run into are for imbedded movies and some (some!) Flash sites.
6) If your target audience is using modern browsers, consider using Flash - it's possible to make some quite low-bandwidth 'flashy' sites with some great UI possibilities using Flash. Flash 4 contains neato things like forms and such, and an addition to Flash 5 I read about this morning allows for form validations and other neat tricks. Eventually Flash will be ubiquitous enough to use for a lot more than we do now. Just a consideration.
7) If your client has an existing site, run some browser statistics on the site for a few weeks or longer and find out what people are doing, how they're using the site, what they're interested in, and don't even START designing the site until you've made a careful analysis of that information. Hire an expert to do that analysis if you can. That's a good idea for UI design, too. Hire a (qualified) company or individual(s) to do the site design for you - and I don't mean a graphic designer - I mean a USER INTERFACE DESIGNER. That term is NOT synonymous with 'graphic designer', no matter what a graphic designer may tell you. Pretty pictures do not a good UI designer make, though it is possible to make a great UI that is very pretty.
8) Information architecture - 'architect' your information before you design your site! Organize that information into the LOGICAL segments that your USERS WILL EXPECT (how do you know what they'll expect? Find out from them what they expect, dummy!) Once you've got your information organized, only THEN can you begin to design the site!
There's more to this subject than what I've written above, but quite honestly, I'm tired of typing just now, so you'll just have to live without my pompous bits of wisdom on this topic.
Have a day...
Well, also the fact that a huge chunk of the web isn't even indexed at all.
Other than that, though, the interfaces that most search engines use are pretty bad. There is usually no way to filter through a set of results to eliminate things that are obviously not what the searcher wants. Just being able to eliminate a set of domains from the initial results would make a huge difference for me.
Also, most people have no clue how to effectively use search engines - and they're not all that interested in doing so. I've been working in the web industry for quite a long time, and most of my colleagues seem to have no idea that changing the settings can yield better results. The setting 'phrase' for instance, makes a HUGE difference much of the time - yet I've never seen a colleague change any default settings when doing a web search. If you're not willing to do so much as even toggle an individual setting, you deserve the crappy results you get.
Oh, another thing - many of the links I get back are of dubious quality - even on the setting 'phrase', many results don't come back that match what I specified. If you play the the rules and the results STILL don't match, I have little faith in ANY results, even if the web site operators are trying to override accuracy. This is aside the very common result of '404 not found' pages.
Right now, the best search engine I know of is a meta search engine called 'ProFusion' - I've had much better luck with it than with Google. Not enough control over Google...I also like that the results with Profusion (http://www.profusion.com) come back with an option next to each result to open in a new browser window - now THAT's a nice idea!
IBM makes little hard drives that have adapters for CompactFlash type II slots. They're made in 340meg, 512meg, and 1gig sizes (not sure if the latter two are available yet - if not, they will be soon). By the time these 16.8mp/si cameras are available (a year or so from now?), you'll definitely be able to get some big storage for them. I'd say, though, this spells the end of high-end cameras trying to get away with using SmartMedia or CF Type I slots.
Slashdot Mirror
Play more violent networked games!!! :^)
I vote for BZFlag...a game which, by the way, is open source, multi-platform, and is badly in need of developers, since the current ones don't seem to have a lot of time on their hands. Check out the bzflag site on sourceforge: http://bzflag.sourceforge.net/
The number of electoral votes is based on the census results - which are ten years out of date (2000 EC #s based on 1990 census). My state (Washington) is horribly underrepresented population-wise in this. A lot has happened here in the last ten years.
As for moving power from the national level to the state level - why is this inherently a good thing? I think this argument is nonsense. State borders are artificial, and have little to do with individual communities' needs in the modern age. See one of my messages in this thread for more info on that point.
Also, as I've said before, the President represents us all, therefore should be elected by ALL, not by the States. Representation of the States is accomplished by our State Representatives & Senators.
Your view of how the EC works seems obsolete. Yes, that's how it originally worked, but no longer.
The EC currently _automatically_ gives their votes to the highest popular vote-winner in their state, so that is no longer a valid reason for the continuation of the EC system. The EC 'representatives' don't do anything nowadays other than announce on tv who got all their EC 'votes' (determined by the popular vote in that state).
The only valid _CURRENT_ reason I know of is to help give the smaller states (population-wise) more of a say. My opinion is that they already get two senators no matter how big or small they are to help REPRESENT THEIR STATE. The President represents the ENTIRE NATION, and thus should, in my opinion, be based purely on the national popular vote results.
A fairly-good compromise I've heard of (and how I think Maine does it already) is to split the EC votes according to popular vote in that state - thus ensuring the smaller states still get their inflated value, yet matching the REAL will of the 'People'.
Also, keep in mind the President is not a dictator - someone who wins the Presidency still has to deal with both houses of Congress. Checks and balances, ya know?
And just because the original founding fathers may have thought something was a good idea doesn't make it so, and certainly doesn't mean a good idea over 200 years ago is a good idea today. Lots of them owned slaves, too. They also weren't full-time politicians, much less politicians for life. Things are _vastly_ different in the modern world, in case you haven't noticed.
Another thing - the value of 'statehood' is pretty much gone in the modern USA - back when the country was formed, the individual states were generally communities of similarly-minded folk. With all the influx of immigrants and migration, and population expansion (thus ensuring communities mixed), this is hardly the case anymore. I live in Seattle, and I can tell you that for all intents and purposes, Western Washington has MUCH more in common with Western Oregon, than it does with Eastern Washington. I used to live in Kansas City, MO - and worked across the border in Kansas City, KS. The Kansas City area is one area with a common set of circumstances. KC, MO is virtually the same as KC, KS, and has little to do with St. Louis, MO. State boundaries are completely obsolete, as well, and serve no real useful function in my mind, other than to help collect & redistribute resources.
...is that the vote of someone who lives in a less-populated state is WORTH MORE than someone who lives in a more-populated state. How is this fair?
The States get their increased representation via two Senators for every state, no matter how large or small. The Presidential election is _national_, and should have nothing to do with the invididual states - only the population.
The easy (and likely) compromise - allow all states to split their electoral votes according to the popular vote.
Okay, each location that has to be able to authenticate you can combine a GPS with biometric security & an atomic-clock-syncronized timestamp. You put whatever bodypart needs to be authenticated (or multiple ones), the thing recognizes you. Then it checks the GPS location & combines that with the verified time. Voila. The information can then be transmitted security to wherever it needs to be via encrypted means.
We'd have more to worry about than being heavier, to put it mildly. First off, those of us who don't die by freezing on the dark side, or frying on the light side, will probably have to deal with flooding from the now-deeper oceans. I don't know what effect this would have on tides & plate tectonics, but I bet it might not be too pretty. Sure would make for a stronger human after several generations, though, I bet! :^)
> Right after the Federal Government repeals the
:^)
> income tax and a Libertarian gets elected
> president
And we'll all be typing in Esperanto on our Dvorak-layout keyboards.
I'd say web developers (like myself) have a better perspective on what's what than the programmers of the mozilla project. We're the ones whose jobs depend on this stuff working right - and we'll be stuck with having to code to that platform for _YEARS_ to come. Any flaws in the platform are ours to deal with for a very long time, as opposed to the programmers who can simply upgrade their browser whenever they want. Web developers have to code to every piece of junk put out by the 'big two' (MS & Netscape) for the past 2 years, so we're understandably more concerned than most about standards-compliance and common-sense layout.
I've submitted my share of bugs for Mozilla (along with test cases to demonstrate them) - and some of them _WON'T_ be fixed 'due to compatibility' reasons. "It's always been done that way," they say. "Use CSS to fix that," they say. "Other browsers do it that way," they say. .swf spec is even 'open' (unfortunately the .fla spec is not). Combine that with Flash Generator, and voila - see ya, HTML, wouldn't wanna be ya.
See, here's the deal - they SAY they're going to make it 'standards compliant', yet that isn't always the case, depending on which person gets your bug report. If their 'mind'set is as quoted above, then you can forget standards compliance and commonsense layout. Unfortunate, to say the least. The big reason why I want to move to full Flash display ASAP. HTML will be quite useful and stable as a Flash-delivery framework. *not kidding* Check out the features of Flash 5 - it's gettin' scary. Detailed scripting, form fields (as of v4), etc. The
On the flip side - I'd STILL rather use a slightly-less compliant browser (Nav 6) than use a browser imbedded into Windows. The reason? Quite simple (for those simpletons out there) - when Navigator (any version) crashes - it takes itself out. When IE crashes (even as late as v5.5), it usually takes out the whole OS (Win 98SE or Win2K - happens with both).
The 'standards compliance' (such as it is) in Navigator 6 will be plenty good enough for me as long as it doesn't take out the OS with it when it crashes (don't be a fool and think "it won't crash"). My real concern isn't with whether it'll crash a lot or be 100% standards compliant (it'll crash some, and it won't be 100% compliant), but how buggy the implementation of JavaScript, CSS, and the DOM will be. Too many bugs in these (especially CSS) are what have prevented wide-spread implementation thus far (that and users who don't understand the concept of 'upgrade').
Okay, enough ranting. I gotta stop making websites for a living. *sigh*
Anyone got any experience with both they'd like to share?
How do they compare with MySQL w/ Berkeley DB tables?
You should know what you're comparing. CAS3 PC133 will be slow as hell compared to a PC2100 CAS2.5 (I don't think the CAS2 DDR modules are out yet).
"A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe."
I'd rather use a host that offers PostgreSQL instead of MySQL - anyone know of any? Preferrably running on OpenBSD, and with SSH-type access, plus the latest PHP4 & Apache?
1) Online Credit Card processing for non-US is often much more expensive, if it's even available at all. Blame the CC processors.
2) Shipping. Hey, it costs more - that's the way it is.
3) Taxes, customs, etc.
These are all issues to take into account.
It's hard enough to start up a business in ONE country (any country), without the added expenses of dealing with clients in multiple countries. Being online doesn't make that any easier. I doubt the true value of free trade will be realized until all countries participate equally and fairly . And that isn't going to happen any time soon, if at all. *sigh*
I'm not sure you're getting the type of case-insensitivity I'm meaning.
It's like on (dare I say it) a Windows system, sorta. When you name a file, the case that appears to you maintains the case you originally specified. When you create or refer to a file, though, it's normalized to lower case.
Thus, case IS maintained, because it would still have all it's uppercase characters when doing a directory listing, etc. I'm not sure your 'indirect stability' is much of an argument.
As for flexibility - when doing searches, just like you should have in programs now, you'd have the option of case sensitive or case insensitive search, there would be no difference at ALL in searches, etc, because the code that would effect this would be in the file system - the normalization of allowed filenames in a given directory would determine what can and cannot be created, and when you're looking for something, the filesystem would match it correctly if you said "gimme foo", and there was only "FOO" in the directory - you'd get "FOO". When you edit FOO, foo is edited and updated correctly.
If you rename "FOO" to "foo", it would then appear as "foo" in directory listings.
So, case IS preserved, it's just how case is being used in the INTERFACE of the system that is being effected, and is what my entire point is all about.
It seems most people participating in this little subtopic seem to agree with me, others don't understand how it would work, and it _seems_ that the ones who understand yet still disagree are only worried about the programming complexity involved.
All I can say to that last point is - if Mac & Windows can do it, it can't be all _that_ terrible difficult, now can it?
If we want Linux and the BSDs to become acceptible to desktop users, this may become a BIG sticking point, IMO.
> There is nothing that prevents someone from
> having all of their files in one case. If all of
> the files are in one case, then how can anyone
> complain?
It's not just the files that I create, though, is it? I don't create every file and program on my system. I get files from elsewhere - and there are a zillion programs that come with a Linux distribution that have mixed-case names for no good reason.
And the GUI argument doesn't make sense, either - if you wind up with a directory of stupidly-named files using case to differentiate them, it's going to take awhile even in a GUI to figure out what's what. There's no reason to have that feature other than to be obtuse, as far as I can figure out. Noone in this conversation has come up with an answer that's sufficient to put this kind of burden on the user. No wonder people hate the command line!
And if, as you say, we're all moving to the lowercase roman alphabet anyway in the future due to unicode, we might as well start altering the file system now, huh? That way we'll be unicode-ready that much sooner.
> double the possible number of files in a given dir?
Well, if you mean double the possible number of CONFUSINGLY-NAMED files in a directory, yeah, I guess some people would find that useful. Sorta.
I'd bet that there are a LOT more people who find that irritating than useful, though.
Whatever.
I've never understood why so many UNIXheads think case-sensitivity is a GOOD thing. Yes, I'd like the files to have upper and lower case in them for the sake of appearance, but I'd rather NOT have it case-sensitive for matching, etc.
Does anyone have a GOOD reason to have a case-sensitive file system? If so, please enlighten me...
>Hm. I'd have to say that once you get above
;)
>1024x768, it's a little silly to be running most
>standard applications fullscreen
I'd have to say that you don't understand one of the best benefits to running at a super-high resolution. If you also then increase your font size, you get some really crisp text on your screen. Check it out if you have the video equipment - it's a brave new world.
I'm not sure using colours and fonts and font sizes is all that bad for accessibility. People who complain about that seem to forget they can override the settings on their browsers for colours and fonts and font sizes. But this is only a general thing - you can take it too far pretty easily.
I've worked on a huge variety of sites and site designs. I've even done an ADA-compliant (Americans with Disabilities Act - they've a set of guidelines) website (it was an earlier incarnation of the Gates Library Foundation website - the current one isn't mine). To do that site, we made everything high contrast (dark links on white/light background), larger font sizes (default or -1 only (that's font size 3 or 2, depending on how you look at it), the table of contents was horizontal, across the top, not vertical. This was because of how screen-readers for the blind work (or, worked at the time - this was a few years ago - they are hopefully better by now) - they work(ed) reading left to right across the screen, and gawd help you if you're using frames - it'll still read right to left, right into the next frame. But that was awhile ago - hopefully that's changed. Anyway, we also used an early version of Bobby to check our site - it finally passed with no complaints (whew!). It took a while to get everything that way.
Some guidelines, off the top of my head - I'm not posting this after a lengthy composition like normal:
1) High contrast on all links - dark text on light, light text on dark, whatever, as long as it's consistently that way. Don't make one area dark on light and another light on dark.
2) If you're controlling the font size in some way (be it through - or + font sizes, fixed font sizes, CSS or not), make them as large as your design lets you get away with.
3) Take a cue from Nielsen - he's got a lot of goofy ideas, but some of his ideas are gems - particularly in the area of page density. In print, lots of white space is good for readability. According to Nielsen's research, the OPPOSITE is true on the web! So, if you're presenting information, organize it very very well - lots of bulleted/numbered lists, etc. Indent things where appropriate, etc.
4) The Web is NOT print (nor is it TV or like a computer program). Font sizes, graphics, dpi, everything is different on the Web than in how print, tv, and regular computer programs work. Everything is relative. You don't control the resolution or size on someone's monitor, nor do you control what colour depth their monitor is in, or if it's been colour-calibrated (the vast majority have not). Colours are darker on PCs than on Macs. People connect at different speeds, and even if they didn't, there's Internet traffic to consider - the fastest T1 can seem like a 56K connection if a link somewhere along the line is flooded. All these things and more must be taken into account when developing a site. Don't make the mistake of thinking you can address all these challenges perfectly - it's just not possible with a realistic budget. Think carefully about each of these points, and come up with a reasonable target audience. If your website is about photography, don't worry about access for blind people, capiche? Likewise, you might also want to consider making your site a bit more usable for those with better-than-average access - I run at 1600x1200 now that I have a 21" monitor and a nice new graphics card. Lots of site developers that have repeating background graphics forget that those background graphics repeat horizontally as well as vertically - so I often cannot see something that's on the page if the contrast between the background graphic conflicts with the foreground, because they never envisioned someone having more than 1024x768 graphics viewing the site.
5) Sound on websites are bad. BAD. MIDI especially. If you're about to use MIDI on a site, don't. Think about it, then don't. If your client insists on it, kill them. There's no excuse for MIDI sound on a website. EVER. Remember: Guns don't kill people - people who run into websites with MIDI background sounds on them kill people! The only good uses of sound I've run into are for imbedded movies and some (some!) Flash sites.
6) If your target audience is using modern browsers, consider using Flash - it's possible to make some quite low-bandwidth 'flashy' sites with some great UI possibilities using Flash. Flash 4 contains neato things like forms and such, and an addition to Flash 5 I read about this morning allows for form validations and other neat tricks. Eventually Flash will be ubiquitous enough to use for a lot more than we do now. Just a consideration.
7) If your client has an existing site, run some browser statistics on the site for a few weeks or longer and find out what people are doing, how they're using the site, what they're interested in, and don't even START designing the site until you've made a careful analysis of that information. Hire an expert to do that analysis if you can. That's a good idea for UI design, too. Hire a (qualified) company or individual(s) to do the site design for you - and I don't mean a graphic designer - I mean a USER INTERFACE DESIGNER. That term is NOT synonymous with 'graphic designer', no matter what a graphic designer may tell you. Pretty pictures do not a good UI designer make, though it is possible to make a great UI that is very pretty.
8) Information architecture - 'architect' your information before you design your site! Organize that information into the LOGICAL segments that your USERS WILL EXPECT (how do you know what they'll expect? Find out from them what they expect, dummy!) Once you've got your information organized, only THEN can you begin to design the site!
There's more to this subject than what I've written above, but quite honestly, I'm tired of typing just now, so you'll just have to live without my pompous bits of wisdom on this topic.
Have a day...
Guess you didn't read what I wrote, eh?
;)
Try searching for 'babelfish translator' with PHRASE mode, and it comes up as number one.
Well, also the fact that a huge chunk of the web isn't even indexed at all.
Other than that, though, the interfaces that most search engines use are pretty bad. There is usually no way to filter through a set of results to eliminate things that are obviously not what the searcher wants. Just being able to eliminate a set of domains from the initial results would make a huge difference for me.
Also, most people have no clue how to effectively use search engines - and they're not all that interested in doing so. I've been working in the web industry for quite a long time, and most of my colleagues seem to have no idea that changing the settings can yield better results. The setting 'phrase' for instance, makes a HUGE difference much of the time - yet I've never seen a colleague change any default settings when doing a web search. If you're not willing to do so much as even toggle an individual setting, you deserve the crappy results you get.
Oh, another thing - many of the links I get back are of dubious quality - even on the setting 'phrase', many results don't come back that match what I specified. If you play the the rules and the results STILL don't match, I have little faith in ANY results, even if the web site operators are trying to override accuracy. This is aside the very common result of '404 not found' pages.
Right now, the best search engine I know of is a meta search engine called 'ProFusion' - I've had much better luck with it than with Google. Not enough control over Google...I also like that the results with Profusion ( http://www.profusion.com ) come back with an option next to each result to open in a new browser window - now THAT's a nice idea!
IBM makes little hard drives that have adapters for CompactFlash type II slots. They're made in 340meg, 512meg, and 1gig sizes (not sure if the latter two are available yet - if not, they will be soon). By the time these 16.8mp/si cameras are available (a year or so from now?), you'll definitely be able to get some big storage for them. I'd say, though, this spells the end of high-end cameras trying to get away with using SmartMedia or CF Type I slots.