If they really want a cross-platform solution that doesn't rely on the goodwill of browser makers to support the standards, they ought to simply implement the site using Flash. Ehm no. Your suggestion to use Flash is about the worst thing they could do. It would greatly reduce the accessibility of the site, because not all browsers support Flash.
Let's see: Flash does not allow text-based browsers to access the site. Or search engines. Or WAP phones. Or text-reading browsers for the blind.
The ONLY way to get a truly cross-platform site is to start by a plain text site, then add layers of gracefully degrading markup, or even gracefully degrading Javascript on top of it, making sure the site never depends on any additional layer of functionality on top of it, making sure only to use the standards that *are* properly supported.
While in general, I'd agree with you, it's worth pointing out that Flash has moved a long way forward in terms of accessibility over the last 3-4 years.
Of course, if you think you can get to the end of your Flash development and then think you can implement accessibility as an add-on at the end then you're bonkers - it does need to be planned in from the get-go.
(Incidentally, I'd be a lot more interested in your opinion if you were demonstrably capable of using semantic markup such as the blockquote element...)
It workers think they are smarter then everyone else.
I don't know about you, but I _am_ smarter than everyone else in most places where I am. It's not a delusion, it's a fact, I need to deal with it, for example when I need to explain stuff. Not only are most of the people less knowledgeable on the subject, but they are less smart. Smart and knowledgeable are two different things. I wouldn't be less smart if I was in upper management. I would be a mess for lack of knowledge alone.
...and the third factor is ability to influence. If you can't persuade stakeholders that your way is best even when it is, then being smart and knowledgeable counts for near zero.
Is it a political game? Sure. Not for nothing is Politics known as the Art of the Possible - that which you can make happen. Don't like it? Not prepared to work that way? You're not as smart as you think.
Design Sabotage... You debate your method to the bitter end and you still lose management tell you to do it the way you don't want to do it... So you do it half assed and make sure all the problems that you warned about occure... Vs. putting your feeling aside and work to make this design work as well as possible.
No way again. Patching a flawed design is only going to make the problem bigger. You might be misinterpreting sabotage for refusal to sweep the design dirt under the carpet.
All very nice in theory. But sometimes the priority at a higher level than you can see or care about is get it done sooner, or done cheaper, rather than done well. Which of course tips the time/cost/quality triangle to a different plane. But it's not your decision at the end of the day.
Again, learning the political game of when it's Good Enough, and accepting the decision this time is your ticket to play next time. And of course, the best of all is when the decision is made against your recommendation, but you cope and deliver anyway. Being known as a Safe Pair of Hands helps you become trusted and hence influential. And long-lived - nobody gives complex and hard (aka interesting) things to people who can't cope.
Not knowing your place... In IT sometimes you feel like you are running the company. And sometimes you feel like you are the lowest part on the totam pole. You are not the top decision maker you are below that but you are hired as an educated employee so people value your ideas.
That does not happen everytime. It's usual that managers get to bargain technical decisions that they hired you to make.
No, the parent was right. Usually you do not get to make the decision. You get to advise on it, but if you're in a position where other people are bargaining with your input, guess what? There are competing priorities and it's not your decision.
So I say once more - your objective should be that you are influential in that process. It's how you make sure your support is normally required for a change. Don't be the inexperienced guy who thinks decisions are made in meetings. Learn about Nemawashi - it's effective almost everywhere, even if you don't work for Sony.
I guess from now on, it's obligatory to use Gore's Nobel Prize as "evidence" that he knows what he's talking about, and the UK court judgement the same week about showing the film in schools as "evidence" that he doesn't, before we move along to any more enlightened discussion.
...and conveniently ignoring that the UK court judgement only criticised 9 (out of a large number) of specific claims made in the film. And of course misunderstood the dividing line between science and politics. Science is the tool that provides evidence showing that $badthings are happening and their probable causative and rectifying agents. If the rectifying agent is a widespread change in human behaviour, then the effective and reasonable tool is politics.
Any work presenting "$badthing is happenening" can either stop at the "So what?" stage (ie be pointless), or move into proposing rectifying action. At which point, it's necessarily political. This is true for climate change, or the shutdown of Manufacturing Industry, or the state of the healthcare system, or whatever.
Ah, what you're getting into is temperaments, m'friend.
Anyone with a particularly sensitive ear for tuning either gets driven mad by this (hell, I used to spend *hours* trying to get even the open strings in a perfect Just Temperament - arg that Pythagorean Comma - tuning by harmonics), or adopts a Well Temperament and lives with the compromises.
And if you're doing the latter, you might as well use an electronic tuner, or this doo-dad.
The problem is the American definition of "Communist countries". It tends to include places like China and Cuba. They are a better approximation than the USA, of course, but are still hardly communist.
*Ping* give Verte a coconut. The Cuban revolution in particular was never an ideologically Communist-led event. While Castro's intent most certainly did have an element of removal of the externally imposed landowners and distribution of their assets to the people, this is more popularism than pure Communism. Castro would then (and does now) prefer to be compared to Jose Marti than Joseph Stalin.
Once Cuba was isolated from the US, and their chief economic partner became the USSR (for the same reasons seen in many US client states), it became expedient to absorb some of the Communist rhetoric to facilitate that economic support.
People like Stalin or Castro or groups like the Chinese Socialist party will always manage to stop communism from becoming a reality.
...and it's likely to be heartening to the CIA to see people conflating those three. Although it's puzzling that the historically least Communistic of the three states is the one still being ostracised by the US. Beyond realpolitik of the blockvote of the former Cuban landlords swinging Florida in the Electoral College (and sheer bloodymindedness), there's no lasting reason for it.
I'm curious about the accessibility support for that helpful feature it has, where entering the password characters puts up random numbers of bullets while hieroglyphics blink randomly around the input box, apparently to distract and confuse shoulder surfers.
I'm curious as to what qualifies you to talk about this when you haven't even observed the application's behaviour correctly.
The hieroglyphs act as a checksum of the entered password. So I know that when I enter my pw correctly, the last char to display is a certain one. Thus, even though my pw is obscured in the display with Xs, I still know whether I've typed it correctly before I hit enter.
It's a user *hint*, bozo. You're neither insightful (I see no insight), nor informative, and as there isn't a mod status for "Just plain wrong", I'm responding instead of moderating.
(Yes, I work for IBM. No, I don't work for Lotus. Yes, I do use Notes every day, and know it's got a whole load better as a mail client since the last time you looked at it)
Bell Labs doesn't really exist anymore because the visionary guys who ran the likes of Bell, HP, etc., have been replaced by corporate greedhead drones who diligently "enhance shareholder value"...
... by offshoring anything that isn't nailed down.
To be clear, just because it's work done offshore, doesn't mean that research is worthless. Unless you really are suggesting that there are no smart people in India/China...
J S Bach was one of those who worked on a solution to this, and he came up with the modern even-tempered scale, which averages out the intervals so that all keys are equally in-tune (or out-of-tune).
Close, but no cigar.
You're thinking of Well Temperament, which Bach showcased, but didn't invent.
Adding to the shrug factor, the twelve-semitone pitch system as a whole is a human invention.
And if you want it in spades: the equally spaced twelve-semitone system is a pretty late, Western European-specific invention. Because the deep joy of the acoustics is that to be perfectly in tune by the frequency multipliers, each key has each note (eg A above middle C) at a slightly different pitch. So the question of whether A=440 is more correctly answered with the question "In which key?".
This is fine and dandy for infinitely variable pitch instruments such as non-fretted string instruments, but causes all kinds of problems for keyboard instruments. You can play perfectly in tune, as long as you never, ever change key. At that point, it starts sounding *really* nasty.
However, in the 18th Century, a fudge was devised whereby each note did have a standard tuning - this is Well Temperament. The result is that you can then modulate between keys without disaster. But each semitone step has its own spacing, and different keys have different characters because the different spacings fall differently in the scale. Bach's 48 uses this very effectively as he cycles through the keys (a Prelude and Fugue for the major and minor of each semitone key... twice)
In the C20th, this was fudged again to the usually used contemporary Equal Temperament, where each semitone is an equal distance apart from all the others.
Interestingly, some other cultures that have different tuning systems allow a greater deal of laxity about what's in tune, allowing quite a lot of crowbarring of their systems into a 12 tone, equal temperament system.
...and the helicopter shot in FOTR when they're passing the ruined fortress on the mountain top doesn't even work on normal DVD, let alone HD. And while Andy Serkis' performance is believable, Gollum is not as the textures and lighting aren't *quite* there in TTT.
Even if iPod is hidden from view, the white earbuds scream 'Please mug me, I have an iPod'
Dunno about Compton, but qualitative data from the London Underground (which is a pretty broad sociodemographic sample) suggests that *every* bugger listening to $personalmusicdevices has white earbuds, whether or not they are iPodded.
Looks to me like every manufacturer of earbuds wants part of the iPod halo, because every bugger wants the white earbud status symbol.
(currently listening to an iPod on Philips branded white earbuds)
Apple just doesn't cater to me... at all. I couldn't get anything like that from them... the closest thing is the pathetic Mac Mini which costs about $600 with no monitor/keyboard/mouse/printer, and is seriously underpowered and limited in upgradability.
See, like some of the posters above, I'd challenge your basis for comparison.
In our house, we have one 4 year old dual processor G4 (my desktop), a 6 year old PIII Dell (Mostly Ubuntu, but dualboots into XP from time to time) and an early Intel Mac Mini that was an insurance replacement for an iBook that got trashed by the kids.
My G4 is getting to the stage where I'm feeling I could probably do with a replacement, but generally it's no hardship to use (everything up to and including a little light Adobe Creative Suite) - if push came to shove, it would just keep motoring on. The Dell is just fine for webbrowsing/email/OO.o plus the odd Windows game. The Mac Mini's performance *spanks* everything else in the house by about an order of magnitude, most obviously measurable in terms of BOINC unit throughput.
So, underpowered, compared to what the vast majority of people need? No. Only when either viewed in high-end professional environments, or those involving high-end egos.
The *only* tower-case system they sell is the hugely powerful and hugely expensive Mac Pro.
I'm a long-standing tower user, but my G4 tower replacement will be an iMac. It's not as if the iMac will need a processor upgrade ever (note how long I've had my G4), or much of a RAM upgrade, and I have enough external storage that a 250 gig drive will do me for ever. Dual monitors? Sure - iMacs have had external video ports for a while.
Otherwise known as 'break the interface paradigm that people know, which makes it *harder* to use'. Ask anyone who actually knows anything about usability - the easiest interface is the one you know.
2) Better looking documents in less time
Entirely subjective, and lacking in comparisons - the 'than what?' bit.
3) Royalty-free clip art
Which every previous version of Office has had, is entirely useless anyway, and can be found on a thing called the Internet. Heard of it?
4) Enhanced copy-paste functions
Old ones worked fine. Enhanced how? And with what actual benefit?
5) Diagrams (see Smart Art)
Thanks, but if you're needing real diagramming, then you'll probably find a diagramming tool for less than the price of Office.
6) Equation editor
Also available in competing products, but how often used?
7) PDF writing
Free add-ons everywhere; freely available in OO.o and in any OSX SW.
8) Bulit-in APA/MLA styles
So, one template's worth, probably not useful outwith the USA. Big deal.
9) Track Changes
Has been part of Word since at least version 2.
10) Mail Merge
Has been part of Word since at least version 2.
11) XML format
But not an open, standard XML format.
12) Sharing with others (SharePoint, Groove, etc)
Is that a feature of Word, or one of Sharepoint? Double counting, I think. Besides, the usecase for collaborative authoring in education isn't that prevalent.
13) Live Grammar and Spell Check
Again, an old feature - explain what's better about it.
14) AutoCorrect
Again, an old feature - explain what's better about it.
15) Visual Basic
Again, an old feature - explain what's better about it.
16) DRM (the kind that corporations need to keep their docs secret)
Not necessary in education.
And when/if you can respond to those, please explain the *benefits* resulting - features are for the birds. How does it make my *education* better?
we have basically 3 main distros: Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu. If you include derivatives of them, then you really have the vast majority of users using one of three choices: Add Fedora and CentOS to Red Hat, and all the Ubuntu-based derivatives to Ubuntu
we have basically 3 main distros: Red Hat, SUSE, Debian. If you include derivatives of them, then you really have the vast majority of users using one of three choices: Add Fedora and CentOS to Red Hat, and all the Debian-based derivatives (such as Ubuntu) to Debian.
Projects are successfully delivered by good coders with good tools, and a thorough understanding of the requirements.
*sigh* I can tell you've either never worked on anything with complexity, or paid attention when you did.
Right, Mr "I'm so smart, I can fix everything with software development tools". Who does the following for your projects?
Ensures that the *right* people (As opposed to J Random Client Staffmember) make decisions about changes to requirements so they get accepted throughout the project lifecycle? And that the bad change requests are rebuffed?
Ensures that potential $badthings are spotted and either avoided, or planned against?
Ensures that the plans to resolve actual $badthings are carried out? That the actions needed actually happen (and if not, the responsible people are taken out and slapped)
Plans the work, end to end, including all external and cross-dependencies? Incidentally, the coding bit is usually a relatively small bit in the middle.
Ensures that appropriately skilled people are found to work in all the necessary roles, at an acceptable cost. Or if they cannot be found, workarounds found. And if they're not located within commuting distance, how they're going to travel (and have that recovered), whether they need work permits, etc. How they're going to get building passes, system logins, desks, chairs, PCs (etc). Ever tried it for a 100+ person team?
Procures external services (eg server infrastructure), and ensures it arrives on time, cost and quality?
Maintains supportive relationships between the project and all the people it needs to keep going (including whoever has to sign the invoice for it to be paid)? Those progress reports aren't there just for fun, you know.
Ensures that the thing that the client *asked for* is the thing the client *actually needs*? (ie ensures the requirements capture process is robust)
Ensures that you get paid?
Doesn't matter what you call them, anyone doing this is a Project Manager.
Good PM software isn't necessary to do this. Good PM methodology is. And if you're limited in PM time, SW helps (like any good tool).
[Where are] Google, Microsoft, IBM, and all the other big players in the industry? Not a single one is on the list, yet they continue to attract, hire, and keep the best talent.
A significant element in why the above (and yes, I work for one of them) attract the best talent is that it looks really good on a resume. Particularly if you've been trained in your chosen profession by one of them. And if you're partway through the training/experience, you *really* don't want to leave.
I know I'm going to get modded offtopic at best here, but wasn't the point of the invasion to stop Iraq from deploying its extensive stockpiles of WMDs? Wasn't it supposed to be a pre-emptive strike to get him before he got America and its allies? Toppling Hussein was supposed to be a byproduct of that, but it was not the primary goal.
Actually, it was explicitly *not* a goal, not least because effecting regime change in another state is illegal. So byproduct, sure, but not secondary goal.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, if you think you can get to the end of your Flash development and then think you can implement accessibility as an add-on at the end then you're bonkers - it does need to be planned in from the get-go.
(Incidentally, I'd be a lot more interested in your opinion if you were demonstrably capable of using semantic markup such as the blockquote element...)
Is it a political game? Sure. Not for nothing is Politics known as the Art of the Possible - that which you can make happen. Don't like it? Not prepared to work that way? You're not as smart as you think.
All very nice in theory. But sometimes the priority at a higher level than you can see or care about is get it done sooner, or done cheaper, rather than done well. Which of course tips the time/cost/quality triangle to a different plane. But it's not your decision at the end of the day.
Again, learning the political game of when it's Good Enough, and accepting the decision this time is your ticket to play next time. And of course, the best of all is when the decision is made against your recommendation, but you cope and deliver anyway. Being known as a Safe Pair of Hands helps you become trusted and hence influential. And long-lived - nobody gives complex and hard (aka interesting) things to people who can't cope.
No, the parent was right. Usually you do not get to make the decision. You get to advise on it, but if you're in a position where other people are bargaining with your input, guess what? There are competing priorities and it's not your decision.
So I say once more - your objective should be that you are influential in that process. It's how you make sure your support is normally required for a change. Don't be the inexperienced guy who thinks decisions are made in meetings. Learn about Nemawashi - it's effective almost everywhere, even if you don't work for Sony.
Any work presenting "$badthing is happenening" can either stop at the "So what?" stage (ie be pointless), or move into proposing rectifying action. At which point, it's necessarily political. This is true for climate change, or the shutdown of Manufacturing Industry, or the state of the healthcare system, or whatever.
Ah, what you're getting into is temperaments, m'friend.
Anyone with a particularly sensitive ear for tuning either gets driven mad by this (hell, I used to spend *hours* trying to get even the open strings in a perfect Just Temperament - arg that Pythagorean Comma - tuning by harmonics), or adopts a Well Temperament and lives with the compromises.
And if you're doing the latter, you might as well use an electronic tuner, or this doo-dad.
Once Cuba was isolated from the US, and their chief economic partner became the USSR (for the same reasons seen in many US client states), it became expedient to absorb some of the Communist rhetoric to facilitate that economic support....and it's likely to be heartening to the CIA to see people conflating those three. Although it's puzzling that the historically least Communistic of the three states is the one still being ostracised by the US. Beyond realpolitik of the blockvote of the former Cuban landlords swinging Florida in the Electoral College (and sheer bloodymindedness), there's no lasting reason for it.
(King eh? I never voted for yer)
MSProject - too low end.
Take a wee look at this fella: Rational Portfolio Manager.
Kicks lumps out of MSP.
(Yes, I work for IBM. No, I don't work for Rational. No, I'm not speaking for IBM. Yes I do use RPM on a daily basis)
The hieroglyphs act as a checksum of the entered password. So I know that when I enter my pw correctly, the last char to display is a certain one. Thus, even though my pw is obscured in the display with Xs, I still know whether I've typed it correctly before I hit enter.
It's a user *hint*, bozo. You're neither insightful (I see no insight), nor informative, and as there isn't a mod status for "Just plain wrong", I'm responding instead of moderating.
(Yes, I work for IBM. No, I don't work for Lotus. Yes, I do use Notes every day, and know it's got a whole load better as a mail client since the last time you looked at it)
(Tongue in cheek here - it's the only example I can think of, and it's apocryphal)
You're thinking of Well Temperament, which Bach showcased, but didn't invent.
Equal Temperament is a C20th invention.
This is fine and dandy for infinitely variable pitch instruments such as non-fretted string instruments, but causes all kinds of problems for keyboard instruments. You can play perfectly in tune, as long as you never, ever change key. At that point, it starts sounding *really* nasty.
However, in the 18th Century, a fudge was devised whereby each note did have a standard tuning - this is Well Temperament. The result is that you can then modulate between keys without disaster. But each semitone step has its own spacing, and different keys have different characters because the different spacings fall differently in the scale. Bach's 48 uses this very effectively as he cycles through the keys (a Prelude and Fugue for the major and minor of each semitone key... twice)
In the C20th, this was fudged again to the usually used contemporary Equal Temperament, where each semitone is an equal distance apart from all the others.
More on temperaments here and at Wikipedia.
Interestingly, some other cultures that have different tuning systems allow a greater deal of laxity about what's in tune, allowing quite a lot of crowbarring of their systems into a 12 tone, equal temperament system.
So would I, if the party were entirely composed of Ainsley Hayes. And I were allowed to vote in another country's elections.
...and the helicopter shot in FOTR when they're passing the ruined fortress on the mountain top doesn't even work on normal DVD, let alone HD. And while Andy Serkis' performance is believable, Gollum is not as the textures and lighting aren't *quite* there in TTT.
Kong, otoh...
Looks to me like every manufacturer of earbuds wants part of the iPod halo, because every bugger wants the white earbud status symbol.
(currently listening to an iPod on Philips branded white earbuds)
In our house, we have one 4 year old dual processor G4 (my desktop), a 6 year old PIII Dell (Mostly Ubuntu, but dualboots into XP from time to time) and an early Intel Mac Mini that was an insurance replacement for an iBook that got trashed by the kids.
My G4 is getting to the stage where I'm feeling I could probably do with a replacement, but generally it's no hardship to use (everything up to and including a little light Adobe Creative Suite) - if push came to shove, it would just keep motoring on. The Dell is just fine for webbrowsing/email/OO.o plus the odd Windows game. The Mac Mini's performance *spanks* everything else in the house by about an order of magnitude, most obviously measurable in terms of BOINC unit throughput.
So, underpowered, compared to what the vast majority of people need? No. Only when either viewed in high-end professional environments, or those involving high-end egos. I'm a long-standing tower user, but my G4 tower replacement will be an iMac. It's not as if the iMac will need a processor upgrade ever (note how long I've had my G4), or much of a RAM upgrade, and I have enough external storage that a 250 gig drive will do me for ever. Dual monitors? Sure - iMacs have had external video ports for a while.
So you need a tower because..?
Oh indeed - for entirely naive users. But "the thing you already use" factor is stronger.
And when/if you can respond to those, please explain the *benefits* resulting - features are for the birds. How does it make my *education* better?
we have basically 3 main distros: Red Hat, SUSE, Debian. If you include derivatives of them, then you really have the vast majority of users using one of three choices: Add Fedora and CentOS to Red Hat, and all the Debian-based derivatives (such as Ubuntu) to Debian.
There - fixed that for you.
*sigh* I can tell you've either never worked on anything with complexity, or paid attention when you did.
Right, Mr "I'm so smart, I can fix everything with software development tools". Who does the following for your projects?
Doesn't matter what you call them, anyone doing this is a Project Manager.
Good PM software isn't necessary to do this. Good PM methodology is. And if you're limited in PM time, SW helps (like any good tool).