Hyrogen and helium... they're not very different at all because the only difference is a few particles. I didn't see it that way. Well I'm off to go build a helium bomb.
Many species are very similar. How different is a dog from a coyote? How about an alligator from a crocodile? They are different species, but they're similar enough that the unique information provided by each one is very low.
Elements are far more unique to each other than species, so the scale isn't as linear as '1/50th of the periodic table.'
In any case, the idea was sound, the details are unimporant and not worth splitting hairs about.
Well, it's true, isn't it? Content companies in general (game companies, movie companies, television networks, music, etc..) can't price their products and then expect people to pay that forever. Each of these companies have a serious problem looming over them, and that is too much content.
Let's look at the game industry, for example. There are at least 6 systems furiously competing today. (DC, PS2, XBOX, GC, GBA, PC) Each of these systems are releasing games like crazy. The problem is, my paycheck in the last few years hasn't risen high enough to buy that many more games, not to mention that the number of hours in the day hasn't increased enough for me to play them. If the number of games released is greater than the amount of disposable money people have to spend, how can they expect everybody to pay the same price for games?
Lowering the price of games for college students, for example, was a great approach! It'd be cool if one day your student ID could get you a discount on games.
I hope the RIAA pays attention to this study. The harder it is to copy music, for example, the more demand there is for somebody to do it. Where there's demand, there's fame. Where there's fame, there's somebody saying "Yes, I'm willing to invest hours into acquiring fame." But if the RIAA were to open up and say "We've lowered the price of CD's, and you're free to copy them and do what you want with them!", they will likely find that going to the store to buy CD's is preferable to waiting to download them.
One idea the RIAA should consider is releasing individual songs on those 2" CD's. Price them low, and then allow people to make their own mixes. Reward the customer for buying these little CD's by letting them create their own single CD that has the songs they want on it. Don't punish the customer for having other desires with music. That's what the economics game is all about. You'll make profit if you give the customer incentive to buy your product. But if you take features away, you're punishing them, and customers don't like that.
I know I don't like being told I'm a thief because I have an MP3 player.
It makes you wonder though, given how popular violent TV got in the last 20 years, how come there doesn't seem to be a similar rise in gun-activity?
Yet, over in the Middle East, there's all kinds of gun play over there. Isn't it true that they don't have those type of programs? (I think I read that they don't have the same type of TV we do, but since I've never been there I won't say that matter of factly.) You'd think America would look like what we're seeing on TV in recent weeks if TV and VG's did cause violence.
There was an episode of Picket Fences that I saw a few years ago that had a court case involving television's role in violence with children. The basic plot of the story was a kid fired a potato gun at a teenager's car because the teenager was picking on the potato-gunman's little brother. The potato broke the car's windshield and caused the teen to swerve, rolling the car. The teen suffered a back injury and temporary paralysis. The little brother of the injured teen brought a gun to school the next day and shot the kid who fired the potato gun in revenge.
The city that this show takes place in is a small town and many of the people there suffer from knee-jerk over-reactiveness to events like these. They immediately blamed television for the shooting and pulled it off the air. The defense of the child that fired the gun (not the potato gun) was that television taught him that shooting guns is ok, therefore it's TV's fault.
The way the episode ended (if memory serves...) is that the prosecuting lawyer asked the kid a very interesting question. "When you watch TV, do you see people get shot?" "Yes." "Do they die?" "... Yes." "So television taught you that when you shoot somebody with a gun, they die."
I thought that was an interesting response to this whole TV/Video Games/Music causes violence debate. Movies like Robocop taught me that guns are not something you really want to play with at all. Some would say Robocop glorified violence, but it sure didn't for me. The idea of getting my arm blown off and surviving to feel it didn't settle too well with me at all.
It bothers me that this aspect of television is never explored. Personally, I think TV teaches that guns are dangerous, and that you're really playing games with your life expectancy vs. solving problems with them.
Oh... actually I was directing that at a bunch of people. I didn't make that very clear though, I'm sorry. I mixed my response to yours with a response to a bunch of people running up to try to milk funny points from what I said hehe.
It did bring up an interesting point though about context. What you said made me understand my values about freedom of expression. It really felt, to me, that it was unfair of Finland to ban Donald Duck for that reason. It also offended me that Eisner (Disney) said that Apple was promoting thievery. What if I were sued for making a Disney parody because it 'promotes not giving Disney money?'. I realize that Eisner's comments aren't part of a lawsuit, but imagine if it was? Parodies are protected today, but what if the victim of a parody can prove they lost money from it?
What you said about Finland made me think. Thank you!
"Hey man, Donald duck was banned in Finland because of this! At least one government agrees! (I'm not sure if he still is banned.) "
Are you serious?
Oh man..
OK ok, the point of my comment seems to have been misdirected. I was playfully pointing out that Eisner's comment that Apple promotes piracy uses the same broken logic as the idea that Donald Duck promotes not wearing pants. Personally, I think it's ok for Donald Duck to not wear pants, and I really don't believe he's 'promoting it.'.
For Finland to ban Donald Duck for that kind of bugs me a bit. But It's not something I'd really like to defend, either . I see Donald Duck as a harmless cartoon, Finland probably has larger issues than that at stake.
Interesting, though. I suddenly go from hating Disney to supporting them when it has to do with creative freedom. I don't support their comments on Apple, though. That was evil.
IE 4.0 is a standard, Netscape 4.0 is a standard. Linux browsers aren't.
Windows is the standard because everybody uses it. Almost every website out there is designed to work with Windows. It's a standard. The market makes Windows a standard. If you can work on Windows, then you are available to most of the people out there. Unless the website developed has an audience of Linux users, it's not generally designed for Linux because it's not one of the standard web browsing platforms.
As for Flash, is it a standard? It's getting there. Nearly everybody (in the Windows world, since we're splitting hairs here...) has Flash capability. So it's a standard too.
You can play with the definition of 'standard' if you want, but when it comes to practicality, both Windows and Flash are standards. Linux browsers are not. If Linux browsers can't properly display code written for Windows(Ie/Netscape), then they're breaking that standard.
I think what you're saying is that a standard is a definition made available for the public to follow. And you're right! And IE and Netscape BOTH fail to meet that particular standard. So what happens? A new standard is created. It's the 'IE standard', the market decided that. I could sit here and code to WC3's standards all day, but the truth is the standard is who I'm supporting, not what some document says somewhere.
As for being "one of the dumbest things you've ever heard", I hope my explanation clears it a bit. If you still think what I'm saying is dumb, give it another read. I did web development for three years. I *had* to code to support IE and Netscape. It has never once come to my attention that I should be supporting Linux browsers. That's because the sites I worked on were only interested in Windows users. And that's ok! You cater to your audience unless you have enough to feed the whole world. So the point of view we had was "If you can't view our site because you're not using the popular browser out there, then you're not following the standard the rest of your audience has set." If we didn't say that, my job would be to get every single OS and browser out there to make the code comform to it. Less than 1% of our visitors were non-Windows (not just Linux, but Mac etc). It would not have made economic sense to do that.
Pity, though. If IE and Netscape would follow the WC standard to the letter on ALL versions of their browsers, then this wouldn't be an issue. But the market has spoken (i.e. said it's ok to be lke that), and I am powerless to do anything about it.
By the way, it's rude to call people stupid, particularly if they have a point. If I wasn't in a better mood I would have slung mud right back at you. So instead, I sat down and wrote a thoughtful response. So please, if you responsd, respond to my point instead of calling me names. I'm trying real hard here to explain my point of view, even if it is offensive.
Which is fine and dandy, but I was asking about my post and why it was interpreted as flame bait. Technically that is on topic. But I just don't have any more energy to worry about it.
Ok, we'll play this game again. I want to know why my original post was modded down as flame bait. Obviously I said something that somebody interpreted as flame bait, but nobody explained why it was.
HTF is that off topic? How is asking about why I was modded down off topic?
GIVE ME AN EXPLANATION instead of modding me down for asking. If you want to mod me down, that's fine, but if I ask why the least somebody could do is say "here's why...".
Damn dudes, I'm trying to contribute to/. here but it's frustrating when somebody goes around modding people down when it's not so obvious why.
Isn't it? What are the odds of more people seeing this guy's point of view?
This isn't a case of people suddenly saying "wow! we can get this free!", if it were I doubt people would pay $300 for an MP3 player. I think, instead, people's needs have changed. They no longer want to carry tons of CD's around, instead they'd rather have one little device with their whole collection on it. That's why they're willing to spend hundreds of dollrs for units such as the iPod.
What happens when you treat these guys like thieves, though? They respond like this "I spent $400 to listen to music, and that makes me a thief?"
I appreciate MSNBC's article here, I just hope more people understand what's really at stake here. People have new criteria for listening to their music, and the RIAA has done nothing to fill that demand. The customer pays the money, they make the rules. Not the other way around.
Heh my question about flamebait got modded down as being off topic.
I think that's a little bizarre, I just wanted to know why my post was modded down. That was an on-topic question, seeing as how I'm trying to understand how my post was being interpreted by people.
Heh I got a flamebait moderation on this. Anybody know why? The basic point of my post was to illustrate that flawed logic can make anybody sound evil. Did I slip up here?
*wishes people who mod down could provide a reason for it*
"Flash sucks because the users make it suck? So it is my fucking fault some jackass who bought a Flash for Dummies book is wasting my bandwidth because he felt the need for artistic expression requiring text to jump all over the fucking screen?"
I said the users who made it, not the users who viewed it.
Its when you distribute music to people freely that it becomes piracy. Apple makes no hint of transmitting your music to others, instead it provides features that make music more worthwhile to buy. In other words, they're promoting purchase of CD's.
Eisner should not be an advocate of the RIAA, he doesn't even know his terminology. As long as they want to use heavy handed approaches to 'stopping piracy', then they're just going to encourage it. Why? Because Eisner, for example, is turning into an enemy of freedom. As long as people hate him, then people feel justified in doing exactly the opposite of what he demands.
... I could accuse Disney of promoting the idea that not wearing pants is okay. There is Disney propoganda that dates back as far as World War 2 of Donald Duck clearly not wearing pants. Thanks to Disney, people are learning left and right that not wearing pants is ok.
Geez guys, lighten up. If Flash pages suck, that's the users making it suck, not the program itself. Gimmick? It's far more useful than HTML because it has more programmability to it. With Flash, you can actually create a well thought out interface. An HTML interface relies on tons of service side and client side programming, plus having to re-load to go to the next page. With Flash, you can programatically ask all the questions without having to talk to the server at every step. At H&R Block's site, for example, you have to answer a bunch of questions in order to get a tax refund estimate. That involved a lot of talking to the server.. click.. wait.. downloading, ok done. Or they could have sent down a little Flash app that had the interface programmed into it. The only talking to the server would be in sending the tax information up to get a response from the server.
The page can scale to fit the screen, smoothly. That's another thing I like about Flash is that I no longer need to develop for multi-resolution displays. If you haven't developed a website for a corporation, or somebody who's just really picky, then you have no idea what a headache it is to try to please everybody with HTML in the state that it's in. HTML gives you tables you can scale, so there are a few tricks you can do there. You can even scale images in HTML, but the browsers don't do any kind of filtering, so it looks like a crummy Playstation texture. Flash beats HTML there. It'll anti-alias re-scaled iamges. Plus it has vector drawing capabilities which can be quite useful in nice, simple design without being hard on bandwidth.
Adding little animation and stuff to a page is nice, but I agree that it's obnoxious on some sites. I remember in the early days of the web, people had some really strange taste in colors and dizzying backgrounds. I think eventually people settled into what's tasteful, and that will happen with Flash too. Animation can be a useful interface tool. Remember that when you you are designing a site, you're expressing message to your customer. I'll give you an example, there's a forum I go to where people have artwork that they want put into a permanent gallery. He used Flash to do a bar-chart of the number of votes. To do that with HTML, you'd have to have a program on the server creating the charts for you.
Flash is yet another tool in your toolset, not a cockroach. Yes, people abuse it. I think once the gimmick features of it wear away, the more interesting uses of Flash will surface. It's a broad tool that is cross-platform. If HTML had even some of the capabilites that Flash has, I probably would have stayed as a web developer.
As for you people shouting "Flash sucks! It's just a gimmick!", then I suggest you actually go download the trial version at Macromedia's site and learn what all you can do with it. That way you can develop an intelligent opinion of it, instead of sounding like an idiot.
Slashdot is an interesting news service, definitely one of the more interesting ones out there. I'm willing to pay $5 for 1,000 views, banners or no banners. I think the news I get out of it is worth paying that.
It's comforting knowing that they have a revenue stream to keep them alive.
I would suggest that some of you adjust your attitude a bit. If/. closes it's doors one day, you may wonder if $5 was too much to spend on it.
I bet I could!! The first thing I'd haveta do is label myself a guru, afterall gurus are smarter than non-gurus. Legally changing my last name to guru might have the same effect.
Then I make an obvious generalization like "PC's are getting cheaper." Other ones that work are "People don't want to pay for stuff.", "Linux will eventually be something people at home will care about.", and "PCs are getting faster." This makes me look like I'm experienced in the market and that I've seen trends before. This makes me look like I'm providing credible indsight into my topic. As long as I point out that things change, then any case I make is possible.
Then I employ a scientific process called "Although my observation proves that things change over time, the entity I'm trying to debunk will do the exact same thing forever and ever.", where my observation will eventually kill my target. Using the "PC's are getting cheaper" observation, I'd then say "But the price of Windows right now is $350, so I'm going to assume it will stay that way forever." Now I have some solid evidence to back my claim. Most people don't break things down into individual costs with every little thing they're interested in, so when I pass off logic like 'the OS will make up most of the price', people will assume that the OS is the bottleneck to preventing their PC from being free. It'll never occur to them that the reason they buy computers is to run software, so it also won't occur to them that the company getting money is the company providing service. They have dollar signs in their eyes, so I don't need to write much more here.
Here I look for some obvious details that don't readily bob up into people's minds, and I pass that off like my target has never thought of that. "Microsoft needs to realize that computers will eventually be cheaper than the OS!" I've found that most people will say 'really?' and will process that bit of information. Since they are busy people, they aren't likely to put too much thought into it. They'll file that bit of logic away, think I have a point, and then I maintain my guru status.
From that, I can draw my conclusion. "One day, computers will cost only a dollar, and the rest of the cost of the machine will be for Windows. Microsoft is doomed." And then I find a buzzword that makes it really sound like there's something new on the horizon who's hype will obliterate it. "Open Source software will make Windows obselete!", but I don't need to explain why. The hype makes everybody understand it. There's no point wasting my time bringing an interesting perspective here. Thank god for hype, it means I can write less and still get paid.
As you can see, the formula for writing for ZD-Net is very simple, and requires very little effort! Just remember to change your name to guru, that's the hardest part.
Slashdot Mirror
Hyrogen and helium... they're not very different at all because the only difference is a few particles. I didn't see it that way. Well I'm off to go build a helium bomb.
Many species are very similar. How different is a dog from a coyote? How about an alligator from a crocodile? They are different species, but they're similar enough that the unique information provided by each one is very low.
Elements are far more unique to each other than species, so the scale isn't as linear as '1/50th of the periodic table.'
In any case, the idea was sound, the details are unimporant and not worth splitting hairs about.
Well, it's true, isn't it? Content companies in general (game companies, movie companies, television networks, music, etc..) can't price their products and then expect people to pay that forever. Each of these companies have a serious problem looming over them, and that is too much content.
Let's look at the game industry, for example. There are at least 6 systems furiously competing today. (DC, PS2, XBOX, GC, GBA, PC) Each of these systems are releasing games like crazy. The problem is, my paycheck in the last few years hasn't risen high enough to buy that many more games, not to mention that the number of hours in the day hasn't increased enough for me to play them. If the number of games released is greater than the amount of disposable money people have to spend, how can they expect everybody to pay the same price for games?
Lowering the price of games for college students, for example, was a great approach! It'd be cool if one day your student ID could get you a discount on games.
I hope the RIAA pays attention to this study. The harder it is to copy music, for example, the more demand there is for somebody to do it. Where there's demand, there's fame. Where there's fame, there's somebody saying "Yes, I'm willing to invest hours into acquiring fame." But if the RIAA were to open up and say "We've lowered the price of CD's, and you're free to copy them and do what you want with them!", they will likely find that going to the store to buy CD's is preferable to waiting to download them.
One idea the RIAA should consider is releasing individual songs on those 2" CD's. Price them low, and then allow people to make their own mixes. Reward the customer for buying these little CD's by letting them create their own single CD that has the songs they want on it. Don't punish the customer for having other desires with music. That's what the economics game is all about. You'll make profit if you give the customer incentive to buy your product. But if you take features away, you're punishing them, and customers don't like that.
I know I don't like being told I'm a thief because I have an MP3 player.
Is it possible that the reason they couldn't get XP certification because they're not following the standard properly?
The only reason I ask is that it seems like we'd see more reports of other motherboards having trouble.
Thank you. :)
It makes you wonder though, given how popular violent TV got in the last 20 years, how come there doesn't seem to be a similar rise in gun-activity?
Yet, over in the Middle East, there's all kinds of gun play over there. Isn't it true that they don't have those type of programs? (I think I read that they don't have the same type of TV we do, but since I've never been there I won't say that matter of factly.) You'd think America would look like what we're seeing on TV in recent weeks if TV and VG's did cause violence.
There was an episode of Picket Fences that I saw a few years ago that had a court case involving television's role in violence with children. The basic plot of the story was a kid fired a potato gun at a teenager's car because the teenager was picking on the potato-gunman's little brother. The potato broke the car's windshield and caused the teen to swerve, rolling the car. The teen suffered a back injury and temporary paralysis. The little brother of the injured teen brought a gun to school the next day and shot the kid who fired the potato gun in revenge.
The city that this show takes place in is a small town and many of the people there suffer from knee-jerk over-reactiveness to events like these. They immediately blamed television for the shooting and pulled it off the air. The defense of the child that fired the gun (not the potato gun) was that television taught him that shooting guns is ok, therefore it's TV's fault.
The way the episode ended (if memory serves...) is that the prosecuting lawyer asked the kid a very interesting question. "When you watch TV, do you see people get shot?" "Yes." "Do they die?" "... Yes." "So television taught you that when you shoot somebody with a gun, they die."
I thought that was an interesting response to this whole TV/Video Games/Music causes violence debate. Movies like Robocop taught me that guns are not something you really want to play with at all. Some would say Robocop glorified violence, but it sure didn't for me. The idea of getting my arm blown off and surviving to feel it didn't settle too well with me at all.
It bothers me that this aspect of television is never explored. Personally, I think TV teaches that guns are dangerous, and that you're really playing games with your life expectancy vs. solving problems with them.
Oh... actually I was directing that at a bunch of people. I didn't make that very clear though, I'm sorry. I mixed my response to yours with a response to a bunch of people running up to try to milk funny points from what I said hehe.
It did bring up an interesting point though about context. What you said made me understand my values about freedom of expression. It really felt, to me, that it was unfair of Finland to ban Donald Duck for that reason. It also offended me that Eisner (Disney) said that Apple was promoting thievery. What if I were sued for making a Disney parody because it 'promotes not giving Disney money?'. I realize that Eisner's comments aren't part of a lawsuit, but imagine if it was? Parodies are protected today, but what if the victim of a parody can prove they lost money from it?
What you said about Finland made me think. Thank you!
"Hey man, Donald duck was banned in Finland because of this! At least one government agrees! (I'm not sure if he still is banned.) "
Are you serious?
Oh man..
OK ok, the point of my comment seems to have been misdirected. I was playfully pointing out that Eisner's comment that Apple promotes piracy uses the same broken logic as the idea that Donald Duck promotes not wearing pants. Personally, I think it's ok for Donald Duck to not wear pants, and I really don't believe he's 'promoting it.'.
For Finland to ban Donald Duck for that kind of bugs me a bit. But It's not something I'd really like to defend, either . I see Donald Duck as a harmless cartoon, Finland probably has larger issues than that at stake.
Interesting, though. I suddenly go from hating Disney to supporting them when it has to do with creative freedom. I don't support their comments on Apple, though. That was evil.
It's a circular world we live in...
IE 4.0 is a standard, Netscape 4.0 is a standard. Linux browsers aren't.
Windows is the standard because everybody uses it. Almost every website out there is designed to work with Windows. It's a standard. The market makes Windows a standard. If you can work on Windows, then you are available to most of the people out there. Unless the website developed has an audience of Linux users, it's not generally designed for Linux because it's not one of the standard web browsing platforms.
As for Flash, is it a standard? It's getting there. Nearly everybody (in the Windows world, since we're splitting hairs here...) has Flash capability. So it's a standard too.
You can play with the definition of 'standard' if you want, but when it comes to practicality, both Windows and Flash are standards. Linux browsers are not. If Linux browsers can't properly display code written for Windows(Ie/Netscape), then they're breaking that standard.
I think what you're saying is that a standard is a definition made available for the public to follow. And you're right! And IE and Netscape BOTH fail to meet that particular standard. So what happens? A new standard is created. It's the 'IE standard', the market decided that. I could sit here and code to WC3's standards all day, but the truth is the standard is who I'm supporting, not what some document says somewhere.
As for being "one of the dumbest things you've ever heard", I hope my explanation clears it a bit. If you still think what I'm saying is dumb, give it another read. I did web development for three years. I *had* to code to support IE and Netscape. It has never once come to my attention that I should be supporting Linux browsers. That's because the sites I worked on were only interested in Windows users. And that's ok! You cater to your audience unless you have enough to feed the whole world. So the point of view we had was "If you can't view our site because you're not using the popular browser out there, then you're not following the standard the rest of your audience has set." If we didn't say that, my job would be to get every single OS and browser out there to make the code comform to it. Less than 1% of our visitors were non-Windows (not just Linux, but Mac etc). It would not have made economic sense to do that.
Pity, though. If IE and Netscape would follow the WC standard to the letter on ALL versions of their browsers, then this wouldn't be an issue. But the market has spoken (i.e. said it's ok to be lke that), and I am powerless to do anything about it.
By the way, it's rude to call people stupid, particularly if they have a point. If I wasn't in a better mood I would have slung mud right back at you. So instead, I sat down and wrote a thoughtful response. So please, if you responsd, respond to my point instead of calling me names. I'm trying real hard here to explain my point of view, even if it is offensive.
Which is fine and dandy, but I was asking about my post and why it was interpreted as flame bait. Technically that is on topic. But I just don't have any more energy to worry about it.
Ok, we'll play this game again. I want to know why my original post was modded down as flame bait. Obviously I said something that somebody interpreted as flame bait, but nobody explained why it was.
/. here but it's frustrating when somebody goes around modding people down when it's not so obvious why.
HTF is that off topic? How is asking about why I was modded down off topic?
GIVE ME AN EXPLANATION instead of modding me down for asking. If you want to mod me down, that's fine, but if I ask why the least somebody could do is say "here's why...".
Damn dudes, I'm trying to contribute to
Isn't it? What are the odds of more people seeing this guy's point of view?
This isn't a case of people suddenly saying "wow! we can get this free!", if it were I doubt people would pay $300 for an MP3 player. I think, instead, people's needs have changed. They no longer want to carry tons of CD's around, instead they'd rather have one little device with their whole collection on it. That's why they're willing to spend hundreds of dollrs for units such as the iPod.
What happens when you treat these guys like thieves, though? They respond like this "I spent $400 to listen to music, and that makes me a thief?"
I appreciate MSNBC's article here, I just hope more people understand what's really at stake here. People have new criteria for listening to their music, and the RIAA has done nothing to fill that demand. The customer pays the money, they make the rules. Not the other way around.
Heh my question about flamebait got modded down as being off topic.
I think that's a little bizarre, I just wanted to know why my post was modded down. That was an on-topic question, seeing as how I'm trying to understand how my post was being interpreted by people.
Heh I got a flamebait moderation on this. Anybody know why? The basic point of my post was to illustrate that flawed logic can make anybody sound evil. Did I slip up here?
*wishes people who mod down could provide a reason for it*
"Pants are optional, but recommended for you.."
Well, I kind of have to. I keep stepping on it.
"Flash sucks because the users make it suck? So it is my fucking fault some jackass who bought a Flash for Dummies book is wasting my bandwidth because he felt the need for artistic expression requiring text to jump all over the fucking screen?"
I said the users who made it, not the users who viewed it.
Donald Duck was not wearing shorts. Although I suppose he could have been wearing down boxers...
In any case, you know what I was talking about.
Umm, if you're not using Windows or Mac, you're not really sticking to standards are you?
Thanks for sucking the fun out of my joke. Everybody knows how being literal makes everything funny.
"What did the dog say when his neighbor stepped on his tail?"
"Err, how did a dog learn how to talk?"
Its when you distribute music to people freely that it becomes piracy. Apple makes no hint of transmitting your music to others, instead it provides features that make music more worthwhile to buy. In other words, they're promoting purchase of CD's.
Eisner should not be an advocate of the RIAA, he doesn't even know his terminology. As long as they want to use heavy handed approaches to 'stopping piracy', then they're just going to encourage it. Why? Because Eisner, for example, is turning into an enemy of freedom. As long as people hate him, then people feel justified in doing exactly the opposite of what he demands.
... I could accuse Disney of promoting the idea that not wearing pants is okay. There is Disney propoganda that dates back as far as World War 2 of Donald Duck clearly not wearing pants. Thanks to Disney, people are learning left and right that not wearing pants is ok.
Geez guys, lighten up. If Flash pages suck, that's the users making it suck, not the program itself. Gimmick? It's far more useful than HTML because it has more programmability to it. With Flash, you can actually create a well thought out interface. An HTML interface relies on tons of service side and client side programming, plus having to re-load to go to the next page. With Flash, you can programatically ask all the questions without having to talk to the server at every step. At H&R Block's site, for example, you have to answer a bunch of questions in order to get a tax refund estimate. That involved a lot of talking to the server.. click.. wait.. downloading, ok done. Or they could have sent down a little Flash app that had the interface programmed into it. The only talking to the server would be in sending the tax information up to get a response from the server.
The page can scale to fit the screen, smoothly. That's another thing I like about Flash is that I no longer need to develop for multi-resolution displays. If you haven't developed a website for a corporation, or somebody who's just really picky, then you have no idea what a headache it is to try to please everybody with HTML in the state that it's in. HTML gives you tables you can scale, so there are a few tricks you can do there. You can even scale images in HTML, but the browsers don't do any kind of filtering, so it looks like a crummy Playstation texture. Flash beats HTML there. It'll anti-alias re-scaled iamges. Plus it has vector drawing capabilities which can be quite useful in nice, simple design without being hard on bandwidth.
Adding little animation and stuff to a page is nice, but I agree that it's obnoxious on some sites. I remember in the early days of the web, people had some really strange taste in colors and dizzying backgrounds. I think eventually people settled into what's tasteful, and that will happen with Flash too. Animation can be a useful interface tool. Remember that when you you are designing a site, you're expressing message to your customer. I'll give you an example, there's a forum I go to where people have artwork that they want put into a permanent gallery. He used Flash to do a bar-chart of the number of votes. To do that with HTML, you'd have to have a program on the server creating the charts for you.
Flash is yet another tool in your toolset, not a cockroach. Yes, people abuse it. I think once the gimmick features of it wear away, the more interesting uses of Flash will surface. It's a broad tool that is cross-platform. If HTML had even some of the capabilites that Flash has, I probably would have stayed as a web developer.
As for you people shouting "Flash sucks! It's just a gimmick!", then I suggest you actually go download the trial version at Macromedia's site and learn what all you can do with it. That way you can develop an intelligent opinion of it, instead of sounding like an idiot.
Slashdot is an interesting news service, definitely one of the more interesting ones out there. I'm willing to pay $5 for 1,000 views, banners or no banners. I think the news I get out of it is worth paying that.
/. closes it's doors one day, you may wonder if $5 was too much to spend on it.
It's comforting knowing that they have a revenue stream to keep them alive.
I would suggest that some of you adjust your attitude a bit. If
Errr so you want to pay for higher ratings?
;o)
/. $5 for 1,000 pages just to provide the news, but the banners don't bother me.
Why don't you just generate an HTML page with your story submission added to it, and then stare at that. That would be free.
Seriously tho, the value of Slashdot is that it provides news, not that it provides moderator points.
I'm willing to pay
I bet I could!! The first thing I'd haveta do is label myself a guru, afterall gurus are smarter than non-gurus. Legally changing my last name to guru might have the same effect.
Then I make an obvious generalization like "PC's are getting cheaper." Other ones that work are "People don't want to pay for stuff.", "Linux will eventually be something people at home will care about.", and "PCs are getting faster." This makes me look like I'm experienced in the market and that I've seen trends before. This makes me look like I'm providing credible indsight into my topic. As long as I point out that things change, then any case I make is possible.
Then I employ a scientific process called "Although my observation proves that things change over time, the entity I'm trying to debunk will do the exact same thing forever and ever.", where my observation will eventually kill my target. Using the "PC's are getting cheaper" observation, I'd then say "But the price of Windows right now is $350, so I'm going to assume it will stay that way forever." Now I have some solid evidence to back my claim. Most people don't break things down into individual costs with every little thing they're interested in, so when I pass off logic like 'the OS will make up most of the price', people will assume that the OS is the bottleneck to preventing their PC from being free. It'll never occur to them that the reason they buy computers is to run software, so it also won't occur to them that the company getting money is the company providing service. They have dollar signs in their eyes, so I don't need to write much more here.
Here I look for some obvious details that don't readily bob up into people's minds, and I pass that off like my target has never thought of that. "Microsoft needs to realize that computers will eventually be cheaper than the OS!" I've found that most people will say 'really?' and will process that bit of information. Since they are busy people, they aren't likely to put too much thought into it. They'll file that bit of logic away, think I have a point, and then I maintain my guru status.
From that, I can draw my conclusion. "One day, computers will cost only a dollar, and the rest of the cost of the machine will be for Windows. Microsoft is doomed." And then I find a buzzword that makes it really sound like there's something new on the horizon who's hype will obliterate it. "Open Source software will make Windows obselete!", but I don't need to explain why. The hype makes everybody understand it. There's no point wasting my time bringing an interesting perspective here. Thank god for hype, it means I can write less and still get paid.
As you can see, the formula for writing for ZD-Net is very simple, and requires very little effort! Just remember to change your name to guru, that's the hardest part.