We (PC Users) have been making fun of the Mac users for years using catch phrases like "Don't compute with the fruit." and "What, does that second button on the mouse confuse you?"
What if I post negative comments about a company which are forbidden by UCITA? On a Canadian website, on an American site? On a Kuwaiti site?
As an aside, what kind of business rejects negative feedback? I know this is about a REVIEW, and not a comment forum, but seriously, comment boxes are more for negative feedback than positive.
If I fill out a comment card at McDonalds, they want to know that I was pissed off because the pimply faced 15 yr. old behind the counter screwed up my order 3 times a whole lot more than that I thought they had precisely the right ammount of salt on my fries.
Businesses are based on both kinds of feedback. If a lot of people don't like a product, they're just going to stop buying it. And if they're not allowed to express their reason for disliking the product, the company will never know WHY their product isn't selling.
On top of this, if negative product reviews are being forbidden, why have product reviews at all? Sure it's great to hear about all the new features, and what's GREAT about a product, but pretty much everything has SOMETHING wrong with it. I think it's better to let the reviewers show what that something is, rather than let the user speculate on these problems, and possibly amplify what the problems actually are.
Then again, this might make a great shield for companies who create a substandard product.
I'm following this thread, because I was talking about Canadian Dew being weak, then the Moxie thread.
Anyway, I must commend you on your choice of automobiles. "Some day..." (-: My uncle restores Mopars (including a SWEET '68(?) Road Runner, and a '69(?) Dart), and my father has a partially-assembled '72 Challenger in his garage. Somehow I doubt he'll let me drive it if/when it gets put together.
Yeah, kinda like Dr. Pepper.. but also kinda like cough medecine. (-:
Pretty much everyone I know hates it.
I once bought 8 bottles from a convenience store, leaving New Hampshire, on my way back home (to New Brunswick). When I got the Moxie up to the counter, the clerk said "You actually LIKE this stuff?"
We have Mountain Dew here, but it's weak. It doesn't contain caffeine. None.
When I cross over into the 'states, I pick up some real 'Dew, Jolt, and of course, my favourite, Moxie. (Even though it's not hyper-caffeinated, it's still really good stuff.)
Which reminds me, I should take another trip down there. I just ran out of Penguin Mints.
I learned BASIC on my Tandy CoCoIII when I was 10.
Way back then we had to use things like gosub and line numbers. I think QBASIC comes, slightly hidden, on the Windows CD, or you could teach them pico, and use basic on *nix.
A very high level language like basic, or pascal is definately the way to go when teaching beginners, especially young ones. Even if you can't re-use code when you mature, you keep strong programming concepts such as loops, arrays, functions, subroutines, etc. Which make other languages much easier to get into.
hint: don't teach them about pointers and objects, ok? (-:
Our guests often find it odd that we have a mat in the middle of the hallway, between my room and one of my roommates'. That is, until they see the cables running from both sides, under our doors (-:
The Dutch marketing firm Senta has secured the first EU-wide trademark for a fragrance and registered the "smell of fresh cut grass".
And, as the Slashdot headline confirms, it's a trademark, not a patent.
Now, unless they've actually trademarked "The smell of fresh cut grass" as a slogan, then the journalist who wrote this piece needs a clue. Trademarks are for brands and slogans. "Coca-Cola," along with their logo, using the Coke font, is a trademark. The recipe for Coca-Cola, however, is not patented.
Objects and cannot be patented. Methods for implementing ideas can be. The recipe for Coke, COULD be patented, but never trademarked.
I don't see how a scent could ever be patented (let alone trademarked). Perhaps the method for reproducing this scent could be. Perhaps the recipe for the exact mix ingredients for this scent could be. But a scent can't be patented. Same as a colour can't be patented. The good folks at Pantone can register trademarks that correspond with certain colours. The can also patent their methods for creating those colours, but to try and patent a colour would be futile.
How can it be that a search engine with a huge database can return really precise results from a vague query?
If I construct a query poorly, how will it know what I'm looking for? If I type in "geek festival", how would it know that I'm looking for the GeekPride Festival homepage, and not the guy who swallows mice at the circus?
Doesn't it really come down to asking the right questions?
This is a _program_ which allows a user to Voluntarily translate a page.
Good point. Is this really any different than babelfish?
So long as the good folks at Pantone (the ink people, industry standard color matching) don't start litigation against Oakley (the sunglass people) for showing their swatches in a different tint... (yeah, it's a stretch)
I know that this isn't a SOLUTION to the problem, but wouldn't a simple workaround be to load the.cpp files into a regular text editor, and re-save them?.cpp files are just ASCII anyway, right?
For that matter, if BC++Builder doesn't include any junk in the file, it would be pretty hard to prove that the code was created with the software in question. Might not be legal, but Borland would have a really hard time proving that their software was used instead of.. say, 'notepad.exe'
A little aside: I doubt Borland did this on purpose. There would be no benefit to them to do so. Sounds like a little liscensing mishap that someone happened to pick up.
You're missing the point. In the past, Microsoft has imposed certain regulations on their retailers, showing, to me at least, that MS has a lot of power over their resellers.
Compaq, as a corporate entity, is a MS reseller. It doesn't matter, what product line we're refering to, we're talking about corporate politics here.
The _original_ poster was being speculative. And as I said in my post, I doubt that this is the case this time, because of Compaq's recent support of Linux.
What the hell does Windows 98 have to do with an 8-32 processor server? Did your knee-jerk Microsoft hatred get the best of you on this one?
What the original poster was refering to is Compaq's consumer-level machines like the Presario.
These machines come with Windows98. The example was that Compaq can get Win98 for $20. If they piss Microsoft off, then maybe Compaq's cost on Win98 will rise. Even if it rose to $21, and Compaq pushed 1 million units, they would lose $1Million in profits.
Corporate interests need to be careful about every political move they make.
Having said that, Compaq already seems to be supporting Linux, so they might not be so concerned about Microsoft's agenda.
The WWW is a text-oriented medium. It's a page of text that has links to other pages of text.
What you've just described is gopher with links. I've said this on slashdot before, and I'll say it again: The web is NOT Gopher. The web is a multi-media platform. Including graphics, animation, video, sound, and any other funky stuff people want to throw up on it. The whole "The web should be text. Graphic elements are clutter." mentality makes me sick. I agree 100% that a site should NOT be DEPENDANT on graphics or other 'specialty media' to get content accross. That's what good consideration for the text-based users and ALT tags are for. But a web without graphics is merely gopher tunneled over http.
Why do you want it to look the same on all browsers (it won't by the way...)?
It's pretty simple: clients don't understand the web. They want all that pretty crap. They REQUIRE it to look the same wherever they see it. They expect things as low level as kerning and leading to be the same, universally.
Like I said in my first post, we (as in everyone) need to recognize that the web is a new medium. Traditional media conventions don't apply.
I'm a web developer. I've always loved the potential of the web until recently. Now I don't like working with it. I can't stand developing for 3 different browsers on 4 different platforms, 12 screen resolutions, 3 color depths, and design templates that came from a print artist who thinks that the web is one big brochure.
The web is broke. We're not using it properly, there are too many poorly done corporate sites, contributing to insecurity, poor usability and incompatibility.
Many clients we work with are dead set against sending anyone away from their site. I don't think they realize that links are what the web is made of. This contributes to the unreachable part of the bowtie. These corporate folk are afraid that by linking away from the site, they will lose a viewer, and that use won't find their way back. They don't realize that the web is a pull technology, and the if the user was looking for certain information, the user will come back if it is the best source of such info. The back button is one of the browsers most used features.
We need more of these research projects to help us figure out what needs to be changed. The W3C is a start, but it's expensive to join and it's rare that you find a website that conforms to the standards. In fact, I've run into web developers who have never HEARD of the w3c.
The web is a new, completely different medium. It's not a CDROM, it's not a brochure, it's not TV. We can't keep treating it like these other media.
This is only vaguely related to design, but directly related to the web, and functionality.
We all know that banners don't work anymore. The only way a business can profit from banners is to show thousands per day. Most users don't even SEE banners anymore. We avoid them the same way we dig in the couch for the remote when commercials interrupt The Simpsons.
Do you have any suggestions to make future, content-based sites profitable?
I work as a web programmer. The company where I work was recently acquired by a high-profile (for my location) communications firm. The new company has great print skills, but almost everyone here is old-school.
About once a day, I find myself telling one of the suits that "The web is not print."
My question: Do you have any suggestions for getting the traditional artists of the world to recognize the web as a new medium, and not just print-on-a-monitor?
Nobody wants to feel stupid (which is what you ought to do if you did not larn the lesson after Melissa)
Not only that, but everyone wants to feel safe. Like justice has been done. This is a prime example of the main theme of Arlington Road (if you haven't seen it, do.)
The film deals with the idea of a scapegoat being convicted for a crime that involved the arrested, but the conspirators were never found or caught.
Same thing here. People love to feel all good and like 'justice has been done'. People feel safe now that this person has been arrested. What's to say if they really did it? or more likely if they were the only person involved. Personally, I'm not going to bet 100% that this is the actual person who created it or distributed it. Even if they produce some kind of proof, what's to say that it's not just that, produced?
Remember the DDoS attacks of February? They arrested some kid in Montreal. Now everyone feels all safe because the 'bad guy' is in jail. Same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I work in a design firm.
We (PC Users) have been making fun of the Mac users for years using catch phrases like "Don't compute with the fruit." and "What, does that second button on the mouse confuse you?"
Looks like we'll have to adapt that second one...
I'm Canadian.
Do I have to worry about this?
What if I post negative comments about a company which are forbidden by UCITA? On a Canadian website, on an American site? On a Kuwaiti site?
As an aside, what kind of business rejects negative feedback? I know this is about a REVIEW, and not a comment forum, but seriously, comment boxes are more for negative feedback than positive.
If I fill out a comment card at McDonalds, they want to know that I was pissed off because the pimply faced 15 yr. old behind the counter screwed up my order 3 times a whole lot more than that I thought they had precisely the right ammount of salt on my fries.
Businesses are based on both kinds of feedback. If a lot of people don't like a product, they're just going to stop buying it. And if they're not allowed to express their reason for disliking the product, the company will never know WHY their product isn't selling.
On top of this, if negative product reviews are being forbidden, why have product reviews at all? Sure it's great to hear about all the new features, and what's GREAT about a product, but pretty much everything has SOMETHING wrong with it. I think it's better to let the reviewers show what that something is, rather than let the user speculate on these problems, and possibly amplify what the problems actually are.
Then again, this might make a great shield for companies who create a substandard product.
I'm following this thread, because I was talking about Canadian Dew being weak, then the Moxie thread.
Anyway, I must commend you on your choice of automobiles. "Some day..." (-: My uncle restores Mopars (including a SWEET '68(?) Road Runner, and a '69(?) Dart), and my father has a partially-assembled '72 Challenger in his garage. Somehow I doubt he'll let me drive it if/when it gets put together.
Have you seen the new Charger R/T? I'm drooling.
Yeah, kinda like Dr. Pepper.. but also kinda like cough medecine. (-:
Pretty much everyone I know hates it.
I once bought 8 bottles from a convenience store, leaving New Hampshire, on my way back home (to New Brunswick). When I got the Moxie up to the counter, the clerk said "You actually LIKE this stuff?"
Needless to say, she wasn't on comission.
I live in Canada.
We have Mountain Dew here, but it's weak. It doesn't contain caffeine. None.
When I cross over into the 'states, I pick up some real 'Dew, Jolt, and of course, my favourite, Moxie. (Even though it's not hyper-caffeinated, it's still really good stuff.)
Which reminds me, I should take another trip down there. I just ran out of Penguin Mints.
Why not ducktape the lines down then cover them with a mat. I use a cord protector I salvaged from work.
Hardwood floors and duct tape don't exactly get along well.
When you pull the tape up, it leaves waffled goo all over the contact area, and, well, our landlord doesn't like that too much...
(-:
I learned BASIC on my Tandy CoCoIII when I was 10.
Way back then we had to use things like gosub and line numbers. I think QBASIC comes, slightly hidden, on the Windows CD, or you could teach them pico, and use basic on *nix.
A very high level language like basic, or pascal is definately the way to go when teaching beginners, especially young ones. Even if you can't re-use code when you mature, you keep strong programming concepts such as loops, arrays, functions, subroutines, etc. Which make other languages much easier to get into.
hint: don't teach them about pointers and objects, ok? (-:
I have 4 roommates.
Our guests often find it odd that we have a mat in the middle of the hallway, between my room and one of my roommates'. That is, until they see the cables running from both sides, under our doors (-:
And, as the Slashdot headline confirms, it's a trademark, not a patent.
Now, unless they've actually trademarked "The smell of fresh cut grass" as a slogan, then the journalist who wrote this piece needs a clue. Trademarks are for brands and slogans. "Coca-Cola," along with their logo, using the Coke font, is a trademark. The recipe for Coca-Cola, however, is not patented.
Objects and cannot be patented. Methods for implementing ideas can be. The recipe for Coke, COULD be patented, but never trademarked.
I don't see how a scent could ever be patented (let alone trademarked). Perhaps the method for reproducing this scent could be. Perhaps the recipe for the exact mix ingredients for this scent could be. But a scent can't be patented. Same as a colour can't be patented. The good folks at Pantone can register trademarks that correspond with certain colours. The can also patent their methods for creating those colours, but to try and patent a colour would be futile.
No, I think this is more like if /. started mirroring content on their own servers, then it would be the same thing.
/. currently does so, increases their(the news services') page views, not vice versa.
Linking to articles on C|Net or Wired, the way
I just don't get it.
How can it be that a search engine with a huge database can return really precise results from a vague query?
If I construct a query poorly, how will it know what I'm looking for? If I type in "geek festival", how would it know that I'm looking for the GeekPride Festival homepage, and not the guy who swallows mice at the circus?
Doesn't it really come down to asking the right questions?
I reckon this would make an ideal offshore site for a server farm. Who's going to hassle you on top of a volcano miles from the nearest land.
Lava? Volcanic ash and gasses? The occasional shifting of the 'plates of a newly formed land mass?
I doubt it's exactly habitable.
But hey, IANAG(eologist).
Is the author the guy who was sitting right inside the Castle doors at Geekpride?
If it's the same guy, he handed me the book, almost in a used car salesman kind of way, and pretty much watched me as I read the back.
Kind of strange, I felt bad handing the book back to him.
This is a _program_ which allows a user to Voluntarily translate a page.
Good point. Is this really any different than babelfish?
So long as the good folks at Pantone (the ink people, industry standard color matching) don't start litigation against Oakley (the sunglass people) for showing their swatches in a different tint...
(yeah, it's a stretch)
I know that this isn't a SOLUTION to the problem, but wouldn't a simple workaround be to load the .cpp files into a regular text editor, and re-save them? .cpp files are just ASCII anyway, right?
For that matter, if BC++Builder doesn't include any junk in the file, it would be pretty hard to prove that the code was created with the software in question. Might not be legal, but Borland would have a really hard time proving that their software was used instead of.. say, 'notepad.exe'
A little aside: I doubt Borland did this on purpose. There would be no benefit to them to do so. Sounds like a little liscensing mishap that someone happened to pick up.
In the PHP FAQ, there's a section on PHP vs. Coldfusion. Also, there's a link to an article by a CF and PHP developer, making the comparison.
I found it REALLY useful.
Better?
A little (-:
You're missing the point. In the past, Microsoft has imposed certain regulations on their retailers, showing, to me at least, that MS has a lot of power over their resellers.
Compaq, as a corporate entity, is a MS reseller. It doesn't matter, what product line we're refering to, we're talking about corporate politics here.
The _original_ poster was being speculative. And as I said in my post, I doubt that this is the case this time, because of Compaq's recent support of Linux.
Just trying to clarify things.
What the hell does Windows 98 have to do with an 8-32 processor server? Did your knee-jerk Microsoft hatred get the best of you on this one?
What the original poster was refering to is Compaq's consumer-level machines like the Presario.
These machines come with Windows98. The example was that Compaq can get Win98 for $20. If they piss Microsoft off, then maybe Compaq's cost on Win98 will rise. Even if it rose to $21, and Compaq pushed 1 million units, they would lose $1Million in profits.
Corporate interests need to be careful about every political move they make.
Having said that, Compaq already seems to be supporting Linux, so they might not be so concerned about Microsoft's agenda.
This is not a troll, just pointing something out.
Does anyone else find it ironic that almost ALL of the file extensions on the list pertain to Microsoft applications?
The WWW is a text-oriented medium. It's a page of text that has links to other pages of text.
What you've just described is gopher with links.
I've said this on slashdot before, and I'll say it again: The web is NOT Gopher. The web is a multi-media platform. Including graphics, animation, video, sound, and any other funky stuff people want to throw up on it. The whole "The web should be text. Graphic elements are clutter." mentality makes me sick. I agree 100% that a site should NOT be DEPENDANT on graphics or other 'specialty media' to get content accross. That's what good consideration for the text-based users and ALT tags are for. But a web without graphics is merely gopher tunneled over http.
Why do you want it to look the same on all browsers (it won't by the way...)?
It's pretty simple: clients don't understand the web. They want all that pretty crap. They REQUIRE it to look the same wherever they see it. They expect things as low level as kerning and leading to be the same, universally.
Like I said in my first post, we (as in everyone) need to recognize that the web is a new medium. Traditional media conventions don't apply.
I'm a web developer. I've always loved the potential of the web until recently. Now I don't like working with it. I can't stand developing for 3 different browsers on 4 different platforms, 12 screen resolutions, 3 color depths, and design templates that came from a print artist who thinks that the web is one big brochure.
The web is broke. We're not using it properly, there are too many poorly done corporate sites, contributing to insecurity, poor usability and incompatibility.
Many clients we work with are dead set against sending anyone away from their site. I don't think they realize that links are what the web is made of. This contributes to the unreachable part of the bowtie. These corporate folk are afraid that by linking away from the site, they will lose a viewer, and that use won't find their way back. They don't realize that the web is a pull technology, and the if the user was looking for certain information, the user will come back if it is the best source of such info. The back button is one of the browsers most used features.
We need more of these research projects to help us figure out what needs to be changed. The W3C is a start, but it's expensive to join and it's rare that you find a website that conforms to the standards. In fact, I've run into web developers who have never HEARD of the w3c.
The web is a new, completely different medium. It's not a CDROM, it's not a brochure, it's not TV. We can't keep treating it like these other media.
This is only vaguely related to design, but directly related to the web, and functionality.
We all know that banners don't work anymore. The only way a business can profit from banners is to show thousands per day. Most users don't even SEE banners anymore. We avoid them the same way we dig in the couch for the remote when commercials interrupt The Simpsons.
Do you have any suggestions to make future, content-based sites profitable?
I work as a web programmer. The company where I work was recently acquired by a high-profile (for my location) communications firm. The new company has great print skills, but almost everyone here is old-school.
About once a day, I find myself telling one of the suits that "The web is not print."
My question: Do you have any suggestions for getting the traditional artists of the world to recognize the web as a new medium, and not just print-on-a-monitor?
This way looks as lame as any IIS server reboot.
Yeah, except slashdot doesn't get.. uh.. 'moved'.. every couple days.
Nobody wants to feel stupid (which is what you ought to do if you did not larn the lesson after Melissa)
Not only that, but everyone wants to feel safe. Like justice has been done. This is a prime example of the main theme of Arlington Road (if you haven't seen it, do.)
The film deals with the idea of a scapegoat being convicted for a crime that involved the arrested, but the conspirators were never found or caught.
Same thing here. People love to feel all good and like 'justice has been done'. People feel safe now that this person has been arrested. What's to say if they really did it? or more likely if they were the only person involved. Personally, I'm not going to bet 100% that this is the actual person who created it or distributed it. Even if they produce some kind of proof, what's to say that it's not just that, produced?
Remember the DDoS attacks of February? They arrested some kid in Montreal. Now everyone feels all safe because the 'bad guy' is in jail. Same thing.
It's hard to decide what to trust nowadays.