I'm not a politician and I'm not in a huff. Instead I'm outraged at the assholes who take my life and that of others in their hands by driving around chatting on their cellphones absolutely oblivious to other drivers.
This is the first time I've cursed on slashdot. I don't like to do it and see far too much of it here and elsewhere. In this case though it's perfectly fitting.
I'm happy to say that I'm of the pre-appropriation, pre-sampling, pre-plagiarism-is-just-fine generation. But this did get me thinking. Picasso redid Velazquez, see 'Las Meninas After Velazquez.' But those paintings are radically different. You can see the similarity but there's no way in the world that anyone could accuse Picasso of plagiarizing Velazquez. You might say he cannibalized him in some sort of perhaps perverse homage. But the original was just a jumping off point.
What I don't understand about appropriation art and everything that's come after it, including this somewhat ridiculous novel and its rationale, is the lack of ambition. Are people too incapable of coming up with something original? Do you just copy a more famous artist, throw in an ironic comment or two and think you have original and probably superior art to the original. It's a mystery to me.
My reaction is the same. Philadelphia recently made it illegal and I'm constantly seeing people driving and talking. I'm not sure it's decreased at all. I'd like to see how many arrests have been made and then do some studies based on it. For example did crashes drop with 100 arrests/fines, 1000 a/f/, 10000 a/f? I have to wonder if anyone has even been arrested/fined in Philadelphia based on what I see.
Considering all the idiots I see on their phones while driving, I don't have any doubt at all that they make driving much less safe for the rest of us. I'm really tired of the so-called proficient multi-taskers saying that it is dumb people who cause accidents, whether or not they're on the phone, rather than cell phone users per se. Show me the proof.
Back when I used to use Macs regularly(about 15-20 years ago) that was the one thing that bothered me: the self-proclaimed hipness, creativity, intelligence of its users, especially the fanboys. You just couldn't say anything negative about Apple without being attacked. Everything Apple did was good. At the time I really loved Macs. It was their users I couldn't handle.
Eventually I moved to a much improved Windows and also to Linux. Even Linux users seemed more open-minded than Mac users. I tried a Mac a few years ago, thinking that I'd like it. I hoped it would combine the UI of earlier Macs with the OS power and stability of Unix. But all I found was cute.
I don't know if that's still as true as it was. Perhaps a broader range of products from Apple has gotten rid of that. But my guess is not. In fact that's probably part of what allows Apple to dictate a higher price: the creative cachet that goes with their products. Sort of like the blonde with the car: buy this car and soon you'll have beautiful blondes falling over you. Buy an Apple product and your creativity will just ooze. You'll become a true free-thinker, money-back guarantee!
You're 100% right but you're preaching to a group that just refuses to believe it. "Information just wants to be free!' I'll be happy when all newspapers charge for online content and Google has no news. Sadly all newspapers are scared to death to give it a try and actually charge for what they do. So they'll hold off until someone else does it, slowly dying in the meantime. By the time they see that someone else has been successful it will be too late.
You'd think newspapers would be bold. Instead they're about the most timid industry around.
Nobody in IT should ever say, "You're my customer and my job is to make sure you're satisfied," or ask, "What do you want me to do?"
Instead, they should say, "My job is to help you and the company succeed," followed by "Show me how you do things now," and "Let's figure out a better way of getting this done."
The article is to have IT treated as a peer not as an order-taker. Anything other than that is a waste of the talents of IT. This doesn't have anything to do with egos. It's just common sense. Do you hire a doctor to mow your lawn? No you hire him and respect his expertise as a doctor. The point of the article is that by viewing IT as a peer IT can become involved where it's most valuable, at the very beginning of any projects. I surely have seen how poorly the other method works: we do whatever the customer wants to matter how stupid, how inefficient and how harmful to the company in the long run.
Sounds like management-speak. Confusing show and substance. If the Help Desk does its job no one cares about forward face or point of contact. They know the job gets done. That's substance. Uniforms are show, and degrading show at that. But maybe if you have really stupid clients they'll confuse the show of uniforms with the substance of solving the problem. I doubt it though. Clients do know when they're getting show not substance.
This is one of the most pitiful things I've yet seen in IT.
I'd ask yourselves this question: do you think you need to 'promote visibility and unity'? It sounds like most people already know who you are. Do you need 'unity' then? Is this how you'd prefer to 'promote unity'?
My guess it that the answer is no. In that case I'd ask management to have enough guts to tell you what they really want. If they think you dress like slobs they should tell you so. I have no sympathy at all with gutless management and you shouldn't either.
Yep the answer is a threat, not another safeguard. Couldn't be simpler. Philadelphia had the good sense, finally, to make the use of a cell phone on almost any vehicle illegal just the other day.
But this is all obvious and has been obvious for years. The only reason that nothing was done has to be the lobbyists for the phone industry, and politicians who love their own cell phones, and have caved in to the lobbyists.
I know this sounds like the typical crap you read in comments: it's all a conspiracy by so and so. But in this case I just can't see it any other way. I wish this weren't true but I think it is. I can't think of anything in recent memory that has made me more cynical about government and it's easy co-option by business.
You've made good progress in explaining this.........
Re:ah yes, anti-perl tirades are refreshing
on
Coders At Work
·
· Score: 1
Not trying to be sarcastic here but let me try to get straight what you are saying:
1)Application standpoint -> Perl's bad 2)Programming language -> Perl's bad 3)Advanced scripting language -> Perl does that really, really well.
So I assume that 1 and 2 are more or less the same. Programming languages are used for applications and Perl is not a real programming language and thus bad for building applications. Not trying to put words in your mouth here but just making sure I understand you.
On the other hand Perl is great at advanced scripting.
Don't you think that the line between advanced scripting and an 'application' can sometimes be very thin? Do you see them always as very far apart?
What do you think about what seems to be the rising popularity of scripting languages? Is it possible that some users think that programming languages for applications might be beautiful but aren't always as practical as advanced scripting languages? I realize I could be wrong about the 'rising popularity' of scripting languages. It's based more on what I read than on actual experience. Still it does at least look like there is a trend towards dynamic scripting languages.
Re:ah yes, anti-perl tirades are refreshing
on
Coders At Work
·
· Score: 1
I was looking forward to reading this book based on the thread above. But you're right, Peter Deutsch's comment about perl is less refeshing than asinine. I'd love to see a thoughtful analysis of perl compared to other languages, because sometimes, even though it's the language I use most frequently, it drives me nuts. But calling it 'an abomination' doesn't quite qualify as thoughtful analysis. And it certainly doesn't consider that it must be doing something right to still be used in so much functioning code.
As essay or two on elegance and reductionism versus practicality would be nice to see in the book.
don't you think it's the Opera Company that looks dumb here? This seems like the most desperate, and obvious, attempt in the world to widen its audience. You can't go anywhere or do anything anymore without being invited to 'follow us on Twitter.' When I'm bombarded that often by the same advertising I have to think that the product being peddled is hopelessly out of date. Everyone seems to want to get on the Twitter bandwagon regardless of whether it has anything to do with them or their business.
There was a time in the arts where it might have been somewhat bold and refreshing to engage the audience in some way. But that was about 40 years ago. To suggest that tweets from the public will be used for a libretto seems, to me anyway, to be far more about getting on a bandwagon and hoping for the best, than it does about art. Sometimes I wonder if the world can get any sillier. Then I have my answer.........
I'm not quite sure how the desk calendars work but I got one a couple of years ago. Dullsville! But I've also been subscribing to the New Yorker for last three years or so. The cartoons in the magazine are much funnier. Maybe these calendars have this in small print: 'Rejects from', and in large print 'The New Yorker.'
As far as the drawing I'd be willing to bet that cover wouldn't have been published if it had not been drawn on an iphone. And I'd be willing to bet the 2nd, 3rd,...400th drawings done on iphones probably won't get published anywhere. Their interest is their novelty. This is quite different from New Yorker articles which often are substantial.
Oh you mean like the 'real' artists who have been copying Marcel Duchamps' urinal for over 100 years, tingling all over at just how radical and unconventional they are? Give me a break. This is nothing more than marketing for both Apple and the artist. I'd be embarrassed to both have made the art and to be the magazine that is displaying it. Sad to say I subscribe to the New Yorker. If their writing had as little so show for it as this art I'd drop my subscription tomorrow.
There has been a great deal of technological hype in the news over the last 10 years (and maybe 100 years if I really investigated). Newspapers, magazines, tv and other media often don't understand a topic well. But they do see a 'hook' they can use to latch onto something they don't understand. So the media see a new Kindle and think it will save newspapers. Or twitter will save just about anything. 'Everyone knows: Live Goes Better with Twitter!'. Or in this case: 'Look at this: if you wanted to you could make a drawing on your teeny little iphone'. You wouldn't have any control over line because the screen is too small to allow any subtlety of hand movement, the way you can with a pen or pencil on a sheet of paper. And it's so small you can't see any detail, so you don't know how it will look when it's printed much larger. And the color is probably off and won't look like what it will when it's printed. But you can say you did it on a phone. That's all that counts. We've got a hook! Print it.
Something similar happened recently with birding and The World Series of Birding. Most media will ignore birding for an entire year or more. Then along comes the World Series of Birding, which has a familiar, measurable, sportlike aspect to it. That's a hook. So everybody covers The World Series of Birding. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that it misses what birding is to most people. But normal birding doesn't have that hook.
You say that there is a limit to what can be parsed easily. But there is no such objective limit. Why do people continue to read such writers as James Joyce and Henry James? Obviously some readers do parse them and enjoy doing so. Of course fiction is not the same as non-fiction.
Nonetheless not all readers want or enjoy non-fiction writing that sacrifices nuance for simplicity. Sometimes, in fact most times from what I can tell, writing is so pared down, so simple, as to not have much substance to it. Obviously this is partially subjective. What is richly complex and rewarding to one reader is muddled and confusing to another. Every author needs to make a choice as to just who their audience is.
But there is no reason that an author needs to write for the lowest common denominator. That may be your suggestion but there's no reason that anyone else need agree with it. I realize that you said you were writing with the good intention of helping the author be more effective in reaching his audience and I don't want to question that.
My argument is that I think that you are wrong in being so uncompromising in your idea of what is good and clear writing. Entangled clauses can be both better for explaining a subject and more enjoyable reading for the right audience.
I've spent a lot of time over the last month reading legal documents. They are incredibly complex and I'm only reading them because they refer to the company I work for. It is difficult reading. But as I've read them I've understood that their seeming complexity is really just an attempt to put very complex thoughts into precise, language. When I was done I admired the language used even though it had been a pain to understand it. But that's the value of language: it can help explain complicated subjects.
Your writing is just fine. If you read actual legal notes, as I've been doing recently, you realize how convoluted writing really can be. It's sad that most readers can no longer read a sentence with more than one clause in it. That's the reader's problem, not yours. God forbid that writing should sink to the level of the lowest common denominator.
This is one reason I can't see the internet ever replacing newspapers or magazines. The latter are designed for slower, more thoughtful reading. The former is better for quick news bytes and shorter bits of information. They both have their place. But many problems are complex and can only be explained in a complex way. Of course the best writers still manage to make their complex explanations seem simple. But none do it without multiple clauses. That's just part of explaining something in terms more simple than black and white.
Worse than that there are too many people at newspapers wasting time, energy and hope on tech solutions. They most likely will not work because: 1, they don't address the problem of greatly declining PRINT(read costly enough to support a reporting staff) advertising; and 2, some loyal readers, myself included, hate to read the news digitally. I have to say I've never tried reading from an apparition in the sky, though.............
Obviously newspapers are in real trouble and they have to consider all solutions. My fear is that they'll put too much time, energy and hope with something this and then be in even sadder shape when they realize it wasn't the answer. I wish I knew the answer.
As a sidelight it's interesting that both Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger said the loss of newspapers would be a tragedy while at the same time saying that there is no way in the world they would invest additional money in them.
I'm replying to a number of people here who asked why I say that selling ads doesn't work. It's strictly financial. How much are advertisers willing to pay to place advertisements on web pages? Not nearly enough numerous recent studies have shown. It has little to do with what users do with the ads - block them, click them or whatever. Web sites make money by selling ads to advertisers. If advertisers won't pay enough for them then sites don't make money. In particular they make little money in comparison to what they get in payment for print advertising, even though print advertising is in a tremendous decline. In addition, and I have to say I've read various articles saying that they do/don't make enough money from online advertising to pay for the online staff.
That in fact goes back to the original article. The people who were going to fund the online paper said that 3,000 subscribers was just not anywhere near enough money to support a staff of 30. My guess is that they also found a severe lack of advertising income.
Except 'selling ads' doesn't work and it doesn't come close to the amount of money made from print ads. That, and the tremendous problems that the current recession has brought to newspapers, is why they're considering charging for access. This venture is a bit different in that it's trying to replace a failed print paper not augment one.
Opinions go back and forth on this and most of them are not unbiased. Tell certain people that you have to charge for online news and they'll call you a Luddite who lives in the past, chases already failed dreams, etc. But I think most people who know anything about the industry and its economics know that online news is not a winning economic proposition, particularly if it is funded by ads. Those who believe that it is a winning model have to assume that things will change drastically after the recession. No one really knows but I suspect that they won't and this has been a foolish business strategy.
Nor is news free. In fact there is talk now of getting most print based web sites to coordinate the change to subscription. Thus you go from 'all the news is free' to 'no news is free.' People who say the news is free are idiots. It takes a tremendous amount of work and money to cover the news in a substantive way. And this has nothing to do with ideology. It costs the same for both left and right leaning papers. So news may seem free but it isn't. There is a large cost and for it to continue someone has to pay for it. In any case print papers are finally realizing that they are losing readers, and perhaps advertisers, because there is this thought that news is free and that it doesn't make sense to pay for a print newspaper.
They thought they might counter this with online sites and make up the lost money in online advertising. That didn't happen. So in this recession, with many papers filing for bankruptcy protection they have to consider all options, including pay sites. This would make little sense if people can get the news they want free elsewhere. But if all newspapers institute the same policy things might change. Newspapers know it is a huge gamble. But so is bankruptcy.
Well maybe,just maybe, that's the very reason that they're so popular! They give users what they want, not what someone in marketing/advertising thinks users ought to want, or what will give them a few more ad dollars but drive users off. They're old cliches but it seems silly to argue with success or fix what's not broken.
I'm going to make a very broad statement here: the most successful parts of the internet give users content, not advertising. Advertising revenue is a byproduct and it's a mistake to make it the priority as many sites have done, all the while arguing of course that they haven't.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not a politician and I'm not in a huff. Instead I'm outraged at the assholes who take my life and that of others in their hands by driving around chatting on their cellphones absolutely oblivious to other drivers.
This is the first time I've cursed on slashdot. I don't like to do it and see far too much of it here and elsewhere. In this case though it's perfectly fitting.
This called: Geniuses in Marketing.
I'm happy to say that I'm of the pre-appropriation, pre-sampling, pre-plagiarism-is-just-fine generation. But this did get me thinking. Picasso redid Velazquez, see 'Las Meninas After Velazquez.' But those paintings are radically different. You can see the similarity but there's no way in the world that anyone could accuse Picasso of plagiarizing Velazquez. You might say he cannibalized him in some sort of perhaps perverse homage. But the original was just a jumping off point.
What I don't understand about appropriation art and everything that's come after it, including this somewhat ridiculous novel and its rationale, is the lack of ambition. Are people too incapable of coming up with something original? Do you just copy a more famous artist, throw in an ironic comment or two and think you have original and probably superior art to the original. It's a mystery to me.
My reaction is the same. Philadelphia recently made it illegal and I'm constantly seeing people driving and talking. I'm not sure it's decreased at all. I'd like to see how many arrests have been made and then do some studies based on it. For example did crashes drop with 100 arrests/fines, 1000 a/f/, 10000 a/f? I have to wonder if anyone has even been arrested/fined in Philadelphia based on what I see.
Considering all the idiots I see on their phones while driving, I don't have any doubt at all that they make driving much less safe for the rest of us. I'm really tired of the so-called proficient multi-taskers saying that it is dumb people who cause accidents, whether or not they're on the phone, rather than cell phone users per se. Show me the proof.
Back when I used to use Macs regularly(about 15-20 years ago) that was the one thing that bothered me: the self-proclaimed hipness, creativity, intelligence of its users, especially the fanboys. You just couldn't say anything negative about Apple without being attacked. Everything Apple did was good. At the time I really loved Macs. It was their users I couldn't handle.
Eventually I moved to a much improved Windows and also to Linux. Even Linux users seemed more open-minded than Mac users. I tried a Mac a few years ago, thinking that I'd like it. I hoped it would combine the UI of earlier Macs with the OS power and stability of Unix. But all I found was cute.
I don't know if that's still as true as it was. Perhaps a broader range of products from Apple has gotten rid of that. But my guess is not. In fact that's probably part of what allows Apple to dictate a higher price: the creative cachet that goes with their products. Sort of like the blonde with the car: buy this car and soon you'll have beautiful blondes falling over you. Buy an Apple product and your creativity will just ooze. You'll become a true free-thinker, money-back guarantee!
You're 100% right but you're preaching to a group that just refuses to believe it. "Information just wants to be free!' I'll be happy when all newspapers charge for online content and Google has no news. Sadly all newspapers are scared to death to give it a try and actually charge for what they do. So they'll hold off until someone else does it, slowly dying in the meantime. By the time they see that someone else has been successful it will be too late.
You'd think newspapers would be bold. Instead they're about the most timid industry around.
I guess you missed this part in your reading:
Nobody in IT should ever say, "You're my customer and my job is to make sure you're satisfied," or ask, "What do you want me to do?"
Instead, they should say, "My job is to help you and the company succeed," followed by "Show me how you do things now," and "Let's figure out a better way of getting this done."
The article is to have IT treated as a peer not as an order-taker. Anything other than that is a waste of the talents of IT. This doesn't have anything to do with egos. It's just common sense. Do you hire a doctor to mow your lawn? No you hire him and respect his expertise as a doctor. The point of the article is that by viewing IT as a peer IT can become involved where it's most valuable, at the very beginning of any projects. I surely have seen how poorly the other method works: we do whatever the customer wants to matter how stupid, how inefficient and how harmful to the company in the long run.
Sounds like management-speak. Confusing show and substance. If the Help Desk does its job no one cares about forward face or point of contact. They know the job gets done. That's substance. Uniforms are show, and degrading show at that. But maybe if you have really stupid clients they'll confuse the show of uniforms with the substance of solving the problem. I doubt it though. Clients do know when they're getting show not substance.
This is one of the most pitiful things I've yet seen in IT.
I'd ask yourselves this question: do you think you need to 'promote visibility and unity'? It sounds like most people already know who you are. Do you need 'unity' then? Is this how you'd prefer to 'promote unity'?
My guess it that the answer is no. In that case I'd ask management to have enough guts to tell you what they really want. If they think you dress like slobs they should tell you so. I have no sympathy at all with gutless management and you shouldn't either.
In other words, get out and see the world!
When it comes to being dumb, never say never!
I'm not sure why someone would say Cnet when all Cnet does is paraphrase the article that ran in WSJ yesterday. Why not just go to the source?
Yep the answer is a threat, not another safeguard. Couldn't be simpler. Philadelphia had the good sense, finally, to make the use of a cell phone on almost any vehicle illegal just the other day.
But this is all obvious and has been obvious for years. The only reason that nothing was done has to be the lobbyists for the phone industry, and politicians who love their own cell phones, and have caved in to the lobbyists.
I know this sounds like the typical crap you read in comments: it's all a conspiracy by so and so. But in this case I just can't see it any other way. I wish this weren't true but I think it is. I can't think of anything in recent memory that has made me more cynical about government and it's easy co-option by business.
You've made good progress in explaining this.........
Not trying to be sarcastic here but let me try to get straight what you are saying:
1)Application standpoint -> Perl's bad
2)Programming language -> Perl's bad
3)Advanced scripting language -> Perl does that really, really well.
So I assume that 1 and 2 are more or less the same. Programming languages are used for applications and Perl is not a real programming language and thus bad for building applications. Not trying to put words in your mouth here but just making sure I understand you.
On the other hand Perl is great at advanced scripting.
Don't you think that the line between advanced scripting and an 'application' can sometimes be very thin? Do you see them always as very far apart?
What do you think about what seems to be the rising popularity of scripting languages? Is it possible that some users think that programming languages for applications might be beautiful but aren't always as practical as advanced scripting languages? I realize I could be wrong about the 'rising popularity' of scripting languages. It's based more on what I read than on actual experience. Still it does at least look like there is a trend towards dynamic scripting languages.
I was looking forward to reading this book based on the thread above. But you're right, Peter Deutsch's comment about perl is less refeshing than asinine. I'd love to see a thoughtful analysis of perl compared to other languages, because sometimes, even though it's the language I use most frequently, it drives me nuts. But calling it 'an abomination' doesn't quite qualify as thoughtful analysis. And it certainly doesn't consider that it must be doing something right to still be used in so much functioning code.
As essay or two on elegance and reductionism versus practicality would be nice to see in the book.
don't you think it's the Opera Company that looks dumb here? This seems like the most desperate, and obvious, attempt in the world to widen its audience. You can't go anywhere or do anything anymore without being invited to 'follow us on Twitter.' When I'm bombarded that often by the same advertising I have to think that the product being peddled is hopelessly out of date. Everyone seems to want to get on the Twitter bandwagon regardless of whether it has anything to do with them or their business.
There was a time in the arts where it might have been somewhat bold and refreshing to engage the audience in some way. But that was about 40 years ago. To suggest that tweets from the public will be used for a libretto seems, to me anyway, to be far more about getting on a bandwagon and hoping for the best, than it does about art. Sometimes I wonder if the world can get any sillier. Then I have my answer.........
I'm not quite sure how the desk calendars work but I got one a couple of years ago. Dullsville! But I've also been subscribing to the New Yorker for last three years or so. The cartoons in the magazine are much funnier. Maybe these calendars have this in small print:
'Rejects from', and in large print 'The New Yorker.'
As far as the drawing I'd be willing to bet that cover wouldn't have been published if it had not been drawn on an iphone. And I'd be willing to bet the 2nd, 3rd, ...400th drawings done on iphones probably won't get published anywhere. Their interest is their novelty. This is quite different from New Yorker articles which often are substantial.
Oh you mean like the 'real' artists who have been copying Marcel Duchamps' urinal for over 100 years, tingling all over at just how radical and unconventional they are? Give me a break. This is nothing more than marketing for both Apple and the artist. I'd be embarrassed to both have made the art and to be the magazine that is displaying it. Sad to say I subscribe to the New Yorker. If their writing had as little so show for it as this art I'd drop my subscription tomorrow.
There has been a great deal of technological hype in the news over the last 10 years (and maybe 100 years if I really investigated). Newspapers, magazines, tv and other media often don't understand a topic well. But they do see a 'hook' they can use to latch onto something they don't understand. So the media see a new Kindle and think it will save newspapers. Or twitter will save just about anything. 'Everyone knows: Live Goes Better with Twitter!'. Or in this case: 'Look at this: if you wanted to you could make a drawing on your teeny little iphone'. You wouldn't have any control over line because the screen is too small to allow any subtlety of hand movement, the way you can with a pen or pencil on a sheet of paper. And it's so small you can't see any detail, so you don't know how it will look when it's printed much larger. And the color is probably off and won't look like what it will when it's printed. But you can say you did it on a phone. That's all that counts. We've got a hook! Print it.
Something similar happened recently with birding and The World Series of Birding. Most media will ignore birding for an entire year or more. Then along comes the World Series of Birding, which has a familiar, measurable, sportlike aspect to it. That's a hook. So everybody covers The World Series of Birding. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that it misses what birding is to most people. But normal birding doesn't have that hook.
You say that there is a limit to what can be parsed easily. But there is no such objective limit. Why do people continue to read such writers as James Joyce and Henry James? Obviously some readers do parse them and enjoy doing so. Of course fiction is not the same as non-fiction.
Nonetheless not all readers want or enjoy non-fiction writing that sacrifices nuance for simplicity. Sometimes, in fact most times from what I can tell, writing is so pared down, so simple, as to not have much substance to it. Obviously this is partially subjective. What is richly complex and rewarding to one reader is muddled and confusing to another. Every author needs to make a choice as to just who their audience is.
But there is no reason that an author needs to write for the lowest common denominator. That may be your suggestion but there's no reason that anyone else need agree with it.
I realize that you said you were writing with the good intention of helping the author be more effective in reaching his audience and I don't want to question that.
My argument is that I think that you are wrong in being so uncompromising in your idea of what is good and clear writing. Entangled clauses can be both better for explaining a subject and more enjoyable reading for the right audience.
I've spent a lot of time over the last month reading legal documents. They are incredibly complex and I'm only reading them because they refer to the company I work for. It is difficult reading. But as I've read them I've understood that their seeming complexity is really just an attempt to put very complex thoughts into precise, language. When I was done I admired the language used even though it had been a pain to understand it. But that's the value of language: it can help explain complicated subjects.
Your writing is just fine. If you read actual legal notes, as I've been doing recently, you realize how convoluted writing really can be. It's sad that most readers can no longer read a sentence with more than one clause in it. That's the reader's problem, not yours. God forbid that writing should sink to the level of the lowest common denominator.
This is one reason I can't see the internet ever replacing newspapers or magazines. The latter are designed for slower, more thoughtful reading. The former is better for quick news bytes and shorter bits of information. They both have their place. But many problems are complex and can only be explained in a complex way. Of course the best writers still manage to make their complex explanations seem simple. But none do it without multiple clauses. That's just part of explaining something in terms more simple than black and white.
Worse than that there are too many people at newspapers wasting time, energy and hope on tech solutions. They most likely will not work because: 1, they don't address the problem of greatly declining PRINT(read costly enough to support a reporting staff) advertising; and 2, some loyal readers, myself included, hate to read the news digitally. I have to say I've never tried reading from an apparition in the sky, though.............
Obviously newspapers are in real trouble and they have to consider all solutions. My fear is that they'll put too much time, energy and hope with something this and then be in even sadder shape when they realize it wasn't the answer. I wish I knew the answer.
As a sidelight it's interesting that both Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger said the loss of newspapers would be a tragedy while at the same time saying that there is no way in the world they would invest additional money in them.
I'm replying to a number of people here who asked why I say that selling ads doesn't work. It's strictly financial. How much are advertisers willing to pay to place advertisements on web pages? Not nearly enough numerous recent studies have shown. It has little to do with what users do with the ads - block them, click them or whatever. Web sites make money by selling ads to advertisers. If advertisers won't pay enough for them then sites don't make money. In particular they make little money in comparison to what they get in payment for print advertising, even though print advertising is in a tremendous decline. In addition, and I have to say I've read various articles saying that they do/don't make enough money from online advertising to pay for the online staff.
That in fact goes back to the original article. The people who were going to fund the online paper said that 3,000 subscribers was just not anywhere near enough money to support a staff of 30. My guess is that they also found a severe lack of advertising income.
Except 'selling ads' doesn't work and it doesn't come close to the amount of money made from print ads. That, and the tremendous problems that the current recession has brought to newspapers, is why they're considering charging for access. This venture is a bit different in that it's trying to replace a failed print paper not augment one.
Opinions go back and forth on this and most of them are not unbiased. Tell certain people that you have to charge for online news and they'll call you a Luddite who lives in the past, chases already failed dreams, etc. But I think most people who know anything about the industry and its economics know that online news is not a winning economic proposition, particularly if it is funded by ads. Those who believe that it is a winning model have to assume that things will change drastically after the recession. No one really knows but I suspect that they won't and this has been a foolish business strategy.
Nor is news free. In fact there is talk now of getting most print based web sites to coordinate the change to subscription. Thus you go from 'all the news is free' to 'no news is free.' People who say the news is free are idiots. It takes a tremendous amount of work and money to cover the news in a substantive way. And this has nothing to do with ideology. It costs the same for both left and right leaning papers. So news may seem free but it isn't. There is a large cost and for it to continue someone has to pay for it. In any case print papers are finally realizing that they are losing readers, and perhaps advertisers, because there is this thought that news is free and that it doesn't make sense to pay for a print newspaper.
They thought they might counter this with online sites and make up the lost money in online advertising. That didn't happen. So in this recession, with many papers filing for bankruptcy protection they have to consider all options, including pay sites. This would make little sense if people can get the news they want free elsewhere. But if all newspapers institute the same policy things might change. Newspapers know it is a huge gamble. But so is bankruptcy.
Well maybe,just maybe, that's the very reason that they're so popular! They give users what they want, not what someone in marketing/advertising thinks users ought to want, or what will give them a few more ad dollars but drive users off. They're old cliches but it seems silly to argue with success or fix what's not broken.
I'm going to make a very broad statement here: the most successful parts of the internet give users content, not advertising. Advertising revenue is a byproduct and it's a mistake to make it the priority as many sites have done, all the while arguing of course that they haven't.