I think I forgot something - I thought Microsoft was in the OS, Office, Servicer Software business... And Google was in the search engine/advertising business...
What users should do is complain about Microsoft ignoring their core product (OS/Server/Office software) while whining that they want a better piece of the action of some other market (Advertising, Gaming, Digital Music) than the ones they really need to concentrate on.
Living in a rural area I have heard stories about people with their remote controlled homes starting up the furnace or whatever remotely in order to have the house toasty when they arrive. The problem with that is the critters who decided to nest on said furnace, or the broken gas hose, etc. so when Mr. and Mrs. tech get home they are greeted by the smoldering remains.
It's all about formatting Postscript in intended to be Exactly what they get is what you got format. PDFs will embed all the needed fonts, etc. Scale the page to fit on whatever printer, etc. So if you make a spiffy poster with 348 point Comic Sans MS some Linux guy will still see the document has you envisioned it even if theyt don't have Comic Sans installed.
Secondly there are options in PDF to to make PDF forms fillable as well as calculate the totals, etc. I have a USPS bulk mailing form I had added entry fields and tricked out with calculations, it's very handy.
I wonder how long it took the spin masters to work up that word; It has to be something that people remember that has a hint of disaster in the sound of it, but does not hurt their cause.
Many of those tools include (without mention) IE specific code and quirks, even if the programmer is conscientious, they may be unable to create a site supporting other browsers due to the way MS has set up their products. Doing a search to see if there are pages by MS on how to code for firefox with visual studio, reveals only a lot of non MS pages for help.
Probably the school has some sort of spyware system in place that depends on IE as well as other specific software and snitches on anyone running programs not on the approved list - so the teacher probably saw a red blinking warning stating the student was running this "firefox.exe" program instead of what the school's spyware was monitored to allow.
I was just thinking the same thing - the thing that makes Star Trek what it is are the FANS, though it's nice to have a corporate site up, they don't always posses the interest and creativity. It's in large part the fan base that made the show so popular (and provided talent for the production of subsequent shows and movies.)
If the fans are still there after all this over marketing and hype, maybe Star Trek will have a brighter future again.
We have all Macs at work, (well OK, we do have a Linux server and a couple Windows Laptops for MS only apps/sites)
There are a significant number of sites where we go through the process of first Safari, then FireFox, and then if those don't work, it's probably best no to use it unless it is necessary then it gets accessed by the laptop.
One of which we access regularly I know is coded with Visual Studio and has some bug in the Javascript for a popup form which only seems to work for Konqueror and Safari - not to mention the client-side validation(!) being busted on non active-x enabled browsers. We have requested them to adjust it but I don't think they really know how (VS maybe does not present them with an option?).
We also had another site a year back that had a nasty IE only message and even if you set your browser to IE, there was nasty active-x in it as well. Fortunately that gone is gone now (at least from us).
A big problem is Microsoft is not just looking for internet search/data market they want the internet search/data market to run on and only be browsable by Windows (or something other that is totally MS or provides a revenue channel to MS).
While the web apps department may be all OK with just service revenue and advertising the big wigs in other departments will make sure that the 'embrace and extend' goes into their on-line offerings in order to 'encourage' use of Microsoft enabled PCs and servers to fully utilize those services.
I for one am very resistant into inserting intentional quirks and other bits of muck in my web apps to satisfy a non-standard approach to displaying HTML/CSS and help enable it to be more popular. Firefox, Safari, Konquerer, Opera, Galeon, etc. all render my pages fine with the standards, and I don't have to use MS servers, browsers or OSs (though they work fine as well, only not IE, but there are free alternatives).
Also as far as services, from my point of view (Firefox on Linux) many of the MS technology based sites show up as like broken crap to me (does not support my browser, features not working, pages render poorly, etc.)
Google gets it's high marks because they are not locking the customer (business or user) into a specific application or platform; got Linux, Xserve, MS IIS, that's OK, just add this and you are good. Browser? - is it up to date? Then you are good there too. Like many say of OS X, Google internet tools and results usually "Just Work" and if you start there you probably aren't concerned into looking for other places after that.
So what I think you are saying is your registrar/hosting went bust and some other one picked up your registration (before it expired) and now claims it as wholly their own.
Probably the biggest thing I see is that we live with a 'quirky' web where you write an HTML/CSS document and have to adjust for problems with one browser or another (or not support some because of such things), while the use of standard libraries and tools have provided automatic solutions for much of the quirks they still limit the possibilities.
I am downright embarrassed by the quality of my code. It is buggy, slow, fragile, and a nightmare to maintain.
That above statement is holding you back, Everybody's code sucks in one way or another, my code sucks in some ways I do things but there are things I do that make it worth the effort. And I know my next bit will be better, I know how to do what I've done and I have better iseas on what to do next. Also in that tangle of code I bet there are things you ARE proud of, did you pull of some nice intuitive user interface? Or maybe you made that page of data look real professional, don't overlook your good skills.
...More importantly, what if anything are you planning to do about it? I enjoy programming and have from a young age (cut my teeth on BASIC on an Apple IIe). I have worked for companies large and small in a variety of languages and platforms.
I got my start in BASIC (on the Commodore PET, then on the 3.5K VIC) I still write BASIC programs for my Commodores in my collection in BASIC. I also have worked on many different programs - databases, data conversion, graphics, games, sound, etc. all are good experiences on how to do or not do things. Every time I do something new I take the wisdom of what I did before and the ideas I have learned since and integrate them, Along the way I pick up some style tips, or a better method to do something, those go in the next project or future rewrite. I liken good programming to woodwork you can make a lot of functional pieces, each one getting better then the last as you work toward masterworks.
Sadly the one constant in my career is that I am assigned to projects that drift, seemingly aimlessly, from inception to a point where the client runs out of funding. Have any developers here successfully lobbied their company to stop or cut back on 'cowboy coding' and adopt best practices?
Part of that can be alleviated by good coding but it sounds like your is more a communications issue, where the customer is going back to some base function and making significant changes. Also, again from the filed project learn from your mistakes and the knowledge you gained from the experience, paraphrasing Thomas Edison, you may not have learned to make a light bulb but you learned many ways not to.
Has anyone convinced their superiors that the customer isn't always right and saying no once in awhile is the best course of action?
Communication also; start with encouraging some realistic milestones not everything in one fail swoop, if it is something 'completely new' encourage the customer to start off small (and inexpensive) and build from there as you both learn the system and all the data/customer needs. You probably will need to rewrite, but you will not be rewriting something you were unsure of in the first place and still are.
Also thinking on this, maybe part is the platform you are developing on; some development languages/tools are a pain to try to do advanced stuff with, others are just not well suited or specific things. Ask yourself: "Am I struggling on the project or the platform I'm developing in?"
If you are working with a redundant distributed DB (where the satellites don't always have connection so the data is mirrored) trying to integrate added data among the nodes is a nightmare with an auto incrementing numeric key.
I believe all of those were honest (for MS) efforts to be competitive, all of them represented a lot of work, investment na d marketing, but are either a tad too late, just the same ol stuff against a competing more popular format.
It was a lot easier for them when a lot of these deals were fought in the back rooms (old boy politics), but with open standards as well as community efforts improving quality and open communication they really can't be considered as much of 'the standard' as they were thought to be a few years back.
Their size is finally catching up with them, MS now turns wide corners on innovation as they follow the others with their white boards - trying to match feature with feature, but either can't compete with the FOSS outside talent, are too encumbered by their back-room partnerships (RIAA, MPAA, etc), or are still too set on the old ways of 'embrace and extinguish'. Not to mention the waving the flag of an OS rapidly gaining the perception as overly expensive, continuously buggy and a security liability.
Anyone who knows would start building up their data centers in Australia as you can get the whole area and it's an easily defensible region which will increase your build stats. Then wait till after the other data centers fight it out in Asia and Europe you move in and take over.
I really like how many retailers are now taking this war on customers stance. I think a lot of companies are realizing they don't really like customers, only their money, so they are working harder to get the money with little customer involvement as possible. And those customers that do interfere with getting money are treated more as enemies.
I would say the combination of the bad puns in 1-3 referencing 4-6 as well as the need to tie up everything in a pretty package where EVERYONE was put into their place at the end, Vader has his suit, Kenobi off to Tattooine (Lars being Anikans half-brother), Leia, etc etc. Episode III ended with every thing ready and everyone was in their place waiting for 17 whole years or so for Luke to grow up. Heck they even had the death star plans put in there, I guess they got stupid for those 17 years and just sat around grew old and built the Death Star.
The plot could have just:
Let Anikin be good at the force without being some weird plot thing and then would better explain why in 4-6 he was not quite powerful and stiff.
Beat up Anikin real good and put him out of commission for a while and just gave him a couple more artificial limbs and a lot of destructive anger (so he could earn the rest of his suit)
Let "Uncle" Lars be his brother, or just as well another fallen Jedi in hiding that unlike Kenobi totally disavowed the order.
Leaving some things open to speculation and opportunity for fans or authors to fill in the blanks would have been a whole lot more entertaining and interesting in my book.
When I got to the proprietary apps question I realized I don't really want to see any of those on Linux.
It was a realization that either Open Office and other Linux apps are already doing a good enough job for what I or my office would need, or I would rather those who do use those particular apps to convert their documents to support more open formats.
I did write in one though, Print Shop. Maybe KreetingKard Card will improve.
Either way someone could easily make a better platform for an e-reader than what things the marketing departments of tech co. are trying to foist on us. Epaper is not as much the issue (except maybe in the resolution department) it's the lack of versatility and value for the end user. (plenty of 'value' for the manufacturer though)
While they are all well and good they still suck on screen resolution or color. Even if someone was to crack it, that does not man you can display adequate PDFs or render decent HTML on it only that you have better access to the hobbled display technology these books are limited in offering.
I say take one of those insanely cheap color sub-notebooks and hack that into a full color browsable PDF viewing, multi media playing, DRM free wireless, accessialbe, printable, high capacity and speed (relatively) E-library (compared to the current ebook specs it would be a library.)
I wish all you Gnome/KDE guys would not refer to Gnome as "Mac like". Actually as a long time Mac user I find KDE more Mac like than Gnome, in KDE things just happen as they should (which is usually the feeling I get with the Mac Desktop), in Gnome I always feel like I'm missing 'something'. It might also be the included K-APPS with KDE which are VERY useful and easy to operate.
The only similarity I can see is that the menu is on the top (and then it acts more like a Windows menu as it is full of different apps, not functions, something the Mac never had.)
In short KDE "feels" much more intuitive, like the Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I forgot something - I thought Microsoft was in the OS, Office, Servicer Software business... And Google was in the search engine/advertising business... What users should do is complain about Microsoft ignoring their core product (OS/Server/Office software) while whining that they want a better piece of the action of some other market (Advertising, Gaming, Digital Music) than the ones they really need to concentrate on.
Living in a rural area I have heard stories about people with their remote controlled homes starting up the furnace or whatever remotely in order to have the house toasty when they arrive. The problem with that is the critters who decided to nest on said furnace, or the broken gas hose, etc. so when Mr. and Mrs. tech get home they are greeted by the smoldering remains.
It's all about formatting Postscript in intended to be Exactly what they get is what you got format. PDFs will embed all the needed fonts, etc. Scale the page to fit on whatever printer, etc. So if you make a spiffy poster with 348 point Comic Sans MS some Linux guy will still see the document has you envisioned it even if theyt don't have Comic Sans installed.
Secondly there are options in PDF to to make PDF forms fillable as well as calculate the totals, etc. I have a USPS bulk mailing form I had added entry fields and tricked out with calculations, it's very handy.
Windows doesn't come free with a computer. Or maybe the first hit does - can't remember anymore
Hmm... Windows didn't come with the Mac I bought last year. And most likely my next computer will have Linux pre-loaded.For all we know the IE 8 pre-alpha is actually Safari Windows with a new skin. Until they release it, it only exists as hype.
I wonder how long it took the spin masters to work up that word; It has to be something that people remember that has a hint of disaster in the sound of it, but does not hurt their cause.
Many of those tools include (without mention) IE specific code and quirks, even if the programmer is conscientious, they may be unable to create a site supporting other browsers due to the way MS has set up their products. Doing a search to see if there are pages by MS on how to code for firefox with visual studio, reveals only a lot of non MS pages for help.
Live was the MS site I was thinking of.
Probably the school has some sort of spyware system in place that depends on IE as well as other specific software and snitches on anyone running programs not on the approved list - so the teacher probably saw a red blinking warning stating the student was running this "firefox.exe" program instead of what the school's spyware was monitored to allow.
No, they aren't owned by MS but I am sure they were created with MSs own RAD web tools, which does in a sense relate to MS as a cause of the issue.
I was just thinking the same thing - the thing that makes Star Trek what it is are the FANS, though it's nice to have a corporate site up, they don't always posses the interest and creativity. It's in large part the fan base that made the show so popular (and provided talent for the production of subsequent shows and movies.)
If the fans are still there after all this over marketing and hype, maybe Star Trek will have a brighter future again.
We have all Macs at work, (well OK, we do have a Linux server and a couple Windows Laptops for MS only apps/sites)
There are a significant number of sites where we go through the process of first Safari, then FireFox, and then if those don't work, it's probably best no to use it unless it is necessary then it gets accessed by the laptop.
One of which we access regularly I know is coded with Visual Studio and has some bug in the Javascript for a popup form which only seems to work for Konqueror and Safari - not to mention the client-side validation(!) being busted on non active-x enabled browsers. We have requested them to adjust it but I don't think they really know how (VS maybe does not present them with an option?).
We also had another site a year back that had a nasty IE only message and even if you set your browser to IE, there was nasty active-x in it as well. Fortunately that gone is gone now (at least from us).
A big problem is Microsoft is not just looking for internet search/data market they want the internet search/data market to run on and only be browsable by Windows (or something other that is totally MS or provides a revenue channel to MS).
While the web apps department may be all OK with just service revenue and advertising the big wigs in other departments will make sure that the 'embrace and extend' goes into their on-line offerings in order to 'encourage' use of Microsoft enabled PCs and servers to fully utilize those services.
I for one am very resistant into inserting intentional quirks and other bits of muck in my web apps to satisfy a non-standard approach to displaying HTML/CSS and help enable it to be more popular. Firefox, Safari, Konquerer, Opera, Galeon, etc. all render my pages fine with the standards, and I don't have to use MS servers, browsers or OSs (though they work fine as well, only not IE, but there are free alternatives).
Also as far as services, from my point of view (Firefox on Linux) many of the MS technology based sites show up as like broken crap to me (does not support my browser, features not working, pages render poorly, etc.)
Google gets it's high marks because they are not locking the customer (business or user) into a specific application or platform; got Linux, Xserve, MS IIS, that's OK, just add this and you are good. Browser? - is it up to date? Then you are good there too. Like many say of OS X, Google internet tools and results usually "Just Work" and if you start there you probably aren't concerned into looking for other places after that.
So what I think you are saying is your registrar/hosting went bust and some other one picked up your registration (before it expired) and now claims it as wholly their own.
Is that what you are saying?
Probably the biggest thing I see is that we live with a 'quirky' web where you write an HTML/CSS document and have to adjust for problems with one browser or another (or not support some because of such things), while the use of standard libraries and tools have provided automatic solutions for much of the quirks they still limit the possibilities.
I am downright embarrassed by the quality of my code. It is buggy, slow, fragile, and a nightmare to maintain.
That above statement is holding you back, Everybody's code sucks in one way or another, my code sucks in some ways I do things but there are things I do that make it worth the effort. And I know my next bit will be better, I know how to do what I've done and I have better iseas on what to do next. Also in that tangle of code I bet there are things you ARE proud of, did you pull of some nice intuitive user interface? Or maybe you made that page of data look real professional, don't overlook your good skills.
I got my start in BASIC (on the Commodore PET, then on the 3.5K VIC) I still write BASIC programs for my Commodores in my collection in BASIC. I also have worked on many different programs - databases, data conversion, graphics, games, sound, etc. all are good experiences on how to do or not do things. Every time I do something new I take the wisdom of what I did before and the ideas I have learned since and integrate them, Along the way I pick up some style tips, or a better method to do something, those go in the next project or future rewrite. I liken good programming to woodwork you can make a lot of functional pieces, each one getting better then the last as you work toward masterworks.
Sadly the one constant in my career is that I am assigned to projects that drift, seemingly aimlessly, from inception to a point where the client runs out of funding. Have any developers here successfully lobbied their company to stop or cut back on 'cowboy coding' and adopt best practices?
Part of that can be alleviated by good coding but it sounds like your is more a communications issue, where the customer is going back to some base function and making significant changes. Also, again from the filed project learn from your mistakes and the knowledge you gained from the experience, paraphrasing Thomas Edison, you may not have learned to make a light bulb but you learned many ways not to.
Has anyone convinced their superiors that the customer isn't always right and saying no once in awhile is the best course of action?
Communication also; start with encouraging some realistic milestones not everything in one fail swoop, if it is something 'completely new' encourage the customer to start off small (and inexpensive) and build from there as you both learn the system and all the data/customer needs. You probably will need to rewrite, but you will not be rewriting something you were unsure of in the first place and still are.
Also thinking on this, maybe part is the platform you are developing on; some development languages/tools are a pain to try to do advanced stuff with, others are just not well suited or specific things. Ask yourself: "Am I struggling on the project or the platform I'm developing in?"
If you are working with a redundant distributed DB (where the satellites don't always have connection so the data is mirrored) trying to integrate added data among the nodes is a nightmare with an auto incrementing numeric key.
Damn right!
:-)
Someone even produced an excellent Commodore 64 fanboy video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CaXVdwWuU-A
Nothing like that for the Spectrum or Atari.
I believe all of those were honest (for MS) efforts to be competitive, all of them represented a lot of work, investment na d marketing, but are either a tad too late, just the same ol stuff against a competing more popular format.
It was a lot easier for them when a lot of these deals were fought in the back rooms (old boy politics), but with open standards as well as community efforts improving quality and open communication they really can't be considered as much of 'the standard' as they were thought to be a few years back.
Their size is finally catching up with them, MS now turns wide corners on innovation as they follow the others with their white boards - trying to match feature with feature, but either can't compete with the FOSS outside talent, are too encumbered by their back-room partnerships (RIAA, MPAA, etc), or are still too set on the old ways of 'embrace and extinguish'. Not to mention the waving the flag of an OS rapidly gaining the perception as overly expensive, continuously buggy and a security liability.
Anyone who knows would start building up their data centers in Australia as you can get the whole area and it's an easily defensible region which will increase your build stats. Then wait till after the other data centers fight it out in Asia and Europe you move in and take over.
I really like how many retailers are now taking this war on customers stance. I think a lot of companies are realizing they don't really like customers, only their money, so they are working harder to get the money with little customer involvement as possible. And those customers that do interfere with getting money are treated more as enemies.
I would say the combination of the bad puns in 1-3 referencing 4-6 as well as the need to tie up everything in a pretty package where EVERYONE was put into their place at the end, Vader has his suit, Kenobi off to Tattooine (Lars being Anikans half-brother), Leia, etc etc. Episode III ended with every thing ready and everyone was in their place waiting for 17 whole years or so for Luke to grow up. Heck they even had the death star plans put in there, I guess they got stupid for those 17 years and just sat around grew old and built the Death Star.
The plot could have just:
Let Anikin be good at the force without being some weird plot thing and then would better explain why in 4-6 he was not quite powerful and stiff.
Beat up Anikin real good and put him out of commission for a while and just gave him a couple more artificial limbs and a lot of destructive anger (so he could earn the rest of his suit)
Let "Uncle" Lars be his brother, or just as well another fallen Jedi in hiding that unlike Kenobi totally disavowed the order.
Leaving some things open to speculation and opportunity for fans or authors to fill in the blanks would have been a whole lot more entertaining and interesting in my book.
When I got to the proprietary apps question I realized I don't really want to see any of those on Linux.
It was a realization that either Open Office and other Linux apps are already doing a good enough job for what I or my office would need, or I would rather those who do use those particular apps to convert their documents to support more open formats.
I did write in one though, Print Shop. Maybe KreetingKard Card will improve.
Either way someone could easily make a better platform for an e-reader than what things the marketing departments of tech co. are trying to foist on us. Epaper is not as much the issue (except maybe in the resolution department) it's the lack of versatility and value for the end user. (plenty of 'value' for the manufacturer though)
While they are all well and good they still suck on screen resolution or color. Even if someone was to crack it, that does not man you can display adequate PDFs or render decent HTML on it only that you have better access to the hobbled display technology these books are limited in offering.
I say take one of those insanely cheap color sub-notebooks and hack that into a full color browsable PDF viewing, multi media playing, DRM free wireless, accessialbe, printable, high capacity and speed (relatively) E-library (compared to the current ebook specs it would be a library.)
I wish all you Gnome/KDE guys would not refer to Gnome as "Mac like". Actually as a long time Mac user I find KDE more Mac like than Gnome, in KDE things just happen as they should (which is usually the feeling I get with the Mac Desktop), in Gnome I always feel like I'm missing 'something'. It might also be the included K-APPS with KDE which are VERY useful and easy to operate.
The only similarity I can see is that the menu is on the top (and then it acts more like a Windows menu as it is full of different apps, not functions, something the Mac never had.)
In short KDE "feels" much more intuitive, like the Mac.