AH... what they didn't tell you is that the payload contains a copy of both the Ten Commandments and the King George Bible... which will be dropped on Pluto to the dismay of Clyde Tombaugh who thought his ashes were going to find a good secular resting place on the farthest planet from Earth we can get to...
yeah Sonnet technologies is in my neighborhoood so I've done a few CPU upgrades to G4 Macs myself... personally my favorite is upgrading a wallstreet PB to a G4 a year ago or so;-p
Most likely setting up some decent firewall rules and a good hosts file... maybe running Little Snitch and Snort w/ logging and a log analyzer and maybe locking down the BIOS with a new password for running in single user mode just in case someone gets physical access to the system.
Little Snitch... it's like Zone Alarm for the rest of us... it's Zone Alarm made intuitive and EASY to use.
I tried Zone Alarm on a work PC after hearing that it was like Little Snitch for Windows... I installed it, then poked around, then uninstalled it. The learning curve was way too high to be useful and after I installed it everything broke, all network connections to internal servers were broken, all email connections to mail servers were broken, all ftp connections - broken, everything network related broke and required reading through pages of documentation to simply reenable them while keeping zone alarm active and doing what it's supposed to do. I think maybe it would have been easier if I'd paid for the full version or something... don't know cause my first experience was so bad.
This is what's wrong with Windows security... they make it so hard to use the security software that most people simply give up or use whatever they have time to figure out which ends up being only a partial solution... which still leaves them with large unplugged holes. Even AVG the easiest AV software is cryptic when it comes to telling you what's going on. They are trying to be informative but end up saying too much and too little at the same time../rant over
It is possible the publishers has someone other than the reader in mind when creating a standard for paperbacks... just to be devil's adv. I'll say that it's possible they were thinking of both the print houses and the distribution channels when standardizing, ie: Covers and artwork specs all the same, shipping box sizes that fit x*x number of books per stack, same for displays in bookstores, etc.
I'm not saying that a paperback isn't a great size for reading, just that reading convenience isn't the only reason to standardize on a size for cheap economical production of paperbacks.
Keep the data online. Provide your users with a standard html form and connect it to a database... save the info in the db and have a 'Print to PDF' button, as well as a 'Print to Excel', 'Print', etc.
If it has to be formatted in the same exact way as the Government form, then you can in fact use PDF editing binaries to do this... I believe there are several PDF libraries in various languages (Perl, PHP, C,.Net) that you can use to create perfectly formatted PDFs. A good way to do it would be to open the Gov PDF in illustrator... and redefine text objects for the input fields with variable names, yes you can create illustrator files that can be dynamically changed with scripting... anyways I won't go into that part too much
The main point here is to keep the data in a db instead of some random PDF that can be deleted, lost or whatever... your users will love being able to edit their info online and know that it is being backed up frequently.
Apparently Nissan also likes the name, they're using it for a concept car that has an XBox 360 in it and lets you use the wheel and pedals to control it;-p but only while in park???? So watch out for neo-hipsters holding up traffic while they try to level up on the new game they got....
Given a good connection you could use a VNC based approach... Use your machine for the host... and let everyone connect to it and take turns controlling the pointer if needed... or just let them watch it in full screen mode while you control. Refresh times should be good enough for slides.
Hey you've got your opinion I've got mine... though I'd like to see what you consider to be a well designed news source (probably an rss feed... or maybe you're the type that likes to store things in text flatfile dbs so you can do a quick find on a keyword you embedded as a target... bleh...
BTW 1996 wants it's technophobia back... no javascript??? you're web experience must be pretty boring. You're obviously a linux head using your stupid escape code thingy an all... and I'm sure you hate flash... I mean who'd ever want to learn from anything more advanced than text... oh well... I'll just... put some more... ellipses... in here... to let you know how much... I think of you...
I won't even address the rest as they are an extension of #1... sorry but most usability studies lately show that people don't even use the back button... except as a sort of history function to go back multiple pages to some other site. Once they are in a site and decide to stay for a while they always use the navigation on the page.. not the browser, (If only we could get rid of those pesky back and forward buttons altogether and just relabel them as a history function instead we'd all be a lot better off, the whole back and forward metaphor is confusing at best and one of the worst usability snafus ever perpetrated on the world's information addicts).
- Earthquakes and Tsunamis (understanding them better not predicting them though that could improve as well) - Any kind of scanning microscope tech (they use waves of energy and interference patterns for imaging) - Radio telescopes (the corollary to scanning microscopes for viewing distant images where the waves of energy generated by the object being imaged) - Ultrasound and Sonar devices
- Most anything that could be improved with more accurate analysis of wave signals since there's virtually no medium that doesn't change over time
People respond to pure mathematics like they do to religion... it's a mystery that is mostly useless to them in their everyday lives, so you have to tell them how it's going to either make their lives easier or ensure they go to heaven... which one does this do????
Now if he can truly apply "the behavior of [orgasm] waves traveling through a medium that changes over time" to his sex life... word will seriously get around to all those hotties in lab coats.... and he'll be a real player, without having to say a word!
You'll want to click on an article to discover the true value though as it doesn't get really good until you start reading content...
Notice how the entire article is already loaded into the page but it's broken up into 3 column sections that shuffle to a new page of text when you click the 'next page' button (which is triggered by clicking anywhere on the first or third columns), without reloading the html page (and without reloading a bunch of ads and all the 'extras' including the useful tools).
This design is sooo much easier to read than any other I've found.. the only thing that comes close is a simple long page of text but even that has it's drawbacks as it becomes difficult to read when you are constantly scrolling every few paragraphs. In fact if you want to read it that way they have an 'article tool' to 'change the format' to vertical scrolling as well.
The only thing I can think of to make it better is if they used keybindings on the arrow keys and pg up pg dn keys to control the buttons (though this is probably an issue of standard behavior across browsers at this time).
On the commercial side of things, it looks like their text ads at the bottom are also going to be the most relevant ads they can be as they are based on the entire text and not some short summary or 1/5 of the article.
As for the rest of the site... it's clean. Yes there are ads but they don't let them be too obtrusive and they way it's layed out, if you have ad blocking enabled, you won't even notice them being gone (which not all sites do well.. often removing the ads ruins the overall layout and is just as difficult to read as having them in).
IHT is an exemplary site. I won't compare their content but as far as design and usability is concerned, they are the #1 Newspaper site on the web today.
Just to be fair... opinion is great and you can certainly have one, but it doesn't mean it's valid. I know a lot of people in the UK and elsewhere who insist on driving on the left side of the road.... which is fine because the have the drivers side on the right side of the car... http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/driving%20o n%20the%20left.htm is a good read on the subject...
but if you read the history it has more to do with tradition than practicality or usefulness... which is where I'm going with this in relation to your opinion... you've grown accustomed to Windows and find an alternative method (which in my opinion is more efficient, more usable and simply better) to be less than optimal for your traditional workflow. You are correct of course. The workflow that you have become accustomed to will not give you optimal results in a system that isn't configured to take advantage of it... or more reasonably... your workflow is not configured to take advantage of the system.
Many OS9 experts had the same dificulties in migrating to OS X... though obviously less so as they were more determined to find the similarities and 'normalize' the differences until they discovered a new and better way to work within the system.
I suspect you never took the time as it was too alien for you to find a comfort zone and expand from there... you simply said... this doesn't work for me, so it must not work at all.
I on the other hand had a background in both OS 9 and Windows and Linux when the OS X beta came out... and set myself to discovering it's hidden secrets immediately. Now I have a seriously hard core work flow system in place that takes advantage of both a mature GUI and a VERY mature CLI... with a rock solid kernel and subsystem I can count on to nine 9s when it comes to stability and predictable results... something I have never been able to do with Windows (it's always one hack or another or a new license fee for software that should be included and still it's not stable or predictable).
So continue driving on the left side if you will... there's plenty of support for it if you choose that route... but don't blind yourself to the fact that there is a better way if you choose to embrace it and learn a new API for doing the tasks that need to get done.
At my job we can't do a damn thing without internet access..... so we keep some beer in the fridge for days when the net is just too damn slow to get any work done. If it was an all guy office we'd probably sit around drinking beers and playing some lan games... but as we have a few hot girls in the office it invariably turns into a flirt and bad joke day;-p not that I'm complaining...
Sometimes design is about achieving an objective, not catering to everyone at once...
When I get paid $60,000.00 to design an effective website whose objective is to grab your attention and get you to do something you may not have considered until you see the site.. well, standards compliance is not at the top of my list.
Sure it would be nice to do both but often the extra time it takes to make an approved creative design using standards based semantically accurate code JUST ISN'T IN THE BUDGET and often the client doesn't care as long as the majority of their visitors see the site as designed.
As an example I recently had to update a site designed without standards as part of the requirements to a standards based layout due to a change in project management on the clients end (the new manager is a standards nazi IT guy who only cares what the code looks like).... and the site has now become an ineffective marketing tool for the client although it is perfectly standards compliant, with alternate stylesheets font-sizes in small, medium, large, menus as lists, etc. etc. and no tables to be found except for tabular data... but it won't be doing the job it was designed to do... which was to convert people looking for information into customers. In the end the client is not going to be happy with the resulr and they'll have noone to blame but their newly appointed project manager.
Web standards are not required... they are a tool, not the product. I interpret them as saying this: "If you're going to do X then here's a standardized methodology to do so that can be counted on to work." However, if the implementationo of the standards gets in the way of the objective... then they become guidelines that can be followed 100% or 90% or whatever as the job allows.
Finally... if the standards were actually implemented correctly by the viewing devices it would make it a hell of a lot easier to follow them. It's been 5 years or so since CSS2 and XHTML standards were adopted... yet only 90% of them are implemented correctly. Even then there are cases where they just dont' work or you have to jump through multiple hack hoops for them to work which then don't work if viewer X has a non-standard setup or a custiom stylesheet or whatever...
You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time.... sorry if you're in between somewhere...
My understanding of it is that the body doesn't always have the ability to get the stem cells to the area they are needed the most.... and even if it does it doesn't always do so. We've evolved as a species to where we are by making genetic sacrifices along the way. Look at some other species ability to regenerate organs, limbs, switch sexes to continue the genetic line, etc.
What this means is that we can potentially use artificial means to promote body behaviors that have been selected against on the species level (because of cancer, immune disorder, etc) which are still very useful to individuals under the right circumstances and with safegaurds in place to limit the intensity of said body behavior. Many current medical and pharmaceutical treatments are dangerous if allowed to happen without supervision. Many lifesaving drugs are toxic killers if not administered properly... this doesn't mean they aren't effective treatments or shouldn't be used... only that they shouldn't be abused when the overall quality of life for the afflicted will not be greatly improved.
You make some perfectly valid points even if they are a little defeatist... though you may think they are simply responsible judgments.... you'd probably have nixed nuclear studies if given the authority due to the overall negative potential... as the world has unfortunately witnessed, but you would also have nixed the scientific and medical knowledge that has resulted from greater understanding of nuclear reactions and radiation in general.
Slashdot Mirror
AH... what they didn't tell you is that the payload contains a copy of both the Ten Commandments and the King George Bible... which will be dropped on Pluto to the dismay of Clyde Tombaugh who thought his ashes were going to find a good secular resting place on the farthest planet from Earth we can get to...
Are you drinking milk at the bar again?
this guy could do it in space
not completely inappropriate, notice the orbiting cow....
yeah Sonnet technologies is in my neighborhoood so I've done a few CPU upgrades to G4 Macs myself... personally my favorite is upgrading a wallstreet PB to a G4 a year ago or so ;-p
Yeah, but you didn't spend 2 grand on any of those machines. Well maybe the 486 back when PCs were still expensive...
Most likely setting up some decent firewall rules and a good hosts file... maybe running Little Snitch and Snort w/ logging and a log analyzer and maybe locking down the BIOS with a new password for running in single user mode just in case someone gets physical access to the system.
Little Snitch... it's like Zone Alarm for the rest of us... it's Zone Alarm made intuitive and EASY to use.
./rant over
I tried Zone Alarm on a work PC after hearing that it was like Little Snitch for Windows... I installed it, then poked around, then uninstalled it. The learning curve was way too high to be useful and after I installed it everything broke, all network connections to internal servers were broken, all email connections to mail servers were broken, all ftp connections - broken, everything network related broke and required reading through pages of documentation to simply reenable them while keeping zone alarm active and doing what it's supposed to do. I think maybe it would have been easier if I'd paid for the full version or something... don't know cause my first experience was so bad.
This is what's wrong with Windows security... they make it so hard to use the security software that most people simply give up or use whatever they have time to figure out which ends up being only a partial solution... which still leaves them with large unplugged holes. Even AVG the easiest AV software is cryptic when it comes to telling you what's going on. They are trying to be informative but end up saying too much and too little at the same time.
It is possible the publishers has someone other than the reader in mind when creating a standard for paperbacks... just to be devil's adv. I'll say that it's possible they were thinking of both the print houses and the distribution channels when standardizing, ie: Covers and artwork specs all the same, shipping box sizes that fit x*x number of books per stack, same for displays in bookstores, etc.
I'm not saying that a paperback isn't a great size for reading, just that reading convenience isn't the only reason to standardize on a size for cheap economical production of paperbacks.
Keep the data online. Provide your users with a standard html form and connect it to a database... save the info in the db and have a 'Print to PDF' button, as well as a 'Print to Excel', 'Print', etc.
.Net) that you can use to create perfectly formatted PDFs. A good way to do it would be to open the Gov PDF in illustrator... and redefine text objects for the input fields with variable names, yes you can create illustrator files that can be dynamically changed with scripting... anyways I won't go into that part too much
If it has to be formatted in the same exact way as the Government form, then you can in fact use PDF editing binaries to do this... I believe there are several PDF libraries in various languages (Perl, PHP, C,
The main point here is to keep the data in a db instead of some random PDF that can be deleted, lost or whatever... your users will love being able to edit their info online and know that it is being backed up frequently.
Apparently Nissan also likes the name, they're using it for a concept car that has an XBox 360 in it and lets you use the wheel and pedals to control it ;-p but only while in park???? So watch out for neo-hipsters holding up traffic while they try to level up on the new game they got....
As long as it's easier to find than the "Any Key"... I still can't find it, so I just press the space bar instead, seems to work
Given a good connection you could use a VNC based approach... Use your machine for the host... and let everyone connect to it and take turns controlling the pointer if needed... or just let them watch it in full screen mode while you control. Refresh times should be good enough for slides.
Specifically it's iChat Video... and it requires that all machines be at least 1Ghz G4... and the host machine be a G5
So you could get 3 Mac Minis, 3 isights and a new iMac w/ integrated iSight and be good to go...
Hey you've got your opinion I've got mine... though I'd like to see what you consider to be a well designed news source (probably an rss feed... or maybe you're the type that likes to store things in text flatfile dbs so you can do a quick find on a keyword you embedded as a target... bleh...
BTW 1996 wants it's technophobia back... no javascript??? you're web experience must be pretty boring. You're obviously a linux head using your stupid escape code thingy an all... and I'm sure you hate flash... I mean who'd ever want to learn from anything more advanced than text... oh well... I'll just... put some more... ellipses... in here... to let you know how much... I think of you...
1) 1996 wants it's usability standards back
I won't even address the rest as they are an extension of #1... sorry but most usability studies lately show that people don't even use the back button... except as a sort of history function to go back multiple pages to some other site. Once they are in a site and decide to stay for a while they always use the navigation on the page.. not the browser, (If only we could get rid of those pesky back and forward buttons altogether and just relabel them as a history function instead we'd all be a lot better off, the whole back and forward metaphor is confusing at best and one of the worst usability snafus ever perpetrated on the world's information addicts).
Some others:
- Earthquakes and Tsunamis (understanding them better not predicting them though that could improve as well)
- Any kind of scanning microscope tech (they use waves of energy and interference patterns for imaging)
- Radio telescopes (the corollary to scanning microscopes for viewing distant images where the waves of energy generated by the object being imaged)
- Ultrasound and Sonar devices
- Most anything that could be improved with more accurate analysis of wave signals since there's virtually no medium that doesn't change over time
People respond to pure mathematics like they do to religion... it's a mystery that is mostly useless to them in their everyday lives, so you have to tell them how it's going to either make their lives easier or ensure they go to heaven... which one does this do????
Now if he can truly apply "the behavior of [orgasm] waves traveling through a medium that changes over time" to his sex life... word will seriously get around to all those hotties in lab coats.... and he'll be a real player, without having to say a word!
The International Herald Tribune www.iht.com
You'll want to click on an article to discover the true value though as it doesn't get really good until you start reading content...
Notice how the entire article is already loaded into the page but it's broken up into 3 column sections that shuffle to a new page of text when you click the 'next page' button (which is triggered by clicking anywhere on the first or third columns), without reloading the html page (and without reloading a bunch of ads and all the 'extras' including the useful tools).
This design is sooo much easier to read than any other I've found.. the only thing that comes close is a simple long page of text but even that has it's drawbacks as it becomes difficult to read when you are constantly scrolling every few paragraphs. In fact if you want to read it that way they have an 'article tool' to 'change the format' to vertical scrolling as well.
The only thing I can think of to make it better is if they used keybindings on the arrow keys and pg up pg dn keys to control the buttons (though this is probably an issue of standard behavior across browsers at this time).
On the commercial side of things, it looks like their text ads at the bottom are also going to be the most relevant ads they can be as they are based on the entire text and not some short summary or 1/5 of the article.
As for the rest of the site... it's clean. Yes there are ads but they don't let them be too obtrusive and they way it's layed out, if you have ad blocking enabled, you won't even notice them being gone (which not all sites do well.. often removing the ads ruins the overall layout and is just as difficult to read as having them in).
IHT is an exemplary site. I won't compare their content but as far as design and usability is concerned, they are the #1 Newspaper site on the web today.
"I am remembering a cute late night cable tv cartoon with furry animals killing each other."
You mean like this: http://www.happytreefriends.com/
how about:
NightOwl - an OS porn browser or TalkingHorse - an OS IM client [-p
there's still room in the OS Ark for plenty of animals...
Just to be fair... opinion is great and you can certainly have one, but it doesn't mean it's valid. I know a lot of people in the UK and elsewhere who insist on driving on the left side of the road.... which is fine because the have the drivers side on the right side of the car... http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/driving%20o n%20the%20left.htm is a good read on the subject...
but if you read the history it has more to do with tradition than practicality or usefulness... which is where I'm going with this in relation to your opinion... you've grown accustomed to Windows and find an alternative method (which in my opinion is more efficient, more usable and simply better) to be less than optimal for your traditional workflow. You are correct of course. The workflow that you have become accustomed to will not give you optimal results in a system that isn't configured to take advantage of it... or more reasonably... your workflow is not configured to take advantage of the system.
Many OS9 experts had the same dificulties in migrating to OS X... though obviously less so as they were more determined to find the similarities and 'normalize' the differences until they discovered a new and better way to work within the system.
I suspect you never took the time as it was too alien for you to find a comfort zone and expand from there... you simply said... this doesn't work for me, so it must not work at all.
I on the other hand had a background in both OS 9 and Windows and Linux when the OS X beta came out... and set myself to discovering it's hidden secrets immediately. Now I have a seriously hard core work flow system in place that takes advantage of both a mature GUI and a VERY mature CLI... with a rock solid kernel and subsystem I can count on to nine 9s when it comes to stability and predictable results... something I have never been able to do with Windows (it's always one hack or another or a new license fee for software that should be included and still it's not stable or predictable).
So continue driving on the left side if you will... there's plenty of support for it if you choose that route... but don't blind yourself to the fact that there is a better way if you choose to embrace it and learn a new API for doing the tasks that need to get done.
I for one welcome our newly resistant Bird Virus Saviors.... who will one day defeat our future Martian Overlords!
At my job we can't do a damn thing without internet access..... so we keep some beer in the fridge for days when the net is just too damn slow to get any work done. If it was an all guy office we'd probably sit around drinking beers and playing some lan games... but as we have a few hot girls in the office it invariably turns into a flirt and bad joke day ;-p not that I'm complaining...
Sometimes design is about achieving an objective, not catering to everyone at once...
When I get paid $60,000.00 to design an effective website whose objective is to grab your attention and get you to do something you may not have considered until you see the site.. well, standards compliance is not at the top of my list.
Sure it would be nice to do both but often the extra time it takes to make an approved creative design using standards based semantically accurate code JUST ISN'T IN THE BUDGET and often the client doesn't care as long as the majority of their visitors see the site as designed.
As an example I recently had to update a site designed without standards as part of the requirements to a standards based layout due to a change in project management on the clients end (the new manager is a standards nazi IT guy who only cares what the code looks like).... and the site has now become an ineffective marketing tool for the client although it is perfectly standards compliant, with alternate stylesheets font-sizes in small, medium, large, menus as lists, etc. etc. and no tables to be found except for tabular data... but it won't be doing the job it was designed to do... which was to convert people looking for information into customers. In the end the client is not going to be happy with the resulr and they'll have noone to blame but their newly appointed project manager.
Web standards are not required... they are a tool, not the product. I interpret them as saying this: "If you're going to do X then here's a standardized methodology to do so that can be counted on to work." However, if the implementationo of the standards gets in the way of the objective... then they become guidelines that can be followed 100% or 90% or whatever as the job allows.
Finally... if the standards were actually implemented correctly by the viewing devices it would make it a hell of a lot easier to follow them. It's been 5 years or so since CSS2 and XHTML standards were adopted... yet only 90% of them are implemented correctly. Even then there are cases where they just dont' work or you have to jump through multiple hack hoops for them to work which then don't work if viewer X has a non-standard setup or a custiom stylesheet or whatever...
You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time.... sorry if you're in between somewhere...
My understanding of it is that the body doesn't always have the ability to get the stem cells to the area they are needed the most.... and even if it does it doesn't always do so. We've evolved as a species to where we are by making genetic sacrifices along the way. Look at some other species ability to regenerate organs, limbs, switch sexes to continue the genetic line, etc.
What this means is that we can potentially use artificial means to promote body behaviors that have been selected against on the species level (because of cancer, immune disorder, etc) which are still very useful to individuals under the right circumstances and with safegaurds in place to limit the intensity of said body behavior. Many current medical and pharmaceutical treatments are dangerous if allowed to happen without supervision. Many lifesaving drugs are toxic killers if not administered properly... this doesn't mean they aren't effective treatments or shouldn't be used... only that they shouldn't be abused when the overall quality of life for the afflicted will not be greatly improved.
You make some perfectly valid points even if they are a little defeatist... though you may think they are simply responsible judgments.... you'd probably have nixed nuclear studies if given the authority due to the overall negative potential... as the world has unfortunately witnessed, but you would also have nixed the scientific and medical knowledge that has resulted from greater understanding of nuclear reactions and radiation in general.