There are lots of little reasons, some practical, some personal, but they all basically boil down to the fact that I want to be the one controlling my content. I'm responsible for it, so I want to be in control of it--that way if I have to change it or remove it or whatever, I can do so without having to deal with Google (or the Internet Archive, which I also don't permit to cache my pages).
In my mind it's strictly a matter of personal preference. Most of my clients don't care, though I do mention it to them so they know, and are able to make informed decisions.
According to my experience with my webservers, Google will request robots.txt frequently as it spiders a site. And yes, they do remove pages from their cache based not only because of new robots.txt entries but new META tags in individual pages.
If you can't wait until the next time Google crawls your site to have your information removed, you can always use Google's Automatic URL Removal System. Details are available here.
A few months back I updated all of my web pages to include the NOARCHIVE META tag. I then submitted my site to Google's Removal System and within three days Google had crawled everything and updated their database. The result was that my pages were still searchable, they just weren't cached.
As you noted, though, there are plenty of robots that do not obey robots.txt. Google may be conscientious, but others are not.
Well, idiots populating NASCAR chat rooms aren't going to have much success contacting IE developers, or Opera developers, or Safari developers either, so I don't think that's a meaningful metric.
Mozilla developers are at least as accessible if not more accessible than the developers for other browser projects. There's not much better they can do, short of having a tech support phone line.
Can they be accessible to computer idiots without being too dumbed down for power users?
As long as you understand that is an extremely hard goal to achieve, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with what's coming down the pike for Firebird.
Basically what I'd like to see is a browser that let you decide exactly what features to compile in, sort of like a simplified version of the linux kernel. Make it small and light, but contain all the features you like.
Well, if you're compiling the browser yourself, it's easy enough to leave out bits and pieces. This isn't exactly a selling point for the average user, though.
Right. I'm guessing there will be at least two suite releases before Firebird and Minotaur are ready for release as standalone applications in a milestone release. However, the emphasis in development will switch from the XPFE monolithic suite to the individual applications as the stable branch moves from 1.0 to 1.4.
Of course, Firebird is currently available for download, but it's nowhere near what I'd consider ready for mass consumption. But I do like it muchly.
I absolutely agree that names are important. But again, the author of the article doesn't know what he's talking about. The browser aspect of the Mozilla suite will be called "Mozilla Browser" but for development purposes it will be codenamed "Firebird." The mail aspect of the Mozilla suite will be called "Mozilla Mail" but for development purposes it will be codenamed "Minotaur." (Personally, I suspect that the browser will simply be known as "Mozilla" by the general populace after a while, but only time will tell.)
If the author's bottom line is indeed that "the Mozilla team isn't doing a lot to make themselves accessible to the general public," that's way offbase too. It's quite easy to access members of the Mozilla team through any of a number of methods, including newsgroups, Bugzilla, and Mozillazine. I've had a few conversations with Mozilla developers via private email, too. So short of phone calls and face-to-face meetings, I can't imagine how to make the Mozilla team more accessible to the general public.
Mozilla as a suite has always been a showcase of technology. It's never been meant for mass consumption. This was always a mistake in my mind, and one that has (I hope) been fixed with the new direction the project has taken.
The point is that Moz 1.4 is the last of the releases that will be presented as a monolithic suite. After this, the browser will be separate from the mail client which will be separate from the chat client. You will be able to download just the browser, and it will be svelte (it's currently at 6mb, but I figure it'll get even smaller).
The original article said this is exactly what the Mozilla Project needs to do. How unfortunate for the author that he was out of the loop and didn't know that we've already been there and done that.
I never see Salon ads, even the interstitials, because I don't accept cookies from salon.com and they use cookies to track your activity and determine when you need to see an advertisement.
That said, I do agree with you. To make matters worse, you can even come up with a server-side implementation of this (as has been pointed out way upthread) that means that no matter how much you mess with your browser, you get the ads anyway. The only way to keep the pain down will be to completely disable both JavaScript and Flash, but even that won't be a perfect solution.
The only thing that we'll be able to do is not visit sites that use the technique. And really, I rarely visit sites that would do that anyway.
Even with all of those settings tied down (that's how I have them anyway) the sample ads on the Unicast site still display. The reason why is because they are using an onClick function to open the ads. To avoid the ads, you have to disable JavaScript entirely.
I use AdBlock ( http://adblock.mozdev.org/ ). Blocks both images and flash. You can even define rules using wildcards; the first block rule I put in was *doubleclick*. You can even fine-tune your rules so that you block ads without blocking needed images which are served from the same server, just from a different directory.
Also, check out the Prefbar ( http://www.xulplanet.com/downloads/prefbar/ ). It gives you an easy way to do lots of useful things, including a checkbox to turn Flash on and off.
Between AdBlock and the builtin Block Images function, I rarely see any advertisements at all.
First, although it's comforting to say to ourselves that our industry is in a depression, it isn't. If it were, most of us would have no homes, no cars, and would be lining up for meals at soup kitchens. That's what a depression is, and that's not what's happening.
Second, I've been in charge of building my own teams several times (development, system administration, support, and design). I would never (and let me make this clear: never) consider an applicant without a degree.
A degree does often mean that the candidate will be a better programmer/sysadmin/designer. And you know what I think when I see a candidate without a degree? "Gee, there's someone who couldn't handle college...I sure don't need someone like that on my team." (And for those of you who don't have enough money for college, I'm sorry...really, that sucks, but it's not up to me to fix that for you.)
As for "vb weenies who are gifted in mathematics"...a "vb weenie" wouldn't get a second glance from me unless we were working with VB. But someone gifted in mathematics would definitely net a serious resume review and phone interview, and probably even a real face-to-face interview. Gifted people can be real assets if their gifts are applicable to the work.
You may have "great computer knowledge" but without a degree I'm not going to give you a chance. You may be a "true geek" but I'm interested in hiring people who are educated, disciplined, and know their stuff. And the easiest way for me to pick those kinds of people is to start with people who have degrees.
Good luck on the job at Walmart...without a degree, that's probably all you're going to get.
This announcement doesn't surprise me in the least--indeed, I've been expecting to hear some sort of an announcement that Microsoft was intending to offer some sort of search engine widget.
For the last several weeks, my web server logs have shown that my sites have been crawled heavily by bots from Microsoft-owned IP addresses. (I know they're bots because, even though they don't identify themselves, they DO pick up robots.txt and obey it.)
This has been going on since, oh, about mid-February.
Aside from not identifying themselves, the bots are well-behaved: they pick up and obey robots.txt, and they only request a single page at a time and take a few minutes between requests so as to not overtax my servers.
So, yeah...this announcement is no big surprise to me.
Are you arguing that if you sign up for a service that specifically excludes the use of VPN or the connection of more than one computer, you should get to do it anyway?
I mean, I'd agree with you that it's silly of an ISP to make such rules. But if the rules are there, we don't get to circumvent them just because we disagree with them.
The last time I did hiring, I wrote a pair of job reqs and posted them to the usual job boards. We received over 500 resumes.
Of course the vast majority of them were not right for the job. Many of them were "developers" who I'm sure had no idea what a linked list was. These were workers who migrated to IT during the boom but who lack real related education, skill, or aptitude.
But out of 500 resumes, I ended up with 20 that were good matches. I chose 5 to interview...and they all knew their stuff, from the basics you mentioned all the way up to abstract theoretical concepts.
So, US talent--the real talent--isn't "embarrassingly bad," not in my neighborhood. You're either in a place where you don't have the same large workforce, or you didn't look hard enough.
"So, I tried colonizing a regular PC laptop, but, you know, they're so fragile. And I have a reputation to uphold, you know, as hero, and husband of Princess Bala, and special envoy to the Queen.
"But what a disaster that laptop was. My god. I mean, it was near biblical proportions. Well, maybe not as bad as that, and certainly not as bad as the whole big thing with, you know, General Mandible, but still, it was pretty bad. I mean, we couldn't do anything we wanted, it was like the whole thing was fighting us. When we tried to build something it would crash down on us, and the whole thing was far too hard to defend. It was totally unsecure and just about anyone could waltz right in and make themselves at home. It was just, you know, bad.
"So we tried a new iBook. We love it. It's warm, and clean, and dry, and everything just works. It's the best, really. It's saved my butt. We moved the whole colony in there last week, and we're never going back.
Cell phones don't make any given person stupid, they just reinforce the already pervasive attitude that they are the Only Person In The World.
Think about it. Most of the common rudness you encounter on a daily basis comes from people who simply don't think about people around them...or if they do, they regard them as obstacles. Driving aggressively, taking more than 7 items through the express checkout lane, playing stereos loudly at 3am, talking on a cell phone during a movie...all of it comes from people not considering the other people around them. And in modern culture, this is a common habit.
Cell phones don't make people stupid. They just reinforce their rude habits.
Here are some of the most important lessons I learned while I was at University. (Caveat: My degrees are in physics and math so YMMV on some of these issues, especially if you're studying outside the sciences.)
Make friends. Network with other students. You can do this by living in the dorms for a semester or two, forming or joining study groups, joining local academic societies, etc.
Some professors are simply not interested in teaching. Others are simply bad teachers. You won't be able to avoid all the bad professors, but you can stack the odds in your favor as follows:
Talk with your friends and with other students in the department.
If your university does have professor reviews, read them. Professors who consistently score badly are either bad teachers or they're doing something to piss off all their students. Either way you should avoid them.
I know this may sound insane, but a good way to avoid bad professors in introductory classes (like Chem 101 or Philosophy 101) is to seek out and take the honors level introductory classes. They're not that much harder, and you get smaller classes and better professors. They do tend to self-select for brighter students, though, so if you're planning on surfing the curve, you'd best take a regular introductory class.
The most important person in the department is not the departmant chair, it is the department secretary. The department secretary knows everything that is going on in the department, and, most importantly, the department secratary has access to the department's computer. The department secretary has the power to Make Things Happen.
Utilize your professors' office hours if you are having trouble with the course. Just about all professors will do anything it takes to help someone who is honestly interested in grasping the material. I still remember one of my professors madly juggling three balls in an attempt to illustrate Fourrier Transforms (long story, but a great memory).
If in your class you are using a textbook written by the professor and you find you are having problems with the material, go to the library and check out a different text.
Heck, checking out different texts from the library is a good idea in general. Schaum's Outlines are also good tools (I practically taught myself differential calculus using Schaum's.)
If you are using a textbook in a class that was written by a different professor than the one teaching the class, feel free to also ask questions of the author if they have office hours. In my lab classes, we used the analysis text written by a local professor, and if I had any questions on the material he could always clear it up instantly.
One of my biggest regrets was not participating in study groups. I had this bizarre idea that I needed to do everything on my own and that study groups were somehow "cheating." Yeah, I know, pretty stupid. But I figured I'd mention it just in case someone else had the same misconception.
Take some classes for yourself. You'll have plenty of requirements to fulfill, but at some point you'll see in the catalog or hear from your friends about a class that just sounds really cool. Take it. For me, it was a Film Studies class, "History of Animation"--the very same class that saw the first glimmers of the genius that is Trey Parker, when he created as his final project "American History." (We could write a paper or do a project.) Needless to say, the computer animation project that I did with a friend sank without a ripple in comparison.:)
Take time out for yourself. Partying, staying up late with friends at a LAN party, gaming, whatever. If you don't you'll go insane.
If you want to participate in the Greek system, make your choices wisely. Though most houses encourage freshmen to rush, I would advise waiting. If you're lucky, there will be one cool house on campus, but you won't find that out until you've been there for a while.
Eat right (at least, as well as possible on a student's budget). Learn some basic nutrition if you haven't already. Even if you don't like to cook, learn how to stir fry. Stir fry is cheap and good for you. Take a multivitamin, especially around exam times when stress will sap your strength.
Exercise. Walking is good; learn to leave your car behind if you can (on some campuses it's not possible; on others, it's easier to get around on foot and by public transportation than by car).
Finally, do not be afraid. Or, be afraid, but don't let it stop you from doing stuff.
I'm a UI designer/developer and a general bibliophile, so I have lots and lots of books. Most of them are only mediocre, but there are a few that I have found very helpful. I know/.ers come from many different walks of life, so maybe a look into my User Interface library might be interesting:
Tufte, Edward: I've already seen a few recommendations for his books, but they are so good I wanted to reiterate them. Even if you're not a UI person, these books are worth at least a flip through in the bookstore.
Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Visual Explanations
Envisioning Information
Cooper, Alan, About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design. Good book with lots of practical advice for designers.
Johnson, Jeff, GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Do's for Software Developers and Web Designers. Concentrates more on the "don'ts" than the "do's" but still an excellent read. Well designed, too, so that you can go to exactly the right section to do a quick check of your work. Good for developers as well as designers, and designed with both audiences in mind.
Jacobson, Robert (editor), Information Design. A collection of papers on general information architecture, grouped by topics. Probably the best read I've ever had on information architecture and design, even if I didn't agree with everything in it.
Wildbur, Peter and Burke, Michael, Information Graphics: Innovative Solutions in Contemporary Design. Good, hardcore success stories. The section about the signing in Schipol Airport and Dusseldorf Airport is a highlight. Each chapter has relevant case studies about design in various media, from in-car navigational displays to neighborhood maps for the blind.
Flanagan, David, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide. One of the only JavaScript books to treat JavaScript like a real language, as opposed to just concentrating on recipes for making mouse cursor trailers and other abominations. I haven't seen the newly-released edition yet.
Schengili-Roberts, Keith, Core CSS. A fairly advanced text that I use regularly. Lots of examples. At the time I bought it, it was the only full CSS-2 reference I could find in print.
I also have several pure design books for various media--books on typography, graphic design, web graphics, technique books for Photoshop and Illustrator, and so forth. Those aren't precisely apropos, though.
In addition to my UI books, I have a few other books that I'd classify as seminal:
Kernighan, Brian and Ritchie, Dennis, The C Programming Language. My very first language book. Hard to beat as a way to learn C, though not for the faint of heart. (I learned C using K&R and the man pages.)
Nemeth, Evi, et al. Unix System Administration Handbook. The book for Unix admins. I have five sysadminish books that I've bought in my ten or so years of doing Unix administration, and this is the only one I refer to with any regularity.
Oualline, Steve, Practical C Programming. The stylistic advice in this book is priceless. Great companion to K&R.
Vermeulen, Allan, et al. The Elements of Java Style. Great handbook on writing good Java code, which will help keep code clean and consistent--something all of use can use help with from time to time. The directives are along the lines of "Choose good and consistent variable names," as opposed to "All variable names shouldBeLikeThis."
Now I haven't used Mozilla 1.0 extensively yet, what with it just having come out, but I can tell you that Netscape 6 and espically 4 have problems of just rendering HTML WRONG.
Yep. They sure do--Netscape 4 and 6 had serious problems with standards compliance.
Happily, Mozilla 1.0 != Netscape 4 or 6. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by how compliant Mozilla is with current standards.
Slashdot Mirror
In my mind it's strictly a matter of personal preference. Most of my clients don't care, though I do mention it to them so they know, and are able to make informed decisions.
If you can't wait until the next time Google crawls your site to have your information removed, you can always use Google's Automatic URL Removal System. Details are available here.
A few months back I updated all of my web pages to include the NOARCHIVE META tag. I then submitted my site to Google's Removal System and within three days Google had crawled everything and updated their database. The result was that my pages were still searchable, they just weren't cached.
As you noted, though, there are plenty of robots that do not obey robots.txt. Google may be conscientious, but others are not.
Mozilla developers are at least as accessible if not more accessible than the developers for other browser projects. There's not much better they can do, short of having a tech support phone line.
Can they be accessible to computer idiots without being too dumbed down for power users?
As long as you understand that is an extremely hard goal to achieve, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with what's coming down the pike for Firebird.
Basically what I'd like to see is a browser that let you decide exactly what features to compile in, sort of like a simplified version of the linux kernel. Make it small and light, but contain all the features you like.
Well, if you're compiling the browser yourself, it's easy enough to leave out bits and pieces. This isn't exactly a selling point for the average user, though.
Of course, Firebird is currently available for download, but it's nowhere near what I'd consider ready for mass consumption. But I do like it muchly.
If the author's bottom line is indeed that "the Mozilla team isn't doing a lot to make themselves accessible to the general public," that's way offbase too. It's quite easy to access members of the Mozilla team through any of a number of methods, including newsgroups, Bugzilla, and Mozillazine. I've had a few conversations with Mozilla developers via private email, too. So short of phone calls and face-to-face meetings, I can't imagine how to make the Mozilla team more accessible to the general public.
Mozilla as a suite has always been a showcase of technology. It's never been meant for mass consumption. This was always a mistake in my mind, and one that has (I hope) been fixed with the new direction the project has taken.
The original article said this is exactly what the Mozilla Project needs to do. How unfortunate for the author that he was out of the loop and didn't know that we've already been there and done that.
Oh, really?
*mutes speakers*
That said, I do agree with you. To make matters worse, you can even come up with a server-side implementation of this (as has been pointed out way upthread) that means that no matter how much you mess with your browser, you get the ads anyway. The only way to keep the pain down will be to completely disable both JavaScript and Flash, but even that won't be a perfect solution.
The only thing that we'll be able to do is not visit sites that use the technique. And really, I rarely visit sites that would do that anyway.
Even with all of those settings tied down (that's how I have them anyway) the sample ads on the Unicast site still display. The reason why is because they are using an onClick function to open the ads. To avoid the ads, you have to disable JavaScript entirely.
Also, check out the Prefbar ( http://www.xulplanet.com/downloads/prefbar/ ). It gives you an easy way to do lots of useful things, including a checkbox to turn Flash on and off.
Between AdBlock and the builtin Block Images function, I rarely see any advertisements at all.
Second, I've been in charge of building my own teams several times (development, system administration, support, and design). I would never (and let me make this clear: never) consider an applicant without a degree.
A degree does often mean that the candidate will be a better programmer/sysadmin/designer. And you know what I think when I see a candidate without a degree? "Gee, there's someone who couldn't handle college...I sure don't need someone like that on my team." (And for those of you who don't have enough money for college, I'm sorry...really, that sucks, but it's not up to me to fix that for you.)
As for "vb weenies who are gifted in mathematics"...a "vb weenie" wouldn't get a second glance from me unless we were working with VB. But someone gifted in mathematics would definitely net a serious resume review and phone interview, and probably even a real face-to-face interview. Gifted people can be real assets if their gifts are applicable to the work.
You may have "great computer knowledge" but without a degree I'm not going to give you a chance. You may be a "true geek" but I'm interested in hiring people who are educated, disciplined, and know their stuff. And the easiest way for me to pick those kinds of people is to start with people who have degrees.
Good luck on the job at Walmart...without a degree, that's probably all you're going to get.
For the last several weeks, my web server logs have shown that my sites have been crawled heavily by bots from Microsoft-owned IP addresses. (I know they're bots because, even though they don't identify themselves, they DO pick up robots.txt and obey it.)
This has been going on since, oh, about mid-February.
Aside from not identifying themselves, the bots are well-behaved: they pick up and obey robots.txt, and they only request a single page at a time and take a few minutes between requests so as to not overtax my servers.
So, yeah...this announcement is no big surprise to me.
I mean, I'd agree with you that it's silly of an ISP to make such rules. But if the rules are there, we don't get to circumvent them just because we disagree with them.
Of course the vast majority of them were not right for the job. Many of them were "developers" who I'm sure had no idea what a linked list was. These were workers who migrated to IT during the boom but who lack real related education, skill, or aptitude.
But out of 500 resumes, I ended up with 20 that were good matches. I chose 5 to interview...and they all knew their stuff, from the basics you mentioned all the way up to abstract theoretical concepts.
So, US talent--the real talent--isn't "embarrassingly bad," not in my neighborhood. You're either in a place where you don't have the same large workforce, or you didn't look hard enough.
"But what a disaster that laptop was. My god. I mean, it was near biblical proportions. Well, maybe not as bad as that, and certainly not as bad as the whole big thing with, you know, General Mandible, but still, it was pretty bad. I mean, we couldn't do anything we wanted, it was like the whole thing was fighting us. When we tried to build something it would crash down on us, and the whole thing was far too hard to defend. It was totally unsecure and just about anyone could waltz right in and make themselves at home. It was just, you know, bad.
"So we tried a new iBook. We love it. It's warm, and clean, and dry, and everything just works. It's the best, really. It's saved my butt. We moved the whole colony in there last week, and we're never going back.
"My name's Z and I'm an ant."
Well, Tarantella is still alive and kicking. And on my UnixWare server I have (and often use) the highly useful Webtop.
Donate it to a local museum, university, or other place where it will be appreciated.
Think about it. Most of the common rudness you encounter on a daily basis comes from people who simply don't think about people around them...or if they do, they regard them as obstacles. Driving aggressively, taking more than 7 items through the express checkout lane, playing stereos loudly at 3am, talking on a cell phone during a movie...all of it comes from people not considering the other people around them. And in modern culture, this is a common habit.
Cell phones don't make people stupid. They just reinforce their rude habits.
- Tufte, Edward: I've already seen a few recommendations for his books, but they are so good I wanted to reiterate them. Even if you're not a UI person, these books are worth at least a flip through in the bookstore.
- Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- Visual Explanations
- Envisioning Information
- Cooper, Alan, About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design. Good book with lots of practical advice for designers.
- Johnson, Jeff, GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Do's for Software Developers and Web Designers. Concentrates more on the "don'ts" than the "do's" but still an excellent read. Well designed, too, so that you can go to exactly the right section to do a quick check of your work. Good for developers as well as designers, and designed with both audiences in mind.
- Jacobson, Robert (editor), Information Design. A collection of papers on general information architecture, grouped by topics. Probably the best read I've ever had on information architecture and design, even if I didn't agree with everything in it.
- Wildbur, Peter and Burke, Michael, Information Graphics: Innovative Solutions in Contemporary Design. Good, hardcore success stories. The section about the signing in Schipol Airport and Dusseldorf Airport is a highlight. Each chapter has relevant case studies about design in various media, from in-car navigational displays to neighborhood maps for the blind.
- Flanagan, David, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide. One of the only JavaScript books to treat JavaScript like a real language, as opposed to just concentrating on recipes for making mouse cursor trailers and other abominations. I haven't seen the newly-released edition yet.
- Schengili-Roberts, Keith, Core CSS. A fairly advanced text that I use regularly. Lots of examples. At the time I bought it, it was the only full CSS-2 reference I could find in print.
I also have several pure design books for various media--books on typography, graphic design, web graphics, technique books for Photoshop and Illustrator, and so forth. Those aren't precisely apropos, though.In addition to my UI books, I have a few other books that I'd classify as seminal:
Yep. They sure do--Netscape 4 and 6 had serious problems with standards compliance.
Happily, Mozilla 1.0 != Netscape 4 or 6. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by how compliant Mozilla is with current standards.