Back in The Day (early '90s) when I worked as a senior tech manager in a very forward-thinking company, I hired one of that industry's first "webmasters." We had to pay the dude six figures, cuz we had to be ahead of the curve, and we were bargaining that an early net presence would give us an edge. I hired this guy from a very small selection of very expensive candidates, all of whom had a sense they had the right skills at the right time.
That time, of course, has past.
"Web Mastery" skills, and to a lesser extent (but one on the same curve) IT skills have become almost a commodity in the HR market. Every kid with half a brain and PC Hobbyist's enthusiasm grabbed a CS degree at some Uni or another in the late 90's, and now I can walk out on the street corner on Broadway, swing a baseball bat over my head, and hit three of them, any time of the day or night.
Of course, the *good* sys admins are worth their weight in gold, they know it, and most likely their managers know it and take proper care of them. Sort of like good Executive Secretaries, whom I suspect would have as much luck as IT guys unionizing...
Damn... what's the point of having a technology sufficiently far advanced that you can conduct a remote-control war if the button-pushing still results in some kind of scarring, albeit emotional?
Here's your problem: You don't "beat" Eve. It's a sandbox, with as many ways to play as there are ways to play in a sandbox. Also: it's a MMORPG, which means that, by its very nature and design, it's designed to be played *with other people*. If you want to play a space game by yourself, play StarCraft.
I view the pirates in Eve as highly-intelligent AI that have to be out-smarted (okay, having read the interview above, maybe not so highly intelligent...). If the pirates are harassing you, you learn better tactics, get a better ship, and -- most importantly -- find like-minded people to either protect you or hunt them down. *That's* the game, the posse-gathering, the working together, the satisfaction derived from stabilizing a section of space (or dipping it into discord and chaos, if you are a pirate). If you're not one who participates well in groups, you won't like EVE.
How are efforts to extend being safeguarded from creating mission creep that threatens all civil discourse in the United States and abroad form targeting, suppression, propaganda and extra-legal surbeillance?
Why don't you just ask him for exactly how long he's cheated on his wife?
Re:Islam - Always Used to Getting its Own Way
on
Pakistan Blocks YouTube
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
As a religion Islam is the petulant, spoiled bully child on the playground - always accustomed to getting what it wants. If it doesn't get its own way, it resorts to acts of barbaric aggression.
naah, it's worse than that. It gets its own way, in countries throughout the world where there is Sharia. Jeez, how many religions would like to have the government make laws in lock-step with their teachings? All of 'em! But Islam is not content with the countries whose laws and mores it already directly affects, it wants to control the 21st Century nations as well.
But I'm a glass-half-full kinda guy, so let's look at the bright side: There is no better incentive for the West to pursue alternate energy sources than the opportunity that represents to stem the tide of Islamic Imperialism.
meh, i think if it did the same stuff as photoshop and was free it could be called "shit stained grunt and punt image manipulation" and people would still use it.
...sez the guy whose slashdot moniker is "kiddygrinder."
Yah, we'll all be looking to you for nomenclature marketing advice any day now...
Of course this makes me wonder- if it's this easy, wouldn't an international super power war pretty much immediately mean the downing of every satellite in orbit?
The downing of every non-US allied satellite, you mean.
It's called The GIMP!...which is probably the number one reason so few digital art professionals take it seriously.
I love linux, and advocate for it ad nauseum, but the devs need to do something about the clever-only-to-the-AV-Club names with which they continue to burden their otherwise fine creations.
the reflexive and snide referral to the principles of atmospheric science as religion indicate to me that an increasingly large group in society are hostile to science.
They're not hostile to science. It's Slashdot, it's all about teh Science. What the posts are hostile towards is *religion*, which is what the Global Warming Cult has become. It's got everything a good old school religion could want: High Priesthood whom one must dare not defy; a clear blue print designed to funnel money away from the wealthy to said Priesthood and their cronies; a vaguely mystical component ("mother earth" "gaia"); the stern, self-righteous demands from on-high for sacrifice and penitence (while priesthood and cronies fly about in their gulf streams); a complete and holistic set of rules which stretch across diet, fashion, pets, transportation, and commerce; and now more and more, really scary and dangerous zealot foot-soldiers and crusaders.
Global Warming not a religion? Dude, in two hundred years, the same schools being forced to teach it today as "science" will be teaching it as social studies alongside Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Unless it becomes a state religion in the US and EU, in which case all mention of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism might be expunged from the curriculum (religions hate competition).
The benefit provided by academic expertise is not simply the number of degrees one acquires, but dialogical engagement with other experts who dedicate themselves to finding fault in arguments (via journals, conferences, etc).
Of course, the disadvantage provided by academic expertise is that the politicians would use words like "dialogical."
All things considered, I'll take the non-academic, thanks.
I run into this misunderstanding all the time, on both sides (geek and suit).
There is nothing about being a "geek" or knowing HTML, CSS, or javascript that magically grants someone designer chops. It's like expecting the guy who sets type and runs the printing press to be a novelist or journalist, or expecting the chemist who mixes the paint to also be a canvas artist.
This misunderstanding was prevalent back when the web was "new" (circa '94-95), but it's inexcusable today. In any case, it's a lot easier to teach HTML and CSS to a legitimate designer, than design to an HTML jockey.
If the work of a real designer or design firm is simply not in the budget (which is crazy talk, because there are firms online that grind this stuff out now for chump change), than find some CSS book with a CD full of templates that grant license to modify. But please, for the sake of art, sanity, and all that's holy, keep IT out of web design!
Please note: Code is *not* poetry, and HTML is not code...
...except that nearly all of the most extreme, strident, unforgiving and tediously sanctimonious people I have been running across lately seem to be atheists. What's the world coming to when the religious right have a better sense of humor about themselves than the lefty atheists? I'd call it one of the "signs of the apocalypse," but that'd be a religious reference and some atheist would start preaching at me, so let's just leave it that I'm amused and amazed...
Public education, science education in particular, should not mention gods at all.
No, public education -- in the US -- cannot advocate a particular religion over another. It can mention God all it wants, and pretty much has to if it wants to prepare children for "life out there," or merely teach history.
You zealot atheists are no better than the right-wing fundamentalists. The only difference between the two groups is that the fundies are usually better informed and educated.
Clearly, the act of creating it is counter to our current collective sociatial morality
No, the act of creating child pornography is wrong. It is bad. It should be punished. The only "collective societal" differences that come into play are the amount of evidence needed to convict and the punishment. In the old days, if someone in the tribe was even suspected of child pornography, the elders dispatched a couple of the bigger warriors to visit his cave while he was sleeping, drop a large rock on his head, and throw his body in the bog. Nowadays, there is due process, appeals, a jury system, and merely imprisonment.
But make no mistake: It was wrong then, wrong now, and will be wrong in the future.
But what are the consequences if this sampling is representative of the wanted postings in general? What happens when people see minorities on wanted postings over and over?
Don't worry, it'll never happen. It's New York. If there were, say, 100 criminals who were eligible for the billboard treatment, and 97 of them were Black or Hispanic, the politically correct NYPD billboard-masters would put the mugs of the 3 white guys up in lights.
If the billboards were being run by the same cops whose fists are wrapped around the billy clubs day-to-day, different story. But the NYPD Propaganda Ministry? Heh.
The fact is, few people really honestly care much about the religious angle, they just want an excuse to spend time with family and take a few days off from their busy work schedules.
Wow! That's one heck of a fact! From whereabouts was that pulled?
I suspect that is your impression, based upon your experiences with your immediate friends and family. My own -- admittedly anecdotal -- impression is just the opposite. I think I like my circle better...
Until the mid 1800s most of the major christian religions even tried to eliminate christmas
In case you have not noticed, Mr. Van Winkle, a lot has changed since the mid 1800s. (Although I'd still be real interested in seeing some statistical back-up to your "most" and "major" adjectives.) I mean, Christmas disappeared after Gregory of Nazianzus resigned as bishop in 381, and was reintroduced by John Chrysostom at around 400. So... what's your point? That in the 1800s there were some Christian sects extant with decidedly Puritanical bents? Good thing we pushed those back into the minority, ennit? TODAY (which is when we are having this dialogue), the birth of Christ is celebrated on December 25 by pretty much every Christian priest, pastor, and congregation, and it matters only to the Han-Shot-First Fringe that Jesus was not actually born on that calendar day.
I'm trying to point out that most people don't understand anything about the holiday they're celebrating.
I think most everyone who celebrates Christmas knows they are celebrating the birth of Christ. It doesn't matter one iota (except to the "there can be no explosions in outer space" geeks and other wonder-deprived nit-pickers) that Christ was not born on December 25th. The fact that the Church celebrates the event in the heart of winter, when humans have traditionally craved celebrations of light and hope, is a point in the holiday's favor, not a knock against it.
And the fact that Christmas has co-opted and superseded so many other religions' celebrations held at the same time ("embrace, extend, destroy") is just brilliant marketing...
Oh, man, do you "Do You Know That Christmas isn't really Jesus' Birthday?" neo-pagan hipsters know how boring you've become? You're just two tics on the pedantic-o-meter below the "Why can't Hollywood get computers right in the movies?" pop-culture geeks, which is to say nestled snugly between the crowd who can't get over the fact that the word "hacker" doesn't mean "computer hobbyist" like it did for twenty minutes in 1994 and those who insist upon using "architect" as a verb.
It's Christmas Eve. Hug the person next to you, say something to make a child smile, thank God your free and healthy enough to be idling time away in front of a computer monitor, and pour yourself another eggnog.
Maybe the school figures it will block the encyclopedia written by students so that its students can focus on the encyclopedias written by professors and other professional researchers? That makes sense to me.
The students aren't using text books written by the guy sitting at the desk next to them, why should their research sources be dorm-grown?
I realize they want to control the content they own and all, but
Stop. Stop right there. No "buts." Quit while your ahead.
Lookit, all the non-creators and non-artists of the world said "We want the professional distributors to provide your work online, and on-demand! If you don't give it to us the way we want it, we'll just make copies of it and distribute it ourselves." And along came Napster, and [finally] Youtube.
So now the creators and distributors (Viacom happens to be both) finally begin to steer their gigantic battleship around and begin to offer some shows on the Net. OF COURSE they're going to use their own site to do so (DUH!). Yet you still find a reason to complain because... why? You've already got Youtube bookmarked and it's too much work to mark a new site?
No, the reason (one of them) is that YouTube had a great leveling effect on video. It was the one site where a professionally produced 30-minute sitcom sat on the shelf next to a webcam vid of a coupla 14-year-olds lip-synching to "Barbie Girl." And this was a source of great satisfaction to the lip-synchers. Now, as more and more of the professional content melts away from YouTube and gets archived on the artists' and distributors' own sites, YouTube reverts to the Major Bowes Amateur Hour status from whence it started, like that Flowers from Algernon guy when the drugs wore off. Meanwhile, the semi-pro artists, not quite ready for Viacom, feeling the great sucking cold draft in the room left by the professional content going bye-bye, begin to glance nervously at the barbie-girlers on their left and the exploding Mentos lunatics on their right, and they begin to bail off to online distribution environs that aren't, um, painted in such primary colors. Youtube begins to garner that odiferous MySpace cachet, other distribution sites erupt to fill the want/need, and a new era of entertainment distribution arises, putting content at the fingertips of anyone with a cellphone or PC, and money in the pockets of the content creators.
Youtube is dying. Long live online video distribution!!
I mean, actual Designers? Sure, plenty of HTML/CSS jockeys do, but that's a whole different discipline. And I wonder what the ratio of HTML jockey to designer was amongst the 33,000 people who responded to the survey was...
My experience -- not academia, not corporate intranet, not "blogosphere," not Church Group, but entertainment industry -- is that people pay pretty well for a new site design. But my guess is that better than half of the people who responded to the survey hardly even speak the same language as the artists who do that. In budgeting for various satellite and cable start-ups, I've never allocated less than $55K for the website.
Now, I've personally coded dozens of sites -- for academia, corporate intranet, "blogosphere," and Church Group -- but damned if I consider myself a designer. I've never expected to be paid for my work there (neat, trim, elegant though it might be...), in the same way I don't expect anybody to pay to come and watch me play basketball.
It's been said before, but it bears repeating: HTML ain't code, and Code ain't Poetry
Who has like hours and hours to write really good articles all the time?
The nuts. The fanatics. The giving-geeks-a-bad-name mom's-basement-dwelling sociopaths who adopt obscure TV series, comic book characters, or musicians and then write and champion the articles about their outre darlings. Next they hack into their iphones to call them and/or give them an electric shock the minute someone else edits their article, so that they can swoop down like a deranged digital valkyrie to challenge, re-edit, and pontificate. Because they're the "expert," doncha know? (...having been the first one to google the topic and cut-n-paste the article... )
A lot of people read wikipedia to look up stuff and learn and all that. They never really wanted to edit it though cuz they're lazy.
We don't want to edit it because we are *adults* with lives and jobs and families and deadlines who want our encyclopedias to be encyclopedias and not some kind of bring-your-own-violin pick-up jazz concert.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in The Day (early '90s) when I worked as a senior tech manager in a very forward-thinking company, I hired one of that industry's first "webmasters." We had to pay the dude six figures, cuz we had to be ahead of the curve, and we were bargaining that an early net presence would give us an edge. I hired this guy from a very small selection of very expensive candidates, all of whom had a sense they had the right skills at the right time.
That time, of course, has past.
"Web Mastery" skills, and to a lesser extent (but one on the same curve) IT skills have become almost a commodity in the HR market. Every kid with half a brain and PC Hobbyist's enthusiasm grabbed a CS degree at some Uni or another in the late 90's, and now I can walk out on the street corner on Broadway, swing a baseball bat over my head, and hit three of them, any time of the day or night.
Of course, the *good* sys admins are worth their weight in gold, they know it, and most likely their managers know it and take proper care of them. Sort of like good Executive Secretaries, whom I suspect would have as much luck as IT guys unionizing...
Damn... what's the point of having a technology sufficiently far advanced that you can conduct a remote-control war if the button-pushing still results in some kind of scarring, albeit emotional?
Might as well just send in the pikemen...
Here's your problem: You don't "beat" Eve. It's a sandbox, with as many ways to play as there are ways to play in a sandbox. Also: it's a MMORPG, which means that, by its very nature and design, it's designed to be played *with other people*. If you want to play a space game by yourself, play StarCraft.
I view the pirates in Eve as highly-intelligent AI that have to be out-smarted (okay, having read the interview above, maybe not so highly intelligent...). If the pirates are harassing you, you learn better tactics, get a better ship, and -- most importantly -- find like-minded people to either protect you or hunt them down. *That's* the game, the posse-gathering, the working together, the satisfaction derived from stabilizing a section of space (or dipping it into discord and chaos, if you are a pirate). If you're not one who participates well in groups, you won't like EVE.
Kinda like life...
How are efforts to extend being safeguarded from creating mission creep that threatens all civil discourse in the United States and abroad form targeting, suppression, propaganda and extra-legal surbeillance?
Why don't you just ask him for exactly how long he's cheated on his wife?
As a religion Islam is the petulant, spoiled bully child on the playground - always accustomed to getting what it wants. If it doesn't get its own way, it resorts to acts of barbaric aggression.
naah, it's worse than that. It gets its own way, in countries throughout the world where there is Sharia. Jeez, how many religions would like to have the government make laws in lock-step with their teachings? All of 'em! But Islam is not content with the countries whose laws and mores it already directly affects, it wants to control the 21st Century nations as well.
But I'm a glass-half-full kinda guy, so let's look at the bright side: There is no better incentive for the West to pursue alternate energy sources than the opportunity that represents to stem the tide of Islamic Imperialism.
Yah, we'll all be looking to you for nomenclature marketing advice any day now...
Of course this makes me wonder- if it's this easy, wouldn't an international super power war pretty much immediately mean the downing of every satellite in orbit?
The downing of every non-US allied satellite, you mean.
You could say you use the "GNU Image Manipulation Program." It's just an acronym after all.
Sure. And why not name the next Linux web application framework "Tools Aiding Rapid Development" ?
Hmmmm?
It's called The GIMP! ...which is probably the number one reason so few digital art professionals take it seriously.
I love linux, and advocate for it ad nauseum, but the devs need to do something about the clever-only-to-the-AV-Club names with which they continue to burden their otherwise fine creations.
the reflexive and snide referral to the principles of atmospheric science as religion indicate to me that an increasingly large group in society are hostile to science.
They're not hostile to science. It's Slashdot, it's all about teh Science. What the posts are hostile towards is *religion*, which is what the Global Warming Cult has become. It's got everything a good old school religion could want: High Priesthood whom one must dare not defy; a clear blue print designed to funnel money away from the wealthy to said Priesthood and their cronies; a vaguely mystical component ("mother earth" "gaia"); the stern, self-righteous demands from on-high for sacrifice and penitence (while priesthood and cronies fly about in their gulf streams); a complete and holistic set of rules which stretch across diet, fashion, pets, transportation, and commerce; and now more and more, really scary and dangerous zealot foot-soldiers and crusaders.
Global Warming not a religion? Dude, in two hundred years, the same schools being forced to teach it today as "science" will be teaching it as social studies alongside Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Unless it becomes a state religion in the US and EU, in which case all mention of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism might be expunged from the curriculum (religions hate competition).
Re-Read the summary. They are banning Horror Movies, not Science Fiction.
The benefit provided by academic expertise is not simply the number of degrees one acquires, but dialogical engagement with other experts who dedicate themselves to finding fault in arguments (via journals, conferences, etc).
Of course, the disadvantage provided by academic expertise is that the politicians would use words like "dialogical."
All things considered, I'll take the non-academic, thanks.
In the potential future where Lessig runs and wins, and Obama wins, we'd have two more Slashdot Moral Values-friendly politicians in office.
Wow.
Oxymoron-O-Meter just pinned Eleven.
Not to mention the "Hive Mind Group Think" litmus test, which just burst into flames.
Listen, if you think everyone at slashdot (or everyone in the Tech Industry) is an Obama/Lessig fan, you've got too many people on your ignore list.
You'll probably get a pass here on slashdot, but I recommend you not try this again on a forum where the majority of members are old enough to vote.
I run into this misunderstanding all the time, on both sides (geek and suit).
There is nothing about being a "geek" or knowing HTML, CSS, or javascript that magically grants someone designer chops. It's like expecting the guy who sets type and runs the printing press to be a novelist or journalist, or expecting the chemist who mixes the paint to also be a canvas artist.
This misunderstanding was prevalent back when the web was "new" (circa '94-95), but it's inexcusable today. In any case, it's a lot easier to teach HTML and CSS to a legitimate designer, than design to an HTML jockey.
If the work of a real designer or design firm is simply not in the budget (which is crazy talk, because there are firms online that grind this stuff out now for chump change), than find some CSS book with a CD full of templates that grant license to modify. But please, for the sake of art, sanity, and all that's holy, keep IT out of web design!
Please note: Code is *not* poetry, and HTML is not code...
...except that nearly all of the most extreme, strident, unforgiving and tediously sanctimonious people I have been running across lately seem to be atheists. What's the world coming to when the religious right have a better sense of humor about themselves than the lefty atheists? I'd call it one of the "signs of the apocalypse," but that'd be a religious reference and some atheist would start preaching at me, so let's just leave it that I'm amused and amazed...
Public education, science education in particular, should not mention gods at all.
No, public education -- in the US -- cannot advocate a particular religion over another. It can mention God all it wants, and pretty much has to if it wants to prepare children for "life out there," or merely teach history.
You zealot atheists are no better than the right-wing fundamentalists. The only difference between the two groups is that the fundies are usually better informed and educated.
Clearly, the act of creating it is counter to our current collective sociatial morality
No, the act of creating child pornography is wrong. It is bad. It should be punished. The only "collective societal" differences that come into play are the amount of evidence needed to convict and the punishment. In the old days, if someone in the tribe was even suspected of child pornography, the elders dispatched a couple of the bigger warriors to visit his cave while he was sleeping, drop a large rock on his head, and throw his body in the bog. Nowadays, there is due process, appeals, a jury system, and merely imprisonment.
But make no mistake: It was wrong then, wrong now, and will be wrong in the future.
But what are the consequences if this sampling is representative of the wanted postings in general? What happens when people see minorities on wanted postings over and over?
Don't worry, it'll never happen. It's New York. If there were, say, 100 criminals who were eligible for the billboard treatment, and 97 of them were Black or Hispanic, the politically correct NYPD billboard-masters would put the mugs of the 3 white guys up in lights.
If the billboards were being run by the same cops whose fists are wrapped around the billy clubs day-to-day, different story. But the NYPD Propaganda Ministry? Heh.
The fact is, few people really honestly care much about the religious angle, they just want an excuse to spend time with family and take a few days off from their busy work schedules.
Wow! That's one heck of a fact! From whereabouts was that pulled?
I suspect that is your impression, based upon your experiences with your immediate friends and family. My own -- admittedly anecdotal -- impression is just the opposite. I think I like my circle better...
Until the mid 1800s most of the major christian religions even tried to eliminate christmas
In case you have not noticed, Mr. Van Winkle, a lot has changed since the mid 1800s. (Although I'd still be real interested in seeing some statistical back-up to your "most" and "major" adjectives.) I mean, Christmas disappeared after Gregory of Nazianzus resigned as bishop in 381, and was reintroduced by John Chrysostom at around 400. So... what's your point? That in the 1800s there were some Christian sects extant with decidedly Puritanical bents? Good thing we pushed those back into the minority, ennit? TODAY (which is when we are having this dialogue), the birth of Christ is celebrated on December 25 by pretty much every Christian priest, pastor, and congregation, and it matters only to the Han-Shot-First Fringe that Jesus was not actually born on that calendar day.
I'm trying to point out that most people don't understand anything about the holiday they're celebrating.
I think most everyone who celebrates Christmas knows they are celebrating the birth of Christ. It doesn't matter one iota (except to the "there can be no explosions in outer space" geeks and other wonder-deprived nit-pickers) that Christ was not born on December 25th. The fact that the Church celebrates the event in the heart of winter, when humans have traditionally craved celebrations of light and hope, is a point in the holiday's favor, not a knock against it.
And the fact that Christmas has co-opted and superseded so many other religions' celebrations held at the same time ("embrace, extend, destroy") is just brilliant marketing...
Oh, man, do you "Do You Know That Christmas isn't really Jesus' Birthday?" neo-pagan hipsters know how boring you've become? You're just two tics on the pedantic-o-meter below the "Why can't Hollywood get computers right in the movies?" pop-culture geeks, which is to say nestled snugly between the crowd who can't get over the fact that the word "hacker" doesn't mean "computer hobbyist" like it did for twenty minutes in 1994 and those who insist upon using "architect" as a verb.
It's Christmas Eve. Hug the person next to you, say something to make a child smile, thank God your free and healthy enough to be idling time away in front of a computer monitor, and pour yourself another eggnog.
Merry Christmas. Lighten up.
Maybe the school figures it will block the encyclopedia written by students so that its students can focus on the encyclopedias written by professors and other professional researchers? That makes sense to me.
The students aren't using text books written by the guy sitting at the desk next to them, why should their research sources be dorm-grown?
I realize they want to control the content they own and all, but
Stop. Stop right there. No "buts." Quit while your ahead.
Lookit, all the non-creators and non-artists of the world said "We want the professional distributors to provide your work online, and on-demand! If you don't give it to us the way we want it, we'll just make copies of it and distribute it ourselves." And along came Napster, and [finally] Youtube.
So now the creators and distributors (Viacom happens to be both) finally begin to steer their gigantic battleship around and begin to offer some shows on the Net. OF COURSE they're going to use their own site to do so (DUH!). Yet you still find a reason to complain because... why? You've already got Youtube bookmarked and it's too much work to mark a new site?
No, the reason (one of them) is that YouTube had a great leveling effect on video. It was the one site where a professionally produced 30-minute sitcom sat on the shelf next to a webcam vid of a coupla 14-year-olds lip-synching to "Barbie Girl." And this was a source of great satisfaction to the lip-synchers. Now, as more and more of the professional content melts away from YouTube and gets archived on the artists' and distributors' own sites, YouTube reverts to the Major Bowes Amateur Hour status from whence it started, like that Flowers from Algernon guy when the drugs wore off. Meanwhile, the semi-pro artists, not quite ready for Viacom, feeling the great sucking cold draft in the room left by the professional content going bye-bye, begin to glance nervously at the barbie-girlers on their left and the exploding Mentos lunatics on their right, and they begin to bail off to online distribution environs that aren't, um, painted in such primary colors. Youtube begins to garner that odiferous MySpace cachet, other distribution sites erupt to fill the want/need, and a new era of entertainment distribution arises, putting content at the fingertips of anyone with a cellphone or PC, and money in the pockets of the content creators.
Youtube is dying. Long live online video distribution!!
I mean, actual Designers? Sure, plenty of HTML/CSS jockeys do, but that's a whole different discipline. And I wonder what the ratio of HTML jockey to designer was amongst the 33,000 people who responded to the survey was...
My experience -- not academia, not corporate intranet, not "blogosphere," not Church Group, but entertainment industry -- is that people pay pretty well for a new site design. But my guess is that better than half of the people who responded to the survey hardly even speak the same language as the artists who do that. In budgeting for various satellite and cable start-ups, I've never allocated less than $55K for the website.
Now, I've personally coded dozens of sites -- for academia, corporate intranet, "blogosphere," and Church Group -- but damned if I consider myself a designer. I've never expected to be paid for my work there (neat, trim, elegant though it might be...), in the same way I don't expect anybody to pay to come and watch me play basketball.
It's been said before, but it bears repeating: HTML ain't code, and Code ain't Poetry
Who has like hours and hours to write really good articles all the time?
The nuts. The fanatics. The giving-geeks-a-bad-name mom's-basement-dwelling sociopaths who adopt obscure TV series, comic book characters, or musicians and then write and champion the articles about their outre darlings. Next they hack into their iphones to call them and/or give them an electric shock the minute someone else edits their article, so that they can swoop down like a deranged digital valkyrie to challenge, re-edit, and pontificate. Because they're the "expert," doncha know? (...having been the first one to google the topic and cut-n-paste the article... )
A lot of people read wikipedia to look up stuff and learn and all that. They never really wanted to edit it though cuz they're lazy.
We don't want to edit it because we are *adults* with lives and jobs and families and deadlines who want our encyclopedias to be encyclopedias and not some kind of bring-your-own-violin pick-up jazz concert.