You have a convoluted concept of professional programming.
If you choose to write code--even the boilerplate code that requires no "thoughtfulness"--and you do not know where you want to end up (i.e., design), you put your reputation and other people's money at risk.
Think about how ASP/JSP/PHP programmers must work... everything needs to be coded up front before anything will operate. There is no luxury of, "hey, let's run this and see if it works"... not to the degree of traditional languages anyway.
A design must be in place unless you happen to have ulterior motives and are one of the lucky few that works on an hourly wage.
Eliminating redundant portions involves making good use of functions and procedures. Making good use of functions and procedures requires planning. Planning requires design--the kind of design that has no code attached.
The reason that professional programmers and uninitiated observers can agree that Extreme Programming is a joke is because it *is* a joke.
The only people that write about ideal methodologies and their theoretical applications are academics. I am reluctant to use the term "scholar" on these people.
The key to a successful project is design. Even OSS projects have a design. Anybody can attempt to write for the project but if it doesn't fit with the design or is too far off base to incorporate into the design, that code doesn't get into the next release.
Extreme programming is a ridiculous term. Perhaps a better description is "ad hoc" programming.
Think about evolution itself and you'll see how much damage ad hoc programming can cause.:)
In the 1960s, the Sectoids(of XCom fame) were busy building their military infrastructure on the dark side in order to start launching attacks in the mid-'90s...
I don't doubt we landed on the moon. The questions that intrigue me are:
--Why is Earth's Luna the only satellite that does not reveal its dark side to the planet? It is amazing how many people refuse to believe that nobody on Earth ever sees the other half of the moon. I usually use my microwave carousel to explain the principle behind this.
--Why is the apparent size of the sun and the moon nearly exactly the same? Perfect eclipses are pretty bizarre events given the sheer odds of nothing remotely similar anywhere else.
--Why is the synodic period of the moon exactly the length of the menstrual cycle?
There's no weed required for being mystified by these questions.
Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight
and I'm going to drink till I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it
but I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
a little of the glory of, well time slips away
and leaves you with nothing mister but
boring stories of glory days
Seriously... things like Stella and MAME are cool. Stella is cool for about 5 minutes and MAME is cool for about 10 minutes.
The best way to honor the good old arcade games is to recreate them under modern specifications. The authors of the classics pushed their available technology to the limit as today's programmers should.
Consider Arkanoid(Breakout)... that game was unbelievably addictive. Unfortunately, playing the emulated version just isn't the same feeling that those feelings of nostalgia promised to bring.
Then Reflexive Entertainment came out with Ricochet Extreme and I can't think of a more honorable remix of the original Breakout/Arkanoid games. Grab the demo off Cnet and you'll see what I mean.
While everyone else is trying to recapture the original Arkanoid, Reflexive gave it a new life.
The old games should be remembered for how hardcore they are in terms of programming. In every other respect, they should either be updated or left in the past.
Wireless carriers could care less about the charge because they have the advantage of mobility. I've never had a landline in my name. Like quite a few people, cell phone = "phone" for me. People who don't want to incur the charges will finally make the jump and free the phone companies to sell their old landline equipment to developing countries.
2. They're much, much easier to see in normal sunlight and well-lit rooms.
Indoors, LCD displays are incredible. However, the second you get real, natural sunlight--as opposed to your typical lightbulb--LCD displays are worthless.
The number one problem with PDAs, laptops and mobile phones are the problems surrounding outdoor viewing. The most expensive displays are the ones that are able to be viewable outdoors.
Since our design is standardized, the alt tag automatically takes the name of the column for the article. This creates slight discrepancies but nothing worth getting upset about.
For example, if you go to an article by Uzal in his column "Real Politik", you will see the graphic as the column title but the alt tag will say "Uzal"... this is simply so I can use the same code for each section.
ASP programming, or any dynamic programming, is absolutely the most efficient way to run a site. Database calls have to be extremely high to show any slowdown in the page generation.
The point is that putting a little planning into design has major, major, major payoffs. Site maintenance gets reduced and you can focus on improvements rather than minutiae. I programmed Cyberista so I could write and edit... not do more programming.
The fear of doing more programming is probably what is driving these anti-accessibility comments today. Web accessibility is really no big deal and requires only a bit of foresight. As I've said in a previous post, the people with major issues are not programmers. If these same people run sites, they are probably heavily invested in bad design.
Programmers that understand that wacky concept of dynamically driven sites don't have N sites to manage yet can cover everybody...
This is the first time I've made multiple responses to a single article here. I see some tendencies among respondents:
1. The people with major issues to an accessible web are not programmers.
2. The people with no issues to an accessible web are programmers.
Frankly, I'm not surprised.
No, it isn't. There are SCREEN READERS. This stuff requires tags, alt tags and good design. The bar is so low for web accessibilty that any programmer that doesn't implement it is either a graphics loving fudge packer or an insensitive clod.
That said, I agree with the ruling. Legislation and court orders are unnecessary because of how easy it is to make the web accessible. Slashdot is certainly a place where recognizing this can have a major impact on the web we live with.
The cinema experience is excellent precisely because of how wrecked the cinema industry is.
I can catch an afternoon matinee on a weekday for $4, easily smuggle a Coke and a couple of candy bars in and enjoy Hollywood trash with next to NOBODY in the theater.
That, amigos, is golden.
At the same time, catching a movie in the evening is a nightmare. When I saw Castaway in theaters, the opening scene shows the protagonist as a Federal Express worker yet doesn't show Hanks himself until five minutes into the movie...
Some 80 year old, obnoxious SOB started yelling and demanding that he be directed to the proper theater and that he gets refund. Once he figured out that he was, in fact, in the right theater, the craziness didn't end... people letting their kids run wild, cell phones ringing, conversations in full force, etc....
The lunatics come out at night. Hence, the Latin root "Luna".
The problem with cinema is certainly not the form (Plato), but with the reality. Americans, as overweight, obnoxious and insolent pricks, don't know how to just settle down and shut up.
Reality forces good customers and polite people into the afternoon on a weekday or into the cost of a home theater.
That's a much better deal for the OSS movement than the current GPL. It keeps potential code predators, like IBM, Sun, Red Hat et al, as honest players.
The first rule of P2P is that you never talk about P2P...
Seriously, IF this is real then it reveals a major weakness in the industry.
"IF" is an important qualifier because given the MP/RIAA "right to hack", it's certainly possible that the need is real.
However, it is improbable that they would look to the market to fill their need for a P2P "warfare" expert. Hollywood is a place of connections and "I know a guy..." nonsense.
This falls into the "don't pet the sweaty stuff" category regardless of truth.
MAME absolutely rocks for the simple fact that it's easy to leave on for guests/parties.
People are into video games but not into the complexity of modern games.
As for being a "gray" app, there are plenty of freely availabe ROMs at Classic Gaming[classicgaming.com].
MAME belongs on the CD.
The only drawback--like most OSS programs--is that it requires a scope of seemingly unrelated skills to get started.
M$ codes for morons. OS Developers code for their peers. Until "coding for morons" becomes the mantra of the movement, the CD will remain simply a demo and not a tool for revolution.
Despite the whining, I thought it was cool. After my eyes adjusted to the alledged "Western" set, I realized that it wasn't "Western" or tech cowboys but a very good dramatization of the Fallout universe...or a ripoff of it.
As a human with physical disabilities, I must dissent from the general sentiment here and say PayPal is a lifesaver. I don't think I've dealt with cash or coins for the last year with the debit card. The transaction fees are reasonable and for what I use it for--which is everything--it is a treasure.
Perhaps the real issue is that PayPal is a monopoly. CitiCrap doesn't count.
You are insane, dude. You'd better hope that's complete fiction because, if those ppl are real and it never happened, you'll be lucky to get away with simply slander.
Slashdot Mirror
If you choose to write code--even the boilerplate code that requires no "thoughtfulness"--and you do not know where you want to end up (i.e., design), you put your reputation and other people's money at risk.
Think about how ASP/JSP/PHP programmers must work... everything needs to be coded up front before anything will operate. There is no luxury of, "hey, let's run this and see if it works"... not to the degree of traditional languages anyway.
A design must be in place unless you happen to have ulterior motives and are one of the lucky few that works on an hourly wage.
Eliminating redundant portions involves making good use of functions and procedures. Making good use of functions and procedures requires planning. Planning requires design--the kind of design that has no code attached.
The only people that write about ideal methodologies and their theoretical applications are academics. I am reluctant to use the term "scholar" on these people.
The key to a successful project is design. Even OSS projects have a design. Anybody can attempt to write for the project but if it doesn't fit with the design or is too far off base to incorporate into the design, that code doesn't get into the next release.
Extreme programming is a ridiculous term. Perhaps a better description is "ad hoc" programming.
Think about evolution itself and you'll see how much damage ad hoc programming can cause. :)
I don't doubt we landed on the moon. The questions that intrigue me are:
--Why is Earth's Luna the only satellite that does not reveal its dark side to the planet? It is amazing how many people refuse to believe that nobody on Earth ever sees the other half of the moon. I usually use my microwave carousel to explain the principle behind this.
--Why is the apparent size of the sun and the moon nearly exactly the same? Perfect eclipses are pretty bizarre events given the sheer odds of nothing remotely similar anywhere else.
--Why is the synodic period of the moon exactly the length of the menstrual cycle?
There's no weed required for being mystified by these questions.
Conspiracy... C-O-N... spiracy
NATO is a military organization. Why would they have weapons inspectors?
Besides being unbelievably off topic, your contribution to the discussion is non sequitur to Microsoft.
What swamp are you currently living in?
Go educate yourselves and read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
As far as the article is concerned, it is poorly written. The author turned a decent speculative subject into a stupid fest.
and I'm going to drink till I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around
thinking about it
but I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
a little of the glory of, well time slips away
and leaves you with nothing mister but
boring stories of glory days
Seriously... things like Stella and MAME are cool. Stella is cool for about 5 minutes and MAME is cool for about 10 minutes.
The best way to honor the good old arcade games is to recreate them under modern specifications. The authors of the classics pushed their available technology to the limit as today's programmers should.
Consider Arkanoid(Breakout)... that game was unbelievably addictive. Unfortunately, playing the emulated version just isn't the same feeling that those feelings of nostalgia promised to bring.
Then Reflexive Entertainment came out with Ricochet Extreme and I can't think of a more honorable remix of the original Breakout/Arkanoid games. Grab the demo off Cnet and you'll see what I mean.
While everyone else is trying to recapture the original Arkanoid, Reflexive gave it a new life.
The old games should be remembered for how hardcore they are in terms of programming. In every other respect, they should either be updated or left in the past.
Progress... maybe.
Now we can confirm the genuine naked pictures from those photoshopped ones...
Indoors, LCD displays are incredible. However, the second you get real, natural sunlight--as opposed to your typical lightbulb--LCD displays are worthless.
The number one problem with PDAs, laptops and mobile phones are the problems surrounding outdoor viewing. The most expensive displays are the ones that are able to be viewable outdoors.
They are also the first ones to burn out.
Agreed. Our friend, Hooch, can't seem to figure this out.
Since our design is standardized, the alt tag automatically takes the name of the column for the article. This creates slight discrepancies but nothing worth getting upset about.
For example, if you go to an article by Uzal in his column "Real Politik", you will see the graphic as the column title but the alt tag will say "Uzal"... this is simply so I can use the same code for each section.
ASP programming, or any dynamic programming, is absolutely the most efficient way to run a site. Database calls have to be extremely high to show any slowdown in the page generation.
The point is that putting a little planning into design has major, major, major payoffs. Site maintenance gets reduced and you can focus on improvements rather than minutiae. I programmed Cyberista so I could write and edit... not do more programming.
The fear of doing more programming is probably what is driving these anti-accessibility comments today. Web accessibility is really no big deal and requires only a bit of foresight. As I've said in a previous post, the people with major issues are not programmers. If these same people run sites, they are probably heavily invested in bad design.
Sort of like those Counter-Strike people...
Programmers that understand that wacky concept of dynamically driven sites don't have N sites to manage yet can cover everybody... This is the first time I've made multiple responses to a single article here. I see some tendencies among respondents: 1. The people with major issues to an accessible web are not programmers. 2. The people with no issues to an accessible web are programmers. Frankly, I'm not surprised.
Lowest common denominator? Your bigotry is nauseating. Exactly who do you feel deserves your attention?
Ok... this is really funny and deserves to get modded up. I'd like to see the same thing... imagine the alt tags...
No, it isn't. There are SCREEN READERS. This stuff requires tags, alt tags and good design. The bar is so low for web accessibilty that any programmer that doesn't implement it is either a graphics loving fudge packer or an insensitive clod.
That said, I agree with the ruling. Legislation and court orders are unnecessary because of how easy it is to make the web accessible. Slashdot is certainly a place where recognizing this can have a major impact on the web we live with.
Chris
Http://www.cyberista.com
I can catch an afternoon matinee on a weekday for $4, easily smuggle a Coke and a couple of candy bars in and enjoy Hollywood trash with next to NOBODY in the theater.
That, amigos, is golden.
At the same time, catching a movie in the evening is a nightmare. When I saw Castaway in theaters, the opening scene shows the protagonist as a Federal Express worker yet doesn't show Hanks himself until five minutes into the movie... Some 80 year old, obnoxious SOB started yelling and demanding that he be directed to the proper theater and that he gets refund. Once he figured out that he was, in fact, in the right theater, the craziness didn't end... people letting their kids run wild, cell phones ringing, conversations in full force, etc.... The lunatics come out at night. Hence, the Latin root "Luna". The problem with cinema is certainly not the form (Plato), but with the reality. Americans, as overweight, obnoxious and insolent pricks, don't know how to just settle down and shut up. Reality forces good customers and polite people into the afternoon on a weekday or into the cost of a home theater.
That's a much better deal for the OSS movement than the current GPL. It keeps potential code predators, like IBM, Sun, Red Hat et al, as honest players.
Seriously, IF this is real then it reveals a major weakness in the industry.
"IF" is an important qualifier because given the MP/RIAA "right to hack", it's certainly possible that the need is real.
However, it is improbable that they would look to the market to fill their need for a P2P "warfare" expert. Hollywood is a place of connections and "I know a guy..." nonsense.
This falls into the "don't pet the sweaty stuff" category regardless of truth.
Chris Uzal, Editor, Cyberista
People are into video games but not into the complexity of modern games.
As for being a "gray" app, there are plenty of freely availabe ROMs at Classic Gaming[classicgaming.com].
MAME belongs on the CD.
The only drawback--like most OSS programs--is that it requires a scope of seemingly unrelated skills to get started.
M$ codes for morons. OS Developers code for their peers. Until "coding for morons" becomes the mantra of the movement, the CD will remain simply a demo and not a tool for revolution.
--Chris Uzal, Editor, Cyberista
"Jaguar" isn't referring to the car.
Get a clue.
Despite the whining, I thought it was cool. After my eyes adjusted to the alledged "Western" set, I realized that it wasn't "Western" or tech cowboys but a very good dramatization of the Fallout universe...or a ripoff of it.
Sometimes I wonder...prudence dictated absolute clariy.
Perhaps the real issue is that PayPal is a monopoly. CitiCrap doesn't count.
You can run MSOffice and IBM ViaVoice 9 for 12 hours on those units.
It is a true LAPtop. It will not burn your legs off or melt your table finish.
Transmeta Crusoe is a great chip that pays for itself in pure productivity and mobility gains.
You are insane, dude. You'd better hope that's complete fiction because, if those ppl are real and it never happened, you'll be lucky to get away with simply slander.