Lol are you from Iowa? Far be it from me to disparage our neighbours, the Tall Corn State (bearing in mind that Chicago alone is all that saves us here in Illinois from basically being lumped in with Iowa as a flyover state).
I do, and I consider myself most of the time to be a graphic designer. I'm a programmer by trade but I design printed items, web sites, clothes, things. I'm also the world's worst sculptor and a somewhat decent illustrator/cartoonist.
However, for most designers, you're right. It's incredibly frustrating actually working with them because I could speak their language just fine but they couldn't speak mine, and I think it really bothered them too. That's why, at around $60K, I was making more than most of them were.
A lot of the stuff you're complaining about isn't really in the hands of web designers or developers. I will come clean, now, and confess that I have committed some of those sins you describe, but only at the urging of a client. And when the client's paying my bills, I do what they say, even if it feels a little dirty sometimes.
A couple of examples of bizarre client behaviour....
I once had a client (and I'm going to spare them the embarrassment of saying who they were; suffice it to say they're among the world's most recognizable companies with a trademark so recognizable that it's the second most universal word in any language—the number one being "okay") who said they wanted their website to have more red in it. Their reason? Because red downloads faster.
I once had a client who wanted their links underlined in dotted lines and as bright a colour as possible because they didn't think that my more sedated colour scheme properly communicated to the user that these were links. Also each link opened a new window.
I have still never had a client who wanted AVI files downloadable. Everyone wants something that will just play in the browser because, believe it or not, most users download a file and then immediately have no idea where it downloaded (yes, I know, it's mysterious, but this is my experience). They use flash because it's more prevalent than Quicktime or anything that plays AVI files. In the case of playing video in-browser flash is a compromise just like anything else would be. Since you're a power-user anyway just download the FLV files then play those using VLC. It works.
Interesting story: a while back on Craigslist in Chicago I saw a guy who wrote this ridiculous post to "gigs" that said—and I'm paraphrasing here—"I project that my company will be worth $300B in five years. I need an unpaid intern to do all of the technical work, since I don't know how to program." The response from the freelance community was fantastic, seriously. Tons of people posted response posts to his with photos of either their genitals or an extended middle finger in his direction. This kind of thing seriously happens all the time though, and it's the biggest danger for freelance web folks; you can't get involved in something where you're working for someone who thinks that web design isn't real work.
It's a serious problem. As a freelance web designer and developer, I usually find a lot of my jobs either through craigslist or the 37signals "gigs" board. I don't like full-time work or long-term work, so it's kind of hard but I usually end up finding more interesting things this way. Usually, if you find a short-term freelance job, they're looking for one of the following:
Someone who will do "expert" quality work, but they're only offering an intern's salary or hourly rate.
Someone who doesn't ask too many questions when offered a flat rate, and who will be contracted to finish the job for that flat rate no matter how many times the spec changes or how many hours he/she has to work.
Someone who will save their project at the very last minute, for which they will be paid a fabulous amount of money but will be run absolutely ragged in the process.
Needless to say, it's that last one that I usually try to go for, but I've experienced the others, too. My usual rate is pretty high, but that's because I feel like I'm worth that much to someone who needs me, and it also discourages people from talking to me if they don't know what they want or they're not serious about getting the job done. Don't go overboard though, 'cause then you just won't get any clients at all and people will generally think you're full of yourself.
The worst of all is the job postings where someone has a really great (they think) web site concept, but no business plan and no technical details whatsoever, and is looking for a team of people to somehow sort it out. Best to go looking at a site like 37signals that actually charges employers for the privilege of posting jobs there; tends to weed out a lot of the crackpots.
There is no reason for them to "choose what's right over what keeps their asses covered"
Sure there is! Whichever one will keep them in business and making money is the choice they will choose. Corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders to make money, yes, but they also have a responsibility to do so within the boundaries of laws and, hopefully, social convention. If a corporation gets broken up or dissolved or prosecuted in some way, that's a very bad thing for shareholders.
Now the democrats are out for blood, so the Telcos want protection before they help if not they will get into more problems.
It's more than just protection from the democrats. The Telcos will side with the Executive branch because the Executive, not the Legislative, has the power to criminally prosecute them if they don't stay on the right side of the line in the sand. If the Bush Administration told them that revealing this information would be illegal, then they probably mean that they'll find a way to prosecute if that happens.
They're definitely stuck between a rock and a hard place... I just don't know if they'll end up choosing what's right over what keeps their asses covered.
haha I got in trouble once before for blogging about this company, but then again I don't do any work for them anymore (worked for them through an agency). Check out this bizarrely long URL: www.firstdata.com/product_solutions/pc_internet_solutions/internet_processing_solutions/virtual_point_of_sale.htm. The WTF was that the URLs became so long that their server (IIS) wasn't able to handle how long the filenames were. Then I had to go back and forth with them not once not twice but three times to get new filenames that they liked that were short enough. What's truly ironic is that if you're not specifically searching for the company's name in google, and you're only searching stuff they do (electronic funds transfer, electronic check payment, etc.), you totally don't get them in google at all. So you basically have to know where their site is anyway and know what you're looking for in order to find anything from a search engine.
Also, Worse Than Failure will always be WTF to me:D
As a web developer, I can honestly say that my arch nemesis in any workplace is always the search engine optimization "expert". I have had to do so many stupid things because of those idiots it's insanity. I've actually written a couple of Daily WTFs about SEO folk.
The truth of the matter is that if you bother to play by the rules, Google will index your site just fine and if your site is popular you will end up high in the page rankings. If you want to become more popular through your page rank, you can always buy keywords, too. It's a really simple, non-mysterious process, but people get caught up and obsess about it and start paying consultants to torment their web designers and developers for no obvious gain.
( Interestingly enough, the company that had the SEO guy who didn't know his ass from his elbow was pretty much the only business doing what they did, was a Fortune 50 company, and absolutely refused to use metadata in their web site; instead of metadata they opted for super ridiculously long URLs. )
How can the Universe suddenly change like that? Change requires time.
For someone who's not a physicist, you've provided a nice neat explanation there. However, the only way that this change could occur is suddenly, absent a second, unbeknownst dimension of time through which the change would occur.
It does bring up the obvious questions of whether the change would be survivable and then even whether it would be detectable. Would we even care? Would anything change?
The job of the jury isn't to decide on the basis of a popularity contest; the decision is...did she break the law or not?
But that's why we have juries of your peers in the US. If it were merely a question of the word of the law, then a judge would be much more qualified for the job, or a triumvirate of judges (like in other countries where this is the case). We don't have that here because it produces a more just system where the jury box is oftentimes the last thing in the way of exploitation of the law for vindictive purposes. I think a lot of people here and elsewhere would agree that though she was in violation of the law, the punishment here does not fit the crime. It's not the job of a jury to "send a message" either.
*le sigh* People—particularly here in the US—need to settle on down. People get offended so easily here it's like a nation covered in eggshells, especially the religious right, which seems to be everybody here these days. We are a "free society" that bans books and where fewer people believe that natural selection is the most accurate description of biology around the world than they did in the 1920s. There's something wrong.
A Wrinkle in Time is on the banned books list?!?! That's terrible! I'm gonna have to see if I can find any information on why.
Anyways age restriction is less about censorship and more about parents taking an active role in their child's development and their reading choices. There's nothing wrong with that and that's really where the responsibility for these things lies. As for books showing up in the elementary school library; that's more about common sense on the part of the librarians and tolerance on the part of other parents who may be more restrictive.
I'm not a parent and I'm not sure I will be any time soon (I'm 24, after all), but I will say that I can't imagine ever telling a child "you can't read that book ever". My parents gave me no restrictions whatsoever on my reading material. In fact my father, a reading education researcher, often took an active in trying to fight back against the banning of books (we lived in Georgia at this time, so it was extra super bad). I feel like I turned out just fine, and reading is a daily part of my life still.
Don't people know most of the stuff in that book is a good way to get yourself blown up? Dangerous or not, though, censorship of any kind is just not acceptable in a free society. Everybody should read banned books.
When I was a deejay ('cept when I was a radio deejay, and even then it was public radio so not as big of a deal there), I didn't pay any royalties for my performance....
Suing people and advocating the notion that people somehow owe the recording industry money for this sort of thing is going to only result in a completely music-less world. As a lot of people have brought up the quiet would be nice, but I don't know if it's really something we should be working towards actively.
After high school but before college, I worked as a printing press operator in a local print shop. The head pressman would play this one top-40 station all day long and I can honestly say that your friend is absolutely right. It's like musical torture! Unfortunately for press operators (and probably mechanics, too, for exactly the same reason) headphones are a big no-no at the press because there's too many moving parts of a printing press for the cables to get tied up in. I never even wore a wristwatch when working on the press and my boss left his wedding ring on the shelf while running. So there was literally no escape!
No matter how you want to look at it though this lawsuit is ridiculous. The prohibition on public performance without royalties is more like if you played a CD in front of a crowd of people and somehow charged them money for this (has this ever happened in the history of recorded music?). You pay royalties for radio by listening to advertisements, in a way, and the radio station pays them by selling advertisements. The very notion that playing a radio loud enough for others to hear it counts as a public performance is so ludicrous it doesn't even bear hearing in a court of law. It's a waste of time and a waste of money.
What I'd really like to know is... who thought this was a good idea?
Slashdot Mirror
Lol are you from Iowa? Far be it from me to disparage our neighbours, the Tall Corn State (bearing in mind that Chicago alone is all that saves us here in Illinois from basically being lumped in with Iowa as a flyover state).
Cheers! — max
I'm tired of all these muthaf**kin' cockroaches on this muthaf**kin' plane!!
halt.ytmnd.com
Bore waves . . . in Iowa? *yawn* That sounds about right.
That's why there's acts_as_enterprisey for us Rails developers.
I do, and I consider myself most of the time to be a graphic designer. I'm a programmer by trade but I design printed items, web sites, clothes, things. I'm also the world's worst sculptor and a somewhat decent illustrator/cartoonist.
However, for most designers, you're right. It's incredibly frustrating actually working with them because I could speak their language just fine but they couldn't speak mine, and I think it really bothered them too. That's why, at around $60K, I was making more than most of them were.
A lot of the stuff you're complaining about isn't really in the hands of web designers or developers. I will come clean, now, and confess that I have committed some of those sins you describe, but only at the urging of a client. And when the client's paying my bills, I do what they say, even if it feels a little dirty sometimes.
A couple of examples of bizarre client behaviour....
I once had a client (and I'm going to spare them the embarrassment of saying who they were; suffice it to say they're among the world's most recognizable companies with a trademark so recognizable that it's the second most universal word in any language—the number one being "okay") who said they wanted their website to have more red in it. Their reason? Because red downloads faster.
I once had a client who wanted their links underlined in dotted lines and as bright a colour as possible because they didn't think that my more sedated colour scheme properly communicated to the user that these were links. Also each link opened a new window.
I have still never had a client who wanted AVI files downloadable. Everyone wants something that will just play in the browser because, believe it or not, most users download a file and then immediately have no idea where it downloaded (yes, I know, it's mysterious, but this is my experience). They use flash because it's more prevalent than Quicktime or anything that plays AVI files. In the case of playing video in-browser flash is a compromise just like anything else would be. Since you're a power-user anyway just download the FLV files then play those using VLC. It works.
Interesting story: a while back on Craigslist in Chicago I saw a guy who wrote this ridiculous post to "gigs" that said—and I'm paraphrasing here—"I project that my company will be worth $300B in five years. I need an unpaid intern to do all of the technical work, since I don't know how to program." The response from the freelance community was fantastic, seriously. Tons of people posted response posts to his with photos of either their genitals or an extended middle finger in his direction. This kind of thing seriously happens all the time though, and it's the biggest danger for freelance web folks; you can't get involved in something where you're working for someone who thinks that web design isn't real work.
It's a serious problem. As a freelance web designer and developer, I usually find a lot of my jobs either through craigslist or the 37signals "gigs" board. I don't like full-time work or long-term work, so it's kind of hard but I usually end up finding more interesting things this way. Usually, if you find a short-term freelance job, they're looking for one of the following:
Needless to say, it's that last one that I usually try to go for, but I've experienced the others, too. My usual rate is pretty high, but that's because I feel like I'm worth that much to someone who needs me, and it also discourages people from talking to me if they don't know what they want or they're not serious about getting the job done. Don't go overboard though, 'cause then you just won't get any clients at all and people will generally think you're full of yourself.
The worst of all is the job postings where someone has a really great (they think) web site concept, but no business plan and no technical details whatsoever, and is looking for a team of people to somehow sort it out. Best to go looking at a site like 37signals that actually charges employers for the privilege of posting jobs there; tends to weed out a lot of the crackpots.
Sure there is! Whichever one will keep them in business and making money is the choice they will choose. Corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders to make money, yes, but they also have a responsibility to do so within the boundaries of laws and, hopefully, social convention. If a corporation gets broken up or dissolved or prosecuted in some way, that's a very bad thing for shareholders.
It's more than just protection from the democrats. The Telcos will side with the Executive branch because the Executive, not the Legislative, has the power to criminally prosecute them if they don't stay on the right side of the line in the sand. If the Bush Administration told them that revealing this information would be illegal, then they probably mean that they'll find a way to prosecute if that happens.
They're definitely stuck between a rock and a hard place... I just don't know if they'll end up choosing what's right over what keeps their asses covered.
What company is this and are y'all looking for a new graphic designer/programmer?
haha I got in trouble once before for blogging about this company, but then again I don't do any work for them anymore (worked for them through an agency). Check out this bizarrely long URL: www.firstdata.com/product_solutions/pc_internet_solutions/internet_processing_solutions/virtual_point_of_sale.htm. The WTF was that the URLs became so long that their server (IIS) wasn't able to handle how long the filenames were. Then I had to go back and forth with them not once not twice but three times to get new filenames that they liked that were short enough. What's truly ironic is that if you're not specifically searching for the company's name in google, and you're only searching stuff they do (electronic funds transfer, electronic check payment, etc.), you totally don't get them in google at all. So you basically have to know where their site is anyway and know what you're looking for in order to find anything from a search engine.
Also, Worse Than Failure will always be WTF to me :D
As a web developer, I can honestly say that my arch nemesis in any workplace is always the search engine optimization "expert". I have had to do so many stupid things because of those idiots it's insanity. I've actually written a couple of Daily WTFs about SEO folk.
The truth of the matter is that if you bother to play by the rules, Google will index your site just fine and if your site is popular you will end up high in the page rankings. If you want to become more popular through your page rank, you can always buy keywords, too. It's a really simple, non-mysterious process, but people get caught up and obsess about it and start paying consultants to torment their web designers and developers for no obvious gain.
( Interestingly enough, the company that had the SEO guy who didn't know his ass from his elbow was pretty much the only business doing what they did, was a Fortune 50 company, and absolutely refused to use metadata in their web site; instead of metadata they opted for super ridiculously long URLs. )
Then maybe you should set your sights a little higher?
I have no lifeOh.... My bad.
No one gets it :(
Maybe we'll get a better answer than "42" this time then!
On the moon, nerds are spanked with moon-rocks!
For someone who's not a physicist, you've provided a nice neat explanation there. However, the only way that this change could occur is suddenly, absent a second, unbeknownst dimension of time through which the change would occur.
It does bring up the obvious questions of whether the change would be survivable and then even whether it would be detectable. Would we even care? Would anything change?
But that's why we have juries of your peers in the US. If it were merely a question of the word of the law, then a judge would be much more qualified for the job, or a triumvirate of judges (like in other countries where this is the case). We don't have that here because it produces a more just system where the jury box is oftentimes the last thing in the way of exploitation of the law for vindictive purposes. I think a lot of people here and elsewhere would agree that though she was in violation of the law, the punishment here does not fit the crime. It's not the job of a jury to "send a message" either.
*le sigh* People—particularly here in the US—need to settle on down. People get offended so easily here it's like a nation covered in eggshells, especially the religious right, which seems to be everybody here these days. We are a "free society" that bans books and where fewer people believe that natural selection is the most accurate description of biology around the world than they did in the 1920s. There's something wrong.
A Wrinkle in Time is on the banned books list?!?! That's terrible! I'm gonna have to see if I can find any information on why.
Anyways age restriction is less about censorship and more about parents taking an active role in their child's development and their reading choices. There's nothing wrong with that and that's really where the responsibility for these things lies. As for books showing up in the elementary school library; that's more about common sense on the part of the librarians and tolerance on the part of other parents who may be more restrictive.
I'm not a parent and I'm not sure I will be any time soon (I'm 24, after all), but I will say that I can't imagine ever telling a child "you can't read that book ever". My parents gave me no restrictions whatsoever on my reading material. In fact my father, a reading education researcher, often took an active in trying to fight back against the banning of books (we lived in Georgia at this time, so it was extra super bad). I feel like I turned out just fine, and reading is a daily part of my life still.
Don't people know most of the stuff in that book is a good way to get yourself blown up? Dangerous or not, though, censorship of any kind is just not acceptable in a free society. Everybody should read banned books.
When I was a deejay ('cept when I was a radio deejay, and even then it was public radio so not as big of a deal there), I didn't pay any royalties for my performance....
Suing people and advocating the notion that people somehow owe the recording industry money for this sort of thing is going to only result in a completely music-less world. As a lot of people have brought up the quiet would be nice, but I don't know if it's really something we should be working towards actively.
After high school but before college, I worked as a printing press operator in a local print shop. The head pressman would play this one top-40 station all day long and I can honestly say that your friend is absolutely right. It's like musical torture! Unfortunately for press operators (and probably mechanics, too, for exactly the same reason) headphones are a big no-no at the press because there's too many moving parts of a printing press for the cables to get tied up in. I never even wore a wristwatch when working on the press and my boss left his wedding ring on the shelf while running. So there was literally no escape!
No matter how you want to look at it though this lawsuit is ridiculous. The prohibition on public performance without royalties is more like if you played a CD in front of a crowd of people and somehow charged them money for this (has this ever happened in the history of recorded music?). You pay royalties for radio by listening to advertisements, in a way, and the radio station pays them by selling advertisements. The very notion that playing a radio loud enough for others to hear it counts as a public performance is so ludicrous it doesn't even bear hearing in a court of law. It's a waste of time and a waste of money.
What I'd really like to know is ... who thought this was a good idea?
I figured it should be tagged "dudewheresmyasteroid"