Isn't it just a case of police procedure though, when they go after suspected paedophiles they don't take copies of the hard disks they take the whole computer. I just can't see anyone with serious power really giving enough of a fuck about Indymedia to do anything like this. If it was something of a higher profile then maybe.
Putting AFAIK at the start is a license to write any half-baked bullshit really, I think you might find that we have a very free press (and some of ours isn't even owned by McDonalds and Microsoft) and as for the Crown interfering with free speech (we have a Queen at the moment not a King by the way) I think you may find you are a few centuries out of date.
This was nothing to do with free speech but it was everything to do with someone bragging on the internet about a £100000 vandalism they'd committed and the Police duly investigating it.
I work in NHS IT and before the moves towards approved suppliers we had clueless individuals buying cheapo PCs from local system builders which we then had to try and support.
I certainly wouldn't classify the approved list as a cartel. That implies that suppliers on the list somehow work together to artificially raise prices which they don't, they are, by and large, in competition with one another.
When looking at the cost of a healthcare PC you need to include the costs it incurs over it's lifetime not just the initial purchase price.
From what I can make out this is a fixed pitch design with the lift being controlled by engine speed. When the engine fails you would fall from the sky, even if it had the ability to perform an autorotation this is a manoever (can never spell that) which is more difficult than anything involved in driving a car.
Everything's copyright of the BBC, as far as I'm aware the law doesn't differentiate between them and a private company. The BBC must make a sizeable portion of it's income from sales to American networks and DVDs so that may be the justification.
Last year's license fee was worthwhile if only for this one documentary series. This is exactly the sort of intelligent programming which the current reforms are purported to encourage.
Basically it was an account of how we arrived at the current climate of fear with our leaders exaggerating the dangers from almost entirely fictitious enemies. Interesting comparisons between the American neo-conservative ideologies and the beliefs held by Bin Laden et al.
If you didn't get to see this because you are American or British but missed it then you should, the torrents are out there, seek and ye shall find.
You have to take the point though that the general design and layout of a page can say a lot about an organisation, a well designed (both functionally and aesthetically) site is a more enjoyable place to be than one which is either just brutally functional or utterly confusing yet visually stunning.
To me a well designed, good looking site is the same as going to a mechanics garage which is clearly ordered and tidy, you can make certain assumptions about the owner. This can of course be a contrivance but very often your initial impressions are correct.
This is information and most people use this almost subconscious information on a daily basis. You can dismiss it as propoganda if you like but I really can't understand your distinction between propoganda portayed via visual means and that which is just text.
I've often thought that Nielsen would do better to make his site more visually appealing whilst adhering to his own guidelines. This would reinforce his arguments no end rather than giving the impression that usable websites need to be ugly as sin.
His site should be an aesthetic tour de force, if all that was required of web designers was to spew out text in a clear fashion like his site then it would be really quite easy to make usable sites.
You make the statement that the web should be all about delivering the content but content can take many different forms. Such things as brand values can often be portrayed far more concisely and eloquently with good graphic design.
I have enourmous respect for many of his ideas but he seems to be hell bent on setting himself up in opposition to the design world rather than working with it.
As for his enourmously wide columns, they should have a maximum width. Saying that users should "customize their user agent" in order to render his pages easier to read is surely not what usability should be all about.
Jacob Nielsen is a clever man but also a stubborn idiot who lacks the capacity to take criticism but loves doling it out.
With one very important difference, on a phone the display is not separate from the input device so not only do you have no tactile feedback as previously mentioned but no (or at least no constantly visible) visual feedback. There may be ways to utilise this but not as a replacement keypad.
60 mph head on collision = 120mph combined impact speed and you walked away with no injuries, don't think so.
Check Euro NCAP to read more about the relative safety of various cars. Cinquecento isn't listed but Seicento is and it looks like you picked probably the least safe small car to hit.
Zap are just the distributors/importers, there is only one plant making Smart cars. The Mercedes badged ones you see over here are the same cars but with Mercedes badges on. This is just marketing so that stupid people can brag about owning a Merc.
btw, name one car that would not make you rather ill after a 60mph head-on collision.
FYI, I've been driving one of these for almost two years and have heard many crash tales on forums etc and the real-world (okay anecdotal) conclusion would seem to be that they are about as safe as any other small car (safer than many), not accounting for the fact that most small cars are almost twice as big.
So to take this type of thinking to it's logical conclusion American roads will soon be filled with fully armored twelve tonne combat vehicles.
People on here are talking like American roads are vastly different to Eurpoean ones, this may come as a shock to you but if you were to drive down a motorway in England in a Hummer a great many of the other vehicles would be significantly larger and heavier, yes that's right we have trucks and coaches over here too. Another thing that would come as a shock would be just how much of an idiot you look.
Maybe we're just not so selfish and fearful that we would purchase a car specifically to plough through other cars in a collision.
I've been driving one of these for almost two years now and I'd have to say that it is the best car I've ever owned. Not since the original Mini (not that huge monstrosity by BMW) has a car been produced which seems to generate so much goodwill from fellow road users.
Many of the design elements are innovative but not in a non-essential luvvie kind of way (I'm thinking VW new Beetle here) rather it all just works.
In an age where automotive design is sometimes reduced to retro styling an existing model to make it look like a more intersting classic from a bygone era (again new mini and new beetle, sorry but I just hate these cars, they are the wheeled equivalent of stone clad houses or a cover version of a much loved song by some talentless teenaged boy band) it's refreshing to me to own a car where every element has been carefully considered from the ground up.
Anyway I'm obviously biased because I own one and I don't expect that they'll tempt you lot out of your SUVs just yet but you should really try one out before you write them off.
I'm sick of hearing about how similar the games industry is now to the early film industry.
Films have never been driven by technology as much as games. Sure there were breakthroughs like colour, sound then the ability for people to watch movies in their homes. The medium's technology is still evolving too with digital projectors and home theatre etc, but you can still rent a movie on VHS and watch it on a set-up at home which is 20 years old without really missing much.
I don't see games technology reaching a similar zenith anytime soon and this is where the analogy breaks down.
I like consoles because you can just pick up a game, shove it in the machine and you know that you're going to get pretty much what the developer intended.
Surely a development like XNA would reduce console gaming to the level of a lot of PC games where developers never really have to push the hardware they just wait till the horsepower's available to make their sloppy code run ok. Then you buy the game, it runs like a slideshow so you have to start upgrading. Come to think of it that's probably the whole idea.
Can't see MS taking this one lying down though and I'm sure Richard Granger probably knows this. He's already having to go back and ask for another 2billion on top of the 2.5billion already allocated to his programme. I'm sure that this is a play to get reduced licensing fees.
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Isn't it just a case of police procedure though, when they go after suspected paedophiles they don't take copies of the hard disks they take the whole computer. I just can't see anyone with serious power really giving enough of a fuck about Indymedia to do anything like this. If it was something of a higher profile then maybe.
I was thinking of the BBC
Putting AFAIK at the start is a license to write any half-baked bullshit really, I think you might find that we have a very free press (and some of ours isn't even owned by McDonalds and Microsoft) and as for the Crown interfering with free speech (we have a Queen at the moment not a King by the way) I think you may find you are a few centuries out of date.
This was nothing to do with free speech but it was everything to do with someone bragging on the internet about a £100000 vandalism they'd committed and the Police duly investigating it.
I work in NHS IT and before the moves towards approved suppliers we had clueless individuals buying cheapo PCs from local system builders which we then had to try and support.
I certainly wouldn't classify the approved list as a cartel. That implies that suppliers on the list somehow work together to artificially raise prices which they don't, they are, by and large, in competition with one another.
When looking at the cost of a healthcare PC you need to include the costs it incurs over it's lifetime not just the initial purchase price.
From what I can make out this is a fixed pitch design with the lift being controlled by engine speed. When the engine fails you would fall from the sky, even if it had the ability to perform an autorotation this is a manoever (can never spell that) which is more difficult than anything involved in driving a car.
Everything's copyright of the BBC, as far as I'm aware the law doesn't differentiate between them and a private company. The BBC must make a sizeable portion of it's income from sales to American networks and DVDs so that may be the justification.
Last year's license fee was worthwhile if only for this one documentary series. This is exactly the sort of intelligent programming which the current reforms are purported to encourage.
Basically it was an account of how we arrived at the current climate of fear with our leaders exaggerating the dangers from almost entirely fictitious enemies. Interesting comparisons between the American neo-conservative ideologies and the beliefs held by Bin Laden et al.
If you didn't get to see this because you are American or British but missed it then you should, the torrents are out there, seek and ye shall find.
I'd doubt it will ever get shown in the US.
You have to take the point though that the general design and layout of a page can say a lot about an organisation, a well designed (both functionally and aesthetically) site is a more enjoyable place to be than one which is either just brutally functional or utterly confusing yet visually stunning.
To me a well designed, good looking site is the same as going to a mechanics garage which is clearly ordered and tidy, you can make certain assumptions about the owner. This can of course be a contrivance but very often your initial impressions are correct.
This is information and most people use this almost subconscious information on a daily basis. You can dismiss it as propoganda if you like but I really can't understand your distinction between propoganda portayed via visual means and that which is just text.
I've often thought that Nielsen would do better to make his site more visually appealing whilst adhering to his own guidelines. This would reinforce his arguments no end rather than giving the impression that usable websites need to be ugly as sin.
His site should be an aesthetic tour de force, if all that was required of web designers was to spew out text in a clear fashion like his site then it would be really quite easy to make usable sites.
You make the statement that the web should be all about delivering the content but content can take many different forms. Such things as brand values can often be portrayed far more concisely and eloquently with good graphic design.
I have enourmous respect for many of his ideas but he seems to be hell bent on setting himself up in opposition to the design world rather than working with it.
As for his enourmously wide columns, they should have a maximum width. Saying that users should "customize their user agent" in order to render his pages easier to read is surely not what usability should be all about.
Jacob Nielsen is a clever man but also a stubborn idiot who lacks the capacity to take criticism but loves doling it out.
With one very important difference, on a phone the display is not separate from the input device so not only do you have no tactile feedback as previously mentioned but no (or at least no constantly visible) visual feedback. There may be ways to utilise this but not as a replacement keypad.
your point being...
60 mph head on collision = 120mph combined impact speed and you walked away with no injuries, don't think so.
Check Euro NCAP to read more about the relative safety of various cars. Cinquecento isn't listed but Seicento is and it looks like you picked probably the least safe small car to hit.
Zap are just the distributors/importers, there is only one plant making Smart cars. The Mercedes badged ones you see over here are the same cars but with Mercedes badges on. This is just marketing so that stupid people can brag about owning a Merc.
btw, name one car that would not make you rather ill after a 60mph head-on collision.
FYI, I've been driving one of these for almost two years and have heard many crash tales on forums etc and the real-world (okay anecdotal) conclusion would seem to be that they are about as safe as any other small car (safer than many), not accounting for the fact that most small cars are almost twice as big.
So to take this type of thinking to it's logical conclusion American roads will soon be filled with fully armored twelve tonne combat vehicles.
People on here are talking like American roads are vastly different to Eurpoean ones, this may come as a shock to you but if you were to drive down a motorway in England in a Hummer a great many of the other vehicles would be significantly larger and heavier, yes that's right we have trucks and coaches over here too. Another thing that would come as a shock would be just how much of an idiot you look.
Maybe we're just not so selfish and fearful that we would purchase a car specifically to plough through other cars in a collision.
I've been driving one of these for almost two years now and I'd have to say that it is the best car I've ever owned. Not since the original Mini (not that huge monstrosity by BMW) has a car been produced which seems to generate so much goodwill from fellow road users.
Many of the design elements are innovative but not in a non-essential luvvie kind of way (I'm thinking VW new Beetle here) rather it all just works.
In an age where automotive design is sometimes reduced to retro styling an existing model to make it look like a more intersting classic from a bygone era (again new mini and new beetle, sorry but I just hate these cars, they are the wheeled equivalent of stone clad houses or a cover version of a much loved song by some talentless teenaged boy band) it's refreshing to me to own a car where every element has been carefully considered from the ground up.
Anyway I'm obviously biased because I own one and I don't expect that they'll tempt you lot out of your SUVs just yet but you should really try one out before you write them off.
I'm sick of hearing about how similar the games industry is now to the early film industry. Films have never been driven by technology as much as games. Sure there were breakthroughs like colour, sound then the ability for people to watch movies in their homes. The medium's technology is still evolving too with digital projectors and home theatre etc, but you can still rent a movie on VHS and watch it on a set-up at home which is 20 years old without really missing much. I don't see games technology reaching a similar zenith anytime soon and this is where the analogy breaks down. I like consoles because you can just pick up a game, shove it in the machine and you know that you're going to get pretty much what the developer intended. Surely a development like XNA would reduce console gaming to the level of a lot of PC games where developers never really have to push the hardware they just wait till the horsepower's available to make their sloppy code run ok. Then you buy the game, it runs like a slideshow so you have to start upgrading. Come to think of it that's probably the whole idea.
Can't see MS taking this one lying down though and I'm sure Richard Granger probably knows this. He's already having to go back and ask for another 2billion on top of the 2.5billion already allocated to his programme. I'm sure that this is a play to get reduced licensing fees.