Quark? For long document publishing? You're a loony.
Ventura is for publishing long documents: fifty to five thousand pages of content, in book format.
Quark is for laying out advertisements, brochures and other piddly documents. It simply doesn't support the functions needed to publish long, complicated documents. Not with any grace or ease, at any rate.
I think you'll find this link enlightening: [Comparison of Ventura, Framemaker, Pagemaker and Quark]. Though there's every chance that, having always done things the hard way, you won't realize that features like paragraph numbering, footnotes and page imposition are essential when creating long technical documents.
As for your assertion that Freehand and Illustrator are "first choice" products -- you're right: in the same way that Windows9x is the "first choice" in operating systems.
But that doesn't make them the *best*.
In terms of sheer functionality, the Corel products I listed are best-of-class or in the top two or three.
You can run with the crowd. That's apparently what you've chosen to do. You don't have to think... but you'll have to work harder, and you won't be able to do live up to your potential best.
Or you can use the best products to create the best work, with less work. You'll have to take the time to identify what software has the most functionality, and you'll have to go against the crowd. But at least you'll be able to be the best.
What makes me shake my head in wonderment is that so many people who will go up in arms about this embryo-selection deal, are also using the birth control pill.
A pill which operates, in part, by causing abortions. Every once in a while an egg *will* be released and it *will* be fertilized... but it *will* not find the uterus a receptive place because the Pill makes it difficult to implant, and it *will* be flushed out of the system when the woman has her period.
These hypocrites routinely abort their mistakes. They just don't realize it.
And even those that don't use the Pill are aborting: the chances are actually *against* a fertilized egg being able to implant successfully. That's why the no-protection sex results in pregnancy only eighty-five percent of the time.
Being a blastocyte is a bitch. Doesn't much matter if you're in a uterus or in a test tube: you stand a good chance of dying.
Ah, but in one case it's *nature* killing them off... in the other case, it's those evile mean nasty white-coated lab techs.
Strange, however, that they become wonderful caring saviours when they stop a cancer or repair a heart. It's nature that's evile and nasty when it's an adult body being killed off...
Pshaw, I say.
Let's allow selective abortion to about the age of thirteen. We all know that most kids are pretty beastly. [grin]
This is a little tongue-in-cheek... but maybe the reason MS threw money at Corel was to distract it.
You know Corel: always fascinated by the latest gegaw. Ooh, look at how sparkly Java is! Let's write our Office product in Java! Ooh, look at how sparkly Kylix is! Let's buy the company! Ooh, look at how sparkly Linux is! Let's port our apps to it!
And now... OOOOooh! Look how sparkly.NET is! Let's write our apps in C# and port our apps to it!
Corel, with it's attention-deficit disorder, could very well forget that they've got a Linux project on the go. D-oh!
Be generous this Christmas. Spend as little as ten bucks to help a third-world family.
http://catalog.heifer.org/index.cfm
These guys have phenomenally low administration overhead costs compared to the big-name charities. And they appear to not be evangelising/converting their recipients.
There are almost certainly people in your family/gift-giving circle who you don't trust to get you something you'll like, or who can't afford to get you something useful or fun.
Have them purchase a rabbit in your name. It'll make a world of difference.
Thanks. [And Taco, thanks especially to *you* if you can slip this into your WiReD article!]
Corel Office Suite Java ==> Microsoft Office Suite in C# (C-Sharp).
It'd work, if they disguise the appearance of the products. They have very similar functionality. The Corel products would need to lose some functions (ie. "Reveal Codes") and gain some bugs (ie. "Losing track of captions and buggering the numbering"), but with a MSOffice toolbar and paper clip "assistant," I'll betcha it'd slip by most people...
Er, no. As a technical writer, I have extensive experience in both products.
WordPerfect is better. It's easier (but different) to use, and it is *far* easier to accomplish many things in WP: indexing, page layout, cross-referencing.
But Word is the defacto standard. Not because it is a better product, but because it was better marketed.
It's now at the point where Word has such dominance that one can't get away from it. It's like white cheddar versus that godawful orange-dyed chedder. It's not impossible to find real cheddar, but it's damn difficult!
CorelDraw is *the best* vector graphics illustration program on the market. Illustrator notwithstanding.
Corel Ventura is *the best* long document publishing software available. Framemaker not withstanding.
Paradox is *the best* desktop-class database available. Access97 isn't even in the running, lousy piece of expletive-deleted.
Photopaint is *in the top two* bitmap graphics illustration/art/manipulation programs available, despite it's weird interface. Photoshop notwithstanding.
WordPerfect is *in the top two* word processing/simple page layout programs available. And it does a decent job of SGML/XML. Word2000 notwithstanding.
Quattro is *in the top two* spreadsheet programs available. Excel notwithstanding.
Corel has an incredible product line... and an INCREDIBLE inability to market it! Plus, they shoot themselves in the foot every few releases by releasing unusably buggy shite.
They're *so* close to being great... but *so* damn bad at it!
Hmmm. So if I read correctly, ".NET" is going to allow any language to run anywhere. Presumably through an API. Presumably through a Windows API. Corel has experience hacking the Windows API -- they've had to do it to get their apps to run on Windows, let alone their involvement with WINE.
And who's desperate enough to do MS's bidding on Windows API hacking? Certainly not the core WINE folk... but Corel is!
Isn't it deeply ironic that any number of industry and political folk are spewing on about how "harming Microsoft will destroy the economy!", while at the same time Rambus gets to beat the shit out of everyone involved in building some of the core hardware components?
Ya wanna see harm to the industry, see what happens when some asshole causes prices to double because they control key technology.
Oh... waittasec. With the exception of Micron, Rambus is hurting Asian companies. No wonder it's okay with the politicians.
Er... recent tests I've seen seem to indicate that PCI vidcards are an even match for AGP. On paper, AGP smokes PCI... but in real life, it seems to be a dud.
[Anandtech]: "The results are really no different at higher resolutions, with the PCI card falling only 1.2 FPS behind the AGP card when at 1600x1200x16. The max difference comes at 1280x1024x32, with the PCI card performing 2.3 FPS slower than the AGP card, a difference that may be attributed to the slower bus speed of the PCI card. This difference, however, is not really noticeable."
This is an Athlon 750 system; the bottleneck isn't the CPU, and apparently it isn't the bus.
What's most frightening is that the USA just signed a PNTR (preferred nation trade relations) agreement with China.
The government naively (or corruptly?) believes that this is going to open the Chinese market to American companies. How much better life is when you can sell American products to 1.3 *billion* people instead of a measely 275 million people!
Sad truth is, those 1.3 billion people are, for the most part, pretty damn destitute and willing to work for dirt-cheap wages. They can manufacture product one helluva lot cheaper than America.
Now, I dunno what the big-picture score is: are American companies so stupid as to be blind to the risk of being undercut by Chinese competition -- or are they crafty enough to recognize that it doesn't matter if it's an American or a Chinese grunting on the assembly line... as long as the corporate entity thrives and the executive-level management gets multi-million dollar bonuses each year (and, hey, that bonus is all the bigger if wages can be cut!)
Either way, the end result for the lower- and middle-class of America is that there's going to be a net job loss in the American market.
It's downright frightening, it is. America is headed for greater wealth-poverty disparity than it's ever seen. A lotta people gonna be wishing they had a box in a puddle in the middle of the road to live in.
And you high-tech boys? Just how you gonna survive it? There's plenty o' smart Chinese programmers.
As the Chinese curse goes: "May you live in interesting times."
Times a-gonna be interesting over the next decade...
Any chance you buggered with your wiring? I did (installing a new phone jack) and accidently cross-wired a pair (tied 'em down as red-green instead of green-red). Caused me a month of headache before I realized it... flipped 'em and have had no problems since!
I'm thinking that if you get lucky, you should probably haul ass off the couch a good hour and a half early. There ain't *NOTHIN* on TV that's better than sex!
Hell, take dessert to bed with you right after supper. The dishes will keep to the next day.:-)
In which case, Cliff will be promoted to ever-higher levels of management, until his level of incompetency is reached.
Someone below thinks the Peter Principal was a parody. Alas, he is wrong: while the book is caustically witty, it's also very sincere.
For a good followup, read the Peter Principal. Not only do people rise to their level of incompetency, they tend to build pyramids once there, to protect their sorry ass when their department is put on the chopping block...
The basic idea of the Peter Principle is that people rise to their level of incompetency.
Y'see, four years ago, Cliff was the best coder his employer had. His employer wanted to reward him.
So they made him the project lead. There was a bit of a pay increase, and there's certain prestige in being the project lead.
Well, Cliff is a darn good project lead. Not the best the company has ever had, but certainly toward the front of the pack. It's been four years, and it's time to reward him again.
So they'll make him management. Cliff won't be programming, but he'll get to review code and assign programming roles and stuff like that.
He'll be okay at it. He's an experienced programmer, so he'll be good at assigning roles. He's not very experienced at managing scheduling, but he'll be okay.
His next promotion will make him middle management. He'll never see code or coders again. He'll be organizing other people.
And he'll do terribly. It'll require skills that outside his expertise.
And that's where the promotions will stop. He'll have risen to his level of incompetency. His employer will have promoted him from his best expertise -- coding -- into a field where he's truly incapable -- middle-level managing.
The Peter Principal is such a refreshing and sensible way of accounting for the people in a company. They were, almost always, extremely good at something -- and so, as a reward, they were promoted until they weren't any good at something completely different.
The system is malicious. Instead of promoting Cliff, they should throw more money at him. He's a great coder -- so let him code!!
For anyone wanting to begin using a quality methodology in their programming, I make the following suggestions:
1) Read [Steve McConnell's] three books. It's a good start. What he writes is based on solid research, which he shares with you. His books aren't the complete answer to all problems, but reading them and using a bunch of the tools/methodologies he describes is a great way to begin doing things better.
2) Do a Google search on "Software Capability Maturity Model" and start researching. Eventually you'll come across the Software Engineering Institute, and their [summary of CMM], which is well worth reading.
3) Do a Google search on "Bell Canada Trillium" and start researching. The [Trillium model] is well-respected, and is based on ISO, CMM and other best practices. Where it differs is that it actually tells you what to do; the others tell you what you need.
4) Do as much as you can with the structures that are described, plan on how to do them all, and adapt them to your needs. Identify what works and what doesn't, and fix those things that don't.
Seventies artists who are still in the top-100 after thirty years: Eagles, Pink Floyd, Stones... all analogue artists.
Nineties digital artists who will be in the top-100 after thirty years: none.
Hmmm....
Seventies movies still in the top-100 thirty years later: GodFather, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now... all analogue.
Millenial digital movies still in the top-100 thirty years later: Hmmmm.
Digital doesn't equate to better. There's something to be said for blood, sweat and tears.
Ansel Adam's landscape photography was *worked* for: that man grunted his ass off with heavy equipment. And as a result, perhaps, he was a heck of a lot more careful, caring and dedicated to his work.
Maybe art has to be difficult to be lasting. Maybe not; I've no real idea.
I suspect what you say, re: low quality (ie. a true low resolution that's been upsampled to get the 1920x1080, MPEG2 compression and 24fps fixed framerate), is true.
Which I'm afraid leads me to just one conclusion: Lucus has given up on movie theatre experiences, and is targeting this for home DVD playback.
See, it *used* to be that movie-makers made movies with movie-screen dimensions and qualities in mind. That the movie would also be on video was just happy conincidence.
I suspect that in this case, the movie-maker (Lucas) is making the movie with NTSC television and DVD in mind. Seeing it on the big screen is just happy coincidence.
From what I understand, a number of directors now frame shots to be compatible with television format, to avoid letterboxing or pan-and-scan when the movie goes to video.
But this would be the first time a director has chosen the recording media to be compatible with tv, by sacrificing the quality of the big screen.
There's no hope for Hollywood. It ain't art, it ain't storytelling: it's just cash greed. Of course, what's new about that?
CorelDraw -- widely recognized as the best vector illustration application available. Beats Illustrator hands-down, both for ease-of-use and sheer functionality. Challenges Adobe Pagemaker in many areas.
Ventura Publisher -- the only professional-level long-document layout/publishing tool available for desktop-class machines. Adobe FrameMaker is a wanna-be, in comparison: it's adequate for smaller publications and independent contractors, but lacks the functionality required by high-end professionals. Quark doesn't even register on the scale.
WordPerfect -- regarded as one of the two best general-purpose wordprocessing applications (MSWord being the other). Has many strengths that Word lacks; has some weaknesses. Does deal moderately well with SGML; it's a viable alternative to XMetal for those that need more versatility than SoftQuad's product; high-end professionals are using ArborText's products.
PhotoPaint -- recognized as being as powerful (in many ways more powerful) than Adobe Photoshop, but generally presents a challenging interface to anyone who has become used to the Photoshop/Paintshop interface. Once you get over the UI hurdle, it's magic.
Paradox -- as powerful as any desktop-class database, and far better than the dog's breakfast that MS Access provides.
Quattro -- as powerful as any desktop-class spreadsheet. Not as many frills and thrills as MS Excel. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have math errors; Excel has had some primo botches in the past.
In the end, Corel has the world's best desktop-class software. Nothing comes close to Ventura and Draw; and it's neck-and-neck for the other products.
What Corel doesn't seem to have is a marketing plan, the common sense to not release buggy product on every odd release number, and respect.
Heck, I was muttering that as I tried to use the website. Could Sharkey's have less information per page?! My god, it's just painful to use that site -- and several of his competitor's sites.
It's not like they actually get paid for each page download, is it?
The webmasters of these hardware review sites would do themselves a favour if they tested their designs. I seriously doubt they're getting more click-throughs with this mini-page design. If they are, well, then, I'm just weird.
Last time I was at Anandtech, I was able to use a dropdown menu to leap to the concluding remarks. I loved that: cut to the chase; if it turns out I'm interested, I'll go back read the rest of the review.
When I come across a design like Sharkey is using, I tend to give up before I get to the end. I know that someone else will publish much the same information, or will convienently summarize it for me in a weblog.
I hate to volunteer this information, 'cause it'll probably just result in my handy loophole being stuffed, but you know what they say -- Information Wants to Be Free (But You Can Send Me $4.95!)
Perhaps it'll end in court, where its validity will finally be proven or disproven. Either way, the GPL will become stronger: if valid, by virtue of precedent; if invalid, by virtue of being rewritten to become stronger.
Shame it had to be Sun, though. I always expected some company with a history of backstabbing, money-grubbing bastardry to do it first. Microsoft, for instance.
--
Does the Patent Office Know?
on
The First Mouse
·
· Score: 3
IMPORTANT: if there is any information in that video that demonstrates prior art that can invalidate some of the more obnoxious existing patents -- ie. BT's hyperlinks patent, various idiotic web database patents, etc -- then it needs to be put to use!
One of the biggest problems with the high tech industry is that it's just *lousy* at keeping records of things.
Here we've got an actual video record. It's showing a whole bunch of stuff that only really started to come into use a couple decades later. Without it, it's difficult to overturn some of the patents. With it, it may be a breeze!
Everyone should be learning a lesson from this: keep detailed records on anything neat you do. It'll come in handy when someone else does it and then tries to make money from it, when the credit should be going to you.
Slashdot Mirror
Quark? For long document publishing? You're a loony.
Ventura is for publishing long documents: fifty to five thousand pages of content, in book format.
Quark is for laying out advertisements, brochures and other piddly documents. It simply doesn't support the functions needed to publish long, complicated documents. Not with any grace or ease, at any rate.
I think you'll find this link enlightening: [Comparison of Ventura, Framemaker, Pagemaker and Quark]. Though there's every chance that, having always done things the hard way, you won't realize that features like paragraph numbering, footnotes and page imposition are essential when creating long technical documents.
As for your assertion that Freehand and Illustrator are "first choice" products -- you're right: in the same way that Windows9x is the "first choice" in operating systems.
But that doesn't make them the *best*.
In terms of sheer functionality, the Corel products I listed are best-of-class or in the top two or three.
You can run with the crowd. That's apparently what you've chosen to do. You don't have to think... but you'll have to work harder, and you won't be able to do live up to your potential best.
Or you can use the best products to create the best work, with less work. You'll have to take the time to identify what software has the most functionality, and you'll have to go against the crowd. But at least you'll be able to be the best.
--
What makes me shake my head in wonderment is that so many people who will go up in arms about this embryo-selection deal, are also using the birth control pill.
A pill which operates, in part, by causing abortions. Every once in a while an egg *will* be released and it *will* be fertilized... but it *will* not find the uterus a receptive place because the Pill makes it difficult to implant, and it *will* be flushed out of the system when the woman has her period.
These hypocrites routinely abort their mistakes. They just don't realize it.
And even those that don't use the Pill are aborting: the chances are actually *against* a fertilized egg being able to implant successfully. That's why the no-protection sex results in pregnancy only eighty-five percent of the time.
Being a blastocyte is a bitch. Doesn't much matter if you're in a uterus or in a test tube: you stand a good chance of dying.
Ah, but in one case it's *nature* killing them off... in the other case, it's those evile mean nasty white-coated lab techs.
Strange, however, that they become wonderful caring saviours when they stop a cancer or repair a heart. It's nature that's evile and nasty when it's an adult body being killed off...
Pshaw, I say.
Let's allow selective abortion to about the age of thirteen. We all know that most kids are pretty beastly. [grin]
--
This is a little tongue-in-cheek... but maybe the reason MS threw money at Corel was to distract it.
.NET is! Let's write our apps in C# and port our apps to it!
You know Corel: always fascinated by the latest gegaw. Ooh, look at how sparkly Java is! Let's write our Office product in Java! Ooh, look at how sparkly Kylix is! Let's buy the company! Ooh, look at how sparkly Linux is! Let's port our apps to it!
And now... OOOOooh! Look how sparkly
Corel, with it's attention-deficit disorder, could very well forget that they've got a Linux project on the go. D-oh!
Like I said, slightly tongue-in-cheek...
--
Be generous this Christmas. Spend as little as ten bucks to help a third-world family.
http://catalog.heifer.org/index.cfm
These guys have phenomenally low administration overhead costs compared to the big-name charities. And they appear to not be evangelising/converting their recipients.
There are almost certainly people in your family/gift-giving circle who you don't trust to get you something you'll like, or who can't afford to get you something useful or fun.
Have them purchase a rabbit in your name. It'll make a world of difference.
Thanks. [And Taco, thanks especially to *you* if you can slip this into your WiReD article!]
--
Hmmmmmm.
Corel Office Suite Java ==> Microsoft Office Suite in C# (C-Sharp).
It'd work, if they disguise the appearance of the products. They have very similar functionality. The Corel products would need to lose some functions (ie. "Reveal Codes") and gain some bugs (ie. "Losing track of captions and buggering the numbering"), but with a MSOffice toolbar and paper clip "assistant," I'll betcha it'd slip by most people...
--
Er, no. As a technical writer, I have extensive experience in both products.
WordPerfect is better. It's easier (but different) to use, and it is *far* easier to accomplish many things in WP: indexing, page layout, cross-referencing.
But Word is the defacto standard. Not because it is a better product, but because it was better marketed.
It's now at the point where Word has such dominance that one can't get away from it. It's like white cheddar versus that godawful orange-dyed chedder. It's not impossible to find real cheddar, but it's damn difficult!
--
Er, no.
CorelDraw is *the best* vector graphics illustration program on the market. Illustrator notwithstanding.
Corel Ventura is *the best* long document publishing software available. Framemaker not withstanding.
Paradox is *the best* desktop-class database available. Access97 isn't even in the running, lousy piece of expletive-deleted.
Photopaint is *in the top two* bitmap graphics illustration/art/manipulation programs available, despite it's weird interface. Photoshop notwithstanding.
WordPerfect is *in the top two* word processing/simple page layout programs available. And it does a decent job of SGML/XML. Word2000 notwithstanding.
Quattro is *in the top two* spreadsheet programs available. Excel notwithstanding.
Corel has an incredible product line... and an INCREDIBLE inability to market it! Plus, they shoot themselves in the foot every few releases by releasing unusably buggy shite.
They're *so* close to being great... but *so* damn bad at it!
--
Hmmm. So if I read correctly, ".NET" is going to allow any language to run anywhere. Presumably through an API. Presumably through a Windows API. Corel has experience hacking the Windows API -- they've had to do it to get their apps to run on Windows, let alone their involvement with WINE.
And who's desperate enough to do MS's bidding on Windows API hacking? Certainly not the core WINE folk... but Corel is!
--
If you don't like the absurdly draconian drugs laws -- where you go to jail longer for having a joint than for murdering your mother -- then speak up!
(A) Vote for someone *OTHER* than Bush or Gore. Those two tired old aristocratic farts won't change the system. They're too afraid.
(B) Call your local federal representative. Give him hell. Let him know you're against the war against drugs.
(C) Encourage others to do the same.
The USA is rapidly losing all sorts of freedoms because people like you don't get off their sorry duffs and shout out their protest!
--
Isn't it deeply ironic that any number of industry and political folk are spewing on about how "harming Microsoft will destroy the economy!", while at the same time Rambus gets to beat the shit out of everyone involved in building some of the core hardware components?
Ya wanna see harm to the industry, see what happens when some asshole causes prices to double because they control key technology.
Oh... waittasec. With the exception of Micron, Rambus is hurting Asian companies. No wonder it's okay with the politicians.
--
Er... recent tests I've seen seem to indicate that PCI vidcards are an even match for AGP. On paper, AGP smokes PCI... but in real life, it seems to be a dud.
[Anandtech]: "The results are really no different at higher resolutions, with the PCI card falling only 1.2 FPS behind the AGP card when at 1600x1200x16. The max difference comes at 1280x1024x32, with the PCI card performing 2.3 FPS slower than the AGP card, a difference that may be attributed to the slower bus speed of the PCI card. This difference, however, is not really noticeable."
This is an Athlon 750 system; the bottleneck isn't the CPU, and apparently it isn't the bus.
--
What's most frightening is that the USA just signed a PNTR (preferred nation trade relations) agreement with China.
The government naively (or corruptly?) believes that this is going to open the Chinese market to American companies. How much better life is when you can sell American products to 1.3 *billion* people instead of a measely 275 million people!
Sad truth is, those 1.3 billion people are, for the most part, pretty damn destitute and willing to work for dirt-cheap wages. They can manufacture product one helluva lot cheaper than America.
Now, I dunno what the big-picture score is: are American companies so stupid as to be blind to the risk of being undercut by Chinese competition -- or are they crafty enough to recognize that it doesn't matter if it's an American or a Chinese grunting on the assembly line... as long as the corporate entity thrives and the executive-level management gets multi-million dollar bonuses each year (and, hey, that bonus is all the bigger if wages can be cut!)
Either way, the end result for the lower- and middle-class of America is that there's going to be a net job loss in the American market.
It's downright frightening, it is. America is headed for greater wealth-poverty disparity than it's ever seen. A lotta people gonna be wishing they had a box in a puddle in the middle of the road to live in.
And you high-tech boys? Just how you gonna survive it? There's plenty o' smart Chinese programmers.
As the Chinese curse goes: "May you live in interesting times."
Times a-gonna be interesting over the next decade...
--
Any chance you buggered with your wiring? I did (installing a new phone jack) and accidently cross-wired a pair (tied 'em down as red-green instead of green-red). Caused me a month of headache before I realized it... flipped 'em and have had no problems since!
--
I'm thinking that if you get lucky, you should probably haul ass off the couch a good hour and a half early. There ain't *NOTHIN* on TV that's better than sex!
:-)
Hell, take dessert to bed with you right after supper. The dishes will keep to the next day.
--
In which case, Cliff will be promoted to ever-higher levels of management, until his level of incompetency is reached.
Someone below thinks the Peter Principal was a parody. Alas, he is wrong: while the book is caustically witty, it's also very sincere.
For a good followup, read the Peter Principal. Not only do people rise to their level of incompetency, they tend to build pyramids once there, to protect their sorry ass when their department is put on the chopping block...
--
Could be the Peter Principle at work.
The basic idea of the Peter Principle is that people rise to their level of incompetency.
Y'see, four years ago, Cliff was the best coder his employer had. His employer wanted to reward him.
So they made him the project lead. There was a bit of a pay increase, and there's certain prestige in being the project lead.
Well, Cliff is a darn good project lead. Not the best the company has ever had, but certainly toward the front of the pack. It's been four years, and it's time to reward him again.
So they'll make him management. Cliff won't be programming, but he'll get to review code and assign programming roles and stuff like that.
He'll be okay at it. He's an experienced programmer, so he'll be good at assigning roles. He's not very experienced at managing scheduling, but he'll be okay.
His next promotion will make him middle management. He'll never see code or coders again. He'll be organizing other people.
And he'll do terribly. It'll require skills that outside his expertise.
And that's where the promotions will stop. He'll have risen to his level of incompetency. His employer will have promoted him from his best expertise -- coding -- into a field where he's truly incapable -- middle-level managing.
The Peter Principal is such a refreshing and sensible way of accounting for the people in a company. They were, almost always, extremely good at something -- and so, as a reward, they were promoted until they weren't any good at something completely different.
The system is malicious. Instead of promoting Cliff, they should throw more money at him. He's a great coder -- so let him code!!
--
For anyone wanting to begin using a quality methodology in their programming, I make the following suggestions:
1) Read [Steve McConnell's] three books. It's a good start. What he writes is based on solid research, which he shares with you. His books aren't the complete answer to all problems, but reading them and using a bunch of the tools/methodologies he describes is a great way to begin doing things better.
2) Do a Google search on "Software Capability Maturity Model" and start researching. Eventually you'll come across the Software Engineering Institute, and their [summary of CMM], which is well worth reading.
3) Do a Google search on "Bell Canada Trillium" and start researching. The [Trillium model] is well-respected, and is based on ISO, CMM and other best practices. Where it differs is that it actually tells you what to do; the others tell you what you need.
4) Do as much as you can with the structures that are described, plan on how to do them all, and adapt them to your needs. Identify what works and what doesn't, and fix those things that don't.
--
Seventies artists who are still in the top-100 after thirty years: Eagles, Pink Floyd, Stones... all analogue artists.
Nineties digital artists who will be in the top-100 after thirty years: none.
Hmmm....
Seventies movies still in the top-100 thirty years later: GodFather, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now... all analogue.
Millenial digital movies still in the top-100 thirty years later: Hmmmm.
Digital doesn't equate to better. There's something to be said for blood, sweat and tears.
Ansel Adam's landscape photography was *worked* for: that man grunted his ass off with heavy equipment. And as a result, perhaps, he was a heck of a lot more careful, caring and dedicated to his work.
Maybe art has to be difficult to be lasting. Maybe not; I've no real idea.
--
Hmmm.
I suspect what you say, re: low quality (ie. a true low resolution that's been upsampled to get the 1920x1080, MPEG2 compression and 24fps fixed framerate), is true.
Which I'm afraid leads me to just one conclusion: Lucus has given up on movie theatre experiences, and is targeting this for home DVD playback.
See, it *used* to be that movie-makers made movies with movie-screen dimensions and qualities in mind. That the movie would also be on video was just happy conincidence.
I suspect that in this case, the movie-maker (Lucas) is making the movie with NTSC television and DVD in mind. Seeing it on the big screen is just happy coincidence.
From what I understand, a number of directors now frame shots to be compatible with television format, to avoid letterboxing or pan-and-scan when the movie goes to video.
But this would be the first time a director has chosen the recording media to be compatible with tv, by sacrificing the quality of the big screen.
There's no hope for Hollywood. It ain't art, it ain't storytelling: it's just cash greed. Of course, what's new about that?
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CorelDraw -- widely recognized as the best vector illustration application available. Beats Illustrator hands-down, both for ease-of-use and sheer functionality. Challenges Adobe Pagemaker in many areas.
Ventura Publisher -- the only professional-level long-document layout/publishing tool available for desktop-class machines. Adobe FrameMaker is a wanna-be, in comparison: it's adequate for smaller publications and independent contractors, but lacks the functionality required by high-end professionals. Quark doesn't even register on the scale.
WordPerfect -- regarded as one of the two best general-purpose wordprocessing applications (MSWord being the other). Has many strengths that Word lacks; has some weaknesses. Does deal moderately well with SGML; it's a viable alternative to XMetal for those that need more versatility than SoftQuad's product; high-end professionals are using ArborText's products.
PhotoPaint -- recognized as being as powerful (in many ways more powerful) than Adobe Photoshop, but generally presents a challenging interface to anyone who has become used to the Photoshop/Paintshop interface. Once you get over the UI hurdle, it's magic.
Paradox -- as powerful as any desktop-class database, and far better than the dog's breakfast that MS Access provides.
Quattro -- as powerful as any desktop-class spreadsheet. Not as many frills and thrills as MS Excel. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have math errors; Excel has had some primo botches in the past.
In the end, Corel has the world's best desktop-class software. Nothing comes close to Ventura and Draw; and it's neck-and-neck for the other products.
What Corel doesn't seem to have is a marketing plan, the common sense to not release buggy product on every odd release number, and respect.
It's a crying shame.
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Heck, I was muttering that as I tried to use the website. Could Sharkey's have less information per page?! My god, it's just painful to use that site -- and several of his competitor's sites.
It's not like they actually get paid for each page download, is it?
The webmasters of these hardware review sites would do themselves a favour if they tested their designs. I seriously doubt they're getting more click-throughs with this mini-page design. If they are, well, then, I'm just weird.
Last time I was at Anandtech, I was able to use a dropdown menu to leap to the concluding remarks. I loved that: cut to the chase; if it turns out I'm interested, I'll go back read the rest of the review.
When I come across a design like Sharkey is using, I tend to give up before I get to the end. I know that someone else will publish much the same information, or will convienently summarize it for me in a weblog.
Sharkey, are we there yet?
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I hate to volunteer this information, 'cause it'll probably just result in my handy loophole being stuffed, but you know what they say -- Information Wants to Be Free (But You Can Send Me $4.95!)
g y/18BASI.html
http://partners.nytimes.com/2000/09/18/technolo
Note the use of "partners" in lieu of "www"...
[Kuro5hin is back! Yay!]
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Like "Commander Taco" of Slashdot, but with an "I"--and say the "ommander Taco" as "gen"--then add states.
They're like a standing wave: they describe why electrons fall into particular orbits. You can read about it at [The Rotten Foundations of 20th Century Physics].
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Perhaps it'll end in court, where its validity will finally be proven or disproven. Either way, the GPL will become stronger: if valid, by virtue of precedent; if invalid, by virtue of being rewritten to become stronger.
Shame it had to be Sun, though. I always expected some company with a history of backstabbing, money-grubbing bastardry to do it first. Microsoft, for instance.
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One of the biggest problems with the high tech industry is that it's just *lousy* at keeping records of things.
Here we've got an actual video record. It's showing a whole bunch of stuff that only really started to come into use a couple decades later. Without it, it's difficult to overturn some of the patents. With it, it may be a breeze!
Everyone should be learning a lesson from this: keep detailed records on anything neat you do. It'll come in handy when someone else does it and then tries to make money from it, when the credit should be going to you.
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