I wouldn't use it for a personal web site or anything, but for a small business who needs a basic DB-backed web site/service, it's quite a deal (especially if they are short on internal IT resources).
You wouldn't host your personal stuff on it, but you'd put business stuff there?
I should note though that Pixelmator is looking better to me all the time. Pixelmator is a shiny GUI on top of GIMP and works pretty well for my purposes.
I would add that Adobe products are turning into bloatware. From my perspective, the Adobe of today is not the same Adobe of five or ten years ago. Todays Adobe seems more interested in market share and up-selling rather then making products that work smoothly. In my tool box, Adobe's stuff is slowly getting replace by smaller, cheaper apps that only do a few things, but do them very well. Case in point, Dreamweaver. It's over 600 MB, costs $400, and installs a number of "features" that I don't want. Enter TextMate and CSS Edit. Less then a $100 for both of them and both do exactly what I want. It actually kind of bums me out. I used to really like Adobe products. I still use Photoshop
That a website promoting our fiscal recovery cost so much. As an American citizen and a professional web developer, I'd like to understand how this amount can possibly be justified. Did they build a data-center to house this site? I'll bet you that the web developers who actually built this site didn't take home the majority of that cash.
I disagree. Staging fake protests undermines the legitimacy of people who are actually concerned about an issue. Were the people who have been interrupting the town hall meetings around healthcare legitimate, or were they just paid for by the marketing departments of big pharma? Are big pharma marketers good marketers, who just scumbags who would take a buck regardless of the effect is has on our country?
Personally, I think you're confusing "notable" with clever.
Frankly, I fed up to here with the notion that "if it gets results, it must be okay." In the same way I don't buy from companies that send out spam, I've stopped spending my dollars on companies whose marketers do this kind of shit. EA, I can say I noticed you for all this.
bullshit.
If this has been your experience, you're doing it wrong. Nahdudes post was dead on -- relationships are about putting more into it then you might get back, and if both people approach it with that attitude, more people would have happier marriages. I've been married for 15 years, and my home life is terrific.
I'm not here to slag on Zed. He has a point, especially about developers using open source software.
Share the love, or more specifically, the credit and the cash.
I'm the primary developer for a middle sized web site, and we use drupal. I've made a point of making sure that we share our experiences with anyone who asks, helping out the Drupal association when I can, and most importantly: supporting the developers who make all this happen. Most Drupal developers tend to work for small companies and I've hired several of these companies to help us with various projects. They share their time, expertise, and insight, and we share the cash and the love.
In my experience so far, it has been a win-win.
This happened a few years ago with Mambo. The company that started Mambo alienated the development community and the developers all left and started Joomla. Today Joomla seems much more robust and viable then Mambo. Twiki.net has a poor road in front of it...
Surfing through the response here shows a lot of "this guy is behind the times" or "he just doesn't get it" comments. A few things:
Jakob and the people at the Nielson Norman Group are *giants* in the useability field. While he has his opinions, he tends to base his work off what *they actually see users do*, not what they say they do or like. He's also fairly clear about his preferences vs. what average people tend to prefer (HTML email is an example)
Jakob has a new book that follows on this last book, in which he re-evaluates his recommendations in his first book. Again, he makes his recommendations based upon what users do ( or have, when it comes to something like monitor resolution. ) The first chapter of his new book covers his methodology, and frankly, I doubt many people here have come anywhere close to doing the kind of user testing he's doing.
In his latest book, he makes no claim to cover every demographic and says so. If you are targeting kids or teenagers, his book is not necessarily for you. If you are targeting adults, you'll find plenty of good material.
That being said, I do think he leans towards the austere, but thats a perfectly valid stance to take (hello Google!), but he's not telling people how to design. He's telling people what his research is revealing and how we can avoid common pitfalls. I think more people here would do well to actually RTFB before commenting.
I'm not sure its fair to compare Nielson to Tufte. Tufte's book are beautiful and his thoughts are deep, but I suspect more people have Tuftes books then have actually read them. IMHO, Tufte is the academic, while Nielson is the practitioner. Nielson (who just published a follow up to his first book) writes for the masses, and bases his comments on actually watching people use websites. Over the years I've watched him change his recommendations based upon on his research, despite his preferences. HTML e-mail is a great example. He hates it, users love it, so he changed his recommendation. He still hates HTML email and freely admits it, but comes clean about what users want.
Just to be clear, Nielson does the research. Just surfing through the discussions here shows that not a lot of people get this. The principals of his company are all giants in the useability community. If you ever get the chance to hear him speak, do it. He doesn't potificate from on high, but rather he shares (usually for a price ) what his company has discovered in their hours and hours of ongoing user testing.
Is this really a troll? I read this as satire. I could swear that this was an early Slashdot comment about the iPod that got mocked pretty heavily after the fact.
This is the latest of several editorials written lately about Mac users being complacent about security. Regardless of the merits of the argument, this is sort of the "me too" editorial that seems to on the rise these days. It was interesting the first time I heard the theory, but spare me the copycats who do nothing to expand on the basic premise.
I can't quote the person directly, but I spoke with a person at the NSF who told me that the NSF has been rejecting proposals that do not contain a "balanced viewpoint", i.e. not enough content about "Intelligent Design," (which in my book still equals creationism ).
Ironically, the NSF has just informed Kansas they cannot use some NSF materials because of their approach to teaching evolution.
Science in this country is in big trouble because it has become even more politicized. Science and dogma do not mix well...
The product will be allowed to languish for years, squeezing every last drop of usefulness out of a once mighty product, compressor(ing) a once large user base on2 other software solutions.
dang if I can figure out how to work Divx into that sentence...;-)
I offer the argument that the business models of big software (MCSFT) and big media (RIAA) are ultimately doomed to failure unless they really take notice of the more creative and nimble members of their industries. Both groups have created products so successful that their buyers have fully adopted their products into their lives. By doing so, they have in effect turned their products into a "commons," a resource that the entire community demands access to and by trying to limit the consumers access to that product, the big companies either risk making outlaws of their customers, or driving them away to a competitor.
This isn't exactly what the Tragedy of the Commons (wikipedia) refers to, but the parallels are there. In this case, Operating systems and media distribution are the commons.
In relation to this story, MCSFT may have seen the light concerning the quality of their software, but they are still doomed to failure (I should have such failure!) because they cannot hold onto marketshare by suing their users.
Copy-protection and media format are really not that important to me. If I want it bad enough, I can find a way around either, but frankly there is so much media being created that it's much easier to just find something that does work on my Mac.
My spending money on your product is a privilige, not a right, and I will take my ball and go home if you don't offer me a product I want to buy.
The media world is changing, and while I'm sure the RIAA will squeeze some more cash out of their decaying system, there are plenty of media creators at there who are hungry for my cash and will create the products I want to consume at the price and format that I want.
Funny how that "free-market" argument can bite you in the ass...
considering the amount of toxic crap already in our landfills, do we really need to destroy a drive? How many of us actually have data that is worth retrieving off a drive that has already been wiped?
The "it doesn't cost much to just replace it" mentality is going to bite us in the ass eventually.
Wow, this has got to be a coup for SCO, considering what a pariah SCO has become with the open-source community. Even if SCO is offering buckets of cash to MySQL, this seems a really ill-advised decision by the MySQL people.
You are judged by the company you keep.
Frankly I'm not sure I'd hire someone with any certification offered by SCO, mainly because it shows that the person doesn't know very much about the open-source community, and why open-source is so important. Poachers like SCO must not be tolerated, and I for one will not support or endorse them in any way if I can help it.
If your product is full of holes, why not make a few more bucks by charging people to fix them? I think MCSFT is long past the point of caring (in any serious way) what their user base thinks of them.
On top of which, they can make it harder for Unix boxen to act as mail servers effectively, and hopefully moving a few more copies of exchange.
Its a great way to make money, and who needs friends when you can just buy new ones?
Like the Marriott that competed for building there? Regardless of whether or not you like Star Wars, George has a real sense of architecture. The new buildings are beautiful, and match the 100+ year old facility perfectly. And yet they are totally state of the art, and have many green features.
It could have been much worse.
Everytime someone mentions how George has "raped their childhood" by "exploiting" Star Wars, I'm reminded of an interview with Peanuts creator Charles Shultz.
Shultz was asked if he was concerned that the marketing of his Peanuts characters violated his "art." Schultz was shocked. "I draw Peanuts as a way to make my living" he replied. He was less concerned with "art" and more concerned with being a good businessman.
George isn't forcing people to buy his products or locking them into a system they can't easily extract themselves from (*cough* Bill Gates *cough*). If he's rereleasing movies in different formats, its because he knows theres a market for them. You want to show George you're mad at him? Don't buy his products.
As for me, I'm going to go play some Lego Star Wars with my kids, who throughly dig all things Star Wars, and whose childhoods are just fine, thank you.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't use it for a personal web site or anything, but for a small business who needs a basic DB-backed web site/service, it's quite a deal (especially if they are short on internal IT resources).
You wouldn't host your personal stuff on it, but you'd put business stuff there?
pie in the sky?
I should note though that Pixelmator is looking better to me all the time. Pixelmator is a shiny GUI on top of GIMP and works pretty well for my purposes.
I would add that Adobe products are turning into bloatware. From my perspective, the Adobe of today is not the same Adobe of five or ten years ago. Todays Adobe seems more interested in market share and up-selling rather then making products that work smoothly. In my tool box, Adobe's stuff is slowly getting replace by smaller, cheaper apps that only do a few things, but do them very well. Case in point, Dreamweaver. It's over 600 MB, costs $400, and installs a number of "features" that I don't want. Enter TextMate and CSS Edit. Less then a $100 for both of them and both do exactly what I want. It actually kind of bums me out. I used to really like Adobe products. I still use Photoshop
This stinks.
Perfect is the enemy of good... 'nuff said.
I disagree. Staging fake protests undermines the legitimacy of people who are actually concerned about an issue. Were the people who have been interrupting the town hall meetings around healthcare legitimate, or were they just paid for by the marketing departments of big pharma? Are big pharma marketers good marketers, who just scumbags who would take a buck regardless of the effect is has on our country?
Personally, I think you're confusing "notable" with clever.
Frankly, I fed up to here with the notion that "if it gets results, it must be okay." In the same way I don't buy from companies that send out spam, I've stopped spending my dollars on companies whose marketers do this kind of shit. EA, I can say I noticed you for all this.
and I think you suck....
bullshit. If this has been your experience, you're doing it wrong. Nahdudes post was dead on -- relationships are about putting more into it then you might get back, and if both people approach it with that attitude, more people would have happier marriages. I've been married for 15 years, and my home life is terrific.
I'm not here to slag on Zed. He has a point, especially about developers using open source software. Share the love, or more specifically, the credit and the cash. I'm the primary developer for a middle sized web site, and we use drupal. I've made a point of making sure that we share our experiences with anyone who asks, helping out the Drupal association when I can, and most importantly: supporting the developers who make all this happen. Most Drupal developers tend to work for small companies and I've hired several of these companies to help us with various projects. They share their time, expertise, and insight, and we share the cash and the love. In my experience so far, it has been a win-win.
This happened a few years ago with Mambo. The company that started Mambo alienated the development community and the developers all left and started Joomla. Today Joomla seems much more robust and viable then Mambo. Twiki.net has a poor road in front of it...
- Jakob and the people at the Nielson Norman Group are *giants* in the useability field. While he has his opinions, he tends to base his work off what *they actually see users do*, not what they say they do or like. He's also fairly clear about his preferences vs. what average people tend to prefer (HTML email is an example)
- Jakob has a new book that follows on this last book, in which he re-evaluates his recommendations in his first book. Again, he makes his recommendations based upon what users do ( or have, when it comes to something like monitor resolution. ) The first chapter of his new book covers his methodology, and frankly, I doubt many people here have come anywhere close to doing the kind of user testing he's doing.
- In his latest book, he makes no claim to cover every demographic and says so. If you are targeting kids or teenagers, his book is not necessarily for you. If you are targeting adults, you'll find plenty of good material.
That being said, I do think he leans towards the austere, but thats a perfectly valid stance to take (hello Google!), but he's not telling people how to design. He's telling people what his research is revealing and how we can avoid common pitfalls. I think more people here would do well to actually RTFB before commenting.I'm not sure its fair to compare Nielson to Tufte. Tufte's book are beautiful and his thoughts are deep, but I suspect more people have Tuftes books then have actually read them. IMHO, Tufte is the academic, while Nielson is the practitioner. Nielson (who just published a follow up to his first book) writes for the masses, and bases his comments on actually watching people use websites. Over the years I've watched him change his recommendations based upon on his research, despite his preferences. HTML e-mail is a great example. He hates it, users love it, so he changed his recommendation. He still hates HTML email and freely admits it, but comes clean about what users want. Just to be clear, Nielson does the research. Just surfing through the discussions here shows that not a lot of people get this. The principals of his company are all giants in the useability community. If you ever get the chance to hear him speak, do it. He doesn't potificate from on high, but rather he shares (usually for a price ) what his company has discovered in their hours and hours of ongoing user testing.
Is this really a troll? I read this as satire. I could swear that this was an early Slashdot comment about the iPod that got mocked pretty heavily after the fact.
This is the latest of several editorials written lately about Mac users being complacent about security. Regardless of the merits of the argument, this is sort of the "me too" editorial that seems to on the rise these days. It was interesting the first time I heard the theory, but spare me the copycats who do nothing to expand on the basic premise.
I can't quote the person directly, but I spoke with a person at the NSF who told me that the NSF has been rejecting proposals that do not contain a "balanced viewpoint", i.e. not enough content about "Intelligent Design," (which in my book still equals creationism ).
Ironically, the NSF has just informed Kansas they cannot use some NSF materials because of their approach to teaching evolution.
Science in this country is in big trouble because it has become even more politicized. Science and dogma do not mix well...
The product will be allowed to languish for years, squeezing every last drop of usefulness out of a once mighty product, compressor(ing) a once large user base on2 other software solutions.
;-)
dang if I can figure out how to work Divx into that sentence...
This isn't exactly what the Tragedy of the Commons (wikipedia) refers to, but the parallels are there. In this case, Operating systems and media distribution are the commons.
In relation to this story, MCSFT may have seen the light concerning the quality of their software, but they are still doomed to failure (I should have such failure!) because they cannot hold onto marketshare by suing their users.
Actually
My spending money on your product is a privilige, not a right, and I will take my ball and go home if you don't offer me a product I want to buy.
The media world is changing, and while I'm sure the RIAA will squeeze some more cash out of their decaying system, there are plenty of media creators at there who are hungry for my cash and will create the products I want to consume at the price and format that I want.
Funny how that "free-market" argument can bite you in the ass...
two words: RCA out. Fancy encryption can always be trumped by an a/v signal out into a recording device. It's not the fastest, but it works everytime.
Now graphics can corrupt my XP box, not just email! Thanks Microsoft!
considering the amount of toxic crap already in our landfills, do we really need to destroy a drive? How many of us actually have data that is worth retrieving off a drive that has already been wiped? The "it doesn't cost much to just replace it" mentality is going to bite us in the ass eventually.
Wow, this has got to be a coup for SCO, considering what a pariah SCO has become with the open-source community. Even if SCO is offering buckets of cash to MySQL, this seems a really ill-advised decision by the MySQL people.
You are judged by the company you keep.
Frankly I'm not sure I'd hire someone with any certification offered by SCO, mainly because it shows that the person doesn't know very much about the open-source community, and why open-source is so important. Poachers like SCO must not be tolerated, and I for one will not support or endorse them in any way if I can help it.
If your product is full of holes, why not make a few more bucks by charging people to fix them? I think MCSFT is long past the point of caring (in any serious way) what their user base thinks of them. On top of which, they can make it harder for Unix boxen to act as mail servers effectively, and hopefully moving a few more copies of exchange. Its a great way to make money, and who needs friends when you can just buy new ones?
Like the Marriott that competed for building there? Regardless of whether or not you like Star Wars, George has a real sense of architecture. The new buildings are beautiful, and match the 100+ year old facility perfectly. And yet they are totally state of the art, and have many green features. It could have been much worse.
Everytime someone mentions how George has "raped their childhood" by "exploiting" Star Wars, I'm reminded of an interview with Peanuts creator Charles Shultz.
Shultz was asked if he was concerned that the marketing of his Peanuts characters violated his "art." Schultz was shocked. "I draw Peanuts as a way to make my living" he replied. He was less concerned with "art" and more concerned with being a good businessman.
George isn't forcing people to buy his products or locking them into a system they can't easily extract themselves from (*cough* Bill Gates *cough*). If he's rereleasing movies in different formats, its because he knows theres a market for them. You want to show George you're mad at him? Don't buy his products.
As for me, I'm going to go play some Lego Star Wars with my kids, who throughly dig all things Star Wars, and whose childhoods are just fine, thank you.