>> Reread the parent's post. HTML is not a programming language; it is a markup language. However, you still have to markup your document, kind of like how you would code a program (just without the variable setting, looping, etc.).
Ah! So HTML is just like a programming language, but without the logic constructs that instruct the computer to perform a task.
I wrote a document in word once, and clicked on all these buttons to set some parts in color and others in bold type. Word must be a programming language, then. My mom and my sister are programmers too, wow!
Perhaps this is the problem nowadays, that the standards for achievement have been eroded so low, or that there is a lack of basic understanding of tools and their application.
I remember, back in the very early 1990s. It seems like another age entirely now. Apparently the Ministry Of Information took hold of this and "corrected" the history, as I haven't been able to find any information on it, and it appears to me like *nobody* remembers these devices.
Another interesting thing is that, at around the same time these TVs were being advertised, the Phillips CD-Interactive device was being advertised as the new fangled way to access information. I was really considering purchasing one, but instead I decided to buy an Encyclopeadia Britannica. Shortly after I discovered the Internet. Information? Yeah, I've heard of it.
Plus I take issue with the following statement from the article:
>> Email has the unique qualities of being simple enough for beginners but configurable enough to accommodate advanced users. This is something every software vendor strives for, but rarely achieves. Fortunately for email software vendors, the simplicity is inherent to the medium, not the interface.
The simplicity and the configurability of "e-mail" is not inherent to the medium; it is precisely a function of the interface. E-mail has been around for decades, and so its interfaces have been polished and streamlined, and its protocols standardized, in a way that most collaboration software vendors seem unwilling to understand.
I remember a time when explaining e-mail to non-techie users was an ardous task, as many took the "Post-Office and Mail Carrier" analogy too literal, and thus wouldn't understand *why* they had to connect to the Internet to download their mail ("what do you mean I have to pick up my e-mail to put it in my inbox?"), or the fact that e-mail needed to be downloaded at all. Not only that, but configuring an e-mail client was a technical feat, including setting up host addresses, TCP ports, buffers, protocols, folders, etc. And what about filtering rules? Boolean evaluations and decision trees weren't too easy for the casual user, either.
But e-mail has been around for such a long time, and it is so ubiquitous that most software vendors have simplified their configuration and use.
Also keep in mind that most "features" of e-mail aren't features of the "system" at all, but added value offered by each mail software vendor. Return receipts, carbon copies, blind-carbon copies, address books, filter rules; none of these are inherent to "e-mail". Some of them have been around for so long and are so common, that they have been incorporated into most e-mail software applications. But the POP3 and SMTP protocols, the de facto universal "e-mail transport system", is very limited in its inherent feature-set.
I understood what the article said, I just do not agree that there is a cause and effect correlation based on the arguments given. There is also a very big difference between the "ugly" of an amateur and badly designed site, and the "ugly" of a minimalist site such as Google. Which brings me to the question, how does the author define ugly? Is it the lack of content or user interface flare, or is it a confusing and unappealing visual experience? Or is it just what doesn't conform to a specific, yet unmentioned, format?
There is certainly something to be said about embracing simplicity and engendering trust in your design, but I think that the reasons that, say, Google and Ebay are successful, have less to do with their visual design than with their effectiveness, stability and functionality. A little luck and a historical accident never hurt either.
That is not to say that visual design did not play a part; just a smaller one. I suspect that Plenty Of Fish's reason for making so much money are also not so much based on its "uglyness" than on what it has to offer, or perhaps on the way the owner effectively employs the AdSense program, or manages its resources.
I just do not agree that "ugly sells" by its nature, and I don't buy the article's argument about inherent "trust" for amateur-looking sites; users tend to distrust unattractive things, be it a restaurant, store, person, or web site, and even pay more money for the pretty and nifty "brand name" stuff.
After reading the article, I have to say that there was nothing in it that convinces me of its argument. Its assertion that ugliness conveys trust, which later on is used as the basis for this rationale, is spurious at best. And the author seems to be aware of this, as indeed he states at the conclusion that "Its Not Necessarily Ugliness That Sells", but that we should keep in mind not only the visual but the usability aspects of web sites when designing them.
>> The genes themselves are not owned. A "product of nature" - a naturally occurring substance discovered in the wild - may not be patented per se.
From the USPTO site: any person who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent...
Simplified for our purposes to:...any person who invents or discovers any new... composition of matter... may obtain a patent...
So, it appears that the discovery of a previously unknown gene, a chemical compound, and therefore a new composition of matter, is patentable.
I agree with you that this is absurd, and should not be so, but the current statutes of what is patentable are too broad.
>> I think there is something to see here. Why doesn't MS port their non-OS apps to.Net? MS wants their customers to always port software to the latest and greatest MS language/environment of the year, so why doesn't MS do the same?
Perhaps for the same reasons why they don't push VB as the development platform for *every* Windows application developer: It has its purpose and its place in the development tools universe, but I cannot imagine MS asking game developers and system tools developers to switch to, say, VB.NET from VisualC++, just because it is their new fangled thang.
That said, I do agree that it seems like Microsoft is not "eating its own dog food", yet I fail to see this particular argument as proof of it.
The artcile contains an "Edit" note at the end saying that the "per tab" claim was inaccurate, and that the cache is global, per session. So this is not a big issue.
Its a non-issue. As explained on a note at the end of the article, its a per session setting, not per tab, so the entire article misrepresented the "feature".
"Edit: In the comments, Boris and David pointed out that I misread the code, and that this is a global preference so that there are no more than 8 cached pages for the entire session, not per tab. My initial posting had claimed that it was per-tab. Oops!"
If Firefox has memory leaks (and I think it does), this is not what is causing it. If it were, however, per tab, as the article originally claimed, then it would have been a problem, because the more tabs you open, the memory usage increases at an alarming rate, if it has to keep up to 8 history pages cached.
My first computer was the "Computer Module" attachment to the IntelliVision game console. I spent hours, and sometimes even days at a time, tinkering on it with its pretty much useless version of BASIC, with almost no access at all to its game API. But boy, was I into it.
Luckily, some time later, my parents bought me my first Commodore 64 (first of many, as I kept burning them out!) That I consider my very first computer, as I actually learned to program on it, and did some real fun stuff. I hacked away on that li'l machine for days at a time, and used it for so much more than just playing games (though, I played my fair share of games!) I even ran a local, single-line, BBS on it, like many other Commodore enthusiasts of the time.
>> One thing the intel community does is collect information from traditional news sources both foreign and domestic. There is a lot of useful information in the press. It sounds like they've merely extended that to web-based information sources.
Sure, 'cuzz everybody knows that the web is full of useful information. Perhaps they'll start by spidering Wikipedia!
There was a 5 second delay on the broadcast of the game, so if a wardwrobe malfunction occured at precisely the same time the terrorists attack the Super Bowl, nobody would have seen it, and the purpose of the attack might have been thwarted!
Lesson to be learned: let the boobs fly, ya know, for national security.
>>... Joe Lunatic with his suitcase dirty bomb will blow himself and 100 people up, contaminating the entire city while Homeland Security jerks off with its new 3D scanner at the Superbowl.. thus proving that all this heightened 'security' is a joke.
Awww, man! You just gave away the plot to the 5th season of "24", and I was watching it! jeeeez, thanks a lot!
And what about our very own, home-grown, non-muslim, American-born terrorists? We seem to have plenty of those: The Unabomber, the anthrax mail guy, those kids in Columbine, and every one of those disgruntled freaks who grab a shotgun or machine gun and start killing random people at their local fast-food restaurant or post office?
And you are still missing the point: It is *not* complying with "Google Rules", these are common sense, ethical, and logical "rules", or guidelines, that have been in place since the first web indexes and search engines started.
Every time that someone builds a web site with search engines as their focus, instead of humans, they are trying to artificially -- if inadvertently -- "game" the system. Sure, search engines need to be considered, as they have technical limitations and idiosyncracies, but adding "features" to your site purely for the sake of search engines (other than those commonly accepted crawler guides, such as robots.txt files or META tags) is wrong -- whether its a "Google Rule" or not. The truth is that if your site is relevant, and well designed, and interesting -- to your visitors, i.e. humans -- it will most likely be for search engines too; after all, they have an interest vested upon connecting search engine users with genuinely relevant content, to prevent desertion. All those self-proclaimed "experts" on search engine optimization that try to over-analyse the latest page-rank algorithms to try to compensate for low rankings, will always fighting a losing battle, as the search engines will continue to try to prevent such abuses. And they are abuses, make no mistake.
>> Have you ever wondered why a simple text editor on Linux can use dozens of megabytes of memory?
Correct me if I'm wrong but... doesn't the fact that KEdit uses a lot of libraries that consume resources and impact system performance -- whether shared or not -- still means that it is a hog? I mean, if a seemingly simple application is consuming "dozens of megabytes of memory", saying "oh, it's OK, because most of it is being shared and already commited", does not really excuse it. What if those libraries are not currently being used by any other process?
In order for the shared memory to lessen the impact on the system, the user must be running some other processes that share the same libraries. This to me is a *BIG*, and unwarranted, assumption by the developer, as evidenced by his example of someone running the Gnome environment but running a single KDE application.
>> Your argument is strictly about fraudsters, but this was not a case of fraud from what I understand. It was simply a case of their site not being search engine friendly, and trying to improve their rank because they didn't design their site in such a way as to comply with googles commandments.
You are missing the point. I'm sure BMW Germany didn't do this with the intent to defraud, but ignorance is not an excuse to violate policies.
Google's intention -- and I hope or wish the same from other search engines -- is to rank its index by each site's *natural* relevance to a specific topic, theme, or keyword. And the best way, at least with our currently available technology, to assess relevance is by analysing context in as close a way as humans do. After all, *humans* are the ones who ultimately will decide if what they found in search engines results is what they were looking for.
This has always been the goal of every search engine or web index: to discern relevance from context as humans do, so that humans in turn can find the appropriate content when searching for it.
Now, there is a special technical limitation to this, and it is that machine analysis of content is currently limited to mostly textual materal, that is, it is virtually impossible, or at least impractical, for a computer to assess context from image, video, or any audio or visual data -- in a way that will match the way humans do.
So you have various choices when designing your site:
A. You can make it purely textual, so that humans as well as machines can read it. Fully search-engine friendly, but we both will agree that this is not too interesting for the average consumer.
B. You can make it purely multi-media, with videos, images, animation, etc. for it to be more exciting and attractive to your visitors, but alienating search engines, and possibly sacrificing substance.
C. Make a hybrid of "A" and "B", so that it's enticing and interesting for your visitors, yet contains enough textual content for them -- and for machines -- to understand your product or service.
Most organizations choose "C", understanding that a purely sensorial experience for their visitors might be interesting and exciting, but might lack the substance that will turn them into believers of your service or product. BMW Germany decided to go with "B", and artificially add "A" for the benefit of search engines.
This not only violates most search engines' policies, but it makes the relevance of your site suspect -- to machines -- since they cannot correlate the content within the "hidden" search-engine-friendly pages and the "real" content offered to humans. Innocently or not, they attempted to "game" the system, and lost.
So Google is not dictating how you should design your site, being included in search engine results is not a god-given right, and you can certainly ignore them. But if you want your sites found by customers who use search engines -- the de facto "yellow pages" of the Internet -- you should make sure that you follow long established and well accepted standards of content and design.
Slashdot Mirror
>> Reread the parent's post. HTML is not a programming language; it is a markup language. However, you still have to markup your document, kind of like how you would code a program (just without the variable setting, looping, etc.).
Ah! So HTML is just like a programming language, but without the logic constructs that instruct the computer to perform a task.
I wrote a document in word once, and clicked on all these buttons to set some parts in color and others in bold type. Word must be a programming language, then. My mom and my sister are programmers too, wow!
Perhaps this is the problem nowadays, that the standards for achievement have been eroded so low, or that there is a lack of basic understanding of tools and their application.
dZ.
Maybe its pronounced "why" as in Hawaii, as in "Nintendo... Why?"
-dZ.
I remember, back in the very early 1990s. It seems like another age entirely now. Apparently the Ministry Of Information took hold of this and "corrected" the history, as I haven't been able to find any information on it, and it appears to me like *nobody* remembers these devices.
Another interesting thing is that, at around the same time these TVs were being advertised, the Phillips CD-Interactive device was being advertised as the new fangled way to access information. I was really considering purchasing one, but instead I decided to buy an Encyclopeadia Britannica. Shortly after I discovered the Internet. Information? Yeah, I've heard of it.
-dZ.
Plus I take issue with the following statement from the article:
>> Email has the unique qualities of being simple enough for beginners but configurable enough to accommodate advanced users. This is something every software vendor strives for, but rarely achieves. Fortunately for email software vendors, the simplicity is inherent to the medium, not the interface.
The simplicity and the configurability of "e-mail" is not inherent to the medium; it is precisely a function of the interface. E-mail has been around for decades, and so its interfaces have been polished and streamlined, and its protocols standardized, in a way that most collaboration software vendors seem unwilling to understand.
I remember a time when explaining e-mail to non-techie users was an ardous task, as many took the "Post-Office and Mail Carrier" analogy too literal, and thus wouldn't understand *why* they had to connect to the Internet to download their mail ("what do you mean I have to pick up my e-mail to put it in my inbox?"), or the fact that e-mail needed to be downloaded at all. Not only that, but configuring an e-mail client was a technical feat, including setting up host addresses, TCP ports, buffers, protocols, folders, etc. And what about filtering rules? Boolean evaluations and decision trees weren't too easy for the casual user, either.
But e-mail has been around for such a long time, and it is so ubiquitous that most software vendors have simplified their configuration and use.
Also keep in mind that most "features" of e-mail aren't features of the "system" at all, but added value offered by each mail software vendor. Return receipts, carbon copies, blind-carbon copies, address books, filter rules; none of these are inherent to "e-mail". Some of them have been around for so long and are so common, that they have been incorporated into most e-mail software applications. But the POP3 and SMTP protocols, the de facto universal "e-mail transport system", is very limited in its inherent feature-set.
-dZ.
I understood what the article said, I just do not agree that there is a cause and effect correlation based on the arguments given. There is also a very big difference between the "ugly" of an amateur and badly designed site, and the "ugly" of a minimalist site such as Google. Which brings me to the question, how does the author define ugly? Is it the lack of content or user interface flare, or is it a confusing and unappealing visual experience? Or is it just what doesn't conform to a specific, yet unmentioned, format?
There is certainly something to be said about embracing simplicity and engendering trust in your design, but I think that the reasons that, say, Google and Ebay are successful, have less to do with their visual design than with their effectiveness, stability and functionality. A little luck and a historical accident never hurt either.
That is not to say that visual design did not play a part; just a smaller one. I suspect that Plenty Of Fish's reason for making so much money are also not so much based on its "uglyness" than on what it has to offer, or perhaps on the way the owner effectively employs the AdSense program, or manages its resources.
I just do not agree that "ugly sells" by its nature, and I don't buy the article's argument about inherent "trust" for amateur-looking sites; users tend to distrust unattractive things, be it a restaurant, store, person, or web site, and even pay more money for the pretty and nifty "brand name" stuff.
-dZ.
After reading the article, I have to say that there was nothing in it that convinces me of its argument. Its assertion that ugliness conveys trust, which later on is used as the basis for this rationale, is spurious at best. And the author seems to be aware of this, as indeed he states at the conclusion that "Its Not Necessarily Ugliness That Sells", but that we should keep in mind not only the visual but the usability aspects of web sites when designing them.
So in short, it offers nothing new.
-dZ.
>> The genes themselves are not owned. A "product of nature" - a naturally occurring substance discovered in the wild - may not be patented per se.
...any person who invents or discovers any new ... composition of matter ... may obtain a patent...
From the USPTO site:
any person who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent...
Simplified for our purposes to:
So, it appears that the discovery of a previously unknown gene, a chemical compound, and therefore a new composition of matter, is patentable.
I agree with you that this is absurd, and should not be so, but the current statutes of what is patentable are too broad.
-dZ.
>> I think there is something to see here. Why doesn't MS port their non-OS apps to .Net? MS wants their customers to always port software to the latest and greatest MS language/environment of the year, so why doesn't MS do the same?
Perhaps for the same reasons why they don't push VB as the development platform for *every* Windows application developer: It has its purpose and its place in the development tools universe, but I cannot imagine MS asking game developers and system tools developers to switch to, say, VB.NET from VisualC++, just because it is their new fangled thang.
That said, I do agree that it seems like Microsoft is not "eating its own dog food", yet I fail to see this particular argument as proof of it.
-dZ.
>> What if thinking leads to communism and failure.
Then successful stupidity leads to democracy.
-dZ.
>> just as we will never live on the moon, drive flying cars or have robotic teachers at our children's schools.
Phew! You didn't mention jet packs, that's a good thing! (I'm stilll crossing my fingers on that one...)
-dZ.
The artcile contains an "Edit" note at the end saying that the "per tab" claim was inaccurate, and that the cache is global, per session. So this is not a big issue.
-dZ.
>> Why does Opera do the same thing faster without the memory penalties?
Magic!
-dZ.
Its a non-issue. As explained on a note at the end of the article, its a per session setting, not per tab, so the entire article misrepresented the "feature".
"Edit: In the comments, Boris and David pointed out that I misread the code, and that this is a global preference so that there are no more than 8 cached pages for the entire session, not per tab. My initial posting had claimed that it was per-tab. Oops!"
If Firefox has memory leaks (and I think it does), this is not what is causing it. If it were, however, per tab, as the article originally claimed, then it would have been a problem, because the more tabs you open, the memory usage increases at an alarming rate, if it has to keep up to 8 history pages cached.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
-dZ.
My first computer was the "Computer Module" attachment to the IntelliVision game console. I spent hours, and sometimes even days at a time, tinkering on it with its pretty much useless version of BASIC, with almost no access at all to its game API. But boy, was I into it.
Luckily, some time later, my parents bought me my first Commodore 64 (first of many, as I kept burning them out!) That I consider my very first computer, as I actually learned to program on it, and did some real fun stuff. I hacked away on that li'l machine for days at a time, and used it for so much more than just playing games (though, I played my fair share of games!) I even ran a local, single-line, BBS on it, like many other Commodore enthusiasts of the time.
Ah, the memories...
-dZ.
According to the article, they (at least sometimes) wear ther #FFFFFF coats, presumably over their #000000 clothes, which would make them #080808.
Funny, I don't see anybody laughing at me when I go to the store to buy a CD or DVD, now. (the stoner kids hanging out at the mall don't count!)
-dZ.
>> One thing the intel community does is collect information from traditional news sources both foreign and domestic. There is a lot of useful information in the press. It sounds like they've merely extended that to web-based information sources.
Sure, 'cuzz everybody knows that the web is full of useful information. Perhaps they'll start by spidering Wikipedia!
-dZ.
There was a 5 second delay on the broadcast of the game, so if a wardwrobe malfunction occured at precisely the same time the terrorists attack the Super Bowl, nobody would have seen it, and the purpose of the attack might have been thwarted!
Lesson to be learned: let the boobs fly, ya know, for national security.
-dZ.
>> ... Joe Lunatic with his suitcase dirty bomb will blow himself and 100 people up, contaminating the entire city while Homeland Security jerks off with its new 3D scanner at the Superbowl.. thus proving that all this heightened 'security' is a joke.
Awww, man! You just gave away the plot to the 5th season of "24", and I was watching it! jeeeez, thanks a lot!
-dZ.
And what about our very own, home-grown, non-muslim, American-born terrorists? We seem to have plenty of those: The Unabomber, the anthrax mail guy, those kids in Columbine, and every one of those disgruntled freaks who grab a shotgun or machine gun and start killing random people at their local fast-food restaurant or post office?
-dZ.
Stop yer whining, kid.
-dz.
Quick! Someone come up with a nazi reference so that we can end this debate ahead of schedule!
-dZ.
And you are still missing the point: It is *not* complying with "Google Rules", these are common sense, ethical, and logical "rules", or guidelines, that have been in place since the first web indexes and search engines started.
Every time that someone builds a web site with search engines as their focus, instead of humans, they are trying to artificially -- if inadvertently -- "game" the system. Sure, search engines need to be considered, as they have technical limitations and idiosyncracies, but adding "features" to your site purely for the sake of search engines (other than those commonly accepted crawler guides, such as robots.txt files or META tags) is wrong -- whether its a "Google Rule" or not. The truth is that if your site is relevant, and well designed, and interesting -- to your visitors, i.e. humans -- it will most likely be for search engines too; after all, they have an interest vested upon connecting search engine users with genuinely relevant content, to prevent desertion. All those self-proclaimed "experts" on search engine optimization that try to over-analyse the latest page-rank algorithms to try to compensate for low rankings, will always fighting a losing battle, as the search engines will continue to try to prevent such abuses. And they are abuses, make no mistake.
-dZ.
>> Have you ever wondered why a simple text editor on Linux can use dozens of megabytes of memory?
Correct me if I'm wrong but... doesn't the fact that KEdit uses a lot of libraries that consume resources and impact system performance -- whether shared or not -- still means that it is a hog? I mean, if a seemingly simple application is consuming "dozens of megabytes of memory", saying "oh, it's OK, because most of it is being shared and already commited", does not really excuse it. What if those libraries are not currently being used by any other process?
In order for the shared memory to lessen the impact on the system, the user must be running some other processes that share the same libraries. This to me is a *BIG*, and unwarranted, assumption by the developer, as evidenced by his example of someone running the Gnome environment but running a single KDE application.
-dZ.
>> Your argument is strictly about fraudsters, but this was not a case of fraud from what I understand. It was simply a case of their site not being search engine friendly, and trying to improve their rank because they didn't design their site in such a way as to comply with googles commandments.
You are missing the point. I'm sure BMW Germany didn't do this with the intent to defraud, but ignorance is not an excuse to violate policies.
Google's intention -- and I hope or wish the same from other search engines -- is to rank its index by each site's *natural* relevance to a specific topic, theme, or keyword. And the best way, at least with our currently available technology, to assess relevance is by analysing context in as close a way as humans do. After all, *humans* are the ones who ultimately will decide if what they found in search engines results is what they were looking for.
This has always been the goal of every search engine or web index: to discern relevance from context as humans do, so that humans in turn can find the appropriate content when searching for it.
Now, there is a special technical limitation to this, and it is that machine analysis of content is currently limited to mostly textual materal, that is, it is virtually impossible, or at least impractical, for a computer to assess context from image, video, or any audio or visual data -- in a way that will match the way humans do.
So you have various choices when designing your site:
A. You can make it purely textual, so that humans as well as machines can read it. Fully search-engine friendly, but we both will agree that this is not too interesting for the average consumer.
B. You can make it purely multi-media, with videos, images, animation, etc. for it to be more exciting and attractive to your visitors, but alienating search engines, and possibly sacrificing substance.
C. Make a hybrid of "A" and "B", so that it's enticing and interesting for your visitors, yet contains enough textual content for them -- and for machines -- to understand your product or service.
Most organizations choose "C", understanding that a purely sensorial experience for their visitors might be interesting and exciting, but might lack the substance that will turn them into believers of your service or product. BMW Germany decided to go with "B", and artificially add "A" for the benefit of search engines.
This not only violates most search engines' policies, but it makes the relevance of your site suspect -- to machines -- since they cannot correlate the content within the "hidden" search-engine-friendly pages and the "real" content offered to humans. Innocently or not, they attempted to "game" the system, and lost.
So Google is not dictating how you should design your site, being included in search engine results is not a god-given right, and you can certainly ignore them. But if you want your sites found by customers who use search engines -- the de facto "yellow pages" of the Internet -- you should make sure that you follow long established and well accepted standards of content and design.
-dZ.