I quite agree. If I wanted to read the article I would - and did - so the dupe without a dupe comparison is apt. This is filler for a slow news day, or perhaps a new policy for/. editors to promote more discussion. But what's to discuss, it's all already been said in the previous thread for the article. Also slashback should only be used for things that are more controversial and have updates and corrections that need appending.
why exactly is anyone listening to anything that dvorak writes anymore. Any time his editorials appear on/. or digg I read out of curiosity and am always appalled by the backwardness and technological neandralathism of this guy. I think he long ago lost touch with the community he writes about.
chicken and egg or not, the amount of time it took for quark to update quark express to work with mac os x meant alot of designers I knew who needed to use it stayed with mac os 9, as balmy as that sounds, it's sometimes a case.
i'm not aware that i laid out a general principle by which you can base a companies success based on their modesty, or lack thereof. however I do remember saying that Nintendo don't over-hype their gear, and let the product do the talking.
Eventually, when it comes down to it people have to gauge the publics reaction somehow. I read a lot of gaming sites, and talk to a lot of people about gaming as it's a favourite subject of mine and my friends. It seems to be the general opinion that Sony has overstepped the mark regarding the PS3, whereas Nintendo have put a product on the table and said this is what it does. The publicity for the Wii has been for the most self generating as rabid fans jump on any and all info. Make what you will, but my opinion certainly isn't based on simply reading slashdot.
Also, there is a great disturbance in the force as regards to your final statement, that I might post based on what other posts are being modded one way or another. At it's heart the idea of moderation is a way of reaching consensus and saying "I agree with this statement, there is wisdom in it"(or indeed saying the opposite). If I *do* post based on other insightful posts, is that a crime? Or are you the final arbiter of what is Right and Wrong?
It seems unlikely that Van Gogh's painting style accidently approximated - with some accuracy - some kind of mathematical system. Even if it wasn't actually a conscious choice to paint turbulence then perhaps it was some instinctive understanding or recognition of how certain systems worked.
The bridge between science and art is that of conscious decision, science has always been about coming to some recognition about the world around us where we can say 'yes, I understand'. Art seems to be a recognition though that there are a great many processes that we do not understand, or cannot access consciously and so must recognise through the interpretation of the unconscious elements that emerge in different forms of art we create.
I think everyone who sat in their English classes reading Hamlet probably wondered whether Shakespeare was really asking such large questions, or had he just written a play to pay the bills and as per request by one of his sponsors?
However, if we think about how we make causal links between different thoughts we can plainly see that it is frequently a non-logical process. Four different people who see the same women walking a dog will be reminded of four different things, all very different. The logic of the association will not be apparent to each person if they compared it to the next, because it is based on personal experience and subconscious associations. We all have very different minds, and different ways of accessing them.
There perhaps is somewhere out there an excellent cave drawing describing the theory of general relativity, because on an unconscious level in that caveman's mind there is an understanding of the process. Perhaps it's just a fluke, we live in a universe large enough for chances like that to happen.
I guess it depends how cynical you are, and whether there is space for the possibility of amazement in your world.
heh I sense an ideological gap about this wide , but you go towards proving my point that depending on your viewpoint (programmer or artist) you will find different things annoying or good. A great many artists who aren't technically minded would love to be able to put their stuff up on the web, but are frustrated by how unintuitive making web pages is. That's of course where people like me come in, who bridge the gap between creativity and technical know how.
Also, this is a Surgeon statement "I'm both a computer user and professional programmer, so I consider you part of the problem, not part of the solution.;-)". By that I mean a statement of someone who has a massive knowledge of a subject who thinks that if you differ then it must be because you're just not looking at it the right way. If you are a programmer then do you deal with end user usability and interfaces? I hope not, because if you do then there will be a lot of average joe users trying to use your applications and feeling frustrated because you knew *you* were right and they just had to see it your way.
I use FF and have adblock with auto update rules, I miss out on about 99% of annoying flash/gif/advertising content on the web. However I happen to watch a lot of movies on youtube (which is on of the most popular [flash based] sites on the web) and google video. You can hardly ignore them. Nor can you ignore sites like flickr which have an extremely slick flash based interface. A great many sites have built their success on advanced use of flash.
Conversely a great number of/. readers are linux users and so flash haters. Not only because flash isn't very well supported on linux but because it's proprietary and that == bad to the majority of people here. I am more of the mindset of best tool for the job, and there are many occassions where flash as championed exciting, different websites. See it for what it is, a great tool that just doesn't suit your particular demographic unfortunately.
i think predominantly what I am seeing here is a programmers response to a problem, where as it would different if I asked a more artistic group like web designer/graphic designers and animators. different groups will appreciate different approaches. Not to say one is more valid than another, but I am predominantly a graphic designer/artist and I enjoy what can be done with flash.
that's a personal preference, but like i said most major sites have gotten over their love affair with flash and now use it in a practical way, rather than for as you say extremely impractical navigation systems and annoying animations. In a post web 2.0 world designers have learnt to not piss off the consumer, as they will happily walk away. there's no such thing as brand loyalty anymore.
I'm not sure how you can say the web is better without flash, to me that is an obviously false statement. Some of the most enterprising art projects I've seen on the web have been flash based. People have got over their first love affair with flash so it isn't being used in the vulgar way it used to be embedded into sites, and now has become an integral canvas for projects like youtube and google video.
I agree with you on this. People will buy PS3s because they bought the PS2. However the kind of stuff that we get concerned about in our tech orientated gossip and daily news sometimes filters through into the main media, stuff like the PS3 pricetag. I've heard a few of my non-techy friends mention the pricetag of the PS3, so it obviously got through to them. Also, I've found that in the last couple of years the average joe has become much more capable of picking up alternative news sources using the internet, to stay ahead of the hype and find out what is actually going on. I trust in peoples ability to make informed choices these days, we're just much smarter than we used to be when it comes to shopping. Yes I'm an optimist.
whether or not an individual or company (or Government!) has or does not have the right to be arrogant, this is usually the first step to a fall. I think people are beginning to become infuriated with Sony's attitude, I sure as hell would never consider getting a PS3, but that is beside the point.
Good salesmanship and business starts with respecting your customers, Sony's attitude suggests they see their customers as sheep incapable of saying No! even though the product placed before them is overpriced, overhyped and underwhelming.
Nintendo will be one of the winners of this next round of console wars, simply on the basis that they tend towards modesty and don't come off like such fucking jerks.
then it becomes a question of whether we can stop living the way we currently are. I personally don't see us in space in the next 100 years over, but find your drug addict analogy stretching it. What if the way we currently live is a necessity rather than a choice? People are extremely keen on the idea that there is "another way", that there must be an alternative to our current lifestyles, our energy greedy existence. Perhaps there isn't, perhaps it's a function of emergent complex life, that goes with the territory.
On the other hand, moving into space does not necessarily solve anything, but it gives us breathing space. Lets say that the drug addict decides to move to the countryside for a weekend. He rents a cottage in the middle of nowhere, gets dropped off by taxi. He spends the two days crawling up the walls in withdrawal, kissing Gods balls. While it's fucking dreadful, it gives him the space he needs to come to a realization about certain facets of his life as he has had space to do so. Sometimes finding a different space to look at a situation gives us a different outlook.
Going into space would definitely give us a different perspective as a race, and the chance to 'think different' might be exactly what we need to find a New Way to live. who knows... it's a massive question and don't feel equiped to say much more.
as with all open software, you have the chance to change this:) put on your artist hat and get your brushes in gear. If you are not of an artistic bent, then perhaps you could make some suggestions and constructive criticism of the project.
his reasons for changing have everything to do with his stance on DRM/Copyrights and little to do with Mac os x vs 'nix so using him as a figurehead for the Geek who said No! is a bit misleading.
if this was original, exciting and unexpected then it would be interesting. Also, credentials do matter. I'm not going to go to a tramp about my broken leg as readily as I would a doctor at a hospital. There are certain people who are qualified to talk about certain subjects, moreso than others. This doesn't preclude people from talking about a given thing, but I would trust a sociologists take on this more than a web designers.
If this *sociological* experiment had been carried out by qualified sociologists (I don't know that this guy isn't by the way, but the page says he is a web designer) then it might be worth giving a fig about, but all it seems to be is a poorly thought out project set up by an idealist, who is then surprised when human nature takes its course.
people fear what they don't know. Also, what credentials does this guy have beyond being a web designer. i.e., what gives him the guts to carry out an 'experiment' like that and quantitatively derive results from it from an authoritative sociological standpoint? This is practically a myspace joke.
hardly surprising considering the whole article reads like a paid for advertisement and actually goes into little/no detail about the manufacturing process.
i for one am in favour of breeding more sea predators as a program to increase dolphin predation, and also we need to start leaving cryptic aquatic rubics cube style puzzles around the ocean which dolphins can solve to be rewarded. truly we are gods.
no, i realize how well targeted advertising is these days, i just think that there are certain demographics that are much less likely to click on banner adverts. it also never entered my thoughts that these hypothetical adverts were scams, spam or porn.
As people slowly move towards syndicating everything its going to become increasingly hard to make revenue from click through advertising, I personally think banner advertising is going to be unsustainable as technology pushes forward; That's not to say that there won't be any more advertising, but that it's face will change.
I consider myself a pro-sumer (yes it's a horrible term), someone who can avoid the hard sell that we've laid down and taken up until recent years. More and more people are becoming informed buyers who no longer just consume what they are told to, they choose and learn and finally benefit from being proactive rather than inert.
One final note, in the end even though advertising banners on websites are not what most people would consider spam I do consider them to be so. The click through from banners is of course very small, but that doesn't matter on a global scale as that is still a healthy number of people mashing their mouses. However to me the idea of blanket advertising, i.e. seeing the same advert on 30 different websites, is incredibly invasive.
Simply put, there needs to be an opt-in white list for advertising. If you wish to receive advertising from 'selected' companies on the websites you go to then you can opt to see it. ok, ok that is probably the most idealistic and unrealistic thing I've ever said in my whole life, but I can dream!
Slashdot Mirror
Fear of Samuel L. Jackson may drive post-human evolution it seems then?
I quite agree. If I wanted to read the article I would - and did - so the dupe without a dupe comparison is apt. This is filler for a slow news day, or perhaps a new policy for /. editors to promote more discussion. But what's to discuss, it's all already been said in the previous thread for the article. Also slashback should only be used for things that are more controversial and have updates and corrections that need appending.
Sorry, I just thought I would correct your comment. "It's Job's fault for giving us ipods that can be stolen!"
why exactly is anyone listening to anything that dvorak writes anymore. Any time his editorials appear on /. or digg I read out of curiosity and am always appalled by the backwardness and technological neandralathism of this guy. I think he long ago lost touch with the community he writes about.
Whaaat? I was gonna vacation in Tokyo that August. Oh well, Fiji it is.
chicken and egg or not, the amount of time it took for quark to update quark express to work with mac os x meant alot of designers I knew who needed to use it stayed with mac os 9, as balmy as that sounds, it's sometimes a case.
i'm not aware that i laid out a general principle by which you can base a companies success based on their modesty, or lack thereof. however I do remember saying that Nintendo don't over-hype their gear, and let the product do the talking.
Eventually, when it comes down to it people have to gauge the publics reaction somehow. I read a lot of gaming sites, and talk to a lot of people about gaming as it's a favourite subject of mine and my friends. It seems to be the general opinion that Sony has overstepped the mark regarding the PS3, whereas Nintendo have put a product on the table and said this is what it does. The publicity for the Wii has been for the most self generating as rabid fans jump on any and all info. Make what you will, but my opinion certainly isn't based on simply reading slashdot.
Also, there is a great disturbance in the force as regards to your final statement, that I might post based on what other posts are being modded one way or another. At it's heart the idea of moderation is a way of reaching consensus and saying "I agree with this statement, there is wisdom in it"(or indeed saying the opposite). If I *do* post based on other insightful posts, is that a crime? Or are you the final arbiter of what is Right and Wrong?
It seems unlikely that Van Gogh's painting style accidently approximated - with some accuracy - some kind of mathematical system. Even if it wasn't actually a conscious choice to paint turbulence then perhaps it was some instinctive understanding or recognition of how certain systems worked.
The bridge between science and art is that of conscious decision, science has always been about coming to some recognition about the world around us where we can say 'yes, I understand'. Art seems to be a recognition though that there are a great many processes that we do not understand, or cannot access consciously and so must recognise through the interpretation of the unconscious elements that emerge in different forms of art we create.
I think everyone who sat in their English classes reading Hamlet probably wondered whether Shakespeare was really asking such large questions, or had he just written a play to pay the bills and as per request by one of his sponsors?
However, if we think about how we make causal links between different thoughts we can plainly see that it is frequently a non-logical process. Four different people who see the same women walking a dog will be reminded of four different things, all very different. The logic of the association will not be apparent to each person if they compared it to the next, because it is based on personal experience and subconscious associations. We all have very different minds, and different ways of accessing them.
There perhaps is somewhere out there an excellent cave drawing describing the theory of general relativity, because on an unconscious level in that caveman's mind there is an understanding of the process. Perhaps it's just a fluke, we live in a universe large enough for chances like that to happen.
I guess it depends how cynical you are, and whether there is space for the possibility of amazement in your world.
heh I sense an ideological gap about this wide , but you go towards proving my point that depending on your viewpoint (programmer or artist) you will find different things annoying or good. A great many artists who aren't technically minded would love to be able to put their stuff up on the web, but are frustrated by how unintuitive making web pages is. That's of course where people like me come in, who bridge the gap between creativity and technical know how.
;-)". By that I mean a statement of someone who has a massive knowledge of a subject who thinks that if you differ then it must be because you're just not looking at it the right way. If you are a programmer then do you deal with end user usability and interfaces? I hope not, because if you do then there will be a lot of average joe users trying to use your applications and feeling frustrated because you knew *you* were right and they just had to see it your way.
/. readers are linux users and so flash haters. Not only because flash isn't very well supported on linux but because it's proprietary and that == bad to the majority of people here. I am more of the mindset of best tool for the job, and there are many occassions where flash as championed exciting, different websites. See it for what it is, a great tool that just doesn't suit your particular demographic unfortunately.
Also, this is a Surgeon statement "I'm both a computer user and professional programmer, so I consider you part of the problem, not part of the solution.
I use FF and have adblock with auto update rules, I miss out on about 99% of annoying flash/gif/advertising content on the web. However I happen to watch a lot of movies on youtube (which is on of the most popular [flash based] sites on the web) and google video. You can hardly ignore them. Nor can you ignore sites like flickr which have an extremely slick flash based interface. A great many sites have built their success on advanced use of flash.
Conversely a great number of
i think predominantly what I am seeing here is a programmers response to a problem, where as it would different if I asked a more artistic group like web designer/graphic designers and animators. different groups will appreciate different approaches. Not to say one is more valid than another, but I am predominantly a graphic designer/artist and I enjoy what can be done with flash.
that's a personal preference, but like i said most major sites have gotten over their love affair with flash and now use it in a practical way, rather than for as you say extremely impractical navigation systems and annoying animations. In a post web 2.0 world designers have learnt to not piss off the consumer, as they will happily walk away. there's no such thing as brand loyalty anymore.
I'm not sure how you can say the web is better without flash, to me that is an obviously false statement. Some of the most enterprising art projects I've seen on the web have been flash based. People have got over their first love affair with flash so it isn't being used in the vulgar way it used to be embedded into sites, and now has become an integral canvas for projects like youtube and google video.
I agree with you on this. People will buy PS3s because they bought the PS2. However the kind of stuff that we get concerned about in our tech orientated gossip and daily news sometimes filters through into the main media, stuff like the PS3 pricetag. I've heard a few of my non-techy friends mention the pricetag of the PS3, so it obviously got through to them. Also, I've found that in the last couple of years the average joe has become much more capable of picking up alternative news sources using the internet, to stay ahead of the hype and find out what is actually going on. I trust in peoples ability to make informed choices these days, we're just much smarter than we used to be when it comes to shopping. Yes I'm an optimist.
whether or not an individual or company (or Government!) has or does not have the right to be arrogant, this is usually the first step to a fall. I think people are beginning to become infuriated with Sony's attitude, I sure as hell would never consider getting a PS3, but that is beside the point.
Good salesmanship and business starts with respecting your customers, Sony's attitude suggests they see their customers as sheep incapable of saying No! even though the product placed before them is overpriced, overhyped and underwhelming.
Nintendo will be one of the winners of this next round of console wars, simply on the basis that they tend towards modesty and don't come off like such fucking jerks.
then it becomes a question of whether we can stop living the way we currently are. I personally don't see us in space in the next 100 years over, but find your drug addict analogy stretching it. What if the way we currently live is a necessity rather than a choice? People are extremely keen on the idea that there is "another way", that there must be an alternative to our current lifestyles, our energy greedy existence. Perhaps there isn't, perhaps it's a function of emergent complex life, that goes with the territory.
On the other hand, moving into space does not necessarily solve anything, but it gives us breathing space. Lets say that the drug addict decides to move to the countryside for a weekend. He rents a cottage in the middle of nowhere, gets dropped off by taxi. He spends the two days crawling up the walls in withdrawal, kissing Gods balls. While it's fucking dreadful, it gives him the space he needs to come to a realization about certain facets of his life as he has had space to do so. Sometimes finding a different space to look at a situation gives us a different outlook.
Going into space would definitely give us a different perspective as a race, and the chance to 'think different' might be exactly what we need to find a New Way to live. who knows... it's a massive question and don't feel equiped to say much more.
sorry, are we talking about the elves from lord of the rings? I'm confused....
as with all open software, you have the chance to change this :) put on your artist hat and get your brushes in gear. If you are not of an artistic bent, then perhaps you could make some suggestions and constructive criticism of the project.
his reasons for changing have everything to do with his stance on DRM/Copyrights and little to do with Mac os x vs 'nix so using him as a figurehead for the Geek who said No! is a bit misleading.
if this was original, exciting and unexpected then it would be interesting. Also, credentials do matter. I'm not going to go to a tramp about my broken leg as readily as I would a doctor at a hospital. There are certain people who are qualified to talk about certain subjects, moreso than others. This doesn't preclude people from talking about a given thing, but I would trust a sociologists take on this more than a web designers.
If this *sociological* experiment had been carried out by qualified sociologists (I don't know that this guy isn't by the way, but the page says he is a web designer) then it might be worth giving a fig about, but all it seems to be is a poorly thought out project set up by an idealist, who is then surprised when human nature takes its course.
people fear what they don't know. Also, what credentials does this guy have beyond being a web designer. i.e., what gives him the guts to carry out an 'experiment' like that and quantitatively derive results from it from an authoritative sociological standpoint? This is practically a myspace joke.
gonna be told where to spend my computer cycles, just like i ain't gonna be told which charities I donate my time and money to.
"If they could do all this in 50 megs, imagine what they could do in more space."
stop calling it Damn Small Linux for one.
hardly surprising considering the whole article reads like a paid for advertisement and actually goes into little/no detail about the manufacturing process.
i for one am in favour of breeding more sea predators as a program to increase dolphin predation, and also we need to start leaving cryptic aquatic rubics cube style puzzles around the ocean which dolphins can solve to be rewarded. truly we are gods.
no, i realize how well targeted advertising is these days, i just think that there are certain demographics that are much less likely to click on banner adverts. it also never entered my thoughts that these hypothetical adverts were scams, spam or porn.
As people slowly move towards syndicating everything its going to become increasingly hard to make revenue from click through advertising, I personally think banner advertising is going to be unsustainable as technology pushes forward; That's not to say that there won't be any more advertising, but that it's face will change.
I consider myself a pro-sumer (yes it's a horrible term), someone who can avoid the hard sell that we've laid down and taken up until recent years. More and more people are becoming informed buyers who no longer just consume what they are told to, they choose and learn and finally benefit from being proactive rather than inert.
One final note, in the end even though advertising banners on websites are not what most people would consider spam I do consider them to be so. The click through from banners is of course very small, but that doesn't matter on a global scale as that is still a healthy number of people mashing their mouses. However to me the idea of blanket advertising, i.e. seeing the same advert on 30 different websites, is incredibly invasive.
Simply put, there needs to be an opt-in white list for advertising. If you wish to receive advertising from 'selected' companies on the websites you go to then you can opt to see it. ok, ok that is probably the most idealistic and unrealistic thing I've ever said in my whole life, but I can dream!