I fully agree with everything you've said. The US branch of my company switched from Exchange to Notes when we merged witht he European network. And Notes has been completely asstarded. Client side it has a huge memory foot print, it's damn near impossible to customize, and just recently we discovered a really nasty security issue with it (lotus script in emails FTL). Server side, well, it's called Domino for a reason. If one server dies, they all fall down.
If they can't afford to make it commercially viable on their own, they shouldn't look to do it on the taxpayer dime.
Exactly! Just like how us city dwellers shouldn't be forced to offset the cost of Power, Gas, Sewage, Trash disposal, Phone, Emergency Response, or any other public services to people in lower density areas.
Honestly, if the power company can't turn a profit off of them, maybe they should just live in the dark./sarcasm.
Capitalism isn't a magic pill, it won't fix everything. Neither will communism. But there has to be some amount of balance between the two to ensure that society as a whole advances while individuals are able to exceed and be rewarded. Rewarding with out social balance creates strife, and social balance with out individual rewards creates stagnation.
That said, I'm not sure GM is the pinnacle of pragmatism, while I'd like to see the volt hit the road, I think it would be better served by another company that could purchase the product line off of GM in a bankruptcy restructuring.
LOL, you are correct, Novell, not IBM. I've spent too much time beating on the main frame lately.
HTML/JS/CSS is vendor neutral, but it is extremely limited in its functionality with out a server side component, be it PHP/Ruby/.Net/Java.
So if we exclude server side functionality, then yes, going with Silverlight is effectively a vendor lock in where as HTML is not.
That said, how often are we developing static HTML/SL pages that have no server side functionality? And as soon as you start working in any language on the server, you are effectively locked in, even if it is an open source language, due to the opportune cost of changing languages late in the SDLC.
If you are going to be locked in anyway, the issue of SL being a vendor lock in is relatively insignificant.
So you get to the real issues. The huge boon to using HTML/CSS/JS/AJAX/JQuery is that with sufficient effort you can make it render the same on almost any browser on any OS (no matter how much work you do,/. will not look the same in Lynx as it does in Chrome). The down side to that though is that it takes significant effort to get the functionality to match identically across all browsers (IE6 is the main pita, but even FF and Chrome have their little quirks), and you have to have knowledge of all involved technologies and how they interact.
The boon of using Silverlight is that it only requires knowledge of XAML (and a minimal at that since you can do almost everything WYSIWYG style in Blend and the output doesn't suck horrendously like Dreamweaver/frontpage) and your.Net language of choice. Another boon of SL is that it will function absolutely the same in all supported browsers. On the down side, it will only function in supported browsers on supported OSs, and it requires the user to download and install a plug in. The plug in install is highly automated with only 1 or 2 basic "ok to install?" prompts. And the list of supported OS/Browsers, thanks to efforts both from Microsoft and the Mono/Moonlight team is growing.
So: If your goal is to have a "web 2.0" styled page that runs in a controlled environment, Silverlight is likely going to be a better option. If your goal is to have a "web 2.0" styled page that runs in the wild, HTML is likely going to be a better option.* If your goal is to have a vanilla styled page, HTML is going to be a better option.
* This is where things get hairy though. The decision should be made based on user base, penetration of SL, development costs, and lost sales due to technology barriers. By and large, HTML will be the safest bet, but it will also have a higher development costs than SL IMO.
To put my view in context, in the last 2 months I have released two new applications. 1 was a Silverlight app that runs on a kiosk, the other is a web 2.0 ASP.Net app that any of our CSRs can access. Both apps perform async interactions with a web service and database, both apps feature caching, lazy loading, dynamic moving/expanding content containers, etc... The Silverlight app took about half the time to develop, contains a fraction of the code, looks nicer, and has a lot more of what I call 'developer confidence' in it.
That's not to say that the ASP.Net app is bad, on the contrary I am quite pleased with the way it turned out and I think it is quite stable, highly functional and give the user a much better experience then they would get from a vanilla styled website. But the possibility of huge page renders, javascript performance, and AJAX communication has my confidence a little lightened as I'm looking at pushing it out to a couple of hundred users.
Because I'm pretty sure that most people running Java are locked into Sun's Java. Sure, you could write your own derivative of it, but then you would be "locked in" to your specific version.
No matter which language you choose, as soon as you start writing code the opportunity cost starts to rise on changing languages. So even if you aren't "locked in" to Java, the cost of moving production applications out of Java would likely make it an unsound business decision, effectively locking you in.
In the case of Silverlight and.Net, we already have access to the source code, although the license on it kinda sucks. So if you wanted to develop your own derivative of.Net, you can. Moonlight is also being developed by a team funded by IBM with IP rights and direct support from MS.
Sounds like higher training costs, larger skill sets, and bigger price tags on developers who can handle the full stack to me.
Using a decent design, and unobtrusive javascript via jQuery, it's really not that hard.
Using any language isn't "hard". But understanding the interactions, dependencies, and limitations of 5 different technologies requires significantly more experience and knowledge than understanding 2.
And you're in a controlled environment -- why force IE and Silverlight, instead of, say, Firefox 3 and standards compliance -- probably automatically working on Opera, and likely everywhere except IE?
It's not controlled by me. It is an international corporation with IT decisions being made well above my head. Hell, a few years ago when the Irish and US networks merged, they were trying to decide on what email service to use. The US used Exchange, Ireland/Europe used Notes. The decision was made to switch the US to Lotus Notes. Who in their right mind would ever choose Lotus Notes over Exchange!??! Anyway, I'm pushing hard to get IE8 or FF3 as the network standard in the US, but I'm not getting a lot of traction on it.
Forcing IE5.5 upgrades on an individual basis is something I can push through. But getting the install images changed from IE6 is still out of my reach. In the end, I'm developing apps that are being run in IE6, IE7, FF3, Chrome, and by a handful of Mac users. With the exception of Chrome (not sure if there is a SL plug-in for it) I can develop and deploy Silverlight apps and know that they will run exactly the same for every single user.
I would argue that any case where you could use an open standard to do the same job, with little or no ill effects, it's dumb to use Silverlight or Flash.
There is a lot you can do in SL/Flash that you just can not do in HTML/CSS/JS/JQuery/ASP.Net. There is a lot you can do easily in SL/Flash that can be done in HTML standards, but it is very challenging to get the same functionality.
But I hope it does so not directly, but by putting pressure on people interested in HTML5 and other interesting things to get it done.
HTML5, while a nice improvement over HTML4, will still suck. Sure, we'll have the video tag and a couple of other things to improve media display, but we'll still be stuck with the same crappy non-vector based flow layout, the dependency on CSS, Javascript, JQuery, AJAX, and server side code, etc... And no one will nail the standard 100%, let alone everyone nailing it 100%, we will still have to account for variations in specific cases on a browser by browser basis.
However, with Silverlight, it's quite possible Microsoft could drop the patent hammer and kill Mono and Moonlight at any moment.
I could be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure that the patents behind Silverlight are bound to an agreement with IBM who is currently funding Moonlight development. Which means that IF MS did drop the patent hammer, it would be on IBM, which would likely be handled in their agreement and result in some amount of pain and suffering for MS. Not saying they wont, but right now there is no incentive for them to do so, and long term it would likely cost them far more than they could gain in royalties/market share.
Why do you think all this CSS/Javascript/HTML/Ajax/whatever doesn't work in allo those browsers, it's because of what Microsoft did.
Believe me, I am right there with you on that one. I loathe MS for the crap that was IE5.5, 6.0 and even some of the 7.0 oddities, and I am pushing hard to get our IT directory to get IE8 or FF3 into the standard build on our network.
Don't push Silverlight, push Firefox or something.
Just a heads up on that one, Silverlight will run in FireFox.
Also, getting everyone onto IE8/FF3 would solve the standards issue, but it does not solve the need to understand multiple different languages and design standards. Even if everyone is on FF3, rich web client developers still need to have a solid knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, AJAX, and ASP.Net(or what ever server side flavor you are using).
Alternatively, by using Silverlight (or Flash), you need to know 1 layout language, XAML, and one programing language, C# (or VB.NET).
That alone makes it an extremely attractive option.
I do internal development, on a controlled environment, and I have been pushing for moving to Silverlight for the last 3 months or so.
Our users are demanding more 'Web 2.0' styled interfaces, but we're currently supporting IE 5.5, 6, 7, FF 3, and a handful of Opera users.
The incredible mish-mash of CSS/HTML/Javascript/ASP.Net/AJAX/JQuery can do it sure. But it is a royal pain in the ass. The design paradigm looks like something out of a Dr Sues book.
By switching to Silverlight we gain all of the UI features (and more) in a single language that is in the core-competency of the development team. For us, it makes sense. For external sites, it would be a bigger risk until SL gets Flash like penetration.
Comparing SL to Flash though, I think SL is off to a much better start. Both are proprietary. Both have some type of "Open Source" (a lol-worthy quote) model from MS/Adobe. At least we can see the code inside the black box.
SL 1.0 was released for Windows/Mac September 2007. ML 1.0 was released for Linux January 2009. About 16 months to get Linux caught up.
Flash 7 (MX04) for Linux was released what, some time back in 2004? Flash 8 wasn't released for linux (and it wasn't backwards compatible with 7) Flash 9 was released for Windows/Max late 2006. Flash 9 was released for Linux early 2007. About 3 years to get Linux caught up.
It's hard to pull up release dates from before then, but given the current state of Flash on Linux (a mild jump up from pure crap), I can't imagine their support a decade ago was anything more than laughable.
Seeing the Moonlight team's progress so far, and the apparent ease of access they have to Microsoft and the Silverlight team, it seems like the jump to Moonlight 2.0 isn't going to be a 3 year delay like the jump from Flash 7 to Flash 9 was for Linux. And once Moonlight 2.0 is running, further jumps to the inevitable SL 3.0 will likely hinge more on the Mono project keeping up with the 4.0 version of the.Net Framework.
Using either Silverlight or Flash in inappropriate situations is dumb. But the existence of Silverlight and the competition it creates for Flash will truly only improve the functionality of rich browser applications (what I've been trying to get coined as 'Chubby clients').
Annnd to round it out, John Edwards cheating on his wife while she was battle cancer.
The scandal there isn't that he cheated on her. Hell McCain cheated on his 1st wife and left her while she was battling cancer for a younger, richer woman. The scandal is that she accepted his apology and that they have maintained their marriage!
Show me a representative from either party who claims to never have cheated on their spouse, and I'll show you a liar. Hell, lets make it simpler, show me a representative from either party, and I'll show you a liar;)
Insults are usually not considered defamation. The more outrageous the insult, the less likely it is for anyone to believe it to be true, and the less likely it is to actually cause damages to the offended party. Purely by posting anonymously, you are greatly reducing your credibility, which means the other party is going to have to show some pretty clear evidence that your writings were the ones that people believed.
Now, if you happened to be a clerk working for the MD Supreme Court and you were in a position to say such things as fact instead of just wild accusations, then you might be liable for defamation/libel.
We're not that far off now. Not too long ago I bought 3 resin cast models from Forge World to the tune of almost $200.
Had I spent the time and rendered my own versions of those models in 3dsm and sent it off to a 3-d printing service, I could have had them for about $300.
I'm sure with a bulk order and some negotiating I could have easily gotten the price of a 3-piece order to under $200. The only major cost would be my time.
1) Sales in $ != Units sold. Prices have changed over the last 10 years. 2) New to market releases change every year, there were significantly less releases in 2006 then there were in 2003. 3) Consumer trends vary. There was a boom in the karaoke market in the early 2000's, that trend has slowed over the last few years. 4) External market forces abound. It's hard to justify buying a new CD for a hobby/part time job when your day job is in jeopardy due to an economic slow down. 5) Pirated copies != lost sales. If the person wasn't going to buy the product anyway, you haven't lost anything. That doesn't make it right or legal, but it doesn't effect your sales or profits. 6) Newsgroup posts != pirated copies. Claiming so is just silly, that's like trying to prove a correlation between Windows sales diminishing because of Linux usage based on the number of posts on SlashDot.
Honestly, your post comes off as inflammatory, uneducated, and highly emotional. If you can maintain a profitable business model, go for it. If you can't, look for an alternative business model or get out of the industry.
Personally, I don't see a great need for the Karaoke label industry since it is relatively easy to filter out vocals from most pop/country music of CD's we already own. And if you try telling me that doing so is a violation of copy rights I will point you to the base/midrange/trebble/volume/fade/balance filters that are on almost all car radios. Broadcasting those filtered recordings to the public may be a violation of copy rights.
When you beta-test a product, shouldn't you test the complete product?
No. By definition a beta release is not a complete product.
What's more, in large open betas you often want people to test specific elements, so to force people to focus on those parts you make those features more prominent by not releasing other features.
Then once you have that testing out of the way on that first subset, you can release a second beta with new features. The new features list is effectively a marketing campaign to get your beta testers to focus on another specific subset of the application.
So if I was in your guild and I feel uncomfortable around cursing and constant sexual talk that seems to spew from guys, would you state to incoming members that we have someone sensitive to that kind of talk? That way they respect my sensitivities?
Negative. We have established social norms in our social circle. Most of us have known each other for 1-4 years. New members are expected to conform to our social norms.
If new members do not feel comfortable with our social norms, or if the existing member base does not feel comfortable with the new members, we drop the new member.
I don't expect everyone in the world to get along with everyone else. But I'll not go through the drama of clashing social expectations for the sake of getting 25 people into an instance.
That said, I'm more than willing to work with individuals who do want to be part of the guild but are unfamiliar with our expectations and interactions. We've had some members in the past that originally didn't seem like a good fit, but after working with them and the guild, it turned out that they were a great fit. And our social norms are definitely in constant flux, just like any small sub-culture. So while we wouldn't tell everyone in the guild to change their behavior on account of a new person, if someone in the guild were to build up trust and comradery with their fellow members, they would likely have the ability to slowly adjust the social norms to be more to their liking. Such is the nature of social experimentation;)
You seem to have made a point to call it out, which may be the problem with this particular banning, and why some people are complaining. Some times people wear their sexuality like a badge to be shouted to everyone they meet
Having a few friends in my life go through the coming out process I've seen some of what I would call 'excessive presentation'. I don't have much of a problem with it though as others have commented it is largely just a natural phase that eventually passes as people grow.
In a culture that still largely accepts the use of derogatory homosexual terms in civil conversation, I'm not opposed to people wearing their sexuality as a badge.
I mean, if I were gay and played on the xbox or whatever, and people were constantly saying "that's gay" and "what a fag", I'd probably say "Hey, you guys mind? I'm gay and you guys sound like douchebags." But after the 800th time of asking people to knock it off, I'd probably just set my username to "ImGayYouDouche" or something of the like.
Its a pity those people could just avoid tossing words like "fag" around or saying "that's gay" when there aren't gay / queer people around...:(
Ahh, but that's just it! By fostering an atmosphere where using words like fag is socially unacceptable, it becomes the norm. So what started off as a person not saying fag because a gay person was around turns into a social expectation that no one in the guild says fag at all, even when there are no gay people on. Ideally, these same people take that norm with them into their lives out of the game. While a handful of game players isn't going to change the world, if enough small clicks adopt such norms, it eventually becomes mainstream. It won't happen over night, but I would be extactic if in 10 years the word fag was all but removed from our society, reserved for use by people in white pointy hats and the pathetic remains of the radical right.
Actually, we do have black people in our guild. The majority of society has come to the point where dropping n-bombs in civilized conversation is enough to cause significant social pressure to shut the hell up.
But as many small/medium sized guilds do, we teamed up with another guild to get into some 25-man instances. Things were going Okay until one of the people from the other guild said, "Hey, you guys want to hear a racist joke?"
That about ended the raid night and we have not entertained any thoughts of joining up with them again.
Racist crap is unexceptable. Religious crap is unexceptable. Homophobic crap is unexceptable.
Our guild has 1 golden rule: Don't be a douche bag. And I have no qualms about booting someone from a raid if they cross that line.
Also, I don't hang my hat on being straight - do you really need to point out that you're gay in your xbox profile? I mean... really? I don't think you should be banned for doing it, but I think it's a little odd.
I run a guild in WoW, I myself am straight, but we have gay members in the guild. When ever we pick up someone new I make sure they are aware that there are gay men in the guild. Not because I'm trying to pimp them out (most of them are already married), but because people tend to be better about not tossing words like "fag" around or saying "that's gay" when they know that there are gay people around.
So yeah, I think it's perfectly acceptable to have someone post that they are homosexual on their profile. If it makes other people be a little more self conscious about how their words can come across and breaks the social norms of using homosexual terms as insults, then I think it's AWESOME.
Is there any reason why someone should make more here for the same work than someone in Asia?
Yes.
How is the price of bread set in the United States?
How is the price of bread set in China?
Once you see the difference there you should be able to understand why it is critical for someone here to be paid differently than someone in China, and why Tariffs can be used not just for protection and isolation, but to foster a healthy global economy.
Speaking of "whoops" emails and people leaving. This morning I came in to my office as usual, checked my email and saw one from someone I didn't recognize. I figured it was some HR banter about the new office building we're moving to or some new corporate directive, but instead it was a specific message telling me that my services were no longer required.
I about freaked. Then I re-read the email. It had my email address on the To: line, but the email started out "Dear Martin" which isn't my name. Reading further, it appeared to be something about one of the offices in Ireland, I'm in the US. So I'm fairly certain that I did not get fired via e-mail. But I'm guessing there is going to be an awkward moment in a small office in northern Ireland when Mark comes in and his boss asks him, "Uhh, didn't you get my email?"
Slashdot Mirror
Not all recyclers export to China. http://www.file13usa.com/ for example, uses a charcoal fire here in the US!
-Rick
I fully agree with everything you've said. The US branch of my company switched from Exchange to Notes when we merged witht he European network. And Notes has been completely asstarded. Client side it has a huge memory foot print, it's damn near impossible to customize, and just recently we discovered a really nasty security issue with it (lotus script in emails FTL). Server side, well, it's called Domino for a reason. If one server dies, they all fall down.
-Rick
If they can't afford to make it commercially viable on their own, they shouldn't look to do it on the taxpayer dime.
Exactly! Just like how us city dwellers shouldn't be forced to offset the cost of Power, Gas, Sewage, Trash disposal, Phone, Emergency Response, or any other public services to people in lower density areas.
Honestly, if the power company can't turn a profit off of them, maybe they should just live in the dark. /sarcasm.
Capitalism isn't a magic pill, it won't fix everything. Neither will communism. But there has to be some amount of balance between the two to ensure that society as a whole advances while individuals are able to exceed and be rewarded. Rewarding with out social balance creates strife, and social balance with out individual rewards creates stagnation.
That said, I'm not sure GM is the pinnacle of pragmatism, while I'd like to see the volt hit the road, I think it would be better served by another company that could purchase the product line off of GM in a bankruptcy restructuring.
-Rick
LOL, you are correct, Novell, not IBM. I've spent too much time beating on the main frame lately.
HTML/JS/CSS is vendor neutral, but it is extremely limited in its functionality with out a server side component, be it PHP/Ruby/.Net/Java.
So if we exclude server side functionality, then yes, going with Silverlight is effectively a vendor lock in where as HTML is not.
That said, how often are we developing static HTML/SL pages that have no server side functionality? And as soon as you start working in any language on the server, you are effectively locked in, even if it is an open source language, due to the opportune cost of changing languages late in the SDLC.
If you are going to be locked in anyway, the issue of SL being a vendor lock in is relatively insignificant.
So you get to the real issues. The huge boon to using HTML/CSS/JS/AJAX/JQuery is that with sufficient effort you can make it render the same on almost any browser on any OS (no matter how much work you do, /. will not look the same in Lynx as it does in Chrome). The down side to that though is that it takes significant effort to get the functionality to match identically across all browsers (IE6 is the main pita, but even FF and Chrome have their little quirks), and you have to have knowledge of all involved technologies and how they interact.
The boon of using Silverlight is that it only requires knowledge of XAML (and a minimal at that since you can do almost everything WYSIWYG style in Blend and the output doesn't suck horrendously like Dreamweaver/frontpage) and your .Net language of choice. Another boon of SL is that it will function absolutely the same in all supported browsers. On the down side, it will only function in supported browsers on supported OSs, and it requires the user to download and install a plug in. The plug in install is highly automated with only 1 or 2 basic "ok to install?" prompts. And the list of supported OS/Browsers, thanks to efforts both from Microsoft and the Mono/Moonlight team is growing.
So:
If your goal is to have a "web 2.0" styled page that runs in a controlled environment, Silverlight is likely going to be a better option.
If your goal is to have a "web 2.0" styled page that runs in the wild, HTML is likely going to be a better option.*
If your goal is to have a vanilla styled page, HTML is going to be a better option.
* This is where things get hairy though. The decision should be made based on user base, penetration of SL, development costs, and lost sales due to technology barriers. By and large, HTML will be the safest bet, but it will also have a higher development costs than SL IMO.
To put my view in context, in the last 2 months I have released two new applications. 1 was a Silverlight app that runs on a kiosk, the other is a web 2.0 ASP.Net app that any of our CSRs can access. Both apps perform async interactions with a web service and database, both apps feature caching, lazy loading, dynamic moving/expanding content containers, etc... The Silverlight app took about half the time to develop, contains a fraction of the code, looks nicer, and has a lot more of what I call 'developer confidence' in it.
That's not to say that the ASP.Net app is bad, on the contrary I am quite pleased with the way it turned out and I think it is quite stable, highly functional and give the user a much better experience then they would get from a vanilla styled website. But the possibility of huge page renders, javascript performance, and AJAX communication has my confidence a little lightened as I'm looking at pushing it out to a couple of hundred users.
-Rick
Define "vendor neutral"?
Because I'm pretty sure that most people running Java are locked into Sun's Java. Sure, you could write your own derivative of it, but then you would be "locked in" to your specific version.
No matter which language you choose, as soon as you start writing code the opportunity cost starts to rise on changing languages. So even if you aren't "locked in" to Java, the cost of moving production applications out of Java would likely make it an unsound business decision, effectively locking you in.
In the case of Silverlight and .Net, we already have access to the source code, although the license on it kinda sucks. So if you wanted to develop your own derivative of .Net, you can. Moonlight is also being developed by a team funded by IBM with IP rights and direct support from MS.
-Rick
Sounds like a lot of whining.
Sounds like higher training costs, larger skill sets, and bigger price tags on developers who can handle the full stack to me.
Using a decent design, and unobtrusive javascript via jQuery, it's really not that hard.
Using any language isn't "hard". But understanding the interactions, dependencies, and limitations of 5 different technologies requires significantly more experience and knowledge than understanding 2.
And you're in a controlled environment -- why force IE and Silverlight, instead of, say, Firefox 3 and standards compliance -- probably automatically working on Opera, and likely everywhere except IE?
It's not controlled by me. It is an international corporation with IT decisions being made well above my head. Hell, a few years ago when the Irish and US networks merged, they were trying to decide on what email service to use. The US used Exchange, Ireland/Europe used Notes. The decision was made to switch the US to Lotus Notes. Who in their right mind would ever choose Lotus Notes over Exchange!??! Anyway, I'm pushing hard to get IE8 or FF3 as the network standard in the US, but I'm not getting a lot of traction on it.
Forcing IE5.5 upgrades on an individual basis is something I can push through. But getting the install images changed from IE6 is still out of my reach. In the end, I'm developing apps that are being run in IE6, IE7, FF3, Chrome, and by a handful of Mac users. With the exception of Chrome (not sure if there is a SL plug-in for it) I can develop and deploy Silverlight apps and know that they will run exactly the same for every single user.
I would argue that any case where you could use an open standard to do the same job, with little or no ill effects, it's dumb to use Silverlight or Flash.
There is a lot you can do in SL/Flash that you just can not do in HTML/CSS/JS/JQuery/ASP.Net. There is a lot you can do easily in SL/Flash that can be done in HTML standards, but it is very challenging to get the same functionality.
But I hope it does so not directly, but by putting pressure on people interested in HTML5 and other interesting things to get it done.
HTML5, while a nice improvement over HTML4, will still suck. Sure, we'll have the video tag and a couple of other things to improve media display, but we'll still be stuck with the same crappy non-vector based flow layout, the dependency on CSS, Javascript, JQuery, AJAX, and server side code, etc... And no one will nail the standard 100%, let alone everyone nailing it 100%, we will still have to account for variations in specific cases on a browser by browser basis.
However, with Silverlight, it's quite possible Microsoft could drop the patent hammer and kill Mono and Moonlight at any moment.
I could be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure that the patents behind Silverlight are bound to an agreement with IBM who is currently funding Moonlight development. Which means that IF MS did drop the patent hammer, it would be on IBM, which would likely be handled in their agreement and result in some amount of pain and suffering for MS. Not saying they wont, but right now there is no incentive for them to do so, and long term it would likely cost them far more than they could gain in royalties/market share.
-Rick
Why do you think all this CSS/Javascript/HTML/Ajax/whatever doesn't work in allo those browsers, it's because of what Microsoft did.
Believe me, I am right there with you on that one. I loathe MS for the crap that was IE5.5, 6.0 and even some of the 7.0 oddities, and I am pushing hard to get our IT directory to get IE8 or FF3 into the standard build on our network.
Don't push Silverlight, push Firefox or something.
Just a heads up on that one, Silverlight will run in FireFox.
Also, getting everyone onto IE8/FF3 would solve the standards issue, but it does not solve the need to understand multiple different languages and design standards. Even if everyone is on FF3, rich web client developers still need to have a solid knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, AJAX, and ASP.Net(or what ever server side flavor you are using).
Alternatively, by using Silverlight (or Flash), you need to know 1 layout language, XAML, and one programing language, C# (or VB.NET).
That alone makes it an extremely attractive option.
-Rick
I do internal development, on a controlled environment, and I have been pushing for moving to Silverlight for the last 3 months or so.
Our users are demanding more 'Web 2.0' styled interfaces, but we're currently supporting IE 5.5, 6, 7, FF 3, and a handful of Opera users.
The incredible mish-mash of CSS/HTML/Javascript/ASP.Net/AJAX/JQuery can do it sure. But it is a royal pain in the ass. The design paradigm looks like something out of a Dr Sues book.
By switching to Silverlight we gain all of the UI features (and more) in a single language that is in the core-competency of the development team. For us, it makes sense. For external sites, it would be a bigger risk until SL gets Flash like penetration.
Comparing SL to Flash though, I think SL is off to a much better start. Both are proprietary. Both have some type of "Open Source" (a lol-worthy quote) model from MS/Adobe. At least we can see the code inside the black box.
SL 1.0 was released for Windows/Mac September 2007.
ML 1.0 was released for Linux January 2009.
About 16 months to get Linux caught up.
Flash 7 (MX04) for Linux was released what, some time back in 2004?
Flash 8 wasn't released for linux (and it wasn't backwards compatible with 7)
Flash 9 was released for Windows/Max late 2006.
Flash 9 was released for Linux early 2007.
About 3 years to get Linux caught up.
It's hard to pull up release dates from before then, but given the current state of Flash on Linux (a mild jump up from pure crap), I can't imagine their support a decade ago was anything more than laughable.
Seeing the Moonlight team's progress so far, and the apparent ease of access they have to Microsoft and the Silverlight team, it seems like the jump to Moonlight 2.0 isn't going to be a 3 year delay like the jump from Flash 7 to Flash 9 was for Linux. And once Moonlight 2.0 is running, further jumps to the inevitable SL 3.0 will likely hinge more on the Mono project keeping up with the 4.0 version of the .Net Framework.
Using either Silverlight or Flash in inappropriate situations is dumb. But the existence of Silverlight and the competition it creates for Flash will truly only improve the functionality of rich browser applications (what I've been trying to get coined as 'Chubby clients').
-Rick
Sonofabitch, I posted the wrong link.
Don't I look dumb.
-Rick
One! Don't you feel dumb.
Two! Look at you.
Three! Don't you ever make jokes about me behind my back or else I'll stomp you into the ground
http://www.mono-project.com/news/archive/2009/Jan-13.html
-Rick
Sounds like a job for a DUKW. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DUKW
-Rick
Annnd to round it out, John Edwards cheating on his wife while she was battle cancer.
The scandal there isn't that he cheated on her. Hell McCain cheated on his 1st wife and left her while she was battling cancer for a younger, richer woman. The scandal is that she accepted his apology and that they have maintained their marriage!
Show me a representative from either party who claims to never have cheated on their spouse, and I'll show you a liar. Hell, lets make it simpler, show me a representative from either party, and I'll show you a liar ;)
-Rick
To bad he wasn't a Naval gazer... he could have prevented a disaster like this: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/16/1349257
-Rick
Insults are usually not considered defamation. The more outrageous the insult, the less likely it is for anyone to believe it to be true, and the less likely it is to actually cause damages to the offended party. Purely by posting anonymously, you are greatly reducing your credibility, which means the other party is going to have to show some pretty clear evidence that your writings were the ones that people believed.
Now, if you happened to be a clerk working for the MD Supreme Court and you were in a position to say such things as fact instead of just wild accusations, then you might be liable for defamation/libel.
-Rick
Negative. Alpha would imply that the product has non-functional features.
In a multi-staged beta they are exposing a sub set of functional features.
-Rick
We're not that far off now. Not too long ago I bought 3 resin cast models from Forge World to the tune of almost $200.
Had I spent the time and rendered my own versions of those models in 3dsm and sent it off to a 3-d printing service, I could have had them for about $300.
I'm sure with a bulk order and some negotiating I could have easily gotten the price of a 3-piece order to under $200. The only major cost would be my time.
-Rick
1) Sales in $ != Units sold. Prices have changed over the last 10 years.
2) New to market releases change every year, there were significantly less releases in 2006 then there were in 2003.
3) Consumer trends vary. There was a boom in the karaoke market in the early 2000's, that trend has slowed over the last few years.
4) External market forces abound. It's hard to justify buying a new CD for a hobby/part time job when your day job is in jeopardy due to an economic slow down.
5) Pirated copies != lost sales. If the person wasn't going to buy the product anyway, you haven't lost anything. That doesn't make it right or legal, but it doesn't effect your sales or profits.
6) Newsgroup posts != pirated copies. Claiming so is just silly, that's like trying to prove a correlation between Windows sales diminishing because of Linux usage based on the number of posts on SlashDot.
Honestly, your post comes off as inflammatory, uneducated, and highly emotional. If you can maintain a profitable business model, go for it. If you can't, look for an alternative business model or get out of the industry.
Personally, I don't see a great need for the Karaoke label industry since it is relatively easy to filter out vocals from most pop/country music of CD's we already own. And if you try telling me that doing so is a violation of copy rights I will point you to the base/midrange/trebble/volume/fade/balance filters that are on almost all car radios. Broadcasting those filtered recordings to the public may be a violation of copy rights.
-Rick
When you beta-test a product, shouldn't you test the complete product?
No. By definition a beta release is not a complete product.
What's more, in large open betas you often want people to test specific elements, so to force people to focus on those parts you make those features more prominent by not releasing other features.
Then once you have that testing out of the way on that first subset, you can release a second beta with new features. The new features list is effectively a marketing campaign to get your beta testers to focus on another specific subset of the application.
-Rick
So if I was in your guild and I feel uncomfortable around cursing and constant sexual talk that seems to spew from guys, would you state to incoming members that we have someone sensitive to that kind of talk? That way they respect my sensitivities?
Negative. We have established social norms in our social circle. Most of us have known each other for 1-4 years. New members are expected to conform to our social norms.
If new members do not feel comfortable with our social norms, or if the existing member base does not feel comfortable with the new members, we drop the new member.
I don't expect everyone in the world to get along with everyone else. But I'll not go through the drama of clashing social expectations for the sake of getting 25 people into an instance.
That said, I'm more than willing to work with individuals who do want to be part of the guild but are unfamiliar with our expectations and interactions. We've had some members in the past that originally didn't seem like a good fit, but after working with them and the guild, it turned out that they were a great fit. And our social norms are definitely in constant flux, just like any small sub-culture. So while we wouldn't tell everyone in the guild to change their behavior on account of a new person, if someone in the guild were to build up trust and comradery with their fellow members, they would likely have the ability to slowly adjust the social norms to be more to their liking. Such is the nature of social experimentation ;)
You seem to have made a point to call it out, which may be the problem with this particular banning, and why some people are complaining. Some times people wear their sexuality like a badge to be shouted to everyone they meet
Having a few friends in my life go through the coming out process I've seen some of what I would call 'excessive presentation'. I don't have much of a problem with it though as others have commented it is largely just a natural phase that eventually passes as people grow.
In a culture that still largely accepts the use of derogatory homosexual terms in civil conversation, I'm not opposed to people wearing their sexuality as a badge.
I mean, if I were gay and played on the xbox or whatever, and people were constantly saying "that's gay" and "what a fag", I'd probably say "Hey, you guys mind? I'm gay and you guys sound like douchebags." But after the 800th time of asking people to knock it off, I'd probably just set my username to "ImGayYouDouche" or something of the like.
-Rick
Its a pity those people could just avoid tossing words like "fag" around or saying "that's gay" when there aren't gay / queer people around... :(
Ahh, but that's just it! By fostering an atmosphere where using words like fag is socially unacceptable, it becomes the norm. So what started off as a person not saying fag because a gay person was around turns into a social expectation that no one in the guild says fag at all, even when there are no gay people on. Ideally, these same people take that norm with them into their lives out of the game. While a handful of game players isn't going to change the world, if enough small clicks adopt such norms, it eventually becomes mainstream. It won't happen over night, but I would be extactic if in 10 years the word fag was all but removed from our society, reserved for use by people in white pointy hats and the pathetic remains of the radical right.
-Rick
Actually, we do have black people in our guild. The majority of society has come to the point where dropping n-bombs in civilized conversation is enough to cause significant social pressure to shut the hell up.
But as many small/medium sized guilds do, we teamed up with another guild to get into some 25-man instances. Things were going Okay until one of the people from the other guild said, "Hey, you guys want to hear a racist joke?"
That about ended the raid night and we have not entertained any thoughts of joining up with them again.
Racist crap is unexceptable.
Religious crap is unexceptable.
Homophobic crap is unexceptable.
Our guild has 1 golden rule: Don't be a douche bag. And I have no qualms about booting someone from a raid if they cross that line.
-Rick
Also, I don't hang my hat on being straight - do you really need to point out that you're gay in your xbox profile? I mean... really? I don't think you should be banned for doing it, but I think it's a little odd.
I run a guild in WoW, I myself am straight, but we have gay members in the guild. When ever we pick up someone new I make sure they are aware that there are gay men in the guild. Not because I'm trying to pimp them out (most of them are already married), but because people tend to be better about not tossing words like "fag" around or saying "that's gay" when they know that there are gay people around.
So yeah, I think it's perfectly acceptable to have someone post that they are homosexual on their profile. If it makes other people be a little more self conscious about how their words can come across and breaks the social norms of using homosexual terms as insults, then I think it's AWESOME.
-Rick
Is there any reason why someone should make more here for the same work than someone in Asia?
Yes.
How is the price of bread set in the United States?
How is the price of bread set in China?
Once you see the difference there you should be able to understand why it is critical for someone here to be paid differently than someone in China, and why Tariffs can be used not just for protection and isolation, but to foster a healthy global economy.
-Rick
Speaking of "whoops" emails and people leaving. This morning I came in to my office as usual, checked my email and saw one from someone I didn't recognize. I figured it was some HR banter about the new office building we're moving to or some new corporate directive, but instead it was a specific message telling me that my services were no longer required.
I about freaked. Then I re-read the email. It had my email address on the To: line, but the email started out "Dear Martin" which isn't my name. Reading further, it appeared to be something about one of the offices in Ireland, I'm in the US. So I'm fairly certain that I did not get fired via e-mail. But I'm guessing there is going to be an awkward moment in a small office in northern Ireland when Mark comes in and his boss asks him, "Uhh, didn't you get my email?"
-Rick
This is my 02c,YMMV
It's 2c or $0.02, not 02c, and definitely not .02c.
-Rick