"So, it sounds like you are siding with the folks that went over the IT depts head" No, that's not it. A lot of it has to do with how you define IT. Do you mean the people writing the software or the people who don't write software but who make misguided rules about *how* to write software? I wager that most people here belong to the former. I am siding with the people who write the software (naturally, being one of them) and against the ones who make seemingly myopic decisions about *how* the developers are to write software.
"the implications of rolling out new whiz bang bleeding edge software" I am not advocating using new technology just because it's new. I am all for using new stuff *if* it offers advantages not previously available.
A very fair point you make. But upper management employs an IT department. You know, not everyone in IT just wants to spend money. Upper management should learn to trust IT, at least trustworthy factions therein. Why spend the money for an IT department if you cannot trust their judgement?
Many of the newer technologies don't really require any more time than the old ways. I can whip up a site that makes use of ajax in the same amount of time it takes someone else to cobble one toether the conventional way. And yet my app will be faster, less network intensive, and more efficient than an old skool site. There isn't much more cost and there is more benefit. The only downside is that you might need someone with fairly up to date skill sets to maintain it. So what? Its IT!
Web 2.0 is a slippery term. If by web 2.0 you mean user-generated content, then I have to disagree.
One example: wiki based support. I find that people are, for many reasons, willing to help others. Some may like showing how much they know. Some are altruistic. And so on. Now, let's say you have an application that gets used by 25000 people and a development team of 15 people. You probably don't have time to support the application to the extent it needs. Enter a wiki. If you have a wiki, that can at least minimize the questions / requests sent to your team, leaving you to focus on enhancements, future looking stuff, etc. Using a wiki, you can actually get your user base to at least partially support itself.
Sure, a social networking site *might* not be the right thing for you F500 company's intranet. But a wiki might be just what you need.
The company I work for is a VERY large tech company. We are JUST NOW starting to roll out things like Wiki and forum based support for applications, social networking software, etc. It's quite sad. I am sure this is the case in most IT departments in most large corporations. I have some theories as to why:
1) the obvious, resistance from upper management. Upper management is afraid of being "bleeding edge". New stuff, and especially open source stuff, is scary. PHBs fail to realize that the F/OSS community operates on a different set of values than corporations. Corporations only offer free stuff if it gets them good PR or creates a bunch of indentured customers. There is much FOSS that is quite viable, but it usually gets turned down in favor of proprietary crap.
2) complacent IT staff. In many large companies, the people who make decisions have promoted to their level of incompetence. In turn, they just phone it in, just do the minimum they need to do to get by. This precludes their actually learning anything new. When the decision makers are victims of FUD, what do you want?
3) red tape. Where I work, if you want to use non-standard software you have submit an exception, which then has to get approved by the people in bullet point number 2 above. It also has to get sent to upper management. Some supervisors are afraid of that and so strongly discourage you from submitting these exceptions. So people just use the same old software in the same old ways and nobody actually keeps up with the industry.
Case in point: on my intranet, AJAX use is still pretty small scale. Maybe for certain internet sites, AJAX isn't always appropriate, but on the intranet, where you can ensure that everyone is using a somewhat modern browser, it's an obvious choice for certain things. Yet, you still have people developing sites the same way sites have been developed for ten years. I use AJAX heavily, and you'd be surprised how people are still amazed by it. But now there is a push to call libraries like prototype "software" and thus make them subject to regulation and corporate standards. Standards committees cannot keep up with the industry, so you have a situation where you cannot, by decree, use anything *too* new. I can see disallowing joe service rep from installing webshots on his PC, but disallowing a developer from using his software of choice is pretty shortsighted.
No, that's just my dosimeter. You see, my job is to be a radiation absorber. I for one, DO NOT welcome our new radiation-absorbing mineral-based overlords.
The major benefit of agriculture is that it allows for specialization: when you stop hunting-and-gathering and start farming, not everyone needs to spend their entire day involved in food production. This allows for civilization.
Interesting thought. I was thinking the same thing, but maybe from the other end.
Specialization is nice, but it can go to far. I was thinking of the people whose job it is to process food. For them, food production isn't about feeding their families, it's about maximizing profits and producing units, as though they were making clocks or automobiles or shoes. There's an obvious problem with that -- food is so much more important, as all the poisoned-food-from-China-scares in the US as of late have reminded us. If people were at least closer to the food, so to speak, things would be better. Maybe not everyone needs to be a farmer, but maybe everyone *should* know the person who grows his food, and vice versa. I guess I am basically echoing the organic food movement of the 70's (and not the latest incarnation of the organic food movement as a high-end lifestyle choice.) Ironically, as some have pointed out, the green revolution was partly responsible for this as it paved the way for the mega-farms we have today.
The other thing I was thinking is that people are generally less happy than they were before, at least that's what just about every older person (let's say 70+) I talk to tells me. Why? I'd wager it's at least partly because the pendulum has swung so far from the more agrarian society that existed even 50 years ago. Now, instead of having time to grow food, we don't even have time to eat healthy food and so we resort to food that is merely convenient. Most families are two income and therefore life is very rushed and cluttered, and despite all of the labor saving devices, we don't actually have any more time for things that are really important. Is that an improvement? Well, in some ways it is because all of the modern advances have bought us a lot in terms of health care, lifespans, etc. I guess it's just that: the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. Too primitive, and we toil our lives away and die at 50. Too "civilized", and we search in vain for meaning and purpose, for something "real". We cannot seem to find the balance.
Maybe I'm being a bit too philosophical for a discussion here, I dunno. But if we started small, if we started supporting local food producers (and don't go to Whole Foods for that; go to a local farmer's market) we'd be healthier, we'd reward small farmers and discourage large scale mass production of food, and we'd probably save money too.
Or, just try to use Eclipse out of the box without turning off everything that you don't need. Which of course, everyone has to do at least once. But then again, what do you expect? Eclipse is, after all, Java based. What, do you actually expect good performance?
Agreed. Visual Studio, while having its faults (Windows only [duh, right?], pretty large footprint, and some rather unhelpful "help" features) is better than Eclipse. Visual Studio is quite nice if you just want to write Windows apps. C# is excellent..NET is great. I just have too much cognitive dissonance when I totally ignore other operating systems, though. If MSFT would just provide.NET plugins for Linux / Mac they'd help themselves out a lot (and yes I know about MONO.) The annoying start page, and the MSDN search that returns nothing of use, and the !helpful code formatting notwithstanding, Visual Studio is pretty good.
I have gone through periods of trying Eclipse. People are incredulous when I tell them I hate Eclipse, so I feel like I have to see what I am missing and install it. Every time, EVERY TIME, I uninstall it, totally disgusted with the amount of RAM it takes and how heavy it feels. It's just another example of why I hate Java apps. Java on the server is fine, but on the client it just falls flat. Clunky look and feel, slow performance, and weird UI quirks seem to be the hallmarks of Java apps (and when people start using terms like percieved slowness, I reach for my Browning). Doesn't anyone else get annoyed by how slow Eclipse feels? Anyone?
To me, an IDE shouldn't get in the way of development. It should like a good waiter -- there when you want but otherwise out of your face. That's where both Eclipse and Visual Studio fall short.
My IDE of choice is jEdit. Yes, I know it's Java based. I do hate the fact that it's Java and it looks like every other Java application: butt ugly (and even with the Look and Feel plugin that is supposed to give more of a native OS look and feel...stupid swing components). But most importantly, it's a mighty fine text editor which has IDE essentials like syntax highlighting, comprehensive searching, and lots of powerful text editing tools (like block select, which my coworkers who use Dreamweaver just drool over.)
If you use Eclipse but hate it for being so heavy, I'd recommend jEdit. It's just the right amount of IDE. Not so much IDE cruft that writing code is less writing code than it is learning how to use the IDE, yet it's got enough utility to facilitate the business of writing code. Any web development I do (ASP, PHP, Cold Fusion, html, css, javascript) is all done in jEdit and I can code a page in the time it takes Eclipse to open a file.
"You're no better than anyone else", "Take your place and shut up", "Slow down and learn at the same rate as everybody else; you're not special". All the while, within myself, I was thinking "But I can go faster than everyone else", "I can see a better way to do this", and "I am special". When the very core of your being is surpressed, you naturally look for a way to allow it to flourish.
and
"I don't need you to tell me what to do; I'm quite capable of figuring it out for myself."
I can appreciate what you are saying. In school, the most frustrating part about it all was that after summer break, half the year was spent reviewing what had been learned last year (especially in math classes). So while most of the other students were re-learning stuff that they already learned, I was bored out of my skull. I'd argue that if students forget stuff over the summer break, then what's the point of teaching it again? They're just going to forget it again. If I were a math teacher and students said "we're never gonna use this stuff!" then that would tell me that it's pointless to teach them. If people don't like to learn things, then these same people aren't going to turn around and become an engineer or a programmer or a physicist; these professions that do use algebra and beyond are also all about learning.
On the other hand, you have to be careful. You can start to sound very self-aggrandizing very quickly. While I may have been better in high school math than most other students, I am not so foolish as to think that I am flat out smarter than everyone else. Everyone has something he excels at, and too often he thinks that means he can do EVERYTHING better than everyone else. And that just makes a person look stupid and arrogant. And if there's one thing worse than someone who is stupid, it's someone who is also arrogant. It's just like driving: everyone thinks he is a better driver than everyone else. That is statistically impossible. So, while you may be special in your own eyes, and in the eyes of your mother, your significant other, etc, the cold hard reality is that you are, in many ways, just like everyone else.
"Maybe that works well for the least intellectually gifted" Well, look at OP's nick. That should sum it up. The guy calls himself sumdumass and tries as hard as he can to live up to it.
true, but I think you know what I meant. I am not talking about the logistics of growing food so much as I am trying to point out that no fuel doesn't necessarily mean no food. Fuel is not more important than food, even if fuel does aid in the growing/processing of food.
So to summarize, don't be so sure of your own righteousness.
Interestingly, many of the people who fit your description call themselves christians. The Bible teaches that christians should "keep proving what [they] are" and that they should "keep making sure of all things". In other words, *don't* become so complacent that you think you are always right. Be willing to learn and to be readjusted. This is why I am so easily upset by people who claim to be religious and yet totally ignore the very book upon which their faith is supposedly based.
I'd assume a large percentage of people here on/. are atheist and hostile toward religion. I am not one of them.
That said, I want to address your point about a few bad people giving the majority a bad name. You make a fair point, like in so many other things the media sensationalizes the bad and ignores the good, and society in general gets a distorted view of things.
But I think the real problem is not so much with the few bad people, it's often how they are treated when found out. The Catholic church, for example, is notorious for discovering cases of abuse and attempting to cover it up. I am pretty sure the public attitude toward the Catholic church would be a lot different if they vilified the priests who commit these crimes instead of just ignoring the problem. And that's not to say that these individuals cannot be forgiven. But the Bible puts a few conditions on forgiveness, and one of these is true repentance. So many of these religious leaders who are involved with bad things probably don't show true remorse; it seems to most people that they are just sad because they got caught.
"we wouldn't have food without fuel." Sure you would. If I were starving I'd plant some food in my backyard and most people would do the same in their backyards, though I have no idea what people in places like NYC would do. You'd have no industrial farming, sure, but you'd have food. I have this theory that if we had to grow our own food, we'd waste far less and we (Americans) wouldn't be so lazy.
yeah, and I hate all these programs that require windows 95 or greater and 32M of RAM. Jeez, if I want to use Office 2007 with my 1989 386 running windows 3.11, then why can't I?!?! Stupid developers!
I was with you until that last paragraph. In what universe does "quality code" mean lack of cookies, javascript, and flash? By quality code, do you mean code that is lacking stuff that *you* just don't like for some irrational reason?
"If someone releases a product cheaper or with more features than your product, you must move forward to beat them. Competition drives innovation, not monopoly IP protection. So what if you spent 5 years designing something new?"
It seems you are forgetting a few things: 1) Probably more of a moral argument... I'd be willing to bet that a lot of the cost of an iPhone is related to the R&D that went into it. Someone (in this case Apple) sunk a lot of cash into making this thing, and the manufacturing piece is a relatively small part of that. Ok, so somebody comes along and reverse engineers the thing and improves it. They are standing on Apple's back and are thus able to reach higher. They did not innovate anything. The reverse engineering, as impressive as that is, isn't the same thing as innovation. Don't confuse the two. 2) China can produce things cheaper, what with their large and cheap labor pool. Well, the guys who reverse engineered the iPhone are also probably making less money than a janitor in the US. Have you ever seen that poster from despair.com with the Egyptian pyramid on it? The caption says "Anything is possible when you have an unlimited supply of free labor." I know it's just a stupid poster, but the point is valid. See the parallel? 3) It may be a tired old argument, but it's one that still holds water: if there are no "reasonable" IP laws, then what is the incentive to sink a ton of money into R&D? In other words, if there was no Apple iPhone, there would be no chinese iphone. 4) You must realize that your argument is almost identical to the one used to justify the mass outsourcing of corporate IT departments. The story goes, you get close to the same quality at a fraction of the cost. But the devil is in the details. Forget the fact that you are cannibalizing your local economy and hurting yourself in the long run. Forget that "close" to the same quality is not always close enough.
Agreed. Not to be overlooked is the javascript code that can be eliminated.
Want a menu? Gotta write javascript. Want to restrict the length of a textarea? Gotta write a script. Want to make that select box behave like a real select box in a desktop app (where you can type to find a value)? Gotta write javascript.
New tags that accomplish what should be standard behavior would make most websites much leaner and therefore much more maintainable. TFA did not indicate that select or textarea elements are going to be spruced up, though.
"Isn't it already possible to include proprietary tags in (X)HTML documents" Sure, but if you want your code to actually validate, you have to write your own DTD. Have fun with that.
If you include proprietary elements/attributes while using a standard DTD your code won't validate. XHTML code that doesn't validate against its DTD isn't truly XHTML code, since adherence to the DTD is what defines XHTML code.
Right. And not only that, according to tfa "Apple, Opera, and the Mozilla Foundation" got together to do this. We all like these companies, but until they get buy-in from Macrosuck, we'll be coding IE hacks for our entire careers. That pisses me off. Microsoft once propelled the web forward, now they are holding it back with their ~90% marketshare coupled with pigheaded unwillingness to let the web evolve.
Ok, so you're gonna make me trundle out the tired old "You must be new here" gag.
I work for a large company that many people here hate, and no, not MSFT. It seems that whenever I make factual statements about certain company initiatives I get modded down (via the overrated mod, of course...pansy boy mods) while the kneejerk "large corp A === teh evils!1!" comments get modded up as insightful. Not that I really even defend my company, as I am no "company man", I just occasionally refute statements I know to be false.
Not too long ago, as sort of an experiment, I just rattled off some stupid groupthink twaddle and got modded to +5 insighful! Like you said, it's interesting to see that even geeks (or people who at least claim to be geeks) can toss objectivity out the window. Groupthink truly *is* a universal phenomenon. You, sir, went against the groupthink. For that transgression, and since nobody can give you a "bad" downmod like flamebait or troll, they hit you with sly ones. Except this not-so-bright moderator used the redundant mod, which means that he can and likely will be metamodded.
And watch as this gets modded overrated. Or maybe offtopic. Whatever.
I do have to agree with your point about mass media. The dateline shows, well, are entertaining television, and I am sure that many of the people who get caught might justifiably claim they have been entrapped. But this lawsuit just seems to be someone trying to cash in. Would she sue the police department if someone with a mountain of cash (hmm, like NBC?) weren't somehow involved with the arrest? I doubt it, and if so, that would be tossed out with a quickness.
That said, have you ever watched the show? The thing that amazes me are the amount of people who seem intelligent, and who just cannot stop themselves from driving two, three, or even more hours to come and have sex with a young teenager. They do it knowing they can and probably will get caught at some point. Know what that tells me? That if someone is able to make a decent effort to do something they know will destroy them, that is an addiction and a serious problem. There is something [addiction] interfering with logical thought with these guys. You can call entrapment all you want, but the guys keep lining up to get caught. That means that something is seriously wrong with a lot of guys.
Now, as for these dateline biffs going to defcon, well, that's a little ridiculous (not to mention stupid!). They are operating on the assumption that hackers are criminals, and that is just plain sloppy. At least learn the correct terms, geez. And the dateline folks aren't going to outsmart a bunch of hackers. What, they thought someone would be trading warez and that'd be a story? Yawn. Or did they think they were going to get Kraus Umvert Schmilken, the evil haxx0r from Molvania, to announce his plans to hack a comsat and turn it into a giant laser and hold the entire planet hostage for one million dollars? Get serious.
"Pedophilia is no where near the national problem that Alcoholism is in terms of total damage to lives and property, but alcoholics aren't required to be on a national list" Interesting point, and I can kind of see where you are going... but I guess pedophilia is easier to define and thus as a violation, easier to enforce. Plus, one could argue that the damage caused by pedophiles is worse than by alcoholics. There may be more alcoholics than pedophiles, or it could be that pedophiles are often never, ever, caught because of how they manipulate children.
I grew up with an alcoholic father. I am sure it had an effect on me, but I feel like I have a healthy attitude toward alcohol. I drunk never am...[hic]....ok, kidding. Seriously, I can have a beer or two and stop, and I might have a drink or two every day for a week and then go for a month without a drink, or I might go through a stretch where I have a drink a week, etc. I like beer, I don't drink to get drunk, anyhow, I digress. Having an alcoholic father has not made me into an alcoholic. If anything, it has given me a negative role model that I try to stay away from in terms of my habits with alcohol.
On the other hand, I have known a few friends (all female) who have confided in me that they were molested when they were small, and in all cases they had difficulties with relationships. Call it anecdote, but it would seem to me that, per capita, a pedophile causes way more harm than a drunk.
Slashdot Mirror
"So, it sounds like you are siding with the folks that went over the IT depts head"
No, that's not it. A lot of it has to do with how you define IT. Do you mean the people writing the software or the people who don't write software but who make misguided rules about *how* to write software? I wager that most people here belong to the former. I am siding with the people who write the software (naturally, being one of them) and against the ones who make seemingly myopic decisions about *how* the developers are to write software.
"the implications of rolling out new whiz bang bleeding edge software"
I am not advocating using new technology just because it's new. I am all for using new stuff *if* it offers advantages not previously available.
A very fair point you make. But upper management employs an IT department. You know, not everyone in IT just wants to spend money. Upper management should learn to trust IT, at least trustworthy factions therein. Why spend the money for an IT department if you cannot trust their judgement?
Many of the newer technologies don't really require any more time than the old ways. I can whip up a site that makes use of ajax in the same amount of time it takes someone else to cobble one toether the conventional way. And yet my app will be faster, less network intensive, and more efficient than an old skool site. There isn't much more cost and there is more benefit. The only downside is that you might need someone with fairly up to date skill sets to maintain it. So what? Its IT!
Web 2.0 is a slippery term. If by web 2.0 you mean user-generated content, then I have to disagree.
One example: wiki based support. I find that people are, for many reasons, willing to help others. Some may like showing how much they know. Some are altruistic. And so on. Now, let's say you have an application that gets used by 25000 people and a development team of 15 people. You probably don't have time to support the application to the extent it needs. Enter a wiki. If you have a wiki, that can at least minimize the questions / requests sent to your team, leaving you to focus on enhancements, future looking stuff, etc. Using a wiki, you can actually get your user base to at least partially support itself.
Sure, a social networking site *might* not be the right thing for you F500 company's intranet. But a wiki might be just what you need.
The company I work for is a VERY large tech company. We are JUST NOW starting to roll out things like Wiki and forum based support for applications, social networking software, etc. It's quite sad. I am sure this is the case in most IT departments in most large corporations. I have some theories as to why:
1) the obvious, resistance from upper management. Upper management is afraid of being "bleeding edge". New stuff, and especially open source stuff, is scary. PHBs fail to realize that the F/OSS community operates on a different set of values than corporations. Corporations only offer free stuff if it gets them good PR or creates a bunch of indentured customers. There is much FOSS that is quite viable, but it usually gets turned down in favor of proprietary crap.
2) complacent IT staff. In many large companies, the people who make decisions have promoted to their level of incompetence. In turn, they just phone it in, just do the minimum they need to do to get by. This precludes their actually learning anything new. When the decision makers are victims of FUD, what do you want?
3) red tape. Where I work, if you want to use non-standard software you have submit an exception, which then has to get approved by the people in bullet point number 2 above. It also has to get sent to upper management. Some supervisors are afraid of that and so strongly discourage you from submitting these exceptions. So people just use the same old software in the same old ways and nobody actually keeps up with the industry.
Case in point: on my intranet, AJAX use is still pretty small scale. Maybe for certain internet sites, AJAX isn't always appropriate, but on the intranet, where you can ensure that everyone is using a somewhat modern browser, it's an obvious choice for certain things. Yet, you still have people developing sites the same way sites have been developed for ten years. I use AJAX heavily, and you'd be surprised how people are still amazed by it. But now there is a push to call libraries like prototype "software" and thus make them subject to regulation and corporate standards. Standards committees cannot keep up with the industry, so you have a situation where you cannot, by decree, use anything *too* new. I can see disallowing joe service rep from installing webshots on his PC, but disallowing a developer from using his software of choice is pretty shortsighted.
Nah, you see...there's another mineral out there too. It is capable of absorbing radiation from this material. See? Problem solved! Silly boy!
No, that's just my dosimeter. You see, my job is to be a radiation absorber. I for one, DO NOT welcome our new radiation-absorbing mineral-based overlords.
Interesting thought. I was thinking the same thing, but maybe from the other end.
Specialization is nice, but it can go to far. I was thinking of the people whose job it is to process food. For them, food production isn't about feeding their families, it's about maximizing profits and producing units, as though they were making clocks or automobiles or shoes. There's an obvious problem with that -- food is so much more important, as all the poisoned-food-from-China-scares in the US as of late have reminded us. If people were at least closer to the food, so to speak, things would be better. Maybe not everyone needs to be a farmer, but maybe everyone *should* know the person who grows his food, and vice versa. I guess I am basically echoing the organic food movement of the 70's (and not the latest incarnation of the organic food movement as a high-end lifestyle choice.) Ironically, as some have pointed out, the green revolution was partly responsible for this as it paved the way for the mega-farms we have today.
The other thing I was thinking is that people are generally less happy than they were before, at least that's what just about every older person (let's say 70+) I talk to tells me. Why? I'd wager it's at least partly because the pendulum has swung so far from the more agrarian society that existed even 50 years ago. Now, instead of having time to grow food, we don't even have time to eat healthy food and so we resort to food that is merely convenient. Most families are two income and therefore life is very rushed and cluttered, and despite all of the labor saving devices, we don't actually have any more time for things that are really important. Is that an improvement? Well, in some ways it is because all of the modern advances have bought us a lot in terms of health care, lifespans, etc. I guess it's just that: the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. Too primitive, and we toil our lives away and die at 50. Too "civilized", and we search in vain for meaning and purpose, for something "real". We cannot seem to find the balance.
Maybe I'm being a bit too philosophical for a discussion here, I dunno. But if we started small, if we started supporting local food producers (and don't go to Whole Foods for that; go to a local farmer's market) we'd be healthier, we'd reward small farmers and discourage large scale mass production of food, and we'd probably save money too.
Or, just try to use Eclipse out of the box without turning off everything that you don't need. Which of course, everyone has to do at least once. But then again, what do you expect? Eclipse is, after all, Java based. What, do you actually expect good performance?
And yes, I know this from experience.
Agreed. Visual Studio, while having its faults (Windows only [duh, right?], pretty large footprint, and some rather unhelpful "help" features) is better than Eclipse. Visual Studio is quite nice if you just want to write Windows apps. C# is excellent. .NET is great. I just have too much cognitive dissonance when I totally ignore other operating systems, though. If MSFT would just provide .NET plugins for Linux / Mac they'd help themselves out a lot (and yes I know about MONO.) The annoying start page, and the MSDN search that returns nothing of use, and the !helpful code formatting notwithstanding, Visual Studio is pretty good.
I have gone through periods of trying Eclipse. People are incredulous when I tell them I hate Eclipse, so I feel like I have to see what I am missing and install it. Every time, EVERY TIME, I uninstall it, totally disgusted with the amount of RAM it takes and how heavy it feels. It's just another example of why I hate Java apps. Java on the server is fine, but on the client it just falls flat. Clunky look and feel, slow performance, and weird UI quirks seem to be the hallmarks of Java apps (and when people start using terms like percieved slowness, I reach for my Browning). Doesn't anyone else get annoyed by how slow Eclipse feels? Anyone?
To me, an IDE shouldn't get in the way of development. It should like a good waiter -- there when you want but otherwise out of your face. That's where both Eclipse and Visual Studio fall short.
My IDE of choice is jEdit. Yes, I know it's Java based. I do hate the fact that it's Java and it looks like every other Java application: butt ugly (and even with the Look and Feel plugin that is supposed to give more of a native OS look and feel...stupid swing components). But most importantly, it's a mighty fine text editor which has IDE essentials like syntax highlighting, comprehensive searching, and lots of powerful text editing tools (like block select, which my coworkers who use Dreamweaver just drool over.)
If you use Eclipse but hate it for being so heavy, I'd recommend jEdit. It's just the right amount of IDE. Not so much IDE cruft that writing code is less writing code than it is learning how to use the IDE, yet it's got enough utility to facilitate the business of writing code. Any web development I do (ASP, PHP, Cold Fusion, html, css, javascript) is all done in jEdit and I can code a page in the time it takes Eclipse to open a file.
and
I can appreciate what you are saying. In school, the most frustrating part about it all was that after summer break, half the year was spent reviewing what had been learned last year (especially in math classes). So while most of the other students were re-learning stuff that they already learned, I was bored out of my skull. I'd argue that if students forget stuff over the summer break, then what's the point of teaching it again? They're just going to forget it again. If I were a math teacher and students said "we're never gonna use this stuff!" then that would tell me that it's pointless to teach them. If people don't like to learn things, then these same people aren't going to turn around and become an engineer or a programmer or a physicist; these professions that do use algebra and beyond are also all about learning.
On the other hand, you have to be careful. You can start to sound very self-aggrandizing very quickly. While I may have been better in high school math than most other students, I am not so foolish as to think that I am flat out smarter than everyone else. Everyone has something he excels at, and too often he thinks that means he can do EVERYTHING better than everyone else. And that just makes a person look stupid and arrogant. And if there's one thing worse than someone who is stupid, it's someone who is also arrogant. It's just like driving: everyone thinks he is a better driver than everyone else. That is statistically impossible. So, while you may be special in your own eyes, and in the eyes of your mother, your significant other, etc, the cold hard reality is that you are, in many ways, just like everyone else.
"Maybe that works well for the least intellectually gifted"
Well, look at OP's nick. That should sum it up. The guy calls himself sumdumass and tries as hard as he can to live up to it.
true, but I think you know what I meant. I am not talking about the logistics of growing food so much as I am trying to point out that no fuel doesn't necessarily mean no food. Fuel is not more important than food, even if fuel does aid in the growing/processing of food.
So to summarize, don't be so sure of your own righteousness.
Interestingly, many of the people who fit your description call themselves christians. The Bible teaches that christians should "keep proving what [they] are" and that they should "keep making sure of all things". In other words, *don't* become so complacent that you think you are always right. Be willing to learn and to be readjusted. This is why I am so easily upset by people who claim to be religious and yet totally ignore the very book upon which their faith is supposedly based.
I'd assume a large percentage of people here on /. are atheist and hostile toward religion. I am not one of them.
That said, I want to address your point about a few bad people giving the majority a bad name. You make a fair point, like in so many other things the media sensationalizes the bad and ignores the good, and society in general gets a distorted view of things.
But I think the real problem is not so much with the few bad people, it's often how they are treated when found out. The Catholic church, for example, is notorious for discovering cases of abuse and attempting to cover it up. I am pretty sure the public attitude toward the Catholic church would be a lot different if they vilified the priests who commit these crimes instead of just ignoring the problem. And that's not to say that these individuals cannot be forgiven. But the Bible puts a few conditions on forgiveness, and one of these is true repentance. So many of these religious leaders who are involved with bad things probably don't show true remorse; it seems to most people that they are just sad because they got caught.
"we wouldn't have food without fuel."
Sure you would. If I were starving I'd plant some food in my backyard and most people would do the same in their backyards, though I have no idea what people in places like NYC would do. You'd have no industrial farming, sure, but you'd have food. I have this theory that if we had to grow our own food, we'd waste far less and we (Americans) wouldn't be so lazy.
yeah, and I hate all these programs that require windows 95 or greater and 32M of RAM. Jeez, if I want to use Office 2007 with my 1989 386 running windows 3.11, then why can't I?!?! Stupid developers!
I was with you until that last paragraph. In what universe does "quality code" mean lack of cookies, javascript, and flash? By quality code, do you mean code that is lacking stuff that *you* just don't like for some irrational reason?
Damn Luddites.
"If someone releases a product cheaper or with more features than your product, you must move forward to beat them. Competition drives innovation, not monopoly IP protection. So what if you spent 5 years designing something new?"
It seems you are forgetting a few things:
1) Probably more of a moral argument... I'd be willing to bet that a lot of the cost of an iPhone is related to the R&D that went into it. Someone (in this case Apple) sunk a lot of cash into making this thing, and the manufacturing piece is a relatively small part of that. Ok, so somebody comes along and reverse engineers the thing and improves it. They are standing on Apple's back and are thus able to reach higher. They did not innovate anything. The reverse engineering, as impressive as that is, isn't the same thing as innovation. Don't confuse the two.
2) China can produce things cheaper, what with their large and cheap labor pool. Well, the guys who reverse engineered the iPhone are also probably making less money than a janitor in the US. Have you ever seen that poster from despair.com with the Egyptian pyramid on it? The caption says "Anything is possible when you have an unlimited supply of free labor." I know it's just a stupid poster, but the point is valid. See the parallel?
3) It may be a tired old argument, but it's one that still holds water: if there are no "reasonable" IP laws, then what is the incentive to sink a ton of money into R&D? In other words, if there was no Apple iPhone, there would be no chinese iphone.
4) You must realize that your argument is almost identical to the one used to justify the mass outsourcing of corporate IT departments. The story goes, you get close to the same quality at a fraction of the cost. But the devil is in the details. Forget the fact that you are cannibalizing your local economy and hurting yourself in the long run. Forget that "close" to the same quality is not always close enough.
Agreed. Not to be overlooked is the javascript code that can be eliminated.
Want a menu? Gotta write javascript. Want to restrict the length of a textarea? Gotta write a script. Want to make that select box behave like a real select box in a desktop app (where you can type to find a value)? Gotta write javascript.
New tags that accomplish what should be standard behavior would make most websites much leaner and therefore much more maintainable. TFA did not indicate that select or textarea elements are going to be spruced up, though.
"Isn't it already possible to include proprietary tags in (X)HTML documents"
Sure, but if you want your code to actually validate, you have to write your own DTD. Have fun with that.
If you include proprietary elements/attributes while using a standard DTD your code won't validate. XHTML code that doesn't validate against its DTD isn't truly XHTML code, since adherence to the DTD is what defines XHTML code.
Right. And not only that, according to tfa "Apple, Opera, and the Mozilla Foundation" got together to do this. We all like these companies, but until they get buy-in from Macrosuck, we'll be coding IE hacks for our entire careers. That pisses me off. Microsoft once propelled the web forward, now they are holding it back with their ~90% marketshare coupled with pigheaded unwillingness to let the web evolve.
Ok, so you're gonna make me trundle out the tired old "You must be new here" gag.
I work for a large company that many people here hate, and no, not MSFT. It seems that whenever I make factual statements about certain company initiatives I get modded down (via the overrated mod, of course...pansy boy mods) while the kneejerk "large corp A === teh evils!1!" comments get modded up as insightful. Not that I really even defend my company, as I am no "company man", I just occasionally refute statements I know to be false.
Not too long ago, as sort of an experiment, I just rattled off some stupid groupthink twaddle and got modded to +5 insighful! Like you said, it's interesting to see that even geeks (or people who at least claim to be geeks) can toss objectivity out the window. Groupthink truly *is* a universal phenomenon. You, sir, went against the groupthink. For that transgression, and since nobody can give you a "bad" downmod like flamebait or troll, they hit you with sly ones. Except this not-so-bright moderator used the redundant mod, which means that he can and likely will be metamodded.
And watch as this gets modded overrated. Or maybe offtopic. Whatever.
"pedophiles kill far less people while driving than alcoholics."
Whoever posted this is a moron who has no clue.
Why, using that same logic, fewer people choke on guns than jawbreakers, does that mean that jawbreaker related deaths outnumber gun related deaths?
See? Stupid.
I do have to agree with your point about mass media. The dateline shows, well, are entertaining television, and I am sure that many of the people who get caught might justifiably claim they have been entrapped. But this lawsuit just seems to be someone trying to cash in. Would she sue the police department if someone with a mountain of cash (hmm, like NBC?) weren't somehow involved with the arrest? I doubt it, and if so, that would be tossed out with a quickness.
That said, have you ever watched the show? The thing that amazes me are the amount of people who seem intelligent, and who just cannot stop themselves from driving two, three, or even more hours to come and have sex with a young teenager. They do it knowing they can and probably will get caught at some point. Know what that tells me? That if someone is able to make a decent effort to do something they know will destroy them, that is an addiction and a serious problem. There is something [addiction] interfering with logical thought with these guys. You can call entrapment all you want, but the guys keep lining up to get caught. That means that something is seriously wrong with a lot of guys.
Now, as for these dateline biffs going to defcon, well, that's a little ridiculous (not to mention stupid!). They are operating on the assumption that hackers are criminals, and that is just plain sloppy. At least learn the correct terms, geez. And the dateline folks aren't going to outsmart a bunch of hackers. What, they thought someone would be trading warez and that'd be a story? Yawn. Or did they think they were going to get Kraus Umvert Schmilken, the evil haxx0r from Molvania, to announce his plans to hack a comsat and turn it into a giant laser and hold the entire planet hostage for one million dollars? Get serious.
"Pedophilia is no where near the national problem that Alcoholism is in terms of total damage to lives and property, but alcoholics aren't required to be on a national list" ... but I guess pedophilia is easier to define and thus as a violation, easier to enforce. Plus, one could argue that the damage caused by pedophiles is worse than by alcoholics. There may be more alcoholics than pedophiles, or it could be that pedophiles are often never, ever, caught because of how they manipulate children.
Interesting point, and I can kind of see where you are going
I grew up with an alcoholic father. I am sure it had an effect on me, but I feel like I have a healthy attitude toward alcohol. I drunk never am...[hic]....ok, kidding. Seriously, I can have a beer or two and stop, and I might have a drink or two every day for a week and then go for a month without a drink, or I might go through a stretch where I have a drink a week, etc. I like beer, I don't drink to get drunk, anyhow, I digress. Having an alcoholic father has not made me into an alcoholic. If anything, it has given me a negative role model that I try to stay away from in terms of my habits with alcohol.
On the other hand, I have known a few friends (all female) who have confided in me that they were molested when they were small, and in all cases they had difficulties with relationships. Call it anecdote, but it would seem to me that, per capita, a pedophile causes way more harm than a drunk.
Ok, troll, I'll bite.
What, you mean like digg?