Oh how lovely that the post-modernists have finally found the internet. I'm glad that they are not so "post" that they missed the phenomenon completely.
I used to believe some of the deconstructionist rhetoric when I was practicing family therapy. Then I realized that while some academic journals printed their stories, er monographs, nobody outside of their clique really paid them much attention. Psychology followed the money of the big drug companies just like the web follows the money of the big advertisers.
It's a great idea, but, ah, to have the luxury of that much extra time. Books like this and Web Redesign: Workflow That Works, http://tinyurl.com/y3kajb (Amazon/TinyURL link) that provide good checklists are a godsend for the small shop.
They may not fit your firm's policies and workflow exactly but are better than nothing and cheap compared to the number of hours maintaining a wiki would entail. And they're way better than nothing at all, which is what too many design firms have.
If you don't match your client's vision you haven't made a good website. Period. Good websites are about communication. If you have communicated so poorly with your client that you build something the client doesn't like, I'd seriously doubt whether you can communicate well with the rest of the world.
That said, there are some clients who's ideas are so far from yours that you should refer them out. You can't do a good job for someone you seriously disagree with.
This is a joke right? I can't believe that it's not modded funny.
Kevin Anderson the finest writer in Fantasy and Sci-Fi? Hardly. Widely acknowledged? By whom? The finest in either genre? You gotta be kidding. He's competent but no J.R.R.. And Chris Tolkein is just a hack.
If this volume were finished by a true master like Ursula Le Guin, Guy Kay or even Lois Bujold, I'd already have my order in where ever it was sold. If it is a lightly edited volume, like the Silmarillion, I'll be thrilled. You can plainly see the original author's style and brilliance. However, if this is the same quality as Anderson's work with Brian Herbert on the "Dune" books it should stay buried.
Hundreds of answers here by bright people and you all miss the point. This isn't about the student's ability to learn. It's about having profs look bad.
There are lots of bad instructors out there who's classes wouldn't get high attendence if people could avoid it. For every good instructor around there is another who is boring. Bell curves and all that. So many professors get their positions for reasons other than teaching ability that instructional shortcomings would show up. Some of those reasons are even valid like the ability to get grant money and bring prestige from past research. But deep down professors have to fear that if students didn't have to attend their lectures many wouldn't.
While the concept of accessibility is incredibly important, JAWS, the most used screen reader is totally tied to Microsoft products. Did Microsoft come back through the back door with accessibility to derail the Open Format initiative?
On the other hand, maybe this will give some impetus for Open Office to get into bed with the accessibility people.
Maybe it is finally time for Apple's products to speak for themselves without the big show that was necessary when Apple was behind the speed curve and floundering. First the consumer models and laptops caught up with the rest of the computer world, in speed, now the workstations and servers will too, all of them at competitive prices. Steve doesn't have to hype a new silver wind tunnel that's embarrassingly slow and expensive.
Since there is no new box to throw the MacPro into, it just looks a lot like the old G5 Mac. What's sexy there? What sets Macs apart from other personal computers is the OS. Is it better to give promises and produce vaporware or to hold some goodies close and announce them at shipping time? Let's see, Apple has: competitive computers, award winning designs, a modern OS that actually ships, a growing market share, a huge lead in the personal music player business, solid profits. Did I miss anything?
Yeah, I enjoy a good show as well as the next guy, but there isn't the need to see the star hit a home run evey time up to bat. Leopard may not be as exciting as a new iPod but we're still seeing solid innovation. Wall Street doesn't seem happy with the fact that Apple showed a bigger profit and more growth than anybody else in the industry last quarter and probably will this quarter too. This whining is just silly.
The point of OSS on OS X is not to make an alternative Darwin OS that can run X Windows. That's already available with FreeBSD and Linux. Hell, Apple offers a nice X environment that looks like Aqua.
The point is to be able to easily add things like Subversion and ImageMagick and other command line 'Nix programs, that don't come with the default OS X install. The Open Darwin group may have had visions of making an alternative Power PC distro. But most of us wanted it because it was an easy Mac version of RPM.
That's a good suggestion. It never hurts to have good reference material. And, for some people books or online sources just don't do it. We all have different learning styles. Some people need to learn directly from others. Unfortunately having different needs makes it difficult to give meaningful recommendations to a stranger.
The system that works best for me is to try read some first, so at least the vocabulary isn't totally foreign but I learn much, much more quickly in a training class environment. It's not just the live instructor. There's something about learning in a group environment that makes learning faster. It may be because others usually ask very helpful questions that I would have never thought of.
Looking at the problem from your angle, you're right. As a Mac user who needs to occasionally run Windows, I think you miss the point. It's not about cost as much as convenience and quality of experience. Many Mac users are in the same boat. We need to run some Windows program but would love the opportunity to get in and out of Windows as quickly as possible without extra computers or the molasses speed of emulation.
When I get my new Macbook, I will still need to run Windows and certainly won't want to drag around a second notebook. I run VirtualPC now and am very much looking forward to being able to run Windows natively. Remember that over half of all Mac sold are laptops.
You are also forgetting that many Mac owners don't want to run some pieced together kludge box any more than most people who are proud of their cars want to drive some pieced together junk pile, faster, cheaper or not. Performance and cost aren't the issues as much as the elegance of the solution.
While it may be true that there are more brilliant physicists working today making it harder for someone to stand out, I think that there are a couple of other issues involved. Several people have already mentioned that Albert was a non-conformist and the different make for better press. But the other reason that he was so popular was that he was extremely quotable.
Mark Twain was a gifted writer but a good part of his stature came not just from his work but the quips that he dropped. Give us another genuinely quotable, quirky, flamboyant playboy genius and we may have another media darling like Einstein. It was as much the press and the brilliance.
Learning how to use information is half the battle. Along with the ability to sort, store and search we also need the ability to synthesize. Masses of random facts are good for trivia games but little else.
What a ridiculous question. Maybe those who need to believe themselves super geeks may leave but they'll be easily replaced by new users who take joy in learing more about their chosen OS. As president of a MUG, I can say that a good OS attracts passionate users who like to share and learn. Does constant Mac mainstream press kill Mac User Groups? Not hardly. Does ease of use kill Mac user groups? Ain't no easier computer - still got the groups. All computers are complicated to use and user groups are a great resource and a great social opportunity for people to share their passion.
And the idea of Linux being mainstream is just a mite hopeful. It may be mainstream among network administrators and computer science grads reading Slashdot, but I can guarantee you that the general public wouldn't know a Linux box from a linotype machine. And what they do know is probably wrong anyway. Macs get lots of press and misinformation about them is the norm.
I've attended a couple of local LUGs and can testify that their members are just as avid and cultish as Mac users, and just as welcoming and eager to share. As long as Linux remains an underdog users will band together against the Windows world. You may loose a few members who only were proud of Linux because it was so difficult to make work but they are leaving because of some other need than the one to share and learn from each other.
It is always entertaining to watch Slashdotters trashing people without bothering with little details like checking facts. I've been reading a couple of this guy's other blogs for a while, one for about three years, (Livingroom), and another for two (Digital Photpgraphy Blog). In fact, while I was writing my own religion blog (mysticcowboy) I emailed and trackbacked with Darren every couple of months.
That this guy is blogging solely for dollars is absurd. He is just an info junkie who has happened to find a way to make a living at his passion. He also answers question, engages with people writing feedback and gives his writing away, the way most bloggers do. So what if he found out that Google would reward him through its add program? Kudos to him.
C'mon folks. There's no hard sell here, maybe a little blogging fanaticism, but what's wrong with that? What's so evil about making a living writing? It gives some hope to those of us in cubicles doing tech support. Maybe there is another way to make a living doing something fun.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh how lovely that the post-modernists have finally found the internet. I'm glad that they are not so "post" that they missed the phenomenon completely.
I used to believe some of the deconstructionist rhetoric when I was practicing family therapy. Then I realized that while some academic journals printed their stories, er monographs, nobody outside of their clique really paid them much attention. Psychology followed the money of the big drug companies just like the web follows the money of the big advertisers.
It's a great idea, but, ah, to have the luxury of that much extra time. Books like this and Web Redesign: Workflow That Works, http://tinyurl.com/y3kajb (Amazon/TinyURL link) that provide good checklists are a godsend for the small shop.
They may not fit your firm's policies and workflow exactly but are better than nothing and cheap compared to the number of hours maintaining a wiki would entail. And they're way better than nothing at all, which is what too many design firms have.
If you don't match your client's vision you haven't made a good website. Period. Good websites are about communication. If you have communicated so poorly with your client that you build something the client doesn't like, I'd seriously doubt whether you can communicate well with the rest of the world.
That said, there are some clients who's ideas are so far from yours that you should refer them out. You can't do a good job for someone you seriously disagree with.
This is a joke right? I can't believe that it's not modded funny. Kevin Anderson the finest writer in Fantasy and Sci-Fi? Hardly. Widely acknowledged? By whom? The finest in either genre? You gotta be kidding. He's competent but no J.R.R.. And Chris Tolkein is just a hack. If this volume were finished by a true master like Ursula Le Guin, Guy Kay or even Lois Bujold, I'd already have my order in where ever it was sold. If it is a lightly edited volume, like the Silmarillion, I'll be thrilled. You can plainly see the original author's style and brilliance. However, if this is the same quality as Anderson's work with Brian Herbert on the "Dune" books it should stay buried.
Hundreds of answers here by bright people and you all miss the point. This isn't about the student's ability to learn. It's about having profs look bad.
There are lots of bad instructors out there who's classes wouldn't get high attendence if people could avoid it. For every good instructor around there is another who is boring. Bell curves and all that. So many professors get their positions for reasons other than teaching ability that instructional shortcomings would show up. Some of those reasons are even valid like the ability to get grant money and bring prestige from past research. But deep down professors have to fear that if students didn't have to attend their lectures many wouldn't.
While the concept of accessibility is incredibly important, JAWS, the most used screen reader is totally tied to Microsoft products. Did Microsoft come back through the back door with accessibility to derail the Open Format initiative?
On the other hand, maybe this will give some impetus for Open Office to get into bed with the accessibility people.
Maybe it is finally time for Apple's products to speak for themselves without the big show that was necessary when Apple was behind the speed curve and floundering. First the consumer models and laptops caught up with the rest of the computer world, in speed, now the workstations and servers will too, all of them at competitive prices. Steve doesn't have to hype a new silver wind tunnel that's embarrassingly slow and expensive.
Since there is no new box to throw the MacPro into, it just looks a lot like the old G5 Mac. What's sexy there? What sets Macs apart from other personal computers is the OS. Is it better to give promises and produce vaporware or to hold some goodies close and announce them at shipping time? Let's see, Apple has: competitive computers, award winning designs, a modern OS that actually ships, a growing market share, a huge lead in the personal music player business, solid profits. Did I miss anything?
Yeah, I enjoy a good show as well as the next guy, but there isn't the need to see the star hit a home run evey time up to bat. Leopard may not be as exciting as a new iPod but we're still seeing solid innovation. Wall Street doesn't seem happy with the fact that Apple showed a bigger profit and more growth than anybody else in the industry last quarter and probably will this quarter too. This whining is just silly.
The point of OSS on OS X is not to make an alternative Darwin OS that can run X Windows. That's already available with FreeBSD and Linux. Hell, Apple offers a nice X environment that looks like Aqua.
The point is to be able to easily add things like Subversion and ImageMagick and other command line 'Nix programs, that don't come with the default OS X install. The Open Darwin group may have had visions of making an alternative Power PC distro. But most of us wanted it because it was an easy Mac version of RPM.
That's a good suggestion. It never hurts to have good reference material. And, for some people books or online sources just don't do it. We all have different learning styles. Some people need to learn directly from others. Unfortunately having different needs makes it difficult to give meaningful recommendations to a stranger. The system that works best for me is to try read some first, so at least the vocabulary isn't totally foreign but I learn much, much more quickly in a training class environment. It's not just the live instructor. There's something about learning in a group environment that makes learning faster. It may be because others usually ask very helpful questions that I would have never thought of.
You're wrong. It's actually a pirated version of a standards complient Internet Explorer that got stolen from the Microsoft squash vault.
Exactly. My favorite was Word 5.1 for Mac. It's been mostly progressively more bloat and progressively less stability since.
Looking at the problem from your angle, you're right. As a Mac user who needs to occasionally run Windows, I think you miss the point. It's not about cost as much as convenience and quality of experience. Many Mac users are in the same boat. We need to run some Windows program but would love the opportunity to get in and out of Windows as quickly as possible without extra computers or the molasses speed of emulation.
When I get my new Macbook, I will still need to run Windows and certainly won't want to drag around a second notebook. I run VirtualPC now and am very much looking forward to being able to run Windows natively. Remember that over half of all Mac sold are laptops.
You are also forgetting that many Mac owners don't want to run some pieced together kludge box any more than most people who are proud of their cars want to drive some pieced together junk pile, faster, cheaper or not. Performance and cost aren't the issues as much as the elegance of the solution.
While it may be true that there are more brilliant physicists working today making it harder for someone to stand out, I think that there are a couple of other issues involved. Several people have already mentioned that Albert was a non-conformist and the different make for better press. But the other reason that he was so popular was that he was extremely quotable.
Mark Twain was a gifted writer but a good part of his stature came not just from his work but the quips that he dropped. Give us another genuinely quotable, quirky, flamboyant playboy genius and we may have another media darling like Einstein. It was as much the press and the brilliance.
Learning how to use information is half the battle. Along with the ability to sort, store and search we also need the ability to synthesize. Masses of random facts are good for trivia games but little else.
What a ridiculous question. Maybe those who need to believe themselves super geeks may leave but they'll be easily replaced by new users who take joy in learing more about their chosen OS. As president of a MUG, I can say that a good OS attracts passionate users who like to share and learn. Does constant Mac mainstream press kill Mac User Groups? Not hardly. Does ease of use kill Mac user groups? Ain't no easier computer - still got the groups. All computers are complicated to use and user groups are a great resource and a great social opportunity for people to share their passion.
And the idea of Linux being mainstream is just a mite hopeful. It may be mainstream among network administrators and computer science grads reading Slashdot, but I can guarantee you that the general public wouldn't know a Linux box from a linotype machine. And what they do know is probably wrong anyway. Macs get lots of press and misinformation about them is the norm.
I've attended a couple of local LUGs and can testify that their members are just as avid and cultish as Mac users, and just as welcoming and eager to share. As long as Linux remains an underdog users will band together against the Windows world. You may loose a few members who only were proud of Linux because it was so difficult to make work but they are leaving because of some other need than the one to share and learn from each other.
It is always entertaining to watch Slashdotters trashing people without bothering with little details like checking facts. I've been reading a couple of this guy's other blogs for a while, one for about three years, (Livingroom), and another for two (Digital Photpgraphy Blog). In fact, while I was writing my own religion blog (mysticcowboy) I emailed and trackbacked with Darren every couple of months.
That this guy is blogging solely for dollars is absurd. He is just an info junkie who has happened to find a way to make a living at his passion. He also answers question, engages with people writing feedback and gives his writing away, the way most bloggers do. So what if he found out that Google would reward him through its add program? Kudos to him.
C'mon folks. There's no hard sell here, maybe a little blogging fanaticism, but what's wrong with that? What's so evil about making a living writing? It gives some hope to those of us in cubicles doing tech support. Maybe there is another way to make a living doing something fun.