I'm going to a university in Minnesota for a Mass Communications degree and some of our classes are combination class time/online discussions. For my international communications class this worked out very well. The teach was on top of things, posted to the discussion and pointed out flaws in peoples arguments, all in all, I enjoyed it very much, but he is also probably the best professor I've had in the classroom as well.
The rest of my school is a complete joke, and the major reason is the professors. I've had to take classes like intro to publishing that are supposed to be followed up with more advanced classes like layout and typography, but it just turns out to be the same class twice because none of the professors are really that knowledgeable. The professors teach class like it was high school, putting major emphasis on attendance and then letting students just hand in complete crap for their assignments.
I'm slightly older than average for a college student (25), and I've been working as a graphic designer for a couple of years before deciding to complete a Mass Comm degree, and I've handed in things that I've done in a half hour, and would have gotten me fired from my job had I presented it to a client, but the professor would give me an A.
There is absolutely no reason in any of the classes to try, because basically everyone gets good grades, the difference between the highest grade in the class and the lowest is usually I guess what I'm trying to say is - lazy and incompetant faculty is definately not a problem solely on online courses. I'd be willing to bet these same teachers would just skid by if you took a real world class. If you know your stuff already, I'd just say deal with it and get the stupid piece of paper (like I'm doing) If it's something you'd like to learn, and don't already know then search around for a different professor in the same program. If they're all crap then start looking for a whole new school.
(sorry for the cross post at MaSlash, but I wanted both audiences to see this)
People always try to give me reasons why their music stealing is perfectly allright. They try to tell me it doesn't hurt anyone because the musician can make money some other way, damn RIAA, greedy labels, etc.
Well, I call bullsh*t, this feature was disabled because of all the A-holes who decided to post links to their iTunes for anyone to browse and to create Web sites dedicated to streaming music to anyone. Although I don't agree with it, this probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal, until some other A-hole started telling everyone how he has this great utility to rip those streams to mp3, which caused thousands of other A-holes to start stealing music.
Well thanks a f*ck'n lot. Because now a cool utility that let me stream my music from my machine at home to my machine at work is being taken away. (at some point I'll have to upgrade, I imagine)
This is the biggest problem with people who steal music. (and remember kids, no matter how you try to spin it - it's still just stealing). You cause the powers that be to take fair use rights away from me, and I hate you all for it.
>Besides, since most broadband is pretty seriously hamstringed in the upstream department, I'm not sure where they can go with this.
That's one of the most thinly veiled "I'm going to steal music no matter what" rebuttels (sp) I've heard in a long time. It doesn't top the guy in our office that uses the "Music has been free for thousands of years" argument though.
Thank god, other people are thinking the same thing.
In his FAQ's he has stated that he doesn't have time to support his Java applet nor the text files, so he would not be making them available for anyone. Fortunatally enough for those of us who are interested, he has left them wide open in a standard zip file on his server.
WTF? He says he doesn't want them available for anyone, but since someone happened to find them you're going to ignore his request and just take them? At least someone set up a mirror in a post so you're not stealing his bandwidth as well. I can't believe this got posted, it's so wrong.
So is this going to continue down this slope until all the posts are just ftp spots to steal the latest wares? After reading the comments on the Apple music service yesterday, it's obvious a large portion of slashdot readers feel its within their right to take anything they happen to find.
Yeah, I hate downloading that free version of their software to watch a movie that can be played on almost any platform. Now, I don't have a linux box, but it's been pointed out by several people on slashdot that there is software available that will play quicktime movies for those boxes.
I'm so sick of seeing comments like this whenever a new movie trailer comes out. Its quicktime because its on Apples effin site and its a good way to promote quicktime technologies which they would like to see adopted because its their job to make effin money. If you don't like quicktime then/don't watch the trailer/. Jeez, you people act like their taking away your first amendment rights.
Well, that sentence was most likely the work of the articles author and not any source at Apple. I think it's just badly written/researched. The author probably just picked a couple of features out without even checking if these were the ones that were meant to surpass Windows in usability.
As is pointed out in other reports their margins are up because they're selling less machines but with greater profit margins on each one. I want to point out that apple is doing quite well for being in the middle of a recession/and/ selling machines based on a chip that, according to rumors, is nearing the end of its life. We're probably seeing less sales because professionals are holding off buying until they see what's on the horizon. I think if the rumors of the IBM 970 chip turn out to be true, you'll see the number of units sold skyrocket
Re:If Ars Technica is so concerned about usability
on
A Better Finder?
·
· Score: 1
This is totally correct. The web centered on white backgrounds with black text in the mid to late 90s because when you tried to print out white text from early browsers, nothing printed. There are several workarounds to this now, but black-on-white is pretty much the standard now.
Why don't all of you just admit that you like stealing and no service that makes you pay is going to change that. "Oh, I'd have to log into a secure server and that would take to long"
what crap.
I'm sick of listening to people make up excuses for stealing music - I don't want to make the record companies any richer, they're price gouging me, I find new music this way blah blah blah - What garabage, probably about.01% of you actually believe that, and those are the ones that actually go out and find legitimate ways around it without screwing the artists.
If you believe the American people are ready to go to war again and die in Iraq you have been listening to too much of our government's propaganda. They're doing it, by and large, without our support."
Oh really? Could you please back this statement up? Because when I was watching CNN yesterday they should a 61% - 31% approval for the war, and steadily rising.
"These machines are not assigned to them - it's pick-as-you-please. The students do not have network accounts, so there's no server for them to upload to.
They *need* floppies."
Erm. Couldn't they just email their work to themselves? Or... get a freakin' mac. Burning a CD is easy as putting information on a floppy.
I have a friend who works at Microsoft Business Solutions and he first told me about this move over year ago. Nothing confirmed just gossip around the office. So if this is true, they've been looking in Macromedia's direction for a long time.
Funny, according to my UptimeinMenu program. I'm at 23 days. With Oracle, Resin, Tomcat, and Apache running java applications. While I use photoshop and bbedit to create front ends for the servlet pages, while I listen to Mates of State mp3's on iTunes and read customer comments in Micrsoft word and read slashdot on Chimera an OS X only browser based on mozilla. From a g3 pismo laptop.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is the lockup comment is probably unwarranted.
For all the people who are saying how annoying coding to standards are and how they can interfere with how different browsers are rendering their pages. You need to start thinking different. Or you need to change careers.
So you have your site working on 4.x browsers, using hacks and proprietary markup. Good for you. You captured the 5% of the market that is years behind current technology, and probably really doesn't really use the Internet for anything useful other than E-mail.
On the other hand you've locked out people that don't have a choice in their browser, like people who are blind and use aural browsers, because all those tables and crazy tags make the browser read the content in the wrong order. You've also locked out alpha consumers who do or in the next couple years will use wireless PDA's/Internet Appliances/Pad computers to surf on, because those tables render like crap on the small screens.
Meanwhile the CSS sites that are coded to standards and actually had some thought put behind the content, gracefully degrade on these old browsers and the cutting edge wireless devices so that everyone has access to the content while the majority of people have access to the design as you intended it.
I know it's not possible to do this on every site, but designers and developers should at least have css in mind when they start the design process. If it's not feasable then you can start to work backwards. Maybe XHTML won't work on this project because of client requirements, but HTML 4.01 Strict will, maybe you have to go to HTML 4.01 Transitional, but at least you thought about the best solution for the client. Not just for now, but for the future as well.
I believe even evolt.org, which heavily promotes the standards, uses a design that has some tables for layout, in the header. But the main content is layed out using css. This design degrades nicely to 4.x browsers, works/fairly/ well on wireless devices and also gets to reap alot of the benefits of css like ease of redesign. (except for the header which uses tables).
As for the argument that a client won't pay for or the designer doesn't have the time to create a standards site, these people should take a serious look at their business practices. Do you expect your clients to pay for your learning time on CSS? I highly doubt anyone would hire a developer that had no experience with HTML, put him on a client project, and then make the client pay for all the learning time as he tried to complete the site. It's no different when learning CSS and standards, you should be learning it on your own time, not trying to get clients to flip the bill. Once you get the hang of things, it shouldn't take any longer then how you usually do things.
Basically when you're thinking about a site, think big. Think about all the ways people are accessing your site and then decide your coding methods.
Rumormongoring about a mouse? Man MWNY must of really dissappointed alot of people if they need to speculate about a new mouse just to make them feel better.
(Posted with a five button Microsoft Intellimouse on a g3 pismo.
I believed I read, that the researchers later discovered that it was only a single processor application, so It becomes a bit more obvious why it was so far behind.
>...they did alright with the iMac for a while, but then they went right back to struggling to stay in business.
By being one of only a handful of profitable computer companies?
From Macnn:
"Bloomberg quotes Steve Jobs as saying "Not losing a lot of money is, unfortunately, a shining achievement in today's PC market," noting that Apple and Dell are among the few that are profitable,"
"At the time of its release, Apple wouldn't say what -- if anything -- an unlabeled "Bondi blue" port cover on the right side of the Revision A and B machines might be for. As it turns out, the closed architecture design of the iMac hides a 160-pin connector clearly labeled "MEZZANINE" on the motherboard. This connector is basically a sort of PCI variant (PCI is known as a "mezzanine bus.") Although Apple says the connector says the connector is for internal development only and shouldn't be used, a few third-party companies supplied expansion connectors for Voodoo2 video cards and other expansion options. Some postulated that this bus could someday provide a connector for a video capture system, based on hardware designed to support the "Final Cut" video editing software that Apple bought from Macromedia, but Apple discontinued the mezzanine bus and infrared port on Rev. C and later iMac models."
These were included in the iMac, but apple issued warnings to third party developers to *not* develop peripherals that used these ports, and a couple of revisions later they were dropped.
I'm guessing things like this happen when developers are still in the process of 'tweaking' their designs. Although the flash is more integral than a couple of ports maybe it will be dropped in later revisions of the treo?
> My pet peeve is when sites hype and announce new-and-improved sites, and then they come out and they are simply a gigantic flash application.
It's funny how if I would have posted this, it would have been moderated down into oblivion for being offtopic, but it's apparently fine to post it on the front page.
Slashdot Mirror
The rest of my school is a complete joke, and the major reason is the professors. I've had to take classes like intro to publishing that are supposed to be followed up with more advanced classes like layout and typography, but it just turns out to be the same class twice because none of the professors are really that knowledgeable. The professors teach class like it was high school, putting major emphasis on attendance and then letting students just hand in complete crap for their assignments.
I'm slightly older than average for a college student (25), and I've been working as a graphic designer for a couple of years before deciding to complete a Mass Comm degree, and I've handed in things that I've done in a half hour, and would have gotten me fired from my job had I presented it to a client, but the professor would give me an A.
There is absolutely no reason in any of the classes to try, because basically everyone gets good grades, the difference between the highest grade in the class and the lowest is usually
I guess what I'm trying to say is - lazy and incompetant faculty is definately not a problem solely on online courses. I'd be willing to bet these same teachers would just skid by if you took a real world class. If you know your stuff already, I'd just say deal with it and get the stupid piece of paper (like I'm doing) If it's something you'd like to learn, and don't already know then search around for a different professor in the same program. If they're all crap then start looking for a whole new school.
People always try to give me reasons why their music stealing is perfectly allright. They try to tell me it doesn't hurt anyone because the musician can make money some other way, damn RIAA, greedy labels, etc.
Well, I call bullsh*t, this feature was disabled because of all the A-holes who decided to post links to their iTunes for anyone to browse and to create Web sites dedicated to streaming music to anyone. Although I don't agree with it, this probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal, until some other A-hole started telling everyone how he has this great utility to rip those streams to mp3, which caused thousands of other A-holes to start stealing music.
Well thanks a f*ck'n lot. Because now a cool utility that let me stream my music from my machine at home to my machine at work is being taken away. (at some point I'll have to upgrade, I imagine)
This is the biggest problem with people who steal music. (and remember kids, no matter how you try to spin it - it's still just stealing). You cause the powers that be to take fair use rights away from me, and I hate you all for it.
That's one of the most thinly veiled "I'm going to steal music no matter what" rebuttels (sp) I've heard in a long time. It doesn't top the guy in our office that uses the "Music has been free for thousands of years" argument though.
In his FAQ's he has stated that he doesn't have time to support his Java applet nor the text files, so he would not be making them available for anyone. Fortunatally enough for those of us who are interested, he has left them wide open in a standard zip file on his server.
WTF? He says he doesn't want them available for anyone, but since someone happened to find them you're going to ignore his request and just take them? At least someone set up a mirror in a post so you're not stealing his bandwidth as well. I can't believe this got posted, it's so wrong.
So is this going to continue down this slope until all the posts are just ftp spots to steal the latest wares? After reading the comments on the Apple music service yesterday, it's obvious a large portion of slashdot readers feel its within their right to take anything they happen to find.
Yeah, I hate downloading that free version of their software to watch a movie that can be played on almost any platform. Now, I don't have a linux box, but it's been pointed out by several people on slashdot that there is software available that will play quicktime movies for those boxes.
/don't watch the trailer/. Jeez, you people act like their taking away your first amendment rights.
I'm so sick of seeing comments like this whenever a new movie trailer comes out. Its quicktime because its on Apples effin site and its a good way to promote quicktime technologies which they would like to see adopted because its their job to make effin money. If you don't like quicktime then
Well, that sentence was most likely the work of the articles author and not any source at Apple. I think it's just badly written/researched. The author probably just picked a couple of features out without even checking if these were the ones that were meant to surpass Windows in usability.
As is pointed out in other reports their margins are up because they're selling less machines but with greater profit margins on each one. I want to point out that apple is doing quite well for being in the middle of a recession /and/ selling machines based on a chip that, according to rumors, is nearing the end of its life. We're probably seeing less sales because professionals are holding off buying until they see what's on the horizon. I think if the rumors of the IBM 970 chip turn out to be true, you'll see the number of units sold skyrocket
This is totally correct. The web centered on white backgrounds with black text in the mid to late 90s because when you tried to print out white text from early browsers, nothing printed. There are several workarounds to this now, but black-on-white is pretty much the standard now.
You mean like my 3 year old mac laptop?
what crap.
I'm sick of listening to people make up excuses for stealing music - I don't want to make the record companies any richer, they're price gouging me, I find new music this way blah blah blah - What garabage, probably about
Oh really? Could you please back this statement up? Because when I was watching CNN yesterday they should a 61% - 31% approval for the war, and steadily rising.
They *need* floppies."
Erm. Couldn't they just email their work to themselves? Or... get a freakin' mac. Burning a CD is easy as putting information on a floppy.
Insert CD, drag files to CD, Eject CD.
I have a friend who works at Microsoft Business Solutions and he first told me about this move over year ago. Nothing confirmed just gossip around the office. So if this is true, they've been looking in Macromedia's direction for a long time.
Like all that music that Tony Hawk puts out? ;>
So what I've had Ant Running on my apple laptop for months. I didn't get any slashdot press.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is the lockup comment is probably unwarranted.
Not for long
So you have your site working on 4.x browsers, using hacks and proprietary markup. Good for you. You captured the 5% of the market that is years behind current technology, and probably really doesn't really use the Internet for anything useful other than E-mail.
On the other hand you've locked out people that don't have a choice in their browser, like people who are blind and use aural browsers, because all those tables and crazy tags make the browser read the content in the wrong order. You've also locked out alpha consumers who do or in the next couple years will use wireless PDA's/Internet Appliances/Pad computers to surf on, because those tables render like crap on the small screens.
Meanwhile the CSS sites that are coded to standards and actually had some thought put behind the content, gracefully degrade on these old browsers and the cutting edge wireless devices so that everyone has access to the content while the majority of people have access to the design as you intended it.
I know it's not possible to do this on every site, but designers and developers should at least have css in mind when they start the design process. If it's not feasable then you can start to work backwards. Maybe XHTML won't work on this project because of client requirements, but HTML 4.01 Strict will, maybe you have to go to HTML 4.01 Transitional, but at least you thought about the best solution for the client. Not just for now, but for the future as well.
I believe even evolt.org, which heavily promotes the standards, uses a design that has some tables for layout, in the header. But the main content is layed out using css. This design degrades nicely to 4.x browsers, works
As for the argument that a client won't pay for or the designer doesn't have the time to create a standards site, these people should take a serious look at their business practices. Do you expect your clients to pay for your learning time on CSS? I highly doubt anyone would hire a developer that had no experience with HTML, put him on a client project, and then make the client pay for all the learning time as he tried to complete the site. It's no different when learning CSS and standards, you should be learning it on your own time, not trying to get clients to flip the bill. Once you get the hang of things, it shouldn't take any longer then how you usually do things.
Basically when you're thinking about a site, think big. Think about all the ways people are accessing your site and then decide your coding methods.
Critisism and Flames Welcome.
Just remember I browse at +4
Slashdot posts a story on Mozzila, which happens to be the browser I use to blick their banner ads. ;)
(Posted with a five button Microsoft Intellimouse on a g3 pismo.
Can anyone confirm this?
By being one of only a handful of profitable computer companies?
From Macnn:
"Bloomberg quotes Steve Jobs as saying "Not losing a lot of money is, unfortunately, a shining achievement in today's PC market," noting that Apple and Dell are among the few that are profitable,"
ps. I know you can buy software that will make it work on linux, but you know someone will still post it.
from the article:
"At the time of its release, Apple wouldn't say what -- if anything -- an unlabeled "Bondi blue" port cover on the right side of the Revision A and B machines might be for. As it turns out, the closed architecture design of the iMac hides a 160-pin connector clearly labeled "MEZZANINE" on the motherboard. This connector is basically a sort of PCI variant (PCI is known as a "mezzanine bus.") Although Apple says the connector says the connector is for internal development only and shouldn't be used, a few third-party companies supplied expansion connectors for Voodoo2 video cards and other expansion options. Some postulated that this bus could someday provide a connector for a video capture system, based on hardware designed to support the "Final Cut" video editing software that Apple bought from Macromedia, but Apple discontinued the mezzanine bus and infrared port on Rev. C and later iMac models."These were included in the iMac, but apple issued warnings to third party developers to *not* develop peripherals that used these ports, and a couple of revisions later they were dropped.
I'm guessing things like this happen when developers are still in the process of 'tweaking' their designs. Although the flash is more integral than a couple of ports maybe it will be dropped in later revisions of the treo?
It's funny how if I would have posted this, it would have been moderated down into oblivion for being offtopic, but it's apparently fine to post it on the front page.