I think just by linking to the hosting company in this story, he's already done some damage to their rep. I host with Dreamhost anyway, but if I ever had to change I'd definitely steer clear of The Planet now, if this is how they treat their staff.
I did try with my sister and she didn't like it because her friend's "websites" made on piczo.com (from what I can gather, some horrible DHTML drag-and-drop web page "editor) didn't work on it (likely due to FF's support of actual standards). I wouldn't even attempt it with my mum, she's just not ready for stuff like that.
I think part of the problem is the language itself. Since 'Firefox' is much more a product name than 'Internet Explorer', people gt confused. "Internet Explorer" is a generic name for a software type, to me it's synonymous with "browser" (at least, compared to "Firefox") so people like my mum don't really realise they're using a specific company's product, rather they see the little blue E as the way to use the net.
Is it fair to compare these stats? Most IE users don't choose to upgrade, it's simply foisted on them by Windows' Auto Update. When I returned home this Christmas both my mum and sister asked me to "fix the internet" because IE7 had been installed and its new layout confused them. They certainly didn't choose in the way that someone chooses to download and install Firefox does, so the victory is even more in FF's favour.
Please note that this isn't a Firefox fanboy post (despite my love for it), merely pointing out the facts.
At the end of the day, can you imagine how many millions of man-hours of effort would go into such a conversion? For what? UNITY, so that every nation could be the same? I thought DIVERSITY was supposed to be the valued goal?
Oh please. I agree with the rest of your post, but you can't argue that imperial vs metric is about diversity vs uniformity. It's quite clearly being argued because of the difficulties in conversion, not some assault on the brave USA, willing to stand alone from the metric crowd of sheep.
How much is this costing them? Surely it's fairly pricey to make custom-encoded RFID chips for every Jim who signs up? How is this offset? Nobody is going to pay attention the ad subject, it'll all be focussed on the inevitable "Jim is gay" hacked messages.
My friend has a Wii and I've played several times, and this is what I told him regarding the PS3 vs Wii debate (full disclosure: I've never played a PS3):
When I first played a games console, oh, back in the halcyon days of 1992 or so, it was a Sega Mega Drive (aka "Genesis" in the US). It was a whole new experience for me, being able to interact with an onscreen character using a handheld controller. It was a new world and I loved it and was introduced to a whole wealth of other systems.
Fastforward 13 years and nothing has really changed. Games look better, are more imaginative and offer me more satisfying results than grabbing rings and power-ups. But the gaming concept itself is still pretty much the same. We all laze around on couches, plugged into the console, and gradually fall asleep in marathon gaming sessions.
2006: enter the Wii (no pun). I was a little skeptical after seeing the ads and the less-than-impressive graphics, but being there when my friend first plugged his Wii in was like being transported back to when I was 6 again. I was genuinely excited and amused playing WiiSports, with the new concept the controller had brought to my gaming.
The PS3 might look prettier and have more power. It even plays DVDs and other things I have no interest in. But what it doesn't have is a revolutionary new design that's been the most innovative thing (at least, in my personal gaming history) since I first started playing consoles. The Wii has got me up off the couch and really interacting with my games, while the PS3, however real it may look compared to the Wii's bobble-headed "Miis", is just another couch-sitting epic.
The problem isn't with Firefox, that's my point. On the current live site there's no examples of this anyway, it's just something that I came across in dev. And yeah, the page isn't valid, I guess the next incarnation will (maybe) fix that.
For the first time ever, I was actually appreciative of IE7 today when I noticed a bug in IE6 was fixed in 7. My site (link's above) just posted "Pass The Mic", a record label feature. I used some CSS to display a div and set background images etc for the headings on each page. On Firefox, if any of the content in my main column is wider than the layout allows, it simply overlaps horizontally. On IE it bumps everything down to below the content in the other columns. IE7 doesn't do this which makes my life a hell of a lot easier (until I come to redesign the site again, argh).
Even if I was browsing an article for something I was interested in (say, a literary topic), I'd much rather hit up Amazon or whoever my trusted bookseller is, than click a random ad.
Apple has said it will not use the name iTV for the product
I imagine this is because there is a popular UK television channel called ITV, and Apple have saw what troubles Gmail had in the UK over name copyrights (and most Brits haven't even heard of the "UK gmail").
We had 3 full time IT people who had to support all the workstations, servers, and communications equipment.
* The IT people reported that 80% of their support tickets were for the 20% Windows machines.
This is a little distorted though, since it's likely that the 80% of staff members using Unix were much more confident computer users who could probably solve their issues themselves. I'm not disputing that Unix is more reliable than Windows, but only in the hands of an experienced user.
Here's the thing: I'd rather not be hired by somebody prepared to discriminate against me because (for example) I like to get drunk with my friends. Who doesn't? Find me a working stiff who doesn't enjoy a few beers or didn't get up to drunken antics in their teens. They're few and far between. I'm not saying go all-out and tell the world you're a borderline alcoholic, but I'm not going to stop being who I am online because of worries about careers. Society focuses far too much on careers and jobs and I wish it wasn't that way. I'm a good guy, I don't feel embarassed about anything on my Myspace besides the joke "Who I'd Like To Meet" which reads something like "Girls who would consider sleeping with me". Anyone who knows me will know this is tongue-in-cheek and I'm 100% certain that if my current employers had stumbled upon it they would have just laughed and made a joke about it in the office, not refused to hire me. I wouldn't want to work for a company who would.
Just for the record: I don't actually drink, but you know, I might!
Because web designers (who seem to me the majority of the XML-endorsing universe) don't want to look at real code, they like to "simplify" everything into HTML-esque tags. I'm all for semantics when they're neccessary but we call it "code" for a reason.
The thing about the Zune not supporting podcasts reminds me of the newer versions of MSN Messenger. The program has a "Show what I'm listening to" feature. If you're to believe the Preferences box, it apparently only shows what you're playing in Windows Media Player. Obviously, a lot of kids these days are using iTunes and it has to support that too. I think in both instances, Microsoft tries to just deny Apple's success by removing any hard references to them. In the case of the podcast, Apple's very product name is present in the title, so by acknowledging this, Microsoft will also be acknowledging Apple's complete ownership of the digital music market. While I can understand their reasoning, I'd much sooner they gracefully admitted their inferiority (in the context of the battle for portable music players) and let me play my podcasts, than flat-out refuse to recognise their (and Apple's) contribution.
I live in the UK, and without sinking into the realms of denial, I think if I was to take seriously every recent/. story about the UK's new police state, I'd be wearing a tinfoil hat and locked in my basement to avoid the thought police.
I'm not suggesting that the UK is in reality some perfect utopia where everybody can do what they wish and we all get along, but on the other hand, these stories about police with 360-degree cameras, or big brother-esque cameras listening out for public disturbances - they all seem to be like an assault on the UK to try to distract a US audience from the fact that they're even deeper in that we are. Even if our cameras are watching us, at least there's no Patriot Act here... yet.
The thing is though, if you're not a Christian, the threat of going to Hell, a Christian concept, surely isn't that awful? Most people wouldn't complain if a Buddhist told you you would never be reincarnated because you don't believe in Buddha. Not that I condone this guy's judgement - whatever happened to non-biased teaching? - but if I was in his class I wouldn't really take any notice.
Man, it must such to be the journalist who wrote the article inspiring this memo. Responsible (indirectly) for 15-20% of all staff being layed off? Ouch.
Also: "At the risk of being redundant..": I'd guess you aren't the one risking redundancy here, Brad.
"This may sound crazy and rife with privacy concerns but as the author asks, do you still believe in Internet privacy in the age of blogs, MySpace, LinkedIn, Meetup, and Flickr?""
Uhhh, what? This is like saying "Why not just start murdering people? Come on, look at how full our jails are with murderers!". Granted that's a little extreme, but the justification for uploading a naked photo of myself is basically "everyone else is doing it!". No thanks.
Also, the site looks damn awful. Can anyone say "two-bit idea with even less design time"?
Slashdot Mirror
I think just by linking to the hosting company in this story, he's already done some damage to their rep. I host with Dreamhost anyway, but if I ever had to change I'd definitely steer clear of The Planet now, if this is how they treat their staff.
The UK is getting boned on this one, Google says:e =off&q=599+EUR+IN+GBP&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=&saf
599 Euros (Mainland Europe price) = £394.77. They're adding another £30 because the UK is known for swallowing higher prices than everywhere else.
I did try with my sister and she didn't like it because her friend's "websites" made on piczo.com (from what I can gather, some horrible DHTML drag-and-drop web page "editor) didn't work on it (likely due to FF's support of actual standards). I wouldn't even attempt it with my mum, she's just not ready for stuff like that.
I think part of the problem is the language itself. Since 'Firefox' is much more a product name than 'Internet Explorer', people gt confused. "Internet Explorer" is a generic name for a software type, to me it's synonymous with "browser" (at least, compared to "Firefox") so people like my mum don't really realise they're using a specific company's product, rather they see the little blue E as the way to use the net.
Is it fair to compare these stats? Most IE users don't choose to upgrade, it's simply foisted on them by Windows' Auto Update. When I returned home this Christmas both my mum and sister asked me to "fix the internet" because IE7 had been installed and its new layout confused them. They certainly didn't choose in the way that someone chooses to download and install Firefox does, so the victory is even more in FF's favour.
Please note that this isn't a Firefox fanboy post (despite my love for it), merely pointing out the facts.
Oh please. I agree with the rest of your post, but you can't argue that imperial vs metric is about diversity vs uniformity. It's quite clearly being argued because of the difficulties in conversion, not some assault on the brave USA, willing to stand alone from the metric crowd of sheep.
How much is this costing them? Surely it's fairly pricey to make custom-encoded RFID chips for every Jim who signs up? How is this offset? Nobody is going to pay attention the ad subject, it'll all be focussed on the inevitable "Jim is gay" hacked messages.
My friend has a Wii and I've played several times, and this is what I told him regarding the PS3 vs Wii debate (full disclosure: I've never played a PS3):
When I first played a games console, oh, back in the halcyon days of 1992 or so, it was a Sega Mega Drive (aka "Genesis" in the US). It was a whole new experience for me, being able to interact with an onscreen character using a handheld controller. It was a new world and I loved it and was introduced to a whole wealth of other systems.
Fastforward 13 years and nothing has really changed. Games look better, are more imaginative and offer me more satisfying results than grabbing rings and power-ups. But the gaming concept itself is still pretty much the same. We all laze around on couches, plugged into the console, and gradually fall asleep in marathon gaming sessions.
2006: enter the Wii (no pun). I was a little skeptical after seeing the ads and the less-than-impressive graphics, but being there when my friend first plugged his Wii in was like being transported back to when I was 6 again. I was genuinely excited and amused playing WiiSports, with the new concept the controller had brought to my gaming.
The PS3 might look prettier and have more power. It even plays DVDs and other things I have no interest in. But what it doesn't have is a revolutionary new design that's been the most innovative thing (at least, in my personal gaming history) since I first started playing consoles. The Wii has got me up off the couch and really interacting with my games, while the PS3, however real it may look compared to the Wii's bobble-headed "Miis", is just another couch-sitting epic.
The problem isn't with Firefox, that's my point. On the current live site there's no examples of this anyway, it's just something that I came across in dev. And yeah, the page isn't valid, I guess the next incarnation will (maybe) fix that.
For the first time ever, I was actually appreciative of IE7 today when I noticed a bug in IE6 was fixed in 7. My site (link's above) just posted "Pass The Mic", a record label feature. I used some CSS to display a div and set background images etc for the headings on each page. On Firefox, if any of the content in my main column is wider than the layout allows, it simply overlaps horizontally. On IE it bumps everything down to below the content in the other columns. IE7 doesn't do this which makes my life a hell of a lot easier (until I come to redesign the site again, argh).
The GUI is still absolutely awful, though.
But... who wants to see ads?
Even if I was browsing an article for something I was interested in (say, a literary topic), I'd much rather hit up Amazon or whoever my trusted bookseller is, than click a random ad.
I imagine this is because there is a popular UK television channel called ITV, and Apple have saw what troubles Gmail had in the UK over name copyrights (and most Brits haven't even heard of the "UK gmail").
This is a little distorted though, since it's likely that the 80% of staff members using Unix were much more confident computer users who could probably solve their issues themselves. I'm not disputing that Unix is more reliable than Windows, but only in the hands of an experienced user.
Here's the thing: I'd rather not be hired by somebody prepared to discriminate against me because (for example) I like to get drunk with my friends. Who doesn't? Find me a working stiff who doesn't enjoy a few beers or didn't get up to drunken antics in their teens. They're few and far between. I'm not saying go all-out and tell the world you're a borderline alcoholic, but I'm not going to stop being who I am online because of worries about careers. Society focuses far too much on careers and jobs and I wish it wasn't that way. I'm a good guy, I don't feel embarassed about anything on my Myspace besides the joke "Who I'd Like To Meet" which reads something like "Girls who would consider sleeping with me". Anyone who knows me will know this is tongue-in-cheek and I'm 100% certain that if my current employers had stumbled upon it they would have just laughed and made a joke about it in the office, not refused to hire me. I wouldn't want to work for a company who would.
Just for the record: I don't actually drink, but you know, I might!
Because web designers (who seem to me the majority of the XML-endorsing universe) don't want to look at real code, they like to "simplify" everything into HTML-esque tags. I'm all for semantics when they're neccessary but we call it "code" for a reason.
I love when the editors just copy and paste without even reading what they're posting. Which part of that sentence was a
The thing about the Zune not supporting podcasts reminds me of the newer versions of MSN Messenger. The program has a "Show what I'm listening to" feature. If you're to believe the Preferences box, it apparently only shows what you're playing in Windows Media Player. Obviously, a lot of kids these days are using iTunes and it has to support that too. I think in both instances, Microsoft tries to just deny Apple's success by removing any hard references to them. In the case of the podcast, Apple's very product name is present in the title, so by acknowledging this, Microsoft will also be acknowledging Apple's complete ownership of the digital music market. While I can understand their reasoning, I'd much sooner they gracefully admitted their inferiority (in the context of the battle for portable music players) and let me play my podcasts, than flat-out refuse to recognise their (and Apple's) contribution.
Did anyone else think of Philip Pullman's "Subtle Knife"?
I live in the UK, and without sinking into the realms of denial, I think if I was to take seriously every recent /. story about the UK's new police state, I'd be wearing a tinfoil hat and locked in my basement to avoid the thought police.
... yet.
I'm not suggesting that the UK is in reality some perfect utopia where everybody can do what they wish and we all get along, but on the other hand, these stories about police with 360-degree cameras, or big brother-esque cameras listening out for public disturbances - they all seem to be like an assault on the UK to try to distract a US audience from the fact that they're even deeper in that we are. Even if our cameras are watching us, at least there's no Patriot Act here
Haha okay, as you and the poster above you identified, I know nothing about Buddhism. But you see what I'm trying to say, I hope..
The thing is though, if you're not a Christian, the threat of going to Hell, a Christian concept, surely isn't that awful? Most people wouldn't complain if a Buddhist told you you would never be reincarnated because you don't believe in Buddha. Not that I condone this guy's judgement - whatever happened to non-biased teaching? - but if I was in his class I wouldn't really take any notice.
Yeah, well they're just divorced from virtual reality.
Man, it must such to be the journalist who wrote the article inspiring this memo. Responsible (indirectly) for 15-20% of all staff being layed off? Ouch.
Also: "At the risk of being redundant..": I'd guess you aren't the one risking redundancy here, Brad.
Oh man, some further reading reveals the reasoning for my last point.
"# I can't do without Microsoft Frontpage. I know that the next MS Office won't include Frontpage anymore. And this site was planned in Frontpage."
From the Site's Admin's Page.
"This may sound crazy and rife with privacy concerns but as the author asks, do you still believe in Internet privacy in the age
of blogs, MySpace, LinkedIn, Meetup, and Flickr?""
Uhhh, what? This is like saying "Why not just start murdering people? Come on, look at how full our jails are with murderers!". Granted that's a little extreme, but the justification for uploading a naked photo of myself is basically "everyone else is doing it!". No thanks.
Also, the site looks damn awful. Can anyone say "two-bit idea with even less design time"?
How do you literally slash time in half? Quantum physicists would like to know.