You can pick an arbitrary point in time and come up with some sort of stupidity. But that doesn't change the fact that graceful degradation was a design principle of the web from day one.
That's my whole point. At any given time, any design principle of the web has been violated over. All my examples show graceful degradation that was ignored. That you think the "current generation" is any worse than previous generous generations is just Old Man Syndrome.
My impression was that only amateurs did stuff like that.
It was extremely common. As for the web, it's always been amateur hour. Anybody can be a "pro", and even real pros will make a business decision to ignore a tiny percent of web users if it takes extra work.
People supported lack of JavaScript because at one point it was new and couldn't be counted on. It didn't take long at all before it was required on many sites, even before 2000. If anything, I have seen things improve because people wanted Google to navigate and index their site.
But today it is entirely commonplace to see multi-million dollar corporate websites that are completely fall apart without javascript.
Like those same multi-million dollar corporations that required Flash 10+ years ago? Sometimes the corporations were the worst, because they thought the web should be presented like a TV commercial or navigable circular.
Or how about corporations that used images for link menus without alternate text, or designed their site for 800x600 resolution with hacks like 1-pixel images and tons of nested tables?
I think the issue is that, unlike Facebook, Google was probably an incompetent boob that simply fucked up.
Google considered the issue and didn't expect the backlash it received. They did let you opt out of having all your contacts published, but it wasn't by default. They made a business decision in favor of populating the service over privacy.
Facebook we are quick to castigate because they have a record of instant updates to their TOS that let them have the right to screw over your privacy at any time.
Google retains those same rights.
Google, however, rarely does this. In fact a lot of the time they go out of their way to Not Be Evil, as is their company motto.
They had to be arm-twisted and cudgeled to start respecting user privacy. You can go way back to the flap over them not deleting email when the user requested it, or to the retention of IP addresses in their web logs.
especially with a company that doesn't have a soiled reputation.
It isn't my organisation, by the way - I'd have wanted to do a LOT of user testing (and unless it was unusually polished wait for version 2) before making a decision of this magnitude.
Right, which means the guy making this decision is a clown, and not to be used as an example of what the real IT world will be doing.
It's almost like the current generation of web devs haven't even heard the term and to think that graceful degradation was once the cardinal rule in web design.
It used to be that JavaScript was a novelty. I wouldn't complain about the "current generation" too much, since the previous generations were just as awful in so many areas. Do you remember the "best viewed with Internet Explorer" tags? The rampant table abuse for layout? These days people tend to use style sheets by default, which is nice, because I can disable it and get a clean looking page of text.
I eventually got mine back to "normal" by disabling an option that wasn't intuitive....
Help & Preferences / Dynamic Index / Use Classic Index.
I think you mean enabling, not disabling. A couple of days ago Slashdot sent me some mail asking for feedback. Apparently they had switched some people over to the new system experimentally:
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We'd like your feedback on the Slashdot Discussion system.
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Re:metaprogramming FTW!
on
Land of Lisp
·
· Score: 1
There are plenty of highly skilled programmers who don't like Lisp. You can't just blame it all on management.
They innovated in using Java for websites. Remember Java, those applets for NCs?
Perhaps you can explain what, exacty, ATG did that was so special in the applet arena. You've mentioned servlets and JSPs as following technologies, and that is what I addressed.
Sorry Oracle, your recent actions make me extremely suspicious and I don't even *try* to think it might be an innocent purchase any more. See what destroying reputations does?
Too funny. Did Oracle have a reputation to destroy? They've always been a hardball, corporate cutthroat. If you buy Oracle, you do so because you feel like you have to, not out of some warm fuzzies.
Oh please. There's nothing novel in JSP or servlets. It's all just re-invention of old ideas around the new protocol/language. JSP is just templating/macros, invented a million times over. Servlets are just a pool to avoid starting a new process. Truly, there's nothing new here, though no doubt some crap patents were issued.
In truth, I have yet to play a single game online. Perhaps part of it is just that I'm getting older (thirties, now) . . . but I suddenly find the whole "game ends in three minutes and you can tell who is going to lose, often, in the first ten seconds".
You've never played an online game, but you're making false statements like this? Do yourself a favor and watch the casts of high-level games from HDstarcraft and HuskyStarcraft. Some of the end fast, but I'd say most are in the 10-20 minute range.
The knowledge that there is one perfect chain of actions you should take and the entire point of the game is to take those actions faster than the other guy. It takes the fun of discovery, surprise, variety out of it.
That's pretty much true of any game. People who study it and practice at it will become experts and discover a set of strategies. If you want to avoid that, then don't learn from expert advice and discover them on your own.
Google has helped people slack at work and school by providing an extremely rich web search engine, but beyond that, their products haven't been the impetus for any paradigm shift.
You've got to be kidding me. Google totally owned search. It used to be you'd have to sift through pages and pages of AltaVista for anything specific, or look at Yahoo for big items. They turned that into usually a one-page search for everything, with a simple, clean interface (back in the time when everybody was putting up loads of crap and flashing advertisements on their home pages, trying to be a "portal"). That's why they dominated the existing leaders of the day.
Google Maps and GMail revolutionized those two areas. They got everybody on the road to Ajax. Before then maps and mail on the web were clunky.
Chrome got everybody moving again in the browser, addressing long-standing issues. Firefox was stagnating, and IE was just trying to catch up with Firefox.
Android, I would agree, is extremely derivative of iPhone, but at least they moved in an open direction and made an interesting play by fixing up Java for phones.
What's so innovative about Apple iPads? Companies have been trying to sell tablets for decades. The only thing Apple added was touch, and rode on the success of their other products. I mean how many iApple devices do you need? iPod, iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. Ridiculous. The iPod, which started this whole iApple device craze, was just a fashionable MP3 player. I do give them credit on the iPhone, that was revolutionary.
What about the Macs? Revolutionary? Hardly. Maybe back in 1984, but not since then, and they got a lot of their ideas from Xerox PARC.
I'm not so sure they don't, but they're just not willing to give up convenience for it. If you asked users if they could magically have privacy without any cost, I'm sure most would opt for it. The problem with encrypted email is that it's not an easy default.
Teaching math isn't about teaching a specific skill that everyone will use, it's about teaching how to approach problems quantitatively. At least it should be.
That sounds fine at a high level, but in practice you're going to be teaching lots of detail to people who will struggle with it and never use it again. In the meantime, there are basic and critical skills that people don't graduate with.
I never, not once, used the formula to factor a quadratic formula outside of school. I learned so much geometry in high school that I never touched again outside of school. It goes on and on. It got worse in college. It's just a huge waste of time to be teaching these topics in depth, unless there's a demonstrated need.
I actually meant the App Store. The iPhone and iPad are locked-down and DRM-laden (notice how the story under discussion has nothing do with music), and there isn't any evil music corporation that Jobs can point his finger at.
I have karma to burn, so I'm just going to say it:
If you were just going to say it, then you wouldn't have prefixed your message with this. It's the typical tactic that more often than not gets up-modded.
Laughable. Jobs has been a corporate asshole for a long, long time. Just because he got his jollies phone phreaking in his college days doesn't mean shit.
My point is was that free people would likely not follow through and do what we want them to do (waste their lives, as dehumanized DNA-cargo (or at best, maintenance techs), on a journey which won't personally benefit them at all).
Actually, I'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers.
Oh sure, maybe the first generation were volunteers, but their kids weren't.
So what? Did you volunteer to be born in your situation? Besides, there's more to consider. Before you have a generational ship zooming off to another star, we'll likely have a permanently colonized space ship in orbit. You could even let evolution do the work. The people who are happiest being on the ship will procreate. People who want off will get sent home.
What if the ship falls into anarchy, civil wars, dictatorships?
That could happen with the secret order too. Or maybe the secret order will decide to use the people for their own gains. Who knows. The ethical thing to do is keep people informed. A government by the people, for the people -- in space too.
Slashdot Mirror
You can pick an arbitrary point in time and come up with some sort of stupidity.
But that doesn't change the fact that graceful degradation was a design principle of the web from day one.
That's my whole point. At any given time, any design principle of the web has been violated over. All my examples show graceful degradation that was ignored. That you think the "current generation" is any worse than previous generous generations is just Old Man Syndrome.
My impression was that only amateurs did stuff like that.
It was extremely common. As for the web, it's always been amateur hour. Anybody can be a "pro", and even real pros will make a business decision to ignore a tiny percent of web users if it takes extra work.
People supported lack of JavaScript because at one point it was new and couldn't be counted on. It didn't take long at all before it was required on many sites, even before 2000. If anything, I have seen things improve because people wanted Google to navigate and index their site.
But today it is entirely commonplace to see multi-million dollar corporate websites that are completely fall apart without javascript.
Like those same multi-million dollar corporations that required Flash 10+ years ago? Sometimes the corporations were the worst, because they thought the web should be presented like a TV commercial or navigable circular.
Or how about corporations that used images for link menus without alternate text, or designed their site for 800x600 resolution with hacks like 1-pixel images and tons of nested tables?
What is the value of your privacy?
Whatever value a jury places on it should you win a lawsuit, or whatever value you settle for. Same as emotional pain and suffering.
I don't understand the "racial joke" comment, are US citizens considered a "race" now?
Apparently it's the whole continent.
I think the issue is that, unlike Facebook, Google was probably an incompetent boob that simply fucked up.
Google considered the issue and didn't expect the backlash it received. They did let you opt out of having all your contacts published, but it wasn't by default. They made a business decision in favor of populating the service over privacy.
Facebook we are quick to castigate because they have a record of instant updates to their TOS that let them have the right to screw over your privacy at any time.
Google retains those same rights.
Google, however, rarely does this. In fact a lot of the time they go out of their way to Not Be Evil, as is their company motto.
They had to be arm-twisted and cudgeled to start respecting user privacy. You can go way back to the flap over them not deleting email when the user requested it, or to the retention of IP addresses in their web logs.
especially with a company that doesn't have a soiled reputation.
You just haven't been paying attention.
It isn't my organisation, by the way - I'd have wanted to do a LOT of user testing (and unless it was unusually polished wait for version 2) before making a decision of this magnitude.
Right, which means the guy making this decision is a clown, and not to be used as an example of what the real IT world will be doing.
It's almost like the current generation of web devs haven't even heard the term and to think that graceful degradation was once the cardinal rule in web design.
It used to be that JavaScript was a novelty. I wouldn't complain about the "current generation" too much, since the previous generations were just as awful in so many areas. Do you remember the "best viewed with Internet Explorer" tags? The rampant table abuse for layout? These days people tend to use style sheets by default, which is nice, because I can disable it and get a clean looking page of text.
I eventually got mine back to "normal" by disabling an option that wasn't intuitive....
Help & Preferences / Dynamic Index / Use Classic Index.
I think you mean enabling, not disabling. A couple of days ago Slashdot sent me some mail asking for feedback. Apparently they had switched some people over to the new system experimentally:
Greetings Slashdot Discussion User,
We'd like your feedback on the Slashdot Discussion system.
Recently we performed a test moving many users who had chosen the
Classic Discussion System over to our newer Discussion2 system.
During the process we took note of which users switched their pref
back to the Classic Discussion System, and noticed you were among
those users.
You've shown your preference for the Classic Discussion System, but we
want to know *why* you prefer it, and *what* you prefer about it.
We'd like you to let us know:
* What you don't like, doesn't work, is confusing, or missing from
Discussion2.
* What can we improve on Discussion2 to make it more usable for you?
* What are your main reasons for preferring the Classic Discussion System?
* What features of Classic Discussion make it easier for you to
read, moderate, and participate in discussions?
You can give us your feedback by replying to this email, or sending a
message to feedback@slashdot.org
Thanks for all your contributions on Slashdot. We look forward to
your feedback, and using it to make Slashdot better for you, and all
your fellow commenters, readers, and moderators.
-- The Slashdot Team
There are plenty of highly skilled programmers who don't like Lisp. You can't just blame it all on management.
They innovated in using Java for websites. Remember Java, those applets for NCs?
Perhaps you can explain what, exacty, ATG did that was so special in the applet arena. You've mentioned servlets and JSPs as following technologies, and that is what I addressed.
Sorry Oracle, your recent actions make me extremely suspicious and I don't even *try* to think it might be an innocent purchase any more. See what destroying reputations does?
Too funny. Did Oracle have a reputation to destroy? They've always been a hardball, corporate cutthroat. If you buy Oracle, you do so because you feel like you have to, not out of some warm fuzzies.
Oh please. There's nothing novel in JSP or servlets. It's all just re-invention of old ideas around the new protocol/language. JSP is just templating/macros, invented a million times over. Servlets are just a pool to avoid starting a new process. Truly, there's nothing new here, though no doubt some crap patents were issued.
In truth, I have yet to play a single game online. Perhaps part of it is just that I'm getting older (thirties, now) . . . but I suddenly find the whole "game ends in three minutes and you can tell who is going to lose, often, in the first ten seconds".
You've never played an online game, but you're making false statements like this? Do yourself a favor and watch the casts of high-level games from HDstarcraft and HuskyStarcraft. Some of the end fast, but I'd say most are in the 10-20 minute range.
The knowledge that there is one perfect chain of actions you should take and the entire point of the game is to take those actions faster than the other guy. It takes the fun of discovery, surprise, variety out of it.
That's pretty much true of any game. People who study it and practice at it will become experts and discover a set of strategies. If you want to avoid that, then don't learn from expert advice and discover them on your own.
Google has helped people slack at work and school by providing an extremely rich web search engine, but beyond that, their products haven't been the impetus for any paradigm shift.
You've got to be kidding me. Google totally owned search. It used to be you'd have to sift through pages and pages of AltaVista for anything specific, or look at Yahoo for big items. They turned that into usually a one-page search for everything, with a simple, clean interface (back in the time when everybody was putting up loads of crap and flashing advertisements on their home pages, trying to be a "portal"). That's why they dominated the existing leaders of the day.
Google Maps and GMail revolutionized those two areas. They got everybody on the road to Ajax. Before then maps and mail on the web were clunky.
Chrome got everybody moving again in the browser, addressing long-standing issues. Firefox was stagnating, and IE was just trying to catch up with Firefox.
Android, I would agree, is extremely derivative of iPhone, but at least they moved in an open direction and made an interesting play by fixing up Java for phones.
What's so innovative about Apple iPads? Companies have been trying to sell tablets for decades. The only thing Apple added was touch, and rode on the success of their other products. I mean how many iApple devices do you need? iPod, iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. Ridiculous. The iPod, which started this whole iApple device craze, was just a fashionable MP3 player. I do give them credit on the iPhone, that was revolutionary.
What about the Macs? Revolutionary? Hardly. Maybe back in 1984, but not since then, and they got a lot of their ideas from Xerox PARC.
collaboration
5 syllables. You just crashed the parent poster's brain.
People don't want privacy. People want Farmville.
I'm not so sure they don't, but they're just not willing to give up convenience for it. If you asked users if they could magically have privacy without any cost, I'm sure most would opt for it. The problem with encrypted email is that it's not an easy default.
Teaching math isn't about teaching a specific skill that everyone will use, it's about teaching how to approach problems quantitatively. At least it should be.
That sounds fine at a high level, but in practice you're going to be teaching lots of detail to people who will struggle with it and never use it again. In the meantime, there are basic and critical skills that people don't graduate with.
I never, not once, used the formula to factor a quadratic formula outside of school. I learned so much geometry in high school that I never touched again outside of school. It goes on and on. It got worse in college. It's just a huge waste of time to be teaching these topics in depth, unless there's a demonstrated need.
I actually meant the App Store. The iPhone and iPad are locked-down and DRM-laden (notice how the story under discussion has nothing do with music), and there isn't any evil music corporation that Jobs can point his finger at.
If you want to end DRM, you need to support Apple since they are the only large company who has worked to end DRM and had some success.
You're an idiot. The whole Apple Store is DRM.
I have karma to burn, so I'm just going to say it:
If you were just going to say it, then you wouldn't have prefixed your message with this. It's the typical tactic that more often than not gets up-modded.
More specifically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Etymology
Laughable. Jobs has been a corporate asshole for a long, long time. Just because he got his jollies phone phreaking in his college days doesn't mean shit.
My point is was that free people would likely not follow through and do what we want them to do (waste their lives, as dehumanized DNA-cargo (or at best, maintenance techs), on a journey which won't personally benefit them at all).
Actually, I'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers.
Oh sure, maybe the first generation were volunteers, but their kids weren't.
So what? Did you volunteer to be born in your situation? Besides, there's more to consider. Before you have a generational ship zooming off to another star, we'll likely have a permanently colonized space ship in orbit. You could even let evolution do the work. The people who are happiest being on the ship will procreate. People who want off will get sent home.
What if the ship falls into anarchy, civil wars, dictatorships?
That could happen with the secret order too. Or maybe the secret order will decide to use the people for their own gains. Who knows. The ethical thing to do is keep people informed. A government by the people, for the people -- in space too.
Many of them would not need to know they're on a spacecraft. But some staff should definitely exist (an order perhaps?) that knows about the journey.
Government should be open and transparent, and the people should be informed. It makes me sad that people would even propose such a thing.