Ah, the old "computer knowledge is worthless" troll, very elegantly attached to a variation of "you're going to die alone". Very nice work.
Microsoft is the antithesis to your entire second paragraph. People don't give a shit if software doesn't work. They half expect it not to, and they fully expect it to confuse them.
And I love this idea that "The most valuable part of an education is learning how to deal with people". It's definitely a new one on me, but a beautiful piece of short 'n sweet trolling nonetheless: it turns the fact that he tried to help someone into an indirect personal attack, while invoking the image of the 'popular people' from everyone's school experience and implying that they are the real winners.
All in all, a very well thought out post. Guaranteed to infuriate, but also prime +5 Insightful material. In other words, a perfect troll.
In my old school, one of the better ones in the north west of England, it was similar. When I moved there, we were allowed to use the computers in our free time. We had seemingly free access to the web. Visual Basic was installed.
By the time I left, sites were being blocked left, right and centre, there was next to no "leisure" use of computers, and VB was gone (I think).
I never used Visual Basic myself. I went to that school having picked up some rudimentary BASIC from my previous school. Eight years later, I left this "technology college", a school that has spent millions on computing, with my programming knowledge gone, having been taught only how to right-align text in MS Word.
Their website used to be a useful portal to the internet. When I moved there, I hadn't seen the net before (1997). Their custom web portal was a formative experience for me. Now it's a fucking template advert, hosted on "school portal".
More proof that all the money in the world can't buy you a clue (this school is one of the richest in the area). Both the school and myself moved backwards technologically while I was there. It's pretty telling that I was programming before I went there, and started back up immediately after leaving.
When I was about 10 or 11 a teacher used the spare time I had after blowing through the "logo" exercises to teach me BASIC. Man, I even walked to the local library to borrow a book on computer programming.
Then after a few months/a year I didn't program a single thing for about eight years (I would have kept at it, but I couldn't get my head around stuff like loops at that age)... but the experience was still there to draw from when I came back.
Yeah, when I read this I thought it meant they'd robotically research me a little to send me better spam. So far I can't even view the text!
But no, this is pretty boring stuff. Instead of refining their target selection, they're working on increasing their dishonesty technology. Spam programmers are evil.
What are you, kidding? That reads like a list of minimum requirements for a basic desktop environment! It's heartening to see somebody acknowledge that their needs are their needs, however.
Talk about being born for a job!! That's some pretty fucking amazing foresight on the part of his parents, naming him Justice. Or did he get it done by deed poll in order to improve his hiring prospects? Inquiring minds want to know!
There's already a miracle cure for OCD. You just tap your forehead with your right index finger. The impact rejiggers your frontal sensor array.
So just tap your forehead. It might not work first time, so you'll want to keep doing at regular intervals. It helps if you think about your breathing while you do it.
Rage? Nope! Maybe the tone is ambiguous. It usually is.
Those things can be done with the CSS just fine, but they have nothing to do with it at all. They have the right idea with this - the choice is to either stay superficial, or bite the bullet and rebuild it from the information architecture level with a completely different design philosophy. What you're suggesting is to get all clever with the CSS and go deeper than what the contest is asking for.
I'm betting the best designs you get are the ones that ignore your rules and regulations the most.
They'll probably be great designs, but they'll also be rather irrelevant to this CSS redesign contest. Even in 2006, the name of the contest dictates what it is a contest about.
You're thinking so far out of the box that your train of thought has left the warehouse altogether to go to the park and smoke a spliff.
Make a journal entry for it and turn comments on. You can divide the work up in there. You need lots of people and duplicated effort, because checking out each other's work would be a bitch, meaning you need lots of versions.
The reason it'd be hard to view each other's work is that it's unlikely that someone's going to open up any kind of file upload.
I'm tempted to offer a phpbb forum or some such, but the same effect can be achieved with multiple journal entries.
Seriously. Anyone dedicated enough to win this started the moment it was hinted at. These people will have several designs ready, so any surprises in the rules (there are none, by the way) are moot.
People like me, the lay-webmasters who can handle CSS okay, can forget about it. The future winner has already produced the winning files.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is the antithesis to your entire second paragraph. People don't give a shit if software doesn't work. They half expect it not to, and they fully expect it to confuse them.
And I love this idea that "The most valuable part of an education is learning how to deal with people". It's definitely a new one on me, but a beautiful piece of short 'n sweet trolling nonetheless: it turns the fact that he tried to help someone into an indirect personal attack, while invoking the image of the 'popular people' from everyone's school experience and implying that they are the real winners.
All in all, a very well thought out post. Guaranteed to infuriate, but also prime +5 Insightful material. In other words, a perfect troll.
Then he would have said "We can't provide for 1500 profiles", instead of "1 mandatory profile is far easier than 1500 roaming profiles".
In this case, (tm) means "I don't like this".
By the time I left, sites were being blocked left, right and centre, there was next to no "leisure" use of computers, and VB was gone (I think).
I never used Visual Basic myself. I went to that school having picked up some rudimentary BASIC from my previous school. Eight years later, I left this "technology college", a school that has spent millions on computing, with my programming knowledge gone, having been taught only how to right-align text in MS Word.
Their website used to be a useful portal to the internet. When I moved there, I hadn't seen the net before (1997). Their custom web portal was a formative experience for me. Now it's a fucking template advert, hosted on "school portal".
More proof that all the money in the world can't buy you a clue (this school is one of the richest in the area). Both the school and myself moved backwards technologically while I was there. It's pretty telling that I was programming before I went there, and started back up immediately after leaving.
Then after a few months/a year I didn't program a single thing for about eight years (I would have kept at it, but I couldn't get my head around stuff like loops at that age)... but the experience was still there to draw from when I came back.
Come on guys, are we really that scared of his submissions that we need three tags composed of his name? Why not "centrifuge" or "gravity"?
Example
But no, this is pretty boring stuff. Instead of refining their target selection, they're working on increasing their dishonesty technology. Spam programmers are evil.
Am I wrong to assume that computer sale hasn't been like this since the start in the 90s?
Or did Zonk remove it because the vocal morons would call it an ad?
What are you, kidding? That reads like a list of minimum requirements for a basic desktop environment! It's heartening to see somebody acknowledge that their needs are their needs, however.
You could also try "artsdsp /usr/bin/quake", but you shouldn't need to, apps should have some level of intelligence by now, and they don't.
That's odd, I thought it sounded sarcastic enough to be clear.
Talk about being born for a job!! That's some pretty fucking amazing foresight on the part of his parents, naming him Justice. Or did he get it done by deed poll in order to improve his hiring prospects? Inquiring minds want to know!
Shows how much you know - it was quite obviously written in Java. "Write once, crash anywhere".
So just tap your forehead. It might not work first time, so you'll want to keep doing at regular intervals. It helps if you think about your breathing while you do it.
Wait. What are you putting in this coffee? Where are you getting this concentrated stuff from? I DEMAND TO KNOW! Tellmetellmetellmetellmetellme!
Man, you'd better migrate to that account now, out of respect for the MASTER OF ALL TIME. Either that or end your blasphemous pretenses this instant.
Those things can be done with the CSS just fine, but they have nothing to do with it at all. They have the right idea with this - the choice is to either stay superficial, or bite the bullet and rebuild it from the information architecture level with a completely different design philosophy. What you're suggesting is to get all clever with the CSS and go deeper than what the contest is asking for.
You're thinking so far out of the box that your train of thought has left the warehouse altogether to go to the park and smoke a spliff.
There, at least now people can have something nice to look at while they fantasise about being motivated enough to do anything about them!
The reason it'd be hard to view each other's work is that it's unlikely that someone's going to open up any kind of file upload.
I'm tempted to offer a phpbb forum or some such, but the same effect can be achieved with multiple journal entries.
I'm WRONG. Ad divs are actually called things like class="ad1" and id="advertisement-content". The point about using perl to stop it still stands.
People like me, the lay-webmasters who can handle CSS okay, can forget about it. The future winner has already produced the winning files.