That's horribly unintuitive. A customer has no reason to care about the cost of a repair that's covered under warranty. If they want to know, go ahead and tell them, but if you're saying Apple automatically vomits this information at customers coming in for repairs, that's a recipe for confusion.
Urban life is inherently more energy-efficient than sprawl. This should be intuitive. Even if New Yorkers were to live in apartments of the same square footage as the freestanding houses they're foregoing in the countryside, economies of scale would predict conservation due to shared HVAC apparatus and smaller surface area to volume ratio, for example. Then there's the fact that you don't need a car nearly as much when your drugstore, grocery store, and stylist are all in the lobby of your building.
This guy describes it much better than I ever could. Yeah, the source is biased, but read the article for yourself and judge the points based on their merits. I think you'd find it difficult to argue.
Technically CSS2.1 is still a working draft, it was pulled back to working draf on June 13, 2005 after it was had been Candidate Recommendation...
Whoa, how bizarre. I had no idea. Thanks for those links.
BTW, I found the comments to that blog post interesting. Apparently there's at least a couple others who share my suspicions regarding Gecko's lack of inline-block encouraging a proliferation of inappropriate floats. Ah well. I guess we've been managing so far, the world can live without inline-block a while longer yet...:-)
Upon further reflection, I guess what I meant to say was "thanks for the correction, but I won't let that stop me from being serially annoyed by Jakob Nielsen."
Thanks for the correction. I should know better than that.:-P
What annoys me about Nielsen is that he preaches usability, yet his homepage is practically unusable unless you think the same way he thinks. If you're a more visually oriented person than Nielsen seems to be, or you're less of a linear learner--basically, if you approach his homepage in any way he wouldn't--then it's going to be a total nightmare to navigate. His vision of "usability" works well for him, it seems, but Nielsen isn't the world.
There's probably a free Safari plugin to help out with that. SafariStand, maybe?
You know, I have trouble understanding how people separate "design" and "usability." Aren't these concepts inherently linked? Take a bare list of links like Nielsen's page. It isn't usable, it isn't functional, because it's user-hostile, a huge turnoff to anyone who wants to read it. Even worse if you're just browsing through. Design and functionality aren't in opposition; nor, even more clearly, are design and usability.
Indeed. He sneers at graphic design and pretty much anything beyond plaintext, claiming that "gimmicks" like animation impair usability. What he fails to understand is that when properly applied, these very same techniques can aid usability substantially (e.g. Genie effect to tell you where your windows are going).
An oversimplification of his position, I'm sure, but that's the impression he gives. As you say, it doesn't help that his homepage is an oil spill of inscrutable links, an assault on the senses.
inline-block display is perfectly consistent between browsers, in my experience--I'd be interested to see an example, if you can describe the problems? Even IE gets it right according to the standard. CSS2.1 been around for the better part of a decade; it's hardly bleeding-edge.
I'd estimate a good portion, probably a majority, of the counterintuitive uses of float positioning you see in the wild today are only necessary because Firefox lacks support for inline-block. And then there's all the lesser omissions, like text-shadow and display: run-in.
Sometimes, I'll admit, I forget just how much we owe the Mozilla foundation for providing a browser that adheres to standards, even marginally. But just because it's better than IE doesn't mean it's as good as it can be, or even as good as other browsers on the market are right now.
That screenshot is of a development branch, not the latest stable release. It's the same as if I pointed out that the WebKit nightly includes better support for namespaces and SVG--good news, certainly, but not yet very relevant.
Cool, I'm glad to see they've passed Acid2. But what about all the other longtime Gecko deficiencies, probably the most egregious of which is lack of support for display: inline-block? Having to code around Gecko's box model is a pain, especially when you're used to coding to more standards-compliant browsers like Safari. Minor annoyances, mostly, but that inline-block is a killer.
Firefox is far from the most standards-compliant browser out there. For example, Safari aces the Acid2 test (though I personally doubt just how much Acid2 really matters). More important is Gecko's continuing lack of support for things like display: inline-block and text-shadow, both of which Safari handles per spec.
That is until the people in your town replace your current city commissioners with people more sympathetic to getting a Wal*mart. [...] All it takes is a handful of noisy people to organize a "t'row da rich guys out" campaign.
Points well taken, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. I live in NYC, and one reason Wal-Mart failed in its bid to move in was actually a handful of noisy people who organized a "keep the Waltons out" campaign. This included not only local small businessowners, but also a huge swath of everyday working stiffs, like you and me, concerned about the neighborhood and the long-term implications of Wal-Mart opening down the block.
So it works both ways--and even if Wal-Mart eventually seeps into Ozone Park, the lesson remains that they'd have had a much easier time of it if only they'd paid more attention to their corporate image in the first place.
All else aside, Apple doesn't do it to its own customers. As has been mentioned repeatedly, if you call them and explain your situation, they'll send you your purchased library again--this despite the warnings that you should be backing up on your own. I don't understand what you're not understanding here.
Er, not quite. India is about 15–20 years behind China, as far as the state of economic development goes, and this includes outsourcing from the West. The reason you think China is trailing India is that India's boom coincided with the IT bubble in the States, whereas China's has been ongoing for two decades longer; India's development was therefore much more visible to you in your particular (I'm assuming IT-related) industry.
It doesn't always work like that. Where I live, for example, Wal-Mart is currently prohibited from entering the market, precisely because they have a history of destroying communities and fucking people by way of its uncaring management and legendary bad taste. Whether you agree with the city planning commission or not (and I do) this is real money Wal-Mart is losing because they chose to be "evil." Even if the city let Wal-Mart in, it's far from clear they'd be as profitable here as they are in red states, simply because they have such a terrible reputation that nobody would be caught dead shopping there.
Point? Being good can pay off. There are incentives for companies to behave responsibly. Often these can outweigh the benefits of being evil. Probably not in the case of Wal-Mart--hey, who cares about New York, anyway?--but certainly for companies like Body Shop, whose entire corporate image is built on socially responsible behavior.
Because by all indications, Apple is obligated (by its contract with the labels) to pay the labels again every time you download a track. If anything's unfair here, it's you being unfair to Apple by demanding they shell out again because you were too lazy to back up.
1. Call iTunes customer support and explain what happened. 2. Endure a finger-wagging. 3. Wait as iTunes automatically redownloads everything you've bought.
Apple will let you redownload everything you bought, free of charge, but the thing to remember is that when you do this, Apple's obligated to pay the labels again for every single track. It's pure generosity or pure PR--take your pick--so be grateful they'll take a hit on behalf of your failure to backup.
Just a thought, but has it occurred to you that "being good," even at the expense of short-term profits, may very well be in the best interests of a company and its shareholders? The good PR is one significant, immediate benefit. Another (less likely, but still plausible) factor is the long-term positive effects of doing business in a happy, healthy society.
Why is it so hard to believe that businesses, like individual human beings, are capable of doing good things when it's in their interest to do good things?
And the Economist's comprehensive survey of India from a couple weeks ago, IMO, is even better for understanding the changes taking place in the nation from the perspective of the Western corporate world, particularly the rise of "indigenous" business. India right now is a pretty damn exciting place to be.
Nothing personal, I mean, unless you share the sentiments expressed by the original poster. It sounded like he could use an ass-ramming more than anyone else I know.
Slashdot Mirror
That's horribly unintuitive. A customer has no reason to care about the cost of a repair that's covered under warranty. If they want to know, go ahead and tell them, but if you're saying Apple automatically vomits this information at customers coming in for repairs, that's a recipe for confusion.
Urban life is inherently more energy-efficient than sprawl. This should be intuitive. Even if New Yorkers were to live in apartments of the same square footage as the freestanding houses they're foregoing in the countryside, economies of scale would predict conservation due to shared HVAC apparatus and smaller surface area to volume ratio, for example. Then there's the fact that you don't need a car nearly as much when your drugstore, grocery store, and stylist are all in the lobby of your building.
This guy describes it much better than I ever could. Yeah, the source is biased, but read the article for yourself and judge the points based on their merits. I think you'd find it difficult to argue.
Yeah, but your Dell is Republican to the core. I'll happily shell out not to have the GOP standing in a shadowy corner of my own bedroom, watching me as I sleep.
BTW, I found the comments to that blog post interesting. Apparently there's at least a couple others who share my suspicions regarding Gecko's lack of inline-block encouraging a proliferation of inappropriate floats. Ah well. I guess we've been managing so far, the world can live without inline-block a while longer yet...
I'm a dork.
Upon further reflection, I guess what I meant to say was "thanks for the correction, but I won't let that stop me from being serially annoyed by Jakob Nielsen."
Thanks for the correction. I should know better than that. :-P
What annoys me about Nielsen is that he preaches usability, yet his homepage is practically unusable unless you think the same way he thinks. If you're a more visually oriented person than Nielsen seems to be, or you're less of a linear learner--basically, if you approach his homepage in any way he wouldn't--then it's going to be a total nightmare to navigate. His vision of "usability" works well for him, it seems, but Nielsen isn't the world.
There's probably a free Safari plugin to help out with that. SafariStand, maybe?
You know, I have trouble understanding how people separate "design" and "usability." Aren't these concepts inherently linked? Take a bare list of links like Nielsen's page. It isn't usable, it isn't functional, because it's user-hostile, a huge turnoff to anyone who wants to read it. Even worse if you're just browsing through. Design and functionality aren't in opposition; nor, even more clearly, are design and usability.
Indeed. He sneers at graphic design and pretty much anything beyond plaintext, claiming that "gimmicks" like animation impair usability. What he fails to understand is that when properly applied, these very same techniques can aid usability substantially (e.g. Genie effect to tell you where your windows are going).
An oversimplification of his position, I'm sure, but that's the impression he gives. As you say, it doesn't help that his homepage is an oil spill of inscrutable links, an assault on the senses.
...I'd kill myself too.
inline-block display is perfectly consistent between browsers, in my experience--I'd be interested to see an example, if you can describe the problems? Even IE gets it right according to the standard. CSS2.1 been around for the better part of a decade; it's hardly bleeding-edge.
I'd estimate a good portion, probably a majority, of the counterintuitive uses of float positioning you see in the wild today are only necessary because Firefox lacks support for inline-block. And then there's all the lesser omissions, like text-shadow and display: run-in.
Sometimes, I'll admit, I forget just how much we owe the Mozilla foundation for providing a browser that adheres to standards, even marginally. But just because it's better than IE doesn't mean it's as good as it can be, or even as good as other browsers on the market are right now.
That screenshot is of a development branch, not the latest stable release. It's the same as if I pointed out that the WebKit nightly includes better support for namespaces and SVG--good news, certainly, but not yet very relevant.
Cool, I'm glad to see they've passed Acid2. But what about all the other longtime Gecko deficiencies, probably the most egregious of which is lack of support for display: inline-block? Having to code around Gecko's box model is a pain, especially when you're used to coding to more standards-compliant browsers like Safari. Minor annoyances, mostly, but that inline-block is a killer.
Firefox is far from the most standards-compliant browser out there. For example, Safari aces the Acid2 test (though I personally doubt just how much Acid2 really matters). More important is Gecko's continuing lack of support for things like display: inline-block and text-shadow, both of which Safari handles per spec.
Firefox is also really ugly.
Actually, Google Calendar does work in Safari. Though as you say, I'm not sure why you'd use it over iCal.
Don't tell the President. Or Rove, for that matter.
So it works both ways--and even if Wal-Mart eventually seeps into Ozone Park, the lesson remains that they'd have had a much easier time of it if only they'd paid more attention to their corporate image in the first place.
All else aside, Apple doesn't do it to its own customers. As has been mentioned repeatedly, if you call them and explain your situation, they'll send you your purchased library again--this despite the warnings that you should be backing up on your own. I don't understand what you're not understanding here.
Er, not quite. India is about 15–20 years behind China, as far as the state of economic development goes, and this includes outsourcing from the West. The reason you think China is trailing India is that India's boom coincided with the IT bubble in the States, whereas China's has been ongoing for two decades longer; India's development was therefore much more visible to you in your particular (I'm assuming IT-related) industry.
It doesn't always work like that. Where I live, for example, Wal-Mart is currently prohibited from entering the market, precisely because they have a history of destroying communities and fucking people by way of its uncaring management and legendary bad taste. Whether you agree with the city planning commission or not (and I do) this is real money Wal-Mart is losing because they chose to be "evil." Even if the city let Wal-Mart in, it's far from clear they'd be as profitable here as they are in red states, simply because they have such a terrible reputation that nobody would be caught dead shopping there.
Point? Being good can pay off. There are incentives for companies to behave responsibly. Often these can outweigh the benefits of being evil. Probably not in the case of Wal-Mart--hey, who cares about New York, anyway?--but certainly for companies like Body Shop, whose entire corporate image is built on socially responsible behavior.
Because by all indications, Apple is obligated (by its contract with the labels) to pay the labels again every time you download a track. If anything's unfair here, it's you being unfair to Apple by demanding they shell out again because you were too lazy to back up.
1. Call iTunes customer support and explain what happened.
2. Endure a finger-wagging.
3. Wait as iTunes automatically redownloads everything you've bought.
Apple will let you redownload everything you bought, free of charge, but the thing to remember is that when you do this, Apple's obligated to pay the labels again for every single track. It's pure generosity or pure PR--take your pick--so be grateful they'll take a hit on behalf of your failure to backup.
Just a thought, but has it occurred to you that "being good," even at the expense of short-term profits, may very well be in the best interests of a company and its shareholders? The good PR is one significant, immediate benefit. Another (less likely, but still plausible) factor is the long-term positive effects of doing business in a happy, healthy society.
Why is it so hard to believe that businesses, like individual human beings, are capable of doing good things when it's in their interest to do good things?
And the Economist's comprehensive survey of India from a couple weeks ago, IMO, is even better for understanding the changes taking place in the nation from the perspective of the Western corporate world, particularly the rise of "indigenous" business. India right now is a pretty damn exciting place to be.
Nothing personal, I mean, unless you share the sentiments expressed by the original poster. It sounded like he could use an ass-ramming more than anyone else I know.