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I've never seen a report that was actually read.
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Wouldn't thank make you part of the problem, as every report you've seen you've refused to read?
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I guess so. None of them were meant to be read by me though.
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We Moved over from an old AS/400 based system about 2 years ago, it had been around for almost 2 decades. With that we hired a slew of new staff, in their training one of them asked a question along the lines of:
What do I do with these 50 pages of reports that print on my printer ever morning?
they were told to shred them, they print every morning for "some reason" and nobody knew why.
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I worked for a very large company. They printed lots of reports every day from their huge bank of high speed mainframe printers (by the pallet load of paper). At one point a project started to try to move to online reports instead of printing and delivering them. One lady pitched a fit when her reports didn't show up one day. So, someone went over to see what happened to all these printed reports that were needed so desparately. So the person that went over watched as she separated the various reports, carefully placed each one in a labeled binder and filed it away in the large room behind her desk. By now it was late afternoon and the person asked her what happens to them now? She said I've got them filed away now and I can go home in a half an hour. So he pursued a little more, well who comes to look at them now. She replied (with a straight face even) "Oh, nobody ever comes to look at them, I just file them away". Cause, you know, that's her job. She didn't have a job much longer and they stopped printing that truckload of reports (about 2 1/2 pallets of paper) everyday. Then the reports were just turned off and nobody ever called to complain.
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A friend sent me this yesterday...
Quote: I have a distant cousin who is a tenured professor at a state university. After 23 years she is fed up with stupid paperwork and requirements.
So there is a report that was to be filed this week, but it was widely known that nobody plays any attention to it. Further, my cousin has always suspected that nobody even reads it.
So in an act of devious civil disobedience, she duly wrote the required report and then emailed it to wherever it was to go. The devious part was that she converted the report to the font: Wingdings. And yes you guessed it, nobody noticed or cared.
My experience has been that some managers see reports as a matter of prestige. If they are not getting that 4" of bound reports delivered to their desk every month, they feel emasculated.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Way back in the days of machines that took up an entire floor of a good-sized building, I became responsible for a report that, when printed, consumed about eight inches of 132 column paper. It was produced monthly and distributed to about 50 addressees. I asked my manager if we could stop producing the report. He was cautious since the report had been requested by one of our customers
So, to insure that nobody read it, I added a few pages to the report at random locations. The added pages simply stated that the report was under consideration for deletion and, that if the reader wanted it continued, the preparing organization needed to be advised. The report ran for six more months. After that, with no one asking that it be continued, the report was discontinued.
About six months after it was discontinued, we received a call asking where the report was. When told that it had been discontinued six months earlier, the caller just said "thanks" and hung up. Guess he really didn't need it.
Gus Gustafson
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This will never end you know. The HTML5 peace & harmony dream is a little naïve and a little stupid. Why? Because everyone wants to make their mark. Everyone wants to make their buck. And everyone sees themselves in a crusader.
The disadvantage to HTML is specification; as noble and as comprehensive as it may be, it will always be incomplete, always in dispite, and always speculative. The tides of opinion may prefer one implementation over another, but it will never matter. Non-standard is the desity of standards.
XAML, on the other hand, is less like democracy and more a dictatorship. The analogy is bitter but the reality is sweet. There is always a consensus, and it is what it is. It’s like comfort food. There is never wiggle room. Implementation is consistent across platforms. Period.
More[^] So HTML5 is a hype. 
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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If a private company put the current HTML stack out there as a proprietary development environment people would point their fingers and laugh at it.
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I don't much see the point in either. The web at its best is about content from anyone and everyone, so plain-vanilla HTML is plenty, as it can be quickly learned and implemented by anyone and everyone.
It's only people who want to advertise, sell, or steal who want the more complicated stuff.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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OMG - we're basically in agreement about something !
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I'VE CHANGED MY MIND!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Was there something wrong with the one you had?
Software Zen: delete this;
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You even have to ask?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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When I speak to my web-designer friends that work purely on the GUI, I simply feel pity for them. They have a tough time ensuring cross browser compatibility. Internet explorer being the most highly misbehaved kid in their records. But they don't spare FF & Chrome as well. If the protocols were well laid and if companies act sensibly for a cooperation, standardization could have been possible long before. But the article I pointed in my OP says that's never possible  . I would continue to empathize for designer friends.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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If something doesn't work in all the browsers that your target audience is likely to use, just do it differently -- or "more simply" is usually the case.
Just because one browser lets you project solid light 3D constructs doesn't mean that your users need to have solid light 3D constructs.
If you spend too much time on the technology, you lose sight of the real objectives.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote:
If you spend too much time on the technology, you lose sight of the real objectives.
Exactly. Very well said. Just pick a technology you want to work with then stop listening to all the advice to upgrade all the time. Just focus on the task.
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Mark_Wallace wrote: If you spend too much time on the technology, you lose sight of the real
objectives
<cynical mode>
I think you've lost site of the objective. It isn't to produce a product that the users can use, its to stay employed. In order to accomplish that objective, you need to convince the folks paying you that they need all sorts of cutting edge whizzy stuff that works inconsistently on every browser.
</cynical mode>
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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Yup, but the trick is to do as much as possible in HTML3, which takes no time at all to get it to work everywhere, not waste weeks and weeks of your porn-surfing time on actually making HTML5 work.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Looking into XAML as an alternative via the Wikipedia, I noted the complaints.
You seem to prefer trading a path of development teasing with speculation for a dependence and a potential for slavery.
As long as HTMLn and CSSn are open to community control they'll almost certainly get my vote.
Vunic wrote: Everyone wants to make their buck.
A gratuitous statement, at best, in my opinion. I've not paid anyone for use of CSS or HTML, any version. You can stretch the definition of what it means to pay someone, but no one's ever held out a cup to me.
W3C's splashing around has its problems - but overall, they tend to gather the support of the general community (corporate and otherwise).
Why does HTML5 need to be 'done' ? ? ? or perfect ? ? ? or whatever illusion you carry as to what impossible standards it must satisfy?
Anyway - have fun with it.
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos wrote: Everyone wants to make their buck.
May be this is pointed more towards the browser-makers than the browser-users?
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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I'd go for the "browser industry" model - except for this caveat:
Adopting HTML_5 as a standard requires browser makers to surrender some of their distinctiveness and thus work against a reason to pass them coin in some manner for their enhanced coolness. Although at differing rates, all the major browser producers, with the exception of M$, embraced the standards with compliance (not all the same features or equally, but that's to be expected).
M$, as usual, only adopted them extensively w/IE9, and that, of course, required XP users to upgrade or do without (or do w/Firefox, Chrome, Seamonkey, etc.). Finally, with IE11, M$ threw in the towel, for, except for their Trident engine, it does not identify itself as IE - they decided to join the compliance club. In their case, however, I'd say they'd only do this if it has some tangible value-added (like stopping the hemorrhage of their browser market share). I could potentially argue that, from a consumer's standpoint, adoption of standards is a net savings. To me, developing without work-arounds to accommodate variations, is definitely a savings for me and (by proxy) my clients.
Just as an aside: I don't hate all that is MS. I jumped on C++ .NET, even thought I needed to learn an entire new "function library", because the .NET library was also the same as the one in C#.NET, VB.NET, &etc., allowing my pieces to work with their pieces. I also was able to retain proper C++, as well.
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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The problem with HTML is that is always a moving target, and that is not equally supported on all browsers, however my personal gripe with it is that I dislike markup language, so even XAML seems terrible to me (even while I have to withstand it on Windows 8/Phone development).
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Increasingly I find myself using HTML5 with JS and PHP more and more, because they are simply the most convenient tools for much of what I do. HTML5 has been a real boon to my work as I can do cool stuff without worrying too much about client-platforms and servers - as long as I ignore a lot of the more 'experimental' features that is. HTML5 is good, in parts. I am getting much more done with it.
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The only reason to build consensus is to pick the dictator.
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