I'm not nostalgic about the old, low-resolution monitors though. The content in those design fits into 630/700 pixel wide columns and the 11 pixel text in Orchid Beauty looks tiny on my screen!
It is not only the text size. It is also the low contrast. Add to that the fixed size layout, the orchids in the titles, the images replacing the titles (albeit with a proper fallback), the unmotivated plus-icon in the list…
Those old designs were great in the past to show what is possible, but now they are a reminder of the long way web design has behind.
I think relative font-sizing with "em" and "rem" [1] is a popular and good choice these days. "em" has been popular since 2004 after an article by Rutter [2].
IE9- (and Android 1.6-) didn't scale/zoom well when the font was set in px. But using px was widespread despite these (and other) cons because it was easy, reliable and consistent to implement across browsers. [3]
Pt (point type) are only for printer style sheets [4], not screen style sheets. Using them for screen styles is not-done and doesn't make much sense. [5]
That wouldn't help. Without wanting to go too deep into OT-territory:
Even if the DPI could be known (and afaik normally it isn't, it is just set to a value) and it would be possible to convert in into real inches (btw, I have no idea how big that is in real units) to be displayed on a monitor, how would a designer know how big any element, even text, should be? It depends on the available space, which depends on the size of the monitor/the size of the window.
To think about how absurd that would be, try to find a situation where someone would say "this heading should be 2 cm tall".
px as size lead to the same problem with the available space, but they at least correspond to the resolution.
Interesting idea. I have an Android game that I've been working on for a while and I think it is pretty interesting but I just don't have the time to continue to polish it and market it. Maybe there's somebody out there who has the time to finish up the project and likes the idea of skipping the early development phase. There must be a lot of side projects like this.
One thing I find strange is how this Minnesota accent has come to represent "Canada's" accent in American pop culture. It is, unsurprisingly, somewhat similar to nearby parts of Canada (Manitoba, Northern Ontario) but it is not the accent of a large percentage of people in Canada, and it never was.
I think this was from Le Journal de Paris. "Journal" in this case actually means "newspaper" -- it was a daily that ran from the 1770's to the 1840's. I have a copy, but sadly it has no Benjamin Franklin essays in it.
If it was actually published in Journal de Paris, why the weird "Journal of Paris" thing? And did the actual Journal de Paris really publish letters in English sometimes? I've always heard Franklin was a big celebrity in Paris(that definitely might be propaganda in American schoolbooks), but English wasn't all that popular of a language at the time.
I can believe that Franklin was making a joking reference to Le Journal de Paris, but it seems hard to believe this actually got published there.
The article starts in the "E C O N O M I E" section.
(note: the shape of the printed lowercase s looks like an f)
Don't be surprised that the he was able to write in French, as educated people of that time knew French, much as educated people today know English. Moreover he was ambassador to France during 1776–1785.
Thank you very much!! I stand corrected. And with this to search with, I found the complete original on Google Books (along with what seems to be a complete set of Journal de Paris from the 18th century; I'm going to waste the whole day reading bits of these.)
I'm not surprised at all that Jefferson and Franklin spoke French -- I always assumed they did -- what surprises me is that we (at least in the US) see so little evidence of it and that translations are presented as originals so often.
This letter is a good example. Is the English translation even Franklin's? And yet it's everywhere, while this French original doesn't even show up on the Library of Congress Franklin site. That's what I find bizarre.
I think the search function is biased pretty heavily toward more popular titles. Even if you put an obscure word in your app's description, if it is not very popular it will be behind pages of approximate matches.
I'd love to give away free copies of my Android game but I don't think Google Play supports promo codes. You also can't start out with a free app and then convert to a paid app later. Of course, a common approach is to have a free version and a paid version (or make your game ad-supported, or add in-game purchases).
Last I heard, Google supported completely discretionary developer-initiated refunds. IIRC, at least a couple of the high-profile apps that left the Amazon Appstore took advantage of that to ease the transition for their paying (i.e. not FAOTD) customers. With that capability, implementing a reasonable functional equivalent of a free promo code seems straightforward enough.
That's why Apple limits the number of promo codes you can issue to 50 per version last time I checked, so you can't sell the codes to users and avoid giving up the distribution cut.
It's probably a lot easier to understand a larger project like a game or a website by trying to implement something substantial on your own. A lot of the obvious approaches to coding that work for small examples don't scale well for one reason or another. In the process of running into roadblocks and finding solutions (typically with the help of google) you'll encounter some of the pieces that end up in something like an iPhone app and at that point you'll probably be in a much better position to understand them.
To give a sense of what the job market is like here in Vancouver, I know a few people who accepted great offers at Google or similar companies after getting only a couple of mediocre offers locally. There are some interesting startups here for sure and I haven't had trouble finding work but the major tech employers are not on the same level as what you find in the Bay Area.
The talent drain that exists unfortunately forms a self-perpetuating cycle. It lowers the quality of remaining talent, so there are fewer successful companies, and as a result there are fewer potential tech investors of the kind they have in the Bay Area. This is a perennial problem in Canada that has affected multiple industries in a similar way.
Another local problem in Vancouver is the high cost of living. Even Toronto suffers from this somewhat. They're both pretty appealing cities but they don't necessarily have the best "price to performance" ratio.
I would guess that there is a very high correlation between CS degrees and programming or problem solving ability. I've worked in a pretty good lab full of grad students and their average skill level was dramatically higher than what you find at an average company (or at least, what I've seen working at half a dozen or so places), let alone what you see from average job applicants. Upon graduation most of these people easily found jobs at places like Google. They didn't get stumped on FizzBuzz because they had spent their time on abstract academic problems without real-world application.
There are definitely some people with CS degrees who cannot code, and you don't want to hire those people. The existence of these exceptions however doesn't mean that degrees aren't a strong positive signal when you are looking to hire somebody competent.
I think there's at least some reactionary bias against formal qualifications in the software industry and in startups. Some of the old professions like law or medicine do go too far the other way, but it's just as wrong to fetishize "real world experience".
So I know the article isn't entirely serious, but the "score one for the robots" attitude seems pretty common and it's perplexing to me. Isn't this "score one for the humans", since they have created and now control a new kind of machine?
When I see robots doing new stuff I don't worry about humans becoming obsolete (whatever that means), I look forward to the day when humans are freed from the grunt work they do now.
Some people worry about losing their jobs in the rock-paper-scissors industry, but I think this is a social problem that has nothing to do with robots.
It is clearly a social problem, not a technical problem. But it clearly has a LOT to do with robots (and computing in general, and technology in general).
I am not a neo-Luddite (nor Luddite, nor primitivist, all of which are different things), principally in that I do not subscribe to normative Luddite beliefs (beliefs about What We Ought To Do). But the Luddite fears are legitimate fears, for those affected; when the work you currently know how to do is replaceable with (sufficiently-cheap) machinery, it makes you personally poorer. (Of course, when MY job is replaced by cheaper machinery, it makes YOU personally marginally richer, because you get better prices on the goods that I used to produce, and over time this appears to be a net win).
And socially, we observe that increasing automation has, for the most part, not freed humans from doing grunt work, as they once did. Except for those people that have been "freed" into poverty. Admittedly, the poverty of today seems to me to be quite a bit nicer than the poverty of 200 years ago (esp. urban poverty).
socially, we observe that increasing automation has, for the most part, not freed humans from doing grunt work, as they once did.
Sure it has. Much less people work on the land now. Much less people shovel dirt, till land and harvest crops. Also I don't need to wash ky hands by hand, wash my dishes, and empty my chamberpot anymore.
That's not to say there is no poverty (there is), but its wrong to say there is the same amount of grudge work as there was 200 years ago.
I agree that a shrinking percentage of society is doing agricultural work, and certainly many specific tasks of grunt-work-of-yore are less grunt-y and more automated.
But my assertion was not that "automation has not started doing any of the grunt work we once did". My assertion was that the segment of society that WAS doing grunt work is mostly not elevated out of grunt work TODAY. I assert that, rather, those people are mostly either still doing grunt work, or else are unable to find a useful role in society (a leftier turn of phrase would be "they are being abandoned by society"). I can certainly concede that there has been SOME improvement in this, but it's vastly less than starry-eyed optimists seem to suggest.
Remember that this followed mwd_1 stating a vision of the future, in which "humans are freed from the grunt work they do now", by which I assume (s)he meant not just today's variant of grunt work, but grunt work in general. Basically, my whole claim is that techno-utopianism is unrealistic, and it is unrealistic for social reasons, not technological reasons. Not that it stops me from wishing for it.
Oh, and a minor unimportant correction: the phrase is "grunt work", not "grudge work", at least in most English-speaking communities. Look it up.
I assert that, rather, those people are mostly either still doing grunt work, or else are unable to find a useful role in society (a leftier turn of phrase would be "they are being abandoned by society")
Ah, now you're moving the goal posts. From "200 years ago X% of society were doing grunt work, and today X% of society are doing grunt work" to "x% of society are doing grunt work or are just loafing around". I agree that it's wrong that there loads of people who are unemployed, or working crappy jobs, but it's much better than when they had to shovel shit for 10 hours a day.
Tell a serf in the middle ages about the terrible future where people don't work till they're 16ish (sometimes 20), then sit around in housing estates all day doing nothing. Tell them how horrible it is.
Things have gotten better. We need to continue to make things better.
> I agree that it's wrong that there loads of people who are unemployed, or working crappy jobs, but it's much better than when they had to shovel shit for 10 hours a day.
A lot of those crappy jobs involve the equivalent of shoveling shit for 10 hours a day. Jobs available to power in lower economic brackets and classes are demanding: retail, fast food prep, janitorial/custodial work, day labor, etc.
More importantly, just because a job doesn't require physical toil doesn't mean it isn't a soul draining experience. The fact of the matter is that increasing automation hasn't ended class division because automation schemes are employed to increase the profit of those in control of business. Improvements in technology do not automatically improve society, as most technologies get exploited to divert more wealth to few individuals.
Yes those jobs are shitty, but they are better than 200/500 years ago.
(a) There are more labour laws now. You don't have to work as much. No more shoveling shit for 10 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week. (b) There are health and safety laws now, if you were to shovel shit now, you'd have to have a mask etc. (c) There are more labour laws now, so that the employer has to provide tools and training. No more "shovel shit for 10 hours, you have to bring your own shovel, oh you're shovel got broken, you're out of a job" (d) There is more of a safety net. No more shovel shit for 10 hours, oh you broke your hand? Hope you can live without food until it heals. etc.
Those jobs suck, yes. But ask anyone doing them if they think mediæval shit shoveling is just as good (or better), and they'll say no.
The present of labor laws does not mean that everyone has access to union work or that those laws are enforced in some situations. The same goes for health and safety regulations. There are plenty of jobs where you buy your own work equipment (I've had them). Also, the most economically disadvantaged work more than 1 job, so saying that people don't work 10+ or 6 or 7 days is not accurate.
The bottom line is that those at the top have always exploited technological advance for themselves while leaving others behind. This is a primary function of capitalism throughout history. That some conditions may have been worse in the past means nothing while economic oppression continues right now.
I think "grudge" might be a combination of "grunt" and "drudge", aided by the fact that "grudge" is a real word with a different meaning. I noticed it too.
This is not applicable to my comment. I was merely attempting to quickly and easily explain why treating "robots" as a distinct entity, rather than merely human tools, is an extant viewpoint.
