Welcome to the "Joel on Software" discussion group.greenspun.com : LUSENET : Joel on Software : One Thread |
Welcome!The readership of Joel on Software is growing. It gets between 3000 and 15000 page reads a day and there are something like 1500 subscribers. Most importantly, it comes up as the number 1 response when you search for "Joel" on Google :)
I wanted to create a forum for readers to discuss the topics I mention in my pages. To do this, we're using software called "LUSENET" which is open source, and made publically available by a consulting company called arsDigita.
Enjoy!
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
I purposely chose the world's most simplistic discussion group software. I think it will suit our needs for a while.
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
The software seems perfectly adequate. Good call, and thanks!
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
I wish it had some kind of cookie or something so I wouldn't have to type all that stuff in every time.
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
What, you don't like bloatware? :-) Hard to find a site anymore not loaded with advertising. Hope to find good discussion here.
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
Why don't you try something like Slash (http://www.slashdot.org) or Everything (http://www.everything2.com/) engine? Your articles will generate a huge response, which should be filtered, self-moderated and organized.I bet your inbox is already overflowing with resumes, and this board will fill up pretty quickly.
P.S. You are probably the first person who made me regret not going to a good college.
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
My favorite weblog style software is Squishdot, a partial Slashdot clone built on top of Zope.I run a small weblog (posted to infrequently) called FIAWOL (Fandom Is A Way Of Life), that uses Squishdot. I'm pretty happy with it, so far.
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
With barely 1% of the fortune 1000 top management having come from the ranks of Ivy League alumnus, I think you're overstating your case about wanting to have had an Ivy League or comperable education.What I'd like to know is how Yale can admit 4000 freshmen per year out of 12,000 applications, what do those 8000 other people do? Do they die, face down, broke, dead drunk in the gutter a few years later? Pshaw! Wanting to part of this "country club" form of education is vapid and silly. Please don't envy Joel for this. It's an insult to my spirit and yours.
-- Anonymous, November 05, 2000
It's hard to get around in the message list....
-- Anonymous, November 08, 2000
Easy to use and quick, but not nice to use. Once of the reasons I never got into IRC is that text only and ugly interfaces just make the experience less enjoyable.As an analogy: Any car can drive you to the store, so why does everyone want a nice new fancy car? Because once your usability requirements are met, then the next step is to make it enjoyable and comfortable.
-- Anonymous, November 12, 2000
To demonstrate how "easy" this is, try finding the subject '"Google" Nit Pick' in the list (which has been running for about 1/2 week). Easy and quick, right? I also don't like retyping my information for every post - and this is my second post.
-- Anonymous, November 12, 2000
Does this place have an NNTP interface also?I don't think I can stand a Web interface, which doesn't let me 'get *latest* messages' instead of 'get all messages' each time I visit... with a web-based 'get all messages' it seems that I would need to reread the whole board each time I visit, to see what's new.
-Christopher
-- Anonymous, September 06, 2001
that editthispage provides? Just curious. Are you planning on moving off of edit this page?John Phillips
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
Ah, the joy of not having to register to add a post. Not since Slashdot in 1997 have I been on a board like this. Having to register to post on a site is a major obstacle to online community. While I'm scared of the privacy invasion aspects of Microsoft Passport that Joel talked about earlier, not having to register a new account on every site you visit is a big win. I don't have accounts on photo.net, scripting.com, kuro5hin.org, and arsdigita.com precisely because I don't feel like registering (I broke down and registered at Slashdot after they implemented filtering).I'm trying to think of a secure system which would let people use the same user name and password on any community site which participated, yet didn't give out other information without permission. But it's hard. :P
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
I'm trying to think of a secure system which would let people use the same user name and password on any community site which participated, yet didn't give out other information without permission. But it's hard. :PIt's actually easy to envision a system that doesn't give out any other information, it's just hard to envision a system that can't. In other words, I can't envision a system that is immune to abuse by the system owners.Because owners can change their minds, in fact, owners can change, so you don't have any guaranties that your information won't be surreptitiously gathered and monetized at a later date.
The only hope we had for a while was an independent auditing company, but the only candidate was Trust-e, which turned out to be a toothless mutt, instead of a rabid guard dog. Through failing to enforce it's own rather anemic privacy guidelines (Trust-e only required that you be truthful about your policies, and didn't hold those policies to any standard), Trust-e has damaged what little consumer credibility it had.
As far as I'm aware, there is currently no privacy advocacy group with a widespread branding campaign web sites. It's a gap that will be filled eventually, but probably only after some more consumers have been burned, which will generate a willingness to pay a premium for brands-names associated with higher privacy standards.
This will lead (eventually) to the FTC enforcing basic standards of privacy, and also to the rise of 'Good-Housekeeping' and 'Underwriters-Laboratory' style seals of approval.
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
I like not having to register, too. All these different discussion tools make me long for the simplicity (!) of usenet, though. I wish some of the effort that's been put into starting from scratch could have been devoted to leveraging an interface that has a long history of usability refinement.As far as the usenet substitutes go, this one seems as good as any I've seen.
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
I like not having to register, too. All these different discussion tools make me long for the simplicity (!) of usenet, though. I wish some of the effort that's been put into starting from scratch could have been devoted to leveraging an interface that has a long history of usability refinement.As far as the usenet substitutes go, this one seems as good as any I've seen.
That's probably why it's called LUSENET ;)
It's funny that one of the requested features for the next version of this software (bboard) was a NNTP gateway -- so you could read it with your newsreader!
Also interesting is ForumZilla a mozilla XUL application to make reading discussion sites more like usenet. It might be good, but one of my biggest problems with posting online is that the text editing capabilities of a web browser just don't cut it...
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
Registering to post to a discussion isn't all that uncommon, but requiring registration simply to read a forum is absurd. I'm seeing many Manila-based sites that are making this mistake. Perhaps this is a built-in problem with the software.As far as forum software goes, I've found UBB to work pretty well, despite some performance issues. There are also PHP/MySQL variants of UBB-like forum software that deal with some of the problems you get with CGI-based apps.
-- Anonymous, November 03, 2000
Registering to post to a discussion isn't all that uncommon, but requiring registration simply to read a forum is absurd. I'm seeing many Manila-based sites that are making this mistake. Perhaps this is a built-in problem with the software.I agree. I don't think it's a problem with the software, but rather Dave Winer's ego. He was getting flamed so much on his own discussion groups that he shut them down, and turned off read-access to non-members. It's absurd. If other sites have done the same, they're probably just following his lead.
-- Anonymous, November 04, 2000
I might have had something to do with Dave's decision to shut down his Discussion Groups and make then read-only for registered users. About a week or two before he made the decision to shut them down, I made a conscious decision to extract myself from everything Dave Winer and Userland were doing. I simply didn't want to be part of that community anymore. I privately stated such to Dave and requested that all of my Userland accounts be removed from his company servers, not an unreasonable request. It took several weeks of me asking repeatedly for this to be done, and Userland eventually removed the accounts. Shortly thereafter, Dave made the decision to shut down the Discussion Groups. Dave and I have had a number of arguments, both publicly and privately, and we've always agreed to disgree. At times, Dave's correspondence turned very ugly and nasty, full of swear words and bizarre accusations. I responded to such email by telling Dave that I refused to communicate with someone who couldn't hold his ego in check and correspond with basic respect for others. Here's the kicker: I fully expect Dave to discover this post and respond to it on Scripting News negatively, as he has done so many times in the past. Dave's personality does not allow for any kind of criticism. He gets all bent out of shape anytime talks about him in anything but a positive light. This ultimately rsults in him controlling his online communities with a heavy hand, even shutting them down when people start to question the quality of his software or company's business model, or Dave Winer himself. This has happened several times in lifespan of Userland software. Anyone who was part of the Frontier community a few years back will remember when Dave unexpectedly shut down all the Userland- run Frontier mailing lists, probably because someone was asking some hard questions about Frontier that made Userland look bad. Now, if you're in the business of selling software, and you suddenly do something like this, what kind of message does that send to your users? What if Micrososft took away MSDN and all of the online support it provides for its developers? An absurd idea, but that's what Userland did with Frontier, forcing its outside developers and users to scramble to replace the mailing lists that they relied upon for learning and using Frontier.
-- Anonymous, November 05, 2000
Question about these message boards: sometimes I see it in split screen (two frames - top subjects, bottom contents) and sometimes it's one screen viewing single thread of discussion. Is there any easy way to switch?
-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000
To see the DG in Q&A format: http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a.tcl?topic=Joel+on+SoftwareTo see the DG in framed threaded format: http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/main-frame.tcl?topic=Joel%20on%20Software
-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000
Having to register is an option in most boards including UBB that is controlled by the adminisrator. On my board, you can optionally register but if you don't you can still post. The advantage of registering is that you can edit your posts so that the world won't realize what a bad speller you are. ;)
-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000
I am just wondering if Joel is gay. I am not gay. I don't understand why people become gay even though there are so many pretty girls around.I would like to read your answer in this page. The e-mail I have provided is not the right one, so don't write anything in that e-mail.
Thanks
-- Anonymous, March 12, 2001
That's the answer I wrote to my friend as a respond to your "10- years" article. Maybe it could be placed as a discussion issue also... In the past my friend and myself were trying to raise some money to start the start-up company. Ufortunately we didn't succeed. But we still have a soft, which I believe is extremely good for as you call it "version 1.0" with "zillions" of bugs, proper concept and serious implementation. So who knows maybe one day... Any way here is the whole letter. ----------------------------------------------------------------------July 21, 2001 Thank's man, VERY interesting and extremely fascinating stuff! No doubts the guy is a talented programmer and a smart person. He also might be not bad at all in bussines - but in theory only, my friend.
He gives the absolutely right and absolutely unrealistic IDEAL tech-business model - how it suppose to be. But in real life it just can't happen. That's why his successful 10-years cycles examples are from Oracle, MS and Lotus. Who else except IBM or Bill Gates can spend "zillons" for 10-12 years to create a great soft such as Word or Lotus?
Anyway, a lot of things he says are right and intelligent. Just should read it and adopt it for real life situations. And of course there are a lot of contraversial examples of anti-10-years "good soft". Which he calls "get fat fast" - ICQ is only on of them.
The quality of the product should be superior. No argues about it! At the same time another factors such as the concrete field of activities, type of your client (we are not talking about individual PC user as a client - but Joel does. He always pushes himself as an example) as well as your pure business model (I like how he analyzes the subscription model in therms of market understanding) all that might make your cycle much faster and your financial success very "fat". And you're not goin' to screw anybody neither your client with your product and schedules nor your investors or emploees with financial results.
And one more thing. His 10-15 years development examples are from early 80-s. 20 years ago! We can use such a great experience of those companies, we can base and analyze THEIR mistakes and successes and then avoid ourselves from wrong and long-way decisions that have been made by THEM back to 80-s. Of course there is no such a bullshit as Internet Time. But there is a Time, a History of the industry of high-tech (which I believe is a new intellectual era for humanity - maybe even like creation of writing)and we should rely on them, use them for good. And in "good" I mean good for users, for the public as well as personal enrichment of creators. Why not - if it's good they definitely deserved it...
-- Anonymous, July 22, 2001