Uncovering Epistemological and Ontological Assumptions of Software Designers

Grok Headline matches for Uncovering Epistemological and Ontological Assumptions of Software Designers

Cultural assumptions of photo editing
software

Cultural assumptions of photo editing
software 04/08/2005 12:46 PM
Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah has a fascinating post about how photo upload sites and image editing packages look to someone whose skin is dark and who is shooting in very bright sunlight. This is just an example of a broader theme in the post: "The Subtle Business of Software Localization," as Ethan puts it. Snippets: The first thing I very quickly noticed: somehow all the photos that I uploaded to Yahoo Photos turned out darker than on Flickr (the services both resize uploaded photos). The photo-resizing algorithm used by Yahoo Photos was giving worse results. This was noticeable to me because a...

Made by Designers for Designers
HowToMambo.com Mambo Template
Dreamweaver Extension and Video Tutorial
kit for the Mambo Open Source CMS.

Made by Designers for Designers
HowToMambo.com Mambo Template
Dreamweaver Extension and Video Tutorial
kit for the Mambo Open Source CMS. 04/10/2005 04:04 AM
HowToMambo.com Mambo Template Dreamweaver Extension and Video Tutorial kit for the Mambo Open Source CMS. Our Product is great for new comers or Mambo template professionals. [PRWEB Apr 10, 2005]

Fast Cat Carts Release Shopping Cart
Software that Helps Website Designers
Build Customized E-Commerce Sites in
Minutes

Fast Cat Carts Release Shopping Cart
Software that Helps Website Designers
Build Customized E-Commerce Sites in
Minutes 04/06/2005 06:02 PM
This new release includes a special tool just for website designers. Now designers are able to upload their own designs and create customized online catalogs for their clients in minutes. [PRWEB Apr 6, 2005]

Audio Designers Get Development Boost
From Virtio’s VPDA295 Software
Development Platform

Audio Designers Get Development Boost
From Virtio’s VPDA295 Software
Development Platform 03/14/2005 05:58 PM
Features Complete Systems Simulation Integration - Offers Unique Synchronous Multi-Core Processing - Accelerates Development Cycle and Mitigates Risk. [PRWEB Mar 9, 2005]

Kansas City Website Designers and
Software Programming Firm Launches KC
Website Design Resource Website

Kansas City Website Designers and
Software Programming Firm Launches KC
Website Design Resource Website 12/24/2004 12:26 PM
VectorVision, one of Kansas City, Missouri's leading Web design firms and software developers is pleased to announce the creation of http://www.KC-web-design.com a Missouri web site showcase and Missouri web site designers resource center. [PRWEB Dec 24, 2004]

Uncovering the rationales

Uncovering the rationales 05/13/2004 06:34 PM
The 27 rationales... There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but a graduate student in Chicago found and tracked 27 different rationales used to justify the war in Iraq. Gathering over 1500 statements from the Bush cabinet, US senators, and from news stories, Largio even throws in some time series graphs in appendices, so you can see which rationales were hot, and which were not from Sept 2001 to October 2002.

The Most Incorrect Assumptions In
Computing?

The Most Incorrect Assumptions In
Computing? 12/04/2003 03:37 PM

Smoking gun--uncovering Net tax evaders

Smoking gun--uncovering Net tax evaders 11/10/2003 11:11 PM
ZDNet Nov 10 2003 8:21AM ET

uncovering patterns in complicated
networks

uncovering patterns in complicated
networks 02/16/2004 07:55 PM
a new approach .. press release

eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-02/uom-ffc021104.php
track this site | 4 links

Uncovering the Billion-Dollar Secret

Uncovering the Billion-Dollar Secret 12/28/2004 05:27 PM
Understanding stock option expensing isn't easy, but it's worth the effort.

Victoria Gotti Tries to Erase
Assumptions (AP)

Victoria Gotti Tries to Erase
Assumptions (AP) 08/01/2004 08:37 AM
AP - "People make a lot of stupid assumptions about me when they hear my name," says Victoria Gotti. No kidding. But that's the whole point of "Growing Up Gotti," A&E's new unscripted series: To knock down certain obvious assumptions about the daughter of deceased mob boss John Gotti. And to reinforce others: the vulgar extravagance of this full-figured bottle blonde and her three full-of-'tude teens is also part of the appeal.

Zimbabwe call off friendly after
uncovering fake team (Reuters)

Zimbabwe call off friendly after
uncovering fake team (Reuters) 01/09/2004 09:55 PM
Reuters - Zimbabwe's scheduled international friendly with El Salvador in Harare has been cancelled after the visiting team were discovered to be fake, officials say.

Intel IT manager simulation simulates
sexist workplace assumptions, too

Intel IT manager simulation simulates
sexist workplace assumptions, too 04/19/2004 04:23 PM
Amy sez, "Intel has a game on their website called 'The Intel IT Manager Game - The simulation of an IT department.' It's supposed to simulate the tasks of an IT manager, including hiring new people. But guess what? All of the characters are male! You couldn't even hire a woman if you tried, because there are no female characters!! Link (Thanks, Amy!)

CD Sales Increasing; File Sharing
Increasing -- Whose Assumptions Are
Wrong?

CD Sales Increasing; File Sharing
Increasing -- Whose Assumptions Are
Wrong? 01/06/2005 05:24 PM
Even while studies have shown that file sharing has been growing lately, reports are out saying that CD sales are actually up. This isn't all that surprising, for a variety of reasons. First, the RIAA had been manipul ating the numbers all along, and after a point, the reality had to hit. Second, the economy has been picking up. And, as many people pointed out, the economic downturn was probably the biggest factor in music sales declines. Of course, the industry is going to spin this as if their lawsuits "worked," when all the evidence shows that there's actually more file sharing happening now than before. However, the recording industry isn't known for actually looking at evidence.

Should Web Designers Be Regulated?

Should Web Designers Be Regulated? 09/08/2004 06:16 PM
One of the reasons that the web caught on was that HTML was so easy that, with barely any training at all, anyone could create a website. Obviously, that has its downsides as well, as many websites are dreadfully designed. As accessibility issues become more important for websites, it has some wondering if web designers should be regulated, where official web designers would need specific certification, and couldn't use the title "Web Designer" without it. While the HTML purists might like such a thing, it seems like a fairly silly way of going around and improving HTML. A better case could be made for just showing people how bad design harms their business or visitors.

When Web Designers Reproduce

When Web Designers Reproduce 11/11/2003 10:33 AM
When Web Designers Reproduce We've all seen web pages announcing new arrivals, and I have thrown up my own minimalist attempts using bare bones html. But I found this link a fascinating example of what happens when one applies a particular web aesthetic to an important life event. A new genre is born!
Is your infant w3c compliant? (no Flash required)

Calling All Designers!

Calling All Designers! 10/29/2003 01:14 AM
Okay, well, perhaps real designers already know, but there’s some fantastic free stock photography available at sxc.hu and I’m completely set aback by it. It’s basically a submission site for amateur/semipros to get noticed, but in the mean time some...

CSS is for geeks not designers

CSS is for geeks not designers 02/01/2005 10:00 PM
Tables may suck, but CSS is no improvement. Yet web designers who have never used page layout tools for offline...

Some people where meant to be web
designers and some weren't

Some people where meant to be web
designers and some weren't 07/05/2004 07:35 AM

Oh man I want to beat my head against the wall. I figured hey I have some great web designers do some cool work here and on some other sites I own. I have paid for those designers to do what they do and I am very happy thus far with the results. So I have been on this quest to learn CSS and I have the mechanics square in my brain. But I found a cool Photoshop template today that I wanted to cut up. I threw in the towel after 5 hours of trying to deal with Photoshop Imagemaker ver. 7

If there is anyone here in Hawaii that does this stuff for a living drop me a e-mail.

9 designers, 9 cities, 9 chairs

9 designers, 9 cities, 9 chairs 06/18/2004 06:33 AM
Un-Fold. (quicktime clip) City Magazine asked 9 designers, from 9 cities across the world to design a chair in 90 days. Oh, and it had to fit in a FedEx box. Pics and more about the designers and the project.

Re: MS web designers -- "What Security
Initiative?"

Re: MS web designers -- "What Security
Initiative?" 06/14/2004 09:13 PM
Greg Kujawa (Jun 14 2004)

postel's law is for implementors, not
designers

postel's law is for implementors, not
designers 01/11/2004 10:13 AM

Another discussion that recently flared up (again) is regarding the applicability of constraints within specifications, more specifically (heh) of constraints that should or should not be placed in the Atom API. The first I heard about this was through this post on Mark's weblog, where among other things he says:

Another entire class of unhelpful suggestions that seems to pop up on a regular basis is unproductive mandates about how producers can produce Atom feeds, or how clients can consume them. Things like “let’s mandate that feeds can’t use CDATA blocks” (runs contrary to the XML specification), or “let’s mandate that feeds can’t contain processing instructions” (technically possible, but to what purpose?), or “let’s mandate that clients can only consume feeds with conforming XML parsers”.

This last one is interesting, in that it tries to wish away Postel’s Law (originally stated in RFC 793 as “be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others”). Various people have tried to mandate this principle out of existence, some going so far as to claim that Postel’s Law should not apply to XML, because (apparently) the three letters “X”, “M”, and “L” are a magical combination that signal a glorious revolution that somehow overturns the fundamental principles of interoperability.

There are no exceptions to Postel’s Law. Anyone who tries to tell you differently is probably a client-side developer who wants the entire world to change so that their life might be 0.00001% easier. The world doesn’t work that way.

Mark then goes on to describe the ability of his ultra-liberal feed parser to handle different types of RSS, RDF and Atom. (Note: I do agree with Mark that CDATA statements should be permitted, as per the XML spec). In fact I do agree with Mark's statement, but I don't agree with the context in which he applies it.

Today, Dave points to a message on the Atom-syntax mailing list where Bob Wyman gives his view on the barriers created by the "ultra-liberal" approach to specifications, using HTML as an example.

I italicized the word "specifications" because I think there's a disconnect in the discussion here, and the context in which Postel's Law is being applied is at the center of it.

As I understand it, Mark is saying that writing down constraints in the Atom spec (or any other for that matter) is something to be avoided when possible, because people will do whatever they want anyway, and it's not a big deal (and he gives his parser as an example). But whether his parser or any other can deal with anything you throw at it is beside the point I think, or rather it proves that Postel's law is properly applied to implementation, but it doesn't prove that it applies to design.

Mark quotes the original expression of Postel's Law in RFC 793, but his quote is incomplete. Here is the full quote:

2.10. Robustness Principle

TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.

(my emphasis). The comment in the RFC clearly states that implementations will be flexible, not the spec itself. I agree with Mark's statement: there are no exceptions to Postel law. But I disagree in how he applies it, because it doesn't affect design, but rather implementation.

Getting a little bit into the semantic of things, I think it's interesting to note that placing a comment like that on the RFC is actually defining accepted practice (dealing with reality rather than the abstractions of the spec) and so it is a constraint (a constraint that requests you accept anything, rather than reject it, is nevertheless a constraint). So the fact that this "Robustness principle" is within that particular RFC as an example shows that placing constraints is a good idea.

Implementations can and often do differ from specs, unintentionally (ie., because of a bug) or otherwise. But the less constraints there are in a spec, the easier it is to get away with extensions that kill interoperability. So I don't think it's bad to say what's "within spec" and what is not within spec. Saying flat-out that "constraints are bad" is not a good idea IMO.

One example of a reasonable constraint that I think would be useful for Atom would be to say that if an entry's content is not text or HTML/XHTML (e.g., it's a Word document, something that as far as I can see could be done on an Atom feed according to the current spec) then the feed must provide the equivalent text in plain text or HTML. Sure, it might happen that someone starts serving word documents, but they'd be clearly disregaring the spec, and so taking a big chance. Maybe they can pull it off. Just as Netscape introduced new tags that they liked when they had 80 or 90% market share. But when that happened, no one had any doubts that using that tag was "non-standard". And that's a plus I think.

So, my opinion in a nutshell: constraints are good. The more things can be defined with the agreement of those involved, the better, since once something is "out in the wild" accepted practices emerge and the ability to place new constraints (e.g., to fix problems) becomes more limited, as we all know.

What I would say, then, is: Postel's law has no exceptions, but it applies to implementation, not design.

xScope a new set of OS X tools for
designers

xScope a new set of OS X tools for
designers 11/14/2003 04:00 PM
Artis Software and the Iconfactory have released xScope 1.0, a US$14.95 set of Mac OS X designer tools for measuring, aligning and inspecting on-screen graphics and layouts.

MS web designers -- "What Security
Initiative?"

MS web designers -- "What Security
Initiative?" 06/12/2004 12:45 PM
Nick FitzGerald (Jun 12 2004)

Young Web designers hit a home run

Young Web designers hit a home run 05/30/2004 09:00 AM
Chicago Tribune May 30 2004 12:29PM GMT

Designers and developers sought

Designers and developers sought 01/06/2005 08:01 PM
Dr Frankensite wants you.

Free Web Hosting Awarded To Designers

Free Web Hosting Awarded To Designers 05/19/2004 11:48 PM
theWHIR May 20 2004 4:10AM GMT

Professional Website Designers Wanted

Professional Website Designers Wanted 03/29/2005 05:44 PM
As many of you already know, we have been hard at work on the new ActiveWin website and the engine is pretty close to completion. Once again Will has worked his magic and created the engine from scratch instead of recycling code or using anyone else's work and we can't wait for you all to see the improvements.

User-Interface Designers Take Note

User-Interface Designers Take Note 06/05/2005 10:47 PM

Spencer Critchley is going to travel with a hammer from now on. Watch Out!

Dear one-browser Web designers: Don't
say I didn't warn you

Dear one-browser Web designers: Don't
say I didn't warn you 09/27/2004 05:32 AM
In my 2002 book, The Online Rules of Successful Companies, I said it was stupid to design Web sites that would work correctly only with the most popular Web browser. Yes, I told readers, over 90% of all Internet users today may use Microsoft's Internet Explorer (MSIE), but not long ago 90% of all Internet users ran Netscape. Web designers and site owners who made Netscape-only sites had to scramble madly to redo their work when MSIE started getting popular. "Learn from this!" I said.

// hicksdesign :: stuff for designers +
anyone else who cares

// hicksdesign :: stuff for designers +
anyone else who cares 02/10/2004 05:01 AM
Visual Identity Team .. Hicks Design blog .. // hicksdesign .. via

hicksdesign.co.uk/journal
track this site | 4 links

All-in-one button creation tool for web
designers

All-in-one button creation tool for web
designers 01/29/2003 10:59 AM
IDGNet New Zealand Jan 29 2003 10:01AM ET

Dear Developers And Web Site
Designers...

Dear Developers And Web Site
Designers... 06/24/2005 04:42 PM

Remember, your UI is important. Don't change for the sake of changing. Only change your UI when the new one is extremely significantly better than the old one.

Remember Word 6? Or, witness the BBC.

Itanium trips up unwary designers

Itanium trips up unwary designers 04/07/2005 09:25 AM
ZDNet Apr 7 2005 1:30PM GMT

car designers upset over blingin' vinyl
tops

car designers upset over blingin' vinyl
tops 07/07/2004 09:33 PM
i am suspecting that german car designers are also not familiar with spinning rims

Web Designers Attend Search Engine
Conference

Web Designers Attend Search Engine
Conference 05/14/2004 07:37 PM
W3Reports (Press Release),United States-1 hour ago ... Many of the speakers were representatives from the search engines themselves, including Jen Fitzpatrick, Director of Engineering at Google and Tim Mayer ...

Intel Shows Designers How to Ease the
Breeze

Intel Shows Designers How to Ease the
Breeze 09/09/2004 04:46 PM
Intel's new Thermal Management and SpeedStep technologies enable high performance in smaller systems by reducing power dissipation, thermal output, and fan noise.

Chip designers power down latest
creations

Chip designers power down latest
creations 02/17/2004 01:04 PM
As processors continue to grow smaller, chip designers are hammering away at the power consumption of those chips while examining power-thrifty methods of increasing performance, according to presentations at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) Monday

Web designers rally to overturn patent
verdict

Web designers rally to overturn patent
verdict 10/31/2003 06:21 PM
ZDNet Oct 31 2003 4:42PM ET
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GrokA matches for Uncovering Epistemological and Ontological Assumptions of Software Designers

Uncovering Epistemological and Ontological Assumptions of Software Designers

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