Why [some] tech writers don’t like content management
Moving to content management means a big shift in the way technical communicators work and the way they think about their work. With some sweeping generalizations (because the very nature of “top ten” lists require such generalizations), here are my five top reasons that technical communicators don’t like content management
Intentional Design Inc.
Well, lift is actually being used in production. I converted a Rails app to lift and it was a very interesting experience.
David Pollak — Some success with the lift framework.
The aim of BDD is to address this shortcoming and, by using terminology focused on the behavioural aspects of the system rather than testing, attempt to help direct developers towards a focus on the real value to be found in TDD at its most successful, or BDD as we call it.
I think maybe it is time to try this.
Using Erubis 2.2.0 with Rails 1.0My Weblog — Tells how to get Erubis 2.2.0 working with Rails 1.0 using a trick I wrote about a year or so ago.
Judge Tells NTP To Hold Off On Lawsuit Until Patent Office Rules
the Patent Office was proceeding towards invalidating NTP’s patents, since they’re both unoriginal and obvious. This was such a problem in the RIM-NTP case because the judge wasn’t willing to delay the case until the Patent Office issued its final rulings – and RIM’s settlement has no contingencies should the patents be invalidated, so it’s out the $612 million either way. Where things get odd is that the very same judge has ruled that NTP’s similar suit against Palm is on hold until the USPTO rules. While the judge has taken the correct step in this case, it’s hard to see why he wouldn’t do the same thing in the RIM case
Techdirt — Very hard to see why he didn’t.
1984 … The Schmidt Sting Pain Index or The Justin O. Schmidt Pain Index is a scale rating the relative pain caused by different Hymenopteran stings. It is mainly the work of Justin O. Schmidt, an entomologist for whom the index is named. Schmidt has published a number of papers on the subject and claims to have been stung by the majority of stinging Hymenoptera.
Wikipedia (via BoingBoing and Kottke) — Very very funny.
Four individual apartment towers are vertically offset from one another and suspended from a central core. The skyline of floating towers directly relates to the surrounding building volumes and explores the most attractive views towards the city center and an extensive green zone to the north. The lifted apartment towers reduce the building’s footprint to a minimum; the liberated ground level provides communal leisure activities embedded in the tropical landscape.
World Architecture News — Very cool!
DMCA Architect Acknowledges Need For A New Approach
McGill University hosted an interesting conference today on music and copyright reform. … speakers including Bruce Lehman, the architect of the WIPO Internet Treaties and the DMCA, … The most interesting - and surprising - presentation came from Bruce Lehman, who now heads the International Intellectual Property Institute. Lehman explained the U.S. perspective in the early 1990s that led to the DMCA (ie. greater control though TPMs), yet when reflecting on the success of the DMCA acknowledged that “our Clinton administration policies didn’t work out very well” and “our attempts at copyright control have not been successful” … Lehman went further, urging Canada to think outside the box on future copyright reform. … suggested that Canada was well placed to experiment with new approaches. He was not impressed with Bill C-60
Michael Geist — You’d think this would get more coverage in Canada… well, maybe not.
Improved (fair?) Grails versus Rails benchmark
After reading Graeme’s benchmark of Rails versus Grails last night, I was troubled.
Thoughtmining — So was I, evidently for different reasons. WHO CARES if Grails is faster than Rails? Why is this suddenly important? Merb (another Ruby framework) is faster than Rails. Mongrel alone is faster than Rails. Most Java frameworks are faster. Rails was fast enough until now.
Franz Inc company info on Answers.com
… the Franz Inc entry in the “Encyclopedia of Company Histories” on Answers.com. Some of the information on that page is also available in Franz’s own Company History page; however, since Franz is a private company, there are fewer publicly available details about the company than there would be for a public company. Here are a number of interesting tidbits …
Bill Clementson — Hard to get information about an important company in the Lisp world.
An Important Victory For Carol Shloss, Scholarship And Fair Use
Last June we sued the Estate of James Joyce to establish the right of Stanford Professor Carol Shloss to use copyrighted materials in connection with her scholarly biography of Lucia Joyce. Shloss suffered more than ten years of threats and intimidation by Stephen James Joyce, who purported to prohibit her from quoting from anything that James or Lucia Joyce ever wrote for any purpose.
Stanford Center for Internet and Society — Good news!
Free Ruby on Rails ScreencastsRailscasts — Good to know about these screen cast showing how to do various thing in Rails.
IPCC Pulls Its Punches: Scientific American
By excluding statements that provoked disagreement and adhering strictly to data published in peer-reviewed journals, the IPCC has generated a conservative document that may underestimate the changes that will result from a warming world, much as its 2001 report did.
DeSmogBlog — Way to go.
