[thelist] Excuses and Zealotry

Bob Davis wrote:
> 
> I ran across this today (though it happened yesterday) and it got me
> thinking about the excuses software vendors, developers, designers use to
> justify their actions.
> 
> http://discuss.userland.com/msgReader$14609

> the "Discuss" area of the site. You wont. (Except for a couple lines by Dave
> under the title "New policy: No whining").

I find it incredibly lame(for lack of a better word) that Dave chooses
to delete any comments that might rock the boat, or don't agree with him
and his merry band of zelots.

> Jeremy has created a site for *him* - it's his personal site, and if he
> wants to use it to experiment with bleeding edge stuff, more power to him.

+1 If dave starts frowning upon sites that aren't in total agreement
with his beliefs about the internet and computers from his hosting
service(editthispage.com), he's practicing cnesorship. 
Which is *fine* and I can't argue with, because he provides that service
for free. Once that happens, all his talk of open standards and the
power of the Web is meaningless.

> I'm not going to say it's good design for a commercial site, or one whose
> audience includes a broad spectrum of people though. It only works on IE 4
> and 5, and only on a Wintel box (don't know if it works on Linux - Dan?).

Worked fine for me, although there was a blurb about him fixing the JS
to work with more browsers, so I'm not sure..

> Dave, OTOH, seems to think that anyone using his services and software can
> do no harm. He blames it on Apple. Utter bullshit. The truth is that Jeremy
> wrote something that worked on *his* machine and didn't care to work it out
> so that it would work on anyone else's machine, which is a fine explanation.
> Dave seems to think that anything that comes out of his system has to be
> correct though. This is not the case. It's possible to write poor code with
> any tools, even the best. To say that "it's Apples fault for not being up to
> date" is pretty weak.

Exactly! I'd love to get my hands on the source for Frontier. In all
reality I think there are some major security flaws with Frontier(And I
wont even get into SOAP again), but the fact that one person controls
what is said and what is done about a product limits, IMHO, the
credibility of that product. I agree with you Bob on how it must be
Apple's fault, not his
(My case in point(major offtopic ahead:) is when I couldnt post a
comment in response to Taylors comments about evolt all those months
ago. I signed up with an account, but couldnt post a comment for some
reason. I asked for help and suggested frontier wasn't dealing with my
browser correctly, only to get lambasted for even suggesting something
could be wrong with frontier.) 

> The lesson here, I think, is that becoming too enamored with oneself and the
> work one produces can be severely damaging. I've lost my faith in Dave
> (which, in all honesty, had been slipping since the release of Manila and
> Soap).  His objectivity is gone.  It wasn't that long ago that I considered
> Dave one of the "Honest Brokers" of the Internet and wired society - I'm
> sorry to say that he's gotten religious on us.

It seems scripting.com has turned into nothing but a pimp stage for
dave's application server frontier, his point of view about whatever
Wired is talking about today, and a forum for he and his circle of like
minded friends to proclaim that thier way is the best, and only right
way to do and see things.

And power to them. Its their right to express their opinion. I do agree
though with you Bob that he has zero objectivity. Further, his blind
trust in technology like SOAP is a cause for concern. But I'm digressing
here.. :)

<tip type="netscape+unix">
When netscape crashes you can try killing it with "kill -12" to save
your bookmarks and history instead of the usual -9 which wont remember
that..
</tip>

.djc.