Blog Response Reply

Just so it doesn't get buried I'll make a new post out of this.

> Yeah, but there's far, far, far fewer than that on
> a message board or whatever. That's not the
> scale people want to - or even can - work at,
> and not an excuse for behaving badly.

Ahhh but there are no shortage of web boards and the like. On Usenet alone there are well over 30,000 moderately active groups. I generally don't seek mass appeal within any particular group structure, rather I seek out the people who, don't necessarily like me, but those that agree with me. Or those that can argue/debate against me. Everyone else is of ~very~ little importance to me, unless they have some particular creative ability that interests me. Those who don't agree with me are, simply put, of inferior intellect, or they act on emotions without the benefit of intellect. In either case they're basically worthless.

But now here's the trick...it's not really me. My intellect is derived through the art of trolling...hundreds...even thousands of different people. My intellect is, in effect, the collective intellect of thousands of others. Wanna know how that works? Real simple...take two groups, two groups that aren't directly associated with one another and likely don't have any cross pollination of members. Now, take something you want to know...and start an argument in one of those groups. Act like a braggart, claim you're right, no, claim you're fucking GOD almighty. Insult them...attack them...belittle them...whatever it takes to get them to attack the position in return. Now take their attacks...and go in the other group. In the other group take the very opposite stance to the one you originally took and use the arguments from that original group as the basis of your new attack. Again being just as mean, nasty, condescending and vile as you originally were. Now take their counter attacks...and bounce them against the original group. And then you just keep doing that...back and forth, back and forth. Essentially forcing one group of people to argue against another group of people that they're not even aware of.

What I get out of it is of course all their research, knowledge, understanding, beliefs, arguments, etc. Which I will then use to form my own opinion in the matter, which will be a sum of all the advanced arguments and facts presented by both sides. So like I said, if you don't agree with me, it's not simply that you're arguing against me so much as you're arguing against an entire collective of people who spent possibly weeks on end researching and arguing their positions to the absolute height of their intellectual capabilities.

> I don't think your work shows you to be "God's
> Gift" compared to a decent amateur web
> designer - certainly not in a population of
> "hundreds best". Of the sites you posted, one
> seemed impressive, and a decent balance of
> gee-whizzery and functionality. And, obviously,
> I don't use an invective style to critique.

I don't either. As I said, when I ~seriously~ critique a website I can usually churn out over four pages worth of things that can be improved upon in some way...and there are no invectives involved. No attacks, just straight up neutral critique. And btw, those sites that I critique...those would be "professional" sites. I often won't even take the bother to critique an amateurs site as there are often so many things wrong with the site it would be best to just start over completely from scratch...and for their benefit hiring someone else to make the site for them.

Also, I might actually be underestimating my level of skill. There is currently an open challenge to any and all web developers (even amateur class) in which they can prove themselves to be a better web developer than me (or at least on my level). The challenge is simple...build a website, as simple or as advanced as you like. Use all your knowledge, ability and skill to make that site with the absolute smallest overall file size you can. I will then take that site and I will reduce the total site size by at ~least~ 50% without any reduction in quality or any visible alteration of the content. If I can't do it...you win. If I get anywhere between 1% and 49% overall compression then you prove you're on a similar level to my own. So far, only two people have been able to at least place on a similar level to my own, the dozens of others that have tried...failed...miserably. Most of them being such horrible amateurs I was able to get 75%+ compression of the overall site size.

It should be noted that those two who were able to play on my level, those are the two who helped developed God Level coding. Oh, speaking of which, I do give myself a handicap in the challenge by restricting myself from using God Level forms of coding (otherwise I would likely always win, no matter who the opponent). Reaper can code in God Level forms though...probably anyone else who is overly analytical. The form has a lot of appeal to cryptologists and those interested in the field, as Reaper does:
http://www.spyderware.net
She's currently doing a lot of research into trying to figure out the ciphers of the Zodiac Killer. She also developed the Lady Chatterly bot, which is the primary source of most of my bot forms currently (she gave me the source code).

Now, I suppose you could argue that the challenge isn't that good as it doesn't take things into account like interface design, color composition and color theory, etc, etc. But usually those things are best left out as they can be pretty subjective forms. My challenge is purely objective and produces a very straight, measurable level of ability.

> I don't think I took your "attackful" comment out
> of context at SB FWIW. It doesn't justify their
> response to you, especially the page-breaking
> stuff, but come into a new place as a braggart,
> and then copy and pasting in big weird
> self-aggrandizing lists is not not provocative.

You're missing the intention though. Part of the reason I do all that is to test the maturity level of the group and to see whether they can handle trolling/flaming and to what degree. Also to see just how ~serious~ their Internets business really is. And actually I let SB off ~real~ easy in that I was being so over the top and actually poking fun at myself on several occasions. Despite presenting myself in such a weak and comical form the regs still blew up and wound up trashing the fuck out of an entire thread over it. I actually feel kind of bad for them in that, really, at this point the gloves are off and "Onideus Uncensored" is just that. Anything I post here about the SB kiddies is not going to be anywhere near as playful and nice as I was being there.

> Maybe the lurking is optional, but you can
> approach communities, post on-topic stuff, and
> act friendly. I know, I've done it. I've made
> friends from it.

I've done it too, in a variety of different groups. Usually groups that I consider to be too weak to play with on any level. For example I'm very well liked in the various Care Bear message boards and community. I don't ever play with anyone in that community, simply because there's a high probability of kids posting and the community itself is very much against any level of volatility. Simply put, it'd be like shooting fish in a barrel...with a shotgun.

> Re: "Dickweed"... don't say "I never said it did".
> You wrote "I told you right from the start
> *DON'T* fucking take me seriously, especially
> not anything I brag about or act like an
> egotistical bastard about" -- but that's not
> enough. People who don't know you are inclined
> to take a bragalicious attitude seriously, and
> respond (or over respond) accordingly.

Oh but it is enough...for adults or those with an adults maturity. As well as anyone who doesn't treat their Internets as ~serious~ business. Which again is very much the point. If you take the Internet *SO* seriously that you start lashing out and screaming in all caps and giant sized text in response to someone being overly goofy and playful...yeah...you got problems...*BIG* problems. And generally I try to avoid people who have emotional baggage of that magnitude, especially since it's usually an indication that the poster is under age. Once again, I was being ~really~ easy on you guys, actually poking fun of myself on several occasions, especially when I first started posting. But despite how playful I was acting the majority of the regs still blew up completely in a giant frothing Internet tantrum. As I said before...that's not the way adults act, that's the way children act (or those with the mentality of a child).

> You keep making excuses about your work. Oh,
> the sig was just something I threw together. Oh,
> the yoga site is just a prototype. if you're going
> to throw stuff like the yoga site into the ring as
> representative of your skills, you should get it
> right. Two different people got the "You're at
> Flash 0" message and I have never seen that
> message at a different site, therefore I have to
> conclude, your version checker is screwed up,
> not to mention probably unnecessary.

Those weren't really excuses so much as they were explanations of your nitpicking. If you hadn't been nitpicking then no "excuses" as you call them would have even been needed. That sig was certainly never meant to showcase my skills and why you keep thinking it does I have no idea. And once again, I am not Miss Cleo nor am I Mr. Terrific and other than you and one other person I have not had complaint one about that or any of my sites. Further, neither you nor the other person provided any relevant information at all that could be used to "fix" something. At the very ~least~ you should have provided your OS name and version as well as your browser name and version. Without knowing that at the very least there's really not anything ~to~ fix as the script works perfectly on every combination of browser and OS that I've tested it on. I can't isolate a problem that I can't replicate and I'm certainly not going to waste dozens of hours of my time trying to test every last known combination of OS and browser searching for a supposed problem. Essentially it's as if you're a scientist who has claimed to have discovered something...but without the methodology you used it's absolutely impossible for anyone to replicate and verify your discovery. Which basically makes anything you claim absolutely worthless.

> Re: iPhone... if there is a "special version of
> Flash" for the iPhone, I haven't heard much
> about it. Trust me on this, the appeal of the
> iPhone is that it lets you view the 96% or so of
> the REAL web, not some little ".mobi" ghetto, but
> ANY site that isn't built in Flash (or I guess
> Java). Your "iPhone is to a PC browser like a GB
> is to a Wii" analogy is utterly inept.

Huh? How can you have not heard about Flash Lite?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Lite

It's been around since 2005 fer cripe sake. Pretty much unless you've been living in a cave you've had to have heard ~something~ about it. Also, what you said about 96% or so of the "REAL" web being viewable is absolutely absurd in that at this point well over 60% of all content online is Flash based. And in fact if you're talking about pure media forms and file sizes then Flash content, mostly video, accounts for well over 80% of all online content byte for byte. It's not surprising though that you're confused on the issue as most professional business sites will create fall back versions of the site using feature detection methodology. In some cases they get pretty technical with it, where as instead of having a completely separate site they use feature detection scripts to enable or disable certain parts of the website itself. However with a lot of media based sites, especially movie promotion sites and pure advertising sites a completely separate site is created and redirected to via feature detection as the "REAL" site is completely Flash based.

Try this site on your mobile, see what happens:
http://coraline.com

Not seeing the same site, are you? In fact I bet all you see is an icon with a link to the Adobe Flash installer. LOL Sorry, but your "96%" figure is GROSSLY over exaggerated.

> I'm not an "actual web developer", I'm a
> professional Java coder with a strong interest
> in web based UI.
>
> Reviewing your list of 20... most are either
> A. important for certain specialty applications
> or B. for foofy little effects. We are talking web
> *sites*, right? Not specific web applications?

Web development includes both however at this point web application development is what really matters. I could probably teach a monkey how to make a simple HTML web site, but that list is meant for DEVELOPERS. As I said, an amateur wouldn't "get it" because nothing on that list would really be of any use to them as they'll never be doing anything outside of very basic HTML...and even if they did it wouldn't be theirs, it would be a cookie cutter construct, like embedding YouTube videos into your site. In case you hadn't noticed YouTube relies ENTIRELY on Flash and the entire site itself would not even be possible if it were not for several things on that list. But a flunkie doesn't need to know how YouTube works, they just copy a few lines of code, spaghetti bitch them into their FrontPage pile of slop and away they go. That list is meaningless to people on that level, even if it's being used to drive their cookie cutter content.

> Direct port access can be useful, though
> Ajax/JSON etc do most of what needs to
> be done there.

Uh...I don't think you understand what "direct port access" means. JSON is merely an alternative to XML, which is just a data interchange format, it doesn't actually do anything, but it can be used by another program if it's setup to parse the data. Direct port access is where Flash can connect to a port and can communicate directly in a particular protocols language. As such you could create a mail browser/client within Flash...actually you could go even further and create a mail server in Flash. You could create a Usenet browser/client/server as well or an FTP browser/client/server.

You can't do anything of the sort with anything other than Flash, unless you want to move outside of the web level. Some browsers are setup so that they can be used in a limited manner as an FTP browser/client, not as a server though. In addition there is a *HUGE* potential for abuse of the technology in which people could easily design web based DoS and DDoS web programs as well as a whole slew of other potential exploits, which is one of the many reasons if you're a developer you need to keep up on this stuff, unless you want your server to become a convenient target.

There's actually a lot of other stuff too that's not on that list, a lot of it in relation to video content and manipulation. That list was created to show off the features of ActionScript 3 via Flash 8, however with Flash 10 there have been LOTS of additional features that have been added to ActionScript 3. While Flash 10 isn't exactly ActionScript 4, it's certainly at a version higher than the original ActionScript 3. I guess you could call it ActionScript 3.5 if you wanted. But again, most of those additions would only be of importance to web developers, not to your average stay at home mommy who wants to make a website for her scrap booking hobby (or any other level of amateur web designer).

> The cross browser stuff... I mean, it's nice for a
> developer to not have to worry about cross
> browser things, and is probably the single
> strongest argument for Flash, but again the
> iPhone thing is a knock against it (and now it's
> just the iPhone, but more and more devices
> are going to be looking to the real web, and not
> all of them will be running Flash)

Actually they will. It's actually Apple that's blocking Adobe from porting the latest version of Flash to the iPhone. Adobe has specifically said that they could develop a compatible Flash version for the iPhone however Apple would have to release to them various technical documentation needed to do it and I guess they're just dragging their feet for some reason. See here.

By 2010 every portable NOT including the iPhone will support Flash 10. No one knows how much longer Apple is going to continue to drag their feet.

> 237K vs 1Mb is just not that big a deal. Even on
> an iPhone.

Once again it's mostly about the overall mass bandwidth, although if you'd like I can point to you to a variety of web development forums that will literally rip your fuckin head off and put it up on a pole for even suggesting that 237K vs 1Mb is "just not that big a deal". Try and remember that not everyone is as privileged as you are to be on a high bandwidth connection and that the Internet doesn't just include the United States, but the WHOLE WORLD...and in many parts of the world there simply is no such thing as a broad band connection.

> I still think you are either overestimating how
> much SWF searching Google does, and
> overestimating the importance of meta-
> keywords. You are at a disadvantage for SEO.

Go to Google right now. Type in "Backwater Productions" WITHOUT quotes. Guess whose site comes up as number one? Yup, that'd be mine. ^__^

And as you can see Google is using data directly out of my meta-tags. There's just too much data for Google to actually be presenting search results based on text content within the site. To a certain extent Google does look at a site's text, however whether it does or not is based on traffic data, cross linking and other variables. Google does not simply slurp up all the text content over every single page on the web and then search through the entire mess every time anyone runs a search...to even suggest that is just...completely absurd, to the nth degree.

Google primarily uses meta-tags, site links and site traffic data to present their search results. Of course you can't abuse meta-tags like you used to be able to, as Google and other search engines specifically ignore duplicated text forms. One of the reasons why my site appears first when you type Backwater Productions is because there are HUNDREDS of Webbie boards, especially technical ones, that slurp up my posts out of Usenet and then present them on their site as if I'm a member of their board. My signature is of course included, which has a link to my main site. As such there are hundreds, possibly even thousands of pages on the Internet that have essentially linked to my site, which is one of the primary criteria that Google and other search engines use for their ranking.

Um, it should be noted though that those Webbie boards do *NOT* have my permission to copy my content out of Usenet groups and frequently I try and get my content taken down from them as the majority of them censor my posts, replacing any "bad words" with asterisks. I don't mind if they want to copy my posts, but they do *NOT* have any permission to alter my posts in any fuckin way.