Genii Weblog


Civility in critiquing the ideas of others is no vice. Rudeness in defending your own ideas is no virtue.


Thu 16 Oct 2003, 11:45 PM
Way back in August when I launched this website, I decided to do something a bit different and integrate my weblog right into the website design itself (see my post about this).  I wasn't sure how well it would work, and I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea, but I have to say it seems to have been successful.  Feel free to disagree if you like <grin>.

Anyway, in the same vein, I am working at integrating more into the website to make it both more dynamic and more informative.  I am starting to "get" the idea that a website is not just a place for people to stop and find out how to order your products.  It is an information source, a support center, an educational tool, and, last but not least, a marketing vehicle.  The first step is my on-line Help database for Midas.  Rather than leaving the site and going into the "help database world", I am moving the Midas Help database into this world.  Try the new version here. There may be a few kinks at first, so please let me know if you run into any problems, but also let me know if you like the approach.  If this works out, I'll actually add it to the menus in a day or so, and if it works there, the Support Forum is next!

By the way, does anybody know how to turn off the view applet?  I have had  few complaints from people who can't get the applet to work, so I decided to turn it off.  I went to every view that displays and unchecked the "Use view applet", but it doesn't seem to make any difference.  The view applet just launches anyway.  The server is running R5.0.10CF1, and so I save all this in a 5.0.11 client, if any of that makes any difference.  I might buy you a donut at Lotusphere if you can help figure it out.

Copyright © 2003 Genii Software Ltd.

Thu 16 Oct 2003, 08:23 AM
Hypothetical carrots
My daughter is a senior in high school, but this isn't really about her.  She is a vegetarian, which for her means no meat more than it implies anything about vegetables.  When she makes her lunch, she always packs hypothetical carrots, meaning that she means to pack carrots, and says that she packs carrots, but the carrots aren't really there unless I pack them.  They are just hypothetical.

She believes somehow that hypothetical carrots will keep her healthy (along with the hypothetical hard boiled eggs she eats after school and the hypothetical orange juice that she drinks for snack).  I would think that this was a great failing of her age or generation or even her personally, except that it reminds me so much of the hypothetical standards and hypothetical efficiencies to be found in J2EE and Java and Websphere.

Hypothetical standards
From a hypothetical point of view, going with standards based systems such as J2EE will save you dollars, real dollars, not just hypothetical ones.  People believe that just "adopting J2EE as their corporate standard", or buying into the "Websphere portal concept" will save those real dollars, or somehow help them make more real dollars in the future, but it seems a lot like the hypothetical carrots to me.  J2EE or Java or Linux or OO programming or .Net are not how you save or make money, they are methods or frameworks which can be applied through a lot of hard work and design and training and planning, at the end of which there might be some real dollars, but if you think they are magic and will simply save or earn you those real dollars by adopting and proclaiming them, you are just packing hypothetical carrots.

Copyright © 2003 Genii Software Ltd.