Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site. Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has established as a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. After all, if users can’t use a feature, it might as well not exist... (read more)
Friday, February 1, 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008
The Worst Building in the History of Mankind
Cavit Erginsoy
A picture doesn't lie -- the one-hundred-and-five-story Ryugyong Hotel is hideous, dominating the Pyongyang skyline like some twisted North Korean version of Cinderella's castle. Not that you would be able to tell from the official government photos of the North Korean capital -- the hotel is such an eyesore, the Communist regime routinely covers it up, airbrushing it to make it look like it's open -- or Photoshopping or cropping it out of pictures completely.
Even by Communist standards, the 3,000-room hotel is hideously ugly, a series of three gray 328-foot long concrete wings shaped into a steep pyramid. With 75 degree sides that rise to an apex of 1,083 feet, the Hotel of Doom (also known as the Phantom Hotel and the Phantom Pyramid) isn't the just the worst designed building in the world -- it's the worst-built building, too. In 1987, Baikdoosan Architects and Engineers put its first shovel into the ground and more than twenty years later, after North Korea poured more than two percent of its gross domestic product to building this monster, the hotel remains unoccupied, unopened, and unfinished.
Construction on the Hotel of Doom stopped in 1992 (rumors maintain that North Korea ran out of money, or that the building was engineered improperly and can never be occupied) and has never started back up, which shouldn't come as a shock. After all, who the hell travels to beautiful downtown Pyongyang? It would make sense if the hotel were in South Korea, where Americans are allowed to travel and where projects like the Busan Lotte Tower and the Lotte Super Tower now rise thousands of feet above the formerly modest skyline.
With Pyongyang's official population said to range between 2.5 million and 3.8 million (official numbers are not made available by the North Korean government), the Ryugyong Hotel -- the 22nd largest skyscraper in the world -- is a failure on an enormous scale. To put it in context, imagine if the John Hancock Center (1,127 feet tall) in Chicago (population 2.9 million) was not only completely vacant, but unfinished with zero hope of ever being completed.
Cầu Mong ...
Cầu mong
Cầu mong bạn sẽ tìm được sự thanh thản và bình yên trong một thế giới có nhiều điều mà bạn chưa thể hiểu được.
Bạn hãy luôn biết rằng, có một người nào đó hiểu và yêu bạn, người đó luôn ở cạnh bạn ngay cả khi bạn thấy cô độc nhất.
Cầu mong bạn sẽ khám phá sâu sắc lòng tốt của người khác để tin tưởng vào một cuộc sống bình yên.
Cầu mong một lời tử tế, một cử chỉ làm yên lòng, một nụ cười nồng ấm sẽ được tặng cho bạn hàng ngày.
Và cầu mong, bạn hãy trao tặng những món quà như vậy cho người khác ngay khi bạn nhận được chúng.
Hãy nhớ rằng trong cuộc sống những va chạm và đau khổ mà bạn gặp phải sẽ ít hơn nhiều so với những ước mơ và hạnh phúc mà bạn sẽ có.
Cầu mong những điều mà bạn cảm thấy là khiếm khuyết trong hiện tại sẽ trở thành thế mạnh của bạn trong tương lai.
Cầu mong bạn nhìn thấy tương lai của bạn như là một người đầy đủ sự hứa hẹn và những khả năng.
Cầu mong bạn tìm thấy đầy đủ sức mạnh tinh thần để tự quyết định trong những tình huống tệ hại mà không bị bất cứ một người nào phán xử vì kết quả đó.
Và cuối cùng
Cầu mong bạn luôn luôn cảm thấy đuợc yêu thương.
Bill Gates Issues Call For Kinder Capitalism
Free enterprise has been good to Bill Gates. But today, the Microsoft Corp. chairman will call for a revision of capitalism. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the software tycoon plans to call for a "creative capitalism" that uses market forces to address poor-country needs that he feels are being ignored... (read more)
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Are You Obsolete?
January 28, 2008 (Computerworld) Vince Kellen has had a successful IT career. Currently CIO at DePaul University, he is also an international speaker on customer relationship management and the Internet. He has written four books on database technology and is completing a Ph.D. in computer science at DePaul... (read more)
IT salary increases modest; gender gap widens
Annual survey shows managers saw best salary increases in 2007
Salaries for IT pros only edged up in 2007 from 2006, and the gender gap widened to the point where women in IT are now making 12% less on average than male counterparts, according to the Dice.com annual technology salary report released Tuesday... (read more)
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
You Used PHP to Write WHAT?!
January 25, 2008 — CIO — There is no single right answer to every problem and PHP is no exception. The dynamic programming language has its strengths and its weaknesses like any other language. PHP integrates very well with HTML and has hundreds of functions that make it a very capable programming language for a variety of tasks. It also has the ability to interact with the operating system like a scripting language. PHP is also widely held as the way to interact with databases of almost every type... (read more)
You Used JavaScript to Write WHAT?
January 25, 2008 — CIO — The word "JavaScript" has become a lightning rod in the Web development community. Depending on who you listen to, JavaScript is either the shining beacon of light leading us toward Web 3.0 or it's an insidious plot to bring the Web to its knees, one hover button at a time. If you eliminate the radical points of view on each end of the spectrum, you are left with very real questions about when it makes sense to use JavaScript, and when it doesn't. There is no doubt that overzealous scripters have built applications that stretch the limits of JavaScript...and in some cases, reason... (read more)
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