Ya know...the whole fpgroups thing...

[Fairlight]

<rant>

Ya know...I was among the first to say that I didn't think such a site
would entirely (if at all) fly, and why at least some areas of it were a
bad idea.  I even said it'd probably be a waste of Jose's time and effort.
I still believe that.

He went into it -knowing that-.  He's willing to do it anyway, or has a
"Field of Dreams" mentality that I'm too damned cynical to actually hold up
anymore in the face of reality.  If he has the fortitude to take this kind
of rubbish from everyone and try to make a go of it, more power to him.

I'm just really...I mean, I understand Jay's point (and even JPR's...it's
all the same point) about fragmenting community focus.  I, also, do not
have time to monitor "yet another web site".  I stated up front that I'd
likely only use it sporadically and as an advertising platorm most of the
time, and why.

But he was warned ahead of time how fruitless this was likely to be.  He's
well-intentioned though, I think.  He's also at least doing something
constructive, which is more than I can say for the hyenas that pounced on
him last night.  If he's been informed and he's determined to do it anyway,
well then one can either let him continue in silence or one can help him.
There's no need to be a complete and utter arse to him.  I had a laundry
list of things I felt were wrong with the chat area initially, most of them
now fixed.  I voiced those problems not because I intend on using it a lot,
but for the benefit of helping Jose help his own project (whether I agree
with it or not), and in turn anyone that might care to use his site.  And I
think his new version is better for it.

Folks, nobody's forcing you to switch, or even to use both.  It's his
-hope- that you'll use it.  But for cryin' out loud, quit acting like
someone's holding a gun to the community's head and forcing it to adopt
it, splinter, fragment, and start an arms race and a 40yr cold war.  So
it's been mentioned more than a few times on the list and taken up a little
space.  I think many (including myself) have taken more space for less
constructive things.

What I find -really- ironic is that JPR would even jump into
that whole thing the way he did after listing his own URL at
http://www.fpgroups.com/index.php?Target=community and trying to take
advantage of it in one form or another.  If you're so against the very
existence of the site, why the hell would you have the balls to list
yourself on said site before putting it down as useless?  Especially
without at least being up-front like I was about it...there was no such
qualification of participation from JPR at any time that -I- recall.
Hypocrisy, anyone?

I'm not in the best of moods right now, and I think that no matter what
one's feeling about the site, this is turning into a witch hunt very
quickly.  And that gets uglier than I'd like to see.  So at the moment, my
concise feelings on it are:

"Either help him or don't, participate or don't.  But if you have nothing
-constructive- to add on the subject, please STFU."

Yes, I'm in that foul a mood, especially after reading all that tripe.
Crimey, you're supposed to be adults.  Act like it.  The site will succeed
or fail on its own merits; and if you have two neurons to rub together, you
should already realise that it doesn't need the peanut gallery to help it
along either way.

He's been informed, he's doing it anyway.  Deal with it.

</rant>

Kudos to Ken Cole for the PDA information, which was at least informative
and helpful to everyone that does web design.  I wonder just how well some
of these PDA's [don't] work, given my recent excellent experiences with
my PSP on standard web sites.  Only complaint about the PSP is that while
it supports about Flash 5 or 6, much of the Flash content out there only
requires that level of Flash, but polls for v8 and enforces it anyway, so
over half the flash that would work isn't allowed to get that far by the
JS pre-screening.  But that's a site-design flaw, not a flaw in the unit.
Otherwise, it handles web sites absolutely beautifully, if a tad slowly
depending on complexity.

mark->
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