Hey, I would expect a pizza sooner than 2 1/2 hours! Such a pain…

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Why, oh why, are website classes so extremely out of date in universities, colleges, and schools? I just spent the last few hours helping my wife with her Information Systems class. I’ve had to do similar assignments for technology classes, yet the things they are teaching are extremely out of date and a waste of time. Why? After taking these classes, to actually use HTML, I would have to unlearn 80% of what they taught, and re-learn from scratch.

It is one thing to keep things very simple. However, if I have a basic Account class, and I would expect to learn about Credits, Debits, and keeping a ledger. There isn’t a need to get into complex concepts or advanced journal entries. However, if I take an Accounting class, and they teach me incorrect concepts, that class would be 100% worthless. I’ve uploaded the project my wife had done for her class, after following their textbook and professors instructions. This is also after helping her remove as much “junk” HTML.

Her Website Assignment

For those HTML Gurus out there, if they look at the source, they’ll cringe. I haven’t seen this poor of HTML since the 90s. Also, guess what? The book they were following was published in 2008. How well does this example validate? Terrible. This was after I helped her strip every bad piece of HTML I could without “breaking” the instructions.

Why teach your students to use very, very old markup? I guess is the authors don’t have a clue. However, if I hired a person who says they know HTML, and the produced the stuff books teaches, I would very upset. I mean, who teaches their students to use background images like that? Here is what HTML classes need to teach:

HTML Structure

Don’t worry about styling at first. Just worry about the structure. That is why they invented CSS (Cascade Styles Sheets). Teach your students how to use your correct markup. Use strong, emphasis, and span tags. Here are some examples:

<!-- Bad -->
<img src="image.jpg">

<!-- Good -->
<img src="image.jpg" alt="My Dog" />

<-- Bad -->
<b>Bold</b>, <i>Italics</i>

<!-- Good -->
<strong>Bold</strong>, <em>Italics</em>

Once they have a good base for HTML structure, then you can move on to Styling. There is no need to use Font, B, or I tags.

Cascade Styling

I can see why a professor would be leery to teach about Cascade Style-sheets. They can be confusing, and a new concept for their students. Also, Information System classes usually only have 2-3 weeks before moving onto another subject. So keep is very, very basic. Don’t even touch on ID and CLASS attributes if you don’t have time. Just show changing the colors of links, and maybe making strong and emphasis tags different colors. Keep it simple. However, do NOT resort to deprecated methods that may seem easier to use at first, but hurt the student’s full education on the subject.

Teach Principles, Not Motions

My wife’s professor held an optional saturday class to help with the assignment. If a student went, the teacher would walk through, step-by-step, what to put into notepad to make their websites. However, there wasn’t any discuss as to why they were typing what they we’re. Unfortunately, I feel like they were probably just going through the motions. The goal of teaching students is that they walk away with something. If you’re just spoon feeding the students what to type, what good is it doing? Isn’t it just a waste of time?

Don’t spend time getting a better “end result” by sacrificing the learning process. Teach students the “why” for what they are doing. If that means you only mention CSS, show how it works, but not require the students to write any, so be it. I know technology can be extremely difficult to teach. Many students have a hard time grasping concepts. Technology professions, such as website designers, usually rely heavily on self-taught technologies. Traditional classes usually aren’t well adapt to keeping up with the content.

What Should Professors Do?

Don’t worry about crazy backgrounds, changing colors, and different font sizes. Focus on good, validated content. If its super simple, thats fine. You can tell your students if they are interested in learning more, point them to websites like W3Schools.

Also, I would say a large portion of the blame lies on the Book Publishers. I would assume many of these teachers and professors are teaching general information systems classes. They aren’t experienced web designers and just teach what is in the books. The fact that students are buying brand new books with outdated content is rediculous. Maybe 2-3 years out of date, but not a decade.

I don’t know what else, other then there is nothing that drives me crazy more than sitting in a class learning something the wrong way.

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If EA wants to punish its consumers so heavily for posting on their forums what might be inappropriate or out of line, that’s fine, just ban their forum account. But if you ban their entire online gaming connections, that is going too far. This is my last straw with EA, and until I see significant changes in their attitude towards consumers, they will not receive a single penny from me. My money as a consumer is an award for good companies, and I don’t believe in awarding bad companies.

Update: it appears EA has retracted it’s statement to clarify that bans are handled individually, not globally. However, until I see better quality from EA, I’m not buying their games, period.

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The thing that bums me out the most about yesterday’s MacBook announcements is Apple’s move to all-glossy displays. I’ll make no bones about it – I loathe glossy displays – especially on a notebook computer.

Apple will spin it that blacks look darker and colors are more saturated, blah, blah, blah. It’s a load of garbage. How are we expected to read the screen when the glare is practically blinding? (Don’t even get me started on fingerprints).

I remember when I was talking with my boss about the order for my new MacBook Pro. When he asked about my screen, I repeated several times “not-glossy, never, ever glossy.” We triple checked the order at the end that I had the matted screen. I’m glad that I got my MacBook Pro when I did, because I cannot stand a glossy finish. The only purpose for a glossy finish is shine.

Why shine? Because it looks cool from the outside-in. The demos looks really nice. I love the new approach they’re taking. My only beef is the lack of option. Offer glossy and matte. I’m all about choice. But this decision to only offer glossy is a blatant example of “Apple knows best” and their priority is style, not functionality. Those laptops look “sexy”, but blinding.

I haven’t had a chance to handle one myself, but when I get my hands on one I’ll let you know. If you want to see a video about the new MacBook Pro, check out this video.

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‘We implemented a form of DRM and it’s something that 99.8 per cent of users wouldn’t notice,’ claimed Riccitiello, ‘but for the other 0.2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.’ The use of SecuROM in EA’s recent PC games, including Spore, Mass Effect and Crysis Warhead, has caused a lot of controversy on the Internet, resulting in hundreds of one-star reviews on Amazon.

99.8%? That is magical statistics at its best. I bought Spore, and I had an insanse time trying to get it to read the disc and install on my machine. SecuROM is extremely evasive, and when I re-format my machine, I have to go through the entire hassel again. To think that normal “gamers” don’t know mind these DRM tatics is total ignorance. I can’t backup my Spore DVD incase I lose it or it gets damanged. I’ve already written about my thoughts on DRM, but I can’t help re-emphasis my point:

DRM doesn’t stop illegal downloads. It harms legal users try to use their purchase legally. DRM will never, ever, be succcessfully until it makes the users life easier.

The one example of DRM I love is Steam. I buy a game once and it handles everything else for me. If I move computers, it works. If my computer blows up, it works. I can delete and re-download my game as many times as I want. It handles all updates for me. I can buy a game and play it within minutes, not needing to drive to the store. Even if I go to a friends and show him a game on HIS PC it works. Only one person can use it at a time, which for legal Steam owners is great. Steam has make my life easier so I accept it. I bought the game Crysis Warhead, and while the game’s quality was okay, I bought it on Steam and I had no problems with it.

Now, my other problem with EA is their quality of games. EA has turned into a video game assembly line. They pump out more games than any other company. But I will say their quality has also gone down the shaft. My personal latest example is with their game Tiger Woods 09. I managed to completely render my game on XBox 360 completely unplayable, all due to a clitch with the game, and took me several days to solve.

Somehow I managed to equip two gloves, right hand and left hand, on my character. I’m not sure how I did it, and I was playing when I realized “hey…. I have two gloves on?” I didn’t think much of it at the moment, saved and turned off my game, and waited several days before playing again. I went to turn on my game and it froze. I tried it several times, same behavior. After several hours of trial and error, I discovered the solution:

I had to first delete my game settings on my profile on the XBoX 360 hard drive. Then, I had to load the game and go the golfer manager. I then loaded my character, went to the “Pro Shop”, had to do an “item” search with several different combonations (which figuring it out crashed my xbox 7 or 8 times alone), and unquip the item. Finally I could save, restart my XBox, and play the game like normal.

Searching the internet for hours didn’t yeild any results. I tried to figure out how to contact EA for support, but gave up in the end after trying to create support acounts and jump through their hoops. Had it not been for me noticing my playered glitched, and understanding programming logic, I most likely would have never got my game to work again. What happened to Quality Assurance over at EA? I’m sure some poor gamer out there can’t play his game because he on accidently equiped a right-handed glove instead of a left.

I dunno, but I’m started to think I might just boycott EA all together.  Here are imagines of my dual wielding glove golfer, for proof that I really did go through all this mess:

Note: I took these on my iPhone quickly, so I know the quality isn’t that great.

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