Just a little anecdotal evidence

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Mon, 28 Jan 2008 03:04:36
GMT dorayme scribed:

You have decided this? You can make words mean what you want?

If something has every characteristic of a cup except a bottom,
it does not suddenly and magically become not a cup at all.

Right. It was never a cup to begin with.

It is a cup still.
Nope.

It is a cup without a bottom.
Nope.

It is an awkward cup to use but a goddamn cup all the same.
Nope.

Notice how I said awkward and not useless, it may be a cup with a top

and not a bottom and can be held usefully upside down,

Nope.

it may be a cup that has a topography to it that will hold liquids in
it and yet have no bottom,
Nope.

it may be a cup with no central bottom but inner chambers.
Nope.

It may be a cup that is designed for special medical conditions
where it is dangerous for the owner to drink liquids.
Nope.

It may be a punishment cup, used to irritate an offender by
having liquids dump right down on him.

....A "punishment cup"? -A punishment cup... Ooookkaaaayyyyyyyy...
But nope.

I cannot think why you are being so simple minded about cups.
Apart from a desire to evade serious cross planetary
interrogation.


Oh Boji, now don't get all huffy. You know in your heart of
hearts that you do want a sneak preview of my cup that has a
missing half.

Nope. I couldn't care less.

PS. Boji, what about a cup with a hole in it? Is it a bit less of
a cup? How many holes or how big does the one hole need to be
before it magically ceases cuphood?

Just compare it to the hold in your head and you might get the idea.

 

[dorayme]

Then you missed the point. The 'design' is an intrinsically essential part
of communicating the message. Content PLUS presentation is the message.

If it is an intrinsic part of the product, what distinguishes it
from the engineering of the product? Some folk here have been
trying, as far as I can see, to put space between function and
art and I have been intent on criticising this space and reducing
it. Your comment that design features amount to functional
features puzzle me or simply seem to me to concede the point that
there is no space worth talking about. But I may be
misunderstanding you?

Then we seem to agree.

Well, ok. perhaps you and I can be happy then about it at this
point.

 

[Harlan Messinger]

Then you missed the point. The 'design' is an intrinsically essential part
of communicating the message. Content PLUS presentation is the message.

How is the message differing from page to page to page on all the
variously pages at www.csszengarden.com?

 

[dorayme]

I didn't mean it that way. I would have thought that literally speaking
an unconscious thought was logically impossible.

But it depends on what you mean by thought.

OK, a point then about how it is best to speak (as usual, imo):

Literally speaking it is far better and more accurate to suppose
that much thought goes on below consciousness. It is natural to
talk of thinking processes going on that we are not conscious of.
I do see that you might be thinking of the actual word "thought"
and seeing an oddity of supposing "a thought" to not be
conscious.

But if we were to really go with this intuition and reject the
form of tlk because we fancied (without any real surety btw) that
there were identifiable such objects as conscious thoughts then
it would hamper our ability to describe particular brilliancies
that people come up with in their sleep or background brain
activities.

It is quite commonly known now how intense (conscious) thinking
about a problem can hit a brick wall, that sleeping overnight on
the problem or simply leaving it and thinking consciously about
other things, can do the trick. And a natural description of some
of these processes can involve the use of such expressions as "He
had these five seemingly incompatible thoughts swimming about in
his brain and processes of which he was not conscious worked
quietly in the background to synthesis them and this was the
result..." or some such phrasing.

 

[dorayme]

GMT dorayme scribed:


Right. It was never a cup to begin with.


Nope.

[... 1000 gibbering repeat "Nope"s snipped ...]

Ah Boji, you very significantly don't say what a bottomless cup
is. Most of us would have no trouble, it is *a bottomless cup*.
But all you can say is "Nope". I do understand your predicament.
Having eschewed a perfectly natural form of words, you are at a
loss to describe such a cup.

I have thought of another use for a cup that has a (small) hole
in it. And am thinking to actually drill such a hole in existing
cups to make them functionally better. In Australia, if you
forget to drink some or all of your cup of tea or coffee, you
stand a good chance of a cockroach drowning and making for an
ugly sight in the morning. With a small hole, the liquid drains
away slowly and lessens the chances of this.

True, when one is actually drinking with it, there would be a
slight dripping on ones clothes. But in the bush*, this would not
matter much. City refined types would need a small plug perhaps,
this could be engineered or designed (hell, I am clean confused
about which you want to use of these two terms now) into it.

Please think about cups more, Boji. Are you absolutely and
utterly sure you don't want some little pics of cups from me?

* Where is Farmer Joe? He is not around these ngs any more. I
hope he has not had an accident with his tractor.

 

[asdf]

If it is an intrinsic part of the product, what distinguishes it
from the engineering of the product? Some folk here have been
trying, as far as I can see, to put space between function and
art and I have been intent on criticising this space and reducing
it. Your comment that design features amount to functional
features puzzle me or simply seem to me to concede the point that
there is no space worth talking about. But I may be
misunderstanding you?

Indeed you did.

I made no comment to that effect. What I said was that (in the sphere of web
design) "Content PLUS presentation is the message".

If you see that there is a "space" between form and function, then I think
perhaps that is where your problem may lie. Surely it is the job of the
designer to reduce this "space". This is, after all, what a good designer
does... designs products that achieve the desired outcomes with the
available materials.

This is old, old ground now... The 'design' of the product is a description
of how the product should look, how a product should function, how a product
has an emotional impact upon the user, how a product interacts with it's
physical space.

The 'engineering' of a product is working out how to achieve all of the
above, to design a *process* or *technique* as to how to make the vision of
the product a reality.

Sometimes the engineer will also be the designer, sometimes the designer
will also be the engineer. No matter... conceptually the two things are
quite clearly distinct.

BOTH activities together go to make the finished product.

I concede that there may (depending on the project) be considerable overlap
between the two. The two activities are not mutually exclusive in their
areas of responsibility

Well, ok. perhaps you and I can be happy then about it at this
point.

I'm not unhappy Whatever gave you that idea??

 

[asdf]

How is the message differing from page to page to page on all the
variously pages at www.csszengarden.com?

Good example... The content is the same on each page, but the presentation
is slightly different.

In viewing each of these, perhaps the consumer will have a different
emotional response to the message. Indeed, this appears to be the aim of the
designer.

 

[dorayme]

The 'design' of the product is a description
of how the product should look, how a product should function, how a product
has an emotional impact upon the user, how a product interacts with it's
physical space.

The 'engineering' of a product is working out how to achieve all of the
above, to design a *process* or *technique* as to how to make the vision of
the product a reality.

You are interested in the history of the manufactured product and
all the processes that go to make it happen. And you distinguish
various phases and aspects of its construction. Fair enough. But
i am interested in something rather different. I am thinking a
dead designer, a dead manufacturer, a live product and a single
knowledgeable critic and thinking about how he looks at this
product and what he might say by just inspecting the product.

We all know what a complete abortion threatens when these two
aspects are divorced by division of labour. I refer to clueless
designers handing their photoshop ideas to poor schmucks like us.
Ah, you say, but not all designers are clueless. No? Which ones
are not? The ones that are pretty clued up about what is
possible? What is possible engineering wise? So if they are so
clued up how come they don't finish the job? Ah, they are not
that cluey! No? So when the engineering expert comes along he
'makes it possible', he "instantiates the idea' without altering
the idea because he is the expert in instantiation.

Frankly I simply don't buy this picture in the details. The whole
show if it results in a great product may well have a messy
history. But when it comes together, there are not two things
which can be prised apart, the engineering and the design. For
crappy things, yes, for superficial aspects of design, yes, but
not for more than this.

You cannot simply take a great product and make it a different
way (keeping 'the design') without making a different product.

Sometimes the engineer will also be the designer, sometimes the designer
will also be the engineer. No matter... conceptually the two things are
quite clearly distinct.

BOTH activities together go to make the finished product.

What would establish me very wrong are plenty and plenty of pairs
of products with the same fantastic design but *quite different*
engineering. I don't believe it happens much in the real world.

 

[owo.dod]

GMT dorayme scribed:

Right. It was never a cup to begin with.

Nope.

[... 1000 gibbering repeat "Nope"s snipped ...]

Ah Boji, you very significantly don't say what a bottomless cup
is. Most of us would have no trouble, it is *a bottomless cup*.
But all you can say is "Nope". I do understand your predicament.
Having eschewed a perfectly natural form of words, you are at a
loss to describe such a cup.

I have thought of another use for a cup that has a (small) hole
in it. And am thinking to actually drill such a hole in existing
cups to make them functionally better. In Australia, if you
forget to drink some or all of your cup of tea or coffee, you
stand a good chance of a cockroach drowning and making for an
ugly sight in the morning. With a small hole, the liquid drains
away slowly and lessens the chances of this.

True, when one is actually drinking with it, there would be a
slight dripping on ones clothes. But in the bush*, this would not
matter much. City refined types would need a small plug perhaps,
this could be engineered or designed (hell, I am clean confused
about which you want to use of these two terms now) into it.

Please think about cups more, Boji. Are you absolutely and
utterly sure you don't want some little pics of cups from me?

* Where is Farmer Joe? He is not around these ngs any more. I
hope he has not had an accident with his tractor.

Are your services free or just cheap. Oh well you probably stink like
your posts do.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:55:57
GMT dorayme scribed:

Ah Boji, you very significantly don't say what a bottomless cup
is. Most of us would have no trouble, it is *a bottomless cup*.
But all you can say is "Nope". I do understand your predicament.
Having eschewed a perfectly natural form of words, you are at a
loss to describe such a cup.

A cup needs a bottom to be a cup. Is that unreasonable?

I have thought of another use for a cup that has a (small) hole
in it. And am thinking to actually drill such a hole in existing
cups to make them functionally better. In Australia, if you
forget to drink some or all of your cup of tea or coffee, you
stand a good chance of a cockroach drowning and making for an
ugly sight in the morning. With a small hole, the liquid drains
away slowly and lessens the chances of this.

True, when one is actually drinking with it, there would be a
slight dripping on ones clothes. But in the bush*, this would not
matter much. City refined types would need a small plug perhaps,
this could be engineered or designed (hell, I am clean confused
about which you want to use of these two terms now) into it.

Well, if the subject wore a raincoat, it would probably never get to the
bush in either a rural or urban setting.

Please think about cups more, Boji. Are you absolutely and
utterly sure you don't want some little pics of cups from me?

Quite sure. Might give me the hic'cups.

* Where is Farmer Joe? He is not around these ngs any more. I
hope he has not had an accident with his tractor.

And certainly he's not avoiding this topic, this thread, or you...

 

[Kevin Scholl]

A cup needs a bottom to be a cup. Is that unreasonable?

Just to play devil's advocate, is that necessarily true? What about
those cone-shaped paper cups that typically accompany water jugs in
office or sports environments? If the cone is the side(s), then the cup
has no bottom per se. Or, if the cone is in fact the bottom, then the
cup has no sides.

"What if, uh, C-A-T really spelled ... 'dog'?"

 

[asdf]

Just to play devil's advocate, is that necessarily true? What about those
cone-shaped paper cups that typically accompany water jugs in office or
sports environments? If the cone is the side(s), then the cup has no
bottom per se. Or, if the cone is in fact the bottom, then the cup has no
sides.

"What if, uh, C-A-T really spelled ... 'dog'?"

How Pythagorean )

Folks, we've stumbled into the metaphysical now... So for my 2c, and to
obfuscate the discussion even further than has been achieved by dorayme et
al... a cup may have a bottom or not. Both are true, depending on who is
perceiving the cup.

Further... the cup does not exist *as a cup* until somebody actually drinks
from it, since a cup is (partly) defined as a drinking vessel. So, by that
logic, a cup *must* have a bottom, since if not, the liquid to be imbibed
would simply fall out the bottom, invalidating the object's definition...

....should the cup be cone shaped, then the cup has sides AND a bottom, the
functions of which are performed by the cone itself, and depending on from
which angle your are perceiving the cup.

....unless of course the cup was designed by a Govt. Dept. (esp. the Ministry
of Defence, Dept. of Defence, or what have you in your country), in which
case, the definition of "cup" would simply be rewritten, so that all the
bottomless cups thus produced or procured would not appear as unnecessary
expenditure, ensuring the supply of funds for the further production or
procurement of bottomless cups in the next fiscal year, and supplying lots
of meaningless employment for the shiny-bums.

When is a cup not a cup? When it's a useless, design-flawed figment of your
imagination.

Arguing metaphysics in an ostensibly technical newsgroup isn't really
useful. Can I point you all at: LMGDAO

*metaphorically ducks to avoid the cup-abstraction just thrown at my head*

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:51:32 GMT
Kevin Scholl scribed:

Just to play devil's advocate, is that necessarily true? What about
those cone-shaped paper cups that typically accompany water jugs in
office or sports environments? If the cone is the side(s), then the cup
has no bottom per se. Or, if the cone is in fact the bottom, then the
cup has no sides.

Well there's still a part that prevents the contents from leaving the cup.
Where the sides end and the bottom starts might be arbitrary or indefinite,
true, but a bottom (as commonly expressed) exists no matter what the shape.
I kinda like how asdf phrased it:

"...should the cup be cone shaped, then the cup has sides AND a bottom, the
functions of which are performed by the cone itself, and depending on from
which angle you are perceiving the cup."

"What if, uh, C-A-T really spelled ... 'dog'?"

Uh, one meaningless subject at a time if you please...

 

[mrcakey]

GMT dorayme scribed:

A cup could be designed without a bottom.

Uh, no it can't. If whatever it is has no bottom, it is NOT a cup.

You have decided this? You can make words mean what you want?

If something has every characteristic of a cup except a bottom,
it does not suddenly and magically become not a cup at all.

Right. It was never a cup to begin with.

It is a cup without a bottom.

Nope.

[... 1000 gibbering repeat "Nope"s snipped ...]

Ah Boji, you very significantly don't say what a bottomless cup
is. Most of us would have no trouble, it is *a bottomless cup*.
But all you can say is "Nope". I do understand your predicament.
Having eschewed a perfectly natural form of words, you are at a
loss to describe such a cup.

I have thought of another use for a cup that has a (small) hole
in it. And am thinking to actually drill such a hole in existing
cups to make them functionally better. In Australia, if you
forget to drink some or all of your cup of tea or coffee, you
stand a good chance of a cockroach drowning and making for an
ugly sight in the morning. With a small hole, the liquid drains
away slowly and lessens the chances of this.

True, when one is actually drinking with it, there would be a
slight dripping on ones clothes. But in the bush*, this would not
matter much. City refined types would need a small plug perhaps,
this could be engineered or designed (hell, I am clean confused
about which you want to use of these two terms now) into it.

Please think about cups more, Boji. Are you absolutely and
utterly sure you don't want some little pics of cups from me?

* Where is Farmer Joe? He is not around these ngs any more. I
hope he has not had an accident with his tractor.

Are your services free or just cheap. Oh well you probably stink like
your posts do.

You child. Even when he's wrong (and I've rather lost track of whether I
agree with him on this one!), he's funny.

+mrcakey

 

[mrcakey]

How is the message differing from page to page to page on all the
variously pages at www.csszengarden.com?

I looooooooove this one: http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/202/202.css,
although it's not great fun if you actually want to read it. The message I
get from that one is "CSS is great fun but you can really screw things up",
whereas the message I get from this one:
http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=094/094.css is "CSS is great fun and
you can really enhance your presentation with it".

In any case, the markup has also been "designed" to be as flexible as
possible - it's a mass of divs and spans. To use the old house-building
model, the markup is the structure (which still has to be designed) and the
CSS is the decoration.

But I'm working myself into a corner as to where the "engineering" part
comes in. I was about to go on that the markup language itself was designed
this way, the browser was designed that way, the transfer protocols were
designed the other way et cetera et cetera, but then I thought if HTTP is
not engineering what exactly is? Maybe it doesn't exist?

+mrcakey

 

[Kevin Scholl]

Uh, one meaningless subject at a time if you please...

That's a quote from some ol' 80's movie. Though for the life of me
I can't recall what movie.

 

[dorayme]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:55:57
GMT dorayme scribed:


A cup needs a bottom to be a cup. Is that unreasonable?

Not really, no. What would you call the cups I have previously
described without being silly? Would you make up your own terms?

I can see that you have no patience or stomach for the enquiries
I have made to you to explore a distinction you yourself made.
There is no need to explain why this is so, I accept all
responsibility.

For anyone else that might be interested (highly unlikely to be
many <g>): The idea that a cup without a bottom is still a cup is
not some sort of joke. It is the serious point that if you do not
call it a cup, you have lost a perfectly proper and natural way
of describing it. This point is an objection to the common
practice of avoiding real issues by red herrings about words.

The point of probing the distinction between design and
engineering is to see what the true ingredients are of a designed
object, to distinguish in it the various aspects. These aspects
can be divorced from the actual histories and psychology of the
object and its creators.

 

[dorayme]

Folks, we've stumbled into the metaphysical now...

There is nothing metaphysical at all about any of this. People
are making a distinction between engineering and design and I am
wanting to know more about the nature of this. If you do not like
my questions, you are welcome to ask some of your own that
illuminate the distinction further? Questions that do not seem
the least bit metaphysical to you or in the least bit off topic.
But perhaps you are simply satisfied with your present
understanding of what makes for a good website, what ingredients
there are in general for such things? Fair enough, I would not
want to press you further. Every man knows what the limits of his
interest and patience is and it is not for others to dictate to
him.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:41:34 GMT
Kevin Scholl scribed:

That's a quote from some ol' 80's movie. Though for the life of me
I can't recall what movie.

Hmm, maybe something rolling 'round in my subconscious but I can't
recollect it overtly. I have watched quite a few old movies in the past
year or so, though. "Ecstasy is my forte, fantasy my existence."

 

[dorayme]

Even when he's wrong (and I've rather lost track of whether I
agree with him on this one!), he's funny.

Thank you mrcakey, I really only reply here to say that I am not
actually meaning to be funny on this whole subject. I know you
meant well.

It is actually quite an interesting one and probably soon it
should be hived off to its own thread. I will try to get
something together on it when I have time. It may interest some
people.