Two novelists, Mark Helprin and Orson Scott Card, the first an ex-soldier and the latter a science fiction visionary, are of one mind when it comes to the need to shake off our sleepwalking state and face the reality of what confronts this nation.
Halprin in War in the Absence of Strategic Clarity reminds us that:
The enemy must and can be defined. That he is the terrorist himself almost everyone agrees, but in the same way that the United States extended blame beyond the pilots who attacked Pearl Harbor, it must now reach far back into the structures of enablement for the sake of deciding who and what must be fought.Card is even less sanguine when he examines our present situation in light of the Anarchist movment of the 19th and 20th centuries in Fanatic Terrorism from the Past :And given the enormity of a war against civilians, and the attacks upon our warships, embassies, economy, capital, government, and most populous city, this determination must be liberal and free-flowing rather than cautious and constrained, both by necessity and by right.
The enemy has embarked upon a particular form of warfare with the intent of shielding his center of mass from counterattack, but he must not be allowed such a baseless privilege. For as much as he is the terrorist who executes the strategy, he is the intelligence service in aid of it, the nation that harbors his training camps, the country that finances him, the press filled with adulation, the people who dance in the streets when there is a slaughter, and the regime that turns a blind eye.
Not surprisingly, militant Islam arises from and makes its base in the Arab Middle East. The first objective of the war, therefore, must be to offer every state in the area this choice: eradicate all support for terrorism within your borders or forfeit existence as a state. That individual terrorists will subsequently flee to the periphery is certain, but the first step must be to deny them their heartland and their citadels.
I fear that the only thing that will cure the Muslim people of their current love affair with terrorism (for even though the terrorists are few, those who openly sympathize with their barbarities are many and their critics are virtually silent) is the savagery of total war.Posted by Vanderleun at November 19, 2003 12:35 PMThe only alternative is the kind of limited, surgical war that America has been waging in Afghanistan and Iraq. The cost of such a war is not trivial, but it is also not total.
But if America and Britain lose heart and do not complete this kind of war, the terrorists will regard our retreat as proof that they were right and Allah supports their actions. More terrorism will surely follow, and the war we failed to complete now our children will have to complete later -- and under far less advantageous circumstances.
... Giving more aid or support to Muslim nations will not be seen as generosity, it will be seen as tribute or ransom money, and the credit will go to the terrorists ... thereby inviting further acts of terror. (This is the pattern that the Palestinian terrorists have already demonstrated for years.)
That is the thing that the advocates of "peace" just don't seem to understand: Peace cannot be achieved unilaterally. When an enemy is determined to make war -- even a pathetically weak and under-armed enemy -- then a war will be fought ... or the enemy will become your conqueror.
(Mark Helprin, not Daniel.)
Posted by: jaed at November 20, 2003 11:36 AMOf course. Brain fade. Thanks.
Posted by: Gerard Van der Leun at November 20, 2003 12:06 PMYou Must Promise. To call your mother, to help old ladies cross the road, and to turn your cell phone off at the movies.
Posted by: Gabriel at January 12, 2004 5:42 PMAdhere to Layout Guidelines. Did you leave 12 pixels between your push buttons? Does the positioning of your pop-up menus make sense, and when do you use a pop-up versus a scrolling list? Are you using the right types of buttons for the proper functions?
Posted by: Alveredus at January 12, 2004 5:44 PMOther examples of these animations might be to show the status of an FTP transfer, the progress of media being digitized, or an updated time signature. And don't forget that users may want to have some control over this, so give them plenty of options, including the ability to turn these functions off.
Posted by: Bennett at January 12, 2004 7:02 PMUser Assistance. This is helping the user with the proper "next step" when performing a task. Less guesswork for the user on what to do next makes for a better experience.
Posted by: Lucretia at January 12, 2004 7:02 PMThe simple fact is that, when all other factors are equal, where will consumers spend their money? I believe that in the long run, the best looking, easiest-to-use applications will also be the most successful. I think that's why Apple encourages developers to write programs that are 100 percent Aqua-compliant.
Posted by: Reginald at January 12, 2004 7:03 PMFor example, if you see an AIM window peeking out from behind your browser and you click on it, that window will come to the front, but the main application window will not. The Mail.app/Activity Viewer is another example. The Aqua system of layers works well in many instances, but not in all. Thank goodness that the Dock is always there to come to the rescue. I know that clicking on an application icon in the Dock will always result in not only the application coming to the front, but also any non-minimized windows associated with it. And if the application is active but no windows are open, clicking on the Dock icon should create a new window in that application.
Posted by: Joshua at January 12, 2004 7:03 PMYou Must Promise. To call your mother, to help old ladies cross the road, and to turn your cell phone off at the movies.
Posted by: Timothy at January 12, 2004 7:04 PMTo put my money where my mouth is, in each new article I'll build a hypothetical application that illustrates the guidelines I'm covering. Today's application is called "Paint" and will be based on the photo-illustrative icon I created in my last article. Together we will complete each step, and by the end of the project we should have a well-designed, 95%-100% Aqua-compliant application. I'll leave some room for personal preferences and the fact that Apple changes the OS every few months.
Posted by: Augustus at January 12, 2004 7:04 PMOkay, I just told you what Apple wants you to look out for with window positions, but in the real world, not everyone uses the hiding feature of the Dock, and it is unrealistic to be able to predict where each user will place their Dock at any given day or how large they will have it. However, you can build a feature into your application that allows spacing for the Finder. You can give users the option of where to position their windows and what area of the screen not to cross. I know that BBEdit provides me with this feature, and I wish more developers gave me more control over my windows.
Posted by: Elias at January 12, 2004 7:04 PMAdhere to Window Models. Document windows, Utility windows, Click-through, Layering, Drawers, Controls. How do users open windows, how do you properly title windows?
Posted by: Pierce at January 12, 2004 7:05 PMClicking an application in the dock should always bring forward an active window. If the user clicks on an open app's icon in the Dock, the application is active and all unminimized windows come along with it. I have found a few problems with windows behaving independently of their application.
Posted by: Daniel at January 12, 2004 7:05 PMYou Must Promise. To call your mother, to help old ladies cross the road, and to turn your cell phone off at the movies.
Posted by: Georgette at January 12, 2004 7:06 PM
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