Money?

Story: iPad: The Great Sucking SoundTotal Replies: 23
Author Content
nikkels

Apr 05, 2010
3:37 AM EDT
Is there any money to be made by writing sh*t like this. I certainly can fill his shoes
HoTMetaL

Apr 05, 2010
5:03 AM EDT
What sucks more than Ken Hess-authored horsesh*t? I'm at a loss. I got nothin'.
tracyanne

Apr 05, 2010
8:21 AM EDT
I wouldn't know, I realised just in time, that it was Ken Hess, so I didn't go there.
TxtEdMacs

Apr 05, 2010
8:23 AM EDT
You guys,

Writing, I could do better, but I have integrity*.

YBT

* Shill's Oath: Do harm only if it pays well enough.
stustustu123

Apr 05, 2010
9:15 AM EDT
What a painful read that was..
ComputerBob

Apr 05, 2010
9:42 AM EDT
Quoting:* Shill's Oath: Do harm only if it pays well enough.
And your same tired old joke is back again.

That proves that you are not Ken Hess -- Ken Hess constantly finds new ways to waste electrons.
devnet

Apr 05, 2010
5:11 PM EDT
Quoting:What sucks more than Ken Hess-authored horsesh*t? I'm at a loss. I got nothin'.


I think the iPad does.

Even though his article sucked, I think the iPad (makes me think of a web 2.0 feminine hygiene product) tops him.
khess

Apr 05, 2010
5:23 PM EDT
LOL. I love you guys. To anyone who thinks they can do better, do it. It's harder than you think. And there will always be people who love you and those who hate you, no matter what you write.
devnet

Apr 05, 2010
5:27 PM EDT
yes, but your article lacked cohesion and direction...I wouldn't even classify it as an article....it was more like a disjointed, drug infused, incoherent babbling.

Perhaps if you tried harder? No offense khess...I had a tough time reading this 'article'. You might try refraining from saying 'crappy' in the first few sentences...it might do well to improve things.
Sander_Marechal

Apr 05, 2010
6:25 PM EDT
Quoting:To anyone who thinks they can do better


Problem is Ken, you can do better. Much better. Your articles that appear on other sites are great, well thought out and well written. Much, much better than the things you write for Daniweb. And that's sad.

You're not the only one who has trouble with that. Roy from Boycott Novell has the same issue. Fantastic articles all over the web, but garbage tabloid material on his own site.
tracyanne

Apr 05, 2010
8:40 PM EDT
Quoting:To anyone who thinks they can do better, do it. It's harder than you think.


I don't do it because I know how hard it is.

However you Ken can do lots better, it's only your DaniWeb articles that suck like a Hoover.
caitlyn

Apr 05, 2010
8:56 PM EDT
Ken Hess is correct about one thing: you don't make friends or gain praise by putting pen to paper, especially if you write about controversial subjects. It doesn't matter is the controversy is a war or which desktop environment to choose in Linux.

Having said that, yes, this article is tripe. A 9.7" screen is "crappy little". I have a netbook with a 10" screen which I love. Sometimes, though, I miss the earlier one which had a 7" screen because it was smaller and lighter. I'll undoubtedly prefer a tablet that runs Linux, but this article didn't convince me that the iPad "sucks". It did convince me that the writer had a very bad day even when compared to his other DaniWeb articles, most of which are not gems.
khess

Apr 08, 2010
10:14 PM EDT
Umm, you guys didn't get the sarcasm in all that? I actually want an iPad. Did you not see the tone change from hate to love to want?

It's me, isn't it?

C'mon, you love to hate me. Some of my really good stuff doesn't make it on to lxer.com or linuxtoday.com. They seem to like the stuff that's more controversial.
jdixon

Apr 08, 2010
10:38 PM EDT
> C'mon, you love to hate me.

Ken, you're writing's not worth the effort to hate. And I don't know you personally to either like or dislike you.

> Some of my really good stuff doesn't make it on to lxer.com or linuxtoday.com.

Then submit it. It's not like Scott and company are ogres who'll bite your head off.

And word is that the Linux Today editor, while opinionated, is actually quite nice. :)
gus3

Apr 08, 2010
10:59 PM EDT
@jdixon:

It's smart to say nice things about a person whose idea of fun is taking joyrides in the bucket of a front-end loader.
khess

Apr 09, 2010
9:40 AM EDT
@jdixon

I'm very nice too. What you, and others, fail to realize is that my different venues have different audiences and purposes. On Linux Magazine or Linux Pro Magazine or Linux User and Developer and others, I do pure tech. On ServerWatch, I do tech mixed with advice. On Daniweb, I do Linux, Open Source and sometimes miscellaneous but always current, newsy, opinion stuff. The posts are not meant to be particularly tech-oriented. On that site, it's more opinion and commentary on what's happening with tech companies, products and people. The pieces are short and have high impact. I make predictions, give opinion and try to foster dialog and thought in them. And, by the reactions I get here and elsewhere, I'd say that I've been pretty successful.

The Internet is a great place for collaboration and education but one of the major downsides is that people feel somewhat anonymous and that they can say anything and it will never come back to haunt them--as in inflammatory commentary about someone's writing, etc.

I've often said that the worst thing about the Internet is that, "It gives every bastard with a piece of virtual chalk the ability to scrawl his opinion anywhere he likes." It basically amounts to people feeling that they have to "tag" every article with which they disagree or aren't smart enough to understand as "bad writing" or whatever. And, while I support free speech, I also support restraint when criticizing someone else's work.

If you truly believe that my work is lacking, then my suggestion is that you spend the time getting your own writing gigs and do better and allow the fray of ne'er do wells to nip at your work.
tracyanne

Apr 09, 2010
9:51 AM EDT
Quoting:And, by the reactions I get here and elsewhere, I'd say that I've been pretty successful.


If you consider the fact that the discussion centres on you, and not the article, then yes, pretty successful. I suppose that makes you a media whore, doesn't it

Quoting:If you truly believe that my work is lacking, then my suggestion is that you spend the time getting your own writing gigs and do better


No, we don't.

We know our limitations , and we can plainly see yours. What you need to do is lose the ego and have a look at just how bad the stuff you publish on DaniWeb is.
jdixon

Apr 09, 2010
10:41 AM EDT
> What you, and others, fail to realize is that my different venues have different audiences and purposes.

You're presuming a bit much Ken.

> I also support restraint when criticizing someone else's work.

My restraint consists of not reading it.

> If you truly believe that my work is lacking...

The fact that I don't like you your writing on Daniweb doesn't necessarily mean it's lacking. It means I don't like it. As long as someone's willing to pay you for it, it's fine. Just don't expect me to read it.

> ,,,then my suggestion is that you spend the time getting your own writing gigs and do better,,,

I have a job I'm fairly good at Ken, and it's not writing.

> ...and allow the fray of ne'er do wells to nip at your work.

Oh, they do that now.
khess

Apr 09, 2010
11:28 AM EDT
LOL. I have a day job too. I work for a large enterprise in support and have for a long time.

That's ok that you don't like my writing on Daniweb. Not everyone will. I'm ok with that.

@ Tracyanne

It's good to know your limitations--Dirty Harry said, "A man has got to know his limitations" and it works for women too. As a friend of mine used to say, "The only limits you have are the ones you place on yourself."

I know I'm a good writer regardless of what a few naysayers think. Media whore? There are worse things. Like those who sit around and criticize those who are actually doing something--write, wrong or indifferent...just doing something. As a friend from Nigeria once told me, "The only boy who washes dishes ever breaks any." Which means, that you're going to make a few mistakes along the way in whatever you do but at least you're doing something.
jdixon

Apr 09, 2010
12:22 PM EDT
> Like those who sit around and criticize those who are actually doing something

I don't criticize you, Ken. I criticize your articles. Usually with the simple statement "Ken Hess = Do not read".

From what others have said, if you submitted your non-Daniweb articles to LXer that might change. But the only place I usually encounter your stuff is here, and that's always your Daniweb articles.
khess

Apr 09, 2010
12:55 PM EDT
you should see the serverwatchcom and linux-mag.com ones too.
hkwint

Apr 11, 2010
6:22 PM EDT
Please may I weigh in on this issue:

Some of Ken's articles from Linux mag and Server-watch were on LXer. I did read most of them I encountered, I liked them, they were informative, they seemed 'researched', and they contained lots of 'content'. Which means the article was actually telling something. Good writing, in my opinion. Whenever I encounter some article written by Mr. Hess for one of these sites, I read it. I even said in some LXer comment that I liked those articles.

Most Daniweb articles however simply lack content, they lack 'quality'. It doesn't seem like Mr. Hess took much efforts writing them, more something done using a netbook while sitting in the closet. I can read them '3 lines in parallel', and they're short. Some 'loose bullets' going everywhere, it lacks direction. It's no 'journalism', it's blogging. And it's not blogging and telling something, but it's blogging for the sake of soaking of comments, blogging 2.0 in Twitter style. I tried to read probably over 20 of them, and there were only 1 or 2 I liked. Therefore, I, too, stopped reading Daniweb articles. Instead, now I just 'watch' them for three seconds - enough time to know there's nothing interesting told in these articles and I can move on. Usually they end with "what do you think?" - the same line I use when I want to invoke discussion. However, in Mr. Hess Daniweb articles, the whole article just poses a question Mr. Hess hopes somebody will answer in the comments. Something like "I want to blog about my opinion, but I don't have an opinion, so I ask my readers for an opinion, and next time I can repeat the opinion of my readers'. In my country this is how a particular political party works: They don't have ideals (though they are supposed to!), they don't have an opinion (though they're supposed to!), but they ask what 'voters' want to be in their program. Then they write their program based on the opinion of the voters. A lame way of writing, 'letting the readers write the story' in my opinion.

When it comes to articles in blog-style I'd rather read SJVN. When I want to read content, I read Heise (best Linux site in my opinion and I can practice German), Phoronix or LWN. Other informative well-researched stuff includes like X-bit labs and Ars Technica. However, those are usually 'heavy' articles requiring the reader to think, some of them multiple pages long. They probably don't match today's "consumer" zapping style of living: 'Whenever something lasts longer than the 2 minute attention span, click it away and start reading the next article". Therefore Daniweb may have chosen this format, but I don't like it.

Therefore, I strongly disagree with "Ken Hess = Do not read". Mr. Hess is not the problem, Mr. Hess writing for Daniweb is.

Mr Hess, I'd like to see more informative articles like the ones published in Linux-mag and Serverwatch, and less of the '3 minute blogs' on Daniweb - which usually don't tell anything new. Much in the same way Sander said above, but he needed just three lines to say the same.

Some people over here actually do some writing, including TracyAnne, Sander and yours sincerely. And yes, we know it's hard, people will put you under the guillotine for every small mistake you make. But that's no excuse for the Daniweb articles when you're capable of so much more. It's all about intent - in my opinion, and when your intent is to write a good article which contains some content, stuff which make yourself 'proud', you shouldn't be bothered by the reactions. When your only intent is to fart on Apple with the sole purpose of having 1k of angry Apple fanboys flame in your comments however, then you shouldn't be surprised if free-software oriented people blame your articles for a lack of content and direction.

My conclusion would be: Put some more efforts in those articles, put some more love in it, and you'll be OK.

P.S.:And make the Daniweb banner go away, even while I told it over two hundred times I don't want to join the Daniweb community, it still nags me, and the only way to get rid of it seems to be blocking half of Daniweb - including all pictures. But that's not my intention.
tracyanne

Apr 11, 2010
6:51 PM EDT
Quoting:I know I'm a good writer regardless of what a few naysayers think.


Then link to your good ones here, I know you can do better than the cr@p you link to on Daniweb.

Quoting:Media whore?


Well it was you who reckoned you Daniweb articles must be good because of the chatter on this thread, which as it happens is about you.

Quoting:There are worse things.

Like those who sit around and criticize those who are actually doing something--write, wrong or indifferent...just doing something.


Which is why I stuck to talking about the quality of your articles. I don't know you well enough to criticise you.

Just link to your good articles, and leave the Daniweb ones where they belong, in the garbage.
chalbersma

Apr 13, 2010
11:21 AM EDT
Oh snap!

That's all I got to say.

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