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>> But having said that: The offending diagram in the
>> first article isn't actually an indictment of PowerPoint.
Exactly. It is a silly, confused article. The reporter had little
knowledge of the subject matter, and appeared not to know a system
dynamics diagram from a set of bullet points.
And while I am a great admirer of Professor Tufte's other work, I think he
gets it wrong on Powerpoint too.
PowerPoint is a bloody graphics program, fer pete's sake. A set of bullet
points is not a fully developed analysis or strategy or thesis. At best,
it's a convenient outline or summary for people who know the difference.
It doesn't make people dumb. They have to start out that way.
Nor is is a program for professional-quality technical graphics. It's
slideshows for the masses, a few notches up from those blotchy, illegible
b&w transparencies that my college professors used to throw at us.
I reckon anyone who thinks the problem is the tool rather than the user is
off the mark.
A newspaper article can be just as "dumb" as a slide show, but we read the
papers anyway.
Michael West | Business Process Improvement | Aurecon
Ph: +61 3 8683 1976 | Fax: +61 3 8683 1620 | Mob: 0407 485 228
Email: WestM -at- ap -dot- aurecongroup -dot- com
PO Box 321, South Melbourne | VIC 3205 | Australia http://www.aurecongroup.com http://www.aurecongroup.com/apac/groupentity/
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Today's Topics:
1. Doxygen-to-rtf formatting (Sally Derrick)
2. PowerPoint in the military (Dan Goldstein)
3. OnlineStylebooks.com (Dan Goldstein)
If anyone out there has experience with the RTF style sheet generated from
Doxygen and would be willing to provide some off-list assistance. I would
be
very grateful. My deadline doesn't leave much time for trial and error.
Thank you
Sally
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 3 May 2010 11:46:20 -0400
From: "Dan Goldstein" <DGoldstein -at- riverainmedical -dot- com>
Subject: PowerPoint in the military
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
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<0ADA9A22B5BC2147B360A22FD2BAD25C01BA4AF5 -at- RMGBEX01 -dot- rmg -dot- local>
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Maybe in some happy future, the U.S. military will lead the corporate
world to reduce its dependence on PowerPoint.
But having said that: The offending diagram in the first article isn't
actually an indictment of PowerPoint.
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