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I've run into this problem when there's dust on the disk when it's recorded. The laser etches the dust rather than the media, resulting in a disk that's got a small blank section.

You may have had that problem with dusty media, but the explanation sounds suspect. The laser beam is focused to a point inside the disc, not at the surface; at the surface, it's wide and dust simply reduces its intensity at the focused point (diagram). Looks like BD discs have much less tolerance of dust, due to the data layer being so close to the surface.

Well rms wouldn't dissuade people from using debian, it's just to easy to install non-free software with debian, so he doesn't recommend it. If you're interested in his views, here is a nice interview with rms http://geekspeak.org/shows/2008/02/02/.

It'd be nice if he followed the looks of the Smaug in the old animated movie. He was "original" enough to be LOTRish with the cat/wolf hairy appearance, but stereotypically dragon enough to be cool and identifiable. http://www.thehobbit-movie-buzz.com/photos/44/smaug-the-dragon-from-the-hobbit-animated.php Despite loving the movies and books... i had problems with about half of the monsters in LOTR being disappointing. I'm of the mind that monsters should be more cool than ugly, and more menacing than plain disgusting. The Uruk-hai were too apelike(?) or something and were generally gross. Maybe it was just the actors that moved like apes for all the orcs... i dunno, many didn't seem orcish to me very much. Some were cooler than others (the more monstrous ones were extremely cool)... but things like 90% of gums showing instead of teeth on the Uruk-hai's snarl were just nasty/annoying. Like the following would have been good if not for the gums: http://geekspeak.org/articles/comic_con_2004_the_show/weta_uruk-hai_220x293.jpg The fell beasts were too ugly and eel-like or something instead of being more dragon-like. Gothmog (I think the name of the white orc with elephantitis, elephantitis???, in the movie) was just too disgusting despite having a slick demeanor. The oliphaunts, Gollum, etc. were very cool at least. The ringwraiths were VERY cool... they made up for all the effects that I disagreed with. Oh, and the Balrog was perfect, too! The WitchKing looking badass here, and even the winged beasty looks good at this angle. It may have been more of their movements that made them too eel-like. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/49/Fellbeast.jpg

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What is this latency of which you speak?

All benchmarks I've read show that firewire has much worse latency than IDE. A quick google revealed that average IO response time is 17.8ms for firewire and 0.12ms for IDE for a particular Maxtor drie (note: the 0.12ms figure is almost certainly because they were hitting data in the hd cache; otherwise it should have been more like 5 ms for the ide case). I am guessing that if you are streaming data, firewire is not too bad, but random access on a firewire drive will not give you good performance.

I recommend you to run a benchmark after connecting your drive directly to your machine's IDE cable.

Okay, first off, pointing to one particular page which isn't even standards compliant does not improve your argument.

Second, 100K easily fits into CPU cache let alone causing an issue for hundreds of megabytes of main memory. (And no, I don't think that's how CPU cache is effectively used. I just used it as a point of reference.)

Third, it compresses down to less than 20K using standard gzip compression. This equates to three seconds of download time on a 56Kbps modem connecting at 52Kbps. So yes, it could be more efficient, but come on.

Let's take a standards-compliant site like CSS Zen Garden or GeekSpeak.org. When someone actually bothers to reference the standards, you end up with a site with comparatively little markup. Both sites are less than 20K of markup and easily compress to less than 10K. Both are static pages, yes. But then again, so was your Spiegel reference.

With standards. Both are static pages, yes. But then again, so was your Spiegel reference.

What bloat do you see on those pages? How complex is the markup? How well do they stand up with accessibility? (Answer: very well) Both referenced sites are smaller than Spiegel's, but then Spiegel's is much older and established. Same story as with Amazon and eBay, inertia can be the biggest enemy no matter what direction you choose.

And as a sidenote (not directed at the parent), idiots with their monitors set to 640 (or 800) because they "can't read the little text" are idiots and should be smacked on the head. Methods exist to make font sizes larger without having a screen with 1/4-inch-wide pixels or the infernal fuzzy-LCD effect encountered when running a flat panel at a non-native resolution. Stupid clueless users. Of course, web "designers" who specify "10px" as the height of their text should be shot for making this problem worse, as well as whomever is responsible for MSIE not being able to scale this text when requested, which comprises the majority of commercial websites.

I'm certainly glad that vitrol wasn't directed at me. I do take issue with you characterization of "idiots." People are free to browse the web as they please. It is our responsibility as webmonkeys to get our message out, not for the "idiots" to conform to us. You are obviously a young, healthy person who does not know what it is like to have horrible eyesight due to genetics, accidents, or simply old age. I myself use a 19" monitor at 1600x1200. I've also seen people with 21" monitors who use 640x480, and I do not begrudge them. Many of these folks did so not from ignorance or idiocy but rather from a standpoint of comfort.

I'm not saying you have to cater to these folks and make sure every design no matter the intended audience or extra time needed fits for absolutely everyone. In fact, if you want to code to maximized 1600x1200 resolutions, so be it. I code to a minimum of 800x600 and get an estimated >95% of desktop users. However, it is not right or justified to call them idiots simply because you would find it unreasonable or uncomfortable to do yourself. I don't mean to come down so hard, but I've had more than a few relatives who have had vision problems. It struck a nerve.

As for pixel sizes for fonts, that's not a simple issu

Okay, we both seem to be speaking English, but we're not communicating. I never said that layout should not be fluid. I wholeheartedly agree that layout should be fluid. And I know what ems are. I used them extensively on my main site.

However, the fact remains that layouts for screen presentation are done in pixels. Period. What is an em? The width of the letter em in the current font. What units are that width measured in? Not inches. Not percentages. Pixels. When you ask for a percentage of a screen, you aren't asking for a percentage of a 17" monitor. You are asking for a percentage of the page real estate. That page or portion of a page is so many pixels wide by so many pixels high. Pixels.

Now then, as for continuous tone images, what happens when you scale up a JPEG? It gets pixelated. Can a photograph be adequately represented in a vector format? Sure, but it would require so much information (read: huge file size) that its drawbacks for use on the web would far outweigh its advantages over formats such as JPEG. JPEGs on the other hand are perfectly suited to photographs -- aka continuous tone images -- but as a raster format cannot scale seamlessly like a vector graphic.

Am I clearer now?

Could you be more specific? Do you mean a veriably sized center area with boxes on either side or just a header, footer, and a content area in the middle? If it's the latter, why not specify the header and footer to be "display: block"? I have the distinct feeling that I'm misunderstanding you though...

I guess I'm coming from the point of view of CSS Zen Garden. I consider those to be complex and compelling layouts with CSS. My own site has fixed sizes where appropriate (raster images), but a mostly variable layout. Font resizing works to stretch things out. Resizing the browser opens the content area. What am I missing?

Do you have an example link?

Here's something that could work for you perhaps. It watches which stylesheet is active and uses it on subsequent pages.

It presupposes that you have consistent styling/naming on all of your pages though.