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Meant to include a link on the commercial fishing --- it's sobering that there's greater tonnage of ships in the water than there are fish:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/33/7

I need an app for every website I visit like I need double pneumonia and a infected hemorrhoid.

Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1174/

And this makes it worse...

http://xkcd.com/1174/

This argument is growing tedious.

True

The value of money is not constant. People are making more money, and buying more expensive things. That it all "evens out" in the end just speaks to the monetary policies of the US and the EU, it does not disprove my point.

We're not talking about absolute monetary values and never have. Share of income is a good measure precisely because it remains constant with inflation, etc.

No, I am not, but no, you did not. If what you meant is that "tax cuts for the rich cause burdens for the poor", then you are saying that not taking is giving, and not giving is taking. That is at best substituting accounting for economics, and at worst it is religious-level worship of the government. You're going to have to explain your argument.

Energy tax to finance the move to renewable energy. I went on about that for a bit. The important part is that the major industrial users of energy have a special legal exception from the tax. Since the amount that needs to be paid remains constant, energy has become more expensive in Germany for several years now, even though the actual exchange price of electricity has consistently dropped for the same time frame.

If that's not "shifting a burden", I don't know what is. To me, that's a textbook definition. Everyone pays more because some people get an exception.

I will admit that, according to the CIA World Factbook

If you can read german, there are many numbers and current statistics in this online magazine:
http://www.heise.de/tp/inhalt/energie/default.html

This article, for example, contains plenty of numbers for an extrapolation for the next 5 years, where we might see solar+wind cover 30% of our energy needs.

A friend of mine works in the wind energy field and their order books are full. Meanwhile, no new nuclear reactor has gone online since 1989. So a shift is inevitable.

People are real things, companies are not.

I agree with you on that. However, taxes are abstract legal concepts, too. So in that particular context, the argument that companies are abstract entities doesn't make a difference. If they are real to the law and the tax office, then in the context of taxes they are real.

At no point did a non-corporeal entity pay taxes.

You are making a philosophical argument, while I am making a real-world argument. In the real world, companies pay taxes. In a philosophical abstraction you can say that the company is just a concept and in reality all money somewhere flows from and to human beings. Both can be true at the same time.

The Wealth of Nations is in many ways similar to On the Origin of Species, insofar as both are observant reflections on nature.

Yes, but - what you are basically saying is that economy is just applied psychology. ob xkcd. Again, philosophically that is correct. Realistically, however, I prefer an accountant doing my balance sheet over a psychologist.

Yes, economic behaviour is largely guided by psychology. At the same time, it turns out many early assumptions are simplistic and false. For example, the next time someone says "rational market participant", give them a laugh because no such thing exists.

Still, capitalism is not nature. It's one set of explanations and guidelines. Other sets are possible. All of them can be evaluated for their effectiveness and side-effects, a process we as a species are still pretty horrible about as we apparently prefer full-scale experiments without control groups.

http://m.xkcd.com/869/
(I use m.xkcd.com on mobile and desktop alike, FWIW.)

When high-end mobiles had EDGE and QVGA, and many people were stuck with GPRS and 160px screens, mobile sites were absolutely necessary. But with today's phones, the question is not why mobile sites suck, but why we need mobile sites at all.

Over the past decade, the actual functionality of websites, aside from streaming video (which is huge, to be sure) has barely changed at all. Over the same decade, mobile hardware and software have advanced to match the low-end desktops of 2003. If video streaming is handled by separate apps (as it mostly is), there's little reason one website shouldn't work for both desktop and mobile use.

I only really see four differences between today's 1136x640 or 1280x720 phone and yesterday's 1024x768 desktop, as far as web browsing goes:

• mouse motion (without a button state change) - generally, depending on either mouseover or drag is bad practice (it fails not only with touchscreens, but also with software for people with disabilities), but of course they can also be very convenient (provided you actually have a mouse). The right solution is for websites to provide the same functionality another way (e.g. m.xkcd.com's alt-text show/hide link -- note that while this is a mobile site, I and many others use it on desktops; it's a good example of one site working well for both.) Sadly we can't expect such accommodation, so the next alternative is to patch over it in the browser -- the N900's browser does this tolerably well (only permits drags, but most mouse-over stuff works ok by dragging in from an inactive area), but most other mobile browsers don't even try, and I really can't understand why.
• right click - it's mostly mapped to long-touch and works as you'd expect in a lot of mobile browsers. But in some it doesn't work at all. If one does a good fix for allowing separate position/button control, it's trivial to add support for right mouse button.
• screen size - there's a factor of 5 between a 15-20" display and a 3-4" display, so unless you use your phone at one-fifth the distance you use your monitor, you can fit less readable text on it despite the comparable or better number of pixels. But you can always move the phone temporarily closer to see tiny text, and pinch-zooming is so easy on (most) mobiles, it's a mostly solved problem for most sites. For the sites where this doesn't work well, maybe a mobile site really is the answer.
• fat-finger syndrome - UI elements that are to be clicked have to be big. Since one clicks hyperlinks, this means hyperlinks have to be big. But again, zoom fixes this well enough.

It seems like a tiny fraction of the effort spent on mobile sites (making a few changes to mobile browsers) could permit many existing sites to work just fine on both mobiles and desktops, and an additional fraction (making changes to those websites) would fix almost all the remaining ones. Fiddling with mouseover emulation and zooming clearly costs the user time vs. a good mobile-only site, but it's not at all clear to me that that's really true vs. an average mobile site (which, on average, is what you'll get) or that if it is, that the cost in wasted user time is less than the cost in developer time expended on creating and maintaining a mobile site.

Of course, this is all built on the assumption that a website that does A, B, and C today should be no more complicated and require no more resources than a website doing A, B, and C in 2003. While this may appear reasonable enough, Wirth's law says it's too much to expect. But a guy can dream, no?

xkcd

Most relevant is the image tip text. Ran into this last night, with no ability to get to the link I had found via search engine. I had to give up on the site and go elsewhere. Is there a way to set Chrome Mobile to pretend to be a regular browser? (hey anyone remember the browser agent dropdown selection in old versions of opera)

Obligatory:

http://xkcd.com/869/

That, and lets not forget:
http://xkcd.com/386/
So here is my contribution to "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white! â" Justine Sacco"

There is this article I remember about British women increasing the chance of getting HIV by having unprotected sex in Africa:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/26/us-sextourism-idUSN2638979720071126

There is a clear potential for her being wrong about whiteness causing rational behaviour or something similar. While some might argue that often it is just easier to shut up, she could have rather said something like "I let the guys use condoms".

Probably DC, AC is for soup.

Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/378/

Here is the state of web apps.

Oh, wait, even XKCD is blocked according to http://urlchecker.o2.co.uk/. Even wikipedia is blocked.

Probably the people behind this wants that the UK population be at least as stupid as them. In the race to the bottom there is no winner.

What do you mean "The Matrix (1)"? Did they make other ones?

No. Obligatory XKCD, last strip

...the monitoring of the situation is essential for future planning

They mean when the rover is near it's death, they pause it, and send more rovers. After they get like 8 up there, they'll fight them, like on BattleBots. You know, get Mars ready for humans and their wars.

...the monitoring of the situation is essential for future planning

We all know that those rovers are up there cutting up large rocks and stacking them into pyramidal shapes that regulate the atmosphere in preparation for humans to arrive, only to try to cover up the pyramid's real identity so that the future race of beings don't know their real history.

...the monitoring of the situation is essential for future planning

obligatory future for this rover

http://xkcd.com/1022/

It is at the bottom of a Gravity well that is 1/3 as deep as the Earths gravity well

No. At 1g (where g=earth's surface gravity), the moons gravity well is 288km deep and earth's is 5,478km. That is not 1/3 but 1/19th. Citation.

http://xkcd.com/1013/

We ran out of cat food?

http://xkcd.com/1022/

Oblig. XKCD.
It does have a major difference: this hack can be done without the victim noticing. The $5 wrench attack vector is a bit more conspicuous.

http://xkcd.com/149/

http://xkcd.com/538/

Might I add, it's good to have a conversation on slashdot with a total stranger with your manners. Most here simply throw bricks at others.

I'm glad you you liked the converstation. However, I occasionally fall into obsessive internet arguments like this:
http://xkcd.com/386/
Gradually, I am improving, but occasionally I have a relapse.

http://xkcd.com/1234/

Probably my favorite XKCD strip so far.

G.

http://xkcd.com/652/

http://what-if.xkcd.com/5/

What if there was a robot apocalypse? How long would humanity last?

Instead they went for bluetooth and the damn thing says "enter 0000 in the device" and the damned device is buried 3 cm under the subcutaneous layer of the Gluteus maximus. How am I going to do that?

Here we go again:

http://xkcd.com/927

If esoteric references and deep gameplay are the criteria, Sandcastle Builder may be in the running. It has even been referred to as "the Dwarf Fortress of idle games"

And for extra geek credit, it's based off of a xkcd comic

Lunar Lander.
oh yeah, the geek vs nerd debate. Around here, geek is an insult, while nerd is a badge of honor (technical competence).

No its not, its their property. XKCD said it best of all:
http://xkcd.com/1150/

Seriously, make your own damn website and stop getting pissed when people exercise their rights over their own property-- which, Id add, theyre paying for and you arent.

And yes, anyone can question, but very few people do question the fundamental ways we live our life

Uh, questioning 'the fundamental ways we live our life' is asked so often in academics, art, and pop culture that it has become the most banal question around. Simon and Garfunkle could perhaps be excused for thinking they were saying something original, but now it's impossible to believe that if you look around. Seriously, it's a little ridiculous.

You've lost me with this argument. What do you mean by "brutally honest looking at the evidence?"

Sure, sorry I wasn't clear. See what you can glean from this.

How about Up Goer Five?

Oblig.

The relevant xkcd

Oh, and look, you're my foe, it seems. Got tired of an expert coming up to let you know you're wrong, still wrong, and will likely always be wrong?

That wasn't meant to be insulting or degrading (although, in retrospect I can see how it can be taken that way). I meant it to be humourous (See: https://xkcd.com/179/). I apologize if my comment rubbed you the wrong way. To be fair, though, to an untrained eye, it does look like well composed pseudo-scientific doublespeak, like the pro-Mars posts from K'Breel, speaker for the Council.

PYou were too lazy to include an accurate bar indicating when the loading process would finish, and you are insulting our time wasted looking at your "jokes".

You're right. Those in-jokes and obscure references are way less funny than any Microsoft progress bar. One of those provides hours of entertainment! Er, twelve minutes of entertainment. About sixteen days of entertainment. Negative twenty-seven minutes of entertainment. Calculating time of entertainment, please wait....

obligatory xkcd

http://xkcd.com/566/

It's odd how this gas has been used for 100 years and is still "newly discovered".

Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1283/

It's odd how people have been using this gas for 100 years and it is still "newly discovered."

Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1283/

Obligatory xckd
http://xkcd.com/558/

0.18 PPT vs 400 PPM
0.18 PPT vs 400000000 PPM
0.00000018 PPM vs 400 PPM

One of them is deceptive, the other 2 provide proper context. Even being 7000 times more powerful doesn't make up for 6 orders of magnitude in concentration.

Already been done

[Crash! Wham! Ow! Ow!]

Too bad, indeed.

I Don't Own a TV

This is how it was generated.

http://xkcd.com/171/

Another one: http://xkcd.com/619/

I think it phones to this place. However some developers don't trust that random number generator and instead opt for this implementation.