So they're pissed off, and charging the freeloaders a fee.
You mean they're pissed off, and trying to charge the freeloaders a fee - soon enough, they'll discover that the freeloaders have no interest in paying a fee (they are freeloaders after all), don't have the money anyway.
Worse than that, no-one has no real need of the AP service, such as it is, because the internet is much better at distributing information than the AP is. Nobody needs AP any more, they don't add anything to the data they process; in many ways they bastardise it, and adding DRM flags to content isn't going to make that essential problem go away.
If a newspaper, or even a journalist, wants to automate feeds of their stories or even sell feeds of their info to others, they can do that over the internet with very little fuss, and vice versa (RSS). People already do this, without the AP taking their cut, and they simply don't need any broken-by-design licensing system from AP.
Does SumatraPDF and the rest remotely support the following PDF standards?
Do we need or want it to? I know I don't. PDFs are a useful format for interchange and storage of documents while preserving formatting. I don't use SumatraPDF, but I imagine it covers a subset of features which covers reading most PDFs in existence (like the reader I use).
I don't want embedded flash, or any of the other bullshit features listed on that page as standards. The first one (for example) claims to support the long-term preservation of digital documents - perhaps they use extra long-lasting bits to store the data? The PDF explaining the standard is full of obvious advice which has nothing to do with PDFs at all, and some features which belong more properly in CMS software for all documents, like signing or user tracking....
If you do feel you need those sort of misfeatures then please feel free to suffer and use the Adobe Acrobat/Adobe Reader, but I'll continue to avoid it - because it is an invasive, resource hogging, security risk which is more about getting Adobe a foothold on every desktop than it is about facilitating document exchange/storage.
The PDF format is useful. Adobe's attempts to take over everything on the corporate desktop with it are not.
ATV has already delivered cargo to the station, the shuttle is not required for that.
Soyuz has already proved more than capable of shuttling crew, so the shuttle is not required for that either.
The Shuttle really isn't required (except as a sop to NASA's pride) once the station is built and operational, and trying to extend its lifetime by yet another expensive mission leads me to think that NASA really has lost its way in internal politics and power struggles.
The shuttle should have been shut down years ago and a more efficient alternative explored when it became apparent it was a whole bundle of contradictory solutions looking for a problem. It is well past retirement age.
For now, you're right. However, it's not the popular response that matters. What Apple is doing is eroding the good will they had from the technical consumers. They're moving over to Android and RIM phones by droves. Now, that doesn't matter to Apple immediately.
Couldn't agree more. Even if this doesn't have an immediate effect, the cumulative effect of a series of stories all about Apple fucking up their approvals process or using it to stamp on rivals is very damaging.
Until they just forget about trying to filter apps on the store, this sort of thing will continue. No-one cares why they do it (AT&T told us to won't cut any ice), but customers certainly do care if it appears their phone won't let them do stuff that is available on other phones, just because of Apple's arbitrary decisions.
The system they have hurts the confidence of developers and customers, and has to go - at some point it'll just break with the volume of submissions. They could have some sort of automated process and cap on submissions, but the system they have presently is pointless, expensive, and puts them in a new difficult situation every week.
Well, which is it, are fossil fuels going to run out soon, and therefore aren't actually present in sufficient quantities to present much of a threat, or is there way too much carbon locked in fossil fuels for our continued health, and we should get off them before we exhaust the supply?
Your dichotomy is a false one, nice rhetorical trick though. Fossil fuels are going to run out soon and are what we have left still unused would be bad for our environment (local and global). It's not an either/or choice. Ergo, we should start looking for alternatives.
Coal file plants and our use of oil in cars causes local pollution (massive pollution places like China, and parts of the US like LA), and are probably exacerbating global warming, so we may as well start looking for alternatives before we run out of things like oil and coal or they become prohibitively expensive.
Given the attitude of most of the human race though, we'll wait until the long term effects are irreversible, and the supply of handy fuel is almost exhausted, before we decide that it might have been a good idea 20 years ago to start looking at alternatives.
Well, the question is, does the increased fuel efficiency actually pay for itself?
Actually, no, that's not the question at all. The question is what are you going to do when oil is permanently above 100USD a barrel and climbing, or worse, constantly volatile? What are you going to do in 50 years when the supply of oil is tightly constrained and wars are being fought over supplies? We've had an easy ride so far due to fossil fuels just lying around with a lot of stored energy which is easy to release, but that's not going to last forever, and even if it were we'd be creating massive pollution problems (see China and India currently) if we stuck to things like coal power plants long term, quite apart from climate impacts.
The thing is, the more efficient you are, the more complex you are. The more complex you are, the more you cost.
I'm afraid you've just made this connection up. What examples make you feel this three-way relation is universally true as you assert?
Many things are complex and yet inefficient, and vice versa. To pick an example from power generation - photovoltaic cells are at present complex, and yet inefficient, whereas solar water heating is very simple (tube with water/salt mixture in it), and very efficient. Modern computers are more complex and efficient than the space shuttle ones, and yet cost less. etc. etc.
Just because new tech tends to be complex and costly does not mean it will always be so, and there is no overall 'law' which states that efficiency == complexity == cost, and your statistics are meaningless as they are predicated on this assumption.
Even if we stopped now, the glaciers are still going to melt.
We don't actually know with any certainty what's going to happen, save that it probably won't be pretty. We also know the different of a few degrees rise in temperature could mean metres in sea levels, and we have an awful lot of useful coastal land that would put underwater. As I have pointed out, there are many other reasons to stop using dirty fuels like coal anyway, quite apart from greenhouse gases and climate change. It might cost a little more in the short term, but in the long term it makes a lot of sense to diversify sources of energy and use ones with the least environmental impact.
admit it would suck to blow all the billions and trillions of dollars only to find out there ain't a damned thing you can do
There are many reasons to migrate from fossil fuels, the most compelling being that they're going to run out very soon. The changing climate is also a worry (which we wouldn't want to encourage to change faster than it already is), but it's not the only reason, and the money spent on migrating to alternative energy sources certainly wouldn't be wasted.
You may not like the fact that there is a large group of people that refuse to watch 1984. The message of 1984 IS important. How do we reach them?
Some ideas cannot be dumbed down or made comfortable.
Neither Equilibrium nor V for Vendetta deal with the same ideas as 1984 in any comparable depth. They're a crude caricature which loses most of the insight of the original.
The movie is just so bland. It's a movie about the message, one of those artsy political movies that doesn't need any semblance of flow. The people who watch it will already be well versed in the mantra it preaches. However, V for Vendetta and Equilibrium both set out to entertain with an undertone of the 1984 mantra. This lets people take in the meaning without having to put forth any thought.
By flow, do you mean explosions and special effects, or did you have something else in mind? Given the two appalling films you compared it to, it's not surprising you switched off after half an hour, but I don't suppose you've even read the book? It's not necessary for understanding the film, but it might help (as would watching the entire film instead of the first 30 minutes). I hope you realise that the cinematography and sets were intentionally bland to reflect the world it is set in? That it is not in fact 'preaching a mantra' whatever that means, but is remarkably ambivalent about drawing a firm conclusion (like the novel), other than that totalitarianism in all its forms is inhuman?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'movie about the message', but there's far more going on in 1984 than in either of the films you compared it to, and it functions on a lot of different levels, not just a didactic one. The script is pretty good too - in comparison to something like Equilibrium which I suspect has more gun-shots than words. I suppose 1984 is not as slick as the newer films in terms of costume, camera-work, explosions, and implausible acrobatics while firing small-arms, but it has far more interest and long term appeal than those films, and far more depth than much of the flummery which passes for entertainment nowadays.
PS You don't put forth thought or preach a mantra, it's impossible to receive propaganda (unless it's in the mail), albeit cannot be used at the end of a sentence, and latter has two motherfucking t's.
Well done. I've made 0.5% a day, every day, including last year during the crash. Guess who has made more money, at roughly 200 trading days a year?
That's nice for you. Your statement was still wrong. I think you meant in the year 2000, instead of since the year 2000, which completely changes the meaning of the sentence, and reinforces the fact that timing is very important. If you meant since, you shouldn't have made any money recently.
I only mentioned the increase over the last 6 months because it contradicted your incorrect statement, not because it is in some way remarkable (it is in fact quite unremarkable, which was the point).
80% of day traders lose their money on the stock market. EVERYONE who invested since the year 2000 HAS NOT MADE MONEY on the stock market if they "bought and held", with the exception of a VERY few stocks.
I beg to differ. I've made around 20% over the last 6 months with buy and hold. Perhaps you meant anyone who invested in the year 2000, which is quite true, but a very different assertion. Day traders are very different from buy and hold so I'm not sure why you're comparing the two, it's really quite misleading, unless you're trying to say that virtually no-one makes money.
The biggest factor in making money is, in my opinion, timing, rather than what you buy - given that the value of stocks is only tenuously related to the underlying value of a company, and entire sectors crash on bad news from one player in that sector, trying to pick certain stocks on statistics which are highly vulnerable to manipulation and available in advance to many other players, is really quite hopeless, so if you believed the market to be rational, particularly in the short term, perhaps it is best to give up hope now.
This technique appears to be taking that maxim (timing is all) to an extreme; by cutting the time down to the bare minimum, they can make a lot of money in a very short time. Obviously for those without large resources, the long game is best, but it is still a matter of timing - if you chose to compare 2003 -> 2007, you'd find that it was virtually impossible not to make money on stocks, and conversely, from say 2007 -> 2009, very difficult to make money with simple investments, no matter what you invested in.
The pricing of stock markets is always going to be (and always has been) irrational, because people are irrational. The rational market and a rational price is a myth, one we're not even close to, and I think it's something that gets in the way of reasoned analysis of markets.
I do think however that markets should be regulated with the aim of ensuring that investments are made for the long term and in the interests of both the investors and the companies in the market. *Not* in the interests of short-term traders or professional traders. Unfortunately, because there's a lot of money involved, that is unlikely.
A work by an anonymous author is no less creative or less beautiful than a work by a known author.
You can look at plenty of Roman or middle ages art created by people lost to the ages and still understand their culture and reflect on how things were back then.
It's not a question of art being less creative or beautiful - this is about how we can understand and appreciate art (or any created object from the past), which is simply not possible without some clues as to the intention, background, culture etc etc of the author. The beauty is not after all something which exists in a vacuum, but something which can only be appreciated when we understand what a painting is, why it was created, and what those marks on the surface might mean.
The history surrounding art is a bit like a language that we have to learn to speak before interpreting it. Of course we can get by with a rudimentary understanding based on our current culture (which shares some aspects with many artworks), but trying to make art completely anonymous is antithetical to understanding.
In your examples plenty of information is available about the likely background of the creator, their intentions, and the culture (you have mentioned two cultures where we have a lot of art without a specific creator, but with lots of information on the likely background of a creator, their social background etc). The identity of the creator is just one factor which helps to guide us in interpreting art. Completely anonymous art would be stripped of all of those hints, and we'd be left with nothing but a series of marks, with no signposts as to how to interpret them.
If we can destroy the concept of "creator", that's "good" IMO.
Except that knowing the creator, their milieu, culture, and intentions is often vital to a proper understanding and appreciation of the artwork in question, rather than some superficial and effectively meaningless reaction based on your cultural biases and limited experience.
That won't fly with my clients. You provide a design, they agree to it, then you build it and it looks different in their browser? Well then you didn't* deliver what you sold.
Sucks to be you I guess, but not everyone has clients like that. Don't see why you can't just show them the version using basic web fonts, and then say that some browsers support showing headings (say) in this nicer font, and some don't. If they don't understand that it's time to find new clients.
Typography can be used to aid readability but overall it's used to make stuff look pretty. That may not be the sole purpose of typographic design but it is an overriding theme of the majority of fonts.
Having @font-face isn't suddenly going to mean that more readable fonts are used, nor even more emotively proper fonts
It does, however, make it possible in a way it wasn't before.
It is quite possible to set the font of websites with user stylesheets right now, though I agree browsers could make this easier, but you may completely miss part of the author's message if you do so.
Yes you do. All you really need is a serif font and a sans serif font. And frankly, in this case, less is more as consistency improves comprehension. Don't give web designers too much rope, or they'll hang themselves.
Less is a bore. Which sans and serif would you choose? Would it be the same as the ones I'd choose? The same as the ones everyone else would choose? If not who decides which two fonts to use? Or are you happy with whatever Microsoft decides is a good web font? Why not just have one font in one weight for all text anyway, why do we need a serif and a sans at all? After all, the style of text doesn't matter as long as its legible right?
Typefaces are like the tone, cadence and accent of a speaker - they subtly affect the message, and the words itself. Sometimes the delivery subtly changes the message, sometimes it's essential to understanding.
I'm sure you disagree, so please correct me. And use examples. Is the typography on slashdot appalling? Why? How could it be made better? I certainly don't have any trouble reading it, or any website I visit. How does it get any better than that?
Typography on the web misses lots of the subtle hints that have been used elsewhere for centuries, for example drop-caps, proper kerning (not letter-spacing which doesn't work on less than pixel spaces), proper bold and italic styles (not just slanted text), faces of fonts (not very easy with CSS), ligatures, indented paragraphs instead of the sophomoric line gap most sites use, etc.
Some of these things are nowadays possible in some browsers, but CSS has from the start not been very strong on type, which is I feel a loss, not something to be celebrated in happy ignorance of the history of written expression.
IE remains the most popular out there. If you're working on a commercial website, it is not viable to say "oh, fuck IE!", however much I'd like to.
Well, it's certainly the most used, I'm not sure about most popular.
Regarding catering to IE users, it's not viable to say 'oh fuck IE!', but it is viable to say 'oh well, IE users will not get the best styling, they'll get default fonts'. If there's a graceful way to fall back on other fonts (which there is), then @font-face can be used without IE supporting it.
I guess IE users will have to be happy with Georgia then. I see no reason IE should hold everyone else back, and @font-face is an awful lot better than the proposed MS alternative or the TypeKit solution in search of a problem mentioned in the ArsTechnica article.
The only downside to it is that foundries are dragging their feet trying to pretend that the font licenses are only for paper. Plenty of younger designers are not so blinkered though.
You change one css[sic] rule and all the logical kinds of content it applies to all change. [sic]this facilitiates[sic] accessibility and comprehension of a documents[sic] logical layout by the reader. [sic]presumably the latter desiderata is the real goal, not pretty looking documents. [sic]given that, there is a large benefit to users if web pages look a lot alike. it puts less burden on the end user to decipher the page and access it's[sic] content if qualtiatively[sic] different authors web pages dont[sic] differ from each other in too many ways.
CSS is meant to ensure that styles within a site are consistent and logical (though it still has many shortcomings in that regard), not to make sites across the web somehow conform to the same set of styles.
Designers use CSS to define the look of their page, and set the font, which affects (sometimes dramatically), the reader's perception and comprehension of the written content. If you view the look of the page as somehow completely separated from the style in which it is presented, you are falling into an old trap which holds that content is not at all affected by the form in which it is presented, that the medium does not affect the message. And if you think the only reason for changing fonts is 'pretty looking documents', you've misunderstood the function of typography.
You don't have to be a font nerd to decry the appalling typography that passes for acceptable on the web (which you are claiming is some sort of standard we should all adhere to), the lack of subtlety in the default fonts chosen and typography available, and the general philistinism which holds that online typography has nothing to learn from older uses of type and CSS 2.1 is good enough for everyone.
PS For someone who's so hot on accessibility and comprehension, you don't seem very keen on using the cues provided by the English language to improve comprehension (i.e. punctuation and capital letters).
It would prevent developers flooding the market with shoddy apps (I was thinking more like a limit of 10 per year or something) because it would impose a financial penalty for doing so. They wouldn't have to do anything save put a limit per developer account - if people choose to pay $99 again they're obviously serious about making money (and thus pleasing customers) and not just flooding the store with stuff that won't sell in the vague hope that some idiot will buy it.
Large companies are not the problem here, the problem is lone coders who think if they put enough rubbish on there, someone is bound to buy each thing at least once. At present you can pay $99 and then flood the iTunes store with as many useless throwaway apps as you like, including near duplicates for things like 'Call Sam', 'Call Henry' etc, which are the same app but with a different name.
Compare this to the situation with Intel or Microsoft.
People are not forced to use Intel, or Microsoft products, but those two companies have often in the past abused the widespread use of their products to try to encourage customers to use their products in another arena. That's abuse of a monopoly - note it doesn't require forcing people to use something (though it might), just deliberate use of overwhelming power in one market to try to affect another.
The rules change if you have a monopoly.
This is a scummy move by Apple - if they really wanted Palm Pre users not to get left with a sub-standard solution, they should have worked with Palm to provide a solution for those users of iTunes (i.e. explicitly offered to license a sync service to Palm), rather than trying to lock everyone into their own players. It's probably not illegal (though it might be if they are declared to have a monopoly in music stores), but it certainly sucks for everyone but Apple.
They're using their dominance of the music store market to try to shut out competing music player products.
There's a balance to be had between allowing everything and keeping out crap.
Unfortunately Apple's approval process is nowhere near that balance, and is moving further away from it. It doesn't keep out the crap, and cannot, as that's a very subjective judgement call, and not one that Apple tries to make - they ban apps for all sorts of silly reasons, but not because they are rubbish or useless (or we wouldn't have 100 flashlight apps).
Any non-automated approval process just isn't feasible when you have a worldwide store serving millions of people and 100,000 developers. This problem is only going to get worse, until Apple bows the inevitable and stops wasting their employees' and developers' time with this manual approval process.
What they really need to focus on is improving the ways to find the good stuff in their store - at present it's very difficult to discover apps by browsing or searching - there's no 'customers who bought this app also liked' or recommendation lists from other customers, or any sort of extended editors' choice sections within genres, and search throws up all sorts of mismatches and is being actively gamed by developers. They should be focussing on improving their store interface rather than wasting time trying to limit the apps (though a limit of x no of apps per developer would do a lot to help to weed out all the crappy duplicate apps out there).
If we must serve multiple formats with the video-tag how is it better than a single format with flash?
It doesn't require a binary plugin, which is not available on all platforms (Linux, Mobiles), and it exposes the video files so that users can actually download them if they wish, the HTML/javascript of the page can manipulate them, etc. Also, the code is simpler, and it encourages a situation where all the vendors eventually converge on one or two popular formats.
Intentionally breaking compatibility with IE would be an excellent way to ensure the project bombs and fades away as a footnote.
I doubt they'd intentionally break compatibility with IE, but if IE intentionally breaks compatibility with Google stuff, they don't have to care anymore, as there are plenty of viable alternatives. If you use IE and that happens, the correct people to complain to are Microsoft. The same couldn't be said when it had 90% market share, but IE is becoming less and less important.
Another excellent way to ensure failure would be to support _only_ web apps or apps written to Chrome's API.
Looks like this is exactly what they intend (only web apps, though not only ones written to Chrome's API, only ones written to HTML5), so I guess they've failed already, for people with your requirements for a netbook.
Second bit of advice: if you can't run Openoffice on it, it's a toy.
You are again mistaking your requirements for those of most people. Many people would be happier with google docs than open office, so long as it worked offline too.
PS I'd drop the 'toy' name-calling if you want people to take you seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
So they're pissed off, and charging the freeloaders a fee.
You mean they're pissed off, and trying to charge the freeloaders a fee - soon enough, they'll discover that the freeloaders have no interest in paying a fee (they are freeloaders after all), don't have the money anyway.
Worse than that, no-one has no real need of the AP service, such as it is, because the internet is much better at distributing information than the AP is. Nobody needs AP any more, they don't add anything to the data they process; in many ways they bastardise it, and adding DRM flags to content isn't going to make that essential problem go away.
If a newspaper, or even a journalist, wants to automate feeds of their stories or even sell feeds of their info to others, they can do that over the internet with very little fuss, and vice versa (RSS). People already do this, without the AP taking their cut, and they simply don't need any broken-by-design licensing system from AP.
Does SumatraPDF and the rest remotely support the following PDF standards?
Do we need or want it to? I know I don't. PDFs are a useful format for interchange and storage of documents while preserving formatting. I don't use SumatraPDF, but I imagine it covers a subset of features which covers reading most PDFs in existence (like the reader I use).
I don't want embedded flash, or any of the other bullshit features listed on that page as standards. The first one (for example) claims to support the long-term preservation of digital documents - perhaps they use extra long-lasting bits to store the data? The PDF explaining the standard is full of obvious advice which has nothing to do with PDFs at all, and some features which belong more properly in CMS software for all documents, like signing or user tracking....
If you do feel you need those sort of misfeatures then please feel free to suffer and use the Adobe Acrobat/Adobe Reader, but I'll continue to avoid it - because it is an invasive, resource hogging, security risk which is more about getting Adobe a foothold on every desktop than it is about facilitating document exchange/storage.
The PDF format is useful. Adobe's attempts to take over everything on the corporate desktop with it are not.
However, in Wolfrum Alpha's case, you contribute no original content (a search string).
On the contrary, the search string is the only original thing in the entire transaction.
ATV has already delivered cargo to the station, the shuttle is not required for that.
Soyuz has already proved more than capable of shuttling crew, so the shuttle is not required for that either.
The Shuttle really isn't required (except as a sop to NASA's pride) once the station is built and operational, and trying to extend its lifetime by yet another expensive mission leads me to think that NASA really has lost its way in internal politics and power struggles.
The shuttle should have been shut down years ago and a more efficient alternative explored when it became apparent it was a whole bundle of contradictory solutions looking for a problem. It is well past retirement age.
For now, you're right. However, it's not the popular response that matters. What Apple is doing is eroding the good will they had from the technical consumers. They're moving over to Android and RIM phones by droves. Now, that doesn't matter to Apple immediately.
Couldn't agree more. Even if this doesn't have an immediate effect, the cumulative effect of a series of stories all about Apple fucking up their approvals process or using it to stamp on rivals is very damaging.
Until they just forget about trying to filter apps on the store, this sort of thing will continue. No-one cares why they do it (AT&T told us to won't cut any ice), but customers certainly do care if it appears their phone won't let them do stuff that is available on other phones, just because of Apple's arbitrary decisions.
The system they have hurts the confidence of developers and customers, and has to go - at some point it'll just break with the volume of submissions. They could have some sort of automated process and cap on submissions, but the system they have presently is pointless, expensive, and puts them in a new difficult situation every week.
Well, which is it, are fossil fuels going to run out soon, and therefore aren't actually present in sufficient quantities to present much of a threat, or is there way too much carbon locked in fossil fuels for our continued health, and we should get off them before we exhaust the supply?
Your dichotomy is a false one, nice rhetorical trick though. Fossil fuels are going to run out soon and are what we have left still unused would be bad for our environment (local and global). It's not an either/or choice. Ergo, we should start looking for alternatives.
Coal file plants and our use of oil in cars causes local pollution (massive pollution places like China, and parts of the US like LA), and are probably exacerbating global warming, so we may as well start looking for alternatives before we run out of things like oil and coal or they become prohibitively expensive.
Given the attitude of most of the human race though, we'll wait until the long term effects are irreversible, and the supply of handy fuel is almost exhausted, before we decide that it might have been a good idea 20 years ago to start looking at alternatives.
Well, the question is, does the increased fuel efficiency actually pay for itself?
Actually, no, that's not the question at all. The question is what are you going to do when oil is permanently above 100USD a barrel and climbing, or worse, constantly volatile? What are you going to do in 50 years when the supply of oil is tightly constrained and wars are being fought over supplies? We've had an easy ride so far due to fossil fuels just lying around with a lot of stored energy which is easy to release, but that's not going to last forever, and even if it were we'd be creating massive pollution problems (see China and India currently) if we stuck to things like coal power plants long term, quite apart from climate impacts.
The thing is, the more efficient you are, the more complex you are. The more complex you are, the more you cost.
I'm afraid you've just made this connection up. What examples make you feel this three-way relation is universally true as you assert?
Many things are complex and yet inefficient, and vice versa. To pick an example from power generation - photovoltaic cells are at present complex, and yet inefficient, whereas solar water heating is very simple (tube with water/salt mixture in it), and very efficient. Modern computers are more complex and efficient than the space shuttle ones, and yet cost less. etc. etc.
Just because new tech tends to be complex and costly does not mean it will always be so, and there is no overall 'law' which states that efficiency == complexity == cost, and your statistics are meaningless as they are predicated on this assumption.
Even if we stopped now, the glaciers are still going to melt.
We don't actually know with any certainty what's going to happen, save that it probably won't be pretty. We also know the different of a few degrees rise in temperature could mean metres in sea levels, and we have an awful lot of useful coastal land that would put underwater. As I have pointed out, there are many other reasons to stop using dirty fuels like coal anyway, quite apart from greenhouse gases and climate change. It might cost a little more in the short term, but in the long term it makes a lot of sense to diversify sources of energy and use ones with the least environmental impact.
admit it would suck to blow all the billions and trillions of dollars only to find out there ain't a damned thing you can do
There are many reasons to migrate from fossil fuels, the most compelling being that they're going to run out very soon. The changing climate is also a worry (which we wouldn't want to encourage to change faster than it already is), but it's not the only reason, and the money spent on migrating to alternative energy sources certainly wouldn't be wasted.
You may not like the fact that there is a large group of people that refuse to watch 1984. The message of 1984 IS important. How do we reach them?
Some ideas cannot be dumbed down or made comfortable.
Neither Equilibrium nor V for Vendetta deal with the same ideas as 1984 in any comparable depth. They're a crude caricature which loses most of the insight of the original.
The movie is just so bland. It's a movie about the message, one of those artsy political movies that doesn't need any semblance of flow. The people who watch it will already be well versed in the mantra it preaches. However, V for Vendetta and Equilibrium both set out to entertain with an undertone of the 1984 mantra. This lets people take in the meaning without having to put forth any thought.
By flow, do you mean explosions and special effects, or did you have something else in mind? Given the two appalling films you compared it to, it's not surprising you switched off after half an hour, but I don't suppose you've even read the book? It's not necessary for understanding the film, but it might help (as would watching the entire film instead of the first 30 minutes). I hope you realise that the cinematography and sets were intentionally bland to reflect the world it is set in? That it is not in fact 'preaching a mantra' whatever that means, but is remarkably ambivalent about drawing a firm conclusion (like the novel), other than that totalitarianism in all its forms is inhuman?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'movie about the message', but there's far more going on in 1984 than in either of the films you compared it to, and it functions on a lot of different levels, not just a didactic one. The script is pretty good too - in comparison to something like Equilibrium which I suspect has more gun-shots than words. I suppose 1984 is not as slick as the newer films in terms of costume, camera-work, explosions, and implausible acrobatics while firing small-arms, but it has far more interest and long term appeal than those films, and far more depth than much of the flummery which passes for entertainment nowadays.
PS You don't put forth thought or preach a mantra, it's impossible to receive propaganda (unless it's in the mail), albeit cannot be used at the end of a sentence, and latter has two motherfucking t's.
PPS Get off my lawn.
Well done. I've made 0.5% a day, every day, including last year during the crash. Guess who has made more money, at roughly 200 trading days a year?
That's nice for you. Your statement was still wrong. I think you meant in the year 2000, instead of since the year 2000, which completely changes the meaning of the sentence, and reinforces the fact that timing is very important. If you meant since, you shouldn't have made any money recently.
I only mentioned the increase over the last 6 months because it contradicted your incorrect statement, not because it is in some way remarkable (it is in fact quite unremarkable, which was the point).
80% of day traders lose their money on the stock market. EVERYONE who invested since the year 2000 HAS NOT MADE MONEY on the stock market if they "bought and held", with the exception of a VERY few stocks.
I beg to differ. I've made around 20% over the last 6 months with buy and hold. Perhaps you meant anyone who invested in the year 2000, which is quite true, but a very different assertion. Day traders are very different from buy and hold so I'm not sure why you're comparing the two, it's really quite misleading, unless you're trying to say that virtually no-one makes money.
The biggest factor in making money is, in my opinion, timing, rather than what you buy - given that the value of stocks is only tenuously related to the underlying value of a company, and entire sectors crash on bad news from one player in that sector, trying to pick certain stocks on statistics which are highly vulnerable to manipulation and available in advance to many other players, is really quite hopeless, so if you believed the market to be rational, particularly in the short term, perhaps it is best to give up hope now.
This technique appears to be taking that maxim (timing is all) to an extreme; by cutting the time down to the bare minimum, they can make a lot of money in a very short time. Obviously for those without large resources, the long game is best, but it is still a matter of timing - if you chose to compare 2003 -> 2007, you'd find that it was virtually impossible not to make money on stocks, and conversely, from say 2007 -> 2009, very difficult to make money with simple investments, no matter what you invested in.
The pricing of stock markets is always going to be (and always has been) irrational, because people are irrational. The rational market and a rational price is a myth, one we're not even close to, and I think it's something that gets in the way of reasoned analysis of markets.
I do think however that markets should be regulated with the aim of ensuring that investments are made for the long term and in the interests of both the investors and the companies in the market. *Not* in the interests of short-term traders or professional traders. Unfortunately, because there's a lot of money involved, that is unlikely.
A work by an anonymous author is no less creative or less beautiful than a work by a known author.
You can look at plenty of Roman or middle ages art created by people lost to the ages and still understand their culture and reflect on how things were back then.
It's not a question of art being less creative or beautiful - this is about how we can understand and appreciate art (or any created object from the past), which is simply not possible without some clues as to the intention, background, culture etc etc of the author. The beauty is not after all something which exists in a vacuum, but something which can only be appreciated when we understand what a painting is, why it was created, and what those marks on the surface might mean.
The history surrounding art is a bit like a language that we have to learn to speak before interpreting it. Of course we can get by with a rudimentary understanding based on our current culture (which shares some aspects with many artworks), but trying to make art completely anonymous is antithetical to understanding.
In your examples plenty of information is available about the likely background of the creator, their intentions, and the culture (you have mentioned two cultures where we have a lot of art without a specific creator, but with lots of information on the likely background of a creator, their social background etc). The identity of the creator is just one factor which helps to guide us in interpreting art. Completely anonymous art would be stripped of all of those hints, and we'd be left with nothing but a series of marks, with no signposts as to how to interpret them.
If we can destroy the concept of "creator", that's "good" IMO.
Except that knowing the creator, their milieu, culture, and intentions is often vital to a proper understanding and appreciation of the artwork in question, rather than some superficial and effectively meaningless reaction based on your cultural biases and limited experience.
That won't fly with my clients. You provide a design, they agree to it, then you build it and it looks different in their browser? Well then you didn't* deliver what you sold.
Sucks to be you I guess, but not everyone has clients like that. Don't see why you can't just show them the version using basic web fonts, and then say that some browsers support showing headings (say) in this nicer font, and some don't. If they don't understand that it's time to find new clients.
Typography can be used to aid readability but overall it's used to make stuff look pretty. That may not be the sole purpose of typographic design but it is an overriding theme of the majority of fonts.
iseesoifwedont useanytypographicdevices tomakeourtextlegible thenitwillallbethesametoyou ithinkiwouldliketopropose anewultrmodernstyleofwriting withoutallthistypographynonsense nooneneedsspacesfontstypographypunctuationspeeling oranyofthatfancygumfthatjustgetsinthewayofcomprehension anyway
Having @font-face isn't suddenly going to mean that more readable fonts are used, nor even more emotively proper fonts
It does, however, make it possible in a way it wasn't before.
It is quite possible to set the font of websites with user stylesheets right now, though I agree browsers could make this easier, but you may completely miss part of the author's message if you do so.
Yes you do. All you really need is a serif font and a sans serif font. And frankly, in this case, less is more as consistency improves comprehension. Don't give web designers too much rope, or they'll hang themselves.
Less is a bore. Which sans and serif would you choose? Would it be the same as the ones I'd choose? The same as the ones everyone else would choose? If not who decides which two fonts to use? Or are you happy with whatever Microsoft decides is a good web font? Why not just have one font in one weight for all text anyway, why do we need a serif and a sans at all? After all, the style of text doesn't matter as long as its legible right?
Typefaces are like the tone, cadence and accent of a speaker - they subtly affect the message, and the words itself. Sometimes the delivery subtly changes the message, sometimes it's essential to understanding.
I'm sure you disagree, so please correct me. And use examples. Is the typography on slashdot appalling? Why? How could it be made better? I certainly don't have any trouble reading it, or any website I visit. How does it get any better than that?
Typography on the web misses lots of the subtle hints that have been used elsewhere for centuries, for example drop-caps, proper kerning (not letter-spacing which doesn't work on less than pixel spaces), proper bold and italic styles (not just slanted text), faces of fonts (not very easy with CSS), ligatures, indented paragraphs instead of the sophomoric line gap most sites use, etc.
Some of these things are nowadays possible in some browsers, but CSS has from the start not been very strong on type, which is I feel a loss, not something to be celebrated in happy ignorance of the history of written expression.
IE remains the most popular out there. If you're working on a commercial website, it is not viable to say "oh, fuck IE!", however much I'd like to.
Well, it's certainly the most used, I'm not sure about most popular.
Regarding catering to IE users, it's not viable to say 'oh fuck IE!', but it is viable to say 'oh well, IE users will not get the best styling, they'll get default fonts'. If there's a graceful way to fall back on other fonts (which there is), then @font-face can be used without IE supporting it.
I guess IE users will have to be happy with Georgia then. I see no reason IE should hold everyone else back, and @font-face is an awful lot better than the proposed MS alternative or the TypeKit solution in search of a problem mentioned in the ArsTechnica article.
The only downside to it is that foundries are dragging their feet trying to pretend that the font licenses are only for paper. Plenty of younger designers are not so blinkered though.
You change one css[sic] rule and all the logical kinds of content it applies to all change. [sic]this facilitiates[sic] accessibility and comprehension of a documents[sic] logical layout by the reader. [sic]presumably the latter desiderata is the real goal, not pretty looking documents. [sic]given that, there is a large benefit to users if web pages look a lot alike. it puts less burden on the end user to decipher the page and access it's[sic] content if qualtiatively[sic] different authors web pages dont[sic] differ from each other in too many ways.
CSS is meant to ensure that styles within a site are consistent and logical (though it still has many shortcomings in that regard), not to make sites across the web somehow conform to the same set of styles.
Designers use CSS to define the look of their page, and set the font, which affects (sometimes dramatically), the reader's perception and comprehension of the written content. If you view the look of the page as somehow completely separated from the style in which it is presented, you are falling into an old trap which holds that content is not at all affected by the form in which it is presented, that the medium does not affect the message. And if you think the only reason for changing fonts is 'pretty looking documents', you've misunderstood the function of typography.
You don't have to be a font nerd to decry the appalling typography that passes for acceptable on the web (which you are claiming is some sort of standard we should all adhere to), the lack of subtlety in the default fonts chosen and typography available, and the general philistinism which holds that online typography has nothing to learn from older uses of type and CSS 2.1 is good enough for everyone.
PS For someone who's so hot on accessibility and comprehension, you don't seem very keen on using the cues provided by the English language to improve comprehension (i.e. punctuation and capital letters).
It would prevent developers flooding the market with shoddy apps (I was thinking more like a limit of 10 per year or something) because it would impose a financial penalty for doing so. They wouldn't have to do anything save put a limit per developer account - if people choose to pay $99 again they're obviously serious about making money (and thus pleasing customers) and not just flooding the store with stuff that won't sell in the vague hope that some idiot will buy it.
Large companies are not the problem here, the problem is lone coders who think if they put enough rubbish on there, someone is bound to buy each thing at least once. At present you can pay $99 and then flood the iTunes store with as many useless throwaway apps as you like, including near duplicates for things like 'Call Sam', 'Call Henry' etc, which are the same app but with a different name.
Compare this to the situation with Intel or Microsoft.
People are not forced to use Intel, or Microsoft products, but those two companies have often in the past abused the widespread use of their products to try to encourage customers to use their products in another arena. That's abuse of a monopoly - note it doesn't require forcing people to use something (though it might), just deliberate use of overwhelming power in one market to try to affect another.
The rules change if you have a monopoly.
This is a scummy move by Apple - if they really wanted Palm Pre users not to get left with a sub-standard solution, they should have worked with Palm to provide a solution for those users of iTunes (i.e. explicitly offered to license a sync service to Palm), rather than trying to lock everyone into their own players. It's probably not illegal (though it might be if they are declared to have a monopoly in music stores), but it certainly sucks for everyone but Apple.
They're using their dominance of the music store market to try to shut out competing music player products.
There's a balance to be had between allowing everything and keeping out crap.
Unfortunately Apple's approval process is nowhere near that balance, and is moving further away from it. It doesn't keep out the crap, and cannot, as that's a very subjective judgement call, and not one that Apple tries to make - they ban apps for all sorts of silly reasons, but not because they are rubbish or useless (or we wouldn't have 100 flashlight apps).
Any non-automated approval process just isn't feasible when you have a worldwide store serving millions of people and 100,000 developers. This problem is only going to get worse, until Apple bows the inevitable and stops wasting their employees' and developers' time with this manual approval process.
What they really need to focus on is improving the ways to find the good stuff in their store - at present it's very difficult to discover apps by browsing or searching - there's no 'customers who bought this app also liked' or recommendation lists from other customers, or any sort of extended editors' choice sections within genres, and search throws up all sorts of mismatches and is being actively gamed by developers. They should be focussing on improving their store interface rather than wasting time trying to limit the apps (though a limit of x no of apps per developer would do a lot to help to weed out all the crappy duplicate apps out there).
If we must serve multiple formats with the video-tag how is it better than a single format with flash?
It doesn't require a binary plugin, which is not available on all platforms (Linux, Mobiles), and it exposes the video files so that users can actually download them if they wish, the HTML/javascript of the page can manipulate them, etc. Also, the code is simpler, and it encourages a situation where all the vendors eventually converge on one or two popular formats.
Intentionally breaking compatibility with IE would be an excellent way to ensure the project bombs and fades away as a footnote.
I doubt they'd intentionally break compatibility with IE, but if IE intentionally breaks compatibility with Google stuff, they don't have to care anymore, as there are plenty of viable alternatives. If you use IE and that happens, the correct people to complain to are Microsoft. The same couldn't be said when it had 90% market share, but IE is becoming less and less important.
Another excellent way to ensure failure would be to support _only_ web apps or apps written to Chrome's API.
Looks like this is exactly what they intend (only web apps, though not only ones written to Chrome's API, only ones written to HTML5), so I guess they've failed already, for people with your requirements for a netbook.
Second bit of advice: if you can't run Openoffice on it, it's a toy.
You are again mistaking your requirements for those of most people. Many people would be happier with google docs than open office, so long as it worked offline too.
PS I'd drop the 'toy' name-calling if you want people to take you seriously.