Here are the UI annoyances I referred to in my previous reply to you (which is here).
The links following the title is a bad idea. The site made its community used to all links being in the text of the story, but someone decided that a link should go in the title. See this screenshot, and look at where "(phoronix.com)" is? That is really annoying. Make it go back to where we are used to it (in the story text).
In this screenshot the background color is dark when the mouse moves to the drop down list. That is distracting and obscures the choices. The background color should remain white with no change when the mouse is moved in, as in this screenshot.
The community already has a say (or sorts) on what goes on the front page, by voting on the firehose.
Perhaps it can be tweaked to give more weight for the community input.
But in all cases, editorial control should be maintained by a few who have varied outlooks. The front page should never be totally automated, because that is a recipe for ruining the site, as has happened to others (e.g. Digg)
I have been a regular visitor/commenter on Slashdot for over 16 years.
There are some quick fixes to be done, both technology and editorial.
- This site is about one thing: discussion! Not the articles, not the editorializing. Discussion is why everyone comes here. The stories are just jumping points for discussions.
- Fix Unicode. It is 2016 now, and it took a motivated programmer on SoylentNews a moderate effort to fix Unicode in Slashcode. Go get the fix from there.
- Stop linking to sites that don't display right with Javascript and/or Ad blockers. We are nerds here, and most of us disable Javascript and have ad blockers. Sites like Forbes is not welcome here, and daily posts by StartsWithABang are frustrating.
- Move back the main link to the article from the story title, down in the text. The colors make this link all but invisible, and we get side discussions of "there is no link in the story", "yes, there is, it is in the title", and these are unnecessary and frustrating.
- Freeze any UI changes. Do not even go back to the pre-beta version of the site. Just freeze it to what has been running for many months and users have gotten accustomed to. The exception is invisible links, and when foreground and background are the same color when mousing over.
Actually, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao did what they did because they were athiests.
Errr, no. And as someone who has studied Pol Pot a bit (due to family connections with some of his victims) it's clear that his atheism was not a significant motivating force in his rampage. And it's clear that neither Stalin nor Mao did anything due to their lack of belief
That is not the point.
No one is saying they did this because they atheists.
The point is that despite their lack of religion, they committed atrocities that are as bad as, and sometimes worse, than those committed in the name of religion.
If you go back to an age where polytheism was widespread, you will still see conquests and genocide. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans had the habit of equating their own gods with gods from other cultures around them. Despite all this, they still fought bitter wars and conquered territories,..etc, like what was done in the Middle Ages and what is done now...
So, religion, or the lack of it, are not the cause of atrocities. It is humans who are the cause of it.
The new liberal government promised evidence based policies. One thing they promised is to reinstate the long form census which the Conservatives axed on false premises back in 2010.
So this is just undoing the damage done by right wingers...
Disregard the sources above for a moment, not known for being the most objective. However, look at the photos. They do show what appears to be shrapnel piercing the body from the inside out. Gives credence to the bomb theory.
Other indicators:
- USA satellite is said to detect a heat flash, probably from an explosion (could be a bomb or could be fuel tanks exploding) - Egypt replaces the airport manager (then say, not this was not replacing, it was a promotion. Really? Days after this incident)? - UK and USA say terrorist group chatter confirms it.
My biggest concern is that the Liberals and the NDP are going to split the vote and allow the Conservatives to capture enough seats to win the election.
That is my fear too. Would be really disappointing to have Harper for one more term.
The real problem in Canada is the consolation of power in the executive branch, specifically in the PM office.
I fully agree with this.
The Canadian system has the Prime Minister being the leader of the party with the most seats in parliament. The parliament is not only a legislature, but also an oversight body over the executive branch. But in our Canadian system, parliament can't be critical of the PM with him being the boss of the majority of the seats. Moreover, he appoints people to the Senate. This means that he is an emperor for his entire term.
Harper just made it so evident how it can play out, but the system is broken with no checks and balances like they have south of the border.
Fixing it will be a long haul process of getting the constitution amended, with provinces agreeing to these changes, just like any of the proposed reforms to the senate.
In theory, yes you are correct. For this specific case, it is unlikely.
I detailed that in my comment.
The professor who did the research says that it is not a palimpsest, i.e. the parchment has not been reused and rewritten on, e.g. like the Sanaa 1 Manuscript, which is a palimpsest, with older writing on it.
In the case of the Birmingham manuscript, I doubt very much that someone created parchment and it was left blank for a century.
Besides, the use of the Hizaji script shows that it is within 50 years or so from the start of Islam. After that date, the Kufi script dominated almost all Islamic writing for a century or two.
The parchment carbon dating gives a range on when the animal (sheep, goat, camel) died, not when the actual writing was done. But it does establishe an "parchment made no later than X" and a "writing can't be earlier than Y" scenario.
Muhammed died in 632 AD, and the parchment is dated up to 645 AD (latest). So it is most likely a copy written by a companion of Muhammed, possibly in his lifetime, or shortly after.
What this dating refutes beyond a doubt are the now discredited theories about Muhammed being a mythical figure, and the Quran invented in the late 7th century. For example, the Hagarene theory by Crone and Cook and the Nevo-Koren Crossroads to Islam theory are untenable now. This manuscript is earlier than all these theories claim.
It is written in the Hijazi script with no dots or diacritics. This script originated in Hijaz (Arabian Peninsula west coast), and was dominant in the few decades following the death of Muhammed, before the Kufic script dominated (from Iraq). The amazing thing is that I can read most of it, almost 14 centuries later!
By the way, I contacted Dr. David Thomas, one of the researchers, to ask if the ink was carbon dated, or just the parchment. He said just the parchment, so as not to affect the writing. I also asked if this was a palimpsest (older parchment that was washed and written over at a later date), and he said that it is not, since there are markings that show in that case.
So, this is as early a written copy as can be.
The interesting part is that the 645 AD date pre-dates the standardization of the Quran that was done around 650 AD by the 3rd successor to Muhammed, Caliph Uthman. Research shows minor variations, but nothing significant.
Here is his full reply:
1. Has the testing methodology taking into account the ink as well as the parchment?
DT: No, only a tiny corner of the parchment. The test involves the destruction of the object, and we did not want to lose any text.
2. The reason I ask about the dating of the ink is this: What is the possibility that this manuscript is a palimpsest? Could the parchment be indeed from 645AD, but the ink was washed away and the parchment recycled at a later date?
DT: There are usually signs of underwriting in palimpsests, though there are none here. It is theoretically possible that the ink, and therefore, the Qur'an, was written on parchment that had been prepared earlier, but our assumption is that this parchment was prepared expressly for this Qur'an and therefore the writing would have been applied very soon after the surface was prepared.
3. Caliph Othman's unification of the Quran was around 650 AD (he died in 656 AD). Has there been any text variance analysis on this document to see if it is a pre-Othmanic or post-Othmanic variant of the Quran text? For example, similar to the work on Sanaa 1 Manuscript.
DT: This analysis was the subject of Alba Fedeli's PhD thesis (which involved the research that led to the discovery of this date). There are some minor variants from the standard 'Uthmanic text, though in these fragments nothing significant.
In later emails he says that Fedeli's thesis is due to be published soon.
Like some old timers around here, I was using UNIX professionally since 1987, and had to use a modem over metered calls from 1989 to learn more about UNIX.
I heard about Minix, and was following the Usenet group for it, when I saw a post by a student in Finland called Linus. It was not ready for installation on PCs.
I looked for other options, such as the various UNIX SVR4s from the likes of Dell and Everex. They required an expensive tape drive. CD-ROMs were not yet popular in the early 1990s.
Then in 1995, I bought a CD set which has a bunch of Linux distros, from Walnut Creek Software. The set included Slackware, Red Hat, and Debian. That was a life changing moment.
Fast forward a couple of decades, I am a full time consultant on open source (mainly Drupal and LAMP), running on top of Linux (mainly Ubuntu Server LTS). And I am typing this from my main laptop, which runs KDE Ubuntu.
Thank you Linus, and thank you Ian, and a few thousand more people who made all this possible.
And before SQL, there was COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language), which was meant for regular people to program computers instead of requiring programmers writing in assembler...
I have the same experience. For many months now, Gmail has been overzealous in marking stuff as spam. Stuff like daily emails from servers I manage with log digests. Emails about pending security package upgrades. Even when I specifically say that a certain subject string (e.g. "logwatch") is to be excluded, Gmail ignores that rule. It has been very frustrating trying to exclude stuff via filters in Gmail.
Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia are signatories in the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). So, it would be very unlikely that either would start developing nuclear weapons now.
The general consensus is that it was a stupid move to sign for that while Israel, a neighbor and foe, did not sign the same terms.
My bad. Just looked at lshw, and it is 2009 not 2008. But the point stands: if it is fast enough then why replace it? Linux makes it resource efficient, and no bloat, so it is fast enough.
I am typing this on a 2008 Toshiba laptop. Nothing fancy. Intel Core2 Duo T6500 @ 2.10GHz. Upgraded the memory to the maximum of 8GB a year or two ago, and that made it fast enough. Of course it runs Linux (Kubuntu 14.04 LTS, yes KDE, not Gnome nor Unity). As long as it does the job, and fast enough, why replace it?
Look at what was posted in the same thread about a serious bug in systemd that was not fixed by systemd developers, nor in Fedora, but was fixed first in Ubuntu, then in Debian 8.1. A mature well tested system should NOT have those kind of issues, which systemd is not.
Slashdot Mirror
Here are the UI annoyances I referred to in my previous reply to you (which is here).
The links following the title is a bad idea. The site made its community used to all links being in the text of the story, but someone decided that a link should go in the title. See this screenshot, and look at where "(phoronix.com)" is? That is really annoying. Make it go back to where we are used to it (in the story text).
In this screenshot the background color is dark when the mouse moves to the drop down list. That is distracting and obscures the choices. The background color should remain white with no change when the mouse is moved in, as in this screenshot.
The community already has a say (or sorts) on what goes on the front page, by voting on the firehose.
Perhaps it can be tweaked to give more weight for the community input.
But in all cases, editorial control should be maintained by a few who have varied outlooks. The front page should never be totally automated, because that is a recipe for ruining the site, as has happened to others (e.g. Digg)
I have been a regular visitor/commenter on Slashdot for over 16 years.
There are some quick fixes to be done, both technology and editorial.
- This site is about one thing: discussion! Not the articles, not the editorializing. Discussion is why everyone comes here. The stories are just jumping points for discussions.
- Fix Unicode. It is 2016 now, and it took a motivated programmer on SoylentNews a moderate effort to fix Unicode in Slashcode. Go get the fix from there.
- Stop linking to sites that don't display right with Javascript and/or Ad blockers. We are nerds here, and most of us disable Javascript and have ad blockers. Sites like Forbes is not welcome here, and daily posts by StartsWithABang are frustrating.
- Move back the main link to the article from the story title, down in the text. The colors make this link all but invisible, and we get side discussions of "there is no link in the story", "yes, there is, it is in the title", and these are unnecessary and frustrating.
- Freeze any UI changes. Do not even go back to the pre-beta version of the site. Just freeze it to what has been running for many months and users have gotten accustomed to. The exception is invisible links, and when foreground and background are the same color when mousing over.
Will post more if I think of some.
Not 5 centuries ...
The earth has been known to be round for at least 22 centuries.
Eratosthenes, proved it by measuring the circumference of the earth around 240 BC.
Actually, Neil DeGrasse Tyson's predecessor, Carl Sagan explains it very well in this Cosmos video .
Sorry for the misstep there.
I meant that he is wrong, even if he said as much.
That is not the point.
No one is saying they did this because they atheists.
The point is that despite their lack of religion, they committed atrocities that are as bad as, and sometimes worse, than those committed in the name of religion.
If you go back to an age where polytheism was widespread, you will still see conquests and genocide. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans had the habit of equating their own gods with gods from other cultures around them. Despite all this, they still fought bitter wars and conquered territories, ..etc, like what was done in the Middle Ages and what is done now ...
So, religion, or the lack of it, are not the cause of atrocities. It is humans who are the cause of it.
Just a backgrounder ...
For the past 9+ years in Canada, we had a Conservative government (right wing ideologues).
They wanted to eliminate inconvenient truths that are against their ideologies, so they started a war on data and a war on science.
Here is a recent TV program explaining how despicable this is:
War on Data
War on Science
The new liberal government promised evidence based policies. One thing they promised is to reinstate the long form census which the Conservatives axed on false premises back in 2010.
So this is just undoing the damage done by right wingers ...
This is a Daily Mail article quoting Pravda, a Russian newspaper.
Disregard the sources above for a moment, not known for being the most objective. However, look at the photos. They do show what appears to be shrapnel piercing the body from the inside out. Gives credence to the bomb theory.
Other indicators:
- USA satellite is said to detect a heat flash, probably from an explosion (could be a bomb or could be fuel tanks exploding)
- Egypt replaces the airport manager (then say, not this was not replacing, it was a promotion. Really? Days after this incident)?
- UK and USA say terrorist group chatter confirms it.
It has been my experience for a decade or so that everything works with Linux.
In our household, we have three laptops, all working fine with Linux.
One is Dell, and two are Toshibas. All are 6-7 years old.
None came with Linux pre-installed. All ran fine with Kubuntu LTS. Everything works, sound, WiFi.
What does not work are the multimedia buttons (a button may work, e.g. Mute, but the ones next to it would not, e.g. Play, Stop, ...etc.)
That is my fear too. Would be really disappointing to have Harper for one more term.
I fully agree with this.
The Canadian system has the Prime Minister being the leader of the party with the most seats in parliament. The parliament is not only a legislature, but also an oversight body over the executive branch. But in our Canadian system, parliament can't be critical of the PM with him being the boss of the majority of the seats. Moreover, he appoints people to the Senate. This means that he is an emperor for his entire term.
Harper just made it so evident how it can play out, but the system is broken with no checks and balances like they have south of the border.
Fixing it will be a long haul process of getting the constitution amended, with provinces agreeing to these changes, just like any of the proposed reforms to the senate.
In theory, yes you are correct. For this specific case, it is unlikely.
I detailed that in my comment.
The professor who did the research says that it is not a palimpsest, i.e. the parchment has not been reused and rewritten on, e.g. like the Sanaa 1 Manuscript, which is a palimpsest, with older writing on it.
In the case of the Birmingham manuscript, I doubt very much that someone created parchment and it was left blank for a century.
Besides, the use of the Hizaji script shows that it is within 50 years or so from the start of Islam. After that date, the Kufi script dominated almost all Islamic writing for a century or two.
The article and summary are bogus.
The parchment carbon dating gives a range on when the animal (sheep, goat, camel) died, not when the actual writing was done. But it does establishe an "parchment made no later than X" and a "writing can't be earlier than Y" scenario.
Muhammed died in 632 AD, and the parchment is dated up to 645 AD (latest). So it is most likely a copy written by a companion of Muhammed, possibly in his lifetime, or shortly after.
What this dating refutes beyond a doubt are the now discredited theories about Muhammed being a mythical figure, and the Quran invented in the late 7th century. For example, the Hagarene theory by Crone and Cook and the Nevo-Koren Crossroads to Islam theory are untenable now. This manuscript is earlier than all these theories claim.
It is written in the Hijazi script with no dots or diacritics. This script originated in Hijaz (Arabian Peninsula west coast), and was dominant in the few decades following the death of Muhammed, before the Kufic script dominated (from Iraq). The amazing thing is that I can read most of it, almost 14 centuries later!
By the way, I contacted Dr. David Thomas, one of the researchers, to ask if the ink was carbon dated, or just the parchment. He said just the parchment, so as not to affect the writing. I also asked if this was a palimpsest (older parchment that was washed and written over at a later date), and he said that it is not, since there are markings that show in that case.
So, this is as early a written copy as can be.
The interesting part is that the 645 AD date pre-dates the standardization of the Quran that was done around 650 AD by the 3rd successor to Muhammed, Caliph Uthman. Research shows minor variations, but nothing significant.
Here is his full reply:
In later emails he says that Fedeli's thesis is due to be published soon.
Like some old timers around here, I was using UNIX professionally since 1987, and had to use a modem over metered calls from 1989 to learn more about UNIX.
I heard about Minix, and was following the Usenet group for it, when I saw a post by a student in Finland called Linus. It was not ready for installation on PCs.
I looked for other options, such as the various UNIX SVR4s from the likes of Dell and Everex. They required an expensive tape drive. CD-ROMs were not yet popular in the early 1990s.
Then in 1995, I bought a CD set which has a bunch of Linux distros, from Walnut Creek Software. The set included Slackware, Red Hat, and Debian. That was a life changing moment.
Fast forward a couple of decades, I am a full time consultant on open source (mainly Drupal and LAMP), running on top of Linux (mainly Ubuntu Server LTS). And I am typing this from my main laptop, which runs KDE Ubuntu.
Thank you Linus, and thank you Ian, and a few thousand more people who made all this possible.
And before SQL, there was COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language), which was meant for regular people to program computers instead of requiring programmers writing in assembler ...
Mod parent up more!
If you use an LTS distro, then stick with its release schedule.
This is currently 3 years for the desktop, and 5 years for servers.
I have been sticking to this schedule and it works really really well!
I have the same experience. For many months now, Gmail has been overzealous in marking stuff as spam. Stuff like daily emails from servers I manage with log digests. Emails about pending security package upgrades. Even when I specifically say that a certain subject string (e.g. "logwatch") is to be excluded, Gmail ignores that rule. It has been very frustrating trying to exclude stuff via filters in Gmail.
Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia are signatories in the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). So, it would be very unlikely that either would start developing nuclear weapons now.
The general consensus is that it was a stupid move to sign for that while Israel, a neighbor and foe, did not sign the same terms.
Quod licet Iovis, non licet bovis ...
What is legal for Jupiter, is not legal for an ox ...
Many years ago, I wrote an article on Arabic and Islamic themes in Frank Herbert's Dune. It includes many etymological info on terms used in Dune.
Hope some of you enjoy it.
My bad. Just looked at lshw, and it is 2009 not 2008. But the point stands: if it is fast enough then why replace it? Linux makes it resource efficient, and no bloat, so it is fast enough.
I am typing this on a 2008 Toshiba laptop. Nothing fancy. Intel Core2 Duo T6500 @ 2.10GHz. Upgraded the memory to the maximum of 8GB a year or two ago, and that made it fast enough. Of course it runs Linux (Kubuntu 14.04 LTS, yes KDE, not Gnome nor Unity). As long as it does the job, and fast enough, why replace it?
Look at what was posted in the same thread about a serious bug in systemd that was not fixed by systemd developers, nor in Fedora, but was fixed first in Ubuntu, then in Debian 8.1. A mature well tested system should NOT have those kind of issues, which systemd is not.
Here is direct link.
Great minds think alike ...
Wrote this yesterday on the other site ...
The cheap Nokia feature phones are very popular in developing countries.
They are inexpensive, durable, the battery last for many days, and they do the job. Moreover, accessories are dirt cheap as well.
Need a charger? Need a battery? They are sold in haberdasheries and corner stores for very little local money.
It would be really dumb if Microsoft just killed that revenue stream.