You are right in the way that the technical problem should not be too complex, since everyone codes in high-level languages nowadays. Endian issues could be a problem for some people, though, especially when trading binary data files between the two platforms. But since that was solved for Windows versus Mac compatibility, that shouldn't be too tough.
The real problems are marketing and technical - getting all those new CDs out, deciding under what circumstances to replace people's CDs, etc. People would get pretty mad if they were handed a CD and it would not work on their computer, even if it was created before the switch to Intel.
I'd consider it a horrendous nightmare for people involved with administration, and in that sense it would be a terrible hardship even if not one line of code was changed.
Every company in the world supporting the Mac platform would have to recompile and reissue their software for x86. This would be a huge burden on Mac software makers.
That alone seems like a good enough reason for this not to happen short of major disaster for the PowerPC platform. And with the dual cores well on the way, according to most sources, I don't see this as a major problem.
On the other hand... I know someone who's a compulsive gambler with scratcher tickets. I'd never seen something like this before; she buys the expensive $20 tickets, five or six a night, consuming her entire income and sometimes (often) more. About one in three of those tickets pay back $20.
She keeps on telling herself she'll get a $400 winner and that will be worthwhile. So I looked up the odds. Turns out that on the average, you will buy $3,200 worth of tickets to win $400.
I told her this and it has not affected her gambling one whit.
All of this to say that clearly there are many people who behave irrationally. It's a lot more exciting to win something than it is to save up the money and buy it, especially if you're a kid and enjoying candy bars in the meantime:-).
So I still think this contest could well be scammed. After all, so many people want to get back at "the man", no?
The trap with healthy eating habits is that they don't affect you for a long, long time.
I was thin through my high school and college years. I'm not sure exactly when I put on fat, but it was such a gradual process I didn't notice until I was in the 60 pounds overweight class.
Now turning that around is extremely difficult for an adult with set ways, at least in dietary terms. I can still learn new programming languages and environments with the drop of a hat, but not overeating is extremely hard. I know that because I now have a beautiful girlfriend who really, really wants me to get thin. So I have motivation I never had, but changing habits is STILL very hard.
But overall, kids have more control over money and disposable income than ever, so I suspect that for the bulk of them it's a real possibility to bring junk food from home so they look virtuous in school.
All sympathy for the cause and all that, but that post actually made a valid point that was relevant to the article, while the troll posts you linked to did not.
Remember, there are a lot of anonymous cowards in the world, including (ironically enough) you.
D
Rewarding healthy eating isn't inherently bad ...
on
Eat Right, Earn an iPod
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
but I would think this scheme would be exploited mercilessly by kids who simply brought their candy bars in from home, ordered the "good" food and threw half of it away.
If I can figure out that kind of scheme, a kid surely can.
I had a relationship with a nice girl in another country.
It was probably based more on my paying for stuff than her actual undying feelings for me, but that's often true here as well. And I do think she genuinely did enjoy the time we spent together, and we were both sorry to see it end when I left.
I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything morally wrong with that. We both benefitted and we both left with smiles and good memories.
This information is so much at variance with what I know of the Soviet Union, and what I saw in Cuba, that I just don't know what to say.
I hope you are aware of the horrible prices paid by the victims of Comrade Stalin for such progress that occured in the Soviet Union. People were shot because they didn't want to conform to the norms of the new Soviet man. People were shot becuase they were "kulaks", having an extra cow compared to their neighbor. People were shot because Comrade Stalin was in the mood to shoot someone.
Everything I have read about the Soviet Union indicates that life was unhappy and darkly cynical, because the system didn't work well at all. Everything was shoddy, from the housing and the cars to the planes. And people on the top of society always feared the midnight knock on the door, the trip to the mysterious places, the torture chambers and the KGB's bullet.
If my memory serves, only Party functionaries and their friends were allowed to travel at all, let alone by plane. Sure, the official fares were cheap, but that was because demand was limited; nobody was allowed to fly them.
The safety record of Soviet planes, alas, speaks for itself.
And finally, I drive an old Mercedes and really love it. I bought it five years ago for about the price of a new Ford Focus and driving it gives me much joy. Consumerism as it's practiced today has laughable aspects, but it also lets me buy great things, that I use in my business and my life, and that I get genuine joy out of.
I'm really sorry. A Trabant just won't do for me. And I'm really not anxious to get that knock on the door any time soon.
Cuba is actually quite notorious for being an expensive tourism destination that doesn't deliver well on its high prices. If you stay at their hotels and take their expensive packaged tours, on the whole there is a pretty low level of satisfaction.
Basically, Castro seems keen to suck every dollar out of you, regardless of how it affects your experience.
My rating of Cuba would have been very different if I had stayed at the tourist hotels or taken tour busses around. I stayed at a casa particular (a room in a private home) and walked around Havana. Had the time of my life, as I said.
But I never saw a smile on the faces of the "privileged" people on the tour busses. I don't think they were having much fun.
For a while, Cuba was economically almost an extension of the United States. And the economy in general did very well by it. Certainly a lot better than it's doing now.
But sure, many third world countries are poor, and many are worse off than Cuba.
For most of them, the problem isn't poverty; it's an attitude.
If you hate us, if you steal from us, if you make our visits a living horror, we won't come, and then there's no reason for us to share.
If you invite us warmly, and if you treat us well, we will visit your country and get $500 a night hotel suites overlooking the ocean. We will go out on the town and eat in your most expensive restaurants.
But if you steal our $5,000 cameras, well, we'll never come back again.
I understand that's roughly what happened in Jamaica. Is that the fault of poverty, or is that the fault of a culture that approves of stealing?
I'd say the latter. There are plenty of poor places that are hospitable, and those places are getting richer all the time, and more power to them.
Open source is not communism. Open source is people putting together something as a hobby, and then companies joining them because using open source is cheaper than developing your own operating system from scratch.
The hobby value and ego value are what drive open source (at least until corporate sponsorship takes over much of the work, as it has now).
Now, you are right about what people under Communism think of the US. I can say that my Cuban girlfriend, while snuggling with me in our rented love nest, would look at the satellite TV with A Jerrold Perenchio's Univision TV network blaring, and she would see all those cool homes and cars and fashions, and she assumed that if she ever got to LA with me, she would have all of them.
Unfortunately, the TV shows show the lifestyle of A Jerrold Perenchio, owner of Univision. He owns half of Malibu and Bel Air. It's definitely picturesque, but I would agree, it's a bit curious how people in Communist countries just assume you are Perenchio, and not plain old Dennis.
Oh curse you Perenchio! (laugh).
That being said, it's not the whole story, either.
Communism was such a successful system that a wall had to be erected to prevent people from leaving East Germany for West Germany, even though East Germany was the most economically successful of the Communist countries.
When the wall fell apart, so did Communism.
It's absurd to say that such a brittle system was a success. Let me give you one comparison:
In East Germany, you could save for ten years and be on the waiting list and you would eventually get a Trabant car. The Trabant car had a 26hp engine and a top speed of 56mph. It got there in about 33 seconds.
In West Germany, you could save a comparable amount for those same ten years and get something on the order of a Porsche 911. The Porsche 911 has a very powerful engine that at the time of Communism got to 60mph in something like 7 seconds and of course the top speed was way, way over that.
So no, I'm sorry to break this news to you, but Communism didn't succeed. If you don't believe me, another test: Fly a Soviet jet to Cuba and then ride on a Boeing. You'll pick the Boeing, every time.
They're abandoned because major parts of them have collapsed.
Actually, a lot of buildings that should be abandoned are not. People stay in them until they literally collapse around them.
The person who created that web site is, sadly, not a good writer. But then again, his first language is probably not English. I doubt that I could do as well in my pathetic Spanish.
People who lived under dictators and now experience freedom tend to be a little strident. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean they didn't experience what they say they did. I scanned what he wrote and so far I haven't found anything not true.
They certainly haven't had elections in Cuba lately. Or even in the last 46-odd years.
In March of 2003, after my Cuba trip, I still had every intention of returning to Cuba, because I loved being in the country. But then I read about the crackdown: 22-28 year jail sentences to people who created lending libraries of their own books, and/or organized meetings of people peacefully opposing the government.
I got sick to my stomach reading that and haven't been to Cuba since. So his "propaganda", as far as I can tell, is accurate.
His page isn't pretty, and he could really use a course in web design before sending his work in to Slashdot. But that doesn't mean his information isn't accurate, and I certainly feel he deserves to be heard.
Is there something wrong with rich people, as compared to Communist party functionaries who had the pull to get oceanfront homes?
And is there something about poor people that makes them inherently good and deserving? Those who strive to improve themselves become rich people in the US and Communist Party functionaries in Cuba. In my book, those who strive to improve themselves are the people who deserve a better life, inherently.
The only difference is that Communist party functionaries had huge amounts of power over microscopic aspects of people's lives, and in turn other people have power over microscopic parts of their lives. That's a terrible way to live, and that's a major reason why Communism failed as a system.
I'd like to encourage you to visit Cuba for yourself, unfiltered. Walk to the streets and talk to the people. Don't take tours; visit the place and see what it's really like. It will be an eye opener, and you might even change your mind on a few things.
Cuba's a pretty closed country. Something that's "well known" may well be well known because it's propaganda from the Cuban government we are asked to take on faith. The absence of other voices causes it to be believed.
The Soviet Union, during their times of worst famine, managed to convince a New York Times reporter named Walter Duranty that all was well, and he wrote glowing articles saying that the Soviet Union was the hope and future of all mankind.
Just because "it's well known" doesn't mean it's true. Now, it doesn't mean it's false, either, but as an argument, saying something is well known is about as valid as saying we should trust Microsoft's views that using their software is cheaper than Linux, because they've commissioned research saying it is.
I saw plenty of brand new Volvo tour busses, and Audi rental cars, amidst the tired old Soviet cars and the even older American ones.
A Toblerone chocolate cost exactly the same in a Cuban store that it does in the US. Of course this mean the overwhelming majority of Cubans can't afford them.
I didn't get the impression that our sanctions were hurting them as much as their system of government. Once you've seen how things really work, you'd have no doubt that it's their system much more than sanctions that's holding them back.
I've been to Cuba, and I loved going to Cuba. The people were wonderful - friendly, charming, and Cuban women surely give interested tourists the best welcome one would ever want:-).
But all I heard from citizens was gripes about the government. The "free" healthcare is worth about as much as you'd expect a dictator's promises to be worth. The capitalist things, like the taxi system, work gloriously. The hotels, being right under the government's thumb, are a model for poor service and bizarre rules. For instance, you can't take your Cuban girlfriend up to your hotel room without paying a bribe.
I read a lot of books on Cuba before I went, and it seems like people who go to Cuba with an ideological agenda are shuttled carefully to the right places, where things look shiny and new. This is a potemkin village that impresses the heck out of people who want to be impressed.
But if you go a few blocks away, you see scenes like I did. All these pictures were taken on what would be prime real estate in any other country, a block or less from the Malecon, the giant seawall that faces the ocean and is a major gathering spot for Cubans.
Cubans live in their decrepit and dangerous housing until it collapses, because if they maintained it the government would take it over and give it to someone else. No joke, sadly.
To put this slightly on topic, Cubans are generally not allowed to use the Internet, at least not at prices Cubans can afford. The Internet connections in the tourist hotels are closed to Cubans; only non-Cubans can use them. This is part of an effort to keep tourists on the busses and away from contact with the Cuban people.
The Cuban computers I saw were woefully out of date, with truly ancient versions of Windows on display. If my memory serves it was mainly Windows98, and I went in December 2002. So I doubt that this mandate from Castro will have that much effect. It's probably a propaganda effort to make Slashdotters look at his rule more favourably.
It worked in Safari, but let's face it, this is something I hacked together specifically to show that it can be done. When I'm writing CSS for "real" consumption, I put in the units.
I don't see any problem with my HTML as long as browsers can read it and search engines can find it, both of which do just fine.
There's a funny kind of "holier than thou" feeling about CSS and "correct" HTML advocates that I have to admit I don't like at all. The whole attitude of "do it this way or you're not cool" strikes me as a big step backward from the old days.
In the old days, if you write <P> instead of <p>, or said height = 100 instead of height = "100", you weren't crucified by the parser. Does it matter to the content that things are "correct" or not, as long as it can be read?
Do people really gain by the effort taken to change <P> to <p> or putting an end tag in every tag that formerly didn't need one? I don't think so; I think it's simply a waste of effort.
But I think it's the condescending attitude among "good" HTML advocates that bothers me most of all. It definitely made me much slower to change to CSS than I would have been if it had been introduced as "a cool option" instead of "the Holy Grail that you MUST adopt".
You are right, and this definitely confused me when I first encountered it.
For those who like to code as I do, this solves the problem. I prefer sans serif headings but this gives basically the effect you want: <style type = "text/css">
I'm going to write this text like I write HTML so that my point is clear.
.
As you can see, I separate my paragraphs with blank lines. When I read the text as content, as opposed to code, I am really using the blank lines to highlight the beginning and end of paragraphs.<p>
As you can see, this text is pretty readable. When I write text, I want it to be in the standard body text format in any event, so I should not have to worry about delimiting paragraphs.<p>
The first book I ever read on HTML taught me to write HTML in this way, and I don't think it was ever defined as formally wrong until the advent of CSS. <p>
I want my web site to be reasonably attractive visually, but the most important thing about it is the quality of its content. I use emacs to edit it because I have the control keystrokes burned in my fingers, and so it's easy and efficient for me to work. HTML lets me add minimal formatting without having to use a clunker like Word.<p>
I would write XHTML if I was focusing on format, but generally I'm just writing text that I want people to be able to read easily. So I would prefer regular HTML to survive for this application. Otherwise, it's a lot of unnecessary, meaningless work for someone who just wants to put his stuff on the web.<p>
Slashdot Mirror
You're right ... and wrong.
You are right in the way that the technical problem should not be too complex, since everyone codes in high-level languages nowadays. Endian issues could be a problem for some people, though, especially when trading binary data files between the two platforms. But since that was solved for Windows versus Mac compatibility, that shouldn't be too tough.
The real problems are marketing and technical - getting all those new CDs out, deciding under what circumstances to replace people's CDs, etc. People would get pretty mad if they were handed a CD and it would not work on their computer, even if it was created before the switch to Intel.
I'd consider it a horrendous nightmare for people involved with administration, and in that sense it would be a terrible hardship even if not one line of code was changed.
D
Every company in the world supporting the Mac platform would have to recompile and reissue their software for x86. This would be a huge burden on Mac software makers.
That alone seems like a good enough reason for this not to happen short of major disaster for the PowerPC platform. And with the dual cores well on the way, according to most sources, I don't see this as a major problem.
D
Excellent point!
... I know someone who's a compulsive gambler with scratcher tickets. I'd never seen something like this before; she buys the expensive $20 tickets, five or six a night, consuming her entire income and sometimes (often) more. About one in three of those tickets pay back $20.
:-).
On the other hand
She keeps on telling herself she'll get a $400 winner and that will be worthwhile. So I looked up the odds. Turns out that on the average, you will buy $3,200 worth of tickets to win $400.
I told her this and it has not affected her gambling one whit.
All of this to say that clearly there are many people who behave irrationally. It's a lot more exciting to win something than it is to save up the money and buy it, especially if you're a kid and enjoying candy bars in the meantime
So I still think this contest could well be scammed. After all, so many people want to get back at "the man", no?
D
The trap with healthy eating habits is that they don't affect you for a long, long time.
I was thin through my high school and college years. I'm not sure exactly when I put on fat, but it was such a gradual process I didn't notice until I was in the 60 pounds overweight class.
Now turning that around is extremely difficult for an adult with set ways, at least in dietary terms. I can still learn new programming languages and environments with the drop of a hat, but not overeating is extremely hard. I know that because I now have a beautiful girlfriend who really, really wants me to get thin. So I have motivation I never had, but changing habits is STILL very hard.
D
True, for non-affluent kids this is not an issue.
But overall, kids have more control over money and disposable income than ever, so I suspect that for the bulk of them it's a real possibility to bring junk food from home so they look virtuous in school.
D
All sympathy for the cause and all that, but that post actually made a valid point that was relevant to the article, while the troll posts you linked to did not.
Remember, there are a lot of anonymous cowards in the world, including (ironically enough) you.
D
but I would think this scheme would be exploited mercilessly by kids who simply brought their candy bars in from home, ordered the "good" food and threw half of it away.
If I can figure out that kind of scheme, a kid surely can.
D
I had a relationship with a nice girl in another country.
It was probably based more on my paying for stuff than her actual undying feelings for me, but that's often true here as well. And I do think she genuinely did enjoy the time we spent together, and we were both sorry to see it end when I left.
I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything morally wrong with that. We both benefitted and we both left with smiles and good memories.
D
This was exactly my point.
Cuba's system makes it inhospitable to both tourists and residents. With a better system, it would be more prosperous.
D
This information is so much at variance with what I know of the Soviet Union, and what I saw in Cuba, that I just don't know what to say.
I hope you are aware of the horrible prices paid by the victims of Comrade Stalin for such progress that occured in the Soviet Union. People were shot because they didn't want to conform to the norms of the new Soviet man. People were shot becuase they were "kulaks", having an extra cow compared to their neighbor. People were shot because Comrade Stalin was in the mood to shoot someone.
Everything I have read about the Soviet Union indicates that life was unhappy and darkly cynical, because the system didn't work well at all. Everything was shoddy, from the housing and the cars to the planes. And people on the top of society always feared the midnight knock on the door, the trip to the mysterious places, the torture chambers and the KGB's bullet.
If my memory serves, only Party functionaries and their friends were allowed to travel at all, let alone by plane. Sure, the official fares were cheap, but that was because demand was limited; nobody was allowed to fly them.
The safety record of Soviet planes, alas, speaks for itself.
And finally, I drive an old Mercedes and really love it. I bought it five years ago for about the price of a new Ford Focus and driving it gives me much joy. Consumerism as it's practiced today has laughable aspects, but it also lets me buy great things, that I use in my business and my life, and that I get genuine joy out of.
I'm really sorry. A Trabant just won't do for me. And I'm really not anxious to get that knock on the door any time soon.
D
Cuba is actually quite notorious for being an expensive tourism destination that doesn't deliver well on its high prices. If you stay at their hotels and take their expensive packaged tours, on the whole there is a pretty low level of satisfaction.
Basically, Castro seems keen to suck every dollar out of you, regardless of how it affects your experience.
My rating of Cuba would have been very different if I had stayed at the tourist hotels or taken tour busses around. I stayed at a casa particular (a room in a private home) and walked around Havana. Had the time of my life, as I said.
But I never saw a smile on the faces of the "privileged" people on the tour busses. I don't think they were having much fun.
D
For a while, Cuba was economically almost an extension of the United States. And the economy in general did very well by it. Certainly a lot better than it's doing now.
But sure, many third world countries are poor, and many are worse off than Cuba.
For most of them, the problem isn't poverty; it's an attitude.
If you hate us, if you steal from us, if you make our visits a living horror, we won't come, and then there's no reason for us to share.
If you invite us warmly, and if you treat us well, we will visit your country and get $500 a night hotel suites overlooking the ocean. We will go out on the town and eat in your most expensive restaurants.
But if you steal our $5,000 cameras, well, we'll never come back again.
I understand that's roughly what happened in Jamaica. Is that the fault of poverty, or is that the fault of a culture that approves of stealing?
I'd say the latter. There are plenty of poor places that are hospitable, and those places are getting richer all the time, and more power to them.
D
Understood.
And of course I hope you understand that my message was entirely supportive of him, and the Cuban people.
D
Open source is not communism. Open source is people putting together something as a hobby, and then companies joining them because using open source is cheaper than developing your own operating system from scratch.
The hobby value and ego value are what drive open source (at least until corporate sponsorship takes over much of the work, as it has now).
Now, you are right about what people under Communism think of the US. I can say that my Cuban girlfriend, while snuggling with me in our rented love nest, would look at the satellite TV with A Jerrold Perenchio's Univision TV network blaring, and she would see all those cool homes and cars and fashions, and she assumed that if she ever got to LA with me, she would have all of them.
Unfortunately, the TV shows show the lifestyle of A Jerrold Perenchio, owner of Univision. He owns half of Malibu and Bel Air. It's definitely picturesque, but I would agree, it's a bit curious how people in Communist countries just assume you are Perenchio, and not plain old Dennis.
Oh curse you Perenchio! (laugh).
That being said, it's not the whole story, either.
Communism was such a successful system that a wall had to be erected to prevent people from leaving East Germany for West Germany, even though East Germany was the most economically successful of the Communist countries.
When the wall fell apart, so did Communism.
It's absurd to say that such a brittle system was a success. Let me give you one comparison:
In East Germany, you could save for ten years and be on the waiting list and you would eventually get a Trabant car. The Trabant car had a 26hp engine and a top speed of 56mph. It got there in about 33 seconds.
In West Germany, you could save a comparable amount for those same ten years and get something on the order of a Porsche 911. The Porsche 911 has a very powerful engine that at the time of Communism got to 60mph in something like 7 seconds and of course the top speed was way, way over that.
So no, I'm sorry to break this news to you, but Communism didn't succeed. If you don't believe me, another test: Fly a Soviet jet to Cuba and then ride on a Boeing. You'll pick the Boeing, every time.
D
They're abandoned because major parts of them have collapsed.
Actually, a lot of buildings that should be abandoned are not. People stay in them until they literally collapse around them.
The person who created that web site is, sadly, not a good writer. But then again, his first language is probably not English. I doubt that I could do as well in my pathetic Spanish.
People who lived under dictators and now experience freedom tend to be a little strident. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean they didn't experience what they say they did. I scanned what he wrote and so far I haven't found anything not true.
They certainly haven't had elections in Cuba lately. Or even in the last 46-odd years.
In March of 2003, after my Cuba trip, I still had every intention of returning to Cuba, because I loved being in the country. But then I read about the crackdown: 22-28 year jail sentences to people who created lending libraries of their own books, and/or organized meetings of people peacefully opposing the government.
I got sick to my stomach reading that and haven't been to Cuba since. So his "propaganda", as far as I can tell, is accurate.
His page isn't pretty, and he could really use a course in web design before sending his work in to Slashdot. But that doesn't mean his information isn't accurate, and I certainly feel he deserves to be heard.
D
Is there something wrong with rich people, as compared to Communist party functionaries who had the pull to get oceanfront homes?
And is there something about poor people that makes them inherently good and deserving? Those who strive to improve themselves become rich people in the US and Communist Party functionaries in Cuba. In my book, those who strive to improve themselves are the people who deserve a better life, inherently.
The only difference is that Communist party functionaries had huge amounts of power over microscopic aspects of people's lives, and in turn other people have power over microscopic parts of their lives. That's a terrible way to live, and that's a major reason why Communism failed as a system.
I'd like to encourage you to visit Cuba for yourself, unfiltered. Walk to the streets and talk to the people. Don't take tours; visit the place and see what it's really like. It will be an eye opener, and you might even change your mind on a few things.
D
Cuba's a pretty closed country. Something that's "well known" may well be well known because it's propaganda from the Cuban government we are asked to take on faith. The absence of other voices causes it to be believed.
The Soviet Union, during their times of worst famine, managed to convince a New York Times reporter named Walter Duranty that all was well, and he wrote glowing articles saying that the Soviet Union was the hope and future of all mankind.
Just because "it's well known" doesn't mean it's true. Now, it doesn't mean it's false, either, but as an argument, saying something is well known is about as valid as saying we should trust Microsoft's views that using their software is cheaper than Linux, because they've commissioned research saying it is.
D
I saw plenty of brand new Volvo tour busses, and Audi rental cars, amidst the tired old Soviet cars and the even older American ones.
A Toblerone chocolate cost exactly the same in a Cuban store that it does in the US. Of course this mean the overwhelming majority of Cubans can't afford them.
I didn't get the impression that our sanctions were hurting them as much as their system of government. Once you've seen how things really work, you'd have no doubt that it's their system much more than sanctions that's holding them back.
D
Ruins of the sort that exist in Cuba indicate that there was once prospeerity, and it was squandered.
This is a much different situation than in the other parts of the world. The Favelas in Rio, for instance, are much different.
Cuba had a healthy inheritance, and it was squandered by the Communists.
Big difference.
D
I've been to Cuba, and I loved going to Cuba. The people were wonderful - friendly, charming, and Cuban women surely give interested tourists the best welcome one would ever want :-).
But all I heard from citizens was gripes about the government. The "free" healthcare is worth about as much as you'd expect a dictator's promises to be worth. The capitalist things, like the taxi system, work gloriously. The hotels, being right under the government's thumb, are a model for poor service and bizarre rules. For instance, you can't take your Cuban girlfriend up to your hotel room without paying a bribe.
I read a lot of books on Cuba before I went, and it seems like people who go to Cuba with an ideological agenda are shuttled carefully to the right places, where things look shiny and new. This is a potemkin village that impresses the heck out of people who want to be impressed.
But if you go a few blocks away, you see scenes like I did. All these pictures were taken on what would be prime real estate in any other country, a block or less from the Malecon, the giant seawall that faces the ocean and is a major gathering spot for Cubans.
Cubans live in their decrepit and dangerous housing until it collapses, because if they maintained it the government would take it over and give it to someone else. No joke, sadly.
To put this slightly on topic, Cubans are generally not allowed to use the Internet, at least not at prices Cubans can afford. The Internet connections in the tourist hotels are closed to Cubans; only non-Cubans can use them. This is part of an effort to keep tourists on the busses and away from contact with the Cuban people.
The Cuban computers I saw were woefully out of date, with truly ancient versions of Windows on display. If my memory serves it was mainly Windows98, and I went in December 2002. So I doubt that this mandate from Castro will have that much effect. It's probably a propaganda effort to make Slashdotters look at his rule more favourably.
Even open source tyranny is still tyranny.
Alas.
D
It worked in Safari, but let's face it, this is something I hacked together specifically to show that it can be done. When I'm writing CSS for "real" consumption, I put in the units.
I don't see any problem with my HTML as long as browsers can read it and search engines can find it, both of which do just fine.
There's a funny kind of "holier than thou" feeling about CSS and "correct" HTML advocates that I have to admit I don't like at all. The whole attitude of "do it this way or you're not cool" strikes me as a big step backward from the old days.
In the old days, if you write <P> instead of <p>, or said height = 100 instead of height = "100", you weren't crucified by the parser. Does it matter to the content that things are "correct" or not, as long as it can be read?
Do people really gain by the effort taken to change <P> to <p> or putting an end tag in every tag that formerly didn't need one? I don't think so; I think it's simply a waste of effort.
But I think it's the condescending attitude among "good" HTML advocates that bothers me most of all. It definitely made me much slower to change to CSS than I would have been if it had been introduced as "a cool option" instead of "the Holy Grail that you MUST adopt".
D
You are right, and this definitely confused me when I first encountered it.
For those who like to code as I do, this solves the problem. I prefer sans serif headings but this gives basically the effect you want:
<style type = "text/css">
body { font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 12; }
h1, h2, h3 { font-family: "arial"; font-size: 25; }
</style>
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
This is an exciting paragraph showing why I did this and how it works.<p>
This is another exciting paragraph doing the same thing.<p>
I'm happy to code anything but standard body text in the "correct" way, so this lets me have my cake and eat it too, formatting-wise at least.
D
Not if you're focusing on the content.
<p>When I see a paragraph marker at the beginning of a paragraph, it makes me feel like the formatting dominates the text.</p>
<p>I want the text to dominate the formatting.</p>
<p>I'm writing text, not code. </p>
<p>To me, the way I'm writing now is much, much harder to read <i>as text</i>.</p>
<p>D</p>
I think so, although some would say they've been doing exactly that on their editorial page for decades.
D
.
As you can see, I separate my paragraphs with blank lines. When I read the text as content, as opposed to code, I am really using the blank lines to highlight the beginning and end of paragraphs.<p>
As you can see, this text is pretty readable. When I write text, I want it to be in the standard body text format in any event, so I should not have to worry about delimiting paragraphs.<p>
The first book I ever read on HTML taught me to write HTML in this way, and I don't think it was ever defined as formally wrong until the advent of CSS. <p>
I want my web site to be reasonably attractive visually, but the most important thing about it is the quality of its content. I use emacs to edit it because I have the control keystrokes burned in my fingers, and so it's easy and efficient for me to work. HTML lets me add minimal formatting without having to use a clunker like Word.<p>
I would write XHTML if I was focusing on format, but generally I'm just writing text that I want people to be able to read easily. So I would prefer regular HTML to survive for this application. Otherwise, it's a lot of unnecessary, meaningless work for someone who just wants to put his stuff on the web.<p>
D