I had not considered "polyfills". However, if they are critical to site operation then you would have no choice but to load them on the pages that need it. I'm not saying there should be a hard 250k limit or anything, just that for normal operations you should aggressively try to limit the size.
Personally, I like to inject scripts on demand. When I would need one of those polyfill libraries I could inject the script before hand. If the user never performs an operation requiring it, it does not get loaded.
I never claim to be a front-end expert at all. In the last 2 years though I've been forced to step up and start creating more and more of the front end infrastructure due to costs (which is terrible; I'm overworked). For what I needed the minimum JQuery library has been giving me everything I need and I inject the chart and graph JS when I need it on specific pages.
How do images not from the domain (or registered CDN) failing to load make essential web applications useless? That sounds like hotlinking of images which I've always understood to be a dickhead move on the part of web designers.
That also comes back to the javascript because I cannot understand putting all of your JS on CDN's that you are not paying for. Worse, I see developers all the time hotlinking scripts from other blogs and developers. If you pay for the CDN, then use it as you see fit. If it's something your not paying for, then don't be a dickhead. Common courtesy from my point of view.
In some cases I can understand that hotlinking may be required to offer a service, or normalize images and scripts amongst all of the services clients. However, the vast majority of this activity is highly undesirable from the user's point of view. I use DoNotTrackMe and Ghostery precisely for that reason.
I'm not interested in facilitating the mass violations of privacy for marketers. They can DIAF repeatedly. I really believe that the content or script should be delivered from the domain, or CDN's that they are paying for. Other CDN's are too risky and don't offer the minimum level of reliability that I expect.
Keeping strictly to this requirement would seem to solve a lot of problems. The site owners and designers would be forced to host and review the content they are pushing out. No more pushing the blame out to a 3rd party company, and create accountability to help the users.
If they really want that beacon or tracking technology then download the script to your own servers or CDN's. While I know that many designers would just cron the damn thing to sync it, it does still create accountability.
As for the registering of the CDN, I think you misunderstood me. The site itself would register a CDN as part of the domain through instructions in the XHTML. I believe this would simplify work flow and allow you to swap out a CDN without touching a single line of code in the rest of the site.
You could register several different objects with the browser itself. Off the top of my head you could register CDN's, external widgets, beacons, trackers, etc. Even better, you could register known external objects that are community approved. Meaning, your XHTML does not have to reference the exact Google Analytics script, but to a common reference point that allows Google to normalize that code to whatever they want. No cost for registration. If it's well used enough the community itself can add it to the list of common objects to make life easier for all designers.
Having that can allow the community to manage RBL's for objectionable content. Not to mention with a single preference click you could disable all beacons and trackers. Privacy laws could be amended to state that bypassing the user preferences in the browser is illegal. Wasn't Google guilty of that anyways with something? There are really very few exceptions to disabling trackers. Netflix loading the FB Connect code to facilitate certain features is an example. Netflix could tell it was blocked and pop-up a dialog box informing that certain
The cell phone is the new notepad or scrap of paper that the criminal is carrying.
Maybe so. However, it also represents scraps of paper that are held in numerous other locations, and information that has nothing to do with the crime at hand.
Nothing you said even for a microsecond excuses your desire to eliminate due process. Remember, I'm not arguing that you can't get it. Only that I want a judge to say that the getting of my data is warranted.
You have the same back asswards logic that the NSA uses to justify mass surveillance. We *could* be ohh that much safer if we just got rid of due process and violated everyone's privacy in real time forever. All of the criminal text messages would be seen instantly!! We could even create a "precog" division for rapid response and be at the drug drop *before* the criminals get there.
No dude. The risks and dangers to our society from such invasions of privacy are so much more dangerous than whatever security you think you gained with it.
Once again, for the 2nd time in this post, if you really think you need it, just ask for a WARRANT.
A WARRANT allows you get that information you want because the logic and reasoning you have for getting it is determined to be WARRANTED.
You have not presented any logical reason whatsoever for getting rid of my due process rights.
Judges can be woken up, and if we have so much crime that we need to start hiring and paying judges to work grave yard shifts we have much bigger problems.
At that point let's just put society to rest and create Judge Dredd.
All of your examples pale in comparison to the protections afforded by judicial oversight. It's my RIGHT to have that judge woken up and asked if the logic and reasoning behind the violation of my privacy is warranted.
Interesting how that word is used. An action can be "warranted". That's what a warrant means. Somebody designated by the citizens and trained to be impartial evaluated the situation and said the invasion of my privacy was warranted and in the best interests of society.
With respect, I FUCKING WANT THAT.
Don't take away my right to have a judge involved before the cops can even attempt to violate my rights, haul my ass off to jail for forced enemas, colonoscopies, beatings, jail rapes, etc.
Let's keep due process dude. It's a really good idea.
So why not skip all the bullcrud and use common sense and let cops do their job.
That "bullcrud" is called Due Process and the Constitution of the United States of America.
"Nearly 100%" doesn't cut it. You're being a douchenozzle right now.
If it was your freedom at risk, why would you elect to remove the Judiciary oversight from your interaction with law enforcement?
Another question:
You may feel that way, but why would you deny me my Constitutional right to privacy in my effects and papers?
The position you hold is not reasonable, or rational, and basically amounts to "due process and oversight is so hard. I have to like convince a judge that my logic is correct".
In other words, you strongly disagree with the idea of peer review.
Those checks and balances were created by the founding fathers for a reason. Not just to fuck with law enforcement and make their lives harder.
I have not run FF for at least 2 or 3 years now. It really was hilariously slow compared to previous years when it was the only usable web browser around.
It's nice to hear that IE is getting better, but my experience day to day is that Chrome is way faster in page loads and general operation (javascript). Personally, I would go back to IE if they are that good because I don't like supporting Google. They are so anti-privacy right now it's horrible.
The biggest problem with IE from what I understand is that it costs so much to develop plugins on it. That was the complaint from Ad Blocker right?
I think it was summer of last year I was looking for plugins on IE and did not find nearly as many as available and that was allegedly the reason why.
I shouldn't have to roll that change out in group policy because some idiots at Microsoft destabilize an entire fucking operating system looking for updates to a single program for upwards of an hour after start up.
That's assuming I even have group policy. The number of companies with XP using them effectively as thin clients without domain controllers is the majority, not the minority.
That preference is just a hack and a cheap work around.
It's not just about screen size and resolution. If that were true we would not have any problems rendering exactly the same between Firefox, IE, and Chrome right?
But we do right? Who's the fucking idiot?
No matter the screen resolution? Are you fucking retarded?
The same site layout and style you use on a widescreen tablet is NOT going to fly on a tiny ass little smart phone screen. Unless you want everything to SCALE down, which would be stupid.
Mobile design really does require a significant departure from how your entire site is laid out and used. If you want a fucking example look at Fandango. They DON'T look anywhere near the same.
Your idea that you could code some sort of style sheet that could render on both is hilarious.
Since you are already creating entirely different style sheets and use cases for a mobile platform, why do the work TWICE?
Just stop. Look at yourself and the money and resources you are expending. Face Palm. HARD.
Write the god damn mobile app and just be done with it.
I'd like to say that I'm one of them, but I really stick to back end development, automated BI, databases, sysadmin, etc. The stuff that I do front ends for I approach the same way as the back end. Scaleability and Security. The first part solves most of the bandwidth and processing waste you see, and the latter is just the only sane way to approach anything now.
I wouldn't put a huge library only to use a small part of it. My first attempt I downloaded JQuery right away, and then, actually used it. Meaning, that all of the dialog boxes, button creation, animations, effects, whatever were pure JQuery code. Use their site theme roller and actually stick to it, and you will have a nice clean working site with minimal code.
It's funny you mention caching:)
Since I was using AJAX to get XML documents that I was using to populate rows on reports I created my own caching mechanism that would store the results in the DOM body itself with a TTL. If you went back to do the search again with the same parameters it literally just read it from the DOM body, looked at the TTL, and just put up the loading animation while doing nothing. Those executives could keep clicking the damn button all they wanted. As long as they didn't close the browser and stop the session I was caching all of my own XML response docs myself.
While I know that my stuff wasn't as secure as other professionals could do it, I know that it wasn't terrible either. All input was validated and sanitized, and I did best practices for XSS/CSRF.
Starting out as a programmer the only way you could see web browsers in the beginning was like the special ed classes had leaked out and were running amuck in the industry.
You want to tilt at windmills regarding the DOM and javascript. You can't do the operations people want today with plain xhtml and style sheets. Not to mention, I would need to do device detection to decide on WHAT style sheet to deliver.
You're idea is to deliver what amounts to a PDF and absolve yourself of all responsibility for the rendering. Great. Unrealistic, but great.
Don't group me with those "people". I'm not making stupid hacks and I'm just as tired as you are about all the bullshit just to get something done. Javascript is the only way to do it, and you are conflating the problems of style sheets and rending with JS. No, not always. In fact, not even that often if you are doing JS correctly.
I'm not interested in making JS do everything on the page. A simple event to change the background color to create a menu is not something that should ever break the rendering of the page. By the same token, an AJAX call tied to a click event is not going to break the rendering either. It can even HELP. You don't have to download an entirely new page. Just modify the DOM with the result that came back.
The mobile app is the only sane response I have at the moment to the nightmare that is trying to get CSS rendering correctly on mobile devices, as well as every other freaking device they buy.
I don't want them visiting my website with a mobile browser since the chances of bullshit problems with rendering or malware is just too damn high.
A mobile app solves all the problems you speak about. I can finally, and reliably, control the user experience on their device.
You're right about the marketing vermin, but I'm NOT a marketing vermin. I just want users to be able to perform those operations they want without dealing with the hell that is mobile web browsing.
Be honest. Do you really want mobile web browsing when it sucks, the programs themselves are not standard, and the user experience is so different?
Having a native app written to do exactly what you want would always seem to be the preferred method. At least with the case of PhoneGap I get an IOS and Android App with one single platform.
I think that's easier than coding a separate mobile site for the platform.....
AND... if you are really so damn good that you can do all of what you are saying with just a document and a style sheet.. then teach us master. Show us the way through the valley of darkness to the fields of wheat and honey.
no. the toxicity comes from the advertising and the insistence on javascript (and flash and java etc applets).
just displaying documents is harmless. it's the fact that web-dev fuckers (and worse, "designers") want to run arbitrary code on millions of computers belonging to other people that is the source of the harm.
Noooo, the toxicity comes from using a platform that was designed only to publish static documents with a simple markup language to do rather complicated dynamic operations requiring the browser to act more like an operating system managing objects, making additional requests based on client side activity, etc.
This what YOU WANT. You can't tell me you don't want those features without also telling me that you want to be Amish.
Running arbitrary code is exactly what is required to satisfy web browsing needs of people today.
you're making the mistake of assuming those "shiny" features are essential. they're not. in fact, more often than not, they're a PITA and end up being a reason not to return to the site.
if a web site or even just a web page doesn't work without javascript, then it is broken. js can be useful to *optionally* enhance a page, but the page should work (i.e. display the important information and navigation controls) without javascript.
They're absolutely essential, and done right, not even close to being a pain in the ass. If you have a "form" on a page and want to be able to work with it, without having the entire page reload, your ONLY option is JS. There are NO OTHER OPTIONS.
I'm flabbergasted that you even think for one moment that a site not working without javascript is broken. With respect, you're the one broken.
You simply cannot do 99% of what people expect in a "Web 2.0" experience with working with the DOM locally, and that absolutely requires JS. Unless... you really want JAVA and FLASH?
There is no such thing as "optional" enhancements anymore. Responding to events and using a JS framework greatly accelerates development times and actually allows for rendering on different browsers to be largely the same.
My pages are written far easier and are less cluttered with a simple class having a click event that runs an AJAX call to get your more information about that object.
You're wishing to go back to a pure static page environment, or worse, a dynamic one where to do the SIMPLEST activity requires a GET or POST to a separate page requiring server side code to operate, create a dynamic page just for you, and then return it.
Really? All of that work, those server resources, just because you didn't want one little AJAX call running on the page submitting your post?
Hardly seems reasonable.
Then let's not forget. With your idea, no major web development would have ever been done period. The only way to do anything again would be native code, thereby shutting out quite a bit of valuable innovation in the markets by startups that could have never afforded the resources for large coding shops that could keep track of code for multiple platforms.
Having experienced native code companies and SAAS companies... please don't relegate the rest of us to that hell. The native code companies are cratering because they can't begin to hope to keep up with the SAAS companies using open source frameworks and rapid cross platform development to push out fixes and features in weeks instead of 3 years.
As for that CDN observation, I never said it was perfect. Only that if you wanted web browsers to operate the way they do now with no 3rd party client side library and frameworks you would need to provide all of those capabilities straight in the browser. Registering a CDN in the browser as servicing a particular domain at least allows the browser the ability to filer those requests and choose whether to do it at all. Site coding is easier because the browser understands to redirect the requests for those files to the registered CDN instead
I use IE all the time to download Chrome on new systems....
Though, lately I've been doing more and more front end work. It's where I'm finding money. That unfortunately requires me to use IE most of the day to make sure what I'm working is rendering across browsers correctly.
Otherwise I use Chrome. Opera is just not my cup of tea, Firefox sucks balls now (seriously. they couldn't have fucked up more if they tried), Safari isn't all that good, and that leaves IE or Chrome. Gee... I wonder....
There is an argument that a small site with low visitor counts can get away with a 1 meg download that is cached afterwards anyways. That being said, I think anyone that claims they are anything greater than a novice must use scaleable web design practices. Meaning, that you have to justify every single 1k of data being returned by the web server.
The problem you reference are what I call the web hobbyists. Web developers are plagued with the hobbyists to the extent that people by default think they are fucking morons.
I'm being nice, but there are so many people out there selling their development services that don't even understand PHP or JS and can only follow instructions on some page to get a Wordpress plugin to work. These are the people operating at such a high level of abstraction that they have no idea how a web browser actually works at all. I'm no expert and even I understand headers and the general theory behind rendering and running client side code.
Trial and error by shoving JS on a page and hoping for the best is quite normal unfortunately.
I actually had somebody give me a page back that they had worked on, (which looked very good), and required some JS to dynamically do something (don't remember). They literally copied and pasted the JS from some blog page and gave it to me as a finished product. Never bothered changing the ID, let alone creating a class, and let the code run trying to attach events to non-existing page elements. The library was not even included.
That person probably represents the norm for the armchair web hobbyist that would be unemployed if it was not for Wordpress.
The poster holds a rather unsophisticated view that allows them to see the police's reasonable and justified need for access to that information as something correct and desirable.
The 4th doesn't mean anything to the poster since they don't understand the basics taught to people in Civic's class. That being, the ostensibly simple concept of having a member of the Judiciary act as a check and balance against the needs of the Executive.
Nobody is saying that the police should not have access to that data. They absolutely should and I can totally understand that it would be very useful to solving crimes. What the proponents completely miss is the understanding of what a warrant is.
That's the real problem. How many people understand what the heck a warrant even is anymore?
Seriously? How on earth does anything you just said magically erase the US Constitution?
That smartphone represents, just as you said, access to huge amounts of information about the suspect. As well as information about innocent third parties that quite possibly had nothing to do with the crime.
You're supporting the idea of fishing expeditions into a person's digital space.
Arrest does not imply guilt. A member of the Judiciary should always be consulted regarding, and allowed to limit, the scope of any search of a person's effects and papers.
So, NO. There is not always enough evidence to justify the full and complete invasion of privacy of a citizen that is innocent until being proved guilty. If there really is a justifiable reason to invade that privacy than the police can convince a judge to do it.
Don't be a douchenozzle that enables their asshattery please.
There is never an acceptable reason to violate due process and PERFORM ANY ACTION WITHOUT A WARRANT .
Warrant, warrant, warrant, W A R R A N T!
It's a well conceived check and balance against tyranny ever present in a law enforcement organization. Don't give up something so valuable to the citizens over such stupid reasons.
It's not a deal breaker to me if it's a very small percentage.
Since it's MOST CERTAINLY not, than yes, I say stop the executions until the degree of certainty is much higher.
As far as death goes, while permanent, I have a hard time saying it's substantively worse than 10-20 years in prison. Prison is a tough place and death may truly be merciful.
All of that being said, that execution was NOT merciful. 10 minutes of gasping for air and convulsing is not a merciful death and could be considered torture quite easily. That sedative may have put him a different mental state possibly akin to dreaming.
That's a huge problem. Having chronic sleep apnea I experienced multiple occasions where I had nightmares about drowning and suffocation only to wake up actually suffocating.
That man may have very well died having similar nightmares and I would not wish that upon anybody.
Yes, they would indeed, but they don't have the moral high ground here.
I've personally wrestled with the idea of killing somebody my entire life. While I strongly identify with pacifism and Buddhism, I have to be honest with myself and know that I would kill that mother fucker with my bare hands to prevent him from killing me, another child, a family member, or any other person out there.
Doing that does not even bring me down to their level either. It would be horrible, and I would be traumatized. I doubt many of those murderers feel the same about their victims.
Defending yourself or others to the point of causing death is not inherently evil and history, as well as many cultures, have repeatedly called such actions justified.
Maybe so, but blocking all javascript by default just results in a poor browsing experience devoid of any real capabilities.
The vast majority of CRM platforms and internal web sites use it as well. So obviously your business system allows javascript otherwise you would never get any work done with SAAS vendors.
Stuff I would want to do with my own landing pages is impossible without it. I absolutely need the ability to perform AJAX calls and modify the DOM without reloading the page. There is some truly interesting and beautiful websites that simply cannot make do with just HTML and a style sheet.
Download DoNotTrackMe, Ghostery, Ad Blocker, and a comprehensive hosts file list for blocking at the system level. You'll find that you are still pretty safe, not downloading objectionable content, and enjoying a better web experience.
Don't be to hard on us. While I don't do a tremendous amount of front end work, I do listen to the developers and understand that it's not that easy at all.
You want near perfect rendering on all screen sizes, all devices, and all browsers. Dude. Seriously. Just ask NASA to set you up with your own private Moon Base and Death Star Laser.
It would work 10000000000000x better if it was a native program instead. That costs money. So the only thing I can do as a developer is use a fucking shitty retarded document markup language that instructs that fucking shitty retarded browser to download external code to be run client side on fucking shitty retarded client side code libraries and frame works.
THEN... THEN...
I need to somehow automagically figure out what device you are using, the screen sizes, interface capabilities, etc. and CUSTOMIZE my style sheets (one more nail in the fucktard coffin) just for your device.
And.... it all needs to work with whatever frameworks I have seamlessly. No. It really is a bitch and a half to make a website that dynamically renders and sizes itself to screens. The tech is JUST NOT THERE for me to do it cost effectively at all.
Personally, I would just say fuck it all. Give you a single page when it detects a mobile browser saying mobile browsing is not supported by anything other than our app.
Then I would write that SOB in something like PhoneGap and make it native. Give you what you REALLY want, which is an interface designed for your device.
Mobile web development is HARD and EXPENSIVE and I seriously question the wisdom of even expending the resources on it when everybody and their mother wants a mobile app anyways.
I don't have a problem with javascript, as I do make stuff with it. Done right, you don't have as much impact on the bandwidth as you think. If you have megs of javascript libraries being referenced from external CDN's, you're doing it wrong.
It's going to go down that road anyways till the end. Web browsers have ceased being about document markup and rendering, which is how it started, to running external code in complicated sand boxes. You can't put that genie back in the bottle.
The issue is being able to trust that javascript, which is really about trusting the sandboxes to not allow malicious code to be run. Tracking is a problem of course, but that is mitigated by blocking software that stops those specific scripts and domains from working. Once a Big Data company like that gets big enough, they'll just get shut down by the blockers, which is a very good thing. It protects our privacy as well as our computers.
If you don't want javascript and external code libraries you're only other option is to have a single universal API developed that ALL browsers adhere strictly to. Blocking tracking software is simple as a permissions setting at that point to not listen to any tracking tags or events set up in the page. AJAX type events would need to be classified accordingly and secured. An event going toward a different domain than the page? Blocked by permissions. Image not from the domain? Don't even download it based on permissions. CDN's should be registered in the browser as an alternative for any file that needs to be downloaded for a "page".
Above all, that API should have plentiful RBL's that outright disable all external calls. We want accountability? How about within an hour of malware being downloaded those RBL's are proactive like some email services and browsers start blocking that particular site or CDN automatically? That would make propagation of malware a real bitch in production. Not to mention if you are a big outfit and that happens people will start getting fired till it's fixed. I've been in a major company that got their email shut down by Cisco IronPort (Over half the vendors they dealt with were rejecting mail). Some yahoo in the data center thought it would be cool to run his own little server which got hacked and delivered out 9 tons of spam that shut down corporate email for 4 days till IronPort finally cleared it up.
Can you even imagine what would happen if one of those RBL systems blocked Yahoo by default a week or two ago? Shit storm indeed, but a needed one.
We don't have any of that.
What we *do* have is a clusterfuck of technology that developed from an interesting idea to effectively share a word processing screen at universities that is fundamentally toxic to us. We spend billions cleaning it, defending it, and developing it, etc.
It just needs to be scrapped and start over.
So no, blocking javascript is not the answer either. Unless you want to be left behind with non-working pages because people like me are getting really tired of needing to expend those resources for graceful failure. We don't have the time or the money to do that anymore (not in this economy) and javascript and JQuery (along with the other JS frameworks) are here to stay. So many of the "shiny" features out there only work in an event based framework where I can modify the DOM without reloading the entire page.
The whole mess is just terrible and we keep refactoring code to old email and document markup systems without addressing the underlying issues at all.
The keyword here is "comprehensive". The social programs we do have have a terrible track record of not actually helping to alleviate poverty. Why are we importing Mexicans to work in fields in the South, for instance, when we have people receiving assistance and not working? They could be sent to do that work instead.
By social programs I partly mean social medicine with heavy reforms to bring it's efficiency up from the high 20's to at least the 70's. Emphasis on preventative medicine. We really do have enough money to pull it off if we were just more efficient at it. A healthy populace is happier and more productive.
People can argue about health care all they want. It's a complete failure when you compare it to the rest of the world. Not only are we horrifically obese plagued with health problems, but we spent over 3 times more to achieve that failure than other countries noted successes.
Obviously welfare as well, although I don't want to give hand outs. I love food stamps and EBT. Instead of giving somebody $800 for the month that they can waste on Luxury items, the only thing they can use it for is approved food at the grocery store.
The rest should be better. I can't argue that they are plagued with problems with now, but scrapping them entirely is not an option, and talking about them is not a slippery slope to Communism either.
Call me crazy, but I seem to remember some coward of a President talking about jobs being created to attend to our woeful infrastructure. There are so many damn small jobs that need to be done too. Why not pick people up from the wellfare office, outfit them with work clothes, and pay them to clean up the streets and the graffiti? You can put millions to work repairing and creating new infrastructure, but you can also put millions to work just doing general repair too.
Social programs are not just about taking money from the rich Republatards and giving them to the slackers who never applied themselves in school or got a haircut. It's a strategic move to keep our lower classes from having food riots. Why Republicans think that people deprived of food stamps can magically find a job to feed their kids instead of resorting to desperate crime to eat is beyond me. How shortsighted is that? What about the middle class and people who have worked really hard such as myself, only to lose quite a bit in this recent Great Depression? I don't think it's such a good idea to be punishing them and if anybody deserves some assistance to becoming a productive member of society again it's a member of the middle class. We need them. The upper class cannot exist without them, and the lower classes would have no hope at all without the middle class propping them up.
Social programs are just a smart compromise to keep public safety at a minimum level.
Huh? NASA funding has been hugely successful in improving our technology and economy.
You misunderstood. I had prefaced that list with what the military industrial complex was taking away from NASA and science with their unreasonable budgets. If anything we should increase those budgets by at least an order of magnitude. NASA is hands down one of the best investments this country has ever made. The ROI is insane.
That's because of an over emotional reaction that saying that means you don't support America or your troops. Kind of like the question, "So how long have you stopped having sex with your sister?"
What makes me feel safe is the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, Canada, and Mexico. Canada? HAAHAHHA. They're not a threat to us and they could care less. Mexico already has an attack under way, and that is from their people and economy against ours. Which is not something I'm going to kill somebody over either or get unreasonably upset. Those oceans are significant buffers for protection. We only need a fraction of our current budget to operate the air craft carriers and battle groups in those two seas to make an invasion fleet really really sorry.
The greatest military weapon has already been created. Globalization. China is not going to really attack us, North Korea might bruise us up pretty good but completely die in the process, and nobody else really cares. Any country actually posing a threat is locked into an economic stale mate with us.
If a world war is going to happen, it will be over a shortage of resources and desperate people making attempts to secure resources for their people to keep up an unsustainable way of life 2 minutes longer. At that point, loss of life and the difficulty of getting over to America will be secondary to securing the natural resources. I think that is inevitable at this point with my cynicism. We simply lack the will and morality to suffer and build a sustainable world to avoid that future.
As an American I don't feel safe because of my military. The opposite actually. The expenditure takes away from:
- Education. Makes me feel safer if I'm not in a nation of idiots with faith based anti-science education (Texas). An educated and sophisticated population is far more capable than an Idiocracy. - Infrastructure. I really do like crossing over bridges. So much more convenient than spending a half a day going around. It would be nice to do that without dying. - High speed efficient transportation systems. Well... we don't even have that. We should have that. We don't have that. We're left with an aging rail way that is not even sophisticated enough to transport people across the entire country in viable time periods and is reduced to freight. Planes are used for most shipping now, and that's just hugely efficient. Pretty sure that in the last 10 years we could have dedicated a trillion towards high speed rail criss crossing the country. Would choose that over flying ANY day. - Science. Less funding for NASA and research that is highly beneficial to our way of life and might even solve some of the upcoming resource shortage problems. - Social programs. Yes. Nothing says safety like taking away all hope and mercy from people that aren't going to just die in a gutter, but come over to my gated community and rob/murder/rape me and my family in home invasions.
Lastly, our most recent wars have shown us that we don't even spend that money on the military, but on private contractors like BlackFuck that get immunity from prosecution and kill and rape innocent people in countries that we are terrorizing. It's not even going to soldiers and outfitting them with advanced battle armor.
I'll personally feel safer with a better economy, better educated people, comprehensive social programs (that I have no problems paying for) keeping the lower classes from pure desperation (dangerous), and an infrastructure that is new and up to date.
Brain Drain and woefully inadequate expenditures on infrastructure.
For whatever reasons, electrical engineering is done by foreign companies. Many engineers received education in the US and then fled back to their countries to work in companies servicing us. I don't really blame them either. America has to compete fairly as a place people want to desire to live. If we were so damn good they would stay.
This is just a side effect of all of the brain drain going on for decades. Less electrical engineers needed to support research, and less shops in the US needing those engineers, to provide high tech products to the rest.
The rest of the world isn't stupid. Other countries have the engineering capability to do these things and the economies to compete with ourselves.
With respect to electrical engineering in particular, the US simply does not spend enough on infrastructure to stimulate that part of the economy. Which is sad. We need to not just create new transportation and material sciences, but implement them on a wide scale.
Not doing that, so the engineers shouldn't hold their breath waiting for a game changing high tech rail system being deployed across the US.
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Interesting. Thanks for playing devil's advocate. I did find it funny you felt it necessary to link to explanation of it.
I guess the art of debate is becoming a lost art...
I had not considered "polyfills". However, if they are critical to site operation then you would have no choice but to load them on the pages that need it. I'm not saying there should be a hard 250k limit or anything, just that for normal operations you should aggressively try to limit the size.
Personally, I like to inject scripts on demand. When I would need one of those polyfill libraries I could inject the script before hand. If the user never performs an operation requiring it, it does not get loaded.
I never claim to be a front-end expert at all. In the last 2 years though I've been forced to step up and start creating more and more of the front end infrastructure due to costs (which is terrible; I'm overworked). For what I needed the minimum JQuery library has been giving me everything I need and I inject the chart and graph JS when I need it on specific pages.
How do images not from the domain (or registered CDN) failing to load make essential web applications useless? That sounds like hotlinking of images which I've always understood to be a dickhead move on the part of web designers.
That also comes back to the javascript because I cannot understand putting all of your JS on CDN's that you are not paying for. Worse, I see developers all the time hotlinking scripts from other blogs and developers. If you pay for the CDN, then use it as you see fit. If it's something your not paying for, then don't be a dickhead. Common courtesy from my point of view.
In some cases I can understand that hotlinking may be required to offer a service, or normalize images and scripts amongst all of the services clients. However, the vast majority of this activity is highly undesirable from the user's point of view. I use DoNotTrackMe and Ghostery precisely for that reason.
I'm not interested in facilitating the mass violations of privacy for marketers. They can DIAF repeatedly. I really believe that the content or script should be delivered from the domain, or CDN's that they are paying for. Other CDN's are too risky and don't offer the minimum level of reliability that I expect.
Keeping strictly to this requirement would seem to solve a lot of problems. The site owners and designers would be forced to host and review the content they are pushing out. No more pushing the blame out to a 3rd party company, and create accountability to help the users.
If they really want that beacon or tracking technology then download the script to your own servers or CDN's. While I know that many designers would just cron the damn thing to sync it, it does still create accountability.
As for the registering of the CDN, I think you misunderstood me. The site itself would register a CDN as part of the domain through instructions in the XHTML. I believe this would simplify work flow and allow you to swap out a CDN without touching a single line of code in the rest of the site.
You could register several different objects with the browser itself. Off the top of my head you could register CDN's, external widgets, beacons, trackers, etc. Even better, you could register known external objects that are community approved. Meaning, your XHTML does not have to reference the exact Google Analytics script, but to a common reference point that allows Google to normalize that code to whatever they want. No cost for registration. If it's well used enough the community itself can add it to the list of common objects to make life easier for all designers.
Having that can allow the community to manage RBL's for objectionable content. Not to mention with a single preference click you could disable all beacons and trackers. Privacy laws could be amended to state that bypassing the user preferences in the browser is illegal. Wasn't Google guilty of that anyways with something? There are really very few exceptions to disabling trackers. Netflix loading the FB Connect code to facilitate certain features is an example. Netflix could tell it was blocked and pop-up a dialog box informing that certain
The cell phone is the new notepad or scrap of paper that the criminal is carrying.
Maybe so. However, it also represents scraps of paper that are held in numerous other locations, and information that has nothing to do with the crime at hand.
Nothing you said even for a microsecond excuses your desire to eliminate due process. Remember, I'm not arguing that you can't get it. Only that I want a judge to say that the getting of my data is warranted.
You have the same back asswards logic that the NSA uses to justify mass surveillance. We *could* be ohh that much safer if we just got rid of due process and violated everyone's privacy in real time forever. All of the criminal text messages would be seen instantly!! We could even create a "precog" division for rapid response and be at the drug drop *before* the criminals get there.
No dude. The risks and dangers to our society from such invasions of privacy are so much more dangerous than whatever security you think you gained with it.
Once again, for the 2nd time in this post, if you really think you need it, just ask for a WARRANT.
A WARRANT allows you get that information you want because the logic and reasoning you have for getting it is determined to be WARRANTED.
You have not presented any logical reason whatsoever for getting rid of my due process rights.
Judges can be woken up, and if we have so much crime that we need to start hiring and paying judges to work grave yard shifts we have much bigger problems.
At that point let's just put society to rest and create Judge Dredd.
All of your examples pale in comparison to the protections afforded by judicial oversight. It's my RIGHT to have that judge woken up and asked if the logic and reasoning behind the violation of my privacy is warranted.
Interesting how that word is used. An action can be "warranted". That's what a warrant means. Somebody designated by the citizens and trained to be impartial evaluated the situation and said the invasion of my privacy was warranted and in the best interests of society.
With respect, I FUCKING WANT THAT.
Don't take away my right to have a judge involved before the cops can even attempt to violate my rights, haul my ass off to jail for forced enemas, colonoscopies, beatings, jail rapes, etc.
Let's keep due process dude. It's a really good idea.
So why not skip all the bullcrud and use common sense and let cops do their job.
That "bullcrud" is called Due Process and the Constitution of the United States of America.
"Nearly 100%" doesn't cut it. You're being a douchenozzle right now.
If it was your freedom at risk, why would you elect to remove the Judiciary oversight from your interaction with law enforcement?
Another question:
You may feel that way, but why would you deny me my Constitutional right to privacy in my effects and papers?
The position you hold is not reasonable, or rational, and basically amounts to "due process and oversight is so hard. I have to like convince a judge that my logic is correct".
In other words, you strongly disagree with the idea of peer review.
Those checks and balances were created by the founding fathers for a reason. Not just to fuck with law enforcement and make their lives harder.
I have not run FF for at least 2 or 3 years now. It really was hilariously slow compared to previous years when it was the only usable web browser around.
It's nice to hear that IE is getting better, but my experience day to day is that Chrome is way faster in page loads and general operation (javascript). Personally, I would go back to IE if they are that good because I don't like supporting Google. They are so anti-privacy right now it's horrible.
The biggest problem with IE from what I understand is that it costs so much to develop plugins on it. That was the complaint from Ad Blocker right?
I think it was summer of last year I was looking for plugins on IE and did not find nearly as many as available and that was allegedly the reason why.
Uh huh.
I shouldn't have to roll that change out in group policy because some idiots at Microsoft destabilize an entire fucking operating system looking for updates to a single program for upwards of an hour after start up.
That's assuming I even have group policy. The number of companies with XP using them effectively as thin clients without domain controllers is the majority, not the minority.
That preference is just a hack and a cheap work around.
Says the AC.
It's not just about screen size and resolution. If that were true we would not have any problems rendering exactly the same between Firefox, IE, and Chrome right?
But we do right? Who's the fucking idiot?
No matter the screen resolution? Are you fucking retarded?
The same site layout and style you use on a widescreen tablet is NOT going to fly on a tiny ass little smart phone screen. Unless you want everything to SCALE down, which would be stupid.
Mobile design really does require a significant departure from how your entire site is laid out and used. If you want a fucking example look at Fandango. They DON'T look anywhere near the same.
Your idea that you could code some sort of style sheet that could render on both is hilarious.
Since you are already creating entirely different style sheets and use cases for a mobile platform, why do the work TWICE?
Just stop. Look at yourself and the money and resources you are expending. Face Palm. HARD.
Write the god damn mobile app and just be done with it.
I'd like to say that I'm one of them, but I really stick to back end development, automated BI, databases, sysadmin, etc. The stuff that I do front ends for I approach the same way as the back end. Scaleability and Security. The first part solves most of the bandwidth and processing waste you see, and the latter is just the only sane way to approach anything now.
I wouldn't put a huge library only to use a small part of it. My first attempt I downloaded JQuery right away, and then, actually used it. Meaning, that all of the dialog boxes, button creation, animations, effects, whatever were pure JQuery code. Use their site theme roller and actually stick to it, and you will have a nice clean working site with minimal code.
It's funny you mention caching :)
Since I was using AJAX to get XML documents that I was using to populate rows on reports I created my own caching mechanism that would store the results in the DOM body itself with a TTL. If you went back to do the search again with the same parameters it literally just read it from the DOM body, looked at the TTL, and just put up the loading animation while doing nothing. Those executives could keep clicking the damn button all they wanted. As long as they didn't close the browser and stop the session I was caching all of my own XML response docs myself.
While I know that my stuff wasn't as secure as other professionals could do it, I know that it wasn't terrible either. All input was validated and sanitized, and I did best practices for XSS/CSRF.
Starting out as a programmer the only way you could see web browsers in the beginning was like the special ed classes had leaked out and were running amuck in the industry.
Things are already hard enough.
You want to tilt at windmills regarding the DOM and javascript. You can't do the operations people want today with plain xhtml and style sheets. Not to mention, I would need to do device detection to decide on WHAT style sheet to deliver.
You're idea is to deliver what amounts to a PDF and absolve yourself of all responsibility for the rendering. Great. Unrealistic, but great.
Don't group me with those "people". I'm not making stupid hacks and I'm just as tired as you are about all the bullshit just to get something done. Javascript is the only way to do it, and you are conflating the problems of style sheets and rending with JS. No, not always. In fact, not even that often if you are doing JS correctly.
I'm not interested in making JS do everything on the page. A simple event to change the background color to create a menu is not something that should ever break the rendering of the page. By the same token, an AJAX call tied to a click event is not going to break the rendering either. It can even HELP. You don't have to download an entirely new page. Just modify the DOM with the result that came back.
The mobile app is the only sane response I have at the moment to the nightmare that is trying to get CSS rendering correctly on mobile devices, as well as every other freaking device they buy.
I don't want them visiting my website with a mobile browser since the chances of bullshit problems with rendering or malware is just too damn high.
A mobile app solves all the problems you speak about. I can finally, and reliably, control the user experience on their device.
You're right about the marketing vermin, but I'm NOT a marketing vermin. I just want users to be able to perform those operations they want without dealing with the hell that is mobile web browsing.
Be honest. Do you really want mobile web browsing when it sucks, the programs themselves are not standard, and the user experience is so different?
Having a native app written to do exactly what you want would always seem to be the preferred method. At least with the case of PhoneGap I get an IOS and Android App with one single platform.
I think that's easier than coding a separate mobile site for the platform. ....
AND... if you are really so damn good that you can do all of what you are saying with just a document and a style sheet.. then teach us master. Show us the way through the valley of darkness to the fields of wheat and honey.
Cuz I'm tired. I just want shit that works man.
no. the toxicity comes from the advertising and the insistence on javascript (and flash and java etc applets).
just displaying documents is harmless. it's the fact that web-dev fuckers (and worse, "designers") want to run arbitrary code on millions of computers belonging to other people that is the source of the harm.
Noooo, the toxicity comes from using a platform that was designed only to publish static documents with a simple markup language to do rather complicated dynamic operations requiring the browser to act more like an operating system managing objects, making additional requests based on client side activity, etc.
This what YOU WANT. You can't tell me you don't want those features without also telling me that you want to be Amish.
Running arbitrary code is exactly what is required to satisfy web browsing needs of people today.
you're making the mistake of assuming those "shiny" features are essential. they're not. in fact, more often than not, they're a PITA and end up being a reason not to return to the site.
if a web site or even just a web page doesn't work without javascript, then it is broken. js can be useful to *optionally* enhance a page, but the page should work (i.e. display the important information and navigation controls) without javascript.
They're absolutely essential, and done right, not even close to being a pain in the ass. If you have a "form" on a page and want to be able to work with it, without having the entire page reload, your ONLY option is JS. There are NO OTHER OPTIONS.
I'm flabbergasted that you even think for one moment that a site not working without javascript is broken. With respect, you're the one broken.
You simply cannot do 99% of what people expect in a "Web 2.0" experience with working with the DOM locally, and that absolutely requires JS. Unless... you really want JAVA and FLASH?
There is no such thing as "optional" enhancements anymore. Responding to events and using a JS framework greatly accelerates development times and actually allows for rendering on different browsers to be largely the same.
My pages are written far easier and are less cluttered with a simple class having a click event that runs an AJAX call to get your more information about that object.
You're wishing to go back to a pure static page environment, or worse, a dynamic one where to do the SIMPLEST activity requires a GET or POST to a separate page requiring server side code to operate, create a dynamic page just for you, and then return it.
Really? All of that work, those server resources, just because you didn't want one little AJAX call running on the page submitting your post?
Hardly seems reasonable.
Then let's not forget. With your idea, no major web development would have ever been done period. The only way to do anything again would be native code, thereby shutting out quite a bit of valuable innovation in the markets by startups that could have never afforded the resources for large coding shops that could keep track of code for multiple platforms.
Having experienced native code companies and SAAS companies... please don't relegate the rest of us to that hell. The native code companies are cratering because they can't begin to hope to keep up with the SAAS companies using open source frameworks and rapid cross platform development to push out fixes and features in weeks instead of 3 years.
As for that CDN observation, I never said it was perfect. Only that if you wanted web browsers to operate the way they do now with no 3rd party client side library and frameworks you would need to provide all of those capabilities straight in the browser. Registering a CDN in the browser as servicing a particular domain at least allows the browser the ability to filer those requests and choose whether to do it at all. Site coding is easier because the browser understands to redirect the requests for those files to the registered CDN instead
I use IE all the time to download Chrome on new systems....
Though, lately I've been doing more and more front end work. It's where I'm finding money. That unfortunately requires me to use IE most of the day to make sure what I'm working is rendering across browsers correctly.
Otherwise I use Chrome. Opera is just not my cup of tea, Firefox sucks balls now (seriously. they couldn't have fucked up more if they tried), Safari isn't all that good, and that leaves IE or Chrome. Gee... I wonder....
There is an argument that a small site with low visitor counts can get away with a 1 meg download that is cached afterwards anyways. That being said, I think anyone that claims they are anything greater than a novice must use scaleable web design practices. Meaning, that you have to justify every single 1k of data being returned by the web server.
The problem you reference are what I call the web hobbyists. Web developers are plagued with the hobbyists to the extent that people by default think they are fucking morons.
I'm being nice, but there are so many people out there selling their development services that don't even understand PHP or JS and can only follow instructions on some page to get a Wordpress plugin to work. These are the people operating at such a high level of abstraction that they have no idea how a web browser actually works at all. I'm no expert and even I understand headers and the general theory behind rendering and running client side code.
Trial and error by shoving JS on a page and hoping for the best is quite normal unfortunately.
I actually had somebody give me a page back that they had worked on, (which looked very good), and required some JS to dynamically do something (don't remember). They literally copied and pasted the JS from some blog page and gave it to me as a finished product. Never bothered changing the ID, let alone creating a class, and let the code run trying to attach events to non-existing page elements. The library was not even included.
That person probably represents the norm for the armchair web hobbyist that would be unemployed if it was not for Wordpress.
I think it largely has to do with ignorance.
The poster holds a rather unsophisticated view that allows them to see the police's reasonable and justified need for access to that information as something correct and desirable.
The 4th doesn't mean anything to the poster since they don't understand the basics taught to people in Civic's class. That being, the ostensibly simple concept of having a member of the Judiciary act as a check and balance against the needs of the Executive.
Nobody is saying that the police should not have access to that data. They absolutely should and I can totally understand that it would be very useful to solving crimes. What the proponents completely miss is the understanding of what a warrant is .
That's the real problem. How many people understand what the heck a warrant even is anymore?
Seriously? How on earth does anything you just said magically erase the US Constitution?
That smartphone represents, just as you said, access to huge amounts of information about the suspect. As well as information about innocent third parties that quite possibly had nothing to do with the crime.
You're supporting the idea of fishing expeditions into a person's digital space.
Arrest does not imply guilt. A member of the Judiciary should always be consulted regarding, and allowed to limit, the scope of any search of a person's effects and papers.
So, NO. There is not always enough evidence to justify the full and complete invasion of privacy of a citizen that is innocent until being proved guilty. If there really is a justifiable reason to invade that privacy than the police can convince a judge to do it.
Don't be a douchenozzle that enables their asshattery please.
There is never an acceptable reason to violate due process and PERFORM ANY ACTION WITHOUT A WARRANT .
Warrant, warrant, warrant, W A R R A N T!
It's a well conceived check and balance against tyranny ever present in a law enforcement organization. Don't give up something so valuable to the citizens over such stupid reasons.
It's not a deal breaker to me if it's a very small percentage.
Since it's MOST CERTAINLY not, than yes, I say stop the executions until the degree of certainty is much higher.
As far as death goes, while permanent, I have a hard time saying it's substantively worse than 10-20 years in prison. Prison is a tough place and death may truly be merciful.
All of that being said, that execution was NOT merciful. 10 minutes of gasping for air and convulsing is not a merciful death and could be considered torture quite easily. That sedative may have put him a different mental state possibly akin to dreaming.
That's a huge problem. Having chronic sleep apnea I experienced multiple occasions where I had nightmares about drowning and suffocation only to wake up actually suffocating.
That man may have very well died having similar nightmares and I would not wish that upon anybody.
Yes, they would indeed, but they don't have the moral high ground here.
I've personally wrestled with the idea of killing somebody my entire life. While I strongly identify with pacifism and Buddhism, I have to be honest with myself and know that I would kill that mother fucker with my bare hands to prevent him from killing me, another child, a family member, or any other person out there.
Doing that does not even bring me down to their level either. It would be horrible, and I would be traumatized. I doubt many of those murderers feel the same about their victims.
Defending yourself or others to the point of causing death is not inherently evil and history, as well as many cultures, have repeatedly called such actions justified.
Maybe so, but blocking all javascript by default just results in a poor browsing experience devoid of any real capabilities.
The vast majority of CRM platforms and internal web sites use it as well. So obviously your business system allows javascript otherwise you would never get any work done with SAAS vendors.
Stuff I would want to do with my own landing pages is impossible without it. I absolutely need the ability to perform AJAX calls and modify the DOM without reloading the page. There is some truly interesting and beautiful websites that simply cannot make do with just HTML and a style sheet.
Download DoNotTrackMe, Ghostery, Ad Blocker, and a comprehensive hosts file list for blocking at the system level. You'll find that you are still pretty safe, not downloading objectionable content, and enjoying a better web experience.
Don't be to hard on us. While I don't do a tremendous amount of front end work, I do listen to the developers and understand that it's not that easy at all.
You want near perfect rendering on all screen sizes, all devices, and all browsers. Dude. Seriously. Just ask NASA to set you up with your own private Moon Base and Death Star Laser.
It would work 10000000000000x better if it was a native program instead. That costs money. So the only thing I can do as a developer is use a fucking shitty retarded document markup language that instructs that fucking shitty retarded browser to download external code to be run client side on fucking shitty retarded client side code libraries and frame works.
THEN... THEN...
I need to somehow automagically figure out what device you are using, the screen sizes, interface capabilities, etc. and CUSTOMIZE my style sheets (one more nail in the fucktard coffin) just for your device.
And.... it all needs to work with whatever frameworks I have seamlessly. No. It really is a bitch and a half to make a website that dynamically renders and sizes itself to screens. The tech is JUST NOT THERE for me to do it cost effectively at all.
Personally, I would just say fuck it all. Give you a single page when it detects a mobile browser saying mobile browsing is not supported by anything other than our app.
Then I would write that SOB in something like PhoneGap and make it native. Give you what you REALLY want, which is an interface designed for your device.
Mobile web development is HARD and EXPENSIVE and I seriously question the wisdom of even expending the resources on it when everybody and their mother wants a mobile app anyways.
I don't have a problem with javascript, as I do make stuff with it. Done right, you don't have as much impact on the bandwidth as you think. If you have megs of javascript libraries being referenced from external CDN's, you're doing it wrong.
It's going to go down that road anyways till the end. Web browsers have ceased being about document markup and rendering, which is how it started, to running external code in complicated sand boxes. You can't put that genie back in the bottle.
The issue is being able to trust that javascript, which is really about trusting the sandboxes to not allow malicious code to be run. Tracking is a problem of course, but that is mitigated by blocking software that stops those specific scripts and domains from working. Once a Big Data company like that gets big enough, they'll just get shut down by the blockers, which is a very good thing. It protects our privacy as well as our computers.
If you don't want javascript and external code libraries you're only other option is to have a single universal API developed that ALL browsers adhere strictly to. Blocking tracking software is simple as a permissions setting at that point to not listen to any tracking tags or events set up in the page. AJAX type events would need to be classified accordingly and secured. An event going toward a different domain than the page? Blocked by permissions. Image not from the domain? Don't even download it based on permissions. CDN's should be registered in the browser as an alternative for any file that needs to be downloaded for a "page".
Above all, that API should have plentiful RBL's that outright disable all external calls. We want accountability? How about within an hour of malware being downloaded those RBL's are proactive like some email services and browsers start blocking that particular site or CDN automatically? That would make propagation of malware a real bitch in production. Not to mention if you are a big outfit and that happens people will start getting fired till it's fixed. I've been in a major company that got their email shut down by Cisco IronPort (Over half the vendors they dealt with were rejecting mail). Some yahoo in the data center thought it would be cool to run his own little server which got hacked and delivered out 9 tons of spam that shut down corporate email for 4 days till IronPort finally cleared it up.
Can you even imagine what would happen if one of those RBL systems blocked Yahoo by default a week or two ago? Shit storm indeed, but a needed one.
We don't have any of that.
What we *do* have is a clusterfuck of technology that developed from an interesting idea to effectively share a word processing screen at universities that is fundamentally toxic to us. We spend billions cleaning it, defending it, and developing it, etc.
It just needs to be scrapped and start over.
So no, blocking javascript is not the answer either. Unless you want to be left behind with non-working pages because people like me are getting really tired of needing to expend those resources for graceful failure. We don't have the time or the money to do that anymore (not in this economy) and javascript and JQuery (along with the other JS frameworks) are here to stay. So many of the "shiny" features out there only work in an event based framework where I can modify the DOM without reloading the entire page.
The whole mess is just terrible and we keep refactoring code to old email and document markup systems without addressing the underlying issues at all.
The performance issue was a constant check for updates.. for another program notorious for performance issues....
This is why I really wish that Microsoft was *truly* forced to allow IE to be ripped out of their operating system completely.
At this point, just give it up guys. You had over 10 years trying to make a browser. Let it go....
The keyword here is "comprehensive". The social programs we do have have a terrible track record of not actually helping to alleviate poverty. Why are we importing Mexicans to work in fields in the South, for instance, when we have people receiving assistance and not working? They could be sent to do that work instead.
By social programs I partly mean social medicine with heavy reforms to bring it's efficiency up from the high 20's to at least the 70's. Emphasis on preventative medicine. We really do have enough money to pull it off if we were just more efficient at it. A healthy populace is happier and more productive.
People can argue about health care all they want. It's a complete failure when you compare it to the rest of the world. Not only are we horrifically obese plagued with health problems, but we spent over 3 times more to achieve that failure than other countries noted successes.
Obviously welfare as well, although I don't want to give hand outs. I love food stamps and EBT. Instead of giving somebody $800 for the month that they can waste on Luxury items, the only thing they can use it for is approved food at the grocery store.
The rest should be better. I can't argue that they are plagued with problems with now, but scrapping them entirely is not an option, and talking about them is not a slippery slope to Communism either.
Call me crazy, but I seem to remember some coward of a President talking about jobs being created to attend to our woeful infrastructure. There are so many damn small jobs that need to be done too. Why not pick people up from the wellfare office, outfit them with work clothes, and pay them to clean up the streets and the graffiti? You can put millions to work repairing and creating new infrastructure, but you can also put millions to work just doing general repair too.
Social programs are not just about taking money from the rich Republatards and giving them to the slackers who never applied themselves in school or got a haircut. It's a strategic move to keep our lower classes from having food riots. Why Republicans think that people deprived of food stamps can magically find a job to feed their kids instead of resorting to desperate crime to eat is beyond me. How shortsighted is that? What about the middle class and people who have worked really hard such as myself, only to lose quite a bit in this recent Great Depression? I don't think it's such a good idea to be punishing them and if anybody deserves some assistance to becoming a productive member of society again it's a member of the middle class. We need them. The upper class cannot exist without them, and the lower classes would have no hope at all without the middle class propping them up.
Social programs are just a smart compromise to keep public safety at a minimum level.
Huh? NASA funding has been hugely successful in improving our technology and economy.
You misunderstood. I had prefaced that list with what the military industrial complex was taking away from NASA and science with their unreasonable budgets. If anything we should increase those budgets by at least an order of magnitude. NASA is hands down one of the best investments this country has ever made. The ROI is insane.
That's because of an over emotional reaction that saying that means you don't support America or your troops. Kind of like the question, "So how long have you stopped having sex with your sister?"
What makes me feel safe is the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, Canada, and Mexico. Canada? HAAHAHHA. They're not a threat to us and they could care less. Mexico already has an attack under way, and that is from their people and economy against ours. Which is not something I'm going to kill somebody over either or get unreasonably upset. Those oceans are significant buffers for protection. We only need a fraction of our current budget to operate the air craft carriers and battle groups in those two seas to make an invasion fleet really really sorry.
The greatest military weapon has already been created. Globalization. China is not going to really attack us, North Korea might bruise us up pretty good but completely die in the process, and nobody else really cares. Any country actually posing a threat is locked into an economic stale mate with us.
If a world war is going to happen, it will be over a shortage of resources and desperate people making attempts to secure resources for their people to keep up an unsustainable way of life 2 minutes longer. At that point, loss of life and the difficulty of getting over to America will be secondary to securing the natural resources. I think that is inevitable at this point with my cynicism. We simply lack the will and morality to suffer and build a sustainable world to avoid that future.
As an American I don't feel safe because of my military. The opposite actually. The expenditure takes away from:
- Education. Makes me feel safer if I'm not in a nation of idiots with faith based anti-science education (Texas). An educated and sophisticated population is far more capable than an Idiocracy.
- Infrastructure. I really do like crossing over bridges. So much more convenient than spending a half a day going around. It would be nice to do that without dying.
- High speed efficient transportation systems. Well... we don't even have that. We should have that. We don't have that. We're left with an aging rail way that is not even sophisticated enough to transport people across the entire country in viable time periods and is reduced to freight. Planes are used for most shipping now, and that's just hugely efficient. Pretty sure that in the last 10 years we could have dedicated a trillion towards high speed rail criss crossing the country. Would choose that over flying ANY day.
- Science. Less funding for NASA and research that is highly beneficial to our way of life and might even solve some of the upcoming resource shortage problems.
- Social programs. Yes. Nothing says safety like taking away all hope and mercy from people that aren't going to just die in a gutter, but come over to my gated community and rob/murder/rape me and my family in home invasions.
Lastly, our most recent wars have shown us that we don't even spend that money on the military, but on private contractors like BlackFuck that get immunity from prosecution and kill and rape innocent people in countries that we are terrorizing. It's not even going to soldiers and outfitting them with advanced battle armor.
I'll personally feel safer with a better economy, better educated people, comprehensive social programs (that I have no problems paying for) keeping the lower classes from pure desperation (dangerous), and an infrastructure that is new and up to date.
Brain Drain and woefully inadequate expenditures on infrastructure.
For whatever reasons, electrical engineering is done by foreign companies. Many engineers received education in the US and then fled back to their countries to work in companies servicing us. I don't really blame them either. America has to compete fairly as a place people want to desire to live. If we were so damn good they would stay.
This is just a side effect of all of the brain drain going on for decades. Less electrical engineers needed to support research, and less shops in the US needing those engineers, to provide high tech products to the rest.
The rest of the world isn't stupid. Other countries have the engineering capability to do these things and the economies to compete with ourselves.
With respect to electrical engineering in particular, the US simply does not spend enough on infrastructure to stimulate that part of the economy. Which is sad. We need to not just create new transportation and material sciences, but implement them on a wide scale.
Not doing that, so the engineers shouldn't hold their breath waiting for a game changing high tech rail system being deployed across the US.
I'm not like emotionally invested in the button dude :)
Just pointing out that I did actually use it. I know there are alternatives and that might not even be the best. It's a tool.
I wanted to add that it could very well be profitable and Google took it away and might soon release an alternative adding to their other services.