the big ISP get expansion paid for by the government with no regulations attached.
Considering the cost of the broadband stimulus ($6B) and the cost of the 90s previous efforts ($200B) which resulted in fuck-all for expansion, I'd say if it works, then it is a goddamned good deal.
In my estimation the main problem is that you can "level up" in Wikipedia. That turns it into a game where a win is measured by gaining more special powers in the MMORPG.
Problem is, the levels were designed to combat trolls and outside concerted influences. Whether that worked or has just instutionalized the outside influences is not clear, but this is the explanation you're going to get from the "high-levels" as to why they should retain their status.
I think the main problem is that the concept of all activity being monitored doesn't work if there are ways to get around it (ie, admins can remove comments and edits, and not really have to state reasons).
In all reality, if Wikipedia were to really be more democratic or egalitarian, there would have to be MANY more editors and contributors (like 10x as many as now).
The problem isn't the language, the problem is the development environment. Edit, Upload, and Pray isn't very productive.
If you're programming javascript and still haven't learned about Firebug or even Webkit (aka Safari/Chrome) inspector, you're doing it wrong.
Firebug is a better "development/debug" tool than many IDEs, it's usability is insane. For me, Firefox+Firebug and a syntax-highlighting editor that can edit files over SFTP is all that's really needed (ok, svn support is nice).
I don't think the authorities involved are that stupid.
I'm not scared of stupidity as much as this law effectively allowing witch-hunts (oh, looky here, you have a binary file we can't decypher. Please tell us the encryption key). Add to the fact that you can't disclose your being investigated, and it's just ripe for abuse from very competent but corrupt officials.
"Utility officials have already stated"? Oh yeah, that's comforting. Are these the same "utility officials" who mismanaged the power grid in CA so badly a few years back that we had rolling blackouts all summer?
Are you seriously blaming the utility officials for the outright fraud perpetrated on California by:
The politicians (mainly republican) who partially deregulated energy grid in California
Energy companies like Enron who defrauded the state to the tune of $8 Billion
Utility companies were in a bind... they couldn't add more power generation, but had to buy from out of state (enter: profiteering by Enron & buddies, while FERC sat by and watched the rape).
You might want to read up a bit about the Cali power crisis before you spout off on it.
Intel charges more for chips with VT enabled, they use it as an up sell. Many laptop manufacturers are choosing not to pay the extra, especially on low end laptops with razor thin margins. This isn't just a Sony problem. As any Apple fanboy can tell you, Apple pays for the good stuff.
Apple has roughly 10.7% of the market share of smartphones, while Symbian has 47%, Blackberry has 19.5%, Windows Mobile has 12.4%, and hell, even linux has almost 9%. So to say that the iPhone is is the single most popular is a bit of a stretch (even with the qualifier 'for personal use').
You're conflating things... The guy said that the iPhone was the most popular phone, as opposed to mobile OSX (iphone OS) being the most popular.... it's a big difference, the UI (for now) and capabilities are roughly the same across the iPhone 2G, 3G and 3GS, the pixel width the same, and for camera, the lowest common denominator is pretty good. How many Blackberries have cameras? (I have no idea)... how many symbian or winmo devices do? You'd have to test to make sure the camera quality and UI worked on specific models. This is the strength (and drawback) of the iPhone... it's very uniform in capabilities and UI across all models and thus makes development easier for apps that use features like camera or accelerometer that are just not standard for other OS/brands.
but a language with a little rigidity, checking, and simplicity to it wouldn't hurt, would it?)
Given the history of the web, browsers and multiple companies injecting their own funky little APIs and features, I think a strictly-typed, more "structured" language wouldn't have cut it.
...and you're right, a VM based solution like Java clearly didn't work back in the 90s when PCs were too slow to handle it.
This is all easy to do. Why aren't you doing it? For a small office, it wouldn't even be expensive.
Especially in a small business, your users will rebel if they can't install (or use) their software... which is quite reasonable given most people are still running Windows XP, and most XP software is not capable of being installed or sometimes even used without admin access... this is especially troublesome if that user happens to be the CEO/Owner.
You hardly ever have time/resources to "do it properly" in a small business, unless what you're "doing right" is a core competency of the business. The trick is to convince the guy who signs the checks that it is business/mission critical (often non-trivial).
AFAICT, the only reason we're all using Flash is that it was a stop-gap measure to deal with the fact that normal video support in web browsers wasn't what it should have been.
Which is why Flash's enemy #1 right now is HTML5. Once flash video becomes unneccessary, flash will become as useful as java applets within two years. Adobe's biggest friend right now is probably Microsoft (really).
The 20k toilet seat. Wasn't because company A sold it to the government for 20k. It was from all the bureaucracy that went to approve it.
By this kind of calculation, any person we hire at any company I've worked at in the past several years would have been paying $25k+ per employee they hired (with an average hiring lead-time that takes 3-6mo), which for some staff would amount to 1/2 to 1/4 of their yearly salary.
Another similarity is the insane process in one of my former companies for acquiring external software that we didn't have site-licenses for: I would say it took $1000+ of worker-time to acquire a $99 license... so did we pay thousands for a hundred-dollar software license?
When the Democrats were elected to control essentially two branches of government and neutralize the third, we removed all governing forces keeping government moving slow. Government is now free to grow unchecked, at any rate desired. That's how you got an almost order of magnitude increase in the federal deficit in the first month of a new president. That was of course before any of the other multi-trillion dollar projects come up and get added to the grand total.
Gee, I wonder if your arguement could be applied to the Republicans circa 2002. They ran up the budget, and spent a whole lot of money for war on credit... Oh, but IOKIYAR!
It would be very interesting to close off part of a disused city or even a whole city and leave it as it is to see how nature would take over without human influences.
First thing you have to do is to keep the humans out. I bet that is far more costly than either
What's interesting, for me, about other search engines and their "usability" is the fact that my eyes are trained to parse google results. Google search results look official and informative. I can't use Yahoo or MSN (or Bing for this matter) because their search results look sterile.
I just tried Bing (Did Chandler approve of this?) and it does look like Google, with the exception of the left border as you state (and that weird mouseover line-with-a-dot on the right hand side)
Microsoft really did embrace (phase 1 of embrace, extend, extinguish) Google's format here... The same size font on result headings, the url (without the protocol identifier, in green) and even the "cached" link. And I don't think it looks bad, since many sites basically embed google site-search within their frame, as a quick and easy way of searching their site, and the results look similar to Bing.
That said, it does say a lot that Bing UI look just like Google's search UI embedded/framed within Bing's page... it isn't bad or good, but it does show that MSFT realizes they are NOT the big fish in the pond here, and that they are going for a low-profile look-alike entry so people aren't too scared off.
This American Life is one of the best public radio shows out there. Ira Glass and the quirky insightful topics and stories always pleasantly surprise.
This interview with the homeless poets was one of my favorite episodes (it really put my life, with all of my problems, in perspective)... along with the woman who changed sexes, and the girl who did tarot readings on the commuter rail.
They also had a very interesting stories on the housing and economic crises (don't remember which episodes).
I donate to my local NPR station because of this show.
That must be a typo - could they mean $ 250 million USD ? Most companies would not
choke on $ 250,000 worth of debt.
Unless they wanted to choke... as stated earlier, an important side-effect of bankruptcy is the disruption of all outstanding litigation... Maybe Apple was getting too close to finding the money behind PsyStar?
Once Apple introduces chip-level DRM, all of this goes away. I think it's only a matter of time, if these kind of companies keep cropping up. Think: PA Semi.
You've got a cartel of 5 envirowacko states with pollution standards in excess of Europe's, which are essentially keeping most diesels out of the country now.
Have you been to Europe lately? I visit France every year or so, and the pollution problem there is pretty nasty... I can smell the diesel exhaust in every major city, it's much worse than any town in California (except maybe parts of LA with the inversion).
Normally I defend most of the policy tacts that Europe takes over the US: fuel (diesel = better efficency), energy (France's nuclear program), and healthcare (mostly single-payer).
However in this case, I do think the NOX standards in Cali preventing that aweful smell of diesel exhaust has something to it.
What we should be more concerned with is the fact that everything depends on Javascript.
Javascript is nowhere near the problem. Like the other commenter mentioned, video is the problem along with proprietary frameworks like Flash, Silverlight, plugins (Adobe pdf plugin on FF/Mac behaving diffently than FF/Win is a good example) as well as quirky standards support (all browsers are guilty of this in different areas).
Javascript + JQuery is quite powerful and has tamed a lot of the wild differences between browsers. It's still not a walk in the park, but is managable for folks who aren't JS gurus now.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering the cost of the broadband stimulus ($6B) and the cost of the 90s previous efforts ($200B) which resulted in fuck-all for expansion, I'd say if it works, then it is a goddamned good deal.
Regulations will be pushed through later.
Problem is, the levels were designed to combat trolls and outside concerted influences. Whether that worked or has just instutionalized the outside influences is not clear, but this is the explanation you're going to get from the "high-levels" as to why they should retain their status.
I think the main problem is that the concept of all activity being monitored doesn't work if there are ways to get around it (ie, admins can remove comments and edits, and not really have to state reasons).
In all reality, if Wikipedia were to really be more democratic or egalitarian, there would have to be MANY more editors and contributors (like 10x as many as now).
If you're programming javascript and still haven't learned about Firebug or even Webkit (aka Safari/Chrome) inspector, you're doing it wrong.
Firebug is a better "development/debug" tool than many IDEs, it's usability is insane. For me, Firefox+Firebug and a syntax-highlighting editor that can edit files over SFTP is all that's really needed (ok, svn support is nice).
I'm not scared of stupidity as much as this law effectively allowing witch-hunts (oh, looky here, you have a binary file we can't decypher. Please tell us the encryption key). Add to the fact that you can't disclose your being investigated, and it's just ripe for abuse from very competent but corrupt officials.
Are you seriously blaming the utility officials for the outright fraud perpetrated on California by:
Utility companies were in a bind... they couldn't add more power generation, but had to buy from out of state (enter: profiteering by Enron & buddies, while FERC sat by and watched the rape).
You might want to read up a bit about the Cali power crisis before you spout off on it.
Here's some more evidence that the "Apple Tax" is just a higher price for quality goods:
http://blog.fosketts.net/2009/08/07/macs-beat-pcs-intel-vt/
You're conflating things... The guy said that the iPhone was the most popular phone, as opposed to mobile OSX (iphone OS) being the most popular.... it's a big difference, the UI (for now) and capabilities are roughly the same across the iPhone 2G, 3G and 3GS, the pixel width the same, and for camera, the lowest common denominator is pretty good. How many Blackberries have cameras? (I have no idea)... how many symbian or winmo devices do? You'd have to test to make sure the camera quality and UI worked on specific models. This is the strength (and drawback) of the iPhone... it's very uniform in capabilities and UI across all models and thus makes development easier for apps that use features like camera or accelerometer that are just not standard for other OS/brands.
Given the history of the web, browsers and multiple companies injecting their own funky little APIs and features, I think a strictly-typed, more "structured" language wouldn't have cut it.
...and you're right, a VM based solution like Java clearly didn't work back in the 90s when PCs were too slow to handle it.
Especially in a small business, your users will rebel if they can't install (or use) their software... which is quite reasonable given most people are still running Windows XP, and most XP software is not capable of being installed or sometimes even used without admin access... this is especially troublesome if that user happens to be the CEO/Owner.
You hardly ever have time/resources to "do it properly" in a small business, unless what you're "doing right" is a core competency of the business. The trick is to convince the guy who signs the checks that it is business/mission critical (often non-trivial).
Which is why Flash's enemy #1 right now is HTML5. Once flash video becomes unneccessary, flash will become as useful as java applets within two years. Adobe's biggest friend right now is probably Microsoft (really).
By this kind of calculation, any person we hire at any company I've worked at in the past several years would have been paying $25k+ per employee they hired (with an average hiring lead-time that takes 3-6mo), which for some staff would amount to 1/2 to 1/4 of their yearly salary.
Another similarity is the insane process in one of my former companies for acquiring external software that we didn't have site-licenses for: I would say it took $1000+ of worker-time to acquire a $99 license... so did we pay thousands for a hundred-dollar software license?
This kind of math is way off.
Gee, I wonder if your arguement could be applied to the Republicans circa 2002. They ran up the budget, and spent a whole lot of money for war on credit... Oh, but IOKIYAR!
First thing you have to do is to keep the humans out. I bet that is far more costly than either
This is what family members are useful for (other than for all that mushy emotional support stuff).
I absolutely hate flash. It crashes, causes pages to hang, and is a rampant memory hog. HTML5 killing flash video will make me very happy.
Sickening? Really? Since when is iTunes a monopoly? The only thing that's sickening is the weak analogy you presented that somehow Apple == Microsoft.
More like: "We let you be more graceful when you fail"... lots of product marketing says something very close to that.
I just tried Bing (Did Chandler approve of this?) and it does look like Google, with the exception of the left border as you state (and that weird mouseover line-with-a-dot on the right hand side)
Microsoft really did embrace (phase 1 of embrace, extend, extinguish) Google's format here... The same size font on result headings, the url (without the protocol identifier, in green) and even the "cached" link. And I don't think it looks bad, since many sites basically embed google site-search within their frame, as a quick and easy way of searching their site, and the results look similar to Bing.
That said, it does say a lot that Bing UI look just like Google's search UI embedded/framed within Bing's page... it isn't bad or good, but it does show that MSFT realizes they are NOT the big fish in the pond here, and that they are going for a low-profile look-alike entry so people aren't too scared off.
This American Life is one of the best public radio shows out there.
Ira Glass and the quirky insightful topics and stories always pleasantly surprise.
This interview with the homeless poets was one of my favorite episodes (it really put my life, with all of my problems, in perspective)... along with the woman who changed sexes, and the girl who did tarot readings on the commuter rail.
They also had a very interesting stories on the housing and economic crises (don't remember which episodes).
I donate to my local NPR station because of this show.
Unless they wanted to choke... as stated earlier, an important side-effect of bankruptcy is the disruption of all outstanding litigation... Maybe Apple was getting too close to finding the money behind PsyStar?
Once Apple introduces chip-level DRM, all of this goes away.
I think it's only a matter of time, if these kind of companies keep cropping up.
Think: PA Semi.
Goldschläger!
Have you been to Europe lately? I visit France every year or so, and the pollution problem there is pretty nasty... I can smell the diesel exhaust in every major city, it's much worse than any town in California (except maybe parts of LA with the inversion).
Normally I defend most of the policy tacts that Europe takes over the US: fuel (diesel = better efficency), energy (France's nuclear program), and healthcare (mostly single-payer).
However in this case, I do think the NOX standards in Cali preventing that aweful smell of diesel exhaust has something to it.
Javascript is nowhere near the problem. Like the other commenter mentioned, video is the problem along with proprietary frameworks like Flash, Silverlight, plugins (Adobe pdf plugin on FF/Mac behaving diffently than FF/Win is a good example) as well as quirky standards support (all browsers are guilty of this in different areas).
Javascript + JQuery is quite powerful and has tamed a lot of the wild differences between browsers. It's still not a walk in the park, but is managable for folks who aren't JS gurus now.
Link. Apple allowed it, then (I'm assuming) AT&T complained, and Apple removed it.