Often the victim of lifestyle choices is the person who makes them. I've seen people destroy themselves with drugs and alcohol, and children before they are out of high school, and I just wonder, "This doesn't have to happen! Why do we glorify this stuff?"
Honestly, I didn't know we were. And I don't think we are.
The metal/drug culture you reference in another post -- is it the cause or the symptom of a destructive lifestyle? Or is it somewhere in the middle? (I'd opt for that last option myself.
My point was that non-destructive lifestyle choices shouldn't be marginalized -- there's simply no reason, except that they take others out of their comfort zone. And, destructive or not, 'rebel'-type lifestyles are often reinforced when faced with being blindly squashed -- which is often the case, rather than a rational look at the person behind the lifestyle.
Adolf Hitler was "different". The people in the KKK dress "different". The Heaven's Gate cult was "different".
Why is the attitude around here seem to be that people who deliberatly look and act different are somehow automatically superior to those who don't?
I don't think it's being said that they're superior. Just human, too. And that non-conformity is okay. You cite a few examples of differences being "bad" -- ignoring all the non-events where "different" people or groups are neutral or even helpful. And also ignore all the events where "normal" people have done destructive things.
I've gotten the impression that there's an idea in our society that setting out on your own, being a leader, taking risks, etc. is a good thing. Yet nonconformists are mocked, beaten down, and dragged back in by the pack.
What good is "expressing ones individual identity" if everyone else thinks you are a freak, and treats you as such?
This is a cultural/societal problem with the people who thinks a person a freak, not with the "freak" himself. What good is being (gay/black/other disenfranchised minority) if you are mocked/beaten/killed? Why does a goth lifestyle threaten people, aside from forcing them to expand their mind? Why does any lifestyle, if it hurts no one, ridiculed/persecuted?
XSL isn't finished yet. XML linking isn't finished yet. Are you saying we should wait for those things to be finished before Mozilla 1.0?
Quite possibly, yes. Or rather, have Mozilla released without these modules. I'd rather see no implementation than an incorrect implementation that people will start to use. Unless the implementation is forward-compatible, which is tough to do when all you have is a draft spec.
1. I never use em, no need, it can't hurt me if I don't touch it right?
Except that em and % are two of the most useful size units in CSS. It allows elements to be sized relative to how the user wants to see them, instead of in an absolute manner, which can hinder usability. Unfortunately, the IE 3 screws up em very badly, and NN4 screws up % rather badly as well. (sigh)
3. When you have a large audience you have to cover all your bases, so you have to do all that "stupid shit" so you know it looks the same everywhere
If you're trying to do that, then you're doing the wrong thing. My page will/never/ look the same on a PalmPilot as it does it Mozilla. Nor will it "look the same" if the user overrides my font selections. This is a straw man that's not even worth aiming for. A web page doesn't "look" like anything. It just has possible renderings, some of which may not be visual at all.
(And yeah, I know...try convincing the suits of that -- I do, and it usually fails, but it's worth trying for anyway.).
I've just learned over the years that it's better to make a page with the added functionality for the users of new tech that is also completely backward compatible. Yeah, it's a bitch, but that's what I get paid for.
That's what I get paid for, too. And that's the exact point of CSS. No matter what, some users get a usable version of the page (if you're doing things right) -- some users may just get a better-looking experience. If your content is interesting, it won't really matter too much to the users.
IE3? What the hell are you thinking? IE3 made a valiant effort to be css compliant. The standard wasn't there yet, so things don't work exactly right, but it's better than NN3 which has close to NO css support.
NN3 has no css support, which is better than broken css support. IE3 thinks that 1em = 1px. If you don't know why this is really bad, then do some more research. IE3 has to be specifically excluded from stylesheets because its support is so bad.
Not that I'm defending NN4.x
Why not include your style sheet, and then put some font tags in for backward (NN3) compatibility?? Include your css-p div's below the/html, hide them from your "stupid" browsers like ie3 and nn3 by putting style or open ended table tags around them with JS, and be done with it.
The point of stylesheets is that we don't have to do this stupid shit anymore. We can code up a set of content and have it display in a usable manner on every browser. If you're trying this hard, then you're doing something wrong.
And there's a good reason not to care about fonts at all.
I was rather curious as to how they would skirt the issue of how you can have someone agree to a license without reading it at purchase time. Think about it. "By opening this package, you agree to the license terms/inside/ this package"
AFAIK, these issues have come up before, and have been found to be legally invalid.
This is acceptable, with a condition (as another poster has stated):
Let me turn off the ads if I decide I want to pay for the software. At some point, using the program without the ads will be more vaulable to me than using it for free.
Letting me choose the ads would be nice too. The random banners on the web are of no use to me. Focused ones like/. are actually useful.
Hell, AOLIM already has ad banners on it. As a trend for all software, I don't see this as a good thing - but I don't think it'll last, as banners become less and less valuable. That, and the proliferation of open source software will cause banner-less alternatives to arise.
You'll find out that murder rates have a lot more to do with economic and cultural issues than the availability of firearms.
Yes, I agress completely.
In the United States, the availability of handguns, and the entire militaristic culture, on top of a abysmal economic and cultural structure is akin to throwing gasoline onto a fire.
But wouldn't adequately labelled spam (in some sort of e-mail header) be filterable at pretty much any level? Either at the originating ISP, or anywhere else along the path?
Furthermore, this wouldn't prevent ISPs from still prohibiting UCE as part of their Acceptable Use Policy.
You've done a good job of setting up strawmen to knock down:
Images aren't forbidden. They just need alternative content (possibly none) specified for those who can't or don't want to view images. Tables aren't forbidden. They're best used for row x column situations, but if they/are/ used for layout, do it in a way that makes sense, from left to right, top to bottom, so that the page is readable for those that can't or don't want to use tables.
You're not limited to a grey background either. You are bound to the fact that I can turn off your background color, and use my own. The same thing with fonts. What you think is a nice font, I'll probably find butt-ugly and hard to read. So I'll use my own.
If your web site breaks because of these things, you're done a very poor job of understanding the web. The web is not strictly a visual medium. A visual rendering is just one possibility.
The ability to toggle would make for a great development browser. Of course, I don't think a developer would want to use NeoPlanet. Of course, couldn't Mozilla just embed the IE viewer, if it wanted to? I mean, this is Windows only...
...but something like that would rawk for development if a platform-neutral way of doing was found.
Of course, many of these cross-browser issues go away once the browsers comply to an HTML spec.
I dunno...I found it funny. It wouldn't be funny if there were 300 of them, but 20 seemed to be the right number. Maybe it's because I hate what Scott Adams stands for. Maybe it's because part of my sense of humor is 12 years old. But I think there's a value in something like this. It's not the be-all and end-all of humor, but I'm glad it's there
Yes, I've noticed this also, and it irritates me. I considered writing customized stylesheets to go along with the customized/. content, but when I saw the state of the HTML... there's no way to do it.
CSS a dead technology - XSL the way to go
on
Gecko under Review
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· Score: 1
XSL isn't even a recommendation by the W3C yet. One of the greatest problems of the web is/has been specs being implented in a half-assed manner before they're even recommended, let along finalized.
CSS-1 gives a web page nearly all of the formatting control one needs to lay out a page. CSS-2 is even more powerful. What does HTML/CSS lack (from a document point of view) that XML/XSL can do / can do better?
I think one of the biggest risk here is gene crossover of "terminator seeds" sold by companies like Monsanto. I imagine that the reproductive systems of some plants are similar enough that normally-reproducing plants stop reproducing.
<humor> I mean, if these "terminator" plants start spreading all over the world, we'd be in big trouble! </humor>
Seriously, while such terminator plants are by definition an evolutionary dead-end, they do pose a risk to places that have existing crops that *do* rely on seeds for the next year.
Open Source useless in this and similar cases
on
Open Source Windows
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· Score: 2
This is a similar dilemma to Mozilla - developers have very little interest in delving deep into cruft, whether it be documented or not.
This is why closed source open source transitions don't work very well for a while. The code in place just isn't designed for distributed development. It's generally full of get-me-to-market hacks, rather than well-thought stable design.
Open Source is more than just releasing code -- it requires setting up an infrastructure where that code can be used/modified.
As an aside, I'd say that Mozilla *was* cruft. Now it's just a really big project. But hopefully it (is | will be) broken down enough that modules can be hacked easily.
The Melissa virus (and other macro-style virii) strike me as being more Microsoft and the end user's faults that anyone else. Greater society is quick to blame the virus programmer, but all the gaping security holes were put there by Microsoft.
Using MS products with this type of security holes is like going out, leaving your house unlocked, door wide open, with a sign posted in the front yard saying "Hey! My house is unlocked. Go on in! The stereo's in the living room..." and then complaining when you get robbed.
People use software with gaping security holes that they *know about* (word macro virii are old news) and then complain when those holes are exploited. If you're unwilling to close these holes, you can't complain. Of course, the other problem is that Microsoft has made leaving these holes open (sometimes) a necessity for using their software in useful ways.
UF isn't pointing out the follies of the tech workplace while doing it's damnedest to perpetuate them.
Scott Adams is like a weapons merchant selling guns to both sides in a war. He tells the execs what they want to hear, tells the peons what they want to hear, makes it a bit funny, and then rakes in the cash.
This is just more of Scott Adams grabbing onto a geek meme, using it to further his strip, and selling us out to make money preserving the status quo.
What interest does Scott Adams have in improving the geek workplace, despite what his books might say? Without stupid managers creating all the problems he makes fun of, he has very little to write about.
Scott Adams is selling us out to management, and then throwing us a little scrap of meat to keep us from revolting.
Slashdot Mirror
If the UN cannot even get the US to pay their dues, than how are they going to enforce this?
They seem to be able to enforce things in Kosovo. Well, bomb stuff if not enforce things.
Bomb domain squatters!
Often the victim of lifestyle choices is the person who makes them. I've seen people destroy themselves with drugs and alcohol, and children before they are out of high school, and I just wonder, "This doesn't have to happen! Why do we glorify this stuff?"
Honestly, I didn't know we were. And I don't think we are.
The metal/drug culture you reference in another post -- is it the cause or the symptom of a destructive lifestyle? Or is it somewhere in the middle? (I'd opt for that last option myself.
My point was that non-destructive lifestyle choices shouldn't be marginalized -- there's simply no reason, except that they take others out of their comfort zone. And, destructive or not, 'rebel'-type lifestyles are often reinforced when faced with being blindly squashed -- which is often the case, rather than a rational look at the person behind the lifestyle.
Adolf Hitler was "different".
The people in the KKK dress "different".
The Heaven's Gate cult was "different".
Why is the attitude around here seem to be that people who deliberatly look and act different are somehow automatically superior to those who don't?
I don't think it's being said that they're superior. Just human, too. And that non-conformity is okay. You cite a few examples of differences being "bad" -- ignoring all the non-events where "different" people or groups are neutral or even helpful. And also ignore all the events where "normal" people have done destructive things.
I've gotten the impression that there's an idea in our society that setting out on your own, being a leader, taking risks, etc. is a good thing. Yet nonconformists are mocked, beaten down, and dragged back in by the pack.
What good is "expressing ones individual identity" if everyone else thinks you are a freak, and treats you as such?
This is a cultural/societal problem with the people who thinks a person a freak, not with the "freak" himself. What good is being (gay/black/other disenfranchised minority) if you are mocked/beaten/killed? Why does a goth lifestyle threaten people, aside from forcing them to expand their mind? Why does any lifestyle, if it hurts no one, ridiculed/persecuted?
XSL isn't finished yet. XML linking isn't finished yet. Are you saying we should wait for those things to be finished before Mozilla 1.0?
Quite possibly, yes. Or rather, have Mozilla released without these modules. I'd rather see no implementation than an incorrect implementation that people will start to use. Unless the implementation is forward-compatible, which is tough to do when all you have is a draft spec.
1. I never use em, no need, it can't hurt me if I don't touch it right?
Except that em and % are two of the most useful size units in CSS. It allows elements to be sized relative to how the user wants to see them, instead of in an absolute manner, which can hinder usability. Unfortunately, the IE 3 screws up em very badly, and NN4 screws up % rather badly as well. (sigh)
3. When you have a large audience you have to cover all your bases, so you have to do all that "stupid shit" so you know it looks the same everywhere
If you're trying to do that, then you're doing the wrong thing. My page will
(And yeah, I know...try convincing the suits of that -- I do, and it usually fails, but it's worth trying for anyway.).
I've just learned over the years that it's better to make a page with the added functionality for the users of new tech that is also completely backward compatible. Yeah, it's a bitch, but that's what I get paid for.
That's what I get paid for, too. And that's the exact point of CSS. No matter what, some users get a usable version of the page (if you're doing things right) -- some users may just get a better-looking experience. If your content is interesting, it won't really matter too much to the users.
IE3? What the hell are you thinking? IE3 made a valiant effort to be css compliant. The standard wasn't there yet, so things don't work exactly right, but it's better than NN3 which has close to NO css support.
NN3 has no css support, which is better than broken css support. IE3 thinks that 1em = 1px. If you don't know why this is really bad, then do some more research. IE3 has to be specifically excluded from stylesheets because its support is so bad.
Not that I'm defending NN4.x
Why not include your style sheet, and then put some font tags in for backward (NN3) compatibility?? Include your css-p div's below the
The point of stylesheets is that we don't have to do this stupid shit anymore. We can code up a set of content and have it display in a usable manner on every browser. If you're trying this hard, then you're doing something wrong.
And there's a good reason not to care about fonts at all.
I haven't done any investigation into it, but it occurs to me that IE 5 was lauded by M$ as being the worlds first XML compliant browser.
Except it's not. MSIE 5 fails to implement XML to spec.
I was rather curious as to how they would skirt the issue of how you can have someone agree to a license without reading it at purchase time. Think about it. "By opening this package, you agree to the license terms
AFAIK, these issues have come up before, and have been found to be legally invalid.
This is acceptable, with a condition (as another poster has stated):
/. are actually useful.
Let me turn off the ads if I decide I want to pay for the software. At some point, using the program without the ads will be more vaulable to me than using it for free.
Letting me choose the ads would be nice too. The random banners on the web are of no use to me. Focused ones like
Hell, AOLIM already has ad banners on it. As a trend for all software, I don't see this as a good thing - but I don't think it'll last, as banners become less and less valuable. That, and the proliferation of open source software will cause banner-less alternatives to arise.
You'll find out that murder rates have a lot more to do with economic and cultural issues than the availability of firearms.
Yes, I agress completely.
In the United States, the availability of handguns, and the entire militaristic culture, on top of a abysmal economic and cultural structure is akin to throwing gasoline onto a fire.
Are you part of a well-regulated militia?
Why does Canada also have much lower murder rates? Compare the statistics between Seattle and Vancouver sometime.
But wouldn't adequately labelled spam (in some sort of e-mail header) be filterable at pretty much any level? Either at the originating ISP, or anywhere else along the path?
Furthermore, this wouldn't prevent ISPs from still prohibiting UCE as part of their Acceptable Use Policy.
You've done a good job of setting up strawmen to knock down:
/are/ used for layout, do it in a way that makes sense, from left to right, top to bottom, so that the page is readable for those that can't or don't want to use tables.
Images aren't forbidden. They just need alternative content (possibly none) specified for those who can't or don't want to view images. Tables aren't forbidden. They're best used for row x column situations, but if they
You're not limited to a grey background either. You are bound to the fact that I can turn off your background color, and use my own. The same thing with fonts. What you think is a nice font, I'll probably find butt-ugly and hard to read. So I'll use my own.
If your web site breaks because of these things, you're done a very poor job of understanding the web. The web is not strictly a visual medium. A visual rendering is just one possibility.
I thought it was funny. How is that "no redeeming value"?
The ability to toggle would make for a great development browser. Of course, I don't think a developer would want to use NeoPlanet. Of course, couldn't Mozilla just embed the IE viewer, if it wanted to? I mean, this is Windows only...
...but something like that would rawk for development if a platform-neutral way of doing was found.
Of course, many of these cross-browser issues go away once the browsers comply to an HTML spec.
I dunno...I found it funny. It wouldn't be funny if there were 300 of them, but 20 seemed to be the right number. Maybe it's because I hate what Scott Adams stands for. Maybe it's because part of my sense of humor is 12 years old. But I think there's a value in something like this. It's not the be-all and end-all of humor, but I'm glad it's there
Yes, I've noticed this also, and it irritates me. I considered writing customized stylesheets to go along with the customized /. content, but when I saw the state of the HTML ... there's no way to do it.
XSL isn't even a recommendation by the W3C yet. One of the greatest problems of the web is/has been specs being implented in a half-assed manner before they're even recommended, let along finalized.
CSS-1 gives a web page nearly all of the formatting control one needs to lay out a page. CSS-2 is even more powerful. What does HTML/CSS lack (from a document point of view) that XML/XSL can do / can do better?
I think one of the biggest risk here is gene crossover of "terminator seeds" sold by companies like Monsanto. I imagine that the reproductive systems of some plants are similar enough that normally-reproducing plants stop reproducing.
<humor>
I mean, if these "terminator" plants start spreading all over the world, we'd be in big trouble!
</humor>
Seriously, while such terminator plants are by definition an evolutionary dead-end, they do pose a risk to places that have existing crops that *do* rely on seeds for the next year.
This is why closed source open source transitions don't work very well for a while. The code in place just isn't designed for distributed development. It's generally full of get-me-to-market hacks, rather than well-thought stable design.
Open Source is more than just releasing code -- it requires setting up an infrastructure where that code can be used/modified.
As an aside, I'd say that Mozilla *was* cruft. Now it's just a really big project. But hopefully it (is | will be) broken down enough that modules can be hacked easily.
The Melissa virus (and other macro-style virii) strike me as being more Microsoft and the end user's faults that anyone else. Greater society is quick to blame the virus programmer, but all the gaping security holes were put there by Microsoft.
Using MS products with this type of security holes is like going out, leaving your house unlocked, door wide open, with a sign posted in the front yard saying "Hey! My house is unlocked. Go on in! The stereo's in the living room..." and then complaining when you get robbed.
People use software with gaping security holes that they *know about* (word macro virii are old news) and then complain when those holes are exploited. If you're unwilling to close these holes, you can't complain. Of course, the other problem is that Microsoft has made leaving these holes open (sometimes) a necessity for using their software in useful ways.
Wow...think of the Beowulf Cluster I could make with my body...
(sorry)
UF isn't pointing out the follies of the tech workplace while doing it's damnedest to perpetuate them.
Scott Adams is like a weapons merchant selling guns to both sides in a war. He tells the execs what they want to hear, tells the peons what they want to hear, makes it a bit funny, and then rakes in the cash.
This is just more of Scott Adams grabbing onto a geek meme, using it to further his strip, and selling us out to make money preserving the status quo.
What interest does Scott Adams have in improving the geek workplace, despite what his books might say? Without stupid managers creating all the problems he makes fun of, he has very little to write about.
Scott Adams is selling us out to management, and then throwing us a little scrap of meat to keep us from revolting.