Compared to the taskbar of Windows XP, the taskbar of Windows 7 works a bit more like the dock of Mac OS X: Windows 7 has one button per app even when the taskbar isn't full, and Windows 7 unifies quick launch and open windows.
Congratulations. By reading that sentence, you have now completed your twenty-second mandatory training on the Windows 7 taskbar.
To me the difference between a murderer and a soldier is that a murderer wants to kill.
The differences between a murderer and a soldier are:
1. A soldier has deliberately joined an organization in which s/he will be trained how to be a murderer. Murderers, by contrast, are (usually) self-taught.
2. A soldier believes that murder is totally ethical when it's done at the direction of someone else. Murderers, by contrast, are (usually) aware that what they are doing is ethically wrong.
It's odd you should say this, because I've had a Windows guru/sysadmin try several times to get this working (with his Dell running XP), and every time he's given up after about 45 minutes of messing with configuration settings. I myself tried it on both of my work-issued PCs (an HP and a Lenovo, both running XP) and found it completely impossible. Of the many Windows users I know, none have ever successfully used their laptop as an AP or a reverse bridge (providing connectivity over ethernet from a single wireless connection).
Therefore, you are either lying, or a statistical anomaly. I trust you're recounting the story accurately, so I'm going to conclude that your success is the exception rather than the rule.
And if Microsoft and Windows are one of your biggest concerns in the World, you really need to get a grip and a life.
I dunno, I think that if Windows is your biggest concern, you've clearly figured out all the other more important aspects of life, and therefore you've probably got a better grip on the world.
I think Shuttleworth's basic premise is completely sound -- I know from experience that watching actual users, in the field, using my 'well-thought-out' and 'intuitive' software, found it much less intuitive and well-thought-out than I did. It was a valuable (and, yes, painful) learning experience. The problem I see is that he suggests putting the software in the hands of user interface experts, which are even worse than developers at predicting how real users work.
I've read lots of articles written by usability experts that talk about idioms, efficiency, doing what the user expects, etc. etc. And that's all great, except that it's wrong. If you follow the experts, then you get in a habit of saying "users are used to software X, so if we want to make our software easy to pick up, we'll make it use the same idioms and concepts as software X." Out in the real world (yes, I worked there for a while, and yes, it was painful), people are asking themselves, "why, for the love of god, does every piece of software do this same stupid thing?"
In every conversation I've had with a well-educated, progressive developer about usability, the argument they believe is that users expect the status quo. (I've been shot down from making a few small changes to our software's user interface on these grounds.) When I've asked everyday, non-technical people who actually use our software what they would think of the change, despite the fact that it behaves differently than all the other software they use, over 90% of them have said "oh yes! That would be a GREAT change! I'm so sick of programs always doing it the other way!"
Now, I'll be the first to admit that what users say they would enjoy and what they'll actually enjoy are often different. But I'm inclined to believe them, because I too have been in situations where I constantly have to fight with an interface choice even as I watch other software rush to copy it. I know that experience first-hand. And I know how nice it would be to find software that stopped listening to the so-called 'experts' and actually spent some damn time thinking about what the best design choices would be.
The Linux/OSS community, as a whole, has spent a long time and a great amount of effort trying to become as Windows-like or Mac-like as possible. And I'm not going to say they/we shouldn't have done that, because one thing that such similarity does is it lowers the learning curve for people who want to try Linux/OSS or switch completely. Both Apple and Microsoft have also figured out how to focus their development efforts on the user, instead of developing for their own use, and that's another lesson it's good for the Linux world to learn. But we shouldn't be afraid to ignore the way the commercial OS writers are trampling and take some time to consider what the BEST direction is. Too much regurgitation of the accepted "expert" design, and you get into a feedback loop where you can't make a better design decision because you've written too much stuff that behaves the "expert" way. And then you're Redmond.
So should we put our software in front of the users? Absolutely! There is no better, more accurate, more incisive, more disillusioning gauntlet for our software to go through. But screw the "experts." Seriously.
In my experience, code reviews help the developer much more than they help the product. And this is a Good Thing.
Take me, for example. A few years ago, I was just out of college, 9 months on the job with a global consulting firm, working on a large Java-based web application for a government department. I was assigned a complex and poorly-defined module to write. While my first stab at the module worked fine, passed unit testing, and satisfied all the functional requirements, it was kludgy and would have been inelegant for maintenance programmers to work with. One of the project managers took the time (about two hours!) to go over my module, reading the code until he understood it, and then asked me penetrating questions and made really good suggestions about how to change it so that it didn't just work, but was elegant and maintainable as well.
Those two hours, and the subsequent 30 that I spent rewriting that module, cost my firm one or two thousand dollars, I suspect, on a fixed-price contract that was already over-budget. From an economic point of view, it made no sense for that review and rewrite to occur. But they made me into a much better developer both from a technical standpoint (I learned a better way to design the algorithm) and from a social standpoint (I learned a better way to make my code maintainable). I really liked being part of a company that was willing to sink that time and money into helping me improve my skills.
So should companies have code reviews? Absolutely -- if they care about increasing the skills and maturity of their developers. If they intend for their developers' skills to stagnate, and they don't understand the value of investing in the continued education of their staff, then surely not.
Really? "All cell phones made by the world's largest cell phone manufacturer[s] for a decade" have included all of these features? Wow.
I'd love for you to explain to me where I should have gone on my old Samsung T729 to set the alternate emergency number. No? You can't do that? Well then, maybe you could tell me, on my new Samsung T739, what emergency phrases are available to be automatically spoken? I can't find this information anywhere in the manual. Or on my friend's new Nokia N75, would you mind explaining exactly how it is that the phone makes it more difficult to hang up a 911 call, compared to any other call?
I'd love to hear this, because you're so unbelievably full of Wrong that we should tap you and serve you as a refreshment at the next Microsoft design meeting.
Re:Postgres is looking better than ever
on
Oracle Buys Sun
·
· Score: 1
And this is why you don't do the string comparison on the database side. SELECT hash FROM users WHERE login = [the entered login] and then, in your application, hash the entered password and compare the strings. Problem solved (before it began!). If your app is doing the comparison in the database, it's your own fault.
(This also has the advantage that the hash of the entered password never travels over the wire (if your db server is on a different box). Granted, that would only be a problem if your network security was otherwise compromised, but it is slightly safer.)
Windows stopped being generally unstable years ago. Get with the times.
Bullhonky.
At my most recent job (one of the top-ranked IT consulting firms in the world, rhymes with 'adventure') I was issued a laptop, lovingly imaged by the finest technicians that corporate enterprise IT has to offer, with XP SP2 on it. I had to kill and restart explorer.exe roughly once a day when the interface would stop responding, and BSOD's would happen about once every two weeks.
Contrast that with my 8 years of OSX experience, where I've had maybe 12 kernel panics ever (and at least 75% of those were prior to 10.3). Or contrast it with the small fleet of Ubuntu computers that I maintain (12 servers and around 50 client computers), where we have never had a single kernel panic, ever.
So let's sum this up. Over the course of 2007 and 2008, kernel panics / BSOD's I experienced, by OS:
Windows: ~25 / year
Mac OS X: ~1.5 / year
Ubuntu: 0 / year
Ares / Orion / Constellation are, indeed, important and worthy programs. But that doesn't mean Michael Griffin is the right one to lead them.
If the programs were being managed well, there should be no problem with an oversight committee looking under the hood. If the programs aren't being managed well, we should shit-can Griffin and appoint somebody who's going to get it right, precisely because Ares/Orion/Constellation are so important.
And what's with his assertions that "any change [in the program] would make NASA look bad"?! Screw that; what will REALLY make NASA look bad is if they're unwilling to admit any problems with their new rocket until it blows up on the launch bad and kills its crew. Griffin is right about Ares and Orion needing time and money. But insisting on absolute secrecy and "staying the course" sounds more like the war in Iraq than a space program.
So in short: Go NASA, go Ares, go Orion, go Constellation. Fuck Griffin.
It's interesting to see you are dreaming of the day when you can talk people into abandoning Word and adopting a clone of Word.
Whoa, what? That's not what he said. He said, "I dream of a day where we stop teaching how to use Word, and start teaching how to use a computer as a tool to get your job done."
Seriously, don't stick words in his mouth.
And see, this is where join() on forum threads would become useful...
Go read the above posts about the number of totally stupid users in the world. When Gramma Jones notices her computer is running slow, she's a lot more likely to just go buy a new one than spend the time learning what "defragmentation" means. A light bulb in a fridge, or tires on a car, are much more visible, and she's had years and years of experience with them -- enough to know how to replace a light bulb, or enough to know where to call to get her car fixed. All she knows about this computer thingy is that it doesn't work as well as it used to, and that clicky-whirring sound happens a lot more often.
Analogizing the process of defragmenting a drive and/or adjusting swap space to the process of replacing a light bulb is a gross mistake. The amount of personal education and the depth of understanding necessary for Gramma Jones to adjust her swap space and defragment her drive is vastly larger than the amount needed to replace a light bulb. If the perceived cost of this education (hours spent frustrating oneself on the phone with tech support who insist on walking her through unnecessary steps in their verdammt script, or fighting with an internet search they don't understand, or talking their unwilling grandson into fixing it) is greater than the perceived cost of purchasing a new computer, they'll buy a new computer. This is basic economics, really.
Why is fake assembly and fake OS cruel? It's computer science, not a vocational tech course. They've presumably tried to bypass the issues of real-world systems that distract you from learning the point. Once you've got the basic concepts, any OS and any language become approachable - why would you want to learn something specific that would be out-of-date in short measure? Seems rather myopic to me.
Because at least what you learned would be a desirable skill on the job market for the next five years, instead of never being a useful job skill at all.
You don't want a tether on a bag full of stuff in orbit because it can act in pretty unpredictable ways, flailing about and risking the life of the person that's holding the bag is the first consideration. Guys, this isn't changing the oil on your car. A stray object can damage any one of the many couplings on the suit and rendering that suit inoperable very quickly.
What kind of cheap materials is NASA using for these suits? If a medium-speed collision with a wrench is able to damage "any one of the many couplings on the suit," if a simple impact with the tools these people use to do their job "renders the suit inoperable," then seriously... that sounds like incredibly poor design to me.
I know that meteoroids and other spaceborne debris pose a real threat, but that's because they're moving at a very high velocity relative to the shuttle and crew. The tools wouldn't be.
Remember those old screw-on multi-pin electrical connectors from the 70's? Or have you ever worked in a tool shop that used those compressed-air hose-to-tool connections? Chuck a wrench at any of those at high speed and you might leave a scrape, but the connector would still work. Why is NASA building suits that are so easy to damage?
Do not confuse neoconservative and Republican -- while most neocons are Republicans, most Republicans are not neoconservative and many Republicans found the neoconservatives to be embarrassing.
If so many Republicans find them embarassing, then by all means, those "many" Republicans should feel free to take control of their party and eject the neocons. Then it would be less embarassing to call oneself a Republican.
As long as the Republicans give safe harbor to the neocons, they are implicitly endorsing their (ludicrous, damaging) beliefs.
That is, in fact, why I respect Obama more than any other politician in my lifetime.
Politicians would love for us to believe that every issue facing our country is black-and-white. Stay in Iraq forever or pull out tomorrow. Ban all abortions or kill babies in the streets. Bomb innocent foreigners or "let the terrorists win." Ban gay marriages or have beastiality in the streets. Politicians, of all people, should know that no issue is that clear-cut, because their job is to make hard decisions about how to balance the resources of our country to apply to different sides of these issues.
Unlike many liberals, Obama freely admits that most issues are a nuanced and tangled gray area. Unlike other Democrats, he has demonstrated a willingness to work WITH his opponents instead of blindly opposing their every move. Unlike the Republicans, he actually listens to viewpoints that oppose his own, instead of smacking that tired old "un-American" label on any dissenter. Unlike the conservatives, he has shown willingness to admit when he makes mistakes and genuinely attempt to fix them. Unlike politicians of all flavors, he actually understands that to dissent IS to be American; as Americans it is not only our right to question our leaders and their positions, it's our responsibility. And in his speech last night he freely admitted that he does not have all the answers, that he will make mistakes, but more importantly that he will fix them and keep going.
He has shown himself to believe not in positions but in philosophies, not in directives but in directions. This makes him infinitely more adaptable to changing domestic and foreign situations than any other candidate I've ever seen. It's why I respect him -- which is something I never thought I'd say about a politician -- and it's why he earned my vote.
While I don't expect any politician of either party to be anything but a politician -- meaning someone who has to compromise their promises and principles in order to do their job -- I do think that the hallmark of the Republican party is their willingness to sell their souls just to get elected. Look at the way the same party that brought Lincoln to the white house now runs racist campaigns like Nixon's and Reagan's, to say nothing of Strom Thurmond and his pals.
No, with W3C standards the reverse is true. No one but Microsoft can ever claim to be 100% INCOMPATIBLE with them.
(As a web app developer, I frequently wish to burn the IE 6 and IE 7 development teams alive.)
And what makes you think that those places which DO have the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution are places where freedom of speech is considered important by the government?
Slashdot Mirror
Compared to the taskbar of Windows XP, the taskbar of Windows 7 works a bit more like the dock of Mac OS X: Windows 7 has one button per app even when the taskbar isn't full, and Windows 7 unifies quick launch and open windows.
Congratulations. By reading that sentence, you have now completed your twenty-second mandatory training on the Windows 7 taskbar.
As xkcd says: This is the world's tiniest open-source violin.
A future?
To me the difference between a murderer and a soldier is that a murderer wants to kill.
The differences between a murderer and a soldier are:
1. A soldier has deliberately joined an organization in which s/he will be trained how to be a murderer. Murderers, by contrast, are (usually) self-taught.
2. A soldier believes that murder is totally ethical when it's done at the direction of someone else. Murderers, by contrast, are (usually) aware that what they are doing is ethically wrong.
It's odd you should say this, because I've had a Windows guru/sysadmin try several times to get this working (with his Dell running XP), and every time he's given up after about 45 minutes of messing with configuration settings. I myself tried it on both of my work-issued PCs (an HP and a Lenovo, both running XP) and found it completely impossible. Of the many Windows users I know, none have ever successfully used their laptop as an AP or a reverse bridge (providing connectivity over ethernet from a single wireless connection).
Therefore, you are either lying, or a statistical anomaly. I trust you're recounting the story accurately, so I'm going to conclude that your success is the exception rather than the rule.
And if Microsoft and Windows are one of your biggest concerns in the World, you really need to get a grip and a life.
I dunno, I think that if Windows is your biggest concern, you've clearly figured out all the other more important aspects of life, and therefore you've probably got a better grip on the world.
;-)
I think Shuttleworth's basic premise is completely sound -- I know from experience that watching actual users, in the field, using my 'well-thought-out' and 'intuitive' software, found it much less intuitive and well-thought-out than I did. It was a valuable (and, yes, painful) learning experience. The problem I see is that he suggests putting the software in the hands of user interface experts, which are even worse than developers at predicting how real users work.
I've read lots of articles written by usability experts that talk about idioms, efficiency, doing what the user expects, etc. etc. And that's all great, except that it's wrong. If you follow the experts, then you get in a habit of saying "users are used to software X, so if we want to make our software easy to pick up, we'll make it use the same idioms and concepts as software X." Out in the real world (yes, I worked there for a while, and yes, it was painful), people are asking themselves, "why, for the love of god, does every piece of software do this same stupid thing?"
In every conversation I've had with a well-educated, progressive developer about usability, the argument they believe is that users expect the status quo. (I've been shot down from making a few small changes to our software's user interface on these grounds.) When I've asked everyday, non-technical people who actually use our software what they would think of the change, despite the fact that it behaves differently than all the other software they use, over 90% of them have said "oh yes! That would be a GREAT change! I'm so sick of programs always doing it the other way!"
Now, I'll be the first to admit that what users say they would enjoy and what they'll actually enjoy are often different. But I'm inclined to believe them, because I too have been in situations where I constantly have to fight with an interface choice even as I watch other software rush to copy it. I know that experience first-hand. And I know how nice it would be to find software that stopped listening to the so-called 'experts' and actually spent some damn time thinking about what the best design choices would be.
The Linux/OSS community, as a whole, has spent a long time and a great amount of effort trying to become as Windows-like or Mac-like as possible. And I'm not going to say they/we shouldn't have done that, because one thing that such similarity does is it lowers the learning curve for people who want to try Linux/OSS or switch completely. Both Apple and Microsoft have also figured out how to focus their development efforts on the user, instead of developing for their own use, and that's another lesson it's good for the Linux world to learn. But we shouldn't be afraid to ignore the way the commercial OS writers are trampling and take some time to consider what the BEST direction is. Too much regurgitation of the accepted "expert" design, and you get into a feedback loop where you can't make a better design decision because you've written too much stuff that behaves the "expert" way. And then you're Redmond.
So should we put our software in front of the users? Absolutely! There is no better, more accurate, more incisive, more disillusioning gauntlet for our software to go through. But screw the "experts." Seriously.
In my experience, code reviews help the developer much more than they help the product. And this is a Good Thing.
Take me, for example. A few years ago, I was just out of college, 9 months on the job with a global consulting firm, working on a large Java-based web application for a government department. I was assigned a complex and poorly-defined module to write. While my first stab at the module worked fine, passed unit testing, and satisfied all the functional requirements, it was kludgy and would have been inelegant for maintenance programmers to work with. One of the project managers took the time (about two hours!) to go over my module, reading the code until he understood it, and then asked me penetrating questions and made really good suggestions about how to change it so that it didn't just work, but was elegant and maintainable as well.
Those two hours, and the subsequent 30 that I spent rewriting that module, cost my firm one or two thousand dollars, I suspect, on a fixed-price contract that was already over-budget. From an economic point of view, it made no sense for that review and rewrite to occur. But they made me into a much better developer both from a technical standpoint (I learned a better way to design the algorithm) and from a social standpoint (I learned a better way to make my code maintainable). I really liked being part of a company that was willing to sink that time and money into helping me improve my skills.
So should companies have code reviews? Absolutely -- if they care about increasing the skills and maturity of their developers. If they intend for their developers' skills to stagnate, and they don't understand the value of investing in the continued education of their staff, then surely not.
I'd love for you to explain to me where I should have gone on my old Samsung T729 to set the alternate emergency number. No? You can't do that? Well then, maybe you could tell me, on my new Samsung T739, what emergency phrases are available to be automatically spoken? I can't find this information anywhere in the manual. Or on my friend's new Nokia N75, would you mind explaining exactly how it is that the phone makes it more difficult to hang up a 911 call, compared to any other call?
I'd love to hear this, because you're so unbelievably full of Wrong that we should tap you and serve you as a refreshment at the next Microsoft design meeting.
And this is why you don't do the string comparison on the database side. SELECT hash FROM users WHERE login = [the entered login] and then, in your application, hash the entered password and compare the strings. Problem solved (before it began!). If your app is doing the comparison in the database, it's your own fault.
(This also has the advantage that the hash of the entered password never travels over the wire (if your db server is on a different box). Granted, that would only be a problem if your network security was otherwise compromised, but it is slightly safer.)
*shrug*
Windows stopped being generally unstable years ago. Get with the times.
Bullhonky.
At my most recent job (one of the top-ranked IT consulting firms in the world, rhymes with 'adventure') I was issued a laptop, lovingly imaged by the finest technicians that corporate enterprise IT has to offer, with XP SP2 on it. I had to kill and restart explorer.exe roughly once a day when the interface would stop responding, and BSOD's would happen about once every two weeks.
Contrast that with my 8 years of OSX experience, where I've had maybe 12 kernel panics ever (and at least 75% of those were prior to 10.3). Or contrast it with the small fleet of Ubuntu computers that I maintain (12 servers and around 50 client computers), where we have never had a single kernel panic, ever.
So let's sum this up. Over the course of 2007 and 2008, kernel panics / BSOD's I experienced, by OS:
Windows: ~25 / year
Mac OS X: ~1.5 / year
Ubuntu: 0 / year
Deal with reality.
Ares / Orion / Constellation are, indeed, important and worthy programs. But that doesn't mean Michael Griffin is the right one to lead them.
If the programs were being managed well, there should be no problem with an oversight committee looking under the hood. If the programs aren't being managed well, we should shit-can Griffin and appoint somebody who's going to get it right, precisely because Ares/Orion/Constellation are so important.
And what's with his assertions that "any change [in the program] would make NASA look bad"?! Screw that; what will REALLY make NASA look bad is if they're unwilling to admit any problems with their new rocket until it blows up on the launch bad and kills its crew. Griffin is right about Ares and Orion needing time and money. But insisting on absolute secrecy and "staying the course" sounds more like the war in Iraq than a space program.
So in short: Go NASA, go Ares, go Orion, go Constellation. Fuck Griffin.
It's interesting to see you are dreaming of the day when you can talk people into abandoning Word and adopting a clone of Word.
Whoa, what? That's not what he said. He said, "I dream of a day where we stop teaching how to use Word, and start teaching how to use a computer as a tool to get your job done." Seriously, don't stick words in his mouth.
Or a radio station named Charlie, or another radio station named Charlie, or a radio station named Fred, or a TV channel named Spike.
Oh, wait.
And see, this is where join() on forum threads would become useful...
Go read the above posts about the number of totally stupid users in the world. When Gramma Jones notices her computer is running slow, she's a lot more likely to just go buy a new one than spend the time learning what "defragmentation" means. A light bulb in a fridge, or tires on a car, are much more visible, and she's had years and years of experience with them -- enough to know how to replace a light bulb, or enough to know where to call to get her car fixed. All she knows about this computer thingy is that it doesn't work as well as it used to, and that clicky-whirring sound happens a lot more often.
Analogizing the process of defragmenting a drive and/or adjusting swap space to the process of replacing a light bulb is a gross mistake. The amount of personal education and the depth of understanding necessary for Gramma Jones to adjust her swap space and defragment her drive is vastly larger than the amount needed to replace a light bulb. If the perceived cost of this education (hours spent frustrating oneself on the phone with tech support who insist on walking her through unnecessary steps in their verdammt script, or fighting with an internet search they don't understand, or talking their unwilling grandson into fixing it) is greater than the perceived cost of purchasing a new computer, they'll buy a new computer. This is basic economics, really.
Why is fake assembly and fake OS cruel? It's computer science, not a vocational tech course. They've presumably tried to bypass the issues of real-world systems that distract you from learning the point. Once you've got the basic concepts, any OS and any language become approachable - why would you want to learn something specific that would be out-of-date in short measure? Seems rather myopic to me.
Because at least what you learned would be a desirable skill on the job market for the next five years, instead of never being a useful job skill at all.
Our school had 3 separate Java classes, 3 separate C classes, and 3 separate C++ classes: all in 3 different departments.
Silly. This can't be true. Everyone knows that there are no classes in C.
You don't want a tether on a bag full of stuff in orbit because it can act in pretty unpredictable ways, flailing about and risking the life of the person that's holding the bag is the first consideration. Guys, this isn't changing the oil on your car. A stray object can damage any one of the many couplings on the suit and rendering that suit inoperable very quickly.
What kind of cheap materials is NASA using for these suits? If a medium-speed collision with a wrench is able to damage "any one of the many couplings on the suit," if a simple impact with the tools these people use to do their job "renders the suit inoperable," then seriously... that sounds like incredibly poor design to me.
I know that meteoroids and other spaceborne debris pose a real threat, but that's because they're moving at a very high velocity relative to the shuttle and crew. The tools wouldn't be.
Remember those old screw-on multi-pin electrical connectors from the 70's? Or have you ever worked in a tool shop that used those compressed-air hose-to-tool connections? Chuck a wrench at any of those at high speed and you might leave a scrape, but the connector would still work. Why is NASA building suits that are so easy to damage?
Do not confuse neoconservative and Republican -- while most neocons are Republicans, most Republicans are not neoconservative and many Republicans found the neoconservatives to be embarrassing.
If so many Republicans find them embarassing, then by all means, those "many" Republicans should feel free to take control of their party and eject the neocons. Then it would be less embarassing to call oneself a Republican. As long as the Republicans give safe harbor to the neocons, they are implicitly endorsing their (ludicrous, damaging) beliefs.
That is, in fact, why I respect Obama more than any other politician in my lifetime. Politicians would love for us to believe that every issue facing our country is black-and-white. Stay in Iraq forever or pull out tomorrow. Ban all abortions or kill babies in the streets. Bomb innocent foreigners or "let the terrorists win." Ban gay marriages or have beastiality in the streets. Politicians, of all people, should know that no issue is that clear-cut, because their job is to make hard decisions about how to balance the resources of our country to apply to different sides of these issues. Unlike many liberals, Obama freely admits that most issues are a nuanced and tangled gray area. Unlike other Democrats, he has demonstrated a willingness to work WITH his opponents instead of blindly opposing their every move. Unlike the Republicans, he actually listens to viewpoints that oppose his own, instead of smacking that tired old "un-American" label on any dissenter. Unlike the conservatives, he has shown willingness to admit when he makes mistakes and genuinely attempt to fix them. Unlike politicians of all flavors, he actually understands that to dissent IS to be American; as Americans it is not only our right to question our leaders and their positions, it's our responsibility. And in his speech last night he freely admitted that he does not have all the answers, that he will make mistakes, but more importantly that he will fix them and keep going. He has shown himself to believe not in positions but in philosophies, not in directives but in directions. This makes him infinitely more adaptable to changing domestic and foreign situations than any other candidate I've ever seen. It's why I respect him -- which is something I never thought I'd say about a politician -- and it's why he earned my vote.
While I don't expect any politician of either party to be anything but a politician -- meaning someone who has to compromise their promises and principles in order to do their job -- I do think that the hallmark of the Republican party is their willingness to sell their souls just to get elected. Look at the way the same party that brought Lincoln to the white house now runs racist campaigns like Nixon's and Reagan's, to say nothing of Strom Thurmond and his pals.
The husband and wife really know how to keep the passion burning. 20 years together and there's still a spark.
No, with W3C standards the reverse is true. No one but Microsoft can ever claim to be 100% INCOMPATIBLE with them. (As a web app developer, I frequently wish to burn the IE 6 and IE 7 development teams alive.)
Every consider support Linux naively in an attempt to kick-start Linux as a desktop OS?
Naively, or natively? Seems like it might make a pretty big difference in the effect of their support... *wink*
And what makes you think that those places which DO have the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution are places where freedom of speech is considered important by the government?