Boring point: there's a difference between firefox plugins (e.g. Flash, Quicktime, Java, etc.) and Firefox add-ons, which are written in XUL (Firebug, Foxmarks, AdBlockPlus, etc.).
Without open source, Apple will find itself in the same position as today's Microsoft in seven years.
Doubt it. No-one (non-technical) cares at all about whether a product is open-source; they care about having something that works. And the iPhone works very well. Microsoft seems to be doing quite well anyway, despite open-source.
OpeniBoot project is just a breath away from getting Android onto the iPhone [...]
The seperate science modules (BCP 7) are a bit better, but not by far. OCR C21 is just far too full of whishy-washy content (ALARA Principle, Ethics and all sorts on top).
Out of interest, have you ever taught at A-level? I'd be interested to hear if there's any 'touchy feely' stuff there.
Your suspicions are correct! Doing AS just this year (Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Geography). I agree with the huge gap thing: everyone has mentioned it at some point. For me personally, I haven't felt awash in a sea of 'Oh noes, this is hard' too much (not trying to be arrogant here); perhaps I'm naive. The only exception is Further Maths: it is quite deep (but interesting!). Nevertheless, I get through.
With regard to the pressing of 'Exam technique', 'A little better' is unfair: on the whole, the teaching is a lot better: more subject-based rather than exam-based, but there are still mentions here and there. Geography makes a fuss about it (I don't write consisely enough, apparently). Maths recommends looking at past papers a lot (but then again, it is good practice).
Anyone can get through a GCSE. You need to be able to comprehend and generate bullshit. A-levels need actual work and understanding. I think the difference in candidate's attitudes (i.e. they actually give a shit about the subject) makes a huge difference too. Don't worry too much.
GCSE is certainly of low standards. It's not just chemistry, either: the new science scheme is shit all across the board.
An example: in a physics exam, instead of 'Calculate the speed of this', you get three multiple choices, one of which must be ringed (one will be D/T, another T/D, and the other DT).
From TFA:
"[...] teachers are being compelled to 'teach to the test' [...which] draws mainly on the recalling of facts, with no reference to logic or mathematics."
It's referred to as 'Exam Technique' and is total bullshit. But hey, I did it, and got 11A*s, so who am I to complain? Anyway, things seem a little better at A- (AS-) Level, from what I've seen so far.
That only works if every webpage in the world decides to say 'FUCK YOU!' to IE6. And that would require every web developer to say 'FUCK YOU!' to 25% of the web population. That will not happen.
The ordinary user does not care about what browser they're using. They care about the accessing content. If one site says 'sorry, please upgrade your browser.' then users will simply migrate to another site. And that site'll have more visitors.
Take Facebook, for example. They had a whole fancy Ajax-y redesign. They also didn't support it in IE6, and told people to upgrade or use Flock, Firefox or Safari. Fantastic news - but the point here is that IE6 users were not excluded outright, because it made best sense for them [Facebook] as a business.
As someone who's hacked about with CSS and javascript a bit, I would rejoice if I heard IE6 had just died a long, drawn-out and tortuous death. Firefox has considerably helped with this, but non-technical people do not care. And since lots of non-technical people use IE6, developers cannot stop supporting it; it's a chicken and egg problem.
Unfortunately, short of a Windows Update that upgrades IE6 to 7 or 8, IE6 is not going anywhere soon.
I like to read text, on a monitor, green on black (or white on black). I would like to format a web page the way I want to see it.
This is what user style sheets are for. By using !important (in particular), the user can override the styling (see also the spec).
Something like this might do the trick:
* {
background: white none !important;
color: black !important;
}
As far as making a user stylesheet is concerned, this might help you with that.
Slashdot Mirror
Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 (and presumably releases after this) does/do too.
Boring point: there's a difference between firefox plugins (e.g. Flash, Quicktime, Java, etc.) and Firefox add-ons, which are written in XUL (Firebug, Foxmarks, AdBlockPlus, etc.).
Without open source, Apple will find itself in the same position as today's Microsoft in seven years.
Doubt it. No-one (non-technical) cares at all about whether a product is open-source; they care about having something that works. And the iPhone works very well. Microsoft seems to be doing quite well anyway, despite open-source.
OpeniBoot project is just a breath away from getting Android onto the iPhone [...]
Doesn't look like it to me from that video.
*agrees*
The seperate science modules (BCP 7) are a bit better, but not by far. OCR C21 is just far too full of whishy-washy content (ALARA Principle, Ethics and all sorts on top).
Out of interest, have you ever taught at A-level? I'd be interested to hear if there's any 'touchy feely' stuff there.
Your suspicions are correct! Doing AS just this year (Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Geography). I agree with the huge gap thing: everyone has mentioned it at some point. For me personally, I haven't felt awash in a sea of 'Oh noes, this is hard' too much (not trying to be arrogant here); perhaps I'm naive. The only exception is Further Maths: it is quite deep (but interesting!). Nevertheless, I get through.
With regard to the pressing of 'Exam technique', 'A little better' is unfair: on the whole, the teaching is a lot better: more subject-based rather than exam-based, but there are still mentions here and there. Geography makes a fuss about it (I don't write consisely enough, apparently). Maths recommends looking at past papers a lot (but then again, it is good practice).
Anyone can get through a GCSE. You need to be able to comprehend and generate bullshit. A-levels need actual work and understanding. I think the difference in candidate's attitudes (i.e. they actually give a shit about the subject) makes a huge difference too. Don't worry too much.
It's referred to as 'Exam Technique' and is total bullshit. But hey, I did it, and got 11A*s, so who am I to complain? Anyway, things seem a little better at A- (AS-) Level, from what I've seen so far.
Because the world isn't comprised only of rms.
That only works if every webpage in the world decides to say 'FUCK YOU!' to IE6. And that would require every web developer to say 'FUCK YOU!' to 25% of the web population. That will not happen.
The ordinary user does not care about what browser they're using. They care about the accessing content. If one site says 'sorry, please upgrade your browser.' then users will simply migrate to another site. And that site'll have more visitors.
Take Facebook, for example. They had a whole fancy Ajax-y redesign. They also didn't support it in IE6, and told people to upgrade or use Flock, Firefox or Safari. Fantastic news - but the point here is that IE6 users were not excluded outright, because it made best sense for them [Facebook] as a business.
As someone who's hacked about with CSS and javascript a bit, I would rejoice if I heard IE6 had just died a long, drawn-out and tortuous death. Firefox has considerably helped with this, but non-technical people do not care. And since lots of non-technical people use IE6, developers cannot stop supporting it; it's a chicken and egg problem.
Unfortunately, short of a Windows Update that upgrades IE6 to 7 or 8, IE6 is not going anywhere soon.
I like to read text, on a monitor, green on black (or white on black). I would like to format a web page the way I want to see it.
This is what user style sheets are for. By using !important (in particular), the user can override the styling (see also the spec). Something like this might do the trick:
* {
background: white none !important;
color: black !important;
}
As far as making a user stylesheet is concerned, this might help you with that.
The fact that about 5 out of every 6 people in the UK live in England is probably (at least part of) the reason for that.
Absolutely. I'd be interested to see how Germany fares on a 2008 map, mind. I hope one gets released next year.
As for unemployment, This might help: unemployment rates in 2006 (from here).
Maybe not the 2007 version, in which Germany doesn't fare so well. Or anywhere else, really.
Write their entire OS from scratch?