I think you misunderstood what I meant. I understand what you mean by my example not being sexist, it's not (or non-sexist, however you want to phrase it). But my point was that it's ridiculous to look at a set of comments where it's simply a bunch of anonymous people talking about things that don't have anything to do with gender and then using those comments as proof that they are not sexist. You can only decide whether or not the commentors (NOT comments!) are sexist if they are discussing things where gender is an issue. An example of this would be a question like 'what tools are appropriate for a 16-year-old girl to use to help learn programming.' When someone is prompted with that question they are immediately aware that gender is an issue and they may or may not take that into consideration in their response, but they're aware that gender is an issue.
You can see differing treatment towards women in several places, including right here. I'm not sure who some of the more prominent female posters here are, but ask someone like girlintraining or one of the others how many troll or flamebait responses they get just because they identify themselves as female. Sometimes they get denigrated, sometimes they get special attention (which is still sexism), most often they get treated like everyone else.
It seems to me that analyzing comments in the LKML looking for sexism is about as useful as looking through the WebMD forums for people interested in cars. Yeah, there might be those people there, but you can't look at all of the posts on WebMD that don't have anything to do with cars and then assume that no one who posts on WebMD is interested in cars. It's just not the right venue to identify that relationship.
Also, before you want to continue to remotely diagnose whatever conditions I may or may not have, or postulate about my political or religious or whatever other ideals, keep in mind that my original post was calling into question this statement:
1.5% of the FOSS developers are women, and only 0.1% of the comments are sexist
Aside from the mistake I've already pointed out, I'll also point out that the author was trying to compare the percentage of people with the percentage of posts. Those are not related. If you've got 100 people in the group, and one of them posts 1 sexist message, and the other 99 people post a total of 1000 messages, it's not correct to say that 0.1% of people are sexist. 1% are sexist, but they don't post as often. The OP tried to compare the percentage of women with the percentage of all posts to LKML that are sexist, and that's a B.S. comparison.
You are the one defending the claim that FOSS is sexist.
No I'm not, I'm asking the parent to prove his assertion.
You'll need to provide 100 sexists examples to even reach 0.1% and that is only assuming 100,000 non-sexists comments. Open it up to other languages, all the distros, and you'll likely need to provide 10,000+ sexists examples to reach 0.1%.
This isn't just about statistics - many of the comments that are posted are completely non-sexual in nature, you can't post a comment like "how do I compile a driver", and assume that comment is either sexist or not sexist, it's completely unrelated to gender at all. In order to make your numbers mean something, you need to take the total number of comments as the total number of comments that have anything at all to do with gender. This isn't about injecting gender issues where there aren't any, it's about looking at the incidence of anti-female comments when gender is an issue.
Unless you, for some reason, do not believe that the LKML is really about FOSS development.
Nice preemptive strike.
I don't see the LKML as being representative of the FOSS world in general. Many FOSS developers are application developers, not system developers. The LKML is only a sample of system developers, and FOSS is about far more than development on the Linux kernel (TMYK: it's even possible to write FOSS software for non-Linux platforms!).
It may be a true statement to say that fewer than 0.1% of messages posted to the LKML can be considered sexist, but you can't extrapolate that to say that the same holds true among developers or projects not related to the Linux kernel.
This isn't about sexism around the Linux kernel, this is about sexism in the FOSS world in general.
OK, screw the stuff I've already modded. This is getting ridiculous. You keep spouting this out:
Again, if 1.5% of the FOSS developers are women, and only 0.1% of the comments are sexist, what is the REAL problem that you're trying to "solve"?
I'd like you to prove that "only 0.1% of the comments" (which comments?) are sexist. Sexism is a lot more of an issue than you apparently think, and if you're going to continue in this thread stating that "only 0.1% of the comments" are sexist, then you need to prove that number. You will see sexist comments any time you have identifiable women working around programmers, that's just the way it is.
If you want to throw around baseless numbers, you need to explain where you pulled those out from. Exactly what methodology did you use to determine that 0.1% of "the comments" are sexist in nature?
I've got a question that I haven't seen raised yet, maybe I've just missed it.
The company I work for produces online training courses, usually written using Flash. We've delivered some of our courses in the past for use on PDA devices.
If one of our customers asks for their course to be delivered to the iPhone, what are our options? Is the only way to get one of these loaded to post it in the app store? Would it be possible to load a Flash course like this onto an out-of-the-box iPhone without making the course publicly available? Could we host an installer ourselves or give an installer to the client to host on their end?
That's not exactly "informative". It should be clear to anyone that Google's definition of "beta" is vastly different than everyone else's. Think back to how long Google Search itself was in beta. It debuted in 1997, when was it final, 2002, 2003?
I seriously can't find the answer to that question, oddly enough. But I bet you were more than happy to use Google Search those many years it was a "beta" product.
(for the record, I think you intended humor, not snark, and that the mods are lacking)
Because it doesn't take a lot to write an application to manage media on an Android device, and by 2012 I'm sure Google will have something out that will have blown iTunes away. If you think that Google is not already working on something like that, you're naive.
Who would be willing to shell out money for nothing (besides Dire Straits).
Well it's a good deal if you get your chicks for free..
Re:Crossbrowser libraries just perpetuate the prob
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No, I expect you to see the opportunity, show them the lower costs and better security, make some nice presentations
Have I mentioned that I'm a developer? I develop software. My job is to design and implement applications. I have zero interest in creating a presentation about the dangers of using IE and flying across the country to deliver the presentation to someone like the Air Force. The company I work for does not implement or manage any type of communications or IT infrastructure. The core business of this company is creating online training courses, and I write the software that makes them run. It is my job to make sure that anything we produce is able to run inside any environment that we are asked to support. If Videotron wants to design and implement IT infrastructure, fine, go nuts. If you're looking for award-winning online training courses, we're the people to call.
It's called playing politics
Again, zero interest.
you have to play the game to get ahead
Oddly enough, "doing my job well" is working just fine for me, thanks.
they're working with data, not some boss who can't get rid of the p0rn pop-ups
That sounds a lot like me. My job is not to install people's printers, fix their computers, scan for malware, remove porn, or whatever else. I am a developer.
That's why they go outside for software development - they don't have the expertise in-house for pc-related problems.
They have quite a large IT staff, actually. They just don't develop their own online training courses themselves. I don't know about their other applications, I'm not familiar with them. All I know is their environment that our training runs in.
So why not recognize an opportunity when you see one? You don't have to replace IE - just offer to help them supplant it with safer, peer-reviewed technology that has a faster update cycle and will SAVE THEM MONEY!!!
Because, truth be told, I absolutely hate IT. When I started at this company I was one of the de-facto IT folks because I was the most knowledgeable. I made it pretty clear to the boss that I don't want to support everyone's computers, that's not what I have my degree in, that's not what I want to spend my days doing, and if he wanted me to continue doing it then I would look elsewhere for employment. Now he does that stuff, and I develop the software.
I could not care any less what any of our customers uses in their own environments. If they want to keep chugging along with IE, fine, I don't care, my software will work. If they want to migrate to something like Firefox, fine, I don't care, my software will work. If they want to open everything up and let everyone install whatever browser they want, fine, I don't care, my software will work. If they want to require that everyone use AOL's IE browser, fine, I don't care, I'll stifle my laughter and my software will work.
Am I getting through to you? I do. not. care. what my users are using, as long as my software is able to run on it. If the Air Force wants to require IE for their training portal, then my job is to make sure that our products are useful for them. We're not going to get any contracts if we say that our products are not compatible with their environment, and it really doesn't matter what suggestions we make for them to improve their environment, they're still going to go to a vendor that will support whatever they choose to use. In the interest of getting back on topic, it is the presence of a professional, stable Javascript library that plays a major role in allowing this compatibility to be so easy.
Re:Crossbrowser libraries just perpetuate the prob
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so why is "helping them migrate" not an option?
Let me put things into perspective. I'm a developer working for a small company, less than 20 employees. Several of our clients have tens to hundreds of thousands of employees. These include organizations like Choice Hotels, Avnet, and the US Air Force. Now, you expect me, one of two developers at a small company, to approach a client like Avnet or the Air Force, and try to dictate IT policy to them? Like they don't have an IT staff who already knows everything I might tell them? Avnet is a technology company! Like I said, these people are aware of their problems, they understand the security implications and they understand the development difficulties. I'm sure that all of them have migration away from IE on their schedules, but I'm not going to refuse to write quality software for them just because they have a deficient browser.
If you feel so strongly about this, then perhaps you can contact Choice, Avnet, and the Air Force and let them know that you think they should migrate away from IE. I'm sure they'll value your opinion.
Re:Crossbrowser libraries just perpetuate the prob
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Supporting IE6 has exactly zero to do with ethics, this is not a question of what is morally right and wrong. The fact is that I have customers using IE6. So my options are to 1) support IE6, or 2) lose customers. Ethics don't even come into the picture. I can cherry-pick my customers and only take on people who are up to date, but like I've been saying, considering the fact that I do essentially zero extra work to support IE6 at this point, there's not even a question about whether or not to support those customers. Support is automatic. When I use ExtJS, the one application I write already works in all browsers, I don't need to rummage through things trying to hack it together to support any single browser. I'm not really sure why you would think there's some sort of ethical or professional breach with that scenario.
The vast majority of IE bugs I do have to work around are also present in IE8, so again, whether or not to support IE6 or IE7 isn't even a question, once I get it working for IE8 it works for IE6 also. Surely you're not going to advocate dropping all support for IE entirely.
Here's one example of an issue I had to work around: when you are using IE7 or IE8 (IE6 is unaffected), and you have a web page that has an iframe or regular frame, and the frame contains a Flash movie, and you also have MS Office installed, and the Flash movie sends out a post request that results in an Office file being downloaded, IE will trash the file, it won't give an opportunity to either open or save. If the Flash movie isn't in a frame, or if Office isn't installed, or if it's not an Office file, the issue doesn't appear.
Now, I can whine about IE to the customer and how terrible it is and tell them to use another browser, and their response will be to cancel the contract and find another developer, one that will find a solution without complaining about the environment. There's a perfectly reasonable workaround to that bug which keeps the client happy, allows people to use IE, and allows me to get paid. The customer ends up paying for the workaround, they are aware of what the issue is and that it's caused by IE, and they can choose to migrate if they want to. They are aware of the problem. If they choose not to migrate, they're still my customer.
Re:Crossbrowser libraries just perpetuate the prob
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It sounds like you're assuming I just came up with all of this stuff. The reason I think this way is because of what I see in reality. We have several major corporate clients who are still using IE6 or IE7, this isn't some edge case scenario that I'm just theorizing about. I'm not going to go to one of our major clients with a "no open-source" policy and tell them to upgrade their entire IT infrastructure, rewrite their internal web applications, and change the way they think just because I want to do less work. Instead I'll just charge them extra and tell them why, and they can upgrade whenever they want to reduce our charges.
Doesn't the fact that he didn't deliver the car for several months show that he "intended" to take the money and run?
Not in it itself, there could be several reasons why the car wasn't delivered. Maybe the buyer never arranged pickup. There wasn't any evidence either way (there was a remarkable lack of communication for a $12k deal).
How did the guy failing to deliver a car someone purchased become a criminal case?
I believe theft of greater than $4000 is criminal in this state, the indictment specified he was being charged with theft of between $4000-$25000 (even though he was specifically being charged with theft of $12300, they still included that language).
"this is something Judge Judy could've knocked out in half an hour, plus commercials!"
Yeah, seriously. After the trial the prosecutor told us that she offered him a misdemeanor charge if he just gave the guy the car (which was already impounded), and he apparently declined. It was a 4-day trial that could have probably been solved with a phone call and apology.
Re:Crossbrowser libraries just perpetuate the prob
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It also means knowing what to cut. IE6 compatibility was the "what to cut" then. IE7 is the "what to cut" today.
I just think that's a ridiculous stance to take. Depending on which set of stats you're looking at, either IE6 or IE7 is the current #1 browser. I see IE6 at between 16%-24%, and IE7 at between 20%-25%. So at a minimum that represents 36%, at a maximum nearly 50%. You're saying that you want to eliminate 36%-50% of your potential market, just because you don't want to spend the extra effort. That doesn't make a lot of business sense to me, to willfully cut the number of your potential customers in half, just because you don't want to make the effort.
People who won't upgrade simply aren't the target market, any more than people who are using a 486.
You're comparing a 20 year old processor with a fractional percentage of usage to the most popular browser, which will be 3 years old this month (IE7). Yes, there will come a time when support for IE6 and IE7 is no longer needed, but that time is not now, and it's not even in the near future. Clearly we aren't agreeing here, so I'll just leave you to it.
Logically this leads one to believe that Mac owners are more computer literate and proficient than the average Windows user.
Not really. These are just statistics, you can't draw any conclusions from them. Maybe it means that Mac owners are more indecisive and don't know what they want from a computer. Maybe it means that Mac owners are more likely to accept unwanted spare computers from others. Maybe it means Mac owners are highly likely to live in the same household as Windows users (this surveyed "households", not individuals). There are about a million reasons why a household would have both a Mac and Windows machine, that doesn't mean that there's any correlation between owning a Mac and being computer literate or proficient, if you get marked as a troll it's because you think you can create a correlation where there's not one.
Take my own house for example: I've got a Windows desktop in my bedroom, there's another Windows desktop in an office room, plus 0 or more Windows servers at any given time, I've got a Linux laptop that wanders around, my roommate has a Windows desktop and a Windows laptop, and I've got another roommate who has his own Windows desktop, plus Windows laptop, and also operates the Windows servers. He also owns a G4 from back when he was doing audio work and wanted to use Protools, which doesn't really get powered on any more. So what conclusions can you draw from that?
Re:Crossbrowser libraries just perpetuate the prob
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That's correct, that's why it makes a lot of sense to use a Javascript library that does browser-checking automatically. If I use ExtJS to create a draggable, resizable window layer, I know that it will work in all (relatively modern) browsers.
The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that "material connections" (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers - connections that consumers would not expect - must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other "word-of-mouth" marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement - like any other advertisement - is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.
Re:Crossbrowser libraries just perpetuate the prob
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Simply tell the customer to search for "Internet explorer is a steaming pile of crap" and that, while Microsoft is working towards a version that is standards-compliant (or at least standards-compatible - NOT the same thing), they still have a ways to go.
In my experience if you tell a customer that you can't/won't fix a problem, they just go to someone who can/will. It doesn't matter to the customer why the problem exists, they just want it fixed. As a developer you should be able to do that for them. If you're not willing to do that, well...
... and if you code only to the standard, your time spend debugging problems in IE will be zero. At the very least, dropping support for anything prior to IE8 (and especially ignoring IE6) is sensible.
I'm sorry, but I just think it's a ridiculous premise for a web developer to block out support for the majority of internet users. Doubly so when the only reason they're blocking support is because of misplaced idealism.
bloat because these libraries are BIG
Big deal man, my applications are bigger than the libraries. I've got an application using ExtJS with over 1MB of minified Javascript code that I wrote for it. Any given user doesn't need to download all of that code to run their section of the application, but there's a lot of code there, it's a big application. The library itself is only about 500KB, and they only need to download that once at the loading page (then it should be cached).
I guess our priorities are just different. I'm trying to create large web applications that work everywhere, and it sounds like you're trying to create minimal "standard" sites and you don't really care what they may or may not work in.
It was a case where one guy was buying a car from another guy, paid for it, and never got it. There was no evidence which showed that the seller intended to keep the money and the car at the time the money changed hands. So, according to the indictment he did not steal the money. They showed intent several months later when he modified the car (you wouldn't modify a car unless you considered it yours), but the indictment clearly stated that he was being charged for theft by intending to deprive the buyer of his property (money) when he took the payment, not several months down the line whenever he decided to keep the car. If the state had worded the indictment differently so that we could establish intent at a later date then he would have been found guilty.
Re:Crossbrowser libraries just perpetuate the prob
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You can't know and test for all known web browsers, nor can you test in future browsers that don't exist yet.
That's correct, but I can update the Javascript framework I'm using, which does get updated as browsers are released.
Did you know that JavaScript has feature sniffing that is a perfectly viable alternative?
Of course, as soon as Ext starts using feature checking then my applications will too. Until then, I'll continue writing one piece of code that runs the same in all browsers.
Re:Crossbrowser libraries just perpetuate the prob
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People are following web standards. It's Microsoft that doesn't.
Exactly which standards are the -moz-opacity and -khtml-opacity CSS properties defined in? If I want to support opacity in IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera, why is it that I need to use 4 CSS properties? Is that Microsoft's fault also?
Slashdot Mirror
I think you misunderstood what I meant. I understand what you mean by my example not being sexist, it's not (or non-sexist, however you want to phrase it). But my point was that it's ridiculous to look at a set of comments where it's simply a bunch of anonymous people talking about things that don't have anything to do with gender and then using those comments as proof that they are not sexist. You can only decide whether or not the commentors (NOT comments!) are sexist if they are discussing things where gender is an issue. An example of this would be a question like 'what tools are appropriate for a 16-year-old girl to use to help learn programming.' When someone is prompted with that question they are immediately aware that gender is an issue and they may or may not take that into consideration in their response, but they're aware that gender is an issue.
You can see differing treatment towards women in several places, including right here. I'm not sure who some of the more prominent female posters here are, but ask someone like girlintraining or one of the others how many troll or flamebait responses they get just because they identify themselves as female. Sometimes they get denigrated, sometimes they get special attention (which is still sexism), most often they get treated like everyone else.
It seems to me that analyzing comments in the LKML looking for sexism is about as useful as looking through the WebMD forums for people interested in cars. Yeah, there might be those people there, but you can't look at all of the posts on WebMD that don't have anything to do with cars and then assume that no one who posts on WebMD is interested in cars. It's just not the right venue to identify that relationship.
Also, before you want to continue to remotely diagnose whatever conditions I may or may not have, or postulate about my political or religious or whatever other ideals, keep in mind that my original post was calling into question this statement:
1.5% of the FOSS developers are women, and only 0.1% of the comments are sexist
Aside from the mistake I've already pointed out, I'll also point out that the author was trying to compare the percentage of people with the percentage of posts. Those are not related. If you've got 100 people in the group, and one of them posts 1 sexist message, and the other 99 people post a total of 1000 messages, it's not correct to say that 0.1% of people are sexist. 1% are sexist, but they don't post as often. The OP tried to compare the percentage of women with the percentage of all posts to LKML that are sexist, and that's a B.S. comparison.
You are the one defending the claim that FOSS is sexist.
No I'm not, I'm asking the parent to prove his assertion.
You'll need to provide 100 sexists examples to even reach 0.1% and that is only assuming 100,000 non-sexists comments. Open it up to other languages, all the distros, and you'll likely need to provide 10,000+ sexists examples to reach 0.1%.
This isn't just about statistics - many of the comments that are posted are completely non-sexual in nature, you can't post a comment like "how do I compile a driver", and assume that comment is either sexist or not sexist, it's completely unrelated to gender at all. In order to make your numbers mean something, you need to take the total number of comments as the total number of comments that have anything at all to do with gender. This isn't about injecting gender issues where there aren't any, it's about looking at the incidence of anti-female comments when gender is an issue.
Unless you, for some reason, do not believe that the LKML is really about FOSS development.
Nice preemptive strike.
I don't see the LKML as being representative of the FOSS world in general. Many FOSS developers are application developers, not system developers. The LKML is only a sample of system developers, and FOSS is about far more than development on the Linux kernel (TMYK: it's even possible to write FOSS software for non-Linux platforms!).
It may be a true statement to say that fewer than 0.1% of messages posted to the LKML can be considered sexist, but you can't extrapolate that to say that the same holds true among developers or projects not related to the Linux kernel.
This isn't about sexism around the Linux kernel, this is about sexism in the FOSS world in general.
OK, screw the stuff I've already modded. This is getting ridiculous. You keep spouting this out:
Again, if 1.5% of the FOSS developers are women, and only 0.1% of the comments are sexist, what is the REAL problem that you're trying to "solve"?
I'd like you to prove that "only 0.1% of the comments" (which comments?) are sexist. Sexism is a lot more of an issue than you apparently think, and if you're going to continue in this thread stating that "only 0.1% of the comments" are sexist, then you need to prove that number. You will see sexist comments any time you have identifiable women working around programmers, that's just the way it is.
If you want to throw around baseless numbers, you need to explain where you pulled those out from. Exactly what methodology did you use to determine that 0.1% of "the comments" are sexist in nature?
I don't know where you hang out at night, but where I hang out people who call themselves things like "webmistressrachel" are not men.
Like I said, your mileage may vary..
I've got a question that I haven't seen raised yet, maybe I've just missed it.
The company I work for produces online training courses, usually written using Flash. We've delivered some of our courses in the past for use on PDA devices.
If one of our customers asks for their course to be delivered to the iPhone, what are our options? Is the only way to get one of these loaded to post it in the app store? Would it be possible to load a Flash course like this onto an out-of-the-box iPhone without making the course publicly available? Could we host an installer ourselves or give an installer to the client to host on their end?
That's not exactly "informative". It should be clear to anyone that Google's definition of "beta" is vastly different than everyone else's. Think back to how long Google Search itself was in beta. It debuted in 1997, when was it final, 2002, 2003?
I seriously can't find the answer to that question, oddly enough. But I bet you were more than happy to use Google Search those many years it was a "beta" product.
(for the record, I think you intended humor, not snark, and that the mods are lacking)
The dude who runs the "#1 site for free tarot and astrology?"
Because it doesn't take a lot to write an application to manage media on an Android device, and by 2012 I'm sure Google will have something out that will have blown iTunes away. If you think that Google is not already working on something like that, you're naive.
Who would be willing to shell out money for nothing (besides Dire Straits).
Well it's a good deal if you get your chicks for free..
No, I expect you to see the opportunity, show them the lower costs and better security, make some nice presentations
Have I mentioned that I'm a developer? I develop software. My job is to design and implement applications. I have zero interest in creating a presentation about the dangers of using IE and flying across the country to deliver the presentation to someone like the Air Force. The company I work for does not implement or manage any type of communications or IT infrastructure. The core business of this company is creating online training courses, and I write the software that makes them run. It is my job to make sure that anything we produce is able to run inside any environment that we are asked to support. If Videotron wants to design and implement IT infrastructure, fine, go nuts. If you're looking for award-winning online training courses, we're the people to call.
It's called playing politics
Again, zero interest.
you have to play the game to get ahead
Oddly enough, "doing my job well" is working just fine for me, thanks.
they're working with data, not some boss who can't get rid of the p0rn pop-ups
That sounds a lot like me. My job is not to install people's printers, fix their computers, scan for malware, remove porn, or whatever else. I am a developer.
That's why they go outside for software development - they don't have the expertise in-house for pc-related problems.
They have quite a large IT staff, actually. They just don't develop their own online training courses themselves. I don't know about their other applications, I'm not familiar with them. All I know is their environment that our training runs in.
So why not recognize an opportunity when you see one? You don't have to replace IE - just offer to help them supplant it with safer, peer-reviewed technology that has a faster update cycle and will SAVE THEM MONEY!!!
Because, truth be told, I absolutely hate IT. When I started at this company I was one of the de-facto IT folks because I was the most knowledgeable. I made it pretty clear to the boss that I don't want to support everyone's computers, that's not what I have my degree in, that's not what I want to spend my days doing, and if he wanted me to continue doing it then I would look elsewhere for employment. Now he does that stuff, and I develop the software.
I could not care any less what any of our customers uses in their own environments. If they want to keep chugging along with IE, fine, I don't care, my software will work. If they want to migrate to something like Firefox, fine, I don't care, my software will work. If they want to open everything up and let everyone install whatever browser they want, fine, I don't care, my software will work. If they want to require that everyone use AOL's IE browser, fine, I don't care, I'll stifle my laughter and my software will work.
Am I getting through to you? I do. not. care. what my users are using, as long as my software is able to run on it. If the Air Force wants to require IE for their training portal, then my job is to make sure that our products are useful for them. We're not going to get any contracts if we say that our products are not compatible with their environment, and it really doesn't matter what suggestions we make for them to improve their environment, they're still going to go to a vendor that will support whatever they choose to use. In the interest of getting back on topic, it is the presence of a professional, stable Javascript library that plays a major role in allowing this compatibility to be so easy.
so why is "helping them migrate" not an option?
Let me put things into perspective. I'm a developer working for a small company, less than 20 employees. Several of our clients have tens to hundreds of thousands of employees. These include organizations like Choice Hotels, Avnet, and the US Air Force. Now, you expect me, one of two developers at a small company, to approach a client like Avnet or the Air Force, and try to dictate IT policy to them? Like they don't have an IT staff who already knows everything I might tell them? Avnet is a technology company! Like I said, these people are aware of their problems, they understand the security implications and they understand the development difficulties. I'm sure that all of them have migration away from IE on their schedules, but I'm not going to refuse to write quality software for them just because they have a deficient browser.
If you feel so strongly about this, then perhaps you can contact Choice, Avnet, and the Air Force and let them know that you think they should migrate away from IE. I'm sure they'll value your opinion.
Supporting IE6 has exactly zero to do with ethics, this is not a question of what is morally right and wrong. The fact is that I have customers using IE6. So my options are to 1) support IE6, or 2) lose customers. Ethics don't even come into the picture. I can cherry-pick my customers and only take on people who are up to date, but like I've been saying, considering the fact that I do essentially zero extra work to support IE6 at this point, there's not even a question about whether or not to support those customers. Support is automatic. When I use ExtJS, the one application I write already works in all browsers, I don't need to rummage through things trying to hack it together to support any single browser. I'm not really sure why you would think there's some sort of ethical or professional breach with that scenario.
The vast majority of IE bugs I do have to work around are also present in IE8, so again, whether or not to support IE6 or IE7 isn't even a question, once I get it working for IE8 it works for IE6 also. Surely you're not going to advocate dropping all support for IE entirely.
Here's one example of an issue I had to work around: when you are using IE7 or IE8 (IE6 is unaffected), and you have a web page that has an iframe or regular frame, and the frame contains a Flash movie, and you also have MS Office installed, and the Flash movie sends out a post request that results in an Office file being downloaded, IE will trash the file, it won't give an opportunity to either open or save. If the Flash movie isn't in a frame, or if Office isn't installed, or if it's not an Office file, the issue doesn't appear.
Now, I can whine about IE to the customer and how terrible it is and tell them to use another browser, and their response will be to cancel the contract and find another developer, one that will find a solution without complaining about the environment. There's a perfectly reasonable workaround to that bug which keeps the client happy, allows people to use IE, and allows me to get paid. The customer ends up paying for the workaround, they are aware of what the issue is and that it's caused by IE, and they can choose to migrate if they want to. They are aware of the problem. If they choose not to migrate, they're still my customer.
It sounds like you're assuming I just came up with all of this stuff. The reason I think this way is because of what I see in reality. We have several major corporate clients who are still using IE6 or IE7, this isn't some edge case scenario that I'm just theorizing about. I'm not going to go to one of our major clients with a "no open-source" policy and tell them to upgrade their entire IT infrastructure, rewrite their internal web applications, and change the way they think just because I want to do less work. Instead I'll just charge them extra and tell them why, and they can upgrade whenever they want to reduce our charges.
Doesn't the fact that he didn't deliver the car for several months show that he "intended" to take the money and run?
Not in it itself, there could be several reasons why the car wasn't delivered. Maybe the buyer never arranged pickup. There wasn't any evidence either way (there was a remarkable lack of communication for a $12k deal).
How did the guy failing to deliver a car someone purchased become a criminal case?
I believe theft of greater than $4000 is criminal in this state, the indictment specified he was being charged with theft of between $4000-$25000 (even though he was specifically being charged with theft of $12300, they still included that language).
"this is something Judge Judy could've knocked out in half an hour, plus commercials!"
Yeah, seriously. After the trial the prosecutor told us that she offered him a misdemeanor charge if he just gave the guy the car (which was already impounded), and he apparently declined. It was a 4-day trial that could have probably been solved with a phone call and apology.
Dude, seriously? "Abble?"
It also means knowing what to cut. IE6 compatibility was the "what to cut" then. IE7 is the "what to cut" today.
I just think that's a ridiculous stance to take. Depending on which set of stats you're looking at, either IE6 or IE7 is the current #1 browser. I see IE6 at between 16%-24%, and IE7 at between 20%-25%. So at a minimum that represents 36%, at a maximum nearly 50%. You're saying that you want to eliminate 36%-50% of your potential market, just because you don't want to spend the extra effort. That doesn't make a lot of business sense to me, to willfully cut the number of your potential customers in half, just because you don't want to make the effort.
People who won't upgrade simply aren't the target market, any more than people who are using a 486.
You're comparing a 20 year old processor with a fractional percentage of usage to the most popular browser, which will be 3 years old this month (IE7). Yes, there will come a time when support for IE6 and IE7 is no longer needed, but that time is not now, and it's not even in the near future. Clearly we aren't agreeing here, so I'll just leave you to it.
It's a 4-bedroom house, hence the extra room for an office. To each his own though.
Logically this leads one to believe that Mac owners are more computer literate and proficient than the average Windows user.
Not really. These are just statistics, you can't draw any conclusions from them. Maybe it means that Mac owners are more indecisive and don't know what they want from a computer. Maybe it means that Mac owners are more likely to accept unwanted spare computers from others. Maybe it means Mac owners are highly likely to live in the same household as Windows users (this surveyed "households", not individuals). There are about a million reasons why a household would have both a Mac and Windows machine, that doesn't mean that there's any correlation between owning a Mac and being computer literate or proficient, if you get marked as a troll it's because you think you can create a correlation where there's not one.
Take my own house for example: I've got a Windows desktop in my bedroom, there's another Windows desktop in an office room, plus 0 or more Windows servers at any given time, I've got a Linux laptop that wanders around, my roommate has a Windows desktop and a Windows laptop, and I've got another roommate who has his own Windows desktop, plus Windows laptop, and also operates the Windows servers. He also owns a G4 from back when he was doing audio work and wanted to use Protools, which doesn't really get powered on any more. So what conclusions can you draw from that?
That's correct, that's why it makes a lot of sense to use a Javascript library that does browser-checking automatically. If I use ExtJS to create a draggable, resizable window layer, I know that it will work in all (relatively modern) browsers.
Here's part of the summary of the new guidelines:
The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that "material connections" (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers - connections that consumers would not expect - must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other "word-of-mouth" marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement - like any other advertisement - is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.
http://www2.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm
There's a link to the full text on that page.
Simply tell the customer to search for "Internet explorer is a steaming pile of crap" and that, while Microsoft is working towards a version that is standards-compliant (or at least standards-compatible - NOT the same thing), they still have a ways to go.
In my experience if you tell a customer that you can't/won't fix a problem, they just go to someone who can/will. It doesn't matter to the customer why the problem exists, they just want it fixed. As a developer you should be able to do that for them. If you're not willing to do that, well...
... and if you code only to the standard, your time spend debugging problems in IE will be zero. At the very least, dropping support for anything prior to IE8 (and especially ignoring IE6) is sensible.
I'm sorry, but I just think it's a ridiculous premise for a web developer to block out support for the majority of internet users. Doubly so when the only reason they're blocking support is because of misplaced idealism.
bloat because these libraries are BIG
Big deal man, my applications are bigger than the libraries. I've got an application using ExtJS with over 1MB of minified Javascript code that I wrote for it. Any given user doesn't need to download all of that code to run their section of the application, but there's a lot of code there, it's a big application. The library itself is only about 500KB, and they only need to download that once at the loading page (then it should be cached).
I guess our priorities are just different. I'm trying to create large web applications that work everywhere, and it sounds like you're trying to create minimal "standard" sites and you don't really care what they may or may not work in.
It was a case where one guy was buying a car from another guy, paid for it, and never got it. There was no evidence which showed that the seller intended to keep the money and the car at the time the money changed hands. So, according to the indictment he did not steal the money. They showed intent several months later when he modified the car (you wouldn't modify a car unless you considered it yours), but the indictment clearly stated that he was being charged for theft by intending to deprive the buyer of his property (money) when he took the payment, not several months down the line whenever he decided to keep the car. If the state had worded the indictment differently so that we could establish intent at a later date then he would have been found guilty.
You can't know and test for all known web browsers, nor can you test in future browsers that don't exist yet.
That's correct, but I can update the Javascript framework I'm using, which does get updated as browsers are released.
Did you know that JavaScript has feature sniffing that is a perfectly viable alternative?
Of course, as soon as Ext starts using feature checking then my applications will too. Until then, I'll continue writing one piece of code that runs the same in all browsers.
People are following web standards. It's Microsoft that doesn't.
Exactly which standards are the -moz-opacity and -khtml-opacity CSS properties defined in? If I want to support opacity in IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera, why is it that I need to use 4 CSS properties? Is that Microsoft's fault also?