I stand corrected. I was misled by TFA, which indicated that this revision of HTML is being done by a group external to W3C, one that does not include Microsoft. Rusty is a good (I would even say "great") technical writer, but he's sometimes sloppy with non-technical facts.
On the other hand, Microsoft has a nasty history of not following standards, even ones they helped develop. Hopefully, they're outgrowing that sort of thing. I'd like to think that they're showing signs of losing their "my way or the highway" attitude since Mr. Bill has given up his "software architect" role.
1) The demand for tea did not in fact result in the tea tax being so prominent in American text books. In fact the tea tax is mentioned because the wealthy land owners of the British colonies (heareafter called "the Founding Fathers") wanted to pass the tax THEMSELVES (to pay for a war they funded) and the King wouldn't let them. This lead to several pointless "declarations" and finally a small war. It is always about money.
But not just about money. The ability to tax was the ability to spend (deficit spending not having been invented yet). Recall that parliament itself was originally just a bunch of folks that the king summoned to help him raise money; eventually they ended up running the show. By the same token, granting the Americans the right to levy taxes would have been granting them a large measure of self-government. In hindsight, they didn't really have any choice, of course.
2) No one invaded any country to sell tea. Yes tea was sold but but the real money in China was in opium. Ditto India, by the way. Propaganda has been around for a loooooooong time.
The opium trade and the tea trade went hand in hand. For various reasons, Chinese tea had to be paid for in silver — no bank drafts, no trade goods. There wasn't enough silver on the planet to pay for all the tea the westerners wanted to export, so they found a commodity that they could import to China to sell for silver: opium.
Since this spec is written by a consortium of browser vendors, it actually has a good chance of getting implemented. That's different from all those W3C specs that browser vendors view as containing "optional features". Then again, a certain browser vendor that has 90% of the market is notably absent from this venture.
It may also be that certain mitochondrial variations were better adapted for a thousand years ago, while they don't hold up so well in the modern world.
Aren't mitochondria just energy converters? How much can their conditions change, deep within the cell? Not much, I hope, since mitochondria reproduce asexually, and thus have limited ability to evolve to survive new conditions.
No, I'm not saying that users suck. If you to form a football team entirely of people like me (nonathletic, aging, poor hand-eye coordination) that team would suck. But that doesn't mean that the individuals on the team suck — except as football players.
By the same token, the moderator pool sucks because it's currently designed to contain individuals who are irregular participants in discussions. Now, there's nothing sucky about not participating in Slashdot every day — but a moderator pool that consists only of people with relatively little motivation to moderate correctly has to suck.
Logic is just formal reasoning, and reason is useless without facts. You've been rather selective with yours. When A suggests that B is a murderer, or a swindler, or a jerk, it's reasonable to infer either that A is an asshole or that A has some reason (a bloody knife, a suitcase full of cash, an belief about B's character) for making the accusation.
In other words, if you make baseless accusations or suggestions, you're an asshole. See, I can use logic too!
We don't need moderators who are "experts". We just need moderators who are serious about paying attention to other people and who have a commitment to improving discussions. They have to pay enough attention to know when posts are serious and when they're not. And they have to judge posts by whether they contribute to the discussion, not by whether or not they agree with them.
Back in 2001, the moderator pool included a lot of assholes, but it also included a lot of people who were serious about moderating. So you got a lot of bad mods, but you also got a lot of people who were serious about stuff.
Then Rob decided that the moderator pool should reflect the "normal" Slashdot user. To him, that meant sorting all the users by their post frequency, and only picking moderators from the middle of the curve. I think that's been a disaster. You get moderators who don't themselves post that often, and thus aren't terribly interested in making the discussion better. Since they're casual users, they don't take the time to read the moderator guidelines.
Before, maybe 20% of moderations were based on whether the moderator agreed or disagreed with the poster. Now, it seems to be at least 70%. If I were Rob, I'd backtrack, and try to find other ways to improve the moderator pool.
Now, you can apologize for assuming that I didn't have a plan. Speak up, or you demonstrate that you're a self-righteous asshole.
I knew about small beer, but I was under the impression that only the upper classes drank it. And I believe it was often as much as 4% alcohol. (Anchor Brewery sells a small beer that's 3.4%.) But even 2.5% is not a "safe" amount. A quart of that and you've ingested almost half an ounce of alcohol. That's as much alcohol as a shot of 80 proof!
Yes, I know, you drink beer more slowly than liquor. But people still manage to get drunk on ordinary 5% beer. I doubt that reducing the alcohol by 50% makes it impossible to get drunk.
Anyway, I've read many sources that indicate that ordinary people imbibed huge amounts of hard liquor. For example, the Royal Navy used to give its sailors a daily ration of 1 pint of rum. That's even worse than than it sounds. Not only was it an Imperial pint (20 U.S. ounces), but in those days rum was something like 80% alcohol!
I tend to think that the longer hours were a not large contribution, but rather, what people were able to do in those hours was the bigger issue
How could longer hours not be a large contribution? Longer working hours means lower operating costs. Not a small factor in business.
You seem to want to emphasize the rosy side of the industrial revolution: improved education and better technology. But it had a dark side: peasants forced off the land (agriculture was going industrial too) and forced to put in 80 hour weeks just to make ends meet. Many factory workers were children.
Even the priv8iliged were forced to change their work habits. When you read about the lives of pre-industrial upper-middle class Brits, you're struck by how unseriously they took their jobs. Basically, they seemed to wander by the office every once in a while, when the backlog of work got out of hand. It took the industrial revolution for the work ethic we now take for granted to get established.
You make a very good point. I can think of a few additional facts that back you up.
You mention infected water. People were actually aware of this problem, and had a strategy to avoid it: they only drank alcoholic beverages. In pre-industrial times most western people were (by modern standards) total lushes. Not exactly conducive to industrialization.
During the early stages of the industrial revolution, there was a huge demand for tea. Every American schoolchild knows about the hassles over the colonial tax on tea. Various western powers actually invaded China to establish their right to export tea. (The Chinese didn't mind selling the tea, but they didn't care for the traders importing opium to pay for it.)
Unfortunately, most of the moderators don't get that you're serious. Most of your mods are "funny" and there was at least one "flamebait". I'll say it again: the moderator pool sucks.
I work at Sun (documenting x86 systems, as it happens) and I think you're really oversimplifying our business strategy. Just because we're doing x86 doesn't mean we're abandoning SPARC. Indeed, I see a lot of work going on with SPARC-based products. You might consider this a bad idea. (For obvious reasons, I can't possibly comment.) But it's the current business plan, and as long as that's the case, SPARC is not abandonware.
You want to protect the earth from asteroids using a monochrome 2D spaceship? At the very least, you need better graphics to have any chance of pitching the mo... I mean, saving the planet!
There's virtue in simplicity. How many species can survive for 8 million years, never mind an individual. This "multicellular" crap is just one of those passing fads.
Unfortunately, shooting people tends to cause more problems than it solves. Especially for the folks getting shot.
In the movies, the good guy is always a dead shot, and quicker at the draw than the bad guy. In real life, bystanders get hit by wild shots or by mistake.
Now you're going to accuse me of being an anti-gun fanatic. I don't even want to go there. All I'm saying is that guns are not the quick and easy solution you like to think they are.
Don't read crap into what I was saying. I made no statements as to what Indy should have done. I'm simply questioning the weird assertion that fighting a man with a whip is aggressive, but shooting him dead is not.
I honestly don't think he made HTTP stateless because he envisioned the havoc that malicious websites could cause, but the principle of agnosticism (i.e. providing content without knowing anything about the requester's capabilities) that's implicit in the protocol is inherently more secure than the desire of many to make websites into remotely-accessed desktop apps.
You make some good points. But I don't think it's pr4oductive to imagine what Sir Tim had in mind when he invented http. Like many Internet protocols, http was invented in an era where you just assumed that other users weren't malicious. Remember, this was when you could use any smtp server on the planet without supplying a password.
If you want to get religious about "what the web was meant for" then you have to reject not just dynamic content, but any web application that goes beyond Sir Tim's original concept of simple shared documents. But of course, people went beyond that from day one. Give geeks a new technology, and they'll hack around with it until they make it do all kinds of stuff that was never imagined by the original designers.
Maybe folks should not have kludged interactive application onto http. But I think it was inevitable. There was a huge demand for distributed applications, and the web was the only platform available. As you say, the horse has left the barn. Indeed, he's now surrounded by PETA types armed with tommy guns. We're not going to get him back.
Well, your first concept I have to accept, since you clearly know the tech better than I do. But you couldn't charge somebody for "how much power each kind of equipment draws" because that varies with usage. That was true even before manufacturers started making chips that turn off a lot of transistors when they're in idle state.
Actually, aggression is also an emotion. That's the point that you seem to be missing.
So if I beat you to pulp, but I do it calmly, I'm not being aggressive? Get real.
I have to respond to another stupid comment of yours, that running away is never a solution. What crap. Only macho idiots like you never retreat in the face of superior firepower. I mean, suppose that instead of an a muscle-bound bozo with a couple of swords, Indy had been confronted by a tank? Of course he should run away, if only to buy a bazooka.
Or he could just run to the airport and catch a plane back to Chicago. Then the Nazis would have laughed at him, dug up the Ark, opened it, and been consumed by the beings inside. Then Indy could have picked up the Ark at his leisure, and avoided a lot of bruises. Makes a boring movie, of course, but that doesn't mean it isn't the right choice. Action movies are fantasies, even though pathetic folks view them as life lessons.
People like you should never be allowed to own weapons: you think they make you invulnerable. Thus they make you more at risk, not less. Which I wouldn't care about, except that bystanders tend to get hurt by your Maginot mentality.
Aggression is measured by the effect on the aggressee, not the effort expended by the aggressor. Thus, firing a nuclear missile at a city is generally considered an aggressive act, no matter how little effort it takes to push the requisite button.
If it were up to me, there would be no "troll" mod. It's supposed to mean "you don't really believe that, you just enjoy pissing people off." But how can you tell somebody who's deliberately throwing out an unpopular idea from somebody who actually believes it? Thus, "troll" usually means, "You're stupid."
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Yeah, really. Is there some kind of law or something that says that people who run the public education system have to be totally clueless?
I stand corrected. I was misled by TFA, which indicated that this revision of HTML is being done by a group external to W3C, one that does not include Microsoft. Rusty is a good (I would even say "great") technical writer, but he's sometimes sloppy with non-technical facts.
On the other hand, Microsoft has a nasty history of not following standards, even ones they helped develop. Hopefully, they're outgrowing that sort of thing. I'd like to think that they're showing signs of losing their "my way or the highway" attitude since Mr. Bill has given up his "software architect" role.
No, I'm not saying that users suck. If you to form a football team entirely of people like me (nonathletic, aging, poor hand-eye coordination) that team would suck. But that doesn't mean that the individuals on the team suck — except as football players.
By the same token, the moderator pool sucks because it's currently designed to contain individuals who are irregular participants in discussions. Now, there's nothing sucky about not participating in Slashdot every day — but a moderator pool that consists only of people with relatively little motivation to moderate correctly has to suck.
Logic is just formal reasoning, and reason is useless without facts. You've been rather selective with yours. When A suggests that B is a murderer, or a swindler, or a jerk, it's reasonable to infer either that A is an asshole or that A has some reason (a bloody knife, a suitcase full of cash, an belief about B's character) for making the accusation.
In other words, if you make baseless accusations or suggestions, you're an asshole. See, I can use logic too!
Well, since you asked so politely...
We don't need moderators who are "experts". We just need moderators who are serious about paying attention to other people and who have a commitment to improving discussions. They have to pay enough attention to know when posts are serious and when they're not. And they have to judge posts by whether they contribute to the discussion, not by whether or not they agree with them.
Back in 2001, the moderator pool included a lot of assholes, but it also included a lot of people who were serious about moderating. So you got a lot of bad mods, but you also got a lot of people who were serious about stuff.
Then Rob decided that the moderator pool should reflect the "normal" Slashdot user. To him, that meant sorting all the users by their post frequency, and only picking moderators from the middle of the curve. I think that's been a disaster. You get moderators who don't themselves post that often, and thus aren't terribly interested in making the discussion better. Since they're casual users, they don't take the time to read the moderator guidelines.
Before, maybe 20% of moderations were based on whether the moderator agreed or disagreed with the poster. Now, it seems to be at least 70%. If I were Rob, I'd backtrack, and try to find other ways to improve the moderator pool.
Now, you can apologize for assuming that I didn't have a plan. Speak up, or you demonstrate that you're a self-righteous asshole.
I knew about small beer, but I was under the impression that only the upper classes drank it. And I believe it was often as much as 4% alcohol. (Anchor Brewery sells a small beer that's 3.4%.) But even 2.5% is not a "safe" amount. A quart of that and you've ingested almost half an ounce of alcohol. That's as much alcohol as a shot of 80 proof!
Yes, I know, you drink beer more slowly than liquor. But people still manage to get drunk on ordinary 5% beer. I doubt that reducing the alcohol by 50% makes it impossible to get drunk.
Anyway, I've read many sources that indicate that ordinary people imbibed huge amounts of hard liquor. For example, the Royal Navy used to give its sailors a daily ration of 1 pint of rum. That's even worse than than it sounds. Not only was it an Imperial pint (20 U.S. ounces), but in those days rum was something like 80% alcohol!
You seem to want to emphasize the rosy side of the industrial revolution: improved education and better technology. But it had a dark side: peasants forced off the land (agriculture was going industrial too) and forced to put in 80 hour weeks just to make ends meet. Many factory workers were children.
Even the priv8iliged were forced to change their work habits. When you read about the lives of pre-industrial upper-middle class Brits, you're struck by how unseriously they took their jobs. Basically, they seemed to wander by the office every once in a while, when the backlog of work got out of hand. It took the industrial revolution for the work ethic we now take for granted to get established.
Give me a break! OK, I really was offtopic, but why waste your mod point on a comment so far down the thread? The wrong people are getting mod points.
You make a very good point. I can think of a few additional facts that back you up.
You mention infected water. People were actually aware of this problem, and had a strategy to avoid it: they only drank alcoholic beverages. In pre-industrial times most western people were (by modern standards) total lushes. Not exactly conducive to industrialization.
During the early stages of the industrial revolution, there was a huge demand for tea. Every American schoolchild knows about the hassles over the colonial tax on tea. Various western powers actually invaded China to establish their right to export tea. (The Chinese didn't mind selling the tea, but they didn't care for the traders importing opium to pay for it.)
Unfortunately, most of the moderators don't get that you're serious. Most of your mods are "funny" and there was at least one "flamebait". I'll say it again: the moderator pool sucks.
I work at Sun (documenting x86 systems, as it happens) and I think you're really oversimplifying our business strategy. Just because we're doing x86 doesn't mean we're abandoning SPARC. Indeed, I see a lot of work going on with SPARC-based products. You might consider this a bad idea. (For obvious reasons, I can't possibly comment.) But it's the current business plan, and as long as that's the case, SPARC is not abandonware.
You want to protect the earth from asteroids using a monochrome 2D spaceship? At the very least, you need better graphics to have any chance of pitching the mo... I mean, saving the planet!
I suppose it's healthier than obsessing over Paris Hilton, but it's still pretty pathetic.
There's virtue in simplicity. How many species can survive for 8 million years, never mind an individual. This "multicellular" crap is just one of those passing fads.
Unfortunately, shooting people tends to cause more problems than it solves. Especially for the folks getting shot.
In the movies, the good guy is always a dead shot, and quicker at the draw than the bad guy. In real life, bystanders get hit by wild shots or by mistake.
Now you're going to accuse me of being an anti-gun fanatic. I don't even want to go there. All I'm saying is that guns are not the quick and easy solution you like to think they are.
Except that he wouldn't have improvised those scenes if the mechanical shark hadn't broken down.
Don't read crap into what I was saying. I made no statements as to what Indy should have done. I'm simply questioning the weird assertion that fighting a man with a whip is aggressive, but shooting him dead is not.
If you want to get religious about "what the web was meant for" then you have to reject not just dynamic content, but any web application that goes beyond Sir Tim's original concept of simple shared documents. But of course, people went beyond that from day one. Give geeks a new technology, and they'll hack around with it until they make it do all kinds of stuff that was never imagined by the original designers.
Maybe folks should not have kludged interactive application onto http. But I think it was inevitable. There was a huge demand for distributed applications, and the web was the only platform available. As you say, the horse has left the barn. Indeed, he's now surrounded by PETA types armed with tommy guns. We're not going to get him back.
Well, your first concept I have to accept, since you clearly know the tech better than I do. But you couldn't charge somebody for "how much power each kind of equipment draws" because that varies with usage. That was true even before manufacturers started making chips that turn off a lot of transistors when they're in idle state.
I have to respond to another stupid comment of yours, that running away is never a solution. What crap. Only macho idiots like you never retreat in the face of superior firepower. I mean, suppose that instead of an a muscle-bound bozo with a couple of swords, Indy had been confronted by a tank? Of course he should run away, if only to buy a bazooka.
Or he could just run to the airport and catch a plane back to Chicago. Then the Nazis would have laughed at him, dug up the Ark, opened it, and been consumed by the beings inside. Then Indy could have picked up the Ark at his leisure, and avoided a lot of bruises. Makes a boring movie, of course, but that doesn't mean it isn't the right choice. Action movies are fantasies, even though pathetic folks view them as life lessons.
People like you should never be allowed to own weapons: you think they make you invulnerable. Thus they make you more at risk, not less. Which I wouldn't care about, except that bystanders tend to get hurt by your Maginot mentality.
Aggression is measured by the effect on the aggressee, not the effort expended by the aggressor. Thus, firing a nuclear missile at a city is generally considered an aggressive act, no matter how little effort it takes to push the requisite button.
If it were up to me, there would be no "troll" mod. It's supposed to mean "you don't really believe that, you just enjoy pissing people off." But how can you tell somebody who's deliberately throwing out an unpopular idea from somebody who actually believes it? Thus, "troll" usually means, "You're stupid."
Why is the parent post "Informative" but this one "offtopic"?