If Reed wishes to avoid an all out confrontation with the cable and content providers, it would make sense that he would speak out against doing so. However, that doesn't mean he isn't still planning on competing. The more he can appear tame and docile, the more cunning the surprise attack will be when he finally unsheathes his weapon. If you give the lion a wide berth and a calm gaze as you circle him, eventually the lion will relax and be unprepared for a lunge from behind.
I, for one, welcome our new hyper-tensed, hyper-libidinous, ragingly erected, iron-manly rat overlords. Rat patriarchs walking around with pet spiders ought to be an interesting sight.
If people are so brainwashed by their religion that they think that they're going to be greeted by 17 virgins and everything will be better once this life is over, all bets are off.
Bullshit. This is a fallacy for the vast majority of suicide bomber cases. When your society is reduced to rubble and you are denigrated, stepped on and completely stripped of your dignity, blowing yourself up in the name of your family's, your country's, your race's freedom seems like a viable option. It's either sit back and continue getting screwed while living in hell, or do something to fight back. I don't advocate violence as a solution, but I don't claim to know what I would do if I lived in such appalling conditions.
Religion is the biggest threat to the survival of our species, folks.
Bullshit again. Your statement sounds just as dogmatic as a fundamentalist Baptist. The biggest threat to our survival is fear of each other as well as any one person claiming to know what's best for everyone else. Fundamentalist religion panders to the fearful, and so does rigid atheist dogma. The problem is not religion, it's the belief passed on from generation to generation that we are individually in competition with the rest of the world, therefore what someone else earns is my loss. These false fears of powerlessness and scarcity feed the brainwashers, be they fundamentalist Christian, Scientology, McDonald's, or Glenn Beck.
If we help the would-be suicide bombers reclaim their dignity and self-determination, you will see the bombing stop. The bombing was never fundamentally about religion, at least not until after it had arisen due to enslavement. When people live with the knowing that they are free, they are far less prone to violence.
At first I thought the summary said "Lovely-Feces.com" and I got nervous wondering if I remembered to lock down my Poo Pix Daily Journal. I don't think you wanna scrape that.
It actually bothers me that they blame "oh noes teh hax0rz!!1!". As if there are all these evil hacker minions out there using their villainous technology to break in to sensitive systems. It's classic deflection of responsibility by generating fear of faceless bad guys.
Windows 2000/IIS? Storing cc numbers as plain text in your online database? If you're gonna lay down next to fire ants, don't cover yourself in honey.
Thank you for your concern my friend, but just as in anything in life, cycles bring fortune just as readily as they bring misery. And one of the great lessons of astrology is the ability to discern the ways you can improve your life so that disastrous consequences are minimized, and if/when they happen are more easily navigated through. Sorry to end a sentence with a preposition but I'm guessing not too many folks will read a post so deeply nested in an old article to care.
Please explain this part. Especially what kind of understanding it brings, and how the synchronization thing works.
I am happy to give it a shot. The understanding afforded by astrology is similar to what you might get from a good psychotherapist. It can paint a picture that can reveal insights that are not easily discovered any other way. At it's essence, astrology is simply another language for understanding oneself in context with the surrounding world.
As for how the synchronicity works, well that's the great mystery. It is the point where this philosophy, like all philosophies do at some point, including science, begins to dream. Some like to say the planets "beam" energy to us and influence us. In my view, this is a naive misunderstanding of astrology and human free will. I think of the planets as more like a map. They hint at potentials that can be derived, understood and applied to make life richer and more engaging.
Also what predictions are made? Give a few examples
As I stated, astrology is not about making absolute predictions. It can, however, provide a guidance system for navigating life and, often times, in dealing with a crisis scenario. My own example has to do with a health crisis I experienced in 2008. I began having digestive problems and a great deal of pain and tension in my pelvic floor. At this time, Pluto, in Capricorn, was at a 90 degree angle (a "square aspect" in astrology, an aspect of tension) to my natal Pluto, in Libra. In astrology Pluto rules digestion as well as the area of one's nether-regions, including the pelvic floor. My 6th house (the area of the chart that rules health, among other things) is cusp Scorpio, the sign that Pluto rules. In other words, my chart makes it rather clear that I would suffer health issues in the area of my body that Pluto rules, and these issues were set off just as transiting Pluto began to make an "adverse" aspect to my natal Pluto. Moreover, according to an ancient chart on medical astrology, zero degrees Libra (where my natal Pluto is stationed) represents the pelvis. Note that I did not deduce these factors until after the fact, I had only just begun looking at astrology when my health issues first began.
Also during this time, Jupiter was moving into conjunction with my natal Jupiter in Capricorn (what is termed a "Jupiter return"). Because my Jupiter is in the 8th house (the house of money, inheritance, taxes, among other things) I had already wondered if the Jupiter return would bring about an inheritance or some kind of money windfall. As it turned out, my grandfather passed away at this time and left me a sizable inheritance, much more than I had assumed he had saved.
This post is already long winded, so I'll skip other examples. Again, no one made any hard predictions, but the clear relationship between astrological interpretation and my own life experience cannot be ignored, not by me at least. So I have looked to astrology for a greater sense of context and guidance, and it has been of valuable help.
For astrology to really work, it does require a surrender of one's bias against phenomenon that cannot be directly sensed by physical senses. It requires an acceptance of at least the possibility that there is greater intelligence at work than what our human brains can initially perceive; that the synchronicity of "as above, so below" can only exist if a universal consciousness is extant. Modern science has difficulty getting around its perceptual biases because it requires direct physical proof to stake a claim. This is of course as it should be. However, that does not mean that what science cannot falsify does not exist, such as a higher governing intelligence (note I am not referring to "God" in the religious sense). For my money, my direct experience trumps any scientific journal or academic teaching. My direct experience is also mutable. I don't claim to know anything with absolute certainty, and I hold all other sources of kno
I realize this is very likely the least friendly place to express these ideas, but I'll put myself on the firing line for those who may be genuinely interested in what the art and practice of astrology is about.
All the panic and hub-bub about this finding is coming from a great deal of ignorance about astrology. It's like the criticisms that came from Carl Sagan, where someone with a perspective on science is using demonstrably unscientific methods to put down or even berate (in the case of Sagan) the practice of astrology. It's no different than someone without a background in science claiming that all science is fraudulent due to a few fraudulent scientists.
Astrology makes its observations from a purely relative perspective from Earth. The sun *appears* to be in the sign of Aries on the Spring Equinox, so we say the sun is in Aries. Whether it is actually in absolute alignment with that constellation is not the claim, nor is it even relevant. Indeed, tropical astrology (what is predominantly used in the West) doesn't use the constellations at all but puts the zodiac as a fixed wheel around the Earth, so that the Spring equinox is always the first day of Aries, even though over the thousands of years since the Babylonians the constellation that aligns with the sun (from Earth's perspective) has moved to Pisces, and is now moving towards Aquarius, hence the coming "Age of Aquarius". That is of course the result of the so called precession of the equinoxes.
As for the 13th sign, that's old news. Astrologers have been debating the usefulness of Ophiuchus for decades at least.
Astrology is about understanding natural cycles, in particular the ways in which the cycles of planets and stars synchronize with the cycles of individual and collective human events. It is not about absolute claims of prediction based on absolute alignments. Newspaper horoscopes are, on the whole, a fraud, and not consistent with the true intention and purpose of astrology.
Hope that clears things up. There's no crisis in astrology, you're still who you thought you were....or not.
I regard the answer to the question "is anything worth doing at all?" as the answer to the question "what do you enjoy?". If it feels good, brings pleasure, excites you, makes you feel good about yourself, then please do it. If it's boring, tedious, unpleasant, turns your stomach, then please do not do it -- unless, of course, by not doing it something far more unpleasant will result.
Our brains give us the ability to make reasonable predictions about what might happen if we do or do not take action. At the same time, life is very good at throwing unanticipated curve balls that muck up the entire plan we had in mind. Have you noticed, though, how often things turn out for the better when they don't happen as planned?
Life is really quite simple. We humans just make things complicated because we're addicted to drama. Live, love, laugh, play as much as possible. Life gives us enough challenges, we don't need to keep making up our own.
Thanks for the soapbox loan.:::steps off::: who's next?
This article has little to offer other than to highlight the most prevalent problem with our electoral system. Leaning left, leaning right, either way, a country whose leaders are funded by wealthy corporate donors tars the very notion of democracy.
frankly, I tend to think a LOT of statistics are meaningless. NY state enacted a law against handhed phone use while driving. It resulted in a 70% decrease in OBSERVED use. There was no decrease at all in accident rate.
Ah, the irony of using a statistic to prove that statistics are meaningless.
I think you're overreaching here. While I agree that having a closed App Store is another manifestation of Apple's control freakiness, and that this does some disservice to its customers and developers, I don't see this as anywhere near the bumbling that got them to death's door in the 80s and early 90s. Steve has mellowed out a bit (just a bit), enough to be flexible when it counts. I'll very likely join you in the chorus of anti-Apple's-anti-user policies, but it's quite clear that Apple has the ingenuity to create great computing products while being a benevolent dictator of their platform, very much unlike MS, which has been a raging bully from day 0.
It's been pointed out before that Apple doesn't crackdown on jailbreakers, which would not be the case if they were the self-imploding Big Brother some accuse them of being. I also greatly appreciate the way they allow me to control my OS X Macs, whether it's working with plist files, easy containment of apps and app resources, using Automator/folder actions for basic customized behaviors, or using the ever-lovin' command line to access a plethora of open source apps all eager and ready for my input. This is all very different from the early days of the Mac OS, when we had to use ResEdit and a bunch of cheesy shareware apps to get anything to work outside the Apple-defined paradigm.
So long as Apple continues to produce truly elegant technology for the masses, and continues to support it well (this point may be debatable), they will thrive despite any user-unfriendly policies, due precisely to their stated reason of controlling the user experience for the better. Look at Windows to see what a mess can happen when you allow mob rule to infest your platform. While I don't agree on principle with many of Apple's policy choices, I think they are doing exactly what they should do to remain a vibrant and successful technology company.
Oh great, we're about to start pissing off asteroids by blowing up their kin. OF COURSE they're going to come falling on us, if for no other reason than retaliation.
Watch for attacking asteroid clusters, armed to the teeth with lasers and nuclear bombs!
I wonder how significant this is, being timed with WWDC. Maybe MS heard about all the "Hasta La Vista, Vista" jokes and now they're firing back. (Balmer thought it a better idea than Gates's "Hasta La....Apple.....APPLE!!" comeback quip)
If someone claims to have had a telepathic experience, it is not up to you to decide the validity of their experience. What irks me is people immediately dismissing such a person as a nutjob. There is certainly a lot more going on around us than we can directly sense, and anyone with any amount of intuition who is in touch with themselves has had experiences that demonstrate at least the possibility of "paranormal" awareness.
People with greater than average skill are always derided by the masses. Or, as Einstein put it: "Great thinkers will always face violent opposition from mediocre minds." Just because someone might be more perceptually evolved is no reason to cast them away.
Moreover, it is vastly ignorant of us to think we know everything there is to know about consciousness or any aspect of the physical world. As soon was we start thinking that way, the sooner the evolution of science stops.
We should honor this experiment, not immediately dismiss it. Yes, let's make sure rigorous checks are in place, and that the data is properly validated. But give it a chance, eh?
This BS meme is repeated all time and yet with ZERO proof. None of the most popular sites validate. Not google, not yahoo, not cnn, not msnbc, not flickr, not myspace, not even our sacred slashdot. none!
None of those companies has to fight like hell to get on the first two pages of Google or other search engines. Your average small -> medium sized business needs to leverage whatever techniques are available to rise in the search ranks, as well as draw in more users. No, following standards is not a ticket to high Google ranks, and standards definitely do not help with download speed (standards compliance is antithetical to a small footprint), but they DO give guidelines for developers to create sites that have the best chance of acheiving their clients' goals, as well as ease future maintenance.
The biggest problem with standards and best practices is the idea that they are set in stone, and that you're a "bad" programmer if your sites do not conform. THAT's bullshit, for sure, and seems to be a culture promulgated mostly by the standards bodies themselves. There are so many reasons to break the standards that they can become nigh useless in most production environments. But for the sakes of interoperability and maintenance, standards give developers some good guidelines to follow.
Talk about a straw man argument. Wave the highly speculative evidence around like it's gospel until people would be crazy not to believe it!
His "facts" are wrong on many points. Viz:
As does Bill Gates's onscreen appearance during Apple's turnaround when Jobs was taking a pot of money from Microsoft.
Jobs didn't take a dime from MS, and neither did Apple. MS bought up $150 million worth of non-voting stock, which I believe they have since dumped (likely with huge profits for MS).
Oh, whatever, you all know the deal. Dvorak's a wanker.
I'm amazed at all the complaints about the lack of an OS X version of OpenOffice, when NeoOffice has been in development for a while: http://www.neooffice.org/
I've been using it for about a month and even though it's still in alpha, it's terrific. Runs a bit slow and occasionally crashes on quit (that always amuses me), but I've had no compatibility issues so far. Development on the project is strong, as evidenced by the frequency of quality patches made available.
I would not be at all surprised to see NeoOffice become the de facto OS X version of OO. Check it out, and contribute if you can!
Okay, this is a little off topic, but when I glanced at my RSS reader to see the latest Slashdot headlines, I was more than amused to find "What Interests High-School Students?" immediately followed by "Mathematics and Sex".
Slashdot Mirror
Can anyone confirm if Ford was able to hitchhike out in time?
If Reed wishes to avoid an all out confrontation with the cable and content providers, it would make sense that he would speak out against doing so. However, that doesn't mean he isn't still planning on competing. The more he can appear tame and docile, the more cunning the surprise attack will be when he finally unsheathes his weapon. If you give the lion a wide berth and a calm gaze as you circle him, eventually the lion will relax and be unprepared for a lunge from behind.
I, for one, welcome our new hyper-tensed, hyper-libidinous, ragingly erected, iron-manly rat overlords. Rat patriarchs walking around with pet spiders ought to be an interesting sight.
Bullshit. This is a fallacy for the vast majority of suicide bomber cases. When your society is reduced to rubble and you are denigrated, stepped on and completely stripped of your dignity, blowing yourself up in the name of your family's, your country's, your race's freedom seems like a viable option. It's either sit back and continue getting screwed while living in hell, or do something to fight back. I don't advocate violence as a solution, but I don't claim to know what I would do if I lived in such appalling conditions.
Bullshit again. Your statement sounds just as dogmatic as a fundamentalist Baptist. The biggest threat to our survival is fear of each other as well as any one person claiming to know what's best for everyone else. Fundamentalist religion panders to the fearful, and so does rigid atheist dogma. The problem is not religion, it's the belief passed on from generation to generation that we are individually in competition with the rest of the world, therefore what someone else earns is my loss. These false fears of powerlessness and scarcity feed the brainwashers, be they fundamentalist Christian, Scientology, McDonald's, or Glenn Beck.
If we help the would-be suicide bombers reclaim their dignity and self-determination, you will see the bombing stop. The bombing was never fundamentally about religion, at least not until after it had arisen due to enslavement. When people live with the knowing that they are free, they are far less prone to violence.
At first I thought the summary said "Lovely-Feces.com" and I got nervous wondering if I remembered to lock down my Poo Pix Daily Journal. I don't think you wanna scrape that.
It actually bothers me that they blame "oh noes teh hax0rz!!1!". As if there are all these evil hacker minions out there using their villainous technology to break in to sensitive systems. It's classic deflection of responsibility by generating fear of faceless bad guys.
Windows 2000/IIS? Storing cc numbers as plain text in your online database? If you're gonna lay down next to fire ants, don't cover yourself in honey.
Thank you for your concern my friend, but just as in anything in life, cycles bring fortune just as readily as they bring misery. And one of the great lessons of astrology is the ability to discern the ways you can improve your life so that disastrous consequences are minimized, and if/when they happen are more easily navigated through. Sorry to end a sentence with a preposition but I'm guessing not too many folks will read a post so deeply nested in an old article to care.
Yours,
-sB
I am happy to give it a shot. The understanding afforded by astrology is similar to what you might get from a good psychotherapist. It can paint a picture that can reveal insights that are not easily discovered any other way. At it's essence, astrology is simply another language for understanding oneself in context with the surrounding world.
As for how the synchronicity works, well that's the great mystery. It is the point where this philosophy, like all philosophies do at some point, including science, begins to dream. Some like to say the planets "beam" energy to us and influence us. In my view, this is a naive misunderstanding of astrology and human free will. I think of the planets as more like a map. They hint at potentials that can be derived, understood and applied to make life richer and more engaging.
As I stated, astrology is not about making absolute predictions. It can, however, provide a guidance system for navigating life and, often times, in dealing with a crisis scenario. My own example has to do with a health crisis I experienced in 2008. I began having digestive problems and a great deal of pain and tension in my pelvic floor. At this time, Pluto, in Capricorn, was at a 90 degree angle (a "square aspect" in astrology, an aspect of tension) to my natal Pluto, in Libra. In astrology Pluto rules digestion as well as the area of one's nether-regions, including the pelvic floor. My 6th house (the area of the chart that rules health, among other things) is cusp Scorpio, the sign that Pluto rules. In other words, my chart makes it rather clear that I would suffer health issues in the area of my body that Pluto rules, and these issues were set off just as transiting Pluto began to make an "adverse" aspect to my natal Pluto. Moreover, according to an ancient chart on medical astrology, zero degrees Libra (where my natal Pluto is stationed) represents the pelvis. Note that I did not deduce these factors until after the fact, I had only just begun looking at astrology when my health issues first began.
Also during this time, Jupiter was moving into conjunction with my natal Jupiter in Capricorn (what is termed a "Jupiter return"). Because my Jupiter is in the 8th house (the house of money, inheritance, taxes, among other things) I had already wondered if the Jupiter return would bring about an inheritance or some kind of money windfall. As it turned out, my grandfather passed away at this time and left me a sizable inheritance, much more than I had assumed he had saved.
This post is already long winded, so I'll skip other examples. Again, no one made any hard predictions, but the clear relationship between astrological interpretation and my own life experience cannot be ignored, not by me at least. So I have looked to astrology for a greater sense of context and guidance, and it has been of valuable help.
For astrology to really work, it does require a surrender of one's bias against phenomenon that cannot be directly sensed by physical senses. It requires an acceptance of at least the possibility that there is greater intelligence at work than what our human brains can initially perceive; that the synchronicity of "as above, so below" can only exist if a universal consciousness is extant. Modern science has difficulty getting around its perceptual biases because it requires direct physical proof to stake a claim. This is of course as it should be. However, that does not mean that what science cannot falsify does not exist, such as a higher governing intelligence (note I am not referring to "God" in the religious sense). For my money, my direct experience trumps any scientific journal or academic teaching. My direct experience is also mutable. I don't claim to know anything with absolute certainty, and I hold all other sources of kno
I realize this is very likely the least friendly place to express these ideas, but I'll put myself on the firing line for those who may be genuinely interested in what the art and practice of astrology is about.
All the panic and hub-bub about this finding is coming from a great deal of ignorance about astrology. It's like the criticisms that came from Carl Sagan, where someone with a perspective on science is using demonstrably unscientific methods to put down or even berate (in the case of Sagan) the practice of astrology. It's no different than someone without a background in science claiming that all science is fraudulent due to a few fraudulent scientists.
Astrology makes its observations from a purely relative perspective from Earth. The sun *appears* to be in the sign of Aries on the Spring Equinox, so we say the sun is in Aries. Whether it is actually in absolute alignment with that constellation is not the claim, nor is it even relevant. Indeed, tropical astrology (what is predominantly used in the West) doesn't use the constellations at all but puts the zodiac as a fixed wheel around the Earth, so that the Spring equinox is always the first day of Aries, even though over the thousands of years since the Babylonians the constellation that aligns with the sun (from Earth's perspective) has moved to Pisces, and is now moving towards Aquarius, hence the coming "Age of Aquarius". That is of course the result of the so called precession of the equinoxes.
As for the 13th sign, that's old news. Astrologers have been debating the usefulness of Ophiuchus for decades at least.
Astrology is about understanding natural cycles, in particular the ways in which the cycles of planets and stars synchronize with the cycles of individual and collective human events. It is not about absolute claims of prediction based on absolute alignments. Newspaper horoscopes are, on the whole, a fraud, and not consistent with the true intention and purpose of astrology.
Hope that clears things up. There's no crisis in astrology, you're still who you thought you were....or not.
I regard the answer to the question "is anything worth doing at all?" as the answer to the question "what do you enjoy?". If it feels good, brings pleasure, excites you, makes you feel good about yourself, then please do it. If it's boring, tedious, unpleasant, turns your stomach, then please do not do it -- unless, of course, by not doing it something far more unpleasant will result.
:::steps off::: who's next?
Our brains give us the ability to make reasonable predictions about what might happen if we do or do not take action. At the same time, life is very good at throwing unanticipated curve balls that muck up the entire plan we had in mind. Have you noticed, though, how often things turn out for the better when they don't happen as planned?
Life is really quite simple. We humans just make things complicated because we're addicted to drama. Live, love, laugh, play as much as possible. Life gives us enough challenges, we don't need to keep making up our own.
Thanks for the soapbox loan.
This article has little to offer other than to highlight the most prevalent problem with our electoral system. Leaning left, leaning right, either way, a country whose leaders are funded by wealthy corporate donors tars the very notion of democracy.
Quoting Bloomberg:
:::ducks:::
>>Combating Joblessness
Google has hired more than 80 employees at the site, said spokeswoman Emily Wood....<<
Sounds to me like the town of Maiden is combating Jobslessness.
The Man At Microsoft Charged With Destroying IE6
For a second there I thought this guy was being brought in on charges of third degree browser-slaughter. Sad to see I misread. :(
Ah, the irony of using a statistic to prove that statistics are meaningless.
Good point, I should have clarified my meaning of "crackdown" as not litigating, despite PR statements against it.
Yours in comment purgatory,
-SB
I think you're overreaching here. While I agree that having a closed App Store is another manifestation of Apple's control freakiness, and that this does some disservice to its customers and developers, I don't see this as anywhere near the bumbling that got them to death's door in the 80s and early 90s. Steve has mellowed out a bit (just a bit), enough to be flexible when it counts. I'll very likely join you in the chorus of anti-Apple's-anti-user policies, but it's quite clear that Apple has the ingenuity to create great computing products while being a benevolent dictator of their platform, very much unlike MS, which has been a raging bully from day 0.
It's been pointed out before that Apple doesn't crackdown on jailbreakers, which would not be the case if they were the self-imploding Big Brother some accuse them of being. I also greatly appreciate the way they allow me to control my OS X Macs, whether it's working with plist files, easy containment of apps and app resources, using Automator/folder actions for basic customized behaviors, or using the ever-lovin' command line to access a plethora of open source apps all eager and ready for my input. This is all very different from the early days of the Mac OS, when we had to use ResEdit and a bunch of cheesy shareware apps to get anything to work outside the Apple-defined paradigm.
So long as Apple continues to produce truly elegant technology for the masses, and continues to support it well (this point may be debatable), they will thrive despite any user-unfriendly policies, due precisely to their stated reason of controlling the user experience for the better. Look at Windows to see what a mess can happen when you allow mob rule to infest your platform. While I don't agree on principle with many of Apple's policy choices, I think they are doing exactly what they should do to remain a vibrant and successful technology company.
Oh great, we're about to start pissing off asteroids by blowing up their kin. OF COURSE they're going to come falling on us, if for no other reason than retaliation.
Watch for attacking asteroid clusters, armed to the teeth with lasers and nuclear bombs!
ha ha, just kidding...asteroids don't have teeth.
Included in the MINI motorboard manual:
"The wrapper may be MINI, but the package is Jumbo."
"Hummers suck."
"I drive a MINI! I'm so fucking happy!!"
And to that tailgating prick behind you:
"Back off, fuckface!"
Of course, in the end, we all know this will primarily be used to advertise YouTube videos and phishing sites.
"www.p4yp4l.com! d4 sh1zn1tz!!11!!!!!11!!!"
-SB
I wonder how significant this is, being timed with WWDC. Maybe MS heard about all the "Hasta La Vista, Vista" jokes and now they're firing back. (Balmer thought it a better idea than Gates's "Hasta La....Apple.....APPLE!!" comeback quip)
If someone claims to have had a telepathic experience, it is not up to you to decide the validity of their experience. What irks me is people immediately dismissing such a person as a nutjob. There is certainly a lot more going on around us than we can directly sense, and anyone with any amount of intuition who is in touch with themselves has had experiences that demonstrate at least the possibility of "paranormal" awareness.
People with greater than average skill are always derided by the masses. Or, as Einstein put it: "Great thinkers will always face violent opposition from mediocre minds." Just because someone might be more perceptually evolved is no reason to cast them away.
Moreover, it is vastly ignorant of us to think we know everything there is to know about consciousness or any aspect of the physical world. As soon was we start thinking that way, the sooner the evolution of science stops.
We should honor this experiment, not immediately dismiss it. Yes, let's make sure rigorous checks are in place, and that the data is properly validated. But give it a chance, eh?
This BS meme is repeated all time and yet with ZERO proof. None of the most popular sites validate. Not google, not yahoo, not cnn, not msnbc, not flickr, not myspace, not even our sacred slashdot. none!
None of those companies has to fight like hell to get on the first two pages of Google or other search engines. Your average small -> medium sized business needs to leverage whatever techniques are available to rise in the search ranks, as well as draw in more users. No, following standards is not a ticket to high Google ranks, and standards definitely do not help with download speed (standards compliance is antithetical to a small footprint), but they DO give guidelines for developers to create sites that have the best chance of acheiving their clients' goals, as well as ease future maintenance.
The biggest problem with standards and best practices is the idea that they are set in stone, and that you're a "bad" programmer if your sites do not conform. THAT's bullshit, for sure, and seems to be a culture promulgated mostly by the standards bodies themselves. There are so many reasons to break the standards that they can become nigh useless in most production environments. But for the sakes of interoperability and maintenance, standards give developers some good guidelines to follow.
Guidelines are not religion.
Talk about a straw man argument. Wave the highly speculative evidence around like it's gospel until people would be crazy not to believe it!
His "facts" are wrong on many points. Viz:
As does Bill Gates's onscreen appearance during Apple's turnaround when Jobs was taking a pot of money from Microsoft.
Jobs didn't take a dime from MS, and neither did Apple. MS bought up $150 million worth of non-voting stock, which I believe they have since dumped (likely with huge profits for MS).
Oh, whatever, you all know the deal. Dvorak's a wanker.
Oh, for the love of...I just posted a plug of your app, just after you made this post (nice nick, btw!).
NeoOffice/J is great, and because of it my Mac is now officially and completely cleansed of everything Microsoft. Thanks for the free redemption! :-)
I'm amazed at all the complaints about the lack of an OS X version of OpenOffice, when NeoOffice has been in development for a while:
http://www.neooffice.org/
I've been using it for about a month and even though it's still in alpha, it's terrific. Runs a bit slow and occasionally crashes on quit (that always amuses me), but I've had no compatibility issues so far. Development on the project is strong, as evidenced by the frequency of quality patches made available.
I would not be at all surprised to see NeoOffice become the de facto OS X version of OO. Check it out, and contribute if you can!
Okay, this is a little off topic, but when I glanced at my RSS reader to see the latest Slashdot headlines, I was more than amused to find "What Interests High-School Students?" immediately followed by "Mathematics and Sex".
Sounds about right!