At least they had a warrant (such that it was...) when they stole the drug dealers' property. Which wasn't anything. I recall one case in California, where they got a warrant based on an anonymous tip (claiming marijuana was being grown), entered the property, killed the owner, didn't find any drugs but took the property anyway. The property was adjacent to some kind of animal preserve area and they couldn't annex it any other way.
Guilty until proven innocent, shoot first gather facts later, etc. are an extremely dangerous way to conduct law enforcement, though fortunately that can't happen in the United States because the Founding Fathers wrote protections against it in the constitution. Oh wait...
Ok, yeah, he's probably talking about XP. I mean, when he says [with past technologies] they can't be talking about older operating systems like Unix, Solaris or Linux because root is simply not the default. He means "past Microsoft technologies". Microsoft is 20 to 30 years behind our current state of the art. Unix was multiuser pretty much from the beginning. Microsoft is also following the same evolutionary path, though their recycled VMS programmers should have known better.
Separate I & D space and protected kernel memory came a bit after multiuser in the early to mid 1970s. Virtual memory and paging were added on the late 1970s about the same time as the Berkeley networking stack was first written. The earliest networking code was done without giving much^H^H^H^Hany thought to security. The earliest consumer Unix systems (System V/R2-based) had trivial root exploits out of the box (at least the ones I had at home did). All this stuff got fixed over time, of course and eventually Microsoft might even be able to manage it too.
So with Vista, Microsoft is at last catching up to the level of security and features we had in Unix in the mid to late 1980s.
At that point Linux loses the main advantage that most people (initially at least) care about : that it's free-as-in-beer. And that's where there's a disconnect to the market place. Marketing a free-as-in-beer product requires something else to make a profit.
What makes Linux interesting to me (and why I've contributed so much time and code to various projects over the years) is that it is a system that cannot ever be taken away from me. Ever. Various distros can flourish and then die when their corporate sponsors go away or become insane as in the case of Caldera, but the code doesn't die and something else will take its place or you can keep upgrading it yourself since you have all the source code.
The free-as-in-beer aspect of Linux is not something I find interesting. I certainly do not mind paying for Linux distros - making a working distro is hard work. Even when I worked for Turbolinux, I bought the CDs of the stuff we produced. There are many ways a convicted monopolist with a huge entrenched market share can keep it as the AC points out. In free countries, one can walk into a random brick & mortar computer store and purchase a notebook or desktop computer with Linux preinstalled. Whether or not that ever becomes true in the United States is no longer something I care about.
Nothing that GPG + secure deletion can't solve though, if anyone could make a decent email client that took the donkey work out of using GPG. That would be Mailcrypt plus whatever your favorite emacs lisp mail program is, available for well over a decade now and as transparent as it's going to get. When I was still actively following the cypherpunks mailing list, I participated in a public test of a fully encrypted mailing list managed by a special version of majordomo. Gnus 5 & Mailcrypt handled it like a champ.
Whoa! The crime committed is drinking and driving. Just because you aren't caught doesn't mean a crime hasn't been committed. The law says if you drive at.08 or higher you are driving drunk. You committed the crime, you just didn't get caught. The law was still broken.
I meant committing a crime in the more abstract sense of what harm has been done? I don't really want to get in a discussion pro or con of the nuances of US laws as they are only getting more broken as time passes, but...
What difference does it make that a crime has been committed that cannot be prosecuted? Let's take a different and less extreme example. Traffic violations are something that everyone does, whether it's going a mile or two above the posted speed limit, not coming to complete stop at a red light, not stopping a proper distance from the limit line/cross walk, etc. What difference does it make that a traffic violation has occurred if there is no accident and you are not stopped? What difference should it make? What is the moral thing to do if you realize you just did a California stop?[1]
The United States constitution used to provide for due process, rules of evidence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, etc. In that sense, it was the law of the land that if proper procedure was not performed by the arresting officer, the crime did not occur. That's how the "Miranda rights" were named as one example.
I'm sitting here responding to your post. There is your anything. Now, try and apply it as "endangering other people" in any shape, form, or context under existing US laws. Bet you can't even if you try and pull into the issue my using electricity or bandwidth for the post.
Sigh. All I can say is you asked for it... You would be endangering the planet with your carbon footprint and facilitating Global Warming which will kill many unless Something Is Done. The Kyoto Protocol hasn't been formally ratified by the United States Senate, so it isn't a binding international treaty, but depending on the jurisdiction (the governor of the state of the address on my passport has committed California to abiding by it) you may be bound to it any way.[2]
There's growing evidence[3] that radio waves from wireless networks, WiFi and cellular phones, may have damaging effects on people, particularly children. If you're using WiFi and have small children or anyone other than you around, you may be endangering them with your network. There aren't any specific laws against that though, other than whatever child/spousal abuse laws exist in your locale.
I favor drawing a legal line very close to a criminal act rather than extending it into some grey area beyond. Having a politically incorrect amount of alcohol (or any of the other "controlled" substances) in one's bloodstream if one does not do any harm to others is not something I would consider a crime. To be sure, if you get behind the wheel (drunk or otherwise) and hurt someone, I favor the death penalty, or at least the amputation of both hands.
I only used that example because I was stopped my first Golden Week (I had bicycled to a nearby park and had perhaps oversampled the sake I brought along and was weaving on the sidewalk about a block from my apartment) by a Tokyo policeman also on bicycle. After he examined my gaijin card, he politely suggested that I go straight home.
What is moral and what is legal are not necessarily the same and the farther away the two become (as it has in the United States) the more problems the society will have. In my opinion.
[1] I would say, "whoa, slow down there Steve", but I'm not going to drive to the nearest koban (or police station if I was in the US at the time) and try to talk an officer into giving me a traffic ticket. And I'm certainly not going to call my insurance company and demand that they raise my rates.
[2] My personal feelings towards the Kyoto Protocol, that it's International Welfa
we still can teach a dog to respond to english, but have little to no idea what they mean when they bark a certain way? I can only surmise that you have never had a dog. I have had no trouble communicating with my dogs and it goes both ways. I joke with my wife about it - you can speak four human languages, oh yeah? Well I speak English, dog and 40 different computer languages, so there!
Actually, I found dog to be easier to understand than Japanese, but your mileage may vary.
The day Linux is worth using for the average Joe, is the day I'll start rooting for it. For mail and internet that day was over a decade ago.
(With apologies to Joseph Heller...) Hello Ma'am, I'd like to purchase a computer without an operating system or running Linux.
I'm sorry Sir. We can't do that. You must buy a comuter with Microsoft Windows on it.
Why is that? I don't want to run Microsoft Windows? Besides it should be cheaper for you to provide me with a computer without any software licensing involved.
I'm sorry Sir. We can't do that. There's a catch.
A catch?
Yes, Sir. Catch-22. We are not allowed to sell any computers without Microsoft Windows already preinstalled.
But I don't want to run Microsoft Windows!
Yes, Sir. Sorry, sir, but I am required to sell you a computer running Microsoft Windows.
Even though I do not accept the EULA and do not wish to purchase a Microsoft Windows license, and will delete the software the first chance I get, I'm still required to buy one any way?
Yes, Sir. That's the catch, Catch-22 as I explained to you before.
Their goal is to provide useful reviews for most people. Yeah, sad as it is for me to say that. To name a recent example in my memory, how many errors are there in the South Park episode "Make Love, not Warcraft" even though they worked closely with Blizzard to make it? The last local news TV clip about my workplace that I appeared in wasn't completely factual either, not that I had any say in it:(.
Maybe someone can explain why reality always has to be "prettied" up to me someday. I despise TV and TV mentality.
It's a hard point to argue if you had only two options, food, or a laptop, the food seems a better choice. Not at all, especially when you consider Africa. "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime". I won't go into all the corruption between aid givers and recipients if there's food involved.
Those children in Africa with their new OLPCs are richer than evil monsters like Robert Mugabe, so long as they can survive.
There fixed that for you.
Consumer Reports also has a reputation At one time or another, I've subscribed to all three of the dead tree versions of Consumer Reports, LA Times, and NY Times.
The LA Times makes good fuel for burning Korean-owned stores the next time there's a riot. The NY Times has the world's finest daily Crossword Puzzle. Consumer Reports is a balanced, fair survey of products for sale and is sold at a cost below the value of the information you get in return if you're making a major purchase.
The article is garbage. The LA/NY Times aren't worth the paper they're printed on. The online versions don't offer anything substantial beyond that. Consumer Reports is quality stuff. Ads or no ads, and Consumer Reports cannot be supported by advertising in any fashion whatsoever and keep its reputation, it's a comparison between apples and raisins.
That's because he was crushed everywhere else and there was no hope for him pulling off a victory. There are other things to vote on in a US election besides President. What Carter did was ridiculous and in effect disenfranchised tens of millions of Americans in UT-8 and farther west (many of Carter's ticket mates suffered defeats as Democratic party members stayed home in droves). The media swore off doing national projections before all the polls had closed, but yet again in 1996, the election was called for Clinton about an hour before the polls closed in California. If I remember correctly, 1996 was also the year that one of the so-called news agencies "accidentally" published election results the evening before the election.
I'm not disagreeing with you other than to point out that this sort of thing is the status quo and not something new or special to 2000. More often than not, it seems to help the Democratic party.
Egad, how did something this stupid get bumped to +5, oh wait this is slashdot.
But as someone else already pointed out, you cannot just simply tax spam out of existence. You need real, working, economic solutions. As I and others have pointed out many, many times you won't fix the problem until you fix the economics of email which places all of the costs on the receiver. Advertising that places most or all of the cost on the recipient is just too much of a carrot.
Regulation will just mean catching innocent bystanders in collateral damage. Economics is the right solution, but pricing of domain names has little to do with the real problem.
Until costs are solely placed on the sender, email spam will be a problem. The only solution that will work in the long run will be where the sender pays the recipient to receive email.
Post Marcos rulers evidently haven't been the brightest of shining lights, but that goes to show that having a peaceful, organized way to get rid of the ruler is a good idea. The people power revolutions weren't exactly constitutional, but yes, you are correct.
Given the US track record (1[1] truly honest president in the last 100 years), I sort of wish we could do the same thing here.
[1] That would be President Taft (builder of Baguio, btw). I don't count Jimmy Carter because of the Panama Canal and the fact he didn't even try to reverse the Woody Wilson evils inflicted upon us. Make no mistake though, the fact that President Taft and Jimmy Carter were 1 term Presidents is not a coincidence.
Based on my own research, Ferdinand Marcos still has a fairly high[1] popularity rating. Imelda Marcos is an influential senator. Corazon Aquino is widely regarded as a failure (however well-meaning, she's like the Jimmy Carter of the Philippines). Deposed and recently pardoned President Estrada probably has a higher popularity rating than Dictator wannabe GMA (who was caught red-handed rigging the last Presidential election but skated by on a technicality).
If history has taught us anything, it's that it's better to let people decide their own fate.
[1] Get an older Filipino to travel around with around Metro Manila and point at various modern-looking pieces of infrastructure and ask "who built that?"
Most likely and if Algore in 2000[1] had been like Dick Nixon in 1960, he would be the shoo-in candidate for President now. That's how American politics works.
[1] Unless his theatrics in 2000 meant he was too stupid to rig an election and have it stick.
the media on election night, when the state of Florida was actually called for Gore before the polls closed in Western Florida, causing many people to literally walk away from the election lines. That sort of thing really sucks. Former President Carter actually conceded his losing election before polls had closed in California.
That sort of thing sure gives people a lot of incentive to get out there and vote...
You can usually tell what politicians are up to by what they accuse others of doing. For Republicans, it's cheating on their wives or taking drugs. For Democrats, it's committing vote fraud. For Republicans, it's cheating on their wives, playing footsie in the little boys room or taking drugs.
What I can't understand is why the US government (or media for that matter) doesn't want to investigate these matters. Vote rigging and falsified elections are the status quo in the US and it's been that way since before I was born. To name one example, Dick Nixon won his first election if the voting irregularities in Illinois would had been pursued. I have no illusions about what kind of society this is, but apparently you do.
One should cast their vote for the best candidate in their opinion, writing in one if necessary. That immediately disqualifies many people. There is no way that California Governor Arnold S. could ever have won his seat on a write-in vote because it requires proper spelling. Even I know better than to try it.
You remember that whole toothpaste fiasco from China? They EXECUTED the official responsible for letting that slip by. Not fined, jailed, or sentenced to community service for not 'catching' pad product being exported - they ended his life. You know how much press that got in the US? Dick. Why? Yes, I do. I think you're wrong on the `why' part though. How popular of a decision do you think that was with US lawmakers (if they thought it might apply to them)?
We hold parents responsible for the death of their children if they use bad judgment that results in the child's death, government insists on becoming a parent to everyone, you connect the dots...
You should not be punished for following the law in the places you are, whether it be as a person or as a company. This is the classic Catch-22. Just look at the signs inside the US Embassy next time you travel abroad. They promise absolutely no assistance if you should happen to run afoul of local law enforcement officials. Damned if you, damned if you don't. It is extraordinarily bad law especially since the US doesn't have exactly a stellar record itself on online freedom, though fortunately the Supreme Court keeps overturning the worst of the laws.
What we really need is a GOOD html editor I helped make you one. Use psgml with XEmacs and download sources and compile or a binary off xemacs.org if it isn't already on your system -- very easy to make validated HTML that will work with all standards conformant browsers.
I want 2 colums this size, and the rest of the space given to the third column. Html was NEVER intended to be a format that was at large written in hand. Oh dear. And if the browser window you're allowed to write to is not large enough, what then?
Forget the column madness. Feed your content, put your navigation junk somewhere sane (top or bottom of the "page" and let the user decide where it makes sense to display it. Is that so hard?
Personally, I think 3 columns for a SINGLE piece of content is stupid, I hear you bro. More than 1 column on any web page just plain Sucks. I was about to "fan" you except that your next statement confuses me.
but using it to frame smaller scraps/elements is perfectly OK. I mean, what are people supposed to do.. be forced into making everything one ROW the width of the screen?? The width of the browser window and the width of the screen are disjoint sets with one exception (when the browser is resized to full screen with no window borders).
Who do you mean by "people"? I size a window containing a browser the way I want it. A web developer who doesn't like how I've sized my browser[1], or is mistaken about what size of font I need to have to be able to read text or how much other screen space I need for other windows is one who probably doesn't want me visiting their web page. If by "people" you mean the person behind the browser, I wish there was a way to turn off columning and only have the text of the page displayed in the browser window, but there doesn't seem to be a general way to do that.
Sorry for the rambling thoughts.. it's late and I'm distracted. No problem. Please clarify at your convenience. Thanks.
[1] I'll name a specific example. I wouldn't mind at all, assuming I can keep it carefully hidden from my wife, receiving my timely world news in video from persons in dishabille, but whenever I visit that web page my browser gets set into idiot mode (full screen) without my consent. Sorry, they won't get my money until they fix their web site.
Not only is this completely missing the point (people want 3 column layout, and they HAVE to implement them anyway with tedious gesticulations), but you're posting on a site with a 3 column layout, for fuck's sake! Eh? I see comments in the middle the left side of the window to the left and a scrollbar to the right. I select articles out of an RSS feed, so I rarely see the main page if that's what you're referring to. But if there's a 3 column layout, I've managed to customize it away.
Gmail is a lot harder, but if resize the browser window such that about 80 columns of text is available to read my mail, the crap on the left and the crap on the right disappear. Yeah!!!
I'd read the otherwise wonderful kerneltrap.org site a lot more often if it didn't obscure the main text with worthless crap from the right side of whatever it is trying to display.
Column layouts suck. Just Say No (or please, please allow your readers to say no)!
The problem here is that you're both right. BenoitRen is repeating the original design goals (which I support, but very, very quietly because I've known it was a lost cause for a long time now) and you have a pretty good idea of why people didn't like that and went outside the original box.
Without misuse, there would be no innovation. That's an interesting way of looking at it. It works both positively and negatively too. Nobel invented dynamite as a means of landscaping and became so dismayed at people misusing his invention to do the more obvious application he funded the Nobel Prizes. But look at all the cool stuff we got in return because people started innovating ahead of dynamite looking for new ways to blow people up. This includes computers, because the first computer application was to help build the nuclear bomb. Nukes aren't all bad either if someone would build a spaceship like the one described in Niven & Pournelle's Footfall which was something on the lines of build a really, really strong plate of metal, put a spaceship on one side, set off a nuke on the other side, watch the spaceship go...
But I digress. Thinking about the granddaddy of them all, <BLINK>, just naturally tends to push my thoughts towards big explosions and blowing things up.
Slashdot Mirror
Guilty until proven innocent, shoot first gather facts later, etc. are an extremely dangerous way to conduct law enforcement, though fortunately that can't happen in the United States because the Founding Fathers wrote protections against it in the constitution. Oh wait
Separate I & D space and protected kernel memory came a bit after multiuser in the early to mid 1970s. Virtual memory and paging were added on the late 1970s about the same time as the Berkeley networking stack was first written. The earliest networking code was done without giving much^H^H^H^Hany thought to security. The earliest consumer Unix systems (System V/R2-based) had trivial root exploits out of the box (at least the ones I had at home did). All this stuff got fixed over time, of course and eventually Microsoft might even be able to manage it too.
So with Vista, Microsoft is at last catching up to the level of security and features we had in Unix in the mid to late 1980s.
What makes Linux interesting to me (and why I've contributed so much time and code to various projects over the years) is that it is a system that cannot ever be taken away from me. Ever. Various distros can flourish and then die when their corporate sponsors go away or become insane as in the case of Caldera, but the code doesn't die and something else will take its place or you can keep upgrading it yourself since you have all the source code.
The free-as-in-beer aspect of Linux is not something I find interesting. I certainly do not mind paying for Linux distros - making a working distro is hard work. Even when I worked for Turbolinux, I bought the CDs of the stuff we produced. There are many ways a convicted monopolist with a huge entrenched market share can keep it as the AC points out. In free countries, one can walk into a random brick & mortar computer store and purchase a notebook or desktop computer with Linux preinstalled. Whether or not that ever becomes true in the United States is no longer something I care about.
Whoa! The crime committed is drinking and driving. Just because you aren't caught doesn't mean a crime hasn't been committed. The law says if you drive at .08 or higher you are driving drunk. You committed the crime, you just didn't get caught. The law was still broken.
I meant committing a crime in the more abstract sense of what harm has been done? I don't really want to get in a discussion pro or con of the nuances of US laws as they are only getting more broken as time passes, but ...
What difference does it make that a crime has been committed that cannot be prosecuted? Let's take a different and less extreme example. Traffic violations are something that everyone does, whether it's going a mile or two above the posted speed limit, not coming to complete stop at a red light, not stopping a proper distance from the limit line/cross walk, etc. What difference does it make that a traffic violation has occurred if there is no accident and you are not stopped? What difference should it make? What is the moral thing to do if you realize you just did a California stop?[1]
The United States constitution used to provide for due process, rules of evidence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, etc. In that sense, it was the law of the land that if proper procedure was not performed by the arresting officer, the crime did not occur. That's how the "Miranda rights" were named as one example.
I'm sitting here responding to your post. There is your anything. Now, try and apply it as "endangering other people" in any shape, form, or context under existing US laws. Bet you can't even if you try and pull into the issue my using electricity or bandwidth for the post.
Sigh. All I can say is you asked for it... You would be endangering the planet with your carbon footprint and facilitating Global Warming which will kill many unless Something Is Done. The Kyoto Protocol hasn't been formally ratified by the United States Senate, so it isn't a binding international treaty, but depending on the jurisdiction (the governor of the state of the address on my passport has committed California to abiding by it) you may be bound to it any way.[2]
There's growing evidence[3] that radio waves from wireless networks, WiFi and cellular phones, may have damaging effects on people, particularly children. If you're using WiFi and have small children or anyone other than you around, you may be endangering them with your network. There aren't any specific laws against that though, other than whatever child/spousal abuse laws exist in your locale.
I favor drawing a legal line very close to a criminal act rather than extending it into some grey area beyond. Having a politically incorrect amount of alcohol (or any of the other "controlled" substances) in one's bloodstream if one does not do any harm to others is not something I would consider a crime. To be sure, if you get behind the wheel (drunk or otherwise) and hurt someone, I favor the death penalty, or at least the amputation of both hands.
I only used that example because I was stopped my first Golden Week (I had bicycled to a nearby park and had perhaps oversampled the sake I brought along and was weaving on the sidewalk about a block from my apartment) by a Tokyo policeman also on bicycle. After he examined my gaijin card, he politely suggested that I go straight home.
What is moral and what is legal are not necessarily the same and the farther away the two become (as it has in the United States) the more problems the society will have. In my opinion.
[1] I would say, "whoa, slow down there Steve", but I'm not going to drive to the nearest koban (or police station if I was in the US at the time) and try to talk an officer into giving me a traffic ticket. And I'm certainly not going to call my insurance company and demand that they raise my rates.
[2] My personal feelings towards the Kyoto Protocol, that it's International Welfa
Actually, I found dog to be easier to understand than Japanese, but your mileage may vary.
(With apologies to Joseph Heller
Hello Ma'am, I'd like to purchase a computer without an operating system or running Linux.
I'm sorry Sir. We can't do that. You must buy a comuter with Microsoft Windows on it.
Why is that? I don't want to run Microsoft Windows? Besides it should be cheaper for you to provide me with a computer without any software licensing involved.
I'm sorry Sir. We can't do that. There's a catch.
A catch?
Yes, Sir. Catch-22. We are not allowed to sell any computers without Microsoft Windows already preinstalled.
But I don't want to run Microsoft Windows!
Yes, Sir. Sorry, sir, but I am required to sell you a computer running Microsoft Windows.
Even though I do not accept the EULA and do not wish to purchase a Microsoft Windows license, and will delete the software the first chance I get, I'm still required to buy one any way?
Yes, Sir. That's the catch, Catch-22 as I explained to you before.
Maybe someone can explain why reality always has to be "prettied" up to me someday. I despise TV and TV mentality.
Those children in Africa with their new OLPCs are richer than evil monsters like Robert Mugabe, so long as they can survive.
I expect to be modded down, but you deserved an answer.
There fixed that for you. Consumer Reports also has a reputation At one time or another, I've subscribed to all three of the dead tree versions of Consumer Reports, LA Times, and NY Times.
The LA Times makes good fuel for burning Korean-owned stores the next time there's a riot. The NY Times has the world's finest daily Crossword Puzzle. Consumer Reports is a balanced, fair survey of products for sale and is sold at a cost below the value of the information you get in return if you're making a major purchase.
The article is garbage. The LA/NY Times aren't worth the paper they're printed on. The online versions don't offer anything substantial beyond that. Consumer Reports is quality stuff. Ads or no ads, and Consumer Reports cannot be supported by advertising in any fashion whatsoever and keep its reputation, it's a comparison between apples and raisins.
I'm not disagreeing with you other than to point out that this sort of thing is the status quo and not something new or special to 2000. More often than not, it seems to help the Democratic party.
Regulation will just mean catching innocent bystanders in collateral damage. Economics is the right solution, but pricing of domain names has little to do with the real problem.
Until costs are solely placed on the sender, email spam will be a problem. The only solution that will work in the long run will be where the sender pays the recipient to receive email.
Given the US track record (1[1] truly honest president in the last 100 years), I sort of wish we could do the same thing here.
[1] That would be President Taft (builder of Baguio, btw). I don't count Jimmy Carter because of the Panama Canal and the fact he didn't even try to reverse the Woody Wilson evils inflicted upon us. Make no mistake though, the fact that President Taft and Jimmy Carter were 1 term Presidents is not a coincidence.
Based on my own research, Ferdinand Marcos still has a fairly high[1] popularity rating. Imelda Marcos is an influential senator. Corazon Aquino is widely regarded as a failure (however well-meaning, she's like the Jimmy Carter of the Philippines). Deposed and recently pardoned President Estrada probably has a higher popularity rating than Dictator wannabe GMA (who was caught red-handed rigging the last Presidential election but skated by on a technicality).
If history has taught us anything, it's that it's better to let people decide their own fate.
[1] Get an older Filipino to travel around with around Metro Manila and point at various modern-looking pieces of infrastructure and ask "who built that?"
Most likely and if Algore in 2000[1] had been like Dick Nixon in 1960, he would be the shoo-in candidate for President now. That's how American politics works.
[1] Unless his theatrics in 2000 meant he was too stupid to rig an election and have it stick.
That sort of thing sure gives people a lot of incentive to get out there and vote
There. Fixed that for you.
We hold parents responsible for the death of their children if they use bad judgment that results in the child's death, government insists on becoming a parent to everyone, you connect the dots
Forget the column madness. Feed your content, put your navigation junk somewhere sane (top or bottom of the "page" and let the user decide where it makes sense to display it. Is that so hard?
Who do you mean by "people"? I size a window containing a browser the way I want it. A web developer who doesn't like how I've sized my browser[1], or is mistaken about what size of font I need to have to be able to read text or how much other screen space I need for other windows is one who probably doesn't want me visiting their web page. If by "people" you mean the person behind the browser, I wish there was a way to turn off columning and only have the text of the page displayed in the browser window, but there doesn't seem to be a general way to do that. Sorry for the rambling thoughts.. it's late and I'm distracted. No problem. Please clarify at your convenience. Thanks.
[1] I'll name a specific example. I wouldn't mind at all, assuming I can keep it carefully hidden from my wife, receiving my timely world news in video from persons in dishabille, but whenever I visit that web page my browser gets set into idiot mode (full screen) without my consent. Sorry, they won't get my money until they fix their web site.
Gmail is a lot harder, but if resize the browser window such that about 80 columns of text is available to read my mail, the crap on the left and the crap on the right disappear. Yeah!!!
I'd read the otherwise wonderful kerneltrap.org site a lot more often if it didn't obscure the main text with worthless crap from the right side of whatever it is trying to display.
Column layouts suck. Just Say No (or please, please allow your readers to say no)!
But I digress. Thinking about the granddaddy of them all, <BLINK>, just naturally tends to push my thoughts towards big explosions and blowing things up.