CSS found inspirations in many places, but not at Microsoft.
Hmm...well being this seems to come right from the horse's mouth I stand corrected...thanks Hakon. I was under the incorrect impression because if IE3 being the first kid on the block with meaningful support for CSS, while Netscape seemed to resist it in favour of their own way of doing things (which is still ironic considering Mozilla's much more dedicated efforts to support the standard today).
It is a shame that MS did not remain committed to supporting the standard through their bowser, and telling that once they achieved market domination with their own browser MS lost interest in supporting the standard (and in fact seemed to put efforts into entrenching/encouraging the use of their own quirky interpretation of CSS as it established in IE3).
...because your idea of what a layout is seems quite rudimentary to me:
Check the CSS3 Layout module proposal: it has rows and columns. Because this is what layouts are.
A layout is NOT a table! A table is a specific KIND of layout in a sense (it is a way to structure content as well, as in a spreadsheet or database, which is why XHTML still has a TABLE construct). You might as well say "Check out this square--it has four sides. Because this is what parallelograms are".
Layouts can be free-form (flowing) or consist of elements in fixed positions described by cartesian coordinates, or be columnar, or, yes, be tabular. CSS3 advanced layout standard as *proposed* (it is NOT yet standard--it is a working draft) contains a "row and column" mode of operation--as well as "template" and "stacked" modes of operation...and look what has been said about the rows-and-columns mode:
This is an alternative to the layout policy above. Probably we don't need both. Maybe the best parts can be combined: layout that is independent from the document structure in one case and arbitrary levels of stretchability in the other.
"Alternative" policy? "Don't need both"? Looks like it isn't seen as essential to keep in the recommendation doesn't it? I certainly wouldn't use them if I didn't have to. As I said, CSS layout is far from perfect and there are challenged in doing things like multi-column, newspaper-like layouts that make less sophisticated web designers give up and use tables, and CSS3 advanced layout was set up to address such shortcomings so that it is easier to avoid the mis-use of layout tables in the content (html code). It "has" rows-and-columns as currently proposed but it DEFINITELY doesn't rely on them, and in fact does not even consider them the layout policy of choice!
The real effect of CSS was to make web layout more complicated, so as to keep a role for programmers in web design. Otherwise, the artists would be in full control by now.
The artists DID have control for a dark time in the mid-to-late 1990s, when the Internet bubble was in the earliest stages of inflation. I like to call it the "JPEG Jigsaw Puzzle Age" of the WWW.
While I think that CSS is far from perfect (it WAS, ironically enough, inspired by a concept from Microsoft after all) I do in fact find a properly-written CSS-formatted HTML page much EASIER to follow. Back in the dark JPEG Jigsaw Puzzle age, when trying to view or parse HTML source, it was cluttered with FONT-this and IMG SRC="spacer.gif"-that and TABLEs inside TABLEs inside TABLEs containing image maps. It was absolutely DREADFUL. And no, nested DIVs are NOT the same as nested tables, because tables have rows and columns and are meant for TABULAR DATA--NOT for general structuring of content. DIVs get no more complicated (from a content perspective) than simple nesting, whereas TABLEs have specialised TR collections within them, which in turn have TDs...and COLSPAN and ROWSPAN even further complicate and confuse when used for layout purposes.
CSS is more than a formatting tool--it enables content and presentation separation as well as semantic web design. The web would be beautiful but completely unusable GARBAGE if artists were in "full control". Similarly, the web would be efficient and powereful, but ugly and arcane if programmers were in "full control" (that is, we'd probably still be messing with Gopher, Archie, WAIS or similar powerful but ugly and/or user-unfriendly systems). If the artists and programmers could cooperate properly (and development tools that make use of CSS and HTML standards more effectively enabled such cooperation perhaps) then we get balance between effective presentation and functionality.
I suppose the biggest problem with CSS, beyond inconsistent interpretation of CSS by various browsers (which isn't CSS' fault) is that it is far too easy to mis-use it, and most CSS isn't properly or effectively used (probably because artists are trying to control it;-). Many (or most?) people who employ CSS see it the way the parent poster Animals sees it: as some kind of fancy layout-macro system. I see a lot of places where class selectors are used when IDs were more appropriate (or vice versa). But even MORE irksome is when I see IDs and classes in HTML and CSS named stupidly: div id="toprightblock"? class="bigboldbluefont"? It makes me want to vomit! Basically, it's like the W3C gave us a set of fancy Henkel knives to use for gourmet cooking and we're all using them to gouge open tins of Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee ravioli.
A properly designed XHTML-and-CSS page is absolutely beautiful to behold: It is attractive yet simple to navigate. It is accessible (it degrades gracefully in audio and text-only browsers, and there is no need for "printer-friendly" links--ever--so get rid of them--NOW). It is easy to manage (don't like the way it looks just change the CSS, and if you need to update the content you can do so in the XHTML with virtually no effect on presentation). It is easy to parse and very human-readable (if you properly name your elements that is--use id="navigationMenu" instead of "toprightblock" and class="articleName" instead of "bigboldblue"). Without all that TABLE/TD/TR/IMG SRC="spacer.gif"/FONT/blah blah clutter in the HTML you can easily see the document structure, links, etc...and without all the
If there was nothing wrong with the first strap then why did they correct it.
Welcome to the lovely world of tort law--keeping the ambulance-chasing lawyers of America employed for generations!
There WAS nothing wrong with the Wii-mote strap...IF it was used as intended and under the conditions encountered during product and focus-group testing. However, it is difficult to find product testers and focus-group participants that are total and complete moronic jackasses. Besides that, QA and market focus people often overlook the "total and complete moronic jackass" segment of the population.
In any case, it is quite clear that Nintendo underestimated the force that would be applied to the strap during the MISuse of the Wii-mote. Tort law is all about establishing "Duty of Care" (a special type of "guilty") and generally speaking it is assumed that the party being sued must prove that they have adequately/reasonably met their duty of care (that is, they are assumed guilty and must establish reasonable doubt to prove their innocence). Because of the way tort law works, once it became apparent that at least one "total and complete moronic jackass" could indeed cause personal injury or property damage through ANY sort of use of Nintendo's equipment (proper use OR OTHERWISE) that they were LEGALLY OBLIGATED to address the situation. Their designers and lawyers no doubt had meetings to discuss what would be the best courses of action and decided that a design modification and well-publicised voluntary recall would reasonably meet their "duty of care" obligations.
What is great about tort law (for the ambulance-chasing-scumball flavour of lawyer anyways) is that it provides a catch-22 that provides justification for a lawsuit REGARDLESS of the actions taken to resolve this sort of issue. For example, if Nintendo decided that the product design was fine as it was and merely added a bright, day-glow warning label then they could be sued for neglecting their "duty of care". OTOH, if they "do the right thing" and address their duty of care fully by doing a design modification and a product recall then it is an admission of a product defect and there is still enough justification for a lawsuit.
IANIAL of course...but if you are employed in a profession (doctors and engineers in particular) or are an entrepreneur (hotel, restaurant or manufacturing for example) you don't need to be a lawyer to know about tory law, because eventually you or someone you know will be a victim of tort law.
Thanks ever so much for opening up these old wounds. You're a lovely bastard...:)
Sorry. I think that the path Microsoft eventually chose is the reason why there are no towers with a good view of BillG's office window...or grassy noles near the roads where he likes to ride in his convertible...
Seriously though...the demise of MS Xenix and rise of SCO is a very tragic case of "not invented here" syndrome. I think that if MS had run with that ball instead of trying cobbling together their own bastardised VMS work-alike kernel and convoluted API that the computing world would've been a much better place. Alas, politics too often trumps practicality and if BillG can't buy it or steal it he won't use it if he doesn't have to, and the AT&T UNIX license wasn't his for the taking at the time. Plus I think he was jealous of Jobs and he wanted for Mocrosoft everything Apple had--including the chronic case of "not invented here syndrome".
OO.o is a very nice MS Office competitor but like MS Office I find it too much of a heavyweight for my needs. I have a somewhat underpowered notebook at home that I still like to use when I don't want to sit at my desk and have found Abiword and Gnumeric fit the bill very nicely. I wasn't all that impressed with KWord when I tried it, but that was some time ago, plus I most often work in a GNOME environment so KWord just didn't deem to "belong" compared to the more GNOMEish AbiWord. Since I'm sure KWord has improved a fair bit I'd be curious to know how it came about to be the "least of all evils" for you.
Anyways, I like AbiWord because it more than meets all my needs for a general-purpose word processor and is still pretty lightweight--the startup time is significantly faster than OO.o, which is close to intolerable on my sub-1GHz notebook (though not too much of an issue on the desktop PC). Gnumeric is also pretty snappy, and it actually seems MORE full-featured than the OO.o or KOffice alternatives.
I think it is great that Softmaker has brought out another viable contender for multi-platform productivity software and though it is not free (or Free) I'd be willing to try it out. However I am disappointed that they have feature-limited the trial edition (Can't they do something like time-limit it instead?). It also seems a shame that it doesn't seems to have support for the.odt standard (dragging their feet on.odt support is what annoyed me about Abiword for awhile too but they eventually addressed that). If you like what you see so far from Softmaker by all means LET THEM KNOW that you'd like these shortcomings addressed--user participation is what makes Free software great and though you cannot participate in the DEVELOPMENT of the closed Softmaker product you can still help them out with product suggestions.
I wish the people at Softmaker luck--however I do think they are fighting a pretty steep uphill battle, becasue in the Windows world Microsoft has the market locked up and on all other platforms there are established, mature, free (and Free) alternatives that already have equal or better support for standard (.odt) and popular (.doc) formats. Softmaker can't just match these people they have to offer something markedly better to justify the extra cost and more restrictive licensing or they will fail, and it is difficult to match the pace of development found in many successful open projects. Nonetheless it is still important to give all alternatives a fair shake--that is what drives continuous improvement for everything.
Most Vista reviewes (and the/. reactions) fail to consider the mission of Vista in most big corporations.
My employer only completed its migration of client machines to Windows XP not quite a year ago. Most of those machines still run Service Pack 1 and the XP service pack 2 rollout will not be fully executed until after the public release of Vista. Out lineup of software products was only fully validated against SP2 this past spring. IE7 breaks most of our corporate intranet--it was (inwisely IMO) designed against IE6 and even Firefox handles it more gracefully than IE7--the default browser.
The reason that most vista reviewers overlook the "mission of Vista in most big corporations" is that it is basically IRRELEVANT to Vista's fortunes. I would say that a large-scale XP-to-Vista migration in our company would take almost as much time, money and effort as a migration to Linux would. None of our software is validated against Vista and we won't widely support our products on Vista for another year. Though I can see Vista client machines starting to filter in some time in 2008 there are no plans for a comprehensive, wide-scale deployment until FY2009. This sort of situation is typical of large enterprises (those with 10000+ computers to manage).
The early adopters of Vista are the individual/retail customers and smaller organisations. That is where MacOS shows its strength and that is what MS has to market against. Big corporate adoption simply doesn't happen quickly, so if MS can't retain and grow its home and small/medium enterprise with Vista it is in SERIOUS TROUBLE.
From a robust permission scheme, remote control of group policies and really easy deployment there's nothing like Windows. (The macintosh really falls down in a controlled environment.
My experience with Mac OSX is limited to the desktop so I cannot fairly comment on its abilities. However I have a great deal of exposure to Windows in large corporate environments (my employer is a fortune 500 companies and I've been to two fortune 500 customer sites in the past month--these are true LARGE enterprise situations). I'm not sure what you mean by "robust permission scheme" but I've found security (authentication and access control) for Windows to be a royal pain in the a$$--dealing with ugly mixes of NT4-style and AD-style domains, DCOM configurations, etc...MS is supposed to be about seamless integration but when they make a sea change it might as well be a mixture of MacOS, UNIX and Windows. Eight years ago where I worked they were migrating from old AT&T UNIX machines to ProLiant's running Linux (yes--this was eight years ago before all the hype and before the internet bubble really started to inflate). For all the fragmentation in the UNIX world that migration was smoother than what I've seen when upgrading VERY large systems from NT4 to Server2003 Active Directory. To be fair though the end result with Windows 2003 "looked prettier" and was a big improvement, but it sure took a lot of work.
I'd say that for the strengths of Windows that you are touting are more significant for real enterprise systems, and in that space MS is not competing with Apple at all--it is competing with Red Hat, Novell, Oracle and IBM--specifically their Linux- and UNIX-based solutions. UNIX-style platforms have a LOT more history in the enterprise environment andwhile they might not be "point and click" easy, they are MUCH more powerful and robust.
Can any one of the Mac fanboys come up with one Fortune 500 company (other than Apple) that has deployed more than 50% Macs?)
My mother worked for the largest newspaper chain in Canada. I'd venture to say that most of their worksataions were Macs by far. I do not believe they are a fortuen 500 company but they were big nonetheless--it was a multinational company that owned newspapers all over North America and in the UK. Macs still have a commanding presence in their niche markets--publishing being one of them.
People are stupid and careless. In addition, capacitors and other parts DO have a limited lifetime.
Let me relate to you a story about my Rogers cellphone, and I'll ask where would you reasonably draw the line...
I obtained a Motorola phone from Rogers Wireless a bit over a year ago, and almost from the start I found I could not get good signal strength on most occasions. I thought it was just crappy coverage from Rogers but then a friend of mine notices we got the exact same model of phone from the same provider and her phone reported full strength and mine showed one "stair step" even when put side-by-side. Obviously Rogers is doing their job so it must be the phone.
I took the phone to a Rogers service centre, where a well-pierced-and-dyed punk looked at it and said "hmm this looks wierd dude...maybe there is a firmware or SIM card problem--we got a couple recalls on this model" (Hey Motorola, where'd you learn your testing and QA procedures from--the old-Microsoft-school of paying-customers-as-testers? People don't like to buy their stuff already broken). Lucky me, after running some tests and looking in ther database it appears that Rogers fixed my phone before issuing it to me (How uncharacteristically thoughful of them!). "Must be something wrong with the radio hardware" said the cellpunker, "We'll have to send it to Motorola in Vancouver. They ususally take 4 weeks to look at it so we'll give you a (crappy) courtesy phone.
After the wait (at least it wasn't delayed) I received my phone...working much better! But it appears that the journey through Rogers, the courier and Motorola was a rough one, as there is now a crack in the pretty brushed-metal front cover. Stupid and careless SERVICE people! I'm then told that such cosmetic damage is not covered under warranty and they'd replace it but I'd have to pay...for THEIR carelessness! Oh well, I can live with the hairline phone fracture.
I'm further told how to minimise the risk of things like this happening again. Don't expose it to cold for too long (HOW cold? It's nearly -30C here right now--it THAT too cold? For how long? Can I keep it in my coat pocket when I walk to the 7-eleven or is that too long? "Just be on the cautios side" I'm told). Don't leave it in a hot place for too long...like your car in the summer. Don't leave it on the charger too long. Don't take it off the charger too soon for too often. Cellphones are sensitive electronic devices, make sure to avoid static discharge (in -30 weather that can be a tall order).
I understand these environmental hazards can be a design challenge...but it's a CELLPHONE...a MOBILE DEVICE. It can be dropped, it can be zapped, it can be exposed to temperature and humidity extremes. It's sold with 2 and 3 year service contracts SO THE DAMN PHONE SHOULD SURVIVE AT LEAST THAT LONG.
My old-school Nokia survived well past the original contract. It was rained on, it was dropped (and the faceplate cracked, but it was removable and replacements were cheap...and the phone sitll worked). It was operated and transported in a temperature range exceeding 60C. It was done before...why can't it be done now? Because cellphones are so much more sophisticated? That's crap. If you cand feature-flood me without making the product flimsy then ditch the extra features. As for limited lifetimes...if the capactitors cannot even last 3 years they are pretty sh*tty capacitors and a new supplier should be found immediately, especially given that a cellphone is a relatively low-power device and that the majority of the internal parts are solid state (the only moving things in them are electrons). To me, this isn't about user abuse or the natural lifetime of internal components--it is about maintaining corporate revenue streams.
But how many of those stories have the head hunter walking into a cube farm and saying, "Hey guys, We are having a job fair across the street."
I can say it happened at least once because it happened to me. It wasn't a professional headhunter and I wasn't in a cubicle, but I WAS asked, while I was on the job, by a customer if I was open to changing employers. We've had former employees poached away by customers/other contractors on a project before. The labour market is extremely tight here, especially for skilled labour, tradespeople and professionals.
...was "random mode". At least, that is how my Dell came configured.
Random mode is very entertaining in that your notebook MOSTLY does the same thing in resonse to a certain action, but just to spice up your user experience XP will throw a bit of randomisation into the logic. It's always fun to make friendly wagers with your colleagues as to whether you computer will sleep, hibernate or power off when you close the lid. Mostly it sleeps (I *think*) but it is always neat when the planets align or the wind blows from a certain direction and it powers off.
Random Mode Release 2 is an improved version in that it seems to change the state of the machine when it is left unattended. That's totallly wild man! My life was dull before then but it's an adventure now to come home from work, open my valise and hear the little fan whirring away on the toasty little notebook machine. It's cold here in Canada sometimes and I guess it was just staying warm, except that the battery is flatter than southwestern Saskatchewan by the time I notice. Having to connect the power WIRE kinda wrecks the wireless experience.
Even better is when I sleep or hibernate my notebook when I'm coming back from a trip. My selfless little XP notebook figures it is too cool up in the overhead compartment of the airplane and decides to expend what energy is left in its flammable cells to warm up itself and all his new carry-on friends. Of course, you learn the first time that happens to make special note to save everything before suspending your machine...and to be patient when (for some reason I cannot fathom, to restart and log back in takes nearly twice as ong as from a proper shutdown.
Nine powerdown options is certainly annoying. However, I'd have to say that it is a minor annoyance in comparison to XP "random mode" power management (assuming this has been addressed in Vista of course)
I have absolutely no doubt that any of the examples you provided above would be ground for severe reprimands against the teacher, especially the first and third which would definitely be enough for getting the teacher fired.
You would think that, and similar incindents have happened where I live now and teachers were in fact canned because of it. However, in these situations I believe the teacher was written up but was not only not fired but was not docked pay or suspended from duties at all. This was an Anglophone school, at a time when there was some hostility towards Anglophones in Quebec (around the time of the first referendum on separating from Canada) and there may have been a problem getting teachers who wanted to teach there.
For some time (and this was with a few strongly-unionised labout markets in Quebec) it caused a lot of grief to fire a teacher (or tradesman or whatever) becasue it was basically standard procedure for a union to file a grievance. Short of having criminal conviction or causing bodily harm or death it was not a pleasant process.
Well, if it is a trap then is is a big black bear trap in plain site. The camera may have been hidden but if a student is trying to goad you on then shouldn't it be obvious to a teacher what the appropriate action is? Getting into an hysterical screaming match with someone who is provoking you is something children do, or drunken pub crawlers, or white trash guests on Jerry Springer. Mature adults in positions of authority do not act this way and shouldn't have to know they are being photographed to behave civilly.
so short of banning camera phones & (video) cameras, I don't really see how you resolve the issue.
Well, by behaving like a civilised, mature human being, at least in public places like classrooms, you would virtually eliminate the possibility of being filmed in a compromising act. Furthermore, if you do not act like a total ass to students or anyone else you won't be providing incentive for them to film you surrupticiously or fabricate an offensive and embarrassing photo or video of you.
By the way...if a teacher behaves like an ass and mistreats his students it merely teaches the students to be the same way, which is probably what mad the girls do something so devious and vindictive anyways. Seems the golden rule is completely lost on this charater.
Proving once again that you can never have too much overkill.
Walking a fine line labelled "troll" here...but I had to comment...
I'm not sure what it is, but from my personal experiences with teachers from Quebec, as well as anecdotal evidence from others (my girfriend was raised in Montreal and I know a couple of other Quebecois with similar experiences as well) I now have quite a dim view of the teaching "profession" there. This is especially true with regard to teachers in anglophone schools in Quebec. They are VERY strongly unionised and VERY protective of their own self interests and, quite frankly, a few of them are mentally unstable. I KNOW this is a blanket statement and I hope that any/. readers who are teachers from Quebec do not take offense becasue there are at least a few good teachers there I'm sure.
In any case, I think that there is some sort of systemic problem with public education in Quebec concerning monitoring competency of teachers and providing accountability. Perhaps it has to do with the union having too much control (unions have a purpose but when they are corrupt or the bargaining posisions are not on level ground it can be harmful). It seems very close to impossible to fire a teacher in Quebec--one would have to be convicted of physically or sexually abusing a student to be fired, or some other similar grave justification. That culture is why some people of questionable capability, mental capacity or emotional stability can remain teachers for as long as they want.
From what I understand, teachers with short fuses have been occasionally blowing up on students in Quebec classrooms for decades. We aren't talking about stern corporal punishment in the style delivered by the nuns of the old Catholic schoolhouses here either--we are talking they go all "Kosmo Kramer" on a student. In my girfriends primary school this was the sort of discipline meted out by these real pieces of work:
* Forgetting to bring something for show and tell in Grade I would mean you were ordered to go home and get it...unescorted..even if you lived a couple kilometres away or had to cross major throughfares. The parents wouldn't be notified of this.
* One teacher would throw objects at her students' heads if they were talking when she didn't want them to (chalk, etc). When my girfriend caught flying chalk coming toward her head one day and threw it back she was sent home and told not to come back the next day.
* Locking children in broom closets was a choice method of discipline. Parents were not notified of behavioural problems that justified such a punishment, nor were they asked if it was appropriate to discipline their child that way.
* Yelling and screaming tantrums--by the teachers--was common in some classes.
What happened to detention or going to the principals' office? What happened with informing and involving parents with such issues? Apparently, at least as early as the late 1970s, such practices have fallen out of style in a few schools in Quebec. And guess how complaints from parents are dealt with:
* Denial - your kid is lying or exaggerating * Defence of the actions by teachers, however inappropriate the parents might think they are * Promises to stop using such methods on your child--mixed in with threats of legal action should you complain publically about a teacher.
Yes, it is true I've met a couple of great teachers who (at least at one time) taught in Quebec. Former STUDENTS that I know, pretty much without exception, had multiple teachers that were incompetent and/or nutjobs at some point. I was not educated in Quebec myself, and I had my fair share of stupid teachers, but I cannot remember there being as many nutjobs as I've heard about in Quebec. Can't say whay that is aside from something systemically wrong with teacher training/hiring/screening becasue as a whole the Quebecois are among the most wonderful people I've met (thankfully they didn't learn how to behave from their teachers).
People will not just use Linux because they don't want to. They don't care. They are not interested. They like Windows because it comes on their computers by default, "everyone else uses it," they didn't see how much it cost, and it looks pretty, even though underneath it's pretty ropey.
[...]
"We" do not need Linux (as only one flabour of *nix) to be pervasive, to replace one monoculture with another.
I've noticed something about personal computing that is quite disturbing and you've put the finger right on it. A lot has been said about how the IT "monoculture" has made us vulnerable to security compromises, viruses and such because the vast majority of PCs share the same platform with the same weaknesses, but it goes much furhter than that. The software monoculture has slowed progress and innovation very substantially. While hardware computing capability marches forward on Moore's Law, progress on the software side has almost ground to a complete halt. Let's look at a few five-year periods of recent personal computing history shall we?
1975 to 1980: Went from Altair (came standard with a few bytes of RAM, LEDs and switches for input) to Atari (800 came with 48K, had a full keyboard, 128 colour graphic display and multi-channel sound)
1980 to 1985: Went from Vic (and its you like competitors from Atari, Apple, TI, etc) to Mac (16/32 bit computing with desktop model GUI on high-res bitmapped display that you could go and buy at a mall)
At this point Microsoft's dominance starts to develop and the monoculture takes shape:
1985 to 1990: Went from Mac to Windows 3.0 (black and white GUI to...ummm...well colour GUI that was a but awkward to use)
1990 to 1995: Win 3.x to Win95 and NT (colour GUI to a prettier colour GUI and uhhh well I guess TCP/IP stack built in...whatever)
1995 to 2000: Win 95/NT4 to Win 2000 (nothing really notable...stability and scalability improvements)
2000 to 2005: Win XP (fisher-price theme on same old desktop.
What is most disturbing is 2001 to present: NOTHING AT ALL...we've been hobbling along on just service packs and patches. And the "great unwashed" JUST DON'T CARE. The only computer users who have enjoyed any innovation or notable improvements are those who are passionate enough about computers to see them as more than a tool and opt to run Linux or MacOS. Furthermore, because that market is so small any innovation that DOES happen happens slowly dur to either lack of resources or fear of being TOO different from the dominant monoculture so as to repel potential new users.
"We" should be quietly confident and work to improve "our" software, and when any of the Heathens feel ready to convert, we should offer them our patient and friendly support.
While I think you're observations are astute, your solution is far from the way to go. We can't merely improve our manners and accessibility towards newbies and be "quietly confident" becasue we'd never get on anybody's radar. Free software advocates have had "quiet confidence" and continuous improvement for decades now and it never stopped the formation of the Microsoft monooculture. We need to boost our volume considerably in the advocacy of Free alternatives to Microsoft (and even Apple, who have survived and are even thriving a bit from being very visible). We do have a few "loud" advocates, however they are idealogues like ESR and RMS--extremely intelligent and capable people but with eccentric personalities who are fringe thinkers. ESR and RMS are poor at marketing and PR and compromise and negotiation which means that if a person is aware of them at all they could be perceived as crackpots.
We need advocates that can effectively talk to the "common man". We need to shelve talk about the merits of the GPL and freedom and such for a PRODUCT-based approach. The philosophy discussion makes more sense amongst the newly converted, not for the unconverted. There are the Linux television commercials? The only notabl
The software giant has declared that home versions of their upcoming OS may not be run virtually, because 'virtualization is not mature enough for broad adoption.'
Output:
Figured out we haven't to make deactivated Windows Vista on virtual machines image copies for to stop clever home user pirates. The version after Vista will have improved protection of copy to prevent this for enhancement of user experience.
...because if you did you wouldn't have asked such a question:
So when was the last time you say a child use the family laptop for a soccer ball?
Never underestimate the destructive capacity of a three year old--especially a bored three year old. Angry three year olds are serious occupational hazards for hapless parents.
Perhaps the older children and adults that would be typical users wouldn't mistreat the machine like this, but these machines must survive households in developing nations, and I'm sure very many of them contain three year olds that are siblings and offspring of these users (and would be potential future users of the machine). A great deal of these families are of modest means as well and I'm sure they have to share close living quarters and have no place to keep the machine out of reach of the younger children. Perhaps the rather non-spherical OLPC unit wouldn't inspire toddlers to try using it as a soccer ball but I'm sure their fertile imaginations would come up with other means of destruction.
Surely you can get a monkey and a good set of darts for less than what they were going to spend?
Getting the required import permits, the actual price of purchase and the care and feeding of a Monkey probably exceeds the price of an analyst's consulatation services. After all, a monkey is far more valuable and useful than, say, that crazy Cramer dude on CNBC (seems like Ballmer's long lost brother doesn't he?).
It doesn't take a very sophisticated algorithm to outperform the average analyst. I suggest a far cheaper solution: My parents still have a lot of stuff from my childhood and I know that stowed somewhere in my basement is that Coleco ADAM. It has more than enough computing power to perform the task. What once came in handy for homework (it's BASIC was applesoft compatible yet the ADAM was much cheaper than an Apple) could be put to use as my investment advisor! I even have 5.25" floppies with SmartCALC spreadsheets of my Dad's portfolio as it stood in late 1986 I could use as a starting point!
So... it is your intent, then, to support the sexual assault of minors by non-pedophiles?
You offer a compelling argument, but the law in question doesn't mention paedophiles (the characterisation of the offender) specifically, rather it specifically refers to the characterisation of the VICTIM (that is, it targets ANYONE who vicimises a MINOR), so NO it ISN'T mine or anyone else's intent to support the rape of a child by ANYONE. Of course, I probably should've previewed my post more carefully;-)
This would, quite immediately, lead to "I'm not a pedophile, I'm just some guy who raped a kid" as a fully legal defense to a law drafted on that statement.
It sure would, and this is EXACTLY the kind of defence that badly-formed laws has invited. This law has two arguments of that nature--the first being "I am not guilty of raping this child becasue I had no reason to believe he/she was a minor--I fully intended to have sexual relations with a non-consenting adult". The second is "I am not guilty becasue I didn't solicit a minor using email--I followed him/her into a chatroom and did it there".
I'd say that the solution would be to say in the law that sexual assult BY ANYONE against ANY VICTIM is illegal and to specify clear and harsh punishments for these offenses regardless of any personal characteristics of the offender OR the victim. Incidentally the law in this area in Canada is extremely bad. First of all, the age of consent for sexual activity is by default 14, which is younger than pretty much the entire civilised world. Since in most cases it is seen as morally reprehensible for an old man to hook up with a 14 year old child there are a number of provisions outlining when sexual acts between 14-to-17 year old children and adults are NOT legal. They are VERY VAGUE provisions ("person in a place of trust" which is supposed to include teachers, family, law enforcement, etc). Since the proliferation of chatrooms, IM, myspace, etc this has caused a VERY dramatic increase in the production and trade of child pornography in Canada as well as a flood of predators in chatrooms, becasue the law cannot make a case for "a person in a place of trust". This law is like old-school-Microsoft security--everything goes and you have to shut down what you don't like one bit at a time.
In my book, that's probably not a good thing. IMO, you handed up an ideal example of why precision is good - and intent is bad... because your stated intent was to attack queers, rather than outlaw solicitation, and that's a giant free pass to walk through should it ever become law.
I suppose I could've been more concise in my original post, however it would help if you actually READ the whole post. My argument wasn't in defence of intent over precision. I was making the case that a badly-crafted law (one that was too specific in one sense, in combination with a legal definition of email that is too ambiguous) invited the consideration of intent as well as just simply making more work and money for lawyers. A law that clearly (PRECISELY) said that ANY solicitation of ANY person under the age of 'x' years is ILLEGAL and punisable by 'y' ot 'z' years in prison is the proper way to deal with this sort of case.
Have fun figuring out why *that's* the law as written - but it is.;)
Again, see my original post..it is done on purpose by slimy-lawyer-politicians to keep themselves and their slimy-lawyer-friends busy and well paid;-)
And here is where you go terribly, horribly wrong. Your first situation is fine... your second is not. Two wrongs do not make a right- the fact that we have crappy laws does not mean they must be interpreted badly. It means they must be struck down and replaced with better ones.
I didn't say the second situation WAS fine. It clearly isn't. The first situation is fine, and the second is REALITY, and REALITY is that there are too many badly written laws and public image and politics to deal with. So, in reality the WRONG thing is done because it must be done. From a moral standpoint, normal, average, well adjusted people know it is morally wrong for a grown man to solicit someone who is clearly a minor for sexual acts--full stop, and regardless of whether the person is legally/technically innocent it is neccesary from a moral standpoint to punish the offender. Thus, everything from appealing the ruling to more liberally interpreting a law is attempted. Certainly when such measures are taken it is on the slippery slope in terms of democracy and civil liberties. But, if laws were crafted better in the first place, what happens in reality would be closer to what is acutally right.
No, it's clear to the slimy lawyers what the law was intended to address. But the law did not address it, and therefore, punishing someone for it is both morally and legally unacceptable. You cannot punish someone for the judge's interpretation framer's intent as expressed in a legal document. Full, complete and total stop. This would be akin to ignoring contractual provisions because you thought they 'weren't what were intended'.
The true intent of a law isn't just what the slimy laywers had in their heads when they introduced the bill though. It includes what was understood as the intent by every politician (slimy or not) who voted to pass the law, as well as what was presented to the public (the true intent of a law and how it is presented to the public are not always the same). Ideally, you SHOULD not punish someone for the judges interpretation of the spirit of a law. In reality, it happens all the time, in the US and especially in Canada. Such a ruling is exactly why Canada includes same-gender couples in the definition of marriage--during a court case, a judge "read in" that sexual orientation was protected in the Constitution Act of 1981 even though it is neither implicitly or expressly mentioned anywhere in the Act. The judge didn't even argue that it was in the spirit of the Act as the framers intended when the act was passed. In essence the judge said "well, if the Constitution Act was written today it would be included becasue homosexuality is acceptable now".
In the ruling, the judge ordered Parliament to amend the Marriage Act to give homosexual unions the same legal status (this is fine accoring to your argument). HOWEVER, at the same time the plaintiff was awarded equivalent benefits that would've been afforded to the surviving spouse of a heterosexual union (even though the law didn't expressly say this should happen yet). I'd say that the majority of Canadians would say that it was the moral/fair thing to do but in my mind this would be short-circuiting the process wouldn't you say?
But that has nothing to do with this specific case.
But it does in a sense, becasue if the law was properly written in the first place, there wouldn't be all the waste of time and money of debate and appeals and study over an issue that is already clear cut. It served the purpose of the slimy lawyers in that the law was ambiguous enough that it lengthened the case, delayed a ruling and made extra work--billable work by the slimy lawyers--to find an odd legal definition of email to support conviction.
So why is it that your very-well thought out position is in total contradiction to your knee-jerk reaction of 'this is a good ruling'?
It IS a good ruling and it is NOT a knee-jerk reaction, because in the end it *DID* agree with both the spirit AND the lette
As it is, the law is clear in its written meaning- and therefore any loopholes have to be fixed legislatively.
Without taking into account any sort of pragmatism, ideally we would have clear, effective laws and if someone commits an offensive/harmful act that is not covered by these fine laws we would let the offender off and say "gee we'd better make a law for that" and then we would. In practise things don't and shouldn't work that way. There are very many terribly written laws out there, which intertwine with each other and are not clearly interpreted, so we end up getting mired in definitions and semantics and technicalities in the absence of common sense.
To me, the judge made a CORRECT decision. It is very clear to all but slimy lawyers (there ARE good ones, but all too many are slimy) that the law was intended to address the problem of paedophiles soliciting minors for sex over the internet. When the law was written, IM was likely not forefront in the framers' minds because it was either uncommon or nonexistent. Furthermore there already existed in Florida law a LEGAL (not technical) definition of email that encompassed any person-to-person electronic distribution of content. Why this is a controversial ruling here I don't know.
Is this a good law? NO...it is one of those terrible laws. It is because lawyers are attracted to politics and become legislators--unfortunately the slimier the lawyer the more likely this happens (it is rare indeed when a truly altruistic, ethical and highly skilled lawyer enters politics). This law should've never been made--existing laws protecting minors from sexual predators should've been amended to make penaltes tougher and broaden the definition of sexual solicitation to include means that do not involve physical proximity in general.
This makes sense, so why didn't it happen? Because SLIMY LAWYER POLITICIANS MAKE BAD LAWS ON PURPOSE. Laws are made that are either poorly defined/too open to judicial interpretation, or otherwise make laws that are too narrow in scope (something along the lines of "it is illegal to rollerskate on city sidewalks between 7AM and 8PM on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays"). Why on earth would they deliberately do this? They do it to ensure the advancement of ther own careers and those of their slimy-lawyer buddies. This too-specific law probably came about as follows:
* A paedophile acted on his urges by luring and raping a child via the internet using e-mail (as we define it technically, because IM didn't exist or wasn't popular yet). He was sent to prison but the child was scarred for life.
* Public demands legislative action to prevent this from happening again. Slimy-lawyer politician introduces bill--one that covers only this specific situation. Said slimy-lawyer politician scores big political points as election is nearing.
* Critics contend the bill is not a good law (arguing of course that it is too specific and that it would be better to strengthen existing laws or create a more general law against soliciting minors).
* Slimy lawyer politician scores more political points at the expense of his critics by labelling everyone who is against the law as "supporting child molestation" or "against protecting our children"--whether or not the critics have a point or even a more effective alternative to protect children.
* Slimy lawyer is re-elected because of his track record on "protecting children"
* Slimy-lawyer-firms (friends of slimy-lawyer-politician) make a lot of money defending accused child molesters using technicalities and strict letter-not-spirit interpretation of the bad law. Even if they lose their cases they at least have a lot of billable hours.
* Slimy-lawyer-politician now has ammo to introduce more bad bills to plug holes in his original bad laws and add to his "stellar track record on protecting our children".
I'm not saying that you are wrong in your contention that we can't just fudge with the law to put some slimeball in pris
It isn't the mix of government and healthcare that is disasterous...not government plus ANYTHING. Governments ALL BY THEMSELVES have a penchant for creating disaster. By and large, anything that can be done to put a limit on how big or far reaching a govenrnment can get is the best thing for a society.
This isn't to say socialised medicine is automatically a bad thing because I see problems in leaving something that directly important to our well being completely to profit-oriented corporations. In the same vein, healthcare is much too important to leave in the bumbling, corruption-prone hands of national/federal governmenta AT ALL COSTS. Anything that closely affects individuals should be at the closest/most local levels of government. Services like healthcare and education very directly touch the lives of individuals and thus government involvement should be at the most local level possible. Things like foreign treaties, macro-economic policy, national defence and so on affect everyone but at a much more removed level...and that is what national-level govenrnments should be limited to as it is only these things they can manage competently.
Imagine if we all went to dinner and had to pay our own meals. We'd all get what we could afford -- burgers for some, steaks for others, soup for the few. Now imagine if we decided to split the bill equally. At first, we'd still buy what we used to, but some people would realize they could now afford steaks for just a little more cash out of pocket. When other people subsidize your irresponsibility, you become irresponsible. Eventually, everyone's buying steaks -- and all our costs go up. In government-run healthcare, everyone orders steaks, but the added bureacracy means the costs are well over the average steak -- and everyone expects to pay for soup.
That is a fairly poor analogy of how government-provided services work. The thing is, when you give up the responsibilty for paying the bill you also give up the freedom to choose what to eat. The rich steak-and-lobster diners might gladly entertain the equal-bill-splitting proposal but the soup-and-salad eaters would quickly protest as they'd be stuck overpaying (and no, you can't assume everyone has a large steak-and-lobster appetite). Since this is a democratic group of diners they'd end up negotiating a fair price for a meal somewhere around the median price, or a bit lower, and designate someone to place the order and pick up the food. Because this negotiation can get a bit acrimonious this designate would decide that in the interest of fairness and simplicity, each and every diner would get the same meal.
THAT is where big government programmes start to fail--when everyone gets bacon-cheeseburgers and fries for dinner. Then the whole plan goes out of whack when one person is a vegan, another is an observant Jew who only eats kosher, another has high cholesterol and cannot eat the high-trans-fat fries and another is allergic to cheese. So many people with differing needs and wants start demanding that they be accomodated, and soon the poor dinner-gopher is having to track people's special orders and go to a half-dozen places to get the meals and you inevidably end up with a BUREAUCRACY. It is NOT people being "greedy and irresponsible" that drives up the cost...it is simply that people are unique and crave choice.
Sidenote: One of my lady's best friends runs a huge network for a hospital chain that is in the process of combining with another hospital. She's told me repeatedly that the biggest costs for her MIS department is integrating all the bureacratic changes that the government requires -- paperwork, forms, etc. While she's a big-government Republican (the new style), she is blown away that 80% of her staff deals with those headaches, which are constantly changing and always need more people to do the job. It disgusts me.
As I said, I'm not against all government...just for LIMITING the scope of government. Sometimes reducing choice and providing a degree
I'm not defending pedophiles, but these shows are REALLY close to entrapment. There is no 13 year old boy or girl. It's an adult acting like one over the internet.
Well, my girlfirend and I have had the opportunity to chat with a member of PJ on a couple of occasions (who is on my girfriend's buddy list) and I can tell you that they aren't even REMOTELY close to entraping these sexual predators. PJ is also NOT A VIGILANTE GROUP AT ALL. They do NOT take the law into their own hands--they work WITH law enforcement closely and make VERY sure they do not conduct themselves in a manner that would jeopardise the case against a suspected predator.
Whether the chatter misrepresents themselves as a minor has NOTHING to do with entrapment at all. Law enforcement personnel work undercover all the time representing themselves as prostitutes, drug dealers and so forth. Entrapment is about enticing someone to commit an illegal act with the intention of charging them for that act--it isn't the same as misrepresentation at all. When a member of PJ goes online, they do so under a profile that clearly suggests he or she is underaged. They NEVER initiate a conversation with a paedophile. When someone messages an undercover PJ chatter only then do they respond and start a conversation. Once the conversation is started they do NOT make any effort to steer to the conversation to sexual content--generally they play the typical "angst-ridden teen" and mention shool troubles, or that they had a fight with a friend or so on. Sometimes they just talk about nothing in particular. In any case, they are simply compliant or agreeable with the suspect--if they ask for a picture they send one...of the paedophile sends a file they accept it.
They are simply putting the bait out on a hook and fishing for sickos. Entrapment would be coralling all the fish into a pond filled with freely-swimming bait. In any case, PJ have thier hearts in the right place but I could see them being overzealous in advocating the shutdown of these sites as they are quite passionate about the issue. I haven't seen the kind of content available on this "boychat" site so I can't say how illegal it would be, but it could be that one or more members of that forum have been conviced of sexual crimes against minors or have been chatting with undercover PJ members. That could very well be enough for PJ to try and shut down the site regardless of actual legality of the content.
I certainly think that Verizon has overstepped themselves here however. These guys are small-fry and from the article anyways appear to be more of a support group than a child porn ring. Yahoo chatrooms and Myspace and usenet are probably much bigger and more dangerous breeding grounds for paederastic sexual predators than some little forum sites. These outfits, however are either too big or have too much money to abuse this way.
I live in Canada and as the article states our laws ARE much stricter on the definition of illegal child porn. Its constitutionality has been challenged in the past even though our protection of "free speech" is not as rigourous as in the US. I'm pretty sure our child porn laws would be ruled unconstitutional in the US. OTOH, for some reson I cannot fathom we have 14 as an age of consent which is lower than the vast majority of the world, and though we are pretty strict about what kind of porn and behaviour involving minors is legal the penalites for violating those laws are pretty weak. That IS significant though is that the Canadian authorities have reviewed the material on this boychat site and have determined it is not illegal by our standards...this suggests to me that it is more like a child-abusers version of alcoholics anonymous. I think the site should be monitored closely by police but I certainly don't think it should be shut down if that is the case because perhaps it actually keeps paedophiles from acting on their urges. I also do not think it is Verizon's place to decide what content is appropriate. That is t
This is basically how it works in Canada--though the US may be different...
Election rules permit political candidates to make phonecalls without restriction DURING A CAMPAIGN (from the day the writ is dropped until election day). These calls MUST be from the candidate directly or on behalf of the candidate by a campaign worker. These calls CANNOT come from a third party--they'd have to respect do-not-call lists and beyond that they are effectively banned from doing so because of "election gag laws" prohibiting any sort of campaign spending by third parties. For example, not only can a lobby group, say for illustrative purposes "Gigantic SUV Owners of Canada" not make phonecalls urging people not to vote for the Green party, they are prohibited from campaigning for or against any party or candidate, in any way (from radio and tv to the internet to billboards etc.) during an election.
Such a "gag law" would be clearly against the US constitution, and it has been contested several times in Canada but the restriction in free speech has been ruled as justifiable by judges in the interest of leveling the electoral playing field. So, if you were in Canada and got a call from ANYONE who does not directly represent a candidate they aren't just being annoying or breaking CRTC rules (CRTC is the Canadian version of FCC), they are also breaking election rules.
The same applies to junk mail. In Canada, postal workers are obligated to deliver everything with an address on it that is not a restricted material (so infectious/biohazardous materials, flammable substances, perishable goods, etc. aren't deliverable, but any addressed letters and such must be delivered). Junk mail without addresses are called "unadressed admail" and you can request that it not be delivered. There is one exception and that is political campaign literature. As with "junk voicemail" you cannot block delivery of political campaign pamphlets even if they are not addressed, and third parties are prohibited from mailing out campaign literature entirely.
I know the US doesn't have "gag laws" but it is probably the case that third parties/lobbyists like "the friends of proposition X" must respect the same do-not-call list that businesses and charities must. As in Canada, I'm betting there is some provision protecting the right of candidates to use dialers as a campaign tool. Of course, if you phone hundreds of people reminding them to "vote for Mr. Smith" during dinner hour you risk turning those portential voters against you for being annoying.
I live quite close to Voodoo's corporate headquarters and remember back when the company was a small, local system builder. I remember their little classified ad in the Bargain Finder and when their headquarters were in a funky little house. Their exclusive focus on the gaming market is actually relatively recent--for the first decade of its existence Voodoo PCs weren't all visually "tricked out" and weren't all gaming PCs. They used to sell a very cool cube-shaped server on caster wheels (it sported a Voodoo badge but didn't have case windows, unusual paint job or anything like that) and were known for high quality, fast computers suitable for business use as well as being favoured by gaming enthusiasts.
Well, Voodooo has grown up, moving from the funky little house to a unit in an industrial park in southeast Calgary. They've embraced the gaming enthusiast crowd and made the outside of their PCs stand out and reflect the quality of the parts inside. They don't do corporate sales anymore and sell more notebooks than towers now and so it seems to me that they are more of a "detailing shop" than they were when they started as a PC builder. In any case I'd say they comand such a following amongst gamers not just becasue of the product but becasue of the PERSONAL SERVICE...in fact MOSTLY becasue of their personal service nowadays becasue their products grow technically less differentiated from their competitors as time goes on. They seem like the Boyd Coddingtons or Orange County Choppers of the PC world--you'd give them lots of money and they'd sit down with you (in person or over the phone) and go through EVERY SINGLE COMPONENT--what they sell, what they recommend and your final choice from motherboard to processor to drives and what not. It looks to me like it isn't quite like that anymore but it is still apparent that is where their roots are. That is what gamers like--control over how their machine is built and personal attention to detail.
HP/Compaq has always been in my mind the ANTI-Voodoo, even moreso than Dell (which at least allows you to personalise your PC on its website, though not nearly to the extent Voodoo has done before). My past experience with Compaq and HP has been about uniformity and inflexibility and everything gamers probably despise about big PC vendors--you buy model X, get to choose the amount or RAM and hard drive and...well...that's it.
I'm pretty sure that Voodoo machines will continue to be high-quality, high-performace systems and that they will continue to be visually distinctive. Where my doubts come in is with the personal touch you get with a smaller vendor (especially the kind of attention I remember getting from Voodoo a number of years ago). Are Rahul and Ravi going to be more removed from the day-to-day operations now that they are executives in HP's "entertainment PC division"? Will customer's choices dwindle to merely colour and memory choices? Beauty is only skin deep and anything that hurts quality of customer service will do damage to Voodoo's business.
It's not that they like commercial software per se, or that they don't know or understand the benefits of open-source software.
Actually, there ARE sonme segments of the market that is still enamoured with all things Microsoft. Yes, when compared to many alternatives Microsoft is garbage but that doesn't matter. Microsoft solutions are typically like McDonalds food...fast and easy, and when you are hungry and don't have much extra cash it tastes good. Also like McDonalds food, if you only have Microsoft your enterprise will get stomach aches, get fat and bloated and have health problems.
So what markets are hooked on Microsoft? Small and medium enterprises mostly, and operations heavy with automation (factories, refineries and so on--except for REAL mission critical stuff like aerospace, nuclear power generation etc). In other words, the "lower-to-middle class" of the enterprise space. Kind of like how low-to-middle-class America is hooked on fast food. And guess what? Not only are these enterprises hooked on "MS Junk food", they are also poorly informed on the benefits of "proper nutrition" (alternative solutions such as Free software, etc).
These large companies would be happy to bring Linux in-house as long as a larger company offers some kind of indemnification clause in their contracts.
That is not what makes large companies happy. The straight license agreement for Microsoft products offers NO indemnification WHATSOEVER. It doesn't even offer a proper warranty! The best you could ever hope for is replecement of defective media. To get indemnification requires a special contract with the vendor regardless of the nature of the software. The "fast food addicts" (which are the largest segment of business customers) don't have the money or legal resources to obtain such indemnification, except for perhaps a small handful of very critical systems. Thankfully, SMEs are rarely on the radar of "litigious bastards" like SCO.
As for REAL large companies that DO have the money and desire for indemnification, what makes them happy is that their vendor is big and established and rich too. Birds of a feather. In any case, this is ALREADY the most successful market for Linux and the one that presents the most challenges for MS. IBM, Sun, Red Hat, Oracle, Novell all are "big company" linux/Unix vendors and can all offer indemnification like MS so it is not the issue. What the issue is is simply that MS products are inferior. They are the biggest consumers of resources, least scalable, largest target of malicious attacks.
Many large companies offer Linux distributions and absorb the indemnification. It's no wonder then that superior distributions like Ubuntu aren't on the enterprise shopping list: there is little or no viable indemnification offered.
Indemnification is not the reason behind Ubuntu's lack of presence in large enterprises. The reason is that Ubuntu didin't come into being as an "enterprise-class OS". It was designed and targeted for personal/workstation use. Yes, it COULD be a capable enterprise OS, with packages installed to support big server installs but in that arena Ubunto is still very unproven. Also, Canonical isn't a big, established player corporately, popularity of its OS notwithstanding, so it isn't the ability to provide "big company support" but rather that it is a "smaller unproven vendor".
It creates more competition for IBM, who perhaps now will actually push for real Linux offerings that work, for Novell with SuSe, for Sun and Solaris, and it opens the door for upstarts like Canonical who are well-positioned to make Ubuntu a household name. Last, it will open doors to Linux that would otherwise remain shut. Oracle Linux marks the maturity phase of the first round of consolidation and is the harbinger of the next distribution wars.
I'm all up for more competition, and it is possible for a "re-spun Red Hat" OS to emerge as an independent contender in its own right (that is what happened to M
Slashdot Mirror
CSS found inspirations in many places, but not at Microsoft.
Hmm...well being this seems to come right from the horse's mouth I stand corrected...thanks Hakon. I was under the incorrect impression because if IE3 being the first kid on the block with meaningful support for CSS, while Netscape seemed to resist it in favour of their own way of doing things (which is still ironic considering Mozilla's much more dedicated efforts to support the standard today).
It is a shame that MS did not remain committed to supporting the standard through their bowser, and telling that once they achieved market domination with their own browser MS lost interest in supporting the standard (and in fact seemed to put efforts into entrenching/encouraging the use of their own quirky interpretation of CSS as it established in IE3).
...because your idea of what a layout is seems quite rudimentary to me:
Check the CSS3 Layout module proposal: it has rows and columns. Because this is what layouts are.
A layout is NOT a table! A table is a specific KIND of layout in a sense (it is a way to structure content as well, as in a spreadsheet or database, which is why XHTML still has a TABLE construct). You might as well say "Check out this square--it has four sides. Because this is what parallelograms are".
Layouts can be free-form (flowing) or consist of elements in fixed positions described by cartesian coordinates, or be columnar, or, yes, be tabular. CSS3 advanced layout standard as *proposed* (it is NOT yet standard--it is a working draft) contains a "row and column" mode of operation--as well as "template" and "stacked" modes of operation...and look what has been said about the rows-and-columns mode:
This is an alternative to the layout policy above. Probably we don't need both. Maybe the best parts can be combined: layout that is independent from the document structure in one case and arbitrary levels of stretchability in the other.
"Alternative" policy? "Don't need both"? Looks like it isn't seen as essential to keep in the recommendation doesn't it? I certainly wouldn't use them if I didn't have to. As I said, CSS layout is far from perfect and there are challenged in doing things like multi-column, newspaper-like layouts that make less sophisticated web designers give up and use tables, and CSS3 advanced layout was set up to address such shortcomings so that it is easier to avoid the mis-use of layout tables in the content (html code). It "has" rows-and-columns as currently proposed but it DEFINITELY doesn't rely on them, and in fact does not even consider them the layout policy of choice!
The artists DID have control for a dark time in the mid-to-late 1990s, when the Internet bubble was in the earliest stages of inflation. I like to call it the "JPEG Jigsaw Puzzle Age" of the WWW.
While I think that CSS is far from perfect (it WAS, ironically enough, inspired by a concept from Microsoft after all) I do in fact find a properly-written CSS-formatted HTML page much EASIER to follow. Back in the dark JPEG Jigsaw Puzzle age, when trying to view or parse HTML source, it was cluttered with FONT-this and IMG SRC="spacer.gif"-that and TABLEs inside TABLEs inside TABLEs containing image maps. It was absolutely DREADFUL. And no, nested DIVs are NOT the same as nested tables, because tables have rows and columns and are meant for TABULAR DATA--NOT for general structuring of content. DIVs get no more complicated (from a content perspective) than simple nesting, whereas TABLEs have specialised TR collections within them, which in turn have TDs...and COLSPAN and ROWSPAN even further complicate and confuse when used for layout purposes.
CSS is more than a formatting tool--it enables content and presentation separation as well as semantic web design. The web would be beautiful but completely unusable GARBAGE if artists were in "full control". Similarly, the web would be efficient and powereful, but ugly and arcane if programmers were in "full control" (that is, we'd probably still be messing with Gopher, Archie, WAIS or similar powerful but ugly and/or user-unfriendly systems). If the artists and programmers could cooperate properly (and development tools that make use of CSS and HTML standards more effectively enabled such cooperation perhaps) then we get balance between effective presentation and functionality.
I suppose the biggest problem with CSS, beyond inconsistent interpretation of CSS by various browsers (which isn't CSS' fault) is that it is far too easy to mis-use it, and most CSS isn't properly or effectively used (probably because artists are trying to control it
A properly designed XHTML-and-CSS page is absolutely beautiful to behold: It is attractive yet simple to navigate. It is accessible (it degrades gracefully in audio and text-only browsers, and there is no need for "printer-friendly" links--ever--so get rid of them--NOW). It is easy to manage (don't like the way it looks just change the CSS, and if you need to update the content you can do so in the XHTML with virtually no effect on presentation). It is easy to parse and very human-readable (if you properly name your elements that is--use id="navigationMenu" instead of "toprightblock" and class="articleName" instead of "bigboldblue"). Without all that TABLE/TD/TR/IMG SRC="spacer.gif"/FONT/blah blah clutter in the HTML you can easily see the document structure, links, etc...and without all the
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Sorry...had to get this out...sometimes I can't resist a troll...
If there was nothing wrong with the first strap then why did they correct it.
Welcome to the lovely world of tort law--keeping the ambulance-chasing lawyers of America employed for generations!
There WAS nothing wrong with the Wii-mote strap...IF it was used as intended and under the conditions encountered during product and focus-group testing. However, it is difficult to find product testers and focus-group participants that are total and complete moronic jackasses. Besides that, QA and market focus people often overlook the "total and complete moronic jackass" segment of the population.
In any case, it is quite clear that Nintendo underestimated the force that would be applied to the strap during the MISuse of the Wii-mote. Tort law is all about establishing "Duty of Care" (a special type of "guilty") and generally speaking it is assumed that the party being sued must prove that they have adequately/reasonably met their duty of care (that is, they are assumed guilty and must establish reasonable doubt to prove their innocence). Because of the way tort law works, once it became apparent that at least one "total and complete moronic jackass" could indeed cause personal injury or property damage through ANY sort of use of Nintendo's equipment (proper use OR OTHERWISE) that they were LEGALLY OBLIGATED to address the situation. Their designers and lawyers no doubt had meetings to discuss what would be the best courses of action and decided that a design modification and well-publicised voluntary recall would reasonably meet their "duty of care" obligations.
What is great about tort law (for the ambulance-chasing-scumball flavour of lawyer anyways) is that it provides a catch-22 that provides justification for a lawsuit REGARDLESS of the actions taken to resolve this sort of issue. For example, if Nintendo decided that the product design was fine as it was and merely added a bright, day-glow warning label then they could be sued for neglecting their "duty of care". OTOH, if they "do the right thing" and address their duty of care fully by doing a design modification and a product recall then it is an admission of a product defect and there is still enough justification for a lawsuit.
IANIAL of course...but if you are employed in a profession (doctors and engineers in particular) or are an entrepreneur (hotel, restaurant or manufacturing for example) you don't need to be a lawyer to know about tory law, because eventually you or someone you know will be a victim of tort law.
Thanks ever so much for opening up these old wounds. You're a lovely bastard... :)
Sorry. I think that the path Microsoft eventually chose is the reason why there are no towers with a good view of BillG's office window...or grassy noles near the roads where he likes to ride in his convertible...
Seriously though...the demise of MS Xenix and rise of SCO is a very tragic case of "not invented here" syndrome. I think that if MS had run with that ball instead of trying cobbling together their own bastardised VMS work-alike kernel and convoluted API that the computing world would've been a much better place. Alas, politics too often trumps practicality and if BillG can't buy it or steal it he won't use it if he doesn't have to, and the AT&T UNIX license wasn't his for the taking at the time. Plus I think he was jealous of Jobs and he wanted for Mocrosoft everything Apple had--including the chronic case of "not invented here syndrome".
OO.o is a very nice MS Office competitor but like MS Office I find it too much of a heavyweight for my needs. I have a somewhat underpowered notebook at home that I still like to use when I don't want to sit at my desk and have found Abiword and Gnumeric fit the bill very nicely. I wasn't all that impressed with KWord when I tried it, but that was some time ago, plus I most often work in a GNOME environment so KWord just didn't deem to "belong" compared to the more GNOMEish AbiWord. Since I'm sure KWord has improved a fair bit I'd be curious to know how it came about to be the "least of all evils" for you.
.odt standard (dragging their feet on .odt support is what annoyed me about Abiword for awhile too but they eventually addressed that). If you like what you see so far from Softmaker by all means LET THEM KNOW that you'd like these shortcomings addressed--user participation is what makes Free software great and though you cannot participate in the DEVELOPMENT of the closed Softmaker product you can still help them out with product suggestions.
Anyways, I like AbiWord because it more than meets all my needs for a general-purpose word processor and is still pretty lightweight--the startup time is significantly faster than OO.o, which is close to intolerable on my sub-1GHz notebook (though not too much of an issue on the desktop PC). Gnumeric is also pretty snappy, and it actually seems MORE full-featured than the OO.o or KOffice alternatives.
I think it is great that Softmaker has brought out another viable contender for multi-platform productivity software and though it is not free (or Free) I'd be willing to try it out. However I am disappointed that they have feature-limited the trial edition (Can't they do something like time-limit it instead?). It also seems a shame that it doesn't seems to have support for the
I wish the people at Softmaker luck--however I do think they are fighting a pretty steep uphill battle, becasue in the Windows world Microsoft has the market locked up and on all other platforms there are established, mature, free (and Free) alternatives that already have equal or better support for standard (.odt) and popular (.doc) formats. Softmaker can't just match these people they have to offer something markedly better to justify the extra cost and more restrictive licensing or they will fail, and it is difficult to match the pace of development found in many successful open projects. Nonetheless it is still important to give all alternatives a fair shake--that is what drives continuous improvement for everything.
Most Vista reviewes (and the /. reactions) fail to consider the mission of Vista in most big corporations.
My employer only completed its migration of client machines to Windows XP not quite a year ago. Most of those machines still run Service Pack 1 and the XP service pack 2 rollout will not be fully executed until after the public release of Vista. Out lineup of software products was only fully validated against SP2 this past spring. IE7 breaks most of our corporate intranet--it was (inwisely IMO) designed against IE6 and even Firefox handles it more gracefully than IE7--the default browser.
The reason that most vista reviewers overlook the "mission of Vista in most big corporations" is that it is basically IRRELEVANT to Vista's fortunes. I would say that a large-scale XP-to-Vista migration in our company would take almost as much time, money and effort as a migration to Linux would. None of our software is validated against Vista and we won't widely support our products on Vista for another year. Though I can see Vista client machines starting to filter in some time in 2008 there are no plans for a comprehensive, wide-scale deployment until FY2009. This sort of situation is typical of large enterprises (those with 10000+ computers to manage).
The early adopters of Vista are the individual/retail customers and smaller organisations. That is where MacOS shows its strength and that is what MS has to market against. Big corporate adoption simply doesn't happen quickly, so if MS can't retain and grow its home and small/medium enterprise with Vista it is in SERIOUS TROUBLE.
From a robust permission scheme, remote control of group policies and really easy deployment there's nothing like Windows. (The macintosh really falls down in a controlled environment.
My experience with Mac OSX is limited to the desktop so I cannot fairly comment on its abilities. However I have a great deal of exposure to Windows in large corporate environments (my employer is a fortune 500 companies and I've been to two fortune 500 customer sites in the past month--these are true LARGE enterprise situations). I'm not sure what you mean by "robust permission scheme" but I've found security (authentication and access control) for Windows to be a royal pain in the a$$--dealing with ugly mixes of NT4-style and AD-style domains, DCOM configurations, etc...MS is supposed to be about seamless integration but when they make a sea change it might as well be a mixture of MacOS, UNIX and Windows. Eight years ago where I worked they were migrating from old AT&T UNIX machines to ProLiant's running Linux (yes--this was eight years ago before all the hype and before the internet bubble really started to inflate). For all the fragmentation in the UNIX world that migration was smoother than what I've seen when upgrading VERY large systems from NT4 to Server2003 Active Directory. To be fair though the end result with Windows 2003 "looked prettier" and was a big improvement, but it sure took a lot of work.
I'd say that for the strengths of Windows that you are touting are more significant for real enterprise systems, and in that space MS is not competing with Apple at all--it is competing with Red Hat, Novell, Oracle and IBM--specifically their Linux- and UNIX-based solutions. UNIX-style platforms have a LOT more history in the enterprise environment andwhile they might not be "point and click" easy, they are MUCH more powerful and robust.
Can any one of the Mac fanboys come up with one Fortune 500 company (other than Apple) that has deployed more than 50% Macs?)
My mother worked for the largest newspaper chain in Canada. I'd venture to say that most of their worksataions were Macs by far. I do not believe they are a fortuen 500 company but they were big nonetheless--it was a multinational company that owned newspapers all over North America and in the UK. Macs still have a commanding presence in their niche markets--publishing being one of them.
People are stupid and careless. In addition, capacitors and other parts DO have a limited lifetime.
Let me relate to you a story about my Rogers cellphone, and I'll ask where would you reasonably draw the line...
I obtained a Motorola phone from Rogers Wireless a bit over a year ago, and almost from the start I found I could not get good signal strength on most occasions. I thought it was just crappy coverage from Rogers but then a friend of mine notices we got the exact same model of phone from the same provider and her phone reported full strength and mine showed one "stair step" even when put side-by-side. Obviously Rogers is doing their job so it must be the phone.
I took the phone to a Rogers service centre, where a well-pierced-and-dyed punk looked at it and said "hmm this looks wierd dude...maybe there is a firmware or SIM card problem--we got a couple recalls on this model" (Hey Motorola, where'd you learn your testing and QA procedures from--the old-Microsoft-school of paying-customers-as-testers? People don't like to buy their stuff already broken). Lucky me, after running some tests and looking in ther database it appears that Rogers fixed my phone before issuing it to me (How uncharacteristically thoughful of them!). "Must be something wrong with the radio hardware" said the cellpunker, "We'll have to send it to Motorola in Vancouver. They ususally take 4 weeks to look at it so we'll give you a (crappy) courtesy phone.
After the wait (at least it wasn't delayed) I received my phone...working much better! But it appears that the journey through Rogers, the courier and Motorola was a rough one, as there is now a crack in the pretty brushed-metal front cover. Stupid and careless SERVICE people! I'm then told that such cosmetic damage is not covered under warranty and they'd replace it but I'd have to pay...for THEIR carelessness! Oh well, I can live with the hairline phone fracture.
I'm further told how to minimise the risk of things like this happening again. Don't expose it to cold for too long (HOW cold? It's nearly -30C here right now--it THAT too cold? For how long? Can I keep it in my coat pocket when I walk to the 7-eleven or is that too long? "Just be on the cautios side" I'm told). Don't leave it in a hot place for too long...like your car in the summer. Don't leave it on the charger too long. Don't take it off the charger too soon for too often. Cellphones are sensitive electronic devices, make sure to avoid static discharge (in -30 weather that can be a tall order).
I understand these environmental hazards can be a design challenge...but it's a CELLPHONE...a MOBILE DEVICE. It can be dropped, it can be zapped, it can be exposed to temperature and humidity extremes. It's sold with 2 and 3 year service contracts SO THE DAMN PHONE SHOULD SURVIVE AT LEAST THAT LONG.
My old-school Nokia survived well past the original contract. It was rained on, it was dropped (and the faceplate cracked, but it was removable and replacements were cheap...and the phone sitll worked). It was operated and transported in a temperature range exceeding 60C. It was done before...why can't it be done now? Because cellphones are so much more sophisticated? That's crap. If you cand feature-flood me without making the product flimsy then ditch the extra features. As for limited lifetimes...if the capactitors cannot even last 3 years they are pretty sh*tty capacitors and a new supplier should be found immediately, especially given that a cellphone is a relatively low-power device and that the majority of the internal parts are solid state (the only moving things in them are electrons). To me, this isn't about user abuse or the natural lifetime of internal components--it is about maintaining corporate revenue streams.
But how many of those stories have the head hunter walking into a cube farm and saying, "Hey guys, We are having a job fair across the street."
I can say it happened at least once because it happened to me. It wasn't a professional headhunter and I wasn't in a cubicle, but I WAS asked, while I was on the job, by a customer if I was open to changing employers. We've had former employees poached away by customers/other contractors on a project before. The labour market is extremely tight here, especially for skilled labour, tradespeople and professionals.
...was "random mode". At least, that is how my Dell came configured.
Random mode is very entertaining in that your notebook MOSTLY does the same thing in resonse to a certain action, but just to spice up your user experience XP will throw a bit of randomisation into the logic. It's always fun to make friendly wagers with your colleagues as to whether you computer will sleep, hibernate or power off when you close the lid. Mostly it sleeps (I *think*) but it is always neat when the planets align or the wind blows from a certain direction and it powers off.
Random Mode Release 2 is an improved version in that it seems to change the state of the machine when it is left unattended. That's totallly wild man! My life was dull before then but it's an adventure now to come home from work, open my valise and hear the little fan whirring away on the toasty little notebook machine. It's cold here in Canada sometimes and I guess it was just staying warm, except that the battery is flatter than southwestern Saskatchewan by the time I notice. Having to connect the power WIRE kinda wrecks the wireless experience.
Even better is when I sleep or hibernate my notebook when I'm coming back from a trip. My selfless little XP notebook figures it is too cool up in the overhead compartment of the airplane and decides to expend what energy is left in its flammable cells to warm up itself and all his new carry-on friends. Of course, you learn the first time that happens to make special note to save everything before suspending your machine...and to be patient when (for some reason I cannot fathom, to restart and log back in takes nearly twice as ong as from a proper shutdown.
Nine powerdown options is certainly annoying. However, I'd have to say that it is a minor annoyance in comparison to XP "random mode" power management (assuming this has been addressed in Vista of course)
I have absolutely no doubt that any of the examples you provided above would be ground for severe reprimands against the teacher, especially the first and third which would definitely be enough for getting the teacher fired.
You would think that, and similar incindents have happened where I live now and teachers were in fact canned because of it. However, in these situations I believe the teacher was written up but was not only not fired but was not docked pay or suspended from duties at all. This was an Anglophone school, at a time when there was some hostility towards Anglophones in Quebec (around the time of the first referendum on separating from Canada) and there may have been a problem getting teachers who wanted to teach there.
For some time (and this was with a few strongly-unionised labout markets in Quebec) it caused a lot of grief to fire a teacher (or tradesman or whatever) becasue it was basically standard procedure for a union to file a grievance. Short of having criminal conviction or causing bodily harm or death it was not a pleasant process.
As Admiral Akbar once said: It's a trap.
Well, if it is a trap then is is a big black bear trap in plain site. The camera may have been hidden but if a student is trying to goad you on then shouldn't it be obvious to a teacher what the appropriate action is? Getting into an hysterical screaming match with someone who is provoking you is something children do, or drunken pub crawlers, or white trash guests on Jerry Springer. Mature adults in positions of authority do not act this way and shouldn't have to know they are being photographed to behave civilly.
so short of banning camera phones & (video) cameras, I don't really see how you resolve the issue.
Well, by behaving like a civilised, mature human being, at least in public places like classrooms, you would virtually eliminate the possibility of being filmed in a compromising act. Furthermore, if you do not act like a total ass to students or anyone else you won't be providing incentive for them to film you surrupticiously or fabricate an offensive and embarrassing photo or video of you.
By the way...if a teacher behaves like an ass and mistreats his students it merely teaches the students to be the same way, which is probably what mad the girls do something so devious and vindictive anyways. Seems the golden rule is completely lost on this charater.
Proving once again that you can never have too much overkill.
/. readers who are teachers from Quebec do not take offense becasue there are at least a few good teachers there I'm sure.
Walking a fine line labelled "troll" here...but I had to comment...
I'm not sure what it is, but from my personal experiences with teachers from Quebec, as well as anecdotal evidence from others (my girfriend was raised in Montreal and I know a couple of other Quebecois with similar experiences as well) I now have quite a dim view of the teaching "profession" there. This is especially true with regard to teachers in anglophone schools in Quebec. They are VERY strongly unionised and VERY protective of their own self interests and, quite frankly, a few of them are mentally unstable. I KNOW this is a blanket statement and I hope that any
In any case, I think that there is some sort of systemic problem with public education in Quebec concerning monitoring competency of teachers and providing accountability. Perhaps it has to do with the union having too much control (unions have a purpose but when they are corrupt or the bargaining posisions are not on level ground it can be harmful). It seems very close to impossible to fire a teacher in Quebec--one would have to be convicted of physically or sexually abusing a student to be fired, or some other similar grave justification. That culture is why some people of questionable capability, mental capacity or emotional stability can remain teachers for as long as they want.
From what I understand, teachers with short fuses have been occasionally blowing up on students in Quebec classrooms for decades. We aren't talking about stern corporal punishment in the style delivered by the nuns of the old Catholic schoolhouses here either--we are talking they go all "Kosmo Kramer" on a student. In my girfriends primary school this was the sort of discipline meted out by these real pieces of work:
* Forgetting to bring something for show and tell in Grade I would mean you were ordered to go home and get it...unescorted..even if you lived a couple kilometres away or had to cross major throughfares. The parents wouldn't be notified of this.
* One teacher would throw objects at her students' heads if they were talking when she didn't want them to (chalk, etc). When my girfriend caught flying chalk coming toward her head one day and threw it back she was sent home and told not to come back the next day.
* Locking children in broom closets was a choice method of discipline. Parents were not notified of behavioural problems that justified such a punishment, nor were they asked if it was appropriate to discipline their child that way.
* Yelling and screaming tantrums--by the teachers--was common in some classes.
What happened to detention or going to the principals' office? What happened with informing and involving parents with such issues? Apparently, at least as early as the late 1970s, such practices have fallen out of style in a few schools in Quebec. And guess how complaints from parents are dealt with:
* Denial - your kid is lying or exaggerating
* Defence of the actions by teachers, however inappropriate the parents might think they are
* Promises to stop using such methods on your child--mixed in with threats of legal action should you complain publically about a teacher.
Yes, it is true I've met a couple of great teachers who (at least at one time) taught in Quebec. Former STUDENTS that I know, pretty much without exception, had multiple teachers that were incompetent and/or nutjobs at some point. I was not educated in Quebec myself, and I had my fair share of stupid teachers, but I cannot remember there being as many nutjobs as I've heard about in Quebec. Can't say whay that is aside from something systemically wrong with teacher training/hiring/screening becasue as a whole the Quebecois are among the most wonderful people I've met (thankfully they didn't learn how to behave from their teachers).
People will not just use Linux because they don't want to. They don't care. They are not interested. They like Windows because it comes on their computers by default, "everyone else uses it," they didn't see how much it cost, and it looks pretty, even though underneath it's pretty ropey.
[...]
"We" do not need Linux (as only one flabour of *nix) to be pervasive, to replace one monoculture with another.
I've noticed something about personal computing that is quite disturbing and you've put the finger right on it. A lot has been said about how the IT "monoculture" has made us vulnerable to security compromises, viruses and such because the vast majority of PCs share the same platform with the same weaknesses, but it goes much furhter than that. The software monoculture has slowed progress and innovation very substantially. While hardware computing capability marches forward on Moore's Law, progress on the software side has almost ground to a complete halt. Let's look at a few five-year periods of recent personal computing history shall we?
1975 to 1980: Went from Altair (came standard with a few bytes of RAM, LEDs and switches for input) to Atari (800 came with 48K, had a full keyboard, 128 colour graphic display and multi-channel sound)
1980 to 1985: Went from Vic (and its you like competitors from Atari, Apple, TI, etc) to Mac (16/32 bit computing with desktop model GUI on high-res bitmapped display that you could go and buy at a mall)
At this point Microsoft's dominance starts to develop and the monoculture takes shape:
1985 to 1990: Went from Mac to Windows 3.0 (black and white GUI to...ummm...well colour GUI that was a but awkward to use)
1990 to 1995: Win 3.x to Win95 and NT (colour GUI to a prettier colour GUI and uhhh well I guess TCP/IP stack built in...whatever)
1995 to 2000: Win 95/NT4 to Win 2000 (nothing really notable...stability and scalability improvements)
2000 to 2005: Win XP (fisher-price theme on same old desktop.
What is most disturbing is 2001 to present: NOTHING AT ALL...we've been hobbling along on just service packs and patches. And the "great unwashed" JUST DON'T CARE. The only computer users who have enjoyed any innovation or notable improvements are those who are passionate enough about computers to see them as more than a tool and opt to run Linux or MacOS. Furthermore, because that market is so small any innovation that DOES happen happens slowly dur to either lack of resources or fear of being TOO different from the dominant monoculture so as to repel potential new users.
"We" should be quietly confident and work to improve "our" software, and when any of the Heathens feel ready to convert, we should offer them our patient and friendly support.
While I think you're observations are astute, your solution is far from the way to go. We can't merely improve our manners and accessibility towards newbies and be "quietly confident" becasue we'd never get on anybody's radar. Free software advocates have had "quiet confidence" and continuous improvement for decades now and it never stopped the formation of the Microsoft monooculture. We need to boost our volume considerably in the advocacy of Free alternatives to Microsoft (and even Apple, who have survived and are even thriving a bit from being very visible). We do have a few "loud" advocates, however they are idealogues like ESR and RMS--extremely intelligent and capable people but with eccentric personalities who are fringe thinkers. ESR and RMS are poor at marketing and PR and compromise and negotiation which means that if a person is aware of them at all they could be perceived as crackpots.
We need advocates that can effectively talk to the "common man". We need to shelve talk about the merits of the GPL and freedom and such for a PRODUCT-based approach. The philosophy discussion makes more sense amongst the newly converted, not for the unconverted. There are the Linux television commercials? The only notabl
Input:
The software giant has declared that home versions of their upcoming OS may not be run virtually, because 'virtualization is not mature enough for broad adoption.'
Output:
Figured out we haven't to make deactivated Windows Vista on virtual machines image copies for to stop clever home user pirates. The version after Vista will have improved protection of copy to prevent this for enhancement of user experience.
...because if you did you wouldn't have asked such a question:
So when was the last time you say a child use the family laptop for a soccer ball?
Never underestimate the destructive capacity of a three year old--especially a bored three year old. Angry three year olds are serious occupational hazards for hapless parents.
Perhaps the older children and adults that would be typical users wouldn't mistreat the machine like this, but these machines must survive households in developing nations, and I'm sure very many of them contain three year olds that are siblings and offspring of these users (and would be potential future users of the machine). A great deal of these families are of modest means as well and I'm sure they have to share close living quarters and have no place to keep the machine out of reach of the younger children. Perhaps the rather non-spherical OLPC unit wouldn't inspire toddlers to try using it as a soccer ball but I'm sure their fertile imaginations would come up with other means of destruction.
Surely you can get a monkey and a good set of darts for less than what they were going to spend?
Getting the required import permits, the actual price of purchase and the care and feeding of a Monkey probably exceeds the price of an analyst's consulatation services. After all, a monkey is far more valuable and useful than, say, that crazy Cramer dude on CNBC (seems like Ballmer's long lost brother doesn't he?).
It doesn't take a very sophisticated algorithm to outperform the average analyst. I suggest a far cheaper solution: My parents still have a lot of stuff from my childhood and I know that stowed somewhere in my basement is that Coleco ADAM. It has more than enough computing power to perform the task. What once came in handy for homework (it's BASIC was applesoft compatible yet the ADAM was much cheaper than an Apple) could be put to use as my investment advisor! I even have 5.25" floppies with SmartCALC spreadsheets of my Dad's portfolio as it stood in late 1986 I could use as a starting point!
So... it is your intent, then, to support the sexual assault of minors by non-pedophiles?
;-)
;)
;-)
You offer a compelling argument, but the law in question doesn't mention paedophiles (the characterisation of the offender) specifically, rather it specifically refers to the characterisation of the VICTIM (that is, it targets ANYONE who vicimises a MINOR), so NO it ISN'T mine or anyone else's intent to support the rape of a child by ANYONE. Of course, I probably should've previewed my post more carefully
This would, quite immediately, lead to "I'm not a pedophile, I'm just some guy who raped a kid" as a fully legal defense to a law drafted on that statement.
It sure would, and this is EXACTLY the kind of defence that badly-formed laws has invited. This law has two arguments of that nature--the first being "I am not guilty of raping this child becasue I had no reason to believe he/she was a minor--I fully intended to have sexual relations with a non-consenting adult". The second is "I am not guilty becasue I didn't solicit a minor using email--I followed him/her into a chatroom and did it there".
I'd say that the solution would be to say in the law that sexual assult BY ANYONE against ANY VICTIM is illegal and to specify clear and harsh punishments for these offenses regardless of any personal characteristics of the offender OR the victim. Incidentally the law in this area in Canada is extremely bad. First of all, the age of consent for sexual activity is by default 14, which is younger than pretty much the entire civilised world. Since in most cases it is seen as morally reprehensible for an old man to hook up with a 14 year old child there are a number of provisions outlining when sexual acts between 14-to-17 year old children and adults are NOT legal. They are VERY VAGUE provisions ("person in a place of trust" which is supposed to include teachers, family, law enforcement, etc). Since the proliferation of chatrooms, IM, myspace, etc this has caused a VERY dramatic increase in the production and trade of child pornography in Canada as well as a flood of predators in chatrooms, becasue the law cannot make a case for "a person in a place of trust". This law is like old-school-Microsoft security--everything goes and you have to shut down what you don't like one bit at a time.
In my book, that's probably not a good thing. IMO, you handed up an ideal example of why precision is good - and intent is bad... because your stated intent was to attack queers, rather than outlaw solicitation, and that's a giant free pass to walk through should it ever become law.
I suppose I could've been more concise in my original post, however it would help if you actually READ the whole post. My argument wasn't in defence of intent over precision. I was making the case that a badly-crafted law (one that was too specific in one sense, in combination with a legal definition of email that is too ambiguous) invited the consideration of intent as well as just simply making more work and money for lawyers. A law that clearly (PRECISELY) said that ANY solicitation of ANY person under the age of 'x' years is ILLEGAL and punisable by 'y' ot 'z' years in prison is the proper way to deal with this sort of case.
Have fun figuring out why *that's* the law as written - but it is.
Again, see my original post..it is done on purpose by slimy-lawyer-politicians to keep themselves and their slimy-lawyer-friends busy and well paid
And here is where you go terribly, horribly wrong. Your first situation is fine... your second is not. Two wrongs do not make a right- the fact that we have crappy laws does not mean they must be interpreted badly. It means they must be struck down and replaced with better ones.
I didn't say the second situation WAS fine. It clearly isn't. The first situation is fine, and the second is REALITY, and REALITY is that there are too many badly written laws and public image and politics to deal with. So, in reality the WRONG thing is done because it must be done. From a moral standpoint, normal, average, well adjusted people know it is morally wrong for a grown man to solicit someone who is clearly a minor for sexual acts--full stop, and regardless of whether the person is legally/technically innocent it is neccesary from a moral standpoint to punish the offender. Thus, everything from appealing the ruling to more liberally interpreting a law is attempted. Certainly when such measures are taken it is on the slippery slope in terms of democracy and civil liberties. But, if laws were crafted better in the first place, what happens in reality would be closer to what is acutally right.
No, it's clear to the slimy lawyers what the law was intended to address. But the law did not address it, and therefore, punishing someone for it is both morally and legally unacceptable. You cannot punish someone for the judge's interpretation framer's intent as expressed in a legal document. Full, complete and total stop. This would be akin to ignoring contractual provisions because you thought they 'weren't what were intended'.
The true intent of a law isn't just what the slimy laywers had in their heads when they introduced the bill though. It includes what was understood as the intent by every politician (slimy or not) who voted to pass the law, as well as what was presented to the public (the true intent of a law and how it is presented to the public are not always the same). Ideally, you SHOULD not punish someone for the judges interpretation of the spirit of a law. In reality, it happens all the time, in the US and especially in Canada. Such a ruling is exactly why Canada includes same-gender couples in the definition of marriage--during a court case, a judge "read in" that sexual orientation was protected in the Constitution Act of 1981 even though it is neither implicitly or expressly mentioned anywhere in the Act. The judge didn't even argue that it was in the spirit of the Act as the framers intended when the act was passed. In essence the judge said "well, if the Constitution Act was written today it would be included becasue homosexuality is acceptable now".
In the ruling, the judge ordered Parliament to amend the Marriage Act to give homosexual unions the same legal status (this is fine accoring to your argument). HOWEVER, at the same time the plaintiff was awarded equivalent benefits that would've been afforded to the surviving spouse of a heterosexual union (even though the law didn't expressly say this should happen yet). I'd say that the majority of Canadians would say that it was the moral/fair thing to do but in my mind this would be short-circuiting the process wouldn't you say?
But that has nothing to do with this specific case.
But it does in a sense, becasue if the law was properly written in the first place, there wouldn't be all the waste of time and money of debate and appeals and study over an issue that is already clear cut. It served the purpose of the slimy lawyers in that the law was ambiguous enough that it lengthened the case, delayed a ruling and made extra work--billable work by the slimy lawyers--to find an odd legal definition of email to support conviction.
So why is it that your very-well thought out position is in total contradiction to your knee-jerk reaction of 'this is a good ruling'?
It IS a good ruling and it is NOT a knee-jerk reaction, because in the end it *DID* agree with both the spirit AND the lette
As it is, the law is clear in its written meaning- and therefore any loopholes have to be fixed legislatively.
Without taking into account any sort of pragmatism, ideally we would have clear, effective laws and if someone commits an offensive/harmful act that is not covered by these fine laws we would let the offender off and say "gee we'd better make a law for that" and then we would. In practise things don't and shouldn't work that way. There are very many terribly written laws out there, which intertwine with each other and are not clearly interpreted, so we end up getting mired in definitions and semantics and technicalities in the absence of common sense.
To me, the judge made a CORRECT decision. It is very clear to all but slimy lawyers (there ARE good ones, but all too many are slimy) that the law was intended to address the problem of paedophiles soliciting minors for sex over the internet. When the law was written, IM was likely not forefront in the framers' minds because it was either uncommon or nonexistent. Furthermore there already existed in Florida law a LEGAL (not technical) definition of email that encompassed any person-to-person electronic distribution of content. Why this is a controversial ruling here I don't know.
Is this a good law? NO...it is one of those terrible laws. It is because lawyers are attracted to politics and become legislators--unfortunately the slimier the lawyer the more likely this happens (it is rare indeed when a truly altruistic, ethical and highly skilled lawyer enters politics). This law should've never been made--existing laws protecting minors from sexual predators should've been amended to make penaltes tougher and broaden the definition of sexual solicitation to include means that do not involve physical proximity in general.
This makes sense, so why didn't it happen? Because SLIMY LAWYER POLITICIANS MAKE BAD LAWS ON PURPOSE. Laws are made that are either poorly defined/too open to judicial interpretation, or otherwise make laws that are too narrow in scope (something along the lines of "it is illegal to rollerskate on city sidewalks between 7AM and 8PM on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays"). Why on earth would they deliberately do this? They do it to ensure the advancement of ther own careers and those of their slimy-lawyer buddies. This too-specific law probably came about as follows:
* A paedophile acted on his urges by luring and raping a child via the internet using e-mail (as we define it technically, because IM didn't exist or wasn't popular yet). He was sent to prison but the child was scarred for life.
* Public demands legislative action to prevent this from happening again. Slimy-lawyer politician introduces bill--one that covers only this specific situation. Said slimy-lawyer politician scores big political points as election is nearing.
* Critics contend the bill is not a good law (arguing of course that it is too specific and that it would be better to strengthen existing laws or create a more general law against soliciting minors).
* Slimy lawyer politician scores more political points at the expense of his critics by labelling everyone who is against the law as "supporting child molestation" or "against protecting our children"--whether or not the critics have a point or even a more effective alternative to protect children.
* Slimy lawyer is re-elected because of his track record on "protecting children"
* Slimy-lawyer-firms (friends of slimy-lawyer-politician) make a lot of money defending accused child molesters using technicalities and strict letter-not-spirit interpretation of the bad law. Even if they lose their cases they at least have a lot of billable hours.
* Slimy-lawyer-politician now has ammo to introduce more bad bills to plug holes in his original bad laws and add to his "stellar track record on protecting our children".
I'm not saying that you are wrong in your contention that we can't just fudge with the law to put some slimeball in pris
It isn't the mix of government and healthcare that is disasterous...not government plus ANYTHING. Governments ALL BY THEMSELVES have a penchant for creating disaster. By and large, anything that can be done to put a limit on how big or far reaching a govenrnment can get is the best thing for a society.
This isn't to say socialised medicine is automatically a bad thing because I see problems in leaving something that directly important to our well being completely to profit-oriented corporations. In the same vein, healthcare is much too important to leave in the bumbling, corruption-prone hands of national/federal governmenta AT ALL COSTS. Anything that closely affects individuals should be at the closest/most local levels of government. Services like healthcare and education very directly touch the lives of individuals and thus government involvement should be at the most local level possible. Things like foreign treaties, macro-economic policy, national defence and so on affect everyone but at a much more removed level...and that is what national-level govenrnments should be limited to as it is only these things they can manage competently.
Imagine if we all went to dinner and had to pay our own meals. We'd all get what we could afford -- burgers for some, steaks for others, soup for the few. Now imagine if we decided to split the bill equally. At first, we'd still buy what we used to, but some people would realize they could now afford steaks for just a little more cash out of pocket. When other people subsidize your irresponsibility, you become irresponsible. Eventually, everyone's buying steaks -- and all our costs go up. In government-run healthcare, everyone orders steaks, but the added bureacracy means the costs are well over the average steak -- and everyone expects to pay for soup.
That is a fairly poor analogy of how government-provided services work. The thing is, when you give up the responsibilty for paying the bill you also give up the freedom to choose what to eat. The rich steak-and-lobster diners might gladly entertain the equal-bill-splitting proposal but the soup-and-salad eaters would quickly protest as they'd be stuck overpaying (and no, you can't assume everyone has a large steak-and-lobster appetite). Since this is a democratic group of diners they'd end up negotiating a fair price for a meal somewhere around the median price, or a bit lower, and designate someone to place the order and pick up the food. Because this negotiation can get a bit acrimonious this designate would decide that in the interest of fairness and simplicity, each and every diner would get the same meal.
THAT is where big government programmes start to fail--when everyone gets bacon-cheeseburgers and fries for dinner. Then the whole plan goes out of whack when one person is a vegan, another is an observant Jew who only eats kosher, another has high cholesterol and cannot eat the high-trans-fat fries and another is allergic to cheese. So many people with differing needs and wants start demanding that they be accomodated, and soon the poor dinner-gopher is having to track people's special orders and go to a half-dozen places to get the meals and you inevidably end up with a BUREAUCRACY. It is NOT people being "greedy and irresponsible" that drives up the cost...it is simply that people are unique and crave choice.
Sidenote: One of my lady's best friends runs a huge network for a hospital chain that is in the process of combining with another hospital. She's told me repeatedly that the biggest costs for her MIS department is integrating all the bureacratic changes that the government requires -- paperwork, forms, etc. While she's a big-government Republican (the new style), she is blown away that 80% of her staff deals with those headaches, which are constantly changing and always need more people to do the job. It disgusts me.
As I said, I'm not against all government...just for LIMITING the scope of government. Sometimes reducing choice and providing a degree
I'm not defending pedophiles, but these shows are REALLY close to entrapment. There is no 13 year old boy or girl. It's an adult acting like one over the internet.
Well, my girlfirend and I have had the opportunity to chat with a member of PJ on a couple of occasions (who is on my girfriend's buddy list) and I can tell you that they aren't even REMOTELY close to entraping these sexual predators. PJ is also NOT A VIGILANTE GROUP AT ALL. They do NOT take the law into their own hands--they work WITH law enforcement closely and make VERY sure they do not conduct themselves in a manner that would jeopardise the case against a suspected predator.
Whether the chatter misrepresents themselves as a minor has NOTHING to do with entrapment at all. Law enforcement personnel work undercover all the time representing themselves as prostitutes, drug dealers and so forth. Entrapment is about enticing someone to commit an illegal act with the intention of charging them for that act--it isn't the same as misrepresentation at all. When a member of PJ goes online, they do so under a profile that clearly suggests he or she is underaged. They NEVER initiate a conversation with a paedophile. When someone messages an undercover PJ chatter only then do they respond and start a conversation. Once the conversation is started they do NOT make any effort to steer to the conversation to sexual content--generally they play the typical "angst-ridden teen" and mention shool troubles, or that they had a fight with a friend or so on. Sometimes they just talk about nothing in particular. In any case, they are simply compliant or agreeable with the suspect--if they ask for a picture they send one...of the paedophile sends a file they accept it.
They are simply putting the bait out on a hook and fishing for sickos. Entrapment would be coralling all the fish into a pond filled with freely-swimming bait. In any case, PJ have thier hearts in the right place but I could see them being overzealous in advocating the shutdown of these sites as they are quite passionate about the issue. I haven't seen the kind of content available on this "boychat" site so I can't say how illegal it would be, but it could be that one or more members of that forum have been conviced of sexual crimes against minors or have been chatting with undercover PJ members. That could very well be enough for PJ to try and shut down the site regardless of actual legality of the content.
I certainly think that Verizon has overstepped themselves here however. These guys are small-fry and from the article anyways appear to be more of a support group than a child porn ring. Yahoo chatrooms and Myspace and usenet are probably much bigger and more dangerous breeding grounds for paederastic sexual predators than some little forum sites. These outfits, however are either too big or have too much money to abuse this way.
I live in Canada and as the article states our laws ARE much stricter on the definition of illegal child porn. Its constitutionality has been challenged in the past even though our protection of "free speech" is not as rigourous as in the US. I'm pretty sure our child porn laws would be ruled unconstitutional in the US. OTOH, for some reson I cannot fathom we have 14 as an age of consent which is lower than the vast majority of the world, and though we are pretty strict about what kind of porn and behaviour involving minors is legal the penalites for violating those laws are pretty weak. That IS significant though is that the Canadian authorities have reviewed the material on this boychat site and have determined it is not illegal by our standards...this suggests to me that it is more like a child-abusers version of alcoholics anonymous. I think the site should be monitored closely by police but I certainly don't think it should be shut down if that is the case because perhaps it actually keeps paedophiles from acting on their urges. I also do not think it is Verizon's place to decide what content is appropriate. That is t
This is basically how it works in Canada--though the US may be different...
Election rules permit political candidates to make phonecalls without restriction DURING A CAMPAIGN (from the day the writ is dropped until election day). These calls MUST be from the candidate directly or on behalf of the candidate by a campaign worker. These calls CANNOT come from a third party--they'd have to respect do-not-call lists and beyond that they are effectively banned from doing so because of "election gag laws" prohibiting any sort of campaign spending by third parties. For example, not only can a lobby group, say for illustrative purposes "Gigantic SUV Owners of Canada" not make phonecalls urging people not to vote for the Green party, they are prohibited from campaigning for or against any party or candidate, in any way (from radio and tv to the internet to billboards etc.) during an election.
Such a "gag law" would be clearly against the US constitution, and it has been contested several times in Canada but the restriction in free speech has been ruled as justifiable by judges in the interest of leveling the electoral playing field. So, if you were in Canada and got a call from ANYONE who does not directly represent a candidate they aren't just being annoying or breaking CRTC rules (CRTC is the Canadian version of FCC), they are also breaking election rules.
The same applies to junk mail. In Canada, postal workers are obligated to deliver everything with an address on it that is not a restricted material (so infectious/biohazardous materials, flammable substances, perishable goods, etc. aren't deliverable, but any addressed letters and such must be delivered). Junk mail without addresses are called "unadressed admail" and you can request that it not be delivered. There is one exception and that is political campaign literature. As with "junk voicemail" you cannot block delivery of political campaign pamphlets even if they are not addressed, and third parties are prohibited from mailing out campaign literature entirely.
I know the US doesn't have "gag laws" but it is probably the case that third parties/lobbyists like "the friends of proposition X" must respect the same do-not-call list that businesses and charities must. As in Canada, I'm betting there is some provision protecting the right of candidates to use dialers as a campaign tool. Of course, if you phone hundreds of people reminding them to "vote for Mr. Smith" during dinner hour you risk turning those portential voters against you for being annoying.
I live quite close to Voodoo's corporate headquarters and remember back when the company was a small, local system builder. I remember their little classified ad in the Bargain Finder and when their headquarters were in a funky little house. Their exclusive focus on the gaming market is actually relatively recent--for the first decade of its existence Voodoo PCs weren't all visually "tricked out" and weren't all gaming PCs. They used to sell a very cool cube-shaped server on caster wheels (it sported a Voodoo badge but didn't have case windows, unusual paint job or anything like that) and were known for high quality, fast computers suitable for business use as well as being favoured by gaming enthusiasts.
Well, Voodooo has grown up, moving from the funky little house to a unit in an industrial park in southeast Calgary. They've embraced the gaming enthusiast crowd and made the outside of their PCs stand out and reflect the quality of the parts inside. They don't do corporate sales anymore and sell more notebooks than towers now and so it seems to me that they are more of a "detailing shop" than they were when they started as a PC builder. In any case I'd say they comand such a following amongst gamers not just becasue of the product but becasue of the PERSONAL SERVICE...in fact MOSTLY becasue of their personal service nowadays becasue their products grow technically less differentiated from their competitors as time goes on. They seem like the Boyd Coddingtons or Orange County Choppers of the PC world--you'd give them lots of money and they'd sit down with you (in person or over the phone) and go through EVERY SINGLE COMPONENT--what they sell, what they recommend and your final choice from motherboard to processor to drives and what not. It looks to me like it isn't quite like that anymore but it is still apparent that is where their roots are. That is what gamers like--control over how their machine is built and personal attention to detail.
HP/Compaq has always been in my mind the ANTI-Voodoo, even moreso than Dell (which at least allows you to personalise your PC on its website, though not nearly to the extent Voodoo has done before). My past experience with Compaq and HP has been about uniformity and inflexibility and everything gamers probably despise about big PC vendors--you buy model X, get to choose the amount or RAM and hard drive and...well...that's it.
I'm pretty sure that Voodoo machines will continue to be high-quality, high-performace systems and that they will continue to be visually distinctive. Where my doubts come in is with the personal touch you get with a smaller vendor (especially the kind of attention I remember getting from Voodoo a number of years ago). Are Rahul and Ravi going to be more removed from the day-to-day operations now that they are executives in HP's "entertainment PC division"? Will customer's choices dwindle to merely colour and memory choices? Beauty is only skin deep and anything that hurts quality of customer service will do damage to Voodoo's business.
It's not that they like commercial software per se, or that they don't know or understand the benefits of open-source software.
Actually, there ARE sonme segments of the market that is still enamoured with all things Microsoft. Yes, when compared to many alternatives Microsoft is garbage but that doesn't matter. Microsoft solutions are typically like McDonalds food...fast and easy, and when you are hungry and don't have much extra cash it tastes good. Also like McDonalds food, if you only have Microsoft your enterprise will get stomach aches, get fat and bloated and have health problems.
So what markets are hooked on Microsoft? Small and medium enterprises mostly, and operations heavy with automation (factories, refineries and so on--except for REAL mission critical stuff like aerospace, nuclear power generation etc). In other words, the "lower-to-middle class" of the enterprise space. Kind of like how low-to-middle-class America is hooked on fast food. And guess what? Not only are these enterprises hooked on "MS Junk food", they are also poorly informed on the benefits of "proper nutrition" (alternative solutions such as Free software, etc).
These large companies would be happy to bring Linux in-house as long as a larger company offers some kind of indemnification clause in their contracts.
That is not what makes large companies happy. The straight license agreement for Microsoft products offers NO indemnification WHATSOEVER. It doesn't even offer a proper warranty! The best you could ever hope for is replecement of defective media. To get indemnification requires a special contract with the vendor regardless of the nature of the software. The "fast food addicts" (which are the largest segment of business customers) don't have the money or legal resources to obtain such indemnification, except for perhaps a small handful of very critical systems. Thankfully, SMEs are rarely on the radar of "litigious bastards" like SCO.
As for REAL large companies that DO have the money and desire for indemnification, what makes them happy is that their vendor is big and established and rich too. Birds of a feather. In any case, this is ALREADY the most successful market for Linux and the one that presents the most challenges for MS. IBM, Sun, Red Hat, Oracle, Novell all are "big company" linux/Unix vendors and can all offer indemnification like MS so it is not the issue. What the issue is is simply that MS products are inferior. They are the biggest consumers of resources, least scalable, largest target of malicious attacks.
Many large companies offer Linux distributions and absorb the indemnification. It's no wonder then that superior distributions like Ubuntu aren't on the enterprise shopping list: there is little or no viable indemnification offered.
Indemnification is not the reason behind Ubuntu's lack of presence in large enterprises. The reason is that Ubuntu didin't come into being as an "enterprise-class OS". It was designed and targeted for personal/workstation use. Yes, it COULD be a capable enterprise OS, with packages installed to support big server installs but in that arena Ubunto is still very unproven. Also, Canonical isn't a big, established player corporately, popularity of its OS notwithstanding, so it isn't the ability to provide "big company support" but rather that it is a "smaller unproven vendor".
It creates more competition for IBM, who perhaps now will actually push for real Linux offerings that work, for Novell with SuSe, for Sun and Solaris, and it opens the door for upstarts like Canonical who are well-positioned to make Ubuntu a household name. Last, it will open doors to Linux that would otherwise remain shut. Oracle Linux marks the maturity phase of the first round of consolidation and is the harbinger of the next distribution wars.
I'm all up for more competition, and it is possible for a "re-spun Red Hat" OS to emerge as an independent contender in its own right (that is what happened to M