One way is to use background images and load or not load them using CSS media queries. A mobile device visiting the page wouldn't request that image and thus wouldn't waste bandwidth on it.
And, I'd add that I want there to be real checks and balances on their spying activities. Not just a "secret rubber-stamp court" that approves all requests and seals them behind a "National Security" veil where nobody, not even Congressfolk with high security clearance, can see them. I understand why they wouldn't want the world to know that they are listening in on Suspect X because they might be contacting Suspected Terrorist Y, but there's got to be a way to balance their need for secrecy with our need to keep them in check.
How much reordering of boxes is CSS capable of doing in response to a width threshold query that has triggered?
Quite a bit. You can also show and hide content depending on whether or not the browser is a certain width. For example, you might have a really cool image slider for the desktop version, but you hide that away for the mobile version to keep it from eating screen real estate (and bandwidth).
I did this in Firefox 26.0 on Xubuntu 12.04 LTS, and after a few seconds of resizing, it automatically switched to the paywall notice: "Read as much as you want anywhere, anytime, and on any device with BostonGlobe.com for just 99 cents".
You should be able to stop resizing, hide that paywall notice, and keep resizing. I just tried here and the paywall notice doesn't appear (except as a small banner on the bottom). I do remember it appearing last night, however.
Thanks to CSS3's media queries, no site should need a "mobile version." You design one site and have it modify itself based on the browser's size. A good example of this is the Boston Globe's site. Go to the site in Chrome or FireFox (not IE) in a large, but not maximized browser. Now slowly resize the browser, making it smaller and smaller. As you do, the site will reconfigure itself from full-fledged desktop site to small-screen mobile site (with quite a few steps in between).
The benefit of this is, of course, that you don't need to maintain two or three different sites. You maintain one site and modify it to suit different sized browsers. Compare this to a mobile site which needs to redirect users to a different URL and often needs a completely separate development effort.
I really don't think that browsing the web on a mobile phone is all that popular, or even something that people want to do.
Quickly checking my Google Analyitics shows that, over the past month, about 52% of my traffic came from desktop users, about 35% came from mobile users, and about 13% came from tablet users. Yes, this is one case, but this article indicates that mobile use is now 28% of traffic. While mobile isn't overtaking desktop, it certainly is a large enough percentage of traffic that it shouldn't be ignored.
...And ignore the first two paragraphs above. I hadn't seen the actual tweet (relied on my wife's account of what happened) but the article has a screenshot of the tweet and there's no hashtag. Someone else might have retweeted it and added the hashtag which poured fuel on the fire.
The last paragraph remains true, though. Never post publicly what you wouldn't say to people face-to-face.
Basically, her biggest mistake was using a hashtag. Her other offensive tweets weren't noticed because few people probably followed her (and the few that did wouldn't get so offended as to call for her to be fired). However, she included "#aids" in her tweet. This means that anyone who searched for "#aids" would see her tweet. As people who searched for that hashtag would tend to be those affected by or somehow interested in the subject, they would also likely get offended by a comment as stupid as "Going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS, Oh, wait I'm white."
She apparently made offensive comments relating to autism and other things also, but didn't use a hashtag. Had she left off the hashtag, her tweet would likely have gone unnoticed and she would have likely kept her job. In essence, she was fired because of one character (#).
Which, of course, leads to the general rule about Twitter (or any Internet posting at all): Don't post what you wouldn't want your spouse, boss, co-workers, family, etc reading. Even if you think you're using a "private message/e-mail", assume that the message will be leaked out and become public. (How many "private e-mails" or "just sent to X" photos get leaked out to everyone?)
Because any service offered costs money. Even if it's done as a hobby by one person (and thus no salaries need be paid), server space and bandwidth cost money. Without some sort of income, the service depends on the bank account of the person running it. Small projects can get away with being run off of donations. Larger projects require more funding. Snapchat, like make other Internet services, is spending money to keep the service alive but isn't taking any money in. Eventually, this means that they will either shut down due to lack of money or will need to find a way to bring money in to pay for the servers/bandwidth/people power. They might get venture capitalists to give them money, but this just makes the situation worse as the venture capitalists will expect some return on their investment. (Not as much as stockholders might, but it ups the pressure to find some way to make a profit.)
Finding a way to make money with a service isn't being greedy. If anything, I'd say turning down a $3 billion bailout because you want more money is greedier than trying to find out how to let your service pay its own bills.
Exactly. It's similar to when people of a political party back increased powers for the branch of government that they control but then act aghast when the opposing party gains control and uses those powers. If you think Government Agency/Branch X should have a certain power, ask yourself how you'd feel if someone completely opposite of you in politician orientation gained control of that agency/branch. How would they use the powers? How might they misuse them? What checks would there be on the power-use/misuse? How would you react to their use/misuse?
If you are perfectly fine with someone with a political ideology completely opposite of yours misusing those powers unchecked, then go ahead and support granting those powers. If not, then perhaps you'd better rethink supporting those government powers.
Actually, the "drastic measures" were largely a reaction to the events. As a country, we went into shock and some people took advantage of this to push security theater that would make them rich and/or would score them votes.
All that was really needed was three things beyond pre-911 security:
1) Lock and reinforce the cockpit doors so a terrorist couldn't burst in and take over. 2) Instruct pilots that, in the event of a terrorist trying to take over, they are to report it, fly to the nearest airport, and make an emergency landing. They are NOT to unlock the cockpit doors no matter how many people the terrorists kill. Pilots would be shielded from being sued for the loss of life while they tried to make an emergency landing. After all, if the terrorists get into the cockpit, everyone might as well be dead. 3) Passengers were not to simply "do as the terrorists say" as they did in pre-911 times. Back then "hijacking" meant you go to some other location, spend some tense hours being captive, and then more likely than not get returned home safe and sound. As long as you just cooperated. Now, "hijacking" means you are dead if you don't stop them. Passengers will now rise up and oppose the terrorists. Even if they die doing it. (See Flight 93.)
If we were to reduce airport security to pre-911 levels with the above exceptions, we'd be just as safe from terrorists as we are today and wouldn't be sacrificing as many freedoms.
You know what else would prevent another 9/11? Let the police burst into any home/business/etc at any time, without a warrant, and based on the barest of suspicions. Let them arrest people based on "looking like they might be a terrorist" or "possibly helping terrorists" or simply "wasn't patriotic enough when we broke down their door." Also let the police stop random people on the street to ask for their citizenship papers, where they are going, and why. If the officer doesn't like the answers, allow him to arrest the person. Track the movements of every citizen and arrest anyone even slightly outside of the norm. I guarantee that terrorist attacks will drop to zero if we put this in place.
As a side benefit, companies will make lots of money building new city-sized prisons to hold all the potential terrorists the police will round up. It's a win-win.
7. After the Congress critters are sent up there, we send lawyers and other politicians. 8. Recall any science folks sent there to set up the place and let them run the whole setup into the ground in an isolated fashion.
Optional step 9: Broadcast the whole thing as a great new reality show: Politicians and Lawyers On The Moon!
No, we NEED to go back. We can't let China - a communist nation that hates freedom - beat us at this. In fact, we need to one up them and send a manned mission to Mars. To do that, we should pour tons of money into NASA and various scientific organizations. That'll show those dirty, rotten commies.
(Waits for the "blindly patriotic" crowd to start chanting for more money to NASA and science.)
I'm too busy using 5% of my net worth to pay for things like food, clothing, my mortgage, gas, insurance, etc. Along with the other 95% of my net worth.
No, but the current model for "evaluating teacher performance" is giving kids a lot of standardized tests (designed by Pearson and other big companies and not evaluated by any third party). Teachers whose students do poorly on the tests are claimed to have done a bad job - regardless if said students are English Second Language students or have special needs that might interfere with test taking. Furthermore, since teachers' jobs are tied to the results of these tests, they wind up teaching to the test. Any time spent covering items that won't appear on the test is time spent risking your job.
Of course, the whole testing system is designed to punish public school teachers and push business-owned, for-profit, publicly financed charter schools (which all too often don't require a background in education to teach), but that's a different rant.
(I have two kids in elementary school dealing with the whole Common Core/EngageNY/high stakes testing nonsense so I know first-hand what this is doing to our kids and teachers.)
That sort of reminds me of something my kids do. They'll misbehave and then complain when I punish them that it isn't "fair." Of course, what they really mean is that they don't like to be punished and would rather be able to misbehave without consequence. My boys are well behaved for the most part but, like any kids, have times when they test the limits of what is allowed. Sadly, too many people don't grow up in this respect, feel slighted when their bad behavior is punished, and complain about how "unfair" it is.
Not to mention how much more they will take if there is a uniformed and armed police officer visible who might get "upset" if you don't participate. You don't want to get Mr. Police Officer upset now, do you?
Don't hate me too much. The YouTube video channel will work perfectly for some videos and for others will show the video twice, side-by-side, squished onto the screen (sort of like those pictures where you cross your eyes and a 3D image pops out... only without the 3D image). So even though I have the channel, it's all but useless. When I want to watch YouTube via my Roku, I usually just use PlayTo.tv or another app to stream the video from a tablet or my phone to the Roku box.
Roku can definitely handle MP4 videos now. I put my videos in MP4 format on a USB hard drive and have my Roku box play them back for me. Works beautifully.
There's also PlayTo which can send photos/music/videos from an Android or iOS device (phone or tablet) to your Roku box. There's a free version to try it out and a paid version for $4.99.
I have that channel too. That was a private channel that someone else programmed, not an official channel. Roku removed access to it for new users but those of us who already had the channel kept it on our boxes. This is about an official YouTube channel coming to Roku.
I have that channel. Maybe it's a glitch with the channel or just the fact that I'm using a standard-definition TV and some YouTube videos try to display in HD but I often get two videos side by side on the same screen.
For example, instead of seeing:
VIDEO
I'll see:
VIDEO VIDEO
Of course, since there's only so much screen room, these double videos wind up squished together and are pretty unwatchable. Here's hoping that this YouTube support goes back to past devices and doesn't just stop with their current ones.
It's both a scare tactic and a protection against precedent. Let's say I was the head of a big company with lots of lawyers and money and I sued you for sharing one movie I owned the copyright to. If the penalty for losing was reasonable - say, 10 times the cost of a DVD of the movie, or about $150 - you might decide to fight it. This could 1) result in you winning and not having to pay a fine at all and 2) setting a precedent that others would use when I sued them.
However, if the fine was a few million dollars per movie, suddenly you are looking at a lifetime of bankruptcy. What's more, the bigger the number the scarier the outcome seems. If the MPAA/RIAA could sue for a trillion dollars without being laughed out of court by a judge, they would. Now, you are unlikely to want to fight this court fight. You'll be likely to take the very one-sided settlement that I "graciously" offer you where you admit that you did it (regardless of whether or not you really did) and pay a "much reduced" fine of a few thousand dollars. This has the added benefit of freeing the big copyright holder up to sue more people and rake in more settlement money.
Slashdot Mirror
One way is to use background images and load or not load them using CSS media queries. A mobile device visiting the page wouldn't request that image and thus wouldn't waste bandwidth on it.
And, I'd add that I want there to be real checks and balances on their spying activities. Not just a "secret rubber-stamp court" that approves all requests and seals them behind a "National Security" veil where nobody, not even Congressfolk with high security clearance, can see them. I understand why they wouldn't want the world to know that they are listening in on Suspect X because they might be contacting Suspected Terrorist Y, but there's got to be a way to balance their need for secrecy with our need to keep them in check.
Quite a bit. You can also show and hide content depending on whether or not the browser is a certain width. For example, you might have a really cool image slider for the desktop version, but you hide that away for the mobile version to keep it from eating screen real estate (and bandwidth).
You should be able to stop resizing, hide that paywall notice, and keep resizing. I just tried here and the paywall notice doesn't appear (except as a small banner on the bottom). I do remember it appearing last night, however.
Thanks to CSS3's media queries, no site should need a "mobile version." You design one site and have it modify itself based on the browser's size. A good example of this is the Boston Globe's site. Go to the site in Chrome or FireFox (not IE) in a large, but not maximized browser. Now slowly resize the browser, making it smaller and smaller. As you do, the site will reconfigure itself from full-fledged desktop site to small-screen mobile site (with quite a few steps in between).
The benefit of this is, of course, that you don't need to maintain two or three different sites. You maintain one site and modify it to suit different sized browsers. Compare this to a mobile site which needs to redirect users to a different URL and often needs a completely separate development effort.
Quickly checking my Google Analyitics shows that, over the past month, about 52% of my traffic came from desktop users, about 35% came from mobile users, and about 13% came from tablet users. Yes, this is one case, but this article indicates that mobile use is now 28% of traffic. While mobile isn't overtaking desktop, it certainly is a large enough percentage of traffic that it shouldn't be ignored.
...And ignore the first two paragraphs above. I hadn't seen the actual tweet (relied on my wife's account of what happened) but the article has a screenshot of the tweet and there's no hashtag. Someone else might have retweeted it and added the hashtag which poured fuel on the fire.
The last paragraph remains true, though. Never post publicly what you wouldn't say to people face-to-face.
Basically, her biggest mistake was using a hashtag. Her other offensive tweets weren't noticed because few people probably followed her (and the few that did wouldn't get so offended as to call for her to be fired). However, she included "#aids" in her tweet. This means that anyone who searched for "#aids" would see her tweet. As people who searched for that hashtag would tend to be those affected by or somehow interested in the subject, they would also likely get offended by a comment as stupid as "Going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS, Oh, wait I'm white."
She apparently made offensive comments relating to autism and other things also, but didn't use a hashtag. Had she left off the hashtag, her tweet would likely have gone unnoticed and she would have likely kept her job. In essence, she was fired because of one character (#).
Which, of course, leads to the general rule about Twitter (or any Internet posting at all): Don't post what you wouldn't want your spouse, boss, co-workers, family, etc reading. Even if you think you're using a "private message/e-mail", assume that the message will be leaked out and become public. (How many "private e-mails" or "just sent to X" photos get leaked out to everyone?)
Because any service offered costs money. Even if it's done as a hobby by one person (and thus no salaries need be paid), server space and bandwidth cost money. Without some sort of income, the service depends on the bank account of the person running it. Small projects can get away with being run off of donations. Larger projects require more funding. Snapchat, like make other Internet services, is spending money to keep the service alive but isn't taking any money in. Eventually, this means that they will either shut down due to lack of money or will need to find a way to bring money in to pay for the servers/bandwidth/people power. They might get venture capitalists to give them money, but this just makes the situation worse as the venture capitalists will expect some return on their investment. (Not as much as stockholders might, but it ups the pressure to find some way to make a profit.)
Finding a way to make money with a service isn't being greedy. If anything, I'd say turning down a $3 billion bailout because you want more money is greedier than trying to find out how to let your service pay its own bills.
Exactly. It's similar to when people of a political party back increased powers for the branch of government that they control but then act aghast when the opposing party gains control and uses those powers. If you think Government Agency/Branch X should have a certain power, ask yourself how you'd feel if someone completely opposite of you in politician orientation gained control of that agency/branch. How would they use the powers? How might they misuse them? What checks would there be on the power-use/misuse? How would you react to their use/misuse?
If you are perfectly fine with someone with a political ideology completely opposite of yours misusing those powers unchecked, then go ahead and support granting those powers. If not, then perhaps you'd better rethink supporting those government powers.
Actually, the "drastic measures" were largely a reaction to the events. As a country, we went into shock and some people took advantage of this to push security theater that would make them rich and/or would score them votes.
All that was really needed was three things beyond pre-911 security:
1) Lock and reinforce the cockpit doors so a terrorist couldn't burst in and take over.
2) Instruct pilots that, in the event of a terrorist trying to take over, they are to report it, fly to the nearest airport, and make an emergency landing. They are NOT to unlock the cockpit doors no matter how many people the terrorists kill. Pilots would be shielded from being sued for the loss of life while they tried to make an emergency landing. After all, if the terrorists get into the cockpit, everyone might as well be dead.
3) Passengers were not to simply "do as the terrorists say" as they did in pre-911 times. Back then "hijacking" meant you go to some other location, spend some tense hours being captive, and then more likely than not get returned home safe and sound. As long as you just cooperated. Now, "hijacking" means you are dead if you don't stop them. Passengers will now rise up and oppose the terrorists. Even if they die doing it. (See Flight 93.)
If we were to reduce airport security to pre-911 levels with the above exceptions, we'd be just as safe from terrorists as we are today and wouldn't be sacrificing as many freedoms.
You know what else would prevent another 9/11? Let the police burst into any home/business/etc at any time, without a warrant, and based on the barest of suspicions. Let them arrest people based on "looking like they might be a terrorist" or "possibly helping terrorists" or simply "wasn't patriotic enough when we broke down their door." Also let the police stop random people on the street to ask for their citizenship papers, where they are going, and why. If the officer doesn't like the answers, allow him to arrest the person. Track the movements of every citizen and arrest anyone even slightly outside of the norm. I guarantee that terrorist attacks will drop to zero if we put this in place.
As a side benefit, companies will make lots of money building new city-sized prisons to hold all the potential terrorists the police will round up. It's a win-win.
I hear there are cookies and bacon there. Or was that a different Dark Side?
Nice plan, but I'd add two final steps:
7. After the Congress critters are sent up there, we send lawyers and other politicians.
8. Recall any science folks sent there to set up the place and let them run the whole setup into the ground in an isolated fashion.
Optional step 9: Broadcast the whole thing as a great new reality show: Politicians and Lawyers On The Moon!
No, we NEED to go back. We can't let China - a communist nation that hates freedom - beat us at this. In fact, we need to one up them and send a manned mission to Mars. To do that, we should pour tons of money into NASA and various scientific organizations. That'll show those dirty, rotten commies.
(Waits for the "blindly patriotic" crowd to start chanting for more money to NASA and science.)
I'm too busy using 5% of my net worth to pay for things like food, clothing, my mortgage, gas, insurance, etc. Along with the other 95% of my net worth.
No, but the current model for "evaluating teacher performance" is giving kids a lot of standardized tests (designed by Pearson and other big companies and not evaluated by any third party). Teachers whose students do poorly on the tests are claimed to have done a bad job - regardless if said students are English Second Language students or have special needs that might interfere with test taking. Furthermore, since teachers' jobs are tied to the results of these tests, they wind up teaching to the test. Any time spent covering items that won't appear on the test is time spent risking your job.
Of course, the whole testing system is designed to punish public school teachers and push business-owned, for-profit, publicly financed charter schools (which all too often don't require a background in education to teach), but that's a different rant.
(I have two kids in elementary school dealing with the whole Common Core/EngageNY/high stakes testing nonsense so I know first-hand what this is doing to our kids and teachers.)
That sort of reminds me of something my kids do. They'll misbehave and then complain when I punish them that it isn't "fair." Of course, what they really mean is that they don't like to be punished and would rather be able to misbehave without consequence. My boys are well behaved for the most part but, like any kids, have times when they test the limits of what is allowed. Sadly, too many people don't grow up in this respect, feel slighted when their bad behavior is punished, and complain about how "unfair" it is.
Not to mention how much more they will take if there is a uniformed and armed police officer visible who might get "upset" if you don't participate. You don't want to get Mr. Police Officer upset now, do you?
Don't hate me too much. The YouTube video channel will work perfectly for some videos and for others will show the video twice, side-by-side, squished onto the screen (sort of like those pictures where you cross your eyes and a 3D image pops out... only without the 3D image). So even though I have the channel, it's all but useless. When I want to watch YouTube via my Roku, I usually just use PlayTo.tv or another app to stream the video from a tablet or my phone to the Roku box.
There are channels that can do this. Here are two free ones I found. (NOTE: I've never used them so I can't vouch for how good they are.)
USB Screen Saver
https://www.roku.com/channels/#!details/2095/usb-screen-saver
Picasa Web Albums Screensaver
https://www.roku.com/channels/#!details/2112/picasa-web-albums-screensaver
Roku can definitely handle MP4 videos now. I put my videos in MP4 format on a USB hard drive and have my Roku box play them back for me. Works beautifully.
There's also PlayTo which can send photos/music/videos from an Android or iOS device (phone or tablet) to your Roku box. There's a free version to try it out and a paid version for $4.99.
I have that channel too. That was a private channel that someone else programmed, not an official channel. Roku removed access to it for new users but those of us who already had the channel kept it on our boxes. This is about an official YouTube channel coming to Roku.
I have that channel. Maybe it's a glitch with the channel or just the fact that I'm using a standard-definition TV and some YouTube videos try to display in HD but I often get two videos side by side on the same screen.
For example, instead of seeing:
VIDEO
I'll see:
VIDEO VIDEO
Of course, since there's only so much screen room, these double videos wind up squished together and are pretty unwatchable. Here's hoping that this YouTube support goes back to past devices and doesn't just stop with their current ones.
It's both a scare tactic and a protection against precedent. Let's say I was the head of a big company with lots of lawyers and money and I sued you for sharing one movie I owned the copyright to. If the penalty for losing was reasonable - say, 10 times the cost of a DVD of the movie, or about $150 - you might decide to fight it. This could 1) result in you winning and not having to pay a fine at all and 2) setting a precedent that others would use when I sued them.
However, if the fine was a few million dollars per movie, suddenly you are looking at a lifetime of bankruptcy. What's more, the bigger the number the scarier the outcome seems. If the MPAA/RIAA could sue for a trillion dollars without being laughed out of court by a judge, they would. Now, you are unlikely to want to fight this court fight. You'll be likely to take the very one-sided settlement that I "graciously" offer you where you admit that you did it (regardless of whether or not you really did) and pay a "much reduced" fine of a few thousand dollars. This has the added benefit of freeing the big copyright holder up to sue more people and rake in more settlement money.