I think it'd be better if they'd simply left italics as italics. I mean, it's nice that it's the "wrong way to do it" and all, but dig it:
The poster marked it up with italics. They previewed it with italics. They liked what they saw. Then, they posted it. Later, some clever programmer comes by and reinterprets all those lovely little i tags to mean
quotes
, because he knows more about how the posters want it to look than the posters themselves do.
[raises hand] I have a question. Why should any of this matter here? I'm just writing a comment on a forum, not engineering a database-backed CSS-enabled web site. Why should I care?
I mean, I've got this little helper box down at the bottom of my screen:
This happens to me a lot on my own server (where I don't put very high weight on SPF records), but I guess I assumed that Gmail was better controlled than that.
That said: Whatever Google is doing, seems to be working. I haven't had a legitimate email tagged as spam by them in years, and my spam folder (which used to get hundreds of spams daily) has shrunk to having only a dozen or so in the past month.
It's a computer. It just runs programs. It will do whatever the user tells it to do, even if it's wrong.
A malware program is just that - a program. Typically in my experience these days, it's a program installed by the user themselves.
There's nary a bit of difference between a Vista user downloading and running the "OMG! Ponies!!!" screensaver and having it take over the system, and an Ubuntu user doing the same.
In both cases -- and without additional permission -- the program will be free to run amok and trash whatever files the user has access to.
If "OMG! Ponies!!!" wants to do more than that, all it has to do is ask the user for admin rights. In Vista, this is in the form of a UAC prompt, while in Ubuntu, gksudo accomplishes the same thing.
And then, it's malware party time. The gates are open, the fence is torn down, and "OMG! Ponies!!!" is inviting all of its friends, all of which get to have administrator/root privileges without additional prompting.
All because a user wanted a new screensaver.
As long as the system is capable of running arbitrary programs, and the user still has control of the helm, this will continue to be a problem -- on any OS.
It's nice to see that I'm not the only one who has recognized the modern trend of people being verbally conservative here on nannydot.
I don't fucking get it, though. Between "sh*t", "fark", and other playground words, and everyone pissing up a storm whenever someone posts a link to something with a picture of either nakedness or deathliness because it's "not safe for work," I find myself appalled at a lot of what I see here.
So, everyone, listen here:
Grow up, kids. If you want to use a word, then use it. If you're too much of a spineless prude to use a word like "shit" without censoring yourself with poor grammar, then perhaps you should try being more creative by using a different word altogether.
For instance: Instead of "shit," as a noun, you could use "stuff" or "things." And instead of "shit" or "shitty" as adjectives, you could use "lousy" or "broken." And instead of "shit" as a verb, you could just say "defecate," "erupt," or "explode."
If you want to work at a place where you could get in trouble for clicking on a random link, then please stop clicking on random links. And if that makes your job unenjoyable, then either find a different fucking job or learn to tolerate being joyless! Don't come here whining about things being "not safe for work."
Leave me, and my uncivilized, freewheeling Intarweb alone -- and go fuck yourselves.
Once you switch on the Reality Distortion Field, no Linux or *BSD system (including OS X) is capable of doing anything wrong. Ever. Additionally, as long as the Reality Distortion Field remains on, users of those systems become infallible.
Can you not see the big fucking signs (I'd link to one, but can't find an image) on EVERY Interstate Highway onramp in the US which state something like "Prohibited: Farm vehicles, bicycles, or vehicles possessing less than 5BHP"? Which part of "limited access highway" do you not understand? There's no verbiage stating "gee, if this is the only convenient way from A to B, go for it."
Now: There are some roads which resemble Interstate highways, but aren't. OH-15 in NW Ohio is one of them (a divided, four lane road, with both exit/on ramps and grade-level crossings), which I have ridden on. But the only interstate here is I-75, upon which bikes are quite plainly not permitted.
Unless we're both wrong, and "the 5" is Californian for something other than a federal Interstate Highway...
I worked in retail once, for a regional department/grocery store.
We had enough generator to maintain minimal lighting, keep cold stuff cold, and run the registers. Whenever the power was out on that end of town, people would instantly line up buying things there instead of the neighboring competitors who had no such facilities.
You can preserve your night vision on foot, but moonlight is not sufficient lighting for even moderate bicycle speeds.
Why not? The roads in question are flat like a ruler, straight like an arrow, and made of old, faded limestone+asphalt: They appear essentially white under moonlight, whereas nothing foreign on the road does. I can see further down the road without the headlight on my bike on a well-lit night, than I can with it. So, in those instances, the headlight is mostly to warn drivers of my existence.
It seems things are different in Germany, but here in the States, one is typically only required to have front and rear reflectors on a bicycle. My methods are already above and beyond that.
I assume that everyone around me is actively trying to kill me. (I make the same assumption while driving a car.) Trust me - I'll be the first to shove myself into a tree, if that's what it takes to avoid being squished by a car.
However, information is a good thing.
It's very simple: As a driver, I like to know what's ahead -- preferably, as far ahead as possible. As a cyclist, I prefer to communicate my presence as clearly as possible.
I don't depend on drivers to pay attention to me. I give them plenty of room. I just hope by giving them knowledge of the fact that there's a bike ahead that they return some of that favor.
It doesn't flash on and off. There's always LEDs illuminated at all times. It simply has a few selectable patterns that it uses, none of which are particularly jarring or glitzy.
In this way, it's both noticeable, and locatable.
And I don't know where you all keep getting a "ton of metal" from; most sedans are closer to twice that. With 3,800 pounds of steel hurling toward me on an otherwise empty and dark road: I'd rather that myself and my slow-moving bike not be confused with some other red light source at the side of the road, like a driveway marker, or a reflector on a mailbox, or a parked car. A little movement with the light is a simple and recognizable way to inform drivers that the thing in front of them is in fact not at all stationary, thus allowing them to react accordingly.
I dislike sunlight, so I ride my bike exclusively at night. We don't have much in the way of bike trails here, so I spend my time on the road.
I have a 3-Watt LED headlight (which was something like $12 from dealextreme), and a blinky-pattern red LED tail light. I wear a reflective (also from dealextreme) orange strap on my right leg, but that's mostly to keep my pants out of the chain wheels. Other than that, the wheels have each have the standard white retroreflectors on the spokes -- and that's it.
The only problem I've had with this simple arrangement are as follows:
1. After I first got the bike and started riding again, I was out in the country under a full moon with the headlight off, so I could preserve my night vision. (I was looking for deer, or any other interesting woodland creature.) A car came around a corner suddenly and quickly and loudly, and off the side of the road I went to avoid the crazy fucker. I clobbered a big rock with my left pedal, but luckily things worked OK otherwise. (The headlight stays on, now, at least anywhere within half a mile of an intersection, and/or if I see any traffic at all, and/or if I'm in an area that I don't know like the back of my hand. Or if there's no moon. Or...)
2. The LED headlight is really just a glorified aluminum-shelled flashlight with a handlebar mount. Works great, lights up everything really well, and is easy to detach for working on the bike or impromptu night hikes or whatever. The problem with it (if you can call it that) is that it has a round pattern: Shining it down the road has enough upward scatter that cars sometimes flash their highbeams at me. But on the plus side, I at least know that they can SEE me and they know I'm there.
(2 involves a choice: I can choose to aim the light down a little bit in response to this until the car passes, OR I can use the light's seizure-inducing strobe mode and perhaps aim up a few more degrees. I'm not enough of an asshat to do the latter, though...)
I would like to get an additional rear-facing light, since I can't control/evade oncoming traffic from the rear as well as I can from the front, and I've been thinking that a few strips of reflective tape would be helpful, but otherwise, things are good, IMHO.
Where'd you find the 1/2W LED tail light? I'm about out of room on my seatpost for mounting accessories; would it be suitable to clip to the back of my under-seat bag?
The problems solved by your airshow HAM are easily fixed by one of the ACU units from Raytheon JPS.
Just plug in radios for NYSP, local fire brigade, county sheriff, ambulance service, links back to one or more repeated channels with a real dispatcher (probably on a tac channel, or a P25 talkgroup), plus one that the local HAMs are legally allowed to use, and call it a day.
It's easy to bring the whole system up or down, or to add and remove individual radios, or to tie in other systems over telephone lines or cell phone or nextel or SIP, or whatever.
(This, of course, is assuming that some local dispatching agency doesn't already have the tech to accomplish this built into their console, which they likely do these days.)
(Disclaimer: We've sold a few ACU-1000 units, and a whole bunch of ACU-Ts. They work fine. Even the local SOs around here have them built into their emergency mobile communications rigs, along with enough radios to make them do useful work amongst a bunch of different trunking systems and frequencies.)
AFAICT, Flash only ever happened to become the defacto way to present video on the web because the popular alternatives (RealVideo and Windows Media Player) were absolutely stifling and/or actively bothersome. Flash was always smaller, more focused, and has suffered very little from feature creep. It won even though it was late to the party.
And I'm surprised find myself writing this, but since the dominance of Flash in this market has really taken hold, Real's software has actually become somewhat useful and is far less annoying.
Wow. At least 1.5 people have actually gotten the thing to work. No reports of whether or not it actually produces watchable movies at the end of the chain, but the steps involved look roughly as complicated as I expected (ie: not very), once Linux is running on the Playstation.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it'd be better if they'd simply left italics as italics. I mean, it's nice that it's the "wrong way to do it" and all, but dig it:
The poster marked it up with italics. They previewed it with italics. They liked what they saw. Then, they posted it. Later, some clever programmer comes by and reinterprets all those lovely little i tags to mean
, because he knows more about how the posters want it to look than the posters themselves do.
Which is, plainly, retarded.
And they couldn't do this for i and b tags...why, exactly?
Hmm?
I read italicized text differently when speaking aloud. I'd expect a screen reader program to do the same.
Good explanation.
[raises hand] I have a question. Why should any of this matter here? I'm just writing a comment on a forum, not engineering a database-backed CSS-enabled web site. Why should I care?
I mean, I've got this little helper box down at the bottom of my screen:
I'm just a user. Why in the fuck should I have to study the ongoing development of HTML, XHTML, CSS, and so on just to get properly italicized text?
Weird.
This happens to me a lot on my own server (where I don't put very high weight on SPF records), but I guess I assumed that Gmail was better controlled than that.
That said: Whatever Google is doing, seems to be working. I haven't had a legitimate email tagged as spam by them in years, and my spam folder (which used to get hundreds of spams daily) has shrunk to having only a dozen or so in the past month.
Depends. Is there a crosswind?
If you think the Veyron is comparable to a plane then...
Well. It does have air brakes. That makes it a little bit like a plane, doesn't it?
[/sarcasm]
I get paid by the hour to do what folks want me to do.
If you're done frothing at the mouth...
It's a computer. It just runs programs. It will do whatever the user tells it to do, even if it's wrong.
A malware program is just that - a program. Typically in my experience these days, it's a program installed by the user themselves.
There's nary a bit of difference between a Vista user downloading and running the "OMG! Ponies!!!" screensaver and having it take over the system, and an Ubuntu user doing the same.
In both cases -- and without additional permission -- the program will be free to run amok and trash whatever files the user has access to.
If "OMG! Ponies!!!" wants to do more than that, all it has to do is ask the user for admin rights. In Vista, this is in the form of a UAC prompt, while in Ubuntu, gksudo accomplishes the same thing.
And then, it's malware party time. The gates are open, the fence is torn down, and "OMG! Ponies!!!" is inviting all of its friends, all of which get to have administrator/root privileges without additional prompting.
All because a user wanted a new screensaver.
As long as the system is capable of running arbitrary programs, and the user still has control of the helm, this will continue to be a problem -- on any OS.
Get your head out of the sand.
It's nice to see that I'm not the only one who has recognized the modern trend of people being verbally conservative here on nannydot.
I don't fucking get it, though. Between "sh*t", "fark", and other playground words, and everyone pissing up a storm whenever someone posts a link to something with a picture of either nakedness or deathliness because it's "not safe for work," I find myself appalled at a lot of what I see here.
So, everyone, listen here:
Grow up, kids. If you want to use a word, then use it. If you're too much of a spineless prude to use a word like "shit" without censoring yourself with poor grammar, then perhaps you should try being more creative by using a different word altogether.
For instance: Instead of "shit," as a noun, you could use "stuff" or "things." And instead of "shit" or "shitty" as adjectives, you could use "lousy" or "broken." And instead of "shit" as a verb, you could just say "defecate," "erupt," or "explode."
If you want to work at a place where you could get in trouble for clicking on a random link, then please stop clicking on random links. And if that makes your job unenjoyable, then either find a different fucking job or learn to tolerate being joyless! Don't come here whining about things being "not safe for work."
Leave me, and my uncivilized, freewheeling Intarweb alone -- and go fuck yourselves.
No, no, no. You've got it all wrong.
Once you switch on the Reality Distortion Field, no Linux or *BSD system (including OS X) is capable of doing anything wrong. Ever. Additionally, as long as the Reality Distortion Field remains on, users of those systems become infallible.
It's just how it is.
I only read the first of your rants, and can only concoct the following reply:
[[citation needed]]
What if my bike gets more than 45MPG?
[/sarcasm]
Can you not see the big fucking signs (I'd link to one, but can't find an image) on EVERY Interstate Highway onramp in the US which state something like "Prohibited: Farm vehicles, bicycles, or vehicles possessing less than 5BHP"? Which part of "limited access highway" do you not understand? There's no verbiage stating "gee, if this is the only convenient way from A to B, go for it."
Now: There are some roads which resemble Interstate highways, but aren't. OH-15 in NW Ohio is one of them (a divided, four lane road, with both exit/on ramps and grade-level crossings), which I have ridden on. But the only interstate here is I-75, upon which bikes are quite plainly not permitted.
Unless we're both wrong, and "the 5" is Californian for something other than a federal Interstate Highway...
Whore: Someone who gets compensated for sex more than you.
I worked in retail once, for a regional department/grocery store.
We had enough generator to maintain minimal lighting, keep cold stuff cold, and run the registers. Whenever the power was out on that end of town, people would instantly line up buying things there instead of the neighboring competitors who had no such facilities.
I'd guess that this allowed it to pay for itself.
You're really not going to find any sympathy around these parts for problems with Windows drivers.
You can preserve your night vision on foot, but moonlight is not sufficient lighting for even moderate bicycle speeds.
Why not? The roads in question are flat like a ruler, straight like an arrow, and made of old, faded limestone+asphalt: They appear essentially white under moonlight, whereas nothing foreign on the road does. I can see further down the road without the headlight on my bike on a well-lit night, than I can with it. So, in those instances, the headlight is mostly to warn drivers of my existence.
It seems things are different in Germany, but here in the States, one is typically only required to have front and rear reflectors on a bicycle. My methods are already above and beyond that.
Thank you, Lieutenant Obvious.
Of course both need to be accounted for.
Thanks, captain obvious!
No, again.
I assume that everyone around me is actively trying to kill me. (I make the same assumption while driving a car.) Trust me - I'll be the first to shove myself into a tree, if that's what it takes to avoid being squished by a car.
However, information is a good thing.
It's very simple: As a driver, I like to know what's ahead -- preferably, as far ahead as possible. As a cyclist, I prefer to communicate my presence as clearly as possible.
I don't depend on drivers to pay attention to me. I give them plenty of room. I just hope by giving them knowledge of the fact that there's a bike ahead that they return some of that favor.
No.
It doesn't flash on and off. There's always LEDs illuminated at all times. It simply has a few selectable patterns that it uses, none of which are particularly jarring or glitzy.
In this way, it's both noticeable, and locatable.
And I don't know where you all keep getting a "ton of metal" from; most sedans are closer to twice that. With 3,800 pounds of steel hurling toward me on an otherwise empty and dark road: I'd rather that myself and my slow-moving bike not be confused with some other red light source at the side of the road, like a driveway marker, or a reflector on a mailbox, or a parked car. A little movement with the light is a simple and recognizable way to inform drivers that the thing in front of them is in fact not at all stationary, thus allowing them to react accordingly.
Wow. Overkill, much? :)
I dislike sunlight, so I ride my bike exclusively at night. We don't have much in the way of bike trails here, so I spend my time on the road.
I have a 3-Watt LED headlight (which was something like $12 from dealextreme), and a blinky-pattern red LED tail light. I wear a reflective (also from dealextreme) orange strap on my right leg, but that's mostly to keep my pants out of the chain wheels. Other than that, the wheels have each have the standard white retroreflectors on the spokes -- and that's it.
The only problem I've had with this simple arrangement are as follows:
1. After I first got the bike and started riding again, I was out in the country under a full moon with the headlight off, so I could preserve my night vision. (I was looking for deer, or any other interesting woodland creature.) A car came around a corner suddenly and quickly and loudly, and off the side of the road I went to avoid the crazy fucker. I clobbered a big rock with my left pedal, but luckily things worked OK otherwise. (The headlight stays on, now, at least anywhere within half a mile of an intersection, and/or if I see any traffic at all, and/or if I'm in an area that I don't know like the back of my hand. Or if there's no moon. Or...)
2. The LED headlight is really just a glorified aluminum-shelled flashlight with a handlebar mount. Works great, lights up everything really well, and is easy to detach for working on the bike or impromptu night hikes or whatever. The problem with it (if you can call it that) is that it has a round pattern: Shining it down the road has enough upward scatter that cars sometimes flash their highbeams at me. But on the plus side, I at least know that they can SEE me and they know I'm there.
(2 involves a choice: I can choose to aim the light down a little bit in response to this until the car passes, OR I can use the light's seizure-inducing strobe mode and perhaps aim up a few more degrees. I'm not enough of an asshat to do the latter, though...)
I would like to get an additional rear-facing light, since I can't control/evade oncoming traffic from the rear as well as I can from the front, and I've been thinking that a few strips of reflective tape would be helpful, but otherwise, things are good, IMHO.
Where'd you find the 1/2W LED tail light? I'm about out of room on my seatpost for mounting accessories; would it be suitable to clip to the back of my under-seat bag?
The problems solved by your airshow HAM are easily fixed by one of the ACU units from Raytheon JPS.
Just plug in radios for NYSP, local fire brigade, county sheriff, ambulance service, links back to one or more repeated channels with a real dispatcher (probably on a tac channel, or a P25 talkgroup), plus one that the local HAMs are legally allowed to use, and call it a day.
It's easy to bring the whole system up or down, or to add and remove individual radios, or to tie in other systems over telephone lines or cell phone or nextel or SIP, or whatever.
(This, of course, is assuming that some local dispatching agency doesn't already have the tech to accomplish this built into their console, which they likely do these days.)
(Disclaimer: We've sold a few ACU-1000 units, and a whole bunch of ACU-Ts. They work fine. Even the local SOs around here have them built into their emergency mobile communications rigs, along with enough radios to make them do useful work amongst a bunch of different trunking systems and frequencies.)
AFAICT, Flash only ever happened to become the defacto way to present video on the web because the popular alternatives (RealVideo and Windows Media Player) were absolutely stifling and/or actively bothersome. Flash was always smaller, more focused, and has suffered very little from feature creep. It won even though it was late to the party.
And I'm surprised find myself writing this, but since the dominance of Flash in this market has really taken hold, Real's software has actually become somewhat useful and is far less annoying.
Wow. At least 1.5 people have actually gotten the thing to work. No reports of whether or not it actually produces watchable movies at the end of the chain, but the steps involved look roughly as complicated as I expected (ie: not very), once Linux is running on the Playstation.
Thanks for the tip.