Hi, this is Super Annoying Incorporated. We sell V14gr/\! Press 1 to buy (forwards to waiting agent), or visit our website at superannoying.com!
Might be easier for annoyed callees to DDOS, and the requirement to have a
short URL might be difficult to meet, but it's certainly possible to advertise
by an automated system. Stock pumping spams would also be very easily
automated.
My Peruvian friends assert that there are only five continents:
Americano, Africano, Oceania (Australia and surrounding islands), Europeo, and
Asiatico. So, depending on who you ask, "America" may refer unambiguously to
the United States of America, or to the single continent of America. It's also
been pointed out that the five rings on the Olympic flag represent those same
five continents.
I don't know if HDMI is using RGB or not, but it's worth noting that RGB
wastes bits in places the eye won't notice leaving fewer bits for places where
it wil notice. See Greg Ward's page,
High Dynamic Range Image Encodings
which discusses perceivable color
differences in the context of HDR encodings.
Capacitance does change with temperature. My books are all at work, but I think "X7R" is a common rating which means at most a 15% capacitance shift over a temperature range -55C to 125C. Not sure how hot a car might get; I assume the capacitor could be kept near air temperature; so we're looking at a smaller temperature range than X7R. Well, my point is that you can expect changes due to temperature, but you're not dealing with reaction kinetics as in a chemical battery, so I agree you'll be much better off.
"Me too." I skimmed the Copyright Office's summary and glanced at the actual bill. From the summary, I didn't see anything that said "end users have to pay for each incidental copy". If someone can point me to this text I'd greatly appreciate it. The original blog post is completely devoid of information. Thankfully some of the posts linked to summary and bill, but so far no one has pointed to the language that requires payment for incidental copies. I have to agree about the "designated agents". If one's music falls to the GDA, will the GDA seek out and pay appropriate royalties to that artist? Or is the only way to be paid to align with a major? This seems evil.
The closest thing I see in the summary is "It is important that both the SIRA and the parties recognize that the CRB has discretion to determine that some statutorily licensed uses, such as the reproduction of intermediate copies for interactive streaming, may have a value of zero depending on the given context and evidence presented. Similarly, the CRB should be at liberty to establish different rates for various digital uses of works licensed pursuant to this new compulsory license." However, this seems to apply only to distributers (iTunes). The bill seems more about extending the RIAA cartel to control prices and licensing for digital music stores... which sounds pretty bad but is nothing like what either the slashdot post or the IPaction post mention.
Someone please chime in here... I'm very cnofused.
Not knowing the time scales involved, I'm just going to throw this out as a possibility: if the orbital period of these odd planets around the galaxy is large enough, then the gravitational landscape on each revolution will be so different that the odd planet will hardly have a regular orbit. Alternatively, could it not eventually be trapped by a star? If so, one could hardly call its journey from wherever it started to the capturing star an orderly orbit.
Our voting system (first past the post) only gathers enough information to
decide between two candidates. Your proposal seems similar to Approval Voting:
vote for each candidate you approve of, and not for any candidate you disaprove
of. Most approvals wins. It appears to be less susceptible to some of the
problems Instant Run-Off has, and looks simpler to implement than Ranked Pairs
(my favorite, a Condorcet method). See condorcet.org for some voting method descriptions, criticisms, and links.
I think everyone needs to seriously ask this question: assume for a moment
that if, as is sometimes suggested, in the 2000 US presidential election, Ralph
Nader "stole" votes from Al Gore such that had only Gore and Bush run then Gore
would have won, do we really want a voting system that picks Bush as the winner
in that case? (change the political parties if it helps, and ignore the Florida
debacle). With any other voting system, all the Nader voters could have also
voted for Gore. Or those who voted for Gore as a vote against Bush could have
also voted for Nader. Or those who voted for Bush as a vote against Gore could
have also voted for the one they really wanted.
First past the post sucks. It leads to voters gaming the system by voting
for the lesser evil rather than voting for their favorite.
Nice. In Peru, election day is a national holiday and liquor may not be
sold. You'll also be fined if you fail to vote (something around $50 I
belive). Not sure how I feel about that one. (I am not a Peruvian citizen nor
have I visted Peru). All democratic nations should really encourage voting by
making it accessable to everyone, including those who work two jobs to make
ends meet.
Changes in the CSS shouldn't affect in any way what you see in Links
(assuming Links doesn't do much with CSS... haven't tried it in a while. w3m 4
life!!). Of course, some html changes were made it seems, but it looks mostly
the same to me. As a frequent text browser user, the main thing that bugs me
about slashdot is the glut of links that precede the main body. I don't care
to scroll through those links every time.
Looking at the new design (out of text browser land), I will say it's
slightly prettier than the current design. However it doesn't seem any more
readable and abounds with 1 + 1 = 3 noise in the same way the current design
does. People have been reading newspapers for ages, yet newspapers don't make
every heading a heavy contrast stripe across the entire page or sharply delimit
every margin... Is it because ink is expensive or because ink is distracting?
I also would have liked an off-white background and unspecified font size and
style of the main text for readability's sake. In my own modest web designing
(home pages and such), I've come across a good rule of thumb: if the page is
more readable in lynx, links, or w3m than it is in Firefox, then it needs work.
The current slashdot is pretty darn readable in a text browser once you get
past the ton of links at the top. I can't say I saw any CSS redesign entrants
that improved upon that for readability. (Now if I was hanging slashdot on my
wall, I might prefer one of the CSS redesigns... but I'm not; I'm reading
it)
pngfix.js also doesn't work with PNG's specified as background images through CSS. For me, most graphics I use PNG for are decorative in nature and thus belong in the CSS. I hate IE6.
I'm ignorant of how advertising placement works, but is it possible to put, however crazy it sounds, multiple ads on a single webpage? A single page littered with ads would be much preferrable to multiple pages with a single ad each. Given the apparent loathing for the practice of splitting pages, I would think advertisers would be falling over themselves to offer a way to do this. I assume it's easier to include a single "include ad here" html or javascript tag in a fixed location per page, but the trouble of splitting an article into pages is surely on par with the trouble of including a varying number of advertisements in a single page?
Neat. Definitely considering buying/donating. Selfish question: I can't tell from the photographs, but can we please please please have a Unix keyboard with Control key to the left of the left pinky and the escape key to the left of the numerals, rather than up with the function keys?
Chemically, Teflon is polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE, a carbon chain with flourine occupying all other bonding (polyethylene, one of the simplest synthetic polymers, is a carbon chain with hydrogens). The carbon-fluorine bond is particularly strong, resulting in the non-stick properties. I'd assume the chemical properties of Fluorplastic paint to be similar to those of PTFE. I recently read a newspaper article that gave light descriptions of how PTFE was bonded to various types of cooking ware (can't remember it... grr). I believe one method, prone to scratching from metal utensils, is to create a porous aluminum pan that PTFE strands then become physically entangled with. I wonder what strategy this paint is using. Presumably it's a PTFE-laced slurry, or perhaps it uses polymers similar to PTFE that have additional functional groups that can then bond to surfaces: PTFE on one side, sticky on the other?
Thanks for the reply pointing out why Ogg Theora was not up to the task. It isn't really relevant other than for my ego, but I'll say that I have created a short movie (much smaller in scope than your own; a one-man lego stop-motion) using entirely Free Software, released in Ogg Theora (and MPEG-4/AVI, violating all sorts of patents), so I'm not completely unqualified to comment (it's one of the samples linked from illiminable's Ogg DirectShow filters audio encoding example filters). I do agree that getting things into Theora is not exactly easy. For my part I've recently surveyed many Windows based tools for encoding to Ogg Theora (easier said than done for one not owning a copy of Windows) with the intent of creating a tutorial for a community of RealVideo-loving stop motion animators and found little encouragement; the FreeAnime frontend to ffmpeg2theora is my current favorite but can almost certainly not handle anything beyond the basics such as Vorbis 5.1.
That said, I do feel that things would progress faster if more folks cared about free formats, and it seems frustratingly few do actually care (perhaps I should stop fighting losing battles). The fact that you cared enough to put in this much effort is encouraging to me; it's a shame the available tools came up short. I hope this improves someday...
Truly a shame... especially if the claim of a previous poster is correct "VLC or MPlayer only". Both of these play Ogg Theora for example on Linux, Mac, and Windows. If you're already using a format that doesn't work by default with, say, QuickTime and Windows Media Player, why not go all out and use Theora?
Look out Cingular, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint-Nextel
I certainly hope so. I went to great pains to buy an unlocked phone to switch back and forth between the two nation-wide GSM carriers... Cingular and T-Mobile. Here's hoping for improved service through competition. I only know what people tell me about Europe, but I assume the system of "buy a phone, buy or recharge a SIM card" is superior to the "sign a two year contract" here in the US
I agree with your sentiments. Perhaps someone from a much older generation
can chime in, but did the advent of hand written correspondance lead to similar
problems with understanding? What changed when we moved from pens to
keyboards?
I believe that user interface shortcomings contribute to the "don't
proofread; send it now" attitude that may contribute to the problem of getting
one's meaning across a text only medium. In Outlook and most email clients I've
used, web based or not, to create a new message the user clicks on "new
message", fills in the "To:" field, types the message, and clicks "send".
Failing to "send" a message immediately causes the message to be saved to
"Drafts" box or similar. The interface is strongly biased toward sending the
letter immediately because the postponed letter is now a few clicks away. In
the physical world, it's possible to have several letters in progress spread
across one's desk in various stacks of paper. A writer may sleep on it and
return to the desk tomorrow to find everything exactly as before. Not so with a
computer where either shutting it down or closing the email program puts
everything into the "Drafts" folder (or worse, deletes them permanently).
I believe this problem may be boiled down the the false division of work (or
rather the impossibility of dividing the work). Why must the user only compose
email within the "email" program? In the physical world, letters are composed
as needed using the appropriate tools: pens, paper, dictionary. Finished
letters are then mailed using different tools: envelope, address book, postage.
The computer forces these two steps into the same space where both suffer the
limitations of the email program that seems less concerned with assisting the
user and more concerned with asserting itself as "the email program".
Similar arguments might be made for, say, posting to slashdot.
If one doesn't care about Free Software, and it seems most people do not,
then what does Linux have that Mac OS X lacks? If not freedom, why Linux?
Should I selfishly attempt to spread Linux to people who will use it for the
wrong reasons (price) in a desperate attempt to save my hobby of choice from
being legislated or marketed into oblivion by excessive copyright laws,
patented file formats, closed hardware, and trusted computing? Because the
only two points for Linux are freedom, which no one cares about, and price,
which becomes largely irrelevant come time for a new computer (which will
include one OS or another).
signed, a desperate and frustrated Free Software user
P.S. This is a serious question. Why should anyone use Linux on the desktop if not for freedom? Or perhaps a better question, why should anyone care about the essential freedoms defined by Stallman?
I temped at an insurance agency phone support office (thankfully not on phone support). The phone support had to hit a certain time per call. Consistent overshooting of this target time got one of my friends who was also temping there on phone support and who is one of the nicest people I know fired. I tend to assume other places are similar and avoid smalltalk when calling tech support. Sad I know. I think the insurance company's policy was ridiculous. Though, perhaps not because most people calling in aren't the ones shopping for insurance; their company is; inferior service is less of a competitive mistake.
I was thinking the other day about police protection from street crimes such as mugging. Some percentage of "bad guys" would mug someone, and there are not enough police officers to guard every dark alley. But if the numbers of police were increased to the point where they *could* watch every corner, what reason would I have to beleive the percentage of "bad guys" was any less among police than among the general public? More to the point, everyone seems to assume the watchers are "good guys". They are not; they are just like everyone else. Do you really want potential stalkers, bosses, insurance agencies, blackmailers (you aren't cheating on your wife are you?), political opponents, business competitors, etc. to have access to you phone records?
Install the final software load while overseers from both parties (and the third, 'impartial' entity) verify the installation and the veracity of the software load via checksum. Right... 'cause noone's ever written a program that "erases" all the cheat sheets from their TI graphing calculator. I agree with the other reply. Computer voting is "ooh, shiny" yet dangerously inferior to paper ballots in the ways that count.
I know... I know, I should be using whatever [back] function is
built into their website.
Don't excuse poor usability. Your browser already has a back button which as you say is often used reflexively. That's a good thing. Webpages that break your learned navigation skills are bad as they cause needless frustration and require uncecessary relearning. Sure, it's not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but add up a million tiny frustrations and before you know it you're tearing your hair out and getting less done.
The state of Massachusetts has to consider the difficulty that
some of its citizens may encounter.
Do none of its citizens encounter difficulty with the MS Word format? I
certainly do. In the short term, yes there will be problems with any big
change. But I am certain that in the long term an open document format will be
superior to any closed format. I do hope that software will quickly become
available to meet the needs of those with disabilities (which probably includes
my future aged self).
Slashdot Mirror
Hi, this is Super Annoying Incorporated. We sell V14gr/\! Press 1 to buy (forwards to waiting agent), or visit our website at superannoying.com!
Might be easier for annoyed callees to DDOS, and the requirement to have a short URL might be difficult to meet, but it's certainly possible to advertise by an automated system. Stock pumping spams would also be very easily automated.
My Peruvian friends assert that there are only five continents: Americano, Africano, Oceania (Australia and surrounding islands), Europeo, and Asiatico. So, depending on who you ask, "America" may refer unambiguously to the United States of America, or to the single continent of America. It's also been pointed out that the five rings on the Olympic flag represent those same five continents.
I don't know if HDMI is using RGB or not, but it's worth noting that RGB wastes bits in places the eye won't notice leaving fewer bits for places where it wil notice. See Greg Ward's page, High Dynamic Range Image Encodings
which discusses perceivable color differences in the context of HDR encodings.Capacitance does change with temperature. My books are all at work, but I think "X7R" is a common rating which means at most a 15% capacitance shift over a temperature range -55C to 125C. Not sure how hot a car might get; I assume the capacitor could be kept near air temperature; so we're looking at a smaller temperature range than X7R. Well, my point is that you can expect changes due to temperature, but you're not dealing with reaction kinetics as in a chemical battery, so I agree you'll be much better off.
"Me too." I skimmed the Copyright Office's summary and glanced at the actual bill. From the summary, I didn't see anything that said "end users have to pay for each incidental copy". If someone can point me to this text I'd greatly appreciate it. The original blog post is completely devoid of information. Thankfully some of the posts linked to summary and bill, but so far no one has pointed to the language that requires payment for incidental copies. I have to agree about the "designated agents". If one's music falls to the GDA, will the GDA seek out and pay appropriate royalties to that artist? Or is the only way to be paid to align with a major? This seems evil.
The closest thing I see in the summary is "It is important that both the SIRA and the parties recognize that the CRB has discretion to determine that some statutorily licensed uses, such as the reproduction of intermediate copies for interactive streaming, may have a value of zero depending on the given context and evidence presented. Similarly, the CRB should be at liberty to establish different rates for various digital uses of works licensed pursuant to this new compulsory license." However, this seems to apply only to distributers (iTunes). The bill seems more about extending the RIAA cartel to control prices and licensing for digital music stores... which sounds pretty bad but is nothing like what either the slashdot post or the IPaction post mention.
Someone please chime in here... I'm very cnofused.
Not knowing the time scales involved, I'm just going to throw this out as a possibility: if the orbital period of these odd planets around the galaxy is large enough, then the gravitational landscape on each revolution will be so different that the odd planet will hardly have a regular orbit. Alternatively, could it not eventually be trapped by a star? If so, one could hardly call its journey from wherever it started to the capturing star an orderly orbit.
Our voting system (first past the post) only gathers enough information to decide between two candidates. Your proposal seems similar to Approval Voting: vote for each candidate you approve of, and not for any candidate you disaprove of. Most approvals wins. It appears to be less susceptible to some of the problems Instant Run-Off has, and looks simpler to implement than Ranked Pairs (my favorite, a Condorcet method). See condorcet.org for some voting method descriptions, criticisms, and links.
I think everyone needs to seriously ask this question: assume for a moment that if, as is sometimes suggested, in the 2000 US presidential election, Ralph Nader "stole" votes from Al Gore such that had only Gore and Bush run then Gore would have won, do we really want a voting system that picks Bush as the winner in that case? (change the political parties if it helps, and ignore the Florida debacle). With any other voting system, all the Nader voters could have also voted for Gore. Or those who voted for Gore as a vote against Bush could have also voted for Nader. Or those who voted for Bush as a vote against Gore could have also voted for the one they really wanted.
First past the post sucks. It leads to voters gaming the system by voting for the lesser evil rather than voting for their favorite.
Nice. In Peru, election day is a national holiday and liquor may not be sold. You'll also be fined if you fail to vote (something around $50 I belive). Not sure how I feel about that one. (I am not a Peruvian citizen nor have I visted Peru). All democratic nations should really encourage voting by making it accessable to everyone, including those who work two jobs to make ends meet.
Changes in the CSS shouldn't affect in any way what you see in Links (assuming Links doesn't do much with CSS... haven't tried it in a while. w3m 4 life!!). Of course, some html changes were made it seems, but it looks mostly the same to me. As a frequent text browser user, the main thing that bugs me about slashdot is the glut of links that precede the main body. I don't care to scroll through those links every time.
Looking at the new design (out of text browser land), I will say it's slightly prettier than the current design. However it doesn't seem any more readable and abounds with 1 + 1 = 3 noise in the same way the current design does. People have been reading newspapers for ages, yet newspapers don't make every heading a heavy contrast stripe across the entire page or sharply delimit every margin... Is it because ink is expensive or because ink is distracting? I also would have liked an off-white background and unspecified font size and style of the main text for readability's sake. In my own modest web designing (home pages and such), I've come across a good rule of thumb: if the page is more readable in lynx, links, or w3m than it is in Firefox, then it needs work. The current slashdot is pretty darn readable in a text browser once you get past the ton of links at the top. I can't say I saw any CSS redesign entrants that improved upon that for readability. (Now if I was hanging slashdot on my wall, I might prefer one of the CSS redesigns... but I'm not; I'm reading it)
pngfix.js also doesn't work with PNG's specified as background images through CSS. For me, most graphics I use PNG for are decorative in nature and thus belong in the CSS. I hate IE6.
I'm ignorant of how advertising placement works, but is it possible to put, however crazy it sounds, multiple ads on a single webpage? A single page littered with ads would be much preferrable to multiple pages with a single ad each. Given the apparent loathing for the practice of splitting pages, I would think advertisers would be falling over themselves to offer a way to do this. I assume it's easier to include a single "include ad here" html or javascript tag in a fixed location per page, but the trouble of splitting an article into pages is surely on par with the trouble of including a varying number of advertisements in a single page?
Neat. Definitely considering buying/donating. Selfish question: I can't tell from the photographs, but can we please please please have a Unix keyboard with Control key to the left of the left pinky and the escape key to the left of the numerals, rather than up with the function keys?
Chemically, Teflon is polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE, a carbon chain with flourine occupying all other bonding (polyethylene, one of the simplest synthetic polymers, is a carbon chain with hydrogens). The carbon-fluorine bond is particularly strong, resulting in the non-stick properties. I'd assume the chemical properties of Fluorplastic paint to be similar to those of PTFE. I recently read a newspaper article that gave light descriptions of how PTFE was bonded to various types of cooking ware (can't remember it... grr). I believe one method, prone to scratching from metal utensils, is to create a porous aluminum pan that PTFE strands then become physically entangled with. I wonder what strategy this paint is using. Presumably it's a PTFE-laced slurry, or perhaps it uses polymers similar to PTFE that have additional functional groups that can then bond to surfaces: PTFE on one side, sticky on the other?
Thanks for the reply pointing out why Ogg Theora was not up to the task. It isn't really relevant other than for my ego, but I'll say that I have created a short movie (much smaller in scope than your own; a one-man lego stop-motion) using entirely Free Software, released in Ogg Theora (and MPEG-4/AVI, violating all sorts of patents), so I'm not completely unqualified to comment (it's one of the samples linked from illiminable's Ogg DirectShow filters audio encoding example filters). I do agree that getting things into Theora is not exactly easy. For my part I've recently surveyed many Windows based tools for encoding to Ogg Theora (easier said than done for one not owning a copy of Windows) with the intent of creating a tutorial for a community of RealVideo-loving stop motion animators and found little encouragement; the FreeAnime frontend to ffmpeg2theora is my current favorite but can almost certainly not handle anything beyond the basics such as Vorbis 5.1.
That said, I do feel that things would progress faster if more folks cared about free formats, and it seems frustratingly few do actually care (perhaps I should stop fighting losing battles). The fact that you cared enough to put in this much effort is encouraging to me; it's a shame the available tools came up short. I hope this improves someday...
Truly a shame... especially if the claim of a previous poster is correct "VLC or MPlayer only". Both of these play Ogg Theora for example on Linux, Mac, and Windows. If you're already using a format that doesn't work by default with, say, QuickTime and Windows Media Player, why not go all out and use Theora?
P.S. It looks like the latest version of Xiph's QuickTime Components has preliminary Theora playback. And there have been DirectShow (Windows Media Player) filters for Ogg codecs for some time now.
P.P.S. Anyone know that status of Dirac?
I certainly hope so. I went to great pains to buy an unlocked phone to switch back and forth between the two nation-wide GSM carriers... Cingular and T-Mobile. Here's hoping for improved service through competition. I only know what people tell me about Europe, but I assume the system of "buy a phone, buy or recharge a SIM card" is superior to the "sign a two year contract" here in the US
I agree with your sentiments. Perhaps someone from a much older generation can chime in, but did the advent of hand written correspondance lead to similar problems with understanding? What changed when we moved from pens to keyboards?
I believe that user interface shortcomings contribute to the "don't proofread; send it now" attitude that may contribute to the problem of getting one's meaning across a text only medium. In Outlook and most email clients I've used, web based or not, to create a new message the user clicks on "new message", fills in the "To:" field, types the message, and clicks "send". Failing to "send" a message immediately causes the message to be saved to "Drafts" box or similar. The interface is strongly biased toward sending the letter immediately because the postponed letter is now a few clicks away. In the physical world, it's possible to have several letters in progress spread across one's desk in various stacks of paper. A writer may sleep on it and return to the desk tomorrow to find everything exactly as before. Not so with a computer where either shutting it down or closing the email program puts everything into the "Drafts" folder (or worse, deletes them permanently).
I believe this problem may be boiled down the the false division of work (or rather the impossibility of dividing the work). Why must the user only compose email within the "email" program? In the physical world, letters are composed as needed using the appropriate tools: pens, paper, dictionary. Finished letters are then mailed using different tools: envelope, address book, postage. The computer forces these two steps into the same space where both suffer the limitations of the email program that seems less concerned with assisting the user and more concerned with asserting itself as "the email program".
Similar arguments might be made for, say, posting to slashdot.
If one doesn't care about Free Software, and it seems most people do not, then what does Linux have that Mac OS X lacks? If not freedom, why Linux? Should I selfishly attempt to spread Linux to people who will use it for the wrong reasons (price) in a desperate attempt to save my hobby of choice from being legislated or marketed into oblivion by excessive copyright laws, patented file formats, closed hardware, and trusted computing? Because the only two points for Linux are freedom, which no one cares about, and price, which becomes largely irrelevant come time for a new computer (which will include one OS or another).
signed, a desperate and frustrated Free Software user
P.S. This is a serious question. Why should anyone use Linux on the desktop if not for freedom? Or perhaps a better question, why should anyone care about the essential freedoms defined by Stallman?
Roundabout Safety Comes to America
I wonder if advertisers will pay people to carry large signs as they walk through town?
I temped at an insurance agency phone support office (thankfully not on phone support). The phone support had to hit a certain time per call. Consistent overshooting of this target time got one of my friends who was also temping there on phone support and who is one of the nicest people I know fired. I tend to assume other places are similar and avoid smalltalk when calling tech support. Sad I know. I think the insurance company's policy was ridiculous. Though, perhaps not because most people calling in aren't the ones shopping for insurance; their company is; inferior service is less of a competitive mistake.
I was thinking the other day about police protection from street crimes such as mugging. Some percentage of "bad guys" would mug someone, and there are not enough police officers to guard every dark alley. But if the numbers of police were increased to the point where they *could* watch every corner, what reason would I have to beleive the percentage of "bad guys" was any less among police than among the general public? More to the point, everyone seems to assume the watchers are "good guys". They are not; they are just like everyone else. Do you really want potential stalkers, bosses, insurance agencies, blackmailers (you aren't cheating on your wife are you?), political opponents, business competitors, etc. to have access to you phone records?
Install the final software load while overseers from both parties (and the third, 'impartial' entity) verify the installation and the veracity of the software load via checksum. Right... 'cause noone's ever written a program that "erases" all the cheat sheets from their TI graphing calculator. I agree with the other reply. Computer voting is "ooh, shiny" yet dangerously inferior to paper ballots in the ways that count.
Don't excuse poor usability. Your browser already has a back button which as you say is often used reflexively. That's a good thing. Webpages that break your learned navigation skills are bad as they cause needless frustration and require uncecessary relearning. Sure, it's not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but add up a million tiny frustrations and before you know it you're tearing your hair out and getting less done.
Do none of its citizens encounter difficulty with the MS Word format? I certainly do. In the short term, yes there will be problems with any big change. But I am certain that in the long term an open document format will be superior to any closed format. I do hope that software will quickly become available to meet the needs of those with disabilities (which probably includes my future aged self).