Having said that, if I thought we had a problem with inappropriate websites, for example, I'd put in a transparent proxy, check the logs from time to time, and block connections to really questionable sites. The younger kids would get "404 Not Found" and I'd blame the ISP... Same with filesharing, etc.
It isn't my place to say so, but you may wish to rethink that particular explanation. I certainly understand the reasons behind blocking certain sites, but sooner or later one of the kids is liable to figure out what's going on. What will you tell them if they confront you?
My mother lied on several occasions to 'protect me' in similar fashion. When I discovered what was going on it resulted in loss of esteem and trust, feelings of resentment and betrayal and even self-doubt and guilt (if my own mother--the woman who drilled into me that honesty was the highest virtue--feels the need to lie to me what sort of person must I be?). Sadly, I was realizing these things as she was dying of cancer and never was able to discuss the matter with her. I was 20 at the time; that I didn't discover her 'white lies' sooner--as my sister did--shows the sort of implicit trust I felt my mother and I shared while growing up. Even at age 33 it still bothers me.
I'm not a parent, so I am in no position to judge your explanation. All I will say is that I scarcely recally the 'you are not allowed to do X and I'm doing Y to prevent you from doing it' stuff my mother did (my sister could probably come up with a list, tho;-). The instances where she lied about what she was doing, however, are as fresh in my memory as the day I discovered the lies.
Requiring them to have onboard GPS with remote deactivation makes sense here, and I don't think that just because hazmat tucks have it that it will be forced upon everyone.
Don't be so sure. It's already on the table in the UK. It started out as just a way to collect use fees on high-traffic roads turing peak times, but is slated to expand into a means to enforce all traffic regs.
Can't happen in the U.S. you say? Maybe not, but photoradar had no trouble jumping the pond.
Note, too, that GM's OnStar already does the tracking bit, BTW. So does your cell phone (has to for 911 service). Even if you don't have OnStar or a cell phone in your car, do you use EzPass or similar? They can't track you from very far away, but they can see when you've gone through a toll both and can spot you from a hundred or so yards out with a reader.
The question really isn't whether law enforcement has the capability to track your car (or phone). They do. 'Get over it,' as McNeally says. The questions are who can use that capability, under what circumstances they should be able to use it and what sort of safeguards there are to prevent unauthorized use.
Technically, you could turn a SVG file into a.swf and I'm sure you'll be able to export to SVG from Flash one of these days, but they're two different ideas.
Good HTML means separating content from presentation as far as oossible.
Er, no. It means separating structure from presentation. See Douglas Bowman's piece on the topic and Eric Meyer's reply.
If you're really smart, you'll name them after what they represent { and are more meaningful than and
You're kinda defeating your own purpose with that. Much better to use a semantically meaningful emelent like address or similar and style or add classes/IDs to that. Just using a bunch of meaningless spans obviates the advantages of using a structural markup language in the first place.
In the days when css was synonym for the crappiest implementation of cross-plattform standards ever,
History lesson: the CSS recommendation we all know and love started life as a proposal to the W3C by Microsoft Corporation. In about the same time frame, Netscape Communications made their own proposal: JavaScript StyleSheets (JSSS). MS naturally implemented their own proposal, NS implemented theirs. Shortly before Navigator 4 was to be released, the W3C settled on CSS and JSSS became roadkill. NS hastily retrofitted Navigator to translate CSS rules into JSSS rules that their style engine could understand, but of course the capabilities of the two technologies were different and so the result was less than whelming.
Point: CSS suffered not because of a lousy cross-platform implementation, but because Navigator never did grok CSS; it just translated it (badly) into JSSS.
Flash was the *only* way to make a good visual appearance and be truly cross plattform. In fact, you'd be more compatible and accessible with Flash than with anything beyond "table" and "href".
Oh dear.
Setting aside questions of taste (and grammar) inherent in the 'good visual appearance' portion, 'truly' cross-plaftorm compatible' is a load of horse manure. A great many browsers/platforms didn't support Flash until well after the advent of Netscape 6.2. Many still don't. And as far as accessibility goes, ever try to access even most recent Flash movies with a screen reader? Rotsa ruck.
That has changed since then, with the appearance of NS 6.1 came a whole bunch of browsers that manage css in a way that is fairly acceptable.
Any 6.x version of NS you care to name was released weeks or months after the corresponding Mozilla version. IE 5/Macintosh offered far and away the best CSS support of any browser when it was released in '00--well ahead of NS 6.0. While it may be a bit dodgy by today's standards, even the original release of IE 5 for Mac is better than even the latest IE 6/Win.
Likewise, Opera 4.x sported a very solid CSS implementation--better than IE 5.x/Win, at least, and arguably on a par with IE 6/Win. That browser was out well before even IE 5/Mac.
Netscape 6.2 was a pretty good browser, particularly from a standards perspective, but it hardly broke new ground in that area.
Back in the we-don't-give-a-f*ck-about-webstandards time Dreamweaver was the _only_ tool that would make webdevelopement possible.
Bullshit. I've been doing web sites since 1996 for large and smal companies (Kaplan, Inc., APBnews.com [if anyone remembers them], GovWorks.com, Eureka-GGN CTW and Insignia Financial Group, to name a few). I've not used Dreamweaver for any of those clients. Not one.
Nobody would handcode anything for NS 4.7, trust me on that one.
Hi, I'm nobody.
Matter of fact, I did several sites for Aktion Mensch (3rd most recognized brand in Germany) that used CSS for layout and had to look 'right' in NN4.x. I did 'em by hand.
no matter what VI zealot keeps bullshitting about on/.
Vi? Never touch the damned thing. Used BBEdit and HomeSite or HTMLKit mostly.
You know why they used suicide attackers on 9/11 and Gulf War 2? Because they know we will never negotiate with them.
You mean like we didn't swap arms for hostages during the Reagan administration?
The U.S. has been nowhere near ruthless enough to eliminate the threat of terrorism. If you want to do it through violence, you have to be more violent than they are. Case in point: 20-odd years ago some terrorists kidnapped a few Soviet citiziens. The KGB promptly began mailing the terrorists their family members in installments. End of terrorist problem for the ol' U.S.S.R.
There is something tugging at your very being that says that if Bush is succeeding, that means you will not, unless you repent, believe in Christ, obey God, and live according to his commandments.
Let me get this straight: you believe there is an invisible man living in the sky, ready to throw you into a flaming pit where you will burn for all eternity if you don't do what he says because he loves you, but liberals are the 'degenerate wackoes'?
Working knowledge of German in 3 months? For an English speaker? From America?
Not in my experience. I've got other things sapping away time I should be studying German, and lord knows I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but a working knowledge in 3 months sound ludicrous to me. I had 2 years in college (a 'B' average) and it took me more like 6 months with both regular courses and an audio program--and that's still woefully insufficient for Bewerbungen, reading Versicherungsdokumente usw.
I agree wholeheartedly that it's important to learn, but I suspect you underestimate the difficulty--particularly for someone coming from a country as monolingual as the U.S.
I've been living in Bonn for a year and a half and thought I'd amplify:
Bureaucracy: Kafka was a master of understatement. If you ever have the misfortune to deal with the Arbeitsamt, you'll understand. I'm lucky in that I get to deal with the main AA in Bonn (employer went bust a while back; anybody got any great job-hunting tips for Deutschland?;-), which is seriously undercrowded and helpful compared to, say, Berlin.
Also, degrees and honorifics carry more weight than in the States. I got shunted into the 'non-degree' line at the AA and it was *hell* compared to the Hochschuleteam.
Language: What he said.
First lesson: Sprechen Sie Englisch?
I find the typical answer is 'Yes, a little bit,' in a perfect British accent. 'A little bit' typically means they converse well but might have trouble with, say,/Macbeth/. 'Very little' or 'not much' is analagous to an American with high-school or college German.
Having the courtesy to ask in German appears to be appreciated. Also, if you start foundering with your German (or your Aussprache is as furchtbar as mine) they'll often jump into English out of courtesy, or just to get the practice.
You will, however, be loaded down with reams of forms, contracts, pamphlets and the like, all of which are available only in German and all of which you will be expected to read. Read them, or get a German speaker to do so: I've already had one PostBank employee try selling me life insurance by assuring me it was a savings account (though such things are mercifully rare).
German Beer: Just enjoy. Lovely stuff, really.
Oktoberfest: Try Karnival in Köln (this weekend, as a matter of fact). Mardi Gras without the drunken jerks (though naturally there are plenty of drunks--no open container laws for pedestrians) and *everyone* wears a costume. I don't recall any nudity, tho (you want T&A, wait until 11 PM and switch on the TV; plenty of softcore porn). Much fun, particularly the Thur. before, which is dedicated to single women on the prowl. I was told only true losers go home alone that day (count me among them, I guess, though I was actually working all day last year and job-hunting this).
There's also the Love Parade in Berlin, but I haven't heard many good things about that one.
Also, forget decent ice cream. If you're really lucky, there'll be someplace that sells Haagen Dasz or you'll be close to the border with the Netherlands, where you can get Ben & Jerry's. Otherwise, forget it. German ice cream truly blows.
Probably my biggest gripe is that most stores close down by 6 pm weekdays, 4 pm Saturday and all day Sunday. You can find the odd gas station or some shops in a Hauptbahnhof open longer or on Sunday, but that's really it.
American-style supermarkets are springing up, but you're still best off with the smaller stores in urban areas. If you happen into an Aldi, try the pre-baked-just-reheat Olive Ciabatta bread. Marvelous.
The restaurants are typically very good (though Chinese is usually dodgy and I haven't had Indian that compares to NYC; Thai is seems a safer bet and the Italian places rock), but you do have to ask for the check when you're done. Tipping is on the order of 5-10%, rather than the American 15%; it seems you're as likely to appear a show-off if you tip big as anything, so no sense overdoing. Also, their idea of 'spicy' seems to be a bit different than mine, so I usually order extra hot.
I imagine Bäyern and so on might be so unforgiving as you've experienced, but I've found people in the Bonn/Köln area to be very forgiving.
Being a jackass won't win you any friends, of course, but the odd cultural blunder won't hurt muchy so long as you remember *you're* the guest and keep your sense of humor. I've bitched plenty about German ice cream and a few other things, and most often I get agreement rather than disdain.
Of course my Greman sucks, so perhaps I'm just missing all the nasty comments behind my back.;-)
What is wrong with you anti-corporation people? Do you just not know what one is?
Yes, I do. It's an entity that our legal system treats as an individual when in fact it more resembles a nation state in terms of revenue, social mores, organization and political and economic power. My theory that the reason many Europeans hate Americans is because we care so little that they hate us Corporations aren't evil. The way they are currently treated under U.S. law, however, they are distorting our democratic (OK, actually federalist/republican, but close enough for/.) system.
My theory that [sic] the reason many Europeans hate Americans is because we care so little that they hate us
Nah. I'm living in Europe right now. The reason they hate us is that we consume nearly twice as much as they do, act as though we have a monopoly on democracy then fund petty dictators around the world and only bother about what the rest of the world thinks when we need their help (see the steel tariff embroglio, Kyoto, arms treaties with Russia, the 'War on Terrorism' and the Gulf War).
The MPAA/RIAA can do whatever they want - but if they put massive, unusable restrictions on the garbage they put out someone will beat their ass in the market with something better.
Not if the MPAA/RIAA get their legislation through. You won't be able to buy any devices that don't include copy protection. Period. That doesn't sound like a 'free market' to me.
The encouraging thing about your rant is that beer-swilling semi-literate bozos like yourself rarely vote.
Digital Consumer was not listed in the official description of the roundtable. I'm sure they were there, though--as audence members, just like the EFF. Matter of fact, looking through the list of attending organizations the only one that doesn't jump out at me as a trade org for the tech or entertainment industries or a company involved in those industries is the Home Recording Rights Coalition, and from their profiles page their membership looks to be primarily composed of people in the consumer electronics industry. The most obvious exception to that characterization is Don Rounds, founder and president of The Consumer Alliance.
As for Michael Epstein, I'm glad to have him on 'our' side so to speak, but he works for Philips, a rather large company itself. I've no doubt that when push comes to shove, Philips will do what's best for their bottom line, regardless of whether that's best for the consumers.
No knock on Mr. Epstein, who I'm sure is a very fine individual, but it's to Philips shareholders and employees he owes his loyalty, not us.
Consumers have been an after thought in this debate from the outset. Even the media, notable exceptions such as Dan Gilmor notwithstanding, has generally cast it as a struggle between the tech and entertainment industries.
Last I checked, the whole of copyright law was based on Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which reads:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
I'm no expert, but last I read it the Constitution began 'We, the people' not 'We, the leaders of industry.'
Every now and then it's good to remind the federales that their asses belong to us, not t'other way 'round.
I wasn't there, and so cannot say whether the NYC faction was over the line or not, but there was a point to be made by utterly disrupting the roundtable: there were no voices for the consumer there. Why should we allow them to discuss our future without our participation?
No, tech industry reps do not count. They're going to follow the money, pure and simple. If they can make more money by screwing us, they will. That's their responsibility to their shareholders, after all: make money, not good social policy.
Dressing in a suit and playing The Game isn't always effective. It is stacked against the public at large.
While it's important that we all work within the system as well, it is equally important that when the process is completely stacked against consumers (i.e., no voice for consumers at the roundtable) we go ahead and change the rules.
Designer: All of them? Okay...lets take a look at the possible conditions under which you can view a web site. You can have this generic looking site that will distinguish you from this peanut in that the peanut isn't on the screen, and it is dumbed down enough to be viewed by everyone. That's cheap. You can have this terrific looking site, but for every different scenario that you want someone to be able to view it under, it will cost an additional 'X' dollars. Or...you can develop for M.S., get 85% of the potential viewers, and have it cost the original quote"
Me: You're incompetent. Next designer, please.
I design and build sites for a living. I worked on the campaign that got an accessibility law analagous to the U.S.'s Section 508 passed in Germany. For very little additional development time (like less than 5%), you can build a site that will function correctly in damn near any browser you throw at it once you know what you're doing.
You probably won't get fancy DHTML menus in Netscape 3.x, since that browser doesn't support DHTML in any form. It may look pretty bland in a browser with weak CSS support like OmniWeb. But it will function just fine in all of them.
If you really must have the thing look 'the same' (not possible, really; never was; there's always a few pixels here or a differently-styled bullet there) in all browsers, I'll use a valid and accessible table layout (yes, it can be done) and call it a day. If you really want it done fast, I'll do the whole layout in CSS and use @import for the fancy stuff, then do a quickie stylesheet for NN4.x and bring that in via the <link> tag. NN4.x users will get colors, fonts, images, maybe even some of the JS goodies. The layout may be circa 1995 top-down boring, but it'll be perfectly usable. If another browser has issues, I'll just use one of assorted browser hacks to hide that bit of CSS. We're talking a couple of hours of testing and hacking, tops.
Things do get ugly if you try to do a CSS-only multi-column layout that works perfectly in NN4.x. (I've done it, but it was a royal PITA). So what? If NN4.x is that big a deal for you, use tables and have done.
Barring developer incompetence, there is NO reason on God's green earth why a site can't look great in Opera 5+, IE 5+ and Gecko-based browsers and function perfectly well in the rest without spending ungodly amounts of development time on it.
Me: It doesn't work because the browser she is using only supports the capabilities set forth by some standards comittee. You know, a bunch of people sitting around a round table, arguing about some base set of features the web should have.
Boss: How do we get it to work?
You're already off in dreaming wish land here. I've had this conversation with bosses and clients hundreds of times in the past 6 years, and the actual response is:
Boss: I don't give a damn why. Just make it work, or I'll hire someone who can.
The US doesn't have anything at all like this -- indeed, it's been explicitly ruled many times in the last decade that the constitution doesn't provide any authority to grant such rights. See Feist v. Rural Telephone Service for the specific phone book case, and ADC v. Hamilton for maps.
You've misread Feist.
Databases and collections can be protected by copyright in the U.S., but the information in them must have been selected or arranged in an original way (i.e., something more than just 'everyone in town X listed in alphabetical order').
The Feist decision reads, in pertinent part:
This case concerns the interaction of two well-established propositions. The first is that facts are not copyrightable; the other, that compilations of facts generally are....it is beyond dispute that compilations of facts are within the subject matter of copyright. Compilations were expressly mentioned in the Copyright Act of 1909, and again in the Copyright Act of 1976.
In Feist, The Court acknowledged that while facts themselves lack any originality (they were 'copied' by the author from the world around him/her), the selection and arrangment of those facts in a collection may be original and therefore copyrightable:
A factual compilation is eligible for copyright if it features an original selection or arrangement of facts, but the copyright is limited to the particular selection or arrangement. In no event may copyright extend to the facts themselves. [citation omitted]
In Feist, the Court was specifically addressing the 'sweat of the brow' doctrine, which stated that collections of facts were copyrightable due to the effort the author had expended assembling them, and that others wishing to publish the same facts would have to derive them for themselves. The Court held that employing this doctrine effectively extended copyright protection to the facts themselves, which was impermissable under the Copyright Act of 1909.
The result is that in the case of, say, a newspaper article reporting on a city council meeting, another newspaper is free to read the article and write their own description of the events at the meeting as those events are facts and not eligible for copyright protection. The second newspaper could not, however, simply reprint the original article as the article constitutes an original expression of the facts, which is eligible for copyright protection.
IANAP, but I don't think writing an AI whatsit to emulate a lawyer would be all that tough—and I went to law school, so I have some idea from whence I speak.
Hell, I could probably work up the logic using JavaScript:
/*requires salesman and IRS agent objects to be present */
function Lawyer(percentage,rate) {
this.contingencyFee = percentage;
this.rate = rate;
this.sue = function(client,defendant,claim,court) {
this.case = new Object();
this.case.atTrial = false;
this.case.court = court
this.case.damages = defendant.netWorth
var win = true;
while (case.damages > 0) {
if (!this.case.atTrial) {
win = defendant.listen(this.lie());//.listen() returns true if he buys it
if (win = true) {
this.takeMoney(defen dant,this.case.damages);
this.collectFee(clie nt,win);
return;
} else if (claim = true) {
this.case.atTrial = true;
} else {
this.case.damages = this.case.damages - 1000;
}
} else {
win = judge.listen(this.lie());
if (win = true) {
this.takeMoney(defen dant,this.case.damages);
this.collectFee(clie nt,win);
return;
} else if (court.highest == false) {
this.appeal();
} else {
win = false;
this.collectFee(clie nt,win);
return;
}
}
}
win = false;
this.collectFee(client,win);
}
this.defend = function(client,judge) {
var win = judge.listen(this.lie());
this.collectFee(client,win);
}
this.collectFee = function(client,win) {
if (win) {
this.takeMoney(client,client.net Worth/2)//leave some for the next time
} else {
this.takeMoney(client,client.net Worth)//better get it all now
}
}
this.appeal = function() {;
this.case.court =+ 1;
this.sue(this.case.client,this.case.de fendant,this.case.claim,this.case.court);
this.lie = salesman.talk;
this.takeMoney = irsAgent.collectTax;
}
Yeah, top left is quicker to access with the mouse. The OS 9 apple menu is also easier to hit, since it's in the corner and effectively infinitely large in two directions because there is no margin to the left or top; you can't 'overshoot' the icon (I'm sitting on OS X now and can't double-check that there's no margin to the left [there is one on OS X--shame on Apple], but I believe there are none).
There's all sorts of margin around the Start menu, and it's easy to overshoot it unless you move your mouse more slowly. Fitt's Law, dontcha know. Quoth Bruce Tognazzini:
The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.
While at first glance, this law might seem patently obvious, it is one of the most ignored principles in design. Fitts's law dictates the Macintosh pull-down menu acquisition should be approximately five times faster than Windows menu acquisition, and this is proven out. Fitt's law dictates that the windows task bar will constantly and unnecessarily get in people's way, and this is proven out. Fitt's law indicates that the most quickly accessed targets on any computer display are the four corners of the screen, because of their pinning action, and yet they seem to be avoided at all costs by designers.
Use large objects for important functions (Big buttons are faster).
Use the pinning actions of the sides, bottom, top, and corners of your display: A single-row toolbar with tool icons that "bleed" into the edges of the display will be many times faster than a double row of icons with a carefully-applied one-pixel non-clickable edge along the side of the display.
It's the same principle, though: a user-editable menu holding a variety of system-wide functions (launching apps, settings, etc.).
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't my place to say so, but you may wish to rethink that particular explanation. I certainly understand the reasons behind blocking certain sites, but sooner or later one of the kids is liable to figure out what's going on. What will you tell them if they confront you?
My mother lied on several occasions to 'protect me' in similar fashion. When I discovered what was going on it resulted in loss of esteem and trust, feelings of resentment and betrayal and even self-doubt and guilt (if my own mother--the woman who drilled into me that honesty was the highest virtue--feels the need to lie to me what sort of person must I be?). Sadly, I was realizing these things as she was dying of cancer and never was able to discuss the matter with her. I was 20 at the time; that I didn't discover her 'white lies' sooner--as my sister did--shows the sort of implicit trust I felt my mother and I shared while growing up. Even at age 33 it still bothers me.
I'm not a parent, so I am in no position to judge your explanation. All I will say is that I scarcely recally the 'you are not allowed to do X and I'm doing Y to prevent you from doing it' stuff my mother did (my sister could probably come up with a list, tho ;-). The instances where she lied about what she was doing, however, are as fresh in my memory as the day I discovered the lies.
Don't be so sure. It's already on the table in the UK. It started out as just a way to collect use fees on high-traffic roads turing peak times, but is slated to expand into a means to enforce all traffic regs.
Can't happen in the U.S. you say? Maybe not, but photoradar had no trouble jumping the pond.
Note, too, that GM's OnStar already does the tracking bit, BTW. So does your cell phone (has to for 911 service). Even if you don't have OnStar or a cell phone in your car, do you use EzPass or similar? They can't track you from very far away, but they can see when you've gone through a toll both and can spot you from a hundred or so yards out with a reader.
The question really isn't whether law enforcement has the capability to track your car (or phone). They do. 'Get over it,' as McNeally says. The questions are who can use that capability, under what circumstances they should be able to use it and what sort of safeguards there are to prevent unauthorized use.
Nonsense. As Agent Smith says, "Human beings define their reality through misery and suffering."
Had two big-budget Hollywoood sequels rocked, we'd have all rejected the illusion and woken up.
Laszlo Systems already does this, as does Kinesis Software. Macromedia looks to be getting into the act, too, with their Royale Initiative.
Er, no. It means separating structure from presentation. See Douglas Bowman's piece on the topic and Eric Meyer's reply.
You're kinda defeating your own purpose with that. Much better to use a semantically meaningful emelent like address or similar and style or add classes/IDs to that. Just using a bunch of meaningless spans obviates the advantages of using a structural markup language in the first place.
He's a nobody, she's a nobody, wouldn't you like to be a nobody too?
History lesson: the CSS recommendation we all know and love started life as a proposal to the W3C by Microsoft Corporation. In about the same time frame, Netscape Communications made their own proposal: JavaScript StyleSheets (JSSS). MS naturally implemented their own proposal, NS implemented theirs. Shortly before Navigator 4 was to be released, the W3C settled on CSS and JSSS became roadkill. NS hastily retrofitted Navigator to translate CSS rules into JSSS rules that their style engine could understand, but of course the capabilities of the two technologies were different and so the result was less than whelming. Point: CSS suffered not because of a lousy cross-platform implementation, but because Navigator never did grok CSS; it just translated it (badly) into JSSS.
Oh dear.
Setting aside questions of taste (and grammar) inherent in the 'good visual appearance' portion, 'truly' cross-plaftorm compatible' is a load of horse manure. A great many browsers/platforms didn't support Flash until well after the advent of Netscape 6.2. Many still don't. And as far as accessibility goes, ever try to access even most recent Flash movies with a screen reader? Rotsa ruck.
Any 6.x version of NS you care to name was released weeks or months after the corresponding Mozilla version. IE 5/Macintosh offered far and away the best CSS support of any browser when it was released in '00--well ahead of NS 6.0. While it may be a bit dodgy by today's standards, even the original release of IE 5 for Mac is better than even the latest IE 6/Win.
Likewise, Opera 4.x sported a very solid CSS implementation--better than IE 5.x/Win, at least, and arguably on a par with IE 6/Win. That browser was out well before even IE 5/Mac.
Netscape 6.2 was a pretty good browser, particularly from a standards perspective, but it hardly broke new ground in that area.
Bullshit. I've been doing web sites since 1996 for large and smal companies (Kaplan, Inc., APBnews.com [if anyone remembers them], GovWorks.com, Eureka-GGN CTW and Insignia Financial Group, to name a few). I've not used Dreamweaver for any of those clients. Not one.
Hi, I'm nobody.
Matter of fact, I did several sites for Aktion Mensch (3rd most recognized brand in Germany) that used CSS for layout and had to look 'right' in NN4.x. I did 'em by hand.
Vi? Never touch the damned thing. Used BBEdit and HomeSite or HTMLKit mostly.
You mean like we didn't swap arms for hostages during the Reagan administration?
The U.S. has been nowhere near ruthless enough to eliminate the threat of terrorism. If you want to do it through violence, you have to be more violent than they are. Case in point: 20-odd years ago some terrorists kidnapped a few Soviet citiziens. The KGB promptly began mailing the terrorists their family members in installments. End of terrorist problem for the ol' U.S.S.R.
Let me get this straight: you believe there is an invisible man living in the sky, ready to throw you into a flaming pit where you will burn for all eternity if you don't do what he says because he loves you, but liberals are the 'degenerate wackoes'?
Number 3 is (former) East Berlin. Horrible mess there in many places.
Working knowledge of German in 3 months? For an English speaker? From America?
Not in my experience. I've got other things sapping away time I should be studying German, and lord knows I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but a working knowledge in 3 months sound ludicrous to me. I had 2 years in college (a 'B' average) and it took me more like 6 months with both regular courses and an audio program--and that's still woefully insufficient for Bewerbungen, reading Versicherungsdokumente usw.
I agree wholeheartedly that it's important to learn, but I suspect you underestimate the difficulty--particularly for someone coming from a country as monolingual as the U.S.
I've been living in Bonn for a year and a half and thought I'd amplify:
;-), which is seriously undercrowded and helpful compared to, say, Berlin.
/Macbeth/. 'Very little' or 'not much' is analagous to an American with high-school or college German.
Bureaucracy: Kafka was a master of understatement. If you ever have the misfortune to deal with the Arbeitsamt, you'll understand. I'm lucky in that I get to deal with the main AA in Bonn (employer went bust a while back; anybody got any great job-hunting tips for Deutschland?
Also, degrees and honorifics carry more weight than in the States. I got shunted into the 'non-degree' line at the AA and it was *hell* compared to the Hochschuleteam.
Language: What he said.
First lesson: Sprechen Sie Englisch?
I find the typical answer is 'Yes, a little bit,' in a perfect British accent. 'A little bit' typically means they converse well but might have trouble with, say,
Having the courtesy to ask in German appears to be appreciated. Also, if you start foundering with your German (or your Aussprache is as furchtbar as mine) they'll often jump into English out of courtesy, or just to get the practice.
You will, however, be loaded down with reams of forms, contracts, pamphlets and the like, all of which are available only in German and all of which you will be expected to read. Read them, or get a German speaker to do so: I've already had one PostBank employee try selling me life insurance by assuring me it was a savings account (though such things are mercifully rare).
German Beer: Just enjoy. Lovely stuff, really.
Oktoberfest: Try Karnival in Köln (this weekend, as a matter of fact). Mardi Gras without the drunken jerks (though naturally there are plenty of drunks--no open container laws for pedestrians) and *everyone* wears a costume. I don't recall any nudity, tho (you want T&A, wait until 11 PM and switch on the TV; plenty of softcore porn). Much fun, particularly the Thur. before, which is dedicated to single women on the prowl. I was told only true losers go home alone that day (count me among them, I guess, though I was actually working all day last year and job-hunting this).
There's also the Love Parade in Berlin, but I haven't heard many good things about that one.
Also, forget decent ice cream. If you're really lucky, there'll be someplace that sells Haagen Dasz or you'll be close to the border with the Netherlands, where you can get Ben & Jerry's. Otherwise, forget it. German ice cream truly blows.
Probably my biggest gripe is that most stores close down by 6 pm weekdays, 4 pm Saturday and all day Sunday. You can find the odd gas station or some shops in a Hauptbahnhof open longer or on Sunday, but that's really it.
American-style supermarkets are springing up, but you're still best off with the smaller stores in urban areas. If you happen into an Aldi, try the pre-baked-just-reheat Olive Ciabatta bread. Marvelous.
The restaurants are typically very good (though Chinese is usually dodgy and I haven't had Indian that compares to NYC; Thai is seems a safer bet and the Italian places rock), but you do have to ask for the check when you're done. Tipping is on the order of 5-10%, rather than the American 15%; it seems you're as likely to appear a show-off if you tip big as anything, so no sense overdoing. Also, their idea of 'spicy' seems to be a bit different than mine, so I usually order extra hot.
I imagine Bäyern and so on might be so unforgiving as you've experienced, but I've found people in the Bonn/Köln area to be very forgiving.
;-)
Being a jackass won't win you any friends, of course, but the odd cultural blunder won't hurt muchy so long as you remember *you're* the guest and keep your sense of humor. I've bitched plenty about German ice cream and a few other things, and most often I get agreement rather than disdain.
Of course my Greman sucks, so perhaps I'm just missing all the nasty comments behind my back.
Regarding the 'from' addy: smtprelay.t-online.de
You have to sign up for an 'up and extra' package of some sort for like EUR 4/month or so, but then you can use whatever reply-to you like.
Irrritating bit of banditry, but it gets the job done.
My theory that the reason many Europeans hate Americans is because we care so little that they hate us
Corporations aren't evil. The way they are currently treated under U.S. law, however, they are distorting our democratic (OK, actually federalist/republican, but close enough for
The encouraging thing about your rant is that beer-swilling semi-literate bozos like yourself rarely vote.
Digital Consumer was not listed in the official description of the roundtable. I'm sure they were there, though--as audence members, just like the EFF. Matter of fact, looking through the list of attending organizations the only one that doesn't jump out at me as a trade org for the tech or entertainment industries or a company involved in those industries is the Home Recording Rights Coalition, and from their profiles page their membership looks to be primarily composed of people in the consumer electronics industry. The most obvious exception to that characterization is Don Rounds, founder and president of The Consumer Alliance.
As for Michael Epstein, I'm glad to have him on 'our' side so to speak, but he works for Philips, a rather large company itself. I've no doubt that when push comes to shove, Philips will do what's best for their bottom line, regardless of whether that's best for the consumers.
No knock on Mr. Epstein, who I'm sure is a very fine individual, but it's to Philips shareholders and employees he owes his loyalty, not us.
Consumers have been an after thought in this debate from the outset. Even the media, notable exceptions such as Dan Gilmor notwithstanding, has generally cast it as a struggle between the tech and entertainment industries.
Last I checked, the whole of copyright law was based on Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which reads: I'm no expert, but last I read it the Constitution began 'We, the people' not 'We, the leaders of industry.'
Every now and then it's good to remind the federales that their asses belong to us, not t'other way 'round.
I wasn't there, and so cannot say whether the NYC faction was over the line or not, but there was a point to be made by utterly disrupting the roundtable: there were no voices for the consumer there. Why should we allow them to discuss our future without our participation?
No, tech industry reps do not count. They're going to follow the money, pure and simple. If they can make more money by screwing us, they will. That's their responsibility to their shareholders, after all: make money, not good social policy.
Dressing in a suit and playing The Game isn't always effective. It is stacked against the public at large.
While it's important that we all work within the system as well, it is equally important that when the process is completely stacked against consumers (i.e., no voice for consumers at the roundtable) we go ahead and change the rules.
Designer: All of them? Okay...lets take a look at the possible conditions under which you can view a web site. You can have this generic looking site that will distinguish you from this peanut in that the peanut isn't on the screen, and it is dumbed down enough to be viewed by everyone. That's cheap. You can have this terrific looking site, but for every different scenario that you want someone to be able to view it under, it will cost an additional 'X' dollars. Or...you can develop for M.S., get 85% of the potential viewers, and have it cost the original quote"
Me: You're incompetent. Next designer, please.
I design and build sites for a living. I worked on the campaign that got an accessibility law analagous to the U.S.'s Section 508 passed in Germany. For very little additional development time (like less than 5%), you can build a site that will function correctly in damn near any browser you throw at it once you know what you're doing.
You probably won't get fancy DHTML menus in Netscape 3.x, since that browser doesn't support DHTML in any form. It may look pretty bland in a browser with weak CSS support like OmniWeb. But it will function just fine in all of them.
If you really must have the thing look 'the same' (not possible, really; never was; there's always a few pixels here or a differently-styled bullet there) in all browsers, I'll use a valid and accessible table layout (yes, it can be done) and call it a day. If you really want it done fast, I'll do the whole layout in CSS and use @import for the fancy stuff, then do a quickie stylesheet for NN4.x and bring that in via the <link> tag. NN4.x users will get colors, fonts, images, maybe even some of the JS goodies. The layout may be circa 1995 top-down boring, but it'll be perfectly usable. If another browser has issues, I'll just use one of assorted browser hacks to hide that bit of CSS. We're talking a couple of hours of testing and hacking, tops.
Things do get ugly if you try to do a CSS-only multi-column layout that works perfectly in NN4.x. (I've done it, but it was a royal PITA). So what? If NN4.x is that big a deal for you, use tables and have done.
Barring developer incompetence, there is NO reason on God's green earth why a site can't look great in Opera 5+, IE 5+ and Gecko-based browsers and function perfectly well in the rest without spending ungodly amounts of development time on it.
Period.
Me: It doesn't work because the browser she is using only supports the capabilities set forth by some standards comittee. You know, a bunch of people sitting around a round table, arguing about some base set of features the web should have.
Boss: How do we get it to work?
You're already off in dreaming wish land here. I've had this conversation with bosses and clients hundreds of times in the past 6 years, and the actual response is:
Boss: I don't give a damn why. Just make it work, or I'll hire someone who can.
You've misread Feist.
Databases and collections can be protected by copyright in the U.S., but the information in them must have been selected or arranged in an original way (i.e., something more than just 'everyone in town X listed in alphabetical order').
The Feist decision reads, in pertinent part: In Feist, The Court acknowledged that while facts themselves lack any originality (they were 'copied' by the author from the world around him/her), the selection and arrangment of those facts in a collection may be original and therefore copyrightable: In Feist, the Court was specifically addressing the 'sweat of the brow' doctrine, which stated that collections of facts were copyrightable due to the effort the author had expended assembling them, and that others wishing to publish the same facts would have to derive them for themselves. The Court held that employing this doctrine effectively extended copyright protection to the facts themselves, which was impermissable under the Copyright Act of 1909.
The result is that in the case of, say, a newspaper article reporting on a city council meeting, another newspaper is free to read the article and write their own description of the events at the meeting as those events are facts and not eligible for copyright protection. The second newspaper could not, however, simply reprint the original article as the article constitutes an original expression of the facts, which is eligible for copyright protection.
IANAP, but I don't think writing an AI whatsit to emulate a lawyer would be all that tough—and I went to law school, so I have some idea from whence I speak.
Hell, I could probably work up the logic using JavaScript:
Yeah, top left is quicker to access with the mouse. The OS 9 apple menu is also easier to hit, since it's in the corner and effectively infinitely large in two directions because there is no margin to the left or top; you can't 'overshoot' the icon (I'm sitting on OS X now and can't double-check that there's no margin to the left [there is one on OS X--shame on Apple], but I believe there are none).
There's all sorts of margin around the Start menu, and it's easy to overshoot it unless you move your mouse more slowly. Fitt's Law, dontcha know. Quoth Bruce Tognazzini:
It's the same principle, though: a user-editable menu holding a variety of system-wide functions (launching apps, settings, etc.).