I call crap on his argument that video games cause violence because it gives people "ideas". It's the old "first a thought, then an act" argument that the Christian Right so often uses to try and get stuff censored.
Problem is, it's completely invalid. There is a huge leap between having an idea and actually choosing to act on that idea. Video games can only give ideas; they cannot move people to act on them. That is, and always will be, solely the reaponsibility of the individual who chooses to act.
Or, to put it another way: anyone who is exposed to sex can easily get the idea of forcing it upon another. Does this mean that any mention of (or, for that matter, having of) sex causes rape? Of course not; that would be ridiculous. Even though most people understand the concept, most would never in a million years do such a thing. They have the idea, but are no more likely to act on it than if they never knew it was possible.
This is like saying that school systems that have shitty overall test scores don't need to do anything because it's all the kid's (or parent's) fault.
No, but once again, I do not place the blame on the state. In most cases, the problems are with the children or the parents (which is not to say that there is no such thing as bad teachers, but the teaching profession itself is trying enough to act as a filter for most of these).
There are problems, I will admit. I do not think that the blame lies in lack of funding, simply because both the private schools in the US and the public school systems of many other nations (23, I believe) manage to do better while spending less money. The US public school system spends more per student than any other system in the world, yet it's a complete joke in terms of test scores.
This does not make sense. According to everything we know, it simply should not be; better-funded schools are supposed to be able to do more for their students, and yet clearly this is not happenning. That indicates to me that we don't know enough; that the real problems lie elsewhere. Rather than spinning our wheels by blindly throwing money at the problem when it's not helping, we should be doing more research into what the problems really are.
You act like the U.S. is the only country with genetically obese people. Or that somehow there are more genetically obese people in the U.S.
Quite the opposite. I said that if only genetically-obese people were counted, the US would probably have similar rates as anyone else. That would seem to indicate that I believe genetically-obese people to exist everywhere, would it not?
I do not debate that the US has a depressingly high obesity rate. I place the blame, however, on the individuals, not the country.
This is a cultural thing. An American cultural thing.
No, it is people with no self-control. That isn't culture at all; it's a personal weakness.
God Bless America, with the worst crime levels in the first world
Irrelevant. That is the fault of the people committing the crimes, and no one else. I could likely find a rather large number of criminals where you live, but you have neglected to provide that information.
God Bless America, where "democracy" means a rich, white male as President
Irrelevant. If a rich white male is elected, then a rich white male is elected. That's all it means.
God Bless America, the biggest consumer of the world's natural resources
Irrelevant, given that all are either produced here or duly purchased from others. It is not as though they are stolen.
God Bless America, so happy to violate international laws
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, my friend.
God Bless America, where "freedom of speech" means race-hate groups like KKK
Where freedom of speech means real freedom of speech for all people, even those despised by society. Better than driving them underground, so you can pretend that the problems don't exist.
God Bless America, and its massive and ever-growing poverty gap
Documentation, please.
God Bless America, with barely 300 years of dire history and culture
The US is a young nation; so what?
God Bless America, all its appalling "sitcoms" with no grasp of irony
Yes, the US has some bad TV shows. It also has some good ones. Mind you, I find it interesting that many of the worst "American" TV shows are actually concepts ripped wholesale from other countries. Witness Coupling, Survivor, and Big Brother, to name only three.
God Bless America, with the highest obesity levels in the developed world
A problem, yes, but once again, the sole fault of those who don't control their eating and exercise habits. This does not consider the genetically obese; were only the genetically obese counted, the levels would almost certainly be similar to anywhere else.
God Bless America, because corporations should be allowed to run amok
As opposed to enslaving the public to the government in a babysitter-state condition of total dependency? I'd call that the lesser of two evils.
God Bless America, wasting billions to attack foreign countries
Define "waste".
I still think it was truly idiotic of the Congress to sing God Bless America on the Capitol steps the afternoon of 9/11 (which is what started the "God Bless America" craze and may be responsible for bolstering the morale of the Pseudo-Christian Right). Why, of all songs, did they have to pick that one? They should have sung The Star-Spangled Banner, or maybe America the Beautiful. Singing a song was a good idea; singing that song was a mistake which has had hideous consequences.
If HTML is a programming language, then explain to me how to create a simple for loop using nothing but HTML. Or something even easier: assign a value to a variable (this being one of the litmus tests of programming language). JavaScript may not be used; that is a separate language, and is not being disputed.
People go on about whether or not HTML is a programming language, as though the fact could actually be debated. It's quite simple, really. Give me a while loop and an assignment statement using only HTML (no JavaScript allowed), and you will have proven beyond any form of debate that HTML is a programming language. If you cannot do this, then HTML is not a programming language.
"Element/attribute/property structure" is irrelevant. There are programming languages with such a structure, such as XSLT, but that isn't what makes XSLT a programming language.
"Interpretation" is also irrelevent. Plenty of programming languages are interpreted: Java is probably the most famous example (scripting language also count, depending on who you ask, but no one calls Java a scripting language).
So, I challenge you: show me a while loop or an if statement in HTML. If you can't do this directly, then no problem; show me a structure which will do the same thing and I will be satisfied. But remember, you must only use HTML; you cannot use Javacript, PHP, or anything like that. Do this, and you will shut me up.
Learn by doing. Do by working. Embelished resumes are a fact of life.
For you, evidently, they are, and have to be. for most of the rest of the world, however, embellished resumes are a fact of life.
The Tasman engine has already been taken out of one browser (IE/Mac) and embedded into another (MSN/Mac). In the process, they cranked the engine's standards support to the point where it actually manages to kick the crap out of Mozilla and Opera. It even supports the nth-child() pseudoclass and its relatives, something no other browser has but everyone wants.
Unfortunately, because they force you to sign up and pay for MSN before you can even use the browser, almost no one knows this, and even fewer people test in it. I don't use MSN/Mac either. The worst part of this, though, is that Opera and Mozilla don't even seem to realize the catch-up that they now have to play.
But here's the thing: the Tasman engine was originally written to be portable, and there are no signs that this has changed. It is entirely possible that Microsoft could port this to Windows, stick it into Longhorn (which would also explain why there aren't supposed to be any more updates to IE/Win before then: they're retiring the old 'Trident' engine and focusing all their efforts on Tasman), and catch Mozilla and Opera completely off guard.
If the plows are owned by the state -not by the plow drivers- then I have no problem with the state putting GPS receivers in them. It's their property, after all; they could paint them bright pink and install loudspeakers on them that blare Yankee Doodle at max volume on repeat while the plows are running for all I care.
If, on the other hand, the plows are private vehicles, then we have a serious privacy issue here.
"File sharing" -the term, at least- has been corrupted by misuse. If we go by the strict definition of the term, then of course there is nothing wrong with it.
The problem is that many pirates have misappropriated the term, using it as a euphemism for piracy. This wouldn't be so bad, except that RIAA/MPAA/whoever has caught wind of this, and is capitalizing on it by trying to convince people that this is the actual definition of the term. Essentially, the idiot pirates have allowed RIAA to make a plausible-sounding claim that p2p networks are only used for piracy, because the pirates themselves use this term.
If this is in fact intentional on Apple's part, then it is very much Not Cool. Competition is good, deliberately breaking a competitor's product is not.
However, given Apple's abysmal QA as of late, I can't deny the possibility that this is just another supremely-idiotic bug that somehow slipped through.
As a former LiteSwitch user, I can say with some confidence that the window is not a "near-pixel" duplication. There are similar concepts in both cases, to be sure. The background of the switcher is transparent with rounded corners, but this can hardly be called a ripoff; the style is consistent with Apple's brightness and volume indicators, which have been a part of OSX since 10.0. Apple can't be blamed for UI consistency on that score.
The app titles are in Lucida Grande Bold in both LSX and OSX, colored white with a black drop shadow. Again, this is just a matter of UI consistency; Apple uses this very same font on desktops, and has since 10.0. In fact, this appears to be intended as Apple's standard font for text on top of any dark-colored UI element; the white text is controlled by a hidden preference "com.apple.Finder.hasDarkDesktop" (this was true in 10.0 at least).
The application icons are arranged in a horizontal row in LSX and OSX. Frankly, no other layout would make sense; Apple can hardly be blamed for this one.
Both LSX and OSX highlight the active app's icon by surrounding it with a differently-colored box. Aside from there being no other sensible way to highlight the icon in such an environment, it is worth noting that the boxes look different; LSX uses a dark box solid white border, while OSX uses a light box with no border but rounded corners, again more consistent with the style. Note that Proteron's implementation is closer to the look of the Windows application switcher, which predates both LSX and OSX.
Both OSX and LSX print the title of the currently selected application. LSX prints it centered at the bottom of the window, while OSX prints it under the application's icon. It's arguable which of these is better UI -points can be made both ways- but again, OSX is more consistent with Aqua, LSX is more consistent with Windows.
Panther's application switcher is not a duplication of LSX's functionality. For one thing, LSX actually goes significantly beyond what Panther's switcher does; if it's a copy, then it is a poor one except in terms of aesthetics. For another, although they look similar -more a testament to LSX's attempts to remain consistent with Aqua than Apple's attempts to rip them off- they are not the same. Some of the differences had to have taken some real effort to write, above and beyond any sort of cut/paste job.
Finally, I suppose, we should take a quick look at the history of LSX. LSX began life as a part of GoMac, which was nothing more or less than a Start Menu implementation for Mac OS 8. Not a bad implementation, either; they even added in support for control strip modules to replace Windows' system tray modules. However, this app copied the Win9X Start menu almost down to the pixel; they used Apple's system font and a Mac OS logo in place of the Windows logo, but other than this the resemblance was more than just uncanny. Later on, Proteron would develop an application switcher as part of the shareware GoMac, which they later duplicated in the freeware LiteSwitch as a kind of teaser for GoMac.
Either way, this kind of application switcher is not a new concept, and Proteron should know that better than anyone. If Apple is to credit the original developers, then they should credit the original developers. I'm sure Microsoft ripped the concept off from somewhere, but whoever it was, it wasn't Proteron. Apple and Proteron have both ripped this one off.
The comparison to Karelia's Watson is, frankly, borderline disgusting. At least Watson could legitimately claim to have come up with a new concept and interface; Proteron -at least as far as common features between LSX and OSX goes- just Aquafied a longtime feature of Windows. LSX did other things, but these don't seem to have been duplicated. I don't agree with everything Karelia has said about the Watson situation either, but they had a much better claim than Proteron does.
Whilst we appreciate the compliment of being treated as an authority, we can return it only by observing that SCO has become a nest of liars and thieves compared to which IBM at its historic worst looked positively angelic.
Um, OK. It's true that SCO has at this point become nothing but a fraudulent company that deserves only to be dissolved, consider exactly what ESR is saying.
If we want to look at IBM's "historic worst", we would have to go back to World War II. At that time, IBM provided a fair amount of hardware to a certain German political party of that era. I believe we all know which one I'm talking about. Regardless, even nowadays, with the executives of that era long gone, there is still a not inconsiderable amount of bad blood between IBM and certain groups because of the support given.
Could Eric's update, therefore, be considered an indirect invocation of Godwin's Law?
Exactly; font-size switchers are Good Things. Granted, it's just coding around an IE misfeature, but this is the kind of thing that JavaScript is really good for.
If only more sites that used JavaScript did stuff like that. Forget the cheesy animations; JavaScript really comes into its own when you're using it to make the site Just Plain Work Better.
Here's a case where JavaScript might actually serve some use.
The The 80+-column eyestrain thing is a valid point. So is the point of making the page as wide as you want. What if a column were to default to 599px wide (using ALA as the example here) but then feature a "Wider" button which, when pressed, made the width of the column depend on the width of the window?
A button like this could be done in less than ten lines of JavaScript, and that includes functionality to make it toggle the fixed width on and off. With something like this, everyone would be happy, no?
I wonder what half-brained "DRM" scheme they will come up with next year? Remember; this is not the first year they've tried draconian "anti-piracy" measures...
The developer preview they have is a standalone version of IE. In other words, it doesn't affect anything else on your system, and it can be completely uninstalled.
Didn't Microsoft say this sort of thing was impossible, back in the days of the antitrust suit? Might we have evidence of perjury on our hands?
The good news: this idiot of a troll was so inept that he couldn't even make the link work right. You'll go to a 403 error on Yahoo's page rather than The Dreaded Site.
They claim that proprietary software vendors will be shut out.
Patently false, if you'll pardon the expression. Software will still need to be written, after all, and governments generally need a much faster timetable for initial releases than Open-Source has.
If anything, this will end up being more profitable for proprietary software vendors, who can leverage the Open-Source requirement to charge the state for an IP-rights release. The state has to pay if they want their software in a timely manner, and the results could easily cost as much or more than proprietary licenses do today.
But hey, that's anti-OSS FUD for you. They tend to claim that you can't make money with Open-Source. It's true that the traditional business model we see for most consumer software today doesn't work well in an Open-Source market. Contract work, however, continues to work just fine, and in an area where IP rights are treated as a valuable commodity (as they are in the US), contract work can become even more lucrative.
Score one for the good guys?
on
TIA Project to End
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I don't know about this. If it were truly scrapped, then it would be a wonderful thing. More likely, however, it's simply being driven underground.
Once granted power, no government ever gives it up willingly. That's the whole point of limited government, and it's why I doubt that this is really being cancelled. I'd watch the budget for next year, to see if the infamous black budget suddently grows by the same amount that TIA would have gotten.
It's clear that the F.T.C. has been engaging in regulatory imperialism and ruled outside it's area.
How so? Honest question.
Everyone knows that this could mean the end off telemarketing as an economical way of doing bussiness.
It probably will. This does not bother me. Business models come and go. In business, just as in nature, the rule is to adapt or perish. I see nothing wrong with that. I do see something wrong with corporate lobbyists manipulating the law, simply so that businesses won't have to make the effort to adapt to the markets. When a business controls its market, rather than the other way around, capitalism breaks.
While many of us don't like people selling us things we don't like but thats capiatalism you know.
No, it's not. It's often mistaken for capitalism, but it's really the opposite.
Allow me to explain. Capitalism is characterized by the law of supply and demand; that is, business adapts to the open market. In essence, the markets control business; when the market wants something, business rises to meet it, and when the market ceases to want it, the businesses either adapt or perish.
But within the past fifty years or so, a new phenomenon has arisen. Businesses are tired of being at the whim of the markets. They want to turn the tables and control the markets instead, by making us accept whatever they want to throw at us. They do this by lobbying Congress, manipulating the law for the sole purpose of preserving their business models, so that they no longer have to make the effort to adapt. Good for them, bad for the consumer. Why do they want this? For most, it's a matter of cost more than anything else; if they don't have to be at the beck and call of their customers, they save a lot of money.
This is not capitalism. In fact, it's the opposite. Some have called it mercantilism, though that's not quite correct (that's the name of a different system). I'm not sure there's a good name for it yet. In the end, though, it's bad for the consumer, because it takes yet another measure of control over our own lives out of our own hands.
That's why I'm not worried if the Do-Not-Call list breaks the back of the telemarketing industry. I doubt that it will; if half the households in the US have categorically rejected telemarketing, and the telemarketers no longer call them, then theoretically their response rate should double, which should make them more economical, not less. But frankly, that doesn't bother me either way. I'm sick and tired of this crap that corporations are feeding us, calling it capitalism when it's anything but. Let it float in the markets without its governmental safety net, and let it sink or swim, as it will.
There have been plenty of hacks. Consider the devices which would play the first tone or two of the error beep you normally get when the line has been disconnected. There's also Caller ID, which is all too easy to block, and so forth.
Every time someone uses a device like this -a clear indication that they wish to be left alone- the telemarketers eventually find a way to circumvent the device and call us anyway, despite the fact that we have already left a clear indication that we want them to deave us alone.
If you or I were to do such a thing, we could be charged with harrassment. In some states we could even be charged with stalking. The Do Not Call list simply ensures that telemarketers fall under the same laws that everyone else does. Businesses aren't above the law, you know. Or are you saying that they should be?
I still say that the worst job ever in science and technology would have to be the photographer for goatse.cx. I mean, think about it. It's bad enough on a computer screen; imagine the poor photographer who had to set that shot up.
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I call crap on his argument that video games cause violence because it gives people "ideas". It's the old "first a thought, then an act" argument that the Christian Right so often uses to try and get stuff censored.
Problem is, it's completely invalid. There is a huge leap between having an idea and actually choosing to act on that idea. Video games can only give ideas; they cannot move people to act on them. That is, and always will be, solely the reaponsibility of the individual who chooses to act.
Or, to put it another way: anyone who is exposed to sex can easily get the idea of forcing it upon another. Does this mean that any mention of (or, for that matter, having of) sex causes rape? Of course not; that would be ridiculous. Even though most people understand the concept, most would never in a million years do such a thing. They have the idea, but are no more likely to act on it than if they never knew it was possible.
This is like saying that school systems that have shitty overall test scores don't need to do anything because it's all the kid's (or parent's) fault.
No, but once again, I do not place the blame on the state. In most cases, the problems are with the children or the parents (which is not to say that there is no such thing as bad teachers, but the teaching profession itself is trying enough to act as a filter for most of these).
There are problems, I will admit. I do not think that the blame lies in lack of funding, simply because both the private schools in the US and the public school systems of many other nations (23, I believe) manage to do better while spending less money. The US public school system spends more per student than any other system in the world, yet it's a complete joke in terms of test scores.
This does not make sense. According to everything we know, it simply should not be; better-funded schools are supposed to be able to do more for their students, and yet clearly this is not happenning. That indicates to me that we don't know enough; that the real problems lie elsewhere. Rather than spinning our wheels by blindly throwing money at the problem when it's not helping, we should be doing more research into what the problems really are.
You act like the U.S. is the only country with genetically obese people. Or that somehow there are more genetically obese people in the U.S.
Quite the opposite. I said that if only genetically-obese people were counted, the US would probably have similar rates as anyone else. That would seem to indicate that I believe genetically-obese people to exist everywhere, would it not?
I do not debate that the US has a depressingly high obesity rate. I place the blame, however, on the individuals, not the country.
This is a cultural thing. An American cultural thing.
No, it is people with no self-control. That isn't culture at all; it's a personal weakness.
The US has its flaws, but you go too far.
God Bless America, with the worst crime levels in the first world
Irrelevant. That is the fault of the people committing the crimes, and no one else. I could likely find a rather large number of criminals where you live, but you have neglected to provide that information.
God Bless America, where "democracy" means a rich, white male as President
Irrelevant. If a rich white male is elected, then a rich white male is elected. That's all it means.
God Bless America, the biggest consumer of the world's natural resources
Irrelevant, given that all are either produced here or duly purchased from others. It is not as though they are stolen.
God Bless America, so happy to violate international laws
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, my friend.
God Bless America, where "freedom of speech" means race-hate groups like KKK
Where freedom of speech means real freedom of speech for all people, even those despised by society. Better than driving them underground, so you can pretend that the problems don't exist.
God Bless America, and its massive and ever-growing poverty gap
Documentation, please.
God Bless America, with barely 300 years of dire history and culture
The US is a young nation; so what?
God Bless America, all its appalling "sitcoms" with no grasp of irony
Yes, the US has some bad TV shows. It also has some good ones. Mind you, I find it interesting that many of the worst "American" TV shows are actually concepts ripped wholesale from other countries. Witness Coupling, Survivor, and Big Brother, to name only three.
God Bless America, with the highest obesity levels in the developed world
A problem, yes, but once again, the sole fault of those who don't control their eating and exercise habits. This does not consider the genetically obese; were only the genetically obese counted, the levels would almost certainly be similar to anywhere else.
God Bless America, because corporations should be allowed to run amok
As opposed to enslaving the public to the government in a babysitter-state condition of total dependency? I'd call that the lesser of two evils.
God Bless America, wasting billions to attack foreign countries
Define "waste".
I still think it was truly idiotic of the Congress to sing God Bless America on the Capitol steps the afternoon of 9/11 (which is what started the "God Bless America" craze and may be responsible for bolstering the morale of the Pseudo-Christian Right). Why, of all songs, did they have to pick that one? They should have sung The Star-Spangled Banner, or maybe America the Beautiful. Singing a song was a good idea; singing that song was a mistake which has had hideous consequences.
If HTML is a programming language, then explain to me how to create a simple for loop using nothing but HTML. Or something even easier: assign a value to a variable (this being one of the litmus tests of programming language). JavaScript may not be used; that is a separate language, and is not being disputed.
People go on about whether or not HTML is a programming language, as though the fact could actually be debated. It's quite simple, really. Give me a while loop and an assignment statement using only HTML (no JavaScript allowed), and you will have proven beyond any form of debate that HTML is a programming language. If you cannot do this, then HTML is not a programming language.
"Element/attribute/property structure" is irrelevant. There are programming languages with such a structure, such as XSLT, but that isn't what makes XSLT a programming language.
"Interpretation" is also irrelevent. Plenty of programming languages are interpreted: Java is probably the most famous example (scripting language also count, depending on who you ask, but no one calls Java a scripting language).
So, I challenge you: show me a while loop or an if statement in HTML. If you can't do this directly, then no problem; show me a structure which will do the same thing and I will be satisfied. But remember, you must only use HTML; you cannot use Javacript, PHP, or anything like that. Do this, and you will shut me up.
Learn by doing. Do by working. Embelished resumes are a fact of life.
For you, evidently, they are, and have to be. for most of the rest of the world, however, embellished resumes are a fact of life.
The Tasman engine has already been taken out of one browser (IE/Mac) and embedded into another (MSN/Mac). In the process, they cranked the engine's standards support to the point where it actually manages to kick the crap out of Mozilla and Opera. It even supports the nth-child() pseudoclass and its relatives, something no other browser has but everyone wants.
Unfortunately, because they force you to sign up and pay for MSN before you can even use the browser, almost no one knows this, and even fewer people test in it. I don't use MSN/Mac either. The worst part of this, though, is that Opera and Mozilla don't even seem to realize the catch-up that they now have to play.
But here's the thing: the Tasman engine was originally written to be portable, and there are no signs that this has changed. It is entirely possible that Microsoft could port this to Windows, stick it into Longhorn (which would also explain why there aren't supposed to be any more updates to IE/Win before then: they're retiring the old 'Trident' engine and focusing all their efforts on Tasman), and catch Mozilla and Opera completely off guard.
If the plows are owned by the state -not by the plow drivers- then I have no problem with the state putting GPS receivers in them. It's their property, after all; they could paint them bright pink and install loudspeakers on them that blare Yankee Doodle at max volume on repeat while the plows are running for all I care.
If, on the other hand, the plows are private vehicles, then we have a serious privacy issue here.
We in the US hate the RIAA and MPAA just as much as anyone else. They're only here because we didn't have the sense to oust them.
"File sharing" -the term, at least- has been corrupted by misuse. If we go by the strict definition of the term, then of course there is nothing wrong with it.
The problem is that many pirates have misappropriated the term, using it as a euphemism for piracy. This wouldn't be so bad, except that RIAA/MPAA/whoever has caught wind of this, and is capitalizing on it by trying to convince people that this is the actual definition of the term. Essentially, the idiot pirates have allowed RIAA to make a plausible-sounding claim that p2p networks are only used for piracy, because the pirates themselves use this term.
If this is in fact intentional on Apple's part, then it is very much Not Cool. Competition is good, deliberately breaking a competitor's product is not.
However, given Apple's abysmal QA as of late, I can't deny the possibility that this is just another supremely-idiotic bug that somehow slipped through.
Um, no.
As a former LiteSwitch user, I can say with some confidence that the window is not a "near-pixel" duplication. There are similar concepts in both cases, to be sure. The background of the switcher is transparent with rounded corners, but this can hardly be called a ripoff; the style is consistent with Apple's brightness and volume indicators, which have been a part of OSX since 10.0. Apple can't be blamed for UI consistency on that score.
The app titles are in Lucida Grande Bold in both LSX and OSX, colored white with a black drop shadow. Again, this is just a matter of UI consistency; Apple uses this very same font on desktops, and has since 10.0. In fact, this appears to be intended as Apple's standard font for text on top of any dark-colored UI element; the white text is controlled by a hidden preference "com.apple.Finder.hasDarkDesktop" (this was true in 10.0 at least).
The application icons are arranged in a horizontal row in LSX and OSX. Frankly, no other layout would make sense; Apple can hardly be blamed for this one.
Both LSX and OSX highlight the active app's icon by surrounding it with a differently-colored box. Aside from there being no other sensible way to highlight the icon in such an environment, it is worth noting that the boxes look different; LSX uses a dark box solid white border, while OSX uses a light box with no border but rounded corners, again more consistent with the style. Note that Proteron's implementation is closer to the look of the Windows application switcher, which predates both LSX and OSX.
Both OSX and LSX print the title of the currently selected application. LSX prints it centered at the bottom of the window, while OSX prints it under the application's icon. It's arguable which of these is better UI -points can be made both ways- but again, OSX is more consistent with Aqua, LSX is more consistent with Windows.
Panther's application switcher is not a duplication of LSX's functionality. For one thing, LSX actually goes significantly beyond what Panther's switcher does; if it's a copy, then it is a poor one except in terms of aesthetics. For another, although they look similar -more a testament to LSX's attempts to remain consistent with Aqua than Apple's attempts to rip them off- they are not the same. Some of the differences had to have taken some real effort to write, above and beyond any sort of cut/paste job.
Finally, I suppose, we should take a quick look at the history of LSX. LSX began life as a part of GoMac, which was nothing more or less than a Start Menu implementation for Mac OS 8. Not a bad implementation, either; they even added in support for control strip modules to replace Windows' system tray modules. However, this app copied the Win9X Start menu almost down to the pixel; they used Apple's system font and a Mac OS logo in place of the Windows logo, but other than this the resemblance was more than just uncanny. Later on, Proteron would develop an application switcher as part of the shareware GoMac, which they later duplicated in the freeware LiteSwitch as a kind of teaser for GoMac.
Either way, this kind of application switcher is not a new concept, and Proteron should know that better than anyone. If Apple is to credit the original developers, then they should credit the original developers. I'm sure Microsoft ripped the concept off from somewhere, but whoever it was, it wasn't Proteron. Apple and Proteron have both ripped this one off.
The comparison to Karelia's Watson is, frankly, borderline disgusting. At least Watson could legitimately claim to have come up with a new concept and interface; Proteron -at least as far as common features between LSX and OSX goes- just Aquafied a longtime feature of Windows. LSX did other things, but these don't seem to have been duplicated. I don't agree with everything Karelia has said about the Watson situation either, but they had a much better claim than Proteron does.
Whilst we appreciate the compliment of being treated as an authority, we can return it only by observing that SCO has become a nest of liars and thieves compared to which IBM at its historic worst looked positively angelic.
Um, OK. It's true that SCO has at this point become nothing but a fraudulent company that deserves only to be dissolved, consider exactly what ESR is saying.
If we want to look at IBM's "historic worst", we would have to go back to World War II. At that time, IBM provided a fair amount of hardware to a certain German political party of that era. I believe we all know which one I'm talking about. Regardless, even nowadays, with the executives of that era long gone, there is still a not inconsiderable amount of bad blood between IBM and certain groups because of the support given.
Could Eric's update, therefore, be considered an indirect invocation of Godwin's Law?
Exactly; font-size switchers are Good Things. Granted, it's just coding around an IE misfeature, but this is the kind of thing that JavaScript is really good for.
If only more sites that used JavaScript did stuff like that. Forget the cheesy animations; JavaScript really comes into its own when you're using it to make the site Just Plain Work Better.
Here's a case where JavaScript might actually serve some use.
The The 80+-column eyestrain thing is a valid point. So is the point of making the page as wide as you want. What if a column were to default to 599px wide (using ALA as the example here) but then feature a "Wider" button which, when pressed, made the width of the column depend on the width of the window?
A button like this could be done in less than ten lines of JavaScript, and that includes functionality to make it toggle the fixed width on and off. With something like this, everyone would be happy, no?
Actually, Carbon apps can use .nib files too. They even work in OS9.
IANAL, but I thought it was illegal to cold-call a cell phone, because the owner often gets charged for incoming and outgoing calls.
What are the telemarketers going to do, send SMS messages?
But there is a compact binary image format for SVG. It's called SVGZ.
Seriously; have you ever seen XML compress? It's a thing of beauty, man.
...maybe this means the current administration isn't as blindly pro-Israel as a lot of people have been led to believe?!
No, of course not. The current administration is one-dimensionally eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil; how could they do something like this?
I wonder what half-brained "DRM" scheme they will come up with next year? Remember; this is not the first year they've tried draconian "anti-piracy" measures...
The developer preview they have is a standalone version of IE. In other words, it doesn't affect anything else on your system, and it can be completely uninstalled.
Didn't Microsoft say this sort of thing was impossible, back in the days of the antitrust suit? Might we have evidence of perjury on our hands?
The bad news: this is a link to goatse.
The good news: this idiot of a troll was so inept that he couldn't even make the link work right. You'll go to a 403 error on Yahoo's page rather than The Dreaded Site.
They claim that proprietary software vendors will be shut out.
Patently false, if you'll pardon the expression. Software will still need to be written, after all, and governments generally need a much faster timetable for initial releases than Open-Source has.
If anything, this will end up being more profitable for proprietary software vendors, who can leverage the Open-Source requirement to charge the state for an IP-rights release. The state has to pay if they want their software in a timely manner, and the results could easily cost as much or more than proprietary licenses do today.
But hey, that's anti-OSS FUD for you. They tend to claim that you can't make money with Open-Source. It's true that the traditional business model we see for most consumer software today doesn't work well in an Open-Source market. Contract work, however, continues to work just fine, and in an area where IP rights are treated as a valuable commodity (as they are in the US), contract work can become even more lucrative.
I don't know about this. If it were truly scrapped, then it would be a wonderful thing. More likely, however, it's simply being driven underground.
Once granted power, no government ever gives it up willingly. That's the whole point of limited government, and it's why I doubt that this is really being cancelled. I'd watch the budget for next year, to see if the infamous black budget suddently grows by the same amount that TIA would have gotten.
It's clear that the F.T.C. has been engaging in regulatory imperialism and ruled outside it's area.
How so? Honest question.
Everyone knows that this could mean the end off telemarketing as an economical way of doing bussiness.
It probably will. This does not bother me. Business models come and go. In business, just as in nature, the rule is to adapt or perish. I see nothing wrong with that. I do see something wrong with corporate lobbyists manipulating the law, simply so that businesses won't have to make the effort to adapt to the markets. When a business controls its market, rather than the other way around, capitalism breaks.
While many of us don't like people selling us things we don't like but thats capiatalism you know.
No, it's not. It's often mistaken for capitalism, but it's really the opposite.
Allow me to explain. Capitalism is characterized by the law of supply and demand; that is, business adapts to the open market. In essence, the markets control business; when the market wants something, business rises to meet it, and when the market ceases to want it, the businesses either adapt or perish.
But within the past fifty years or so, a new phenomenon has arisen. Businesses are tired of being at the whim of the markets. They want to turn the tables and control the markets instead, by making us accept whatever they want to throw at us. They do this by lobbying Congress, manipulating the law for the sole purpose of preserving their business models, so that they no longer have to make the effort to adapt. Good for them, bad for the consumer. Why do they want this? For most, it's a matter of cost more than anything else; if they don't have to be at the beck and call of their customers, they save a lot of money.
This is not capitalism. In fact, it's the opposite. Some have called it mercantilism, though that's not quite correct (that's the name of a different system). I'm not sure there's a good name for it yet. In the end, though, it's bad for the consumer, because it takes yet another measure of control over our own lives out of our own hands.
That's why I'm not worried if the Do-Not-Call list breaks the back of the telemarketing industry. I doubt that it will; if half the households in the US have categorically rejected telemarketing, and the telemarketers no longer call them, then theoretically their response rate should double, which should make them more economical, not less. But frankly, that doesn't bother me either way. I'm sick and tired of this crap that corporations are feeding us, calling it capitalism when it's anything but. Let it float in the markets without its governmental safety net, and let it sink or swim, as it will.
I want my capitalism back.
There have been plenty of hacks. Consider the devices which would play the first tone or two of the error beep you normally get when the line has been disconnected. There's also Caller ID, which is all too easy to block, and so forth.
Every time someone uses a device like this -a clear indication that they wish to be left alone- the telemarketers eventually find a way to circumvent the device and call us anyway, despite the fact that we have already left a clear indication that we want them to deave us alone.
If you or I were to do such a thing, we could be charged with harrassment. In some states we could even be charged with stalking. The Do Not Call list simply ensures that telemarketers fall under the same laws that everyone else does. Businesses aren't above the law, you know. Or are you saying that they should be?
I still say that the worst job ever in science and technology would have to be the photographer for goatse.cx. I mean, think about it. It's bad enough on a computer screen; imagine the poor photographer who had to set that shot up.