I'm something of a free-speech absolutist myself, so I would say that at least ideally, the only time editors should be doing any actual editing is cleaning up duplicate posts, and perhaps mving posts from one forum to another one that's more appropriate, in multi-forum setups.
Beyond that, Slashdot-like moderation by users is the way to go. Slashdot's system has its flaws (the amount and direction of moderation should be independent of description, though there's definitely a need for both), but it's the best general idea that I've seen.
Continue to release your library under the LGPL. Then, create complete codumentation for the codec, complete with code or pseudocode examples, to aid in reimplementation, and release this under a license which allows for commercial development. Consider adding a clause to the license which forces readers who modify and don't redistribute to use a different name. Perhaps something similar to the MAME license would work for this.
The idea is to make reimplementation of the codec easy, while keeping your own code free. While this isn't an ideal solution, it may be a workable one.
What DHTML is, is really a combination of four things. The first is a content model. That's HTML. The second is a property set for these objects; CSS fills the bill. The third is a scripting language to actually do stuff with; JavaScript comes into play here. And the last thing you need is an object model, like the W3C DOM.
In and of themselves, none of these four things are terribly complex. However, putting them together makes life a lot more interesting for the developer.
You're right in that browsers don't have to be huge, even in this day and age. Opera proves that. But Mozilla has one further goal in mind: portability. That becomes a much greater issue, because it can greatly influence design decisions which can afffect speed and footprint.
It looks to me like the patent covers alpha-masking, not alpha-blending.
As I recall, PNG and SVG both use alpha channels. That is, transparency data is stored as a part of the image's color encoding.
Alpha-masking is different. In this case, an image is defined in the "normal" RGB fashion. Along with it, a second image is stored, which has only alpha information in it, not color. You could say that an alpha channel is inline, whereas an alpha mask is not.
Is the patent ridiculous? Of course it is. But I don't think it would affect PNG and SVG anyway, because they use a different method of storing transparency information.
In the end, the only way any of these are going to replace the desktop metaphor is if they can be shown to be better then the desktop. All of these fail at that task.
Although the idea of chronological storage is intriguing, and will work well for small groups of files, it breaks down completely once the user starts manipulating many files. This can be mitigated by storing them hierarchically, but this then ceases to offer much advantage over a desktop list view that's sorted reverse-chronologically by date.
3-D has two main disadvantages, both stemming from this notion of "space" as a way of managing files, as opposed to a flat "surface". The first is speed. Because there is more area (or, to be more accurate, volume) to navigate, the user has to spend more time looking for stuff. Second, as the article points out, things become easier to lose in 3-D space. You can alleviate some of this if you add the notion of "hallways" and "rooms" in which to organize things, but if you do, then you're still thinking in hierarchical terms, and that puts you right back on the Desktop.
Then, there's that funky sphere idea. Somewhat less of a problem than true 3-D, because you're still dealing with only one surface rather than a space Less easy to lose things. However, with all the spinning and zooming that you'd need to do, you lose speed, big time.
Microsoft's task-oriented stuff just doesn't work out. It's well-suited to carrying out actions, but not for organizing files. You just get dumped onto the Desktop.
It's true that the desktop metaphor has its flaws. In fact, truth be told, it's pretty bad. But it's like democracy in that regard: the only thing worse is everything else we've come up with so far.
Law does not prevent crime. There is a reason for this, namely, because laws are absurdly easy to disobey. So easy, in fact, that you and I probably break laws every day, most of which we're not even aware of.
To counterbalance this, laws have to be crafted to make them impossible to disobey. For example, rather than saying "action x is prohibited" (which anyone can do) you say "action x is punishable by sentence y" (which then leaves the matter to the courts to obey or disobey, and obeying the law is basically what courts do, so you're safe).
If you want to prevent crime, there is only one way: education, not legislation. And even this will fail sometimes. That is something a free society must accept; sometimes the bad guy will get away with crimes, but this is worth it if the innocent remain free because of it.
All governmental actions like this do is keep the information out of the hands of innocent, law-abiding citizens who have legitimate reasons (or at least non-malicious ones) for not wanting the data. Criminals will get whatever it is they want, no matter what you do, so the difference that these orders make is negligible at best.
While I don't doubt this is well-intentoned, it must not be allowed to happen.
If all people are to be held equal before the law, then all human thought must also be held equal before the law, because it is thought which truly makes us human. And if that is true, then all human speech must also be held equal before the law, because it is via speech that ideas are formed and propagated. Even the right to say things as reprehensible as hate speech must be held as absolute and sacrosanct.
The reason for this is simple: no one person knows the absolute truth. Not just about morality, but about basically anything (even sciense; Heisenberg showed that with his Uncertainty Principle). And yes, I include myself in this. It is only at some point in between all the differing viewpoints that the truth can ever be found. Start disallowing thoughts of any type, and you permanently cripple humanity's ability to seek truth. This is a far greater crime against humanity than any hate speech could ever be.
Trying to eliminate racism is an honorable goal. But this must be achieved through education, not legislation. Yeah, it's not as efficient. But it doesn't limit the human mind, and that is what makes it ethical.
Actually, the truly scientifically correct thing to do would be to duplicate the tests several times, just to make sure the deviation could be reproduced in a reliable manner.
The results of any experiment should be called into question until several other people have done the same thing and gotten the same results. The whole point of this redundancy is to reduce the chance of a flawed experiment being accepted.
Yeah, it's not as efficient. But science should be nothing if not reliable.
...and if you want your daily dose of factually-impaired pseudo-journalism, MozillaQuest has the usual commentary.
Very nice...
on
Netscape 6.2
·
· Score: 5, Informative
...however, Mozilla 0.9.5 and the nightlies afterward are already far ahead. Among other things, you get tabbed browsing, the Links toolbar, and (if you download the proper add-on) mouse gesture support.
Oh, sure. That's what they all say. And why this bill isn't the narrowly-focused, precise law that a truly protective measure would be. And why it doesn't give the government anything it didn't have that it actually needed.
The alternative is terrorist proliferation and constant fear.
That's one alternative. It's not the only one. Another is the drafting of a law which binds law enforcement to ethical, Constitutional practices while still giving them needed tools, thus resulting in a nation, in the ACLU's words, "safe and free." Not like it is now.
But sadly, that's not likely to happen now. In time, you'll understand, and you'll see this law for what it really is.
If there is anything more important than human life, it is the human spirit. And I don't mean that in the religious sense. I mean the will to succeed. The individual drive to be all that one can be. Reveling in one's individuality. You know, the stuff they make all those bad cheesy movies about.
But the human spirit is meaningless if it is not free. Our forefathers understood this; it's the entire reason they fought for freedom. And now, because a few people died, we are spitting on their graves by denying those who live the freedom that those who died once cherished.
Stop taking the rights you used to have for granted. Or don't; you'll find out soon enough just what this means.
YOu have more freedom than any other country in the world... Not anymore, we don't.
...yet you still whine like children being told off by their parents. I would hardly cause this "being told off by our parents." More like having radio collars attached. Is it wrong to rail against having one's rights violated in such a blatant manner?
You don't deserve all the freedoms you have. Everyone deserves the freedoms we have. It is a shame most governments would not see this happen.
Politically you are a lame, soft country... You just called us the freest nation in the world, yet you think we are "lame" and "soft"? Please explain that, because I don't understand.
and its only your military that stops you being eaten alive by all the others out there who care little for your "Human rights" and other drivel you spout. Perhaps. But this law isn't about the military anyway, so your point is utterly moot.
This betrayal of the American people by Congress is certainly a horrible thing. Worse, even, because the sheep that is the general populace thinks that any good will come of this, that the government will "protect" us now, as though they hadn't in the past.
But it could be even worse.
Think about this. The only ethical thing to do now is to fight to get this overturned. But what will happen if, in fact, the courts find this to be unconstitutional (which it very plainly is)?
I'll tell you what will happen. The traitors who proposed and passed this bill will start bemoan how the Constitution is "unworkable," about how it "keeps the government from protecting its people." They'll whip up public support from the ignorant masses, and whether it's via amendments or just via some kind of resolution, we will lose everything the Constitution guarantees. Not to mention oppression of those who would oppose them.
They now have the Fourth Amendment shot down. Nine to go. And they may well have us painted into a corner.
Congrats, Osama you bastard. You won, it seems. Our government is turning into yours, slowly but very surely.
With the Mozilla build from this morning on Win32, I get the following errors loading the page:
There are three horizontal rules on the page which are shown as grooves, rather than the solid dark lines they should be.
One or two parts of the page are positioned slightly wrong, although nothing is ever obscured.
Translation: MS is lying to users. Not that this is the first time they've done it, but I guess it just goes to show that they're up to their old tricks.
I thought that the original goal was to make a _simple_ declarative language that handled 80% of the transformations easily and left the other 20% to something else (like using a real language). No, that was CSS. XSLT was supposed to fill in another 15% or so, with only a small fraction then being left to a "real" language.
It's not a simple copy...
on
Mozilla 0.9.5
·
· Score: 2
Actually, the MultiZilla guys asked Mozilla to do this one. More recent releases of MultiZilla are extensions to this, rather than a complete re-implementation. Most likely, MultiZilla itself will be folded into Mozilla, eventually.
Of course, what I'm really waiting for is for MozGest to get integrated. Gesture-based navigation rules.
Administrator-class users [i]do [/i]have to authenticate to save their changes to the NetInfo database.
The real problem is sudo. Any Administrator-class user can use sudo on anything they want. That is, obviously, an obscenely huge hole. But it's not quite as bad as you make it sound. Still dire, but there's no need to exaggerate it even further than it already is.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm something of a free-speech absolutist myself, so I would say that at least ideally, the only time editors should be doing any actual editing is cleaning up duplicate posts, and perhaps mving posts from one forum to another one that's more appropriate, in multi-forum setups.
Beyond that, Slashdot-like moderation by users is the way to go. Slashdot's system has its flaws (the amount and direction of moderation should be independent of description, though there's definitely a need for both), but it's the best general idea that I've seen.
Continue to release your library under the LGPL. Then, create complete codumentation for the codec, complete with code or pseudocode examples, to aid in reimplementation, and release this under a license which allows for commercial development. Consider adding a clause to the license which forces readers who modify and don't redistribute to use a different name. Perhaps something similar to the MAME license would work for this.
The idea is to make reimplementation of the codec easy, while keeping your own code free. While this isn't an ideal solution, it may be a workable one.
DHTML is just a marketing term.
What DHTML is, is really a combination of four things. The first is a content model. That's HTML. The second is a property set for these objects; CSS fills the bill. The third is a scripting language to actually do stuff with; JavaScript comes into play here. And the last thing you need is an object model, like the W3C DOM.
In and of themselves, none of these four things are terribly complex. However, putting them together makes life a lot more interesting for the developer.
You're right in that browsers don't have to be huge, even in this day and age. Opera proves that. But Mozilla has one further goal in mind: portability. That becomes a much greater issue, because it can greatly influence design decisions which can afffect speed and footprint.
It looks to me like the patent covers alpha-masking, not alpha-blending.
As I recall, PNG and SVG both use alpha channels. That is, transparency data is stored as a part of the image's color encoding.
Alpha-masking is different. In this case, an image is defined in the "normal" RGB fashion. Along with it, a second image is stored, which has only alpha information in it, not color. You could say that an alpha channel is inline, whereas an alpha mask is not.
Is the patent ridiculous? Of course it is. But I don't think it would affect PNG and SVG anyway, because they use a different method of storing transparency information.
In the end, the only way any of these are going to replace the desktop metaphor is if they can be shown to be better then the desktop. All of these fail at that task.
Although the idea of chronological storage is intriguing, and will work well for small groups of files, it breaks down completely once the user starts manipulating many files. This can be mitigated by storing them hierarchically, but this then ceases to offer much advantage over a desktop list view that's sorted reverse-chronologically by date.
3-D has two main disadvantages, both stemming from this notion of "space" as a way of managing files, as opposed to a flat "surface". The first is speed. Because there is more area (or, to be more accurate, volume) to navigate, the user has to spend more time looking for stuff. Second, as the article points out, things become easier to lose in 3-D space. You can alleviate some of this if you add the notion of "hallways" and "rooms" in which to organize things, but if you do, then you're still thinking in hierarchical terms, and that puts you right back on the Desktop.
Then, there's that funky sphere idea. Somewhat less of a problem than true 3-D, because you're still dealing with only one surface rather than a space Less easy to lose things. However, with all the spinning and zooming that you'd need to do, you lose speed, big time.
Microsoft's task-oriented stuff just doesn't work out. It's well-suited to carrying out actions, but not for organizing files. You just get dumped onto the Desktop.
It's true that the desktop metaphor has its flaws. In fact, truth be told, it's pretty bad. But it's like democracy in that regard: the only thing worse is everything else we've come up with so far.
Well, perhaps the reason Slashdot rejected it was that they already ran a story on Apple's alpha blending patent several days ago?
Not all rejections are ridiculous, you know.
Law does not prevent crime. There is a reason for this, namely, because laws are absurdly easy to disobey. So easy, in fact, that you and I probably break laws every day, most of which we're not even aware of.
To counterbalance this, laws have to be crafted to make them impossible to disobey. For example, rather than saying "action x is prohibited" (which anyone can do) you say "action x is punishable by sentence y" (which then leaves the matter to the courts to obey or disobey, and obeying the law is basically what courts do, so you're safe).
If you want to prevent crime, there is only one way: education, not legislation. And even this will fail sometimes. That is something a free society must accept; sometimes the bad guy will get away with crimes, but this is worth it if the innocent remain free because of it.
All governmental actions like this do is keep the information out of the hands of innocent, law-abiding citizens who have legitimate reasons (or at least non-malicious ones) for not wanting the data. Criminals will get whatever it is they want, no matter what you do, so the difference that these orders make is negligible at best.
While I don't doubt this is well-intentoned, it must not be allowed to happen.
If all people are to be held equal before the law, then all human thought must also be held equal before the law, because it is thought which truly makes us human. And if that is true, then all human speech must also be held equal before the law, because it is via speech that ideas are formed and propagated. Even the right to say things as reprehensible as hate speech must be held as absolute and sacrosanct.
The reason for this is simple: no one person knows the absolute truth. Not just about morality, but about basically anything (even sciense; Heisenberg showed that with his Uncertainty Principle). And yes, I include myself in this. It is only at some point in between all the differing viewpoints that the truth can ever be found. Start disallowing thoughts of any type, and you permanently cripple humanity's ability to seek truth. This is a far greater crime against humanity than any hate speech could ever be.
Trying to eliminate racism is an honorable goal. But this must be achieved through education, not legislation. Yeah, it's not as efficient. But it doesn't limit the human mind, and that is what makes it ethical.
Actually, the truly scientifically correct thing to do would be to duplicate the tests several times, just to make sure the deviation could be reproduced in a reliable manner.
The results of any experiment should be called into question until several other people have done the same thing and gotten the same results. The whole point of this redundancy is to reduce the chance of a flawed experiment being accepted.
Yeah, it's not as efficient. But science should be nothing if not reliable.
...and if you want your daily dose of factually-impaired pseudo-journalism, MozillaQuest has the usual commentary.
...however, Mozilla 0.9.5 and the nightlies afterward are already far ahead. Among other things, you get tabbed browsing, the Links toolbar, and (if you download the proper add-on) mouse gesture support.
Very, very cool.
And this matters... because... why? Honest question: how exactly do someone's religious beliefs affect in the least their ability to code?
This law is for your protection, for God's sake!
Oh, sure. That's what they all say. And why this bill isn't the narrowly-focused, precise law that a truly protective measure would be. And why it doesn't give the government anything it didn't have that it actually needed.
The alternative is terrorist proliferation and constant fear.
That's one alternative. It's not the only one. Another is the drafting of a law which binds law enforcement to ethical, Constitutional practices while still giving them needed tools, thus resulting in a nation, in the ACLU's words, "safe and free." Not like it is now.
But sadly, that's not likely to happen now. In time, you'll understand, and you'll see this law for what it really is.
Yes. It is true. Many people died in the WTC.
That does not matter.
If there is anything more important than human life, it is the human spirit. And I don't mean that in the religious sense. I mean the will to succeed. The individual drive to be all that one can be. Reveling in one's individuality. You know, the stuff they make all those bad cheesy movies about.
But the human spirit is meaningless if it is not free. Our forefathers understood this; it's the entire reason they fought for freedom. And now, because a few people died, we are spitting on their graves by denying those who live the freedom that those who died once cherished.
Stop taking the rights you used to have for granted. Or don't; you'll find out soon enough just what this means.
YOu have more freedom than any other country in the world...
...yet you still whine like children being told off by their parents.
Not anymore, we don't.
I would hardly cause this "being told off by our parents." More like having radio collars attached. Is it wrong to rail against having one's rights violated in such a blatant manner?
You don't deserve all the freedoms you have.
Everyone deserves the freedoms we have. It is a shame most governments would not see this happen.
Politically you are a lame, soft country...
You just called us the freest nation in the world, yet you think we are "lame" and "soft"? Please explain that, because I don't understand.
and its only your military that stops you being eaten alive by all the others out there who care little for your "Human rights" and other drivel you spout.
Perhaps. But this law isn't about the military anyway, so your point is utterly moot.
This betrayal of the American people by Congress is certainly a horrible thing. Worse, even, because the sheep that is the general populace thinks that any good will come of this, that the government will "protect" us now, as though they hadn't in the past.
But it could be even worse.
Think about this. The only ethical thing to do now is to fight to get this overturned. But what will happen if, in fact, the courts find this to be unconstitutional (which it very plainly is)?
I'll tell you what will happen. The traitors who proposed and passed this bill will start bemoan how the Constitution is "unworkable," about how it "keeps the government from protecting its people." They'll whip up public support from the ignorant masses, and whether it's via amendments or just via some kind of resolution, we will lose everything the Constitution guarantees. Not to mention oppression of those who would oppose them.
They now have the Fourth Amendment shot down. Nine to go. And they may well have us painted into a corner.
Congrats, Osama you bastard. You won, it seems. Our government is turning into yours, slowly but very surely.
Translation: MS is lying to users. Not that this is the first time they've done it, but I guess it just goes to show that they're up to their old tricks.
Looks like some kind of MP3 player called the "iPod." FireWire equipped, a 5-gig hard drive, etc, etc, etc.
To be honest, thus far I'm disappointed. This is what Apple calls "breakthrough"?
Live coverage of the conference is at MacMinute (but they'll get swamped soon enough...)
You've got the right idea, but that was for another picture. This is a different one.
Still probably fake, though.
...but these look fake to me. Almost definitely 3D-rendered. Maybe useful as an "artists' conception" pic, but that's not what this was touted as.
And besides, Apple already said "it's not a Mac." This looks a lot like a Mac to me, albeit a reeeeeeeeally small one.
Why are people so obsessed with the idea of Apple releasing a PDA, anyway?
I thought that the original goal was to make a _simple_ declarative language that handled 80% of the transformations easily and left the other 20% to something else (like using a real language).
No, that was CSS. XSLT was supposed to fill in another 15% or so, with only a small fraction then being left to a "real" language.
Actually, the MultiZilla guys asked Mozilla to do this one. More recent releases of MultiZilla are extensions to this, rather than a complete re-implementation. Most likely, MultiZilla itself will be folded into Mozilla, eventually.
Of course, what I'm really waiting for is for MozGest to get integrated. Gesture-based navigation rules.
...though I will admit, it's pretty dismal.
Administrator-class users [i]do [/i]have to authenticate to save their changes to the NetInfo database.
The real problem is sudo. Any Administrator-class user can use sudo on anything they want. That is, obviously, an obscenely huge hole. But it's not quite as bad as you make it sound. Still dire, but there's no need to exaggerate it even further than it already is.
I'm waiting for the GeForce4 Adamantium myself.
"The power to rip the other cards to shreds..."
Does this make mallinking to goatse.cx a crime? Might be something for all those trolls to think about before trying that again...