"People don't surf the web because they want a Rich Immersive Experience. They surf because they want to find solutions to their problems or find products and services that meet their needs and wants. Flash just gets in the way. So, do yourself a favor and learn what makes the Web work well -- HTML, XHTML, CSS, and their W3C-recommended friends."
CSS and dhtml were developed to provide just that "Rich Immersive Experience" you deride, without the plugin download. Fact is, if people didn't want a pretty or graphical site, then the tag would never have been invented, and everyone would still be using lynx.
Actually, I spoke fairly too soon. There is another comment in the thread that talks about a gpl site for shockwave/flash. Apparently, Macromedia has opened up to some degree the plugin for O.S. development.
I dont think plugins are neccessarily a bad thing. Obviously, theres only so much a browser can do, and companies have pretty much been writing addons for them since their inception. The problem arises, however, that plugin downloads and proprietary usage have either pretty much destroyed their usage or have held them back from gaining widespread acceptance (remember VRML?).
Flash/Shockwave has been a nice example of good technology been picked up by the public. It allows for good looking sites and the evolution of the web from a simple straight information only medium to, at least on some level, a distribution point for multimedia content.
There are battles over this, obviously. I saw the comment about sites arent good unless they look good in lynx. That, IMHO, is bollocks. Its been pretty much proven that human beings understand and retain information better when they have at least some degree of visual image correlation to what they are reading. Now, this extends beyond rollovers and site intros. Site navigation and entire architecture can be restudied and revamped in order to provide a more interactive feel, and better grahpical representation to the data that users see. The exact method of going about this is still in its infancy, in reference to the web, because the technology to do this is still fairly new and specific design impacts are not really studied (other than the "its sucks" or "it rocks" type thing).
It is going to be an exciting time when the flash player becomes ubiqutous in browser installs (as it pretty much is for all non *nix OS browsers). *nix is the only system left lacking. However, this might not be so devious as it can be made out to be. Only recently have statistics shown that linux (and other *nix's) are gaining desktop system usage in amounts large enough to allow these companies to feel justified in porting the player over (you dont exactly need browser plugins on a console server). Although we wish that it wasn't so, this wonderful technology is a proprietary product from a large corporation. Even if they bill themselves as a "cutting edge" technology company, they still operate on one principal...their bottom line. For my part, I am content to wait a little bit longer and see if Macromedia (or any other graphical representation plugin company) seriously gets with the program and GPL's their plugin so that it can be accuratly used on *nix desktops.
This does not mean that the community should begin work on its own porting of these technologies. To ignore something this functional and widespread would be fairly ludicrous. Imagine the impact if everyone had said "people are happy with my black and white. why should we broadcast in color?". It is time to face up to the reality that the web can, and does, carry multimedia content, and it is desired by a large group of end users. Therefore, if we can make plans now, while it is still a fairly emerging technology, the O.S./*nix community will be in much better shape than if it is ignored until it is so ubiquotous and wide spread that we are stuck in the cold, and playing catchup.
Basically, F/S is a great technology. The fact that is relies on a currently (and i do stress that word) proprietary plugin is unfortunate, but that doesn't mean it is evil or should be shunned. Facing the future sometimes means going against what you might feel at the time is better judgement. The worst thing that can happen is that the plugin falls out of favor, and no one uses it.
Heh. Yes. But now those splash pages can give way to extremly well designed and thought out sites which have just as much power as a normal dynamic site.
IMHO, part of the reason that, up until now, flash has only been used for those useless splash pages is that that is all the functionality really allowed for. You couldn't very well build a site in flash when it had a joke as a scripting language and only tenuous, at best, ties to external functions on the site. With PERL and php allowing inroads however, it allows developers like little ol' me to program a site exactly as we would with HTML, only allow for the nice little graphic implementation that my designers are always yelling at me about.
When flash first came out, I thought it was truly going to be revolutionary, until I used it in more of a live (instead of experimental) environment and understood its shortcomings. Even up through flash 5 (which has, in its credit, added a lot of functionality, a better designed internal scripting language, and XML support) it had apparent weaknesses which would prevent it from being used for what is was supposed to do, which was allow you to build a fully programmable and extensible site such as you would in Director, yet allow for small file sizes, quick downloads, and better animation resolution.
If you want to really split hairs about it, the translations, which are probably marginally different from the original text, were made this millenium:)j/k
okay..so i wasn't thinking there. point taken. however, i still stand by every other statement i made in my original post. there are a number of books and authors which were not represented, or represented so lowly as to point to a distinct moron-factor in the poll users.
Very true what you say about shakespeare. However, considering he WAS rated #16 in that poll (click the see all top 100 link), its obvious that he was included in the roundup.
Perl has always been good on supporting and integrating with oncoming web technologies. Since i work with both flash 5 and perl, I can say that this is a happy day for me personally, and a happy day for all grahpical inclined web producers everywhere.
better question, now that this is out, does this mean we might see some sort of GPL attached to the flash/shockwave players? IMHO that has been holding back alot of Linux users from being able to experience a great number of excellent looking and functional sites, since they are only capabale of using a beta (and god-awful buggy) player.
Hrmmm....
Now, while I am apt to agree with some of the choices on that list, there are obvious omissions.
Not a single ancient work appears on that list (the Illiad, the Oddessy, Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, for samplers).
Bram's Dracula is probably one of the most popular works EVER, yet it doesn't appear on the list. Also missing is ANYTHING by Dickens, Fitzgerald, Defoe, or Stevenson, or Hemingway. But I guess Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (which are required reading in U.S. grade and junior high schools, I believe) just dont rank up there with the "Harry Potter phenomenon."
No offense inteded to the LOTR, but frankly, it may deserve to be in the top 20, but not in the top 10. As for Tolkien being the greatest author of the Millenium? Well, I should go talk to my H.S. English teacher, and ask her why I had to read all that Shakespeare stuff, when he apparently wasn't even the runner up as the greatest author of all time.
the low-browing of culture makes me absolutely want to vomit sometimes.
There is always the route of contacting companies in the US, and getting them to sponser you for an H1B visa if/when you get hired. However...
Be very careful about the terms and conditions that come along with this. It may seem like a company is offering the world to you, but, rest assured, there is fine print. Unfortunately, due to somewhat lax oversight and the desperate need for technical personnel in the United States right now, alot of up and coming.com's and related businesses are using the H1B as a 2k version of Indentured Servitude.
At a previous employer of mine (and this is not an isolated incident, just one i happend to be a part of), we had hired several workers from India, and then sponsered them for H1Bs. However, after being the in country for a certain amount of time, they asked for a nominal increase in pay (much like any worker would after a set period of time, in this case, 9 months.) The programmers were denied the raise, and told that any further asking would result in the termination of the companies kindness in the H1B process. Also, if there were fired, it would make things extremly difficult, since there is only a set amount of time you have to get a new job and have your new company pick up the visa tab, lest you be deported.
The process can be an excellent thing for people in your position, with talent and skills that are in demand. However, just make sure you read the fine print, and if possible, talk to other employees in the company who may have gone throught the process themselves.
P.S. I think i remember seeing a link in a story on/. as to companies that had/are sponsoring H1B visas, and their fairness (for lack of a better term) in the process. I could be wrong (or it could have been on another site). Look around, do your research, and good luck:).
Re-read my post. Nowhere did I discount the existance of God, nor say that people cannot believe in it/s/he. Just that the view that God created all life seems to run coutner to science and its subsequent mapping of the genome.
"we have caught a glimpse of an instruction book previously known only to God."
My inference that he is a creationist (or holds a like viewpoint) refers to the fact that he said only God had access to the instruction manual to create life. To me, that infers that he believes God made life, and now he has glimpsed the "instruction manual" that was used.
It seems to me that a scientific project which seems to show a chemical and secular basis for (and i do stress the phrase "seems to") life would tend to discount a creationist point of view. This doesn't, nor was I implying, that it discounts the existance of God or any higher power.
I'm not saying that he is not allowed to believe in God, or even allowed to believe in Creationism. Im just saying that a man who believes God created all life seems an ironic choice to head up the mapping of the human genome, IMHO. That is just my opinion, and of course, I could and have been wrong.
Unfortunately, this is a trend that has been going for a long time, and has only been aided by the growth of the www.
It used to be that companies needed magazines and news services to get their name noticed, therefore would submit to a really pointed interview (or at least one that didn't read, as you said, like a press release).
However, with the growth of the niche magazine market and the 1000000000000 gamer sites on the Internet, publications now need to fight to get interviews from relevant companies. If they go too hard on the interview, they just might never get another one, therefore denying them site traffic/buyers for the their magazine. Therefore, they basically kiss up and allow their publication to be used as a secondary marketing platform, instead of a informative source for fans and enthusiasts.
There are some good sites and zines out there that do excellent interviews, however they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Sometimes, the over-abundance of publications can hurt the quality and veracity of information being released. ugh.
FYI - if you look around, you'll notice that this trend is not specific to gaming (or even just computing). Go to your local magazine rack and look through at "exclusive interviews" and you'll notice that they read more like pre-reviewed and press-agent prepared puff pieces, rather than a source of good information.
I read a transcript of the whole to-do at the White House during the genome annoucement, however I missed something that that link pointed out.
"Venter's counterpart at the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, told the same audience that "we have caught a glimpse of an instruction book previously known only to God." "
A man involved in one of the more purely secular and scientific research projects of human history, and he is a creationist?
I'm not hawking any one viewpoint, I just find his position in relationship to his work ironic.
Oh come now. While I do agree with you that the best way for consumers to show their power in a capitalist system is their buying power, I think the rest of your post is more zealotry than I can handle right after lunch.
Being a web developer since pretty much the beginning of html, it has been a large part of my job to examine and test new browsers as they come out, and find which one will a) provide an easy yet powerful development platform and b) provide the end user with the best representation of the information they are trying to reach. For quite some time, in the beginning, Netscape was on the top of my list.
However, times change, dont they? Microsoft has, since the 4th generation, produced an excellent product in Internet Explorer. Its DOM implementation is superior and easier to access, it is far more stable (yes, it crashes, but so do all browsers..except for lynx), and frankly, IMHO, it renders HTML to the desires of the web developer better than Netscape.
Now that I've illustrated pretty much my web-development platform and personal browser choice, let me respond to the OSS issues you raised.
You claim that the use of Netscape 6 is a boon to the OSS movement, in that it proves that it has begun to prove that it can produce superior end-user products. However, how does it speak for the community that highly-paid developers from a HUGE conglomeration were primary figures in developing this product?
Also, speaking to the "moral" issues you raised, i would like very much to see how you feel that AOL is any less immoral than microsoft.
Well, if you are talking about the United States, we could argue the symantec's of "columbus didn't discover the North American continent":) (just kidding)
Anyway, yes, however, to compare the religious fervor of Columbus's time to the more secular concerns of the 1700's, is practically like comparing apples and oranges. Columbus may have written that, however, he was also living in the time of the Spanish Inquisition. He wanted to find new lands for his Lord and Country, because thats the only thing the he could say and get the money and support he needed for his discoveries. Spain, post-Roman Empire, is DEFINATELY a country founded on the Christian fervor and not just the simple Christian faith.
Jumping forward to the times of the American Revolution, we can obviously see the slow deterioration of the Catholic fervor, being slowly replaced with a faith in a more benevolent God (however misguided) and his eventual forgivness, not damnation (a rather reasonable mass hallucination, given the slow rise in personal freedoms and liberties seen since the demise of the early Calvinist theocracies). At this point, a large majority of people have seen the corruption of the Church of the past several hundred years, as well as the problems of basing government on a theocracy, especially in the Northeast. Did people still go to church? Yes. Were there still occasional outcropings of Inquisition style fervor? Yes (remember the witch burnings had been just a little over a century ago, a time which it is quite evident NO ONE wanted to return too). And yes, the vast majority of people in the colonies practiced the Catholic faith.
However, could you not just chalk that up to the fact that the majority of the people that had come to the colonies happened to be of the Catholic faith? And that letting ones religious morals control ones life is not neccessarliy a bad thing, and that those morals will eventually shape a persons actions, even the actions of the forming of his/her own country? The seperation in church and state comes in the fact that you do not have to practice the catholic faith in order to be involved in American government or law (our democratic Vice-Presidential nominee shows this quite nicely at the time of this post).
Now, has there been a constant Christian majority in politics and society in the United States? Yes, that fact is undeniable. Blaming that fact on the state however is ludicrious. The simple fact is that the majority of people in the United States have always been Christian, and the people in the majority tend to do nasty things to stay in majority. It seems to me that the actions of what can be seen as the Christian Majority (protestant to be more specific) can be more attributed to the poor morals of the individual people, rather than the poor message of their faith. It is because of this majority, and their individual actions over the years, that we see America as a catholic club only.
Keep in mind i am not a Christian, but i am saying that it is not wrong to allow what one views as their deep religious beliefs to shape their actions. This only becomes a problem when the outcome of those actions is depolorable by almost any creed.
-syrupMatt
"Moving throught the masses like a fish through water."
Our founding fathers also warned of the tyranny of men who accumulate too much power and lose the ability to change with the times. Face it, our government is slow moving, slow acting, and painfully slow changing.
What is worse is that politicans have learned to exploit this for their own advantage. Know the term "buried in committee", and such nonesene to placate a special interest group by forming a study, and then using the old "these things take time" excuse.
Frankly, change should not take time. We are in an era of unprecendented prosperity and change for the better (even though sometimes it seems like the complete opposite). "Cyber-democracy", or whatever catch phrase you want to attach to that notion, is quite simply the best way to save our governemt from becoming even more of a stagnated cesspool of self-serving nonesense.
Yes, the person with the loudest voice is always heard first (i like your analogy with the pro-life/republicans). However, on the Net, there is no "heard first". There are so many places of information sharing and distribution, that it almost seems infeasable for one special interest group to completly obliterate any voice from dissenters. Even the weight of mega tech corporations cannot silence the voices of dissention on the net (the success of slashdot and the effors of 2600 is perfect evidence of that).
-syrupMatt
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water."
In a way, though, we've seen the speed of the United States political system be ramped up in relation with the spread and speed of technology.
Governments of past weren't slow by design, they were slow by neccessity. You couldn't exactly gauge public opinion when it might have taken two months to determine what the popular majority is (assuming of course, that we are talking about a democracy).
However, now, we have the chance to put government back where it belongs, in the hands of the people. A fast moving govenment that conforms to the will of the people, while still acting in best interests of them, would be an unprecedented feat in human history. Of course, there would be mistakes. And there would always be the "fad factor". However, the answer isn't for government to move slowly and surely. The answer is for them to move FAST and surely, and not be afraid to make mistakes on the way.
I would rather a government i could help to change and mold as needed, mistakes and pathfalls all, rather than continue to deal with the slow moving weight of an archaic political system. Does it really make any sense in the most advanced time in history to be using a system of government (the democratic republic) that was deemed flawed almost 2000 years ago?
-syrupMatt
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water."
The seperation of church and state refers more to the fact that the laws of the United States must reflect secular interests more so than they do the interests of the religious majority.
While I do dislike politicans who use religion as the basis of their platform, I have no problem with a minister/preacher/rabbi/shaman/sheik whatever expressing their political views to his congregation. That right remains his/her right of Free Speech, and as such, although we may disagree with the platform that he is speaking from, we cannot argue that he DOES have the right to speak.
Also, on that same note, it is interesting to note that some of the first gatherings of revolutionary-minded people in the late 1700's were based in/on the preachings of revolutionary deacons, who used their position in front of a large number of people to spread the furvor of anti-British sentiment.
Now, as for every politican mentioning god. What do professional politicans do best? They pander to speical interest groups and large numbers of people with relatively the same beliefs. While you and i and many others may not believe in the religious that said politican is espousing, the fact is that much of America does. Not only that, but if they hold those religious views, it is again their right to state them, as long as they dont force them upon other people.
A better question to ask is to what extent do we let government control the influence of religion? At what point does religion stop being free speech?
-syrupMatt
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water."
Slashdot Mirror
"People don't surf the web because they want a Rich Immersive Experience. They surf because they want to find solutions to their problems or find products and services that meet their needs and wants. Flash just gets in the way. So, do yourself a favor and learn what makes the Web work well -- HTML, XHTML, CSS, and their W3C-recommended friends."
CSS and dhtml were developed to provide just that "Rich Immersive Experience" you deride, without the plugin download. Fact is, if people didn't want a pretty or graphical site, then the tag would never have been invented, and everyone would still be using lynx.
Actually, I spoke fairly too soon. There is another comment in the thread that talks about a gpl site for shockwave/flash. Apparently, Macromedia has opened up to some degree the plugin for O.S. development.
I dont think plugins are neccessarily a bad thing. Obviously, theres only so much a browser can do, and companies have pretty much been writing addons for them since their inception. The problem arises, however, that plugin downloads and proprietary usage have either pretty much destroyed their usage or have held them back from gaining widespread acceptance (remember VRML?).
Flash/Shockwave has been a nice example of good technology been picked up by the public. It allows for good looking sites and the evolution of the web from a simple straight information only medium to, at least on some level, a distribution point for multimedia content.
There are battles over this, obviously. I saw the comment about sites arent good unless they look good in lynx. That, IMHO, is bollocks. Its been pretty much proven that human beings understand and retain information better when they have at least some degree of visual image correlation to what they are reading. Now, this extends beyond rollovers and site intros. Site navigation and entire architecture can be restudied and revamped in order to provide a more interactive feel, and better grahpical representation to the data that users see. The exact method of going about this is still in its infancy, in reference to the web, because the technology to do this is still fairly new and specific design impacts are not really studied (other than the "its sucks" or "it rocks" type thing).
It is going to be an exciting time when the flash player becomes ubiqutous in browser installs (as it pretty much is for all non *nix OS browsers). *nix is the only system left lacking. However, this might not be so devious as it can be made out to be. Only recently have statistics shown that linux (and other *nix's) are gaining desktop system usage in amounts large enough to allow these companies to feel justified in porting the player over (you dont exactly need browser plugins on a console server). Although we wish that it wasn't so, this wonderful technology is a proprietary product from a large corporation. Even if they bill themselves as a "cutting edge" technology company, they still operate on one principal...their bottom line. For my part, I am content to wait a little bit longer and see if Macromedia (or any other graphical representation plugin company) seriously gets with the program and GPL's their plugin so that it can be accuratly used on *nix desktops.
This does not mean that the community should begin work on its own porting of these technologies. To ignore something this functional and widespread would be fairly ludicrous. Imagine the impact if everyone had said "people are happy with my black and white. why should we broadcast in color?". It is time to face up to the reality that the web can, and does, carry multimedia content, and it is desired by a large group of end users. Therefore, if we can make plans now, while it is still a fairly emerging technology, the O.S./*nix community will be in much better shape than if it is ignored until it is so ubiquotous and wide spread that we are stuck in the cold, and playing catchup.
Basically, F/S is a great technology. The fact that is relies on a currently (and i do stress that word) proprietary plugin is unfortunate, but that doesn't mean it is evil or should be shunned. Facing the future sometimes means going against what you might feel at the time is better judgement. The worst thing that can happen is that the plugin falls out of favor, and no one uses it.
But he is in the top #100 on that site. He just, for some reason, did not get enough votes to get into the top #10.
btw: i wouldn't exactly characterize that theory as popular.
Heh. Yes. But now those splash pages can give way to extremly well designed and thought out sites which have just as much power as a normal dynamic site.
IMHO, part of the reason that, up until now, flash has only been used for those useless splash pages is that that is all the functionality really allowed for. You couldn't very well build a site in flash when it had a joke as a scripting language and only tenuous, at best, ties to external functions on the site. With PERL and php allowing inroads however, it allows developers like little ol' me to program a site exactly as we would with HTML, only allow for the nice little graphic implementation that my designers are always yelling at me about.
When flash first came out, I thought it was truly going to be revolutionary, until I used it in more of a live (instead of experimental) environment and understood its shortcomings. Even up through flash 5 (which has, in its credit, added a lot of functionality, a better designed internal scripting language, and XML support) it had apparent weaknesses which would prevent it from being used for what is was supposed to do, which was allow you to build a fully programmable and extensible site such as you would in Director, yet allow for small file sizes, quick downloads, and better animation resolution.
If you want to really split hairs about it, the translations, which are probably marginally different from the original text, were made this millenium:)j/k
okay..so i wasn't thinking there. point taken. however, i still stand by every other statement i made in my original post. there are a number of books and authors which were not represented, or represented so lowly as to point to a distinct moron-factor in the poll users.
Very true what you say about shakespeare. However, considering he WAS rated #16 in that poll (click the see all top 100 link), its obvious that he was included in the roundup.
Perl has always been good on supporting and integrating with oncoming web technologies. Since i work with both flash 5 and perl, I can say that this is a happy day for me personally, and a happy day for all grahpical inclined web producers everywhere.
better question, now that this is out, does this mean we might see some sort of GPL attached to the flash/shockwave players? IMHO that has been holding back alot of Linux users from being able to experience a great number of excellent looking and functional sites, since they are only capabale of using a beta (and god-awful buggy) player.
Hrmmm.... Now, while I am apt to agree with some of the choices on that list, there are obvious omissions. Not a single ancient work appears on that list (the Illiad, the Oddessy, Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, for samplers).
Bram's Dracula is probably one of the most popular works EVER, yet it doesn't appear on the list. Also missing is ANYTHING by Dickens, Fitzgerald, Defoe, or Stevenson, or Hemingway. But I guess Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (which are required reading in U.S. grade and junior high schools, I believe) just dont rank up there with the "Harry Potter phenomenon."
No offense inteded to the LOTR, but frankly, it may deserve to be in the top 20, but not in the top 10. As for Tolkien being the greatest author of the Millenium? Well, I should go talk to my H.S. English teacher, and ask her why I had to read all that Shakespeare stuff, when he apparently wasn't even the runner up as the greatest author of all time.
the low-browing of culture makes me absolutely want to vomit sometimes.
There is always the route of contacting companies in the US, and getting them to sponser you for an H1B visa if/when you get hired. However...
.com's and related businesses are using the H1B as a 2k version of Indentured Servitude.
/. as to companies that had/are sponsoring H1B visas, and their fairness (for lack of a better term) in the process. I could be wrong (or it could have been on another site). Look around, do your research, and good luck:).
Be very careful about the terms and conditions that come along with this. It may seem like a company is offering the world to you, but, rest assured, there is fine print. Unfortunately, due to somewhat lax oversight and the desperate need for technical personnel in the United States right now, alot of up and coming
At a previous employer of mine (and this is not an isolated incident, just one i happend to be a part of), we had hired several workers from India, and then sponsered them for H1Bs. However, after being the in country for a certain amount of time, they asked for a nominal increase in pay (much like any worker would after a set period of time, in this case, 9 months.) The programmers were denied the raise, and told that any further asking would result in the termination of the companies kindness in the H1B process. Also, if there were fired, it would make things extremly difficult, since there is only a set amount of time you have to get a new job and have your new company pick up the visa tab, lest you be deported.
The process can be an excellent thing for people in your position, with talent and skills that are in demand. However, just make sure you read the fine print, and if possible, talk to other employees in the company who may have gone throught the process themselves.
P.S. I think i remember seeing a link in a story on
Re-read my post. Nowhere did I discount the existance of God, nor say that people cannot believe in it/s/he. Just that the view that God created all life seems to run coutner to science and its subsequent mapping of the genome.
"we have caught a glimpse of an instruction book previously known only to God."
My inference that he is a creationist (or holds a like viewpoint) refers to the fact that he said only God had access to the instruction manual to create life. To me, that infers that he believes God made life, and now he has glimpsed the "instruction manual" that was used.
It seems to me that a scientific project which seems to show a chemical and secular basis for (and i do stress the phrase "seems to") life would tend to discount a creationist point of view. This doesn't, nor was I implying, that it discounts the existance of God or any higher power.
I'm not saying that he is not allowed to believe in God, or even allowed to believe in Creationism. Im just saying that a man who believes God created all life seems an ironic choice to head up the mapping of the human genome, IMHO. That is just my opinion, and of course, I could and have been wrong.
Unfortunately, this is a trend that has been going for a long time, and has only been aided by the growth of the www.
It used to be that companies needed magazines and news services to get their name noticed, therefore would submit to a really pointed interview (or at least one that didn't read, as you said, like a press release). However, with the growth of the niche magazine market and the 1000000000000 gamer sites on the Internet, publications now need to fight to get interviews from relevant companies. If they go too hard on the interview, they just might never get another one, therefore denying them site traffic/buyers for the their magazine. Therefore, they basically kiss up and allow their publication to be used as a secondary marketing platform, instead of a informative source for fans and enthusiasts.
There are some good sites and zines out there that do excellent interviews, however they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Sometimes, the over-abundance of publications can hurt the quality and veracity of information being released. ugh. FYI - if you look around, you'll notice that this trend is not specific to gaming (or even just computing). Go to your local magazine rack and look through at "exclusive interviews" and you'll notice that they read more like pre-reviewed and press-agent prepared puff pieces, rather than a source of good information.
I read a transcript of the whole to-do at the White House during the genome annoucement, however I missed something that that link pointed out.
"Venter's counterpart at the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, told the same audience that "we have caught a glimpse of an instruction book previously known only to God." "
A man involved in one of the more purely secular and scientific research projects of human history, and he is a creationist?
I'm not hawking any one viewpoint, I just find his position in relationship to his work ironic.
Oh come now. While I do agree with you that the best way for consumers to show their power in a capitalist system is their buying power, I think the rest of your post is more zealotry than I can handle right after lunch.
Being a web developer since pretty much the beginning of html, it has been a large part of my job to examine and test new browsers as they come out, and find which one will a) provide an easy yet powerful development platform and b) provide the end user with the best representation of the information they are trying to reach. For quite some time, in the beginning, Netscape was on the top of my list.
However, times change, dont they? Microsoft has, since the 4th generation, produced an excellent product in Internet Explorer. Its DOM implementation is superior and easier to access, it is far more stable (yes, it crashes, but so do all browsers..except for lynx), and frankly, IMHO, it renders HTML to the desires of the web developer better than Netscape.
Now that I've illustrated pretty much my web-development platform and personal browser choice, let me respond to the OSS issues you raised.
You claim that the use of Netscape 6 is a boon to the OSS movement, in that it proves that it has begun to prove that it can produce superior end-user products. However, how does it speak for the community that highly-paid developers from a HUGE conglomeration were primary figures in developing this product?
Also, speaking to the "moral" issues you raised, i would like very much to see how you feel that AOL is any less immoral than microsoft.
The first device listed running the Crusoe is the Sony PictureBook, a neat, ableit superflous, sub-notebook, running Windows, if i'm not mistaken.
Well, if you are talking about the United States, we could argue the symantec's of "columbus didn't discover the North American continent" :) (just kidding)
Anyway, yes, however, to compare the religious fervor of Columbus's time to the more secular concerns of the 1700's, is practically like comparing apples and oranges. Columbus may have written that, however, he was also living in the time of the Spanish Inquisition. He wanted to find new lands for his Lord and Country, because thats the only thing the he could say and get the money and support he needed for his discoveries. Spain, post-Roman Empire, is DEFINATELY a country founded on the Christian fervor and not just the simple Christian faith.
Jumping forward to the times of the American Revolution, we can obviously see the slow deterioration of the Catholic fervor, being slowly replaced with a faith in a more benevolent God (however misguided) and his eventual forgivness, not damnation (a rather reasonable mass hallucination, given the slow rise in personal freedoms and liberties seen since the demise of the early Calvinist theocracies). At this point, a large majority of people have seen the corruption of the Church of the past several hundred years, as well as the problems of basing government on a theocracy, especially in the Northeast. Did people still go to church? Yes. Were there still occasional outcropings of Inquisition style fervor? Yes (remember the witch burnings had been just a little over a century ago, a time which it is quite evident NO ONE wanted to return too). And yes, the vast majority of people in the colonies practiced the Catholic faith.
However, could you not just chalk that up to the fact that the majority of the people that had come to the colonies happened to be of the Catholic faith? And that letting ones religious morals control ones life is not neccessarliy a bad thing, and that those morals will eventually shape a persons actions, even the actions of the forming of his/her own country? The seperation in church and state comes in the fact that you do not have to practice the catholic faith in order to be involved in American government or law (our democratic Vice-Presidential nominee shows this quite nicely at the time of this post).
Now, has there been a constant Christian majority in politics and society in the United States? Yes, that fact is undeniable. Blaming that fact on the state however is ludicrious. The simple fact is that the majority of people in the United States have always been Christian, and the people in the majority tend to do nasty things to stay in majority. It seems to me that the actions of what can be seen as the Christian Majority (protestant to be more specific) can be more attributed to the poor morals of the individual people, rather than the poor message of their faith. It is because of this majority, and their individual actions over the years, that we see America as a catholic club only.
Keep in mind i am not a Christian, but i am saying that it is not wrong to allow what one views as their deep religious beliefs to shape their actions. This only becomes a problem when the outcome of those actions is depolorable by almost any creed.
-syrupMatt
"Moving throught the masses like a fish through water."
Our founding fathers also warned of the tyranny of men who accumulate too much power and lose the ability to change with the times. Face it, our government is slow moving, slow acting, and painfully slow changing.
What is worse is that politicans have learned to exploit this for their own advantage. Know the term "buried in committee", and such nonesene to placate a special interest group by forming a study, and then using the old "these things take time" excuse.
Frankly, change should not take time. We are in an era of unprecendented prosperity and change for the better (even though sometimes it seems like the complete opposite). "Cyber-democracy", or whatever catch phrase you want to attach to that notion, is quite simply the best way to save our governemt from becoming even more of a stagnated cesspool of self-serving nonesense.
Yes, the person with the loudest voice is always heard first (i like your analogy with the pro-life/republicans). However, on the Net, there is no "heard first". There are so many places of information sharing and distribution, that it almost seems infeasable for one special interest group to completly obliterate any voice from dissenters. Even the weight of mega tech corporations cannot silence the voices of dissention on the net (the success of slashdot and the effors of 2600 is perfect evidence of that).
-syrupMatt
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water."
In a way, though, we've seen the speed of the United States political system be ramped up in relation with the spread and speed of technology.
Governments of past weren't slow by design, they were slow by neccessity. You couldn't exactly gauge public opinion when it might have taken two months to determine what the popular majority is (assuming of course, that we are talking about a democracy).
However, now, we have the chance to put government back where it belongs, in the hands of the people. A fast moving govenment that conforms to the will of the people, while still acting in best interests of them, would be an unprecedented feat in human history. Of course, there would be mistakes. And there would always be the "fad factor". However, the answer isn't for government to move slowly and surely. The answer is for them to move FAST and surely, and not be afraid to make mistakes on the way.
I would rather a government i could help to change and mold as needed, mistakes and pathfalls all, rather than continue to deal with the slow moving weight of an archaic political system. Does it really make any sense in the most advanced time in history to be using a system of government (the democratic republic) that was deemed flawed almost 2000 years ago?
-syrupMatt
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water."
The seperation of church and state refers more to the fact that the laws of the United States must reflect secular interests more so than they do the interests of the religious majority.
While I do dislike politicans who use religion as the basis of their platform, I have no problem with a minister/preacher/rabbi/shaman/sheik whatever expressing their political views to his congregation. That right remains his/her right of Free Speech, and as such, although we may disagree with the platform that he is speaking from, we cannot argue that he DOES have the right to speak.
Also, on that same note, it is interesting to note that some of the first gatherings of revolutionary-minded people in the late 1700's were based in/on the preachings of revolutionary deacons, who used their position in front of a large number of people to spread the furvor of anti-British sentiment.
Now, as for every politican mentioning god. What do professional politicans do best? They pander to speical interest groups and large numbers of people with relatively the same beliefs. While you and i and many others may not believe in the religious that said politican is espousing, the fact is that much of America does. Not only that, but if they hold those religious views, it is again their right to state them, as long as they dont force them upon other people.
A better question to ask is to what extent do we let government control the influence of religion? At what point does religion stop being free speech?
-syrupMatt
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water."