Crappy field equipment?
That is _exactly_ what it is!
The guys telco (Verizon was it?) simply has to place the DSLAM between the fiber and the copper.
When they say he can't get DSL because there is copper and fiber between him and the CO, then Verizons error is that they want to put the DSLAM in their CO (instaid of wherever the copper begins). So indeed crappy field eqiuipment it is.
To give this bloke DSL Verizon must not rewire the enire 9000ft. In fact they can keep all existing calbes. Only the equipment these cables (copper and fiber) are hooked into will need to change.
The only thing the telco appertly does not want to do is put some new equipment (DSLAM, ADM?) in a street cabinet. The same cabinet where now the fiber is bridged to copper.
If, fore some reason, the guy really has fiber arriving in his house then I ask why on earth his telco can't provide him with some kind of broadband access over that fiber.
I'm dreaming of a fiber bringing an STM-1 to my doorstep;-)
I'm getting tired here... Remember that when you move to a foreign country, you forsake a number of privileges you probably take for granted. Voting. In the last elections lots of Americans voted by letter. Do local elections really interest you? Using social services. European Social Services are by far more advanced then American (Even one of the candidate presidents said that during his campaign when he noticed Europen television). Remember one thing. Your contribution to those services is automatically deducted from your wage. The ability to move aout freely (internationally). Within Europe, movement of people and goods is free. Since the famous "Schengen agreement" border stations are unmanned. Added to which, you will be brining home less income in Europe than you would here. That might very well be the case...
If you just want to see Europe, take a vacation, you'll get more out of it with time dedicated strictly to tourism. I've known many people who have gone to Europe to work and not had time to tour around with work and other issues keeping them pinned down. Well, then they had bad organising skills. Indeed, one must deside wat he/she wants to do: earn money or Visit Europe. I think that most expats overestimate their ability to organize leisure time while they are working - you'll end up doing the same thing after work you do here - watch TV...except in Europe the TV is crappier and often in a language you don't understand. European telvision is full of American shows (with a few months delay of course). But stay from big countries like France, Spain and Germany. they tend to dub everything and you would indeed end up not understanding a thing. But in the smaller countries like Holland and Belgium, the original soundtrack remains and you only have to put up with subtitles. BTW, ever heard of sattelite television?
On the positive side, there is a lot of culture to see there if you can make the time, but on the other hand Europe tends to be dirtier and more crowded than the US. Depends on where you look (in Europe and the US!) Little things will bother you. My wife stayed in Europe for a few months in college and bemaoned how unsanitary and antiquated French lavatories are. Since when does France == Europe? You wife should heve visited the north of France or gone to more expensive restaurants and she would have noticed that the WC really does exist over here:-) ITs the little things that will bug you. Stay in the US. Lots of little things bugged me every time I went to the US. It's called culture.
ref: post just a few moments earlier:-)
Back to Belgium.
Here we have people with French as their mother tongue (the Walloons 40%) and other Dutch (the Flemish 60%).
Both "Communities" (A legal term over here to denote the two groups (Communautés, Gemeenschappen)) can "enjoy" the same educational system.
Currently most Dutch speaking scholars get French as their second language and English as their third (and often German as fourth, with Spanish coming on strong). The Walloons are more and more choosing English as the second language.
Still it can be denied that the English spoken by the Flemish (Dutch) is better then that of the Walloons (French). But it's not their fault! English simply has some sounds that are not to be found in French. Hence it is difficult to learn the pronunciation and they often prefer not to speak English at all. Btw. the same "missing sounds system" also _works_ the other way around: A native English speaker can't pronounce French ether...
The Flemish have the advantage to speak a language that is Germanic basically but has been influenced by Roman giving a very rich (and difficult) tone.
Currently I'm working in Belgium (I'm Belgian) with a consultant from London and one from Liverpool. Those are two _very_ different kinds of English indeed. But still I have no problem understanding them.
Why?
I guess, because here in the tiny Belgium we are trained to overcome linguistic barriers: There are three official languages: Dutch, French and German. Naturally every scholar is thought English as well. (As a matter of fact German is becoming rare...)
In my daily work I have to switch languages very often. A meeting can very well be held in English, while some discussion might be in French for example. It is not even uncommon for two bilinguals (French-Dutch) but with different mother tongues, to have a 121 meeting in two languages: each speaking his mother tongue.
TOPIC:
Is it really that expensive to get a work permit over here? If I see the number of Extra-European people working here, I find that hard to believe.
A long, long time in a far away country (for most/. readers) I was in my final year of informatics. Some nice female teacher asked her student to learn Pro*C (Oracle's precompiler to embed SQL and PL/SQL in C programs).
Apparently the only system in school that wasn't occupied, had C, and some kind of Oracle was the old Vax...
We had to build something, anything in Pro*C. But me an my two fellow students had a real hard time finding a suitable subject.
So finally we thought to make an SQL-navigator like app. We used just plain C (well and Pro*C naturally) but no UI lib at all.
You now what? Next year they extended the life of the Vax. Just because now they (teachers, admins,...) had a system to easily use to their databses!
ERR
If a company (any company, anywhere) uses any form of distant sale (specifically including on-line sales) to sell a product to someone residing on Belgian territory at the time of the sale, then that sale is covered by Belgian law...
For example, this gives the buyer the right to a seven day period in wich he/she can cancel the sale.
If M$ would not respect that (or any other part of the Belgian law regarding distant sales) the guy can sue M$ in any Belgian court: the sale was done on Belgian territory.
It is strange I know, but so are a LOT of things over here!
That is exacly what I thought. And when i'm not using it, it is tuffed away in its nice leather cover: no light.
Then for my mobile phone: I usually attach it on my belt. There it hangs _under_ the pull-over I wear: no light.
When i'm using it, one half is covered bu my hand, and the other half is against my cheek: no light.
A recent law obliges me to use a hands free system if i want to make calls while driving a car: light, but the car kit also charges my battery, so I don't need light...
Whats wrong with plugging your PDA or phone in at night?
Conclusion: nice work guys but rather useless for some (most?) of us.
I also doubt that the >20% efficiency remains once the cells get covered in fingerprints and dust.
That gas cell on the other hand seem more interesting, but is it really safe? Can I bring it on board a plane?
they try to be a trendsetter whenever possible: like in legalizing softdrugs, prostitution, euthanasia etc..
In fact those three things aren't bad. Legalising them makes it much easier for a goverment to control (did a say TAX) them.
I allways found Dutch people to be rather stupid, but they have a SMART government. Just the contrary to Belgium (Grapje jongens, meer gericht tegen de Belgische regering dan Nederlanders)
Well, we have the perfect solution (We=Belgium, just south of Holland) Over here you do not only have the right to vote but it is an obligation.
Every adult must vote, not showing up that sunday morning is punished pretty hard (jailtime).
Doing this "the people who keep track of the living and dead" are also those those that "register voters"... In fact those tasks have become synonims: the "population register (bevolkingsregister)" is often called the "voters register (kiesregister)". Apparently children are not considdered part of the population by some politicians:-)
A few years ago I found this obligation rediculous, but now, I'm convinced that it is the only way to have a real democracy. Once voting is optional, some groups of people might easily be intimidated not to vote. Remebering the protests of some "Black voters organisations" in the last US elections proves this point.
Back to topic:
The Belgian government is years behind on the field of automatisation. still evey person over the age of twelve receives an Identity Card. From the age of 16 one is obliged to have it with him/her when leaving the home.
Like any ID it contains personal data like full name, date and place of birth.
Along with that there is also the "Rijksregisternummer". The "Primary Key" to all your data in governments databases / paper files. Currently you have the right NOT to have that number printed on the ID card, but any police officer (or school headmaster for that matter) can find it using name, place and date of birth.
Still, all data is not centralised and that's good: I do not want the police officer that pulls me over for a broken headlight to know that I didn't pay my last telephone bill and divorcing my second wife (imaginary example;-)
Contrary to what the Dutch government is proposing, here there is a tendancy to _protect_ this fragmentation of personal data.
For medical databases there is allready a law to protect it from being sold or used by third parties. A negative result is that nobody can get its own medical file from his/her doctors:-)
As everyone knows communication cost are the highest in Belgium. Also elektricity cost much more than the European avarage...
Therefore all you French and Germans should not complain.
On the other hand there is allmost no censorship on Internet. Only child-pr0n and holocaust denail is illegal. Still, I do not recall any processes
Or maybe give away the razor (ie) and make money on the blades (iis)?
Except that you can use the same rasor (ie) on another type of blade (Apache, even Netscape has a server IIRC).
I would call the webserver "rasor" and the browser the "blade" IMHO. Just because the idea is to have "multiple blades per rasor", which equals "multiple browsers per server" (Those are the usage realities for both systems).
So I'll translate what you said to: Or maybe give away the razor (IIS) and make money on the blades (IE) Huh? Hey! M$ got it wrong AGAIN!
There a multidude of ways (read distributors) of Linux. Ever tried getting windows NT from anybody else then MicroShit?
If you have bad experiences with one company goto another. That is basis of the free market. Once M$ ties yours hands (read hardware) you can not ever start using anything else (without loosing your entire previous investment).
When you get tired of Red Hat, go get your Linux elsewhere.
Nice dream. Linux will never be as easy as the mac or windows though.
Mac OS X _IS_ Linux... (well, sort of)
I have written some simple programs for my grandfather (age 76) that he runs on an ancient 8086 (yes, there is no digit missing). He does it very nice.
With the M$ sceme called.NET he would not have the right to continue using that old version of DOS or WordPerfect 4.3 and...
And even more: technically it would be impossible.
Now imagine it is april 2011. Your ancient Intel PIII 1Ghz. Is still collecting dust as part of your Domotica system... Good thing you didn't convert it to.NET or you would still be paying for the ancient software it runs. That is, if you weren't forced to buy a couple of new systems along the way and throw away a perfectly good PIII.
Actually I am an Oracle user also:-) (I even managed to do a 100% generation with Designer!!).
The Filemaker came afterwards, in my hobby club (with 9000 Memebers not just any "corner of the street club:-). They use HyperCard and Filemaker on their systems (historical reasons).
But "porting" the HyperCard 'applications' to Filemaker will/would probably be my problem:-(
Since none of the people at hte office ever used Windows (let alone Unix) Oracle is not an option: I can not be around all of the time. (And I will not even think of the price)
Back to professional use of DBs:
Recently I was put on a project at a new client. They told me to test my designs in Access (of all things). Boy was I (not?) surprised that this peace of sh* doesn't even support a simple recursive relation!!!! I allmost dragged the sysadmin over his desk to grant me 'resource' on an Oracle DB. The guy was surprised that I knew the commands by hart... I hope to leave this sinking ship of a client real soon.
About HC still being around: It (still) works and nobody want's to change anything, so...
Do you actually use flash??????
I hate it.
It is used in two ways:
The first is the so called "intro animation". that takes only valuable surfing time and bandwidth away. A site with a flash intro but without a "skip intro" button well be closed immediatly, never to be visited again.
the second use is to define some nifty looking interface. All GUIs currently follow the thought set out by Xerox (dektop analogy and so forth). In any current GUI (Mac, X, Win*, Solaris, whatever) we have gotten used to some standars interface elements: buttons for one example. Now every website designer (no longer a "technician" but an "artist") is creating sites where you have to move the mouse allover and look at the pointer to see where you have to click.
Take for example the website about that bird-frying mirror yesterday on/. First of all it wastes 75% of the screen size on a blank border (is 1024*768 really that high a resolution?). then there is some tekst on the left. Only when you move the mouse over it you can see that it in fact are buttons: there is no border or other specific, recognisable rendering. Clicking on these "planes" (since it are no buttons) opens some lines of text (20 at most) in the right half of the "interface", toghether with some stamp sized pictures. Since those pictures have very light contrast and have some explenatory tekst over them I thought they were "buttons" to get more info with a bigger picture... No such luck!
The info on that website surely fits in a single html-only webpage. With links to full screen images that would be so much easier to navigate and find interesting info. HTML was designed to navigate ALL websites in the same way. And that "way" would be only determined by the browser/terminal you use (Surrfing is quite a different experience when you're blind).
So I say: thank all those websites buildes that also provide html only versions of their 'flashed' sites. But they still are 99% more stupid than a 'simple' html website coder!
Slashdot Mirror
Crappy field equipment?
;-)
That is _exactly_ what it is!
The guys telco (Verizon was it?) simply has to place the DSLAM between the fiber and the copper.
When they say he can't get DSL because there is copper and fiber between him and the CO, then Verizons error is that they want to put the DSLAM in their CO (instaid of wherever the copper begins). So indeed crappy field eqiuipment it is.
To give this bloke DSL Verizon must not rewire the enire 9000ft. In fact they can keep all existing calbes. Only the equipment these cables (copper and fiber) are hooked into will need to change.
The only thing the telco appertly does not want to do is put some new equipment (DSLAM, ADM?) in a street cabinet. The same cabinet where now the fiber is bridged to copper.
If, fore some reason, the guy really has fiber arriving in his house then I ask why on earth his telco can't provide him with some kind of broadband access over that fiber.
I'm dreaming of a fiber bringing an STM-1 to my doorstep
But you'll need the fish there as well.
/.-reader understand (reading is enough)?
Once again I'm happy to see that my education has had a positive effect on me: I do not need "the fish" to read German.
I have a question: What languages does the average
For me (as like most Flemish students) the answer is Dutch (mother tongue) French English and German. How about you all?
I'm getting tired here...
:-) ITs the little things that will bug you. Stay in the US. Lots of little things bugged me every time I went to the US. It's called culture.
Remember that when you move to a foreign country, you forsake a number of privileges you probably take for granted. Voting. In the last elections lots of Americans voted by letter. Do local elections really interest you? Using social services. European Social Services are by far more advanced then American (Even one of the candidate presidents said that during his campaign when he noticed Europen television). Remember one thing. Your contribution to those services is automatically deducted from your wage. The ability to move aout freely (internationally). Within Europe, movement of people and goods is free. Since the famous "Schengen agreement" border stations are unmanned. Added to which, you will be brining home less income in Europe than you would here. That might very well be the case...
If you just want to see Europe, take a vacation, you'll get more out of it with time dedicated strictly to tourism. I've known many people who have gone to Europe to work and not had time to tour around with work and other issues keeping them pinned down. Well, then they had bad organising skills. Indeed, one must deside wat he/she wants to do: earn money or Visit Europe. I think that most expats overestimate their ability to organize leisure time while they are working - you'll end up doing the same thing after work you do here - watch TV...except in Europe the TV is crappier and often in a language you don't understand. European telvision is full of American shows (with a few months delay of course). But stay from big countries like France, Spain and Germany. they tend to dub everything and you would indeed end up not understanding a thing. But in the smaller countries like Holland and Belgium, the original soundtrack remains and you only have to put up with subtitles. BTW, ever heard of sattelite television?
On the positive side, there is a lot of culture to see there if you can make the time, but on the other hand Europe tends to be dirtier and more crowded than the US. Depends on where you look (in Europe and the US!) Little things will bother you. My wife stayed in Europe for a few months in college and bemaoned how unsanitary and antiquated French lavatories are. Since when does France == Europe? You wife should heve visited the north of France or gone to more expensive restaurants and she would have noticed that the WC really does exist over here
ref: post just a few moments earlier :-)
Back to Belgium.
Here we have people with French as their mother tongue (the Walloons 40%) and other Dutch (the Flemish 60%). Both "Communities" (A legal term over here to denote the two groups (Communautés, Gemeenschappen)) can "enjoy" the same educational system.
Currently most Dutch speaking scholars get French as their second language and English as their third (and often German as fourth, with Spanish coming on strong). The Walloons are more and more choosing English as the second language.
Still it can be denied that the English spoken by the Flemish (Dutch) is better then that of the Walloons (French). But it's not their fault! English simply has some sounds that are not to be found in French. Hence it is difficult to learn the pronunciation and they often prefer not to speak English at all. Btw. the same "missing sounds system" also _works_ the other way around: A native English speaker can't pronounce French ether...
The Flemish have the advantage to speak a language that is Germanic basically but has been influenced by Roman giving a very rich (and difficult) tone.
Currently I'm working in Belgium (I'm Belgian) with a consultant from London and one from Liverpool. Those are two _very_ different kinds of English indeed. But still I have no problem understanding them.
Why?
I guess, because here in the tiny Belgium we are trained to overcome linguistic barriers: There are three official languages: Dutch, French and German. Naturally every scholar is thought English as well. (As a matter of fact German is becoming rare...)
In my daily work I have to switch languages very often. A meeting can very well be held in English, while some discussion might be in French for example. It is not even uncommon for two bilinguals (French-Dutch) but with different mother tongues, to have a 121 meeting in two languages: each speaking his mother tongue.
TOPIC:
Is it really that expensive to get a work permit over here? If I see the number of Extra-European people working here, I find that hard to believe.
A long, long time in a far away country (for most /. readers) I was in my final year of informatics. Some nice female teacher asked her student to learn Pro*C (Oracle's precompiler to embed SQL and PL/SQL in C programs). ...) had a system to easily use to their databses!
Apparently the only system in school that wasn't occupied, had C, and some kind of Oracle was the old Vax...
We had to build something, anything in Pro*C. But me an my two fellow students had a real hard time finding a suitable subject.
So finally we thought to make an SQL-navigator like app. We used just plain C (well and Pro*C naturally) but no UI lib at all.
You now what? Next year they extended the life of the Vax. Just because now they (teachers, admins,
ERR
If a company (any company, anywhere) uses any form of distant sale (specifically including on-line sales) to sell a product to someone residing on Belgian territory at the time of the sale, then that sale is covered by Belgian law...
For example, this gives the buyer the right to a seven day period in wich he/she can cancel the sale.
If M$ would not respect that (or any other part of the Belgian law regarding distant sales) the guy can sue M$ in any Belgian court: the sale was done on Belgian territory.
It is strange I know, but so are a LOT of things over here!
That is exacly what I thought. And when i'm not using it, it is tuffed away in its nice leather cover: no light.
Then for my mobile phone: I usually attach it on my belt. There it hangs _under_ the pull-over I wear: no light.
When i'm using it, one half is covered bu my hand, and the other half is against my cheek: no light.
A recent law obliges me to use a hands free system if i want to make calls while driving a car: light, but the car kit also charges my battery, so I don't need light...
Whats wrong with plugging your PDA or phone in at night?
Conclusion: nice work guys but rather useless for some (most?) of us.
I also doubt that the >20% efficiency remains once the cells get covered in fingerprints and dust.
That gas cell on the other hand seem more interesting, but is it really safe? Can I bring it on board a plane?
they try to be a trendsetter whenever possible: like in legalizing softdrugs, prostitution, euthanasia etc..
In fact those three things aren't bad. Legalising them makes it much easier for a goverment to control (did a say TAX) them.
I allways found Dutch people to be rather stupid, but they have a SMART government. Just the contrary to Belgium (Grapje jongens, meer gericht tegen de Belgische regering dan Nederlanders)
Indeed! Alfa Zulu never was on "The Walletjes"! That's cristal clear.
Well, we have the perfect solution (We=Belgium, just south of Holland) Over here you do not only have the right to vote but it is an obligation. Every adult must vote, not showing up that sunday morning is punished pretty hard (jailtime).
:-)
;-)
:-)
Doing this "the people who keep track of the living and dead" are also those those that "register voters"... In fact those tasks have become synonims: the "population register (bevolkingsregister)" is often called the "voters register (kiesregister)". Apparently children are not considdered part of the population by some politicians
A few years ago I found this obligation rediculous, but now, I'm convinced that it is the only way to have a real democracy. Once voting is optional, some groups of people might easily be intimidated not to vote. Remebering the protests of some "Black voters organisations" in the last US elections proves this point.
Back to topic: The Belgian government is years behind on the field of automatisation. still evey person over the age of twelve receives an Identity Card. From the age of 16 one is obliged to have it with him/her when leaving the home.
Like any ID it contains personal data like full name, date and place of birth.
Along with that there is also the "Rijksregisternummer". The "Primary Key" to all your data in governments databases / paper files. Currently you have the right NOT to have that number printed on the ID card, but any police officer (or school headmaster for that matter) can find it using name, place and date of birth.
Still, all data is not centralised and that's good: I do not want the police officer that pulls me over for a broken headlight to know that I didn't pay my last telephone bill and divorcing my second wife (imaginary example
Contrary to what the Dutch government is proposing, here there is a tendancy to _protect_ this fragmentation of personal data.
For medical databases there is allready a law to protect it from being sold or used by third parties. A negative result is that nobody can get its own medical file from his/her doctors
Don't forget that some of USA's nukes reside in dutch army bases, are built to be dropped by dutch planes, etc
A (Drivers) License is _life_long_ over here ;-)
As everyone knows communication cost are the highest in Belgium. Also elektricity cost much more than the European avarage...
Therefore all you French and Germans should not complain.
On the other hand there is allmost no censorship on Internet. Only child-pr0n and holocaust denail is illegal. Still, I do not recall any processes
Or maybe give away the razor (ie) and make money on the blades (iis)?
Except that you can use the same rasor (ie) on another type of blade (Apache, even Netscape has a server IIRC).
I would call the webserver "rasor" and the browser the "blade" IMHO. Just because the idea is to have "multiple blades per rasor", which equals "multiple browsers per server" (Those are the usage realities for both systems).
So I'll translate what you said to: Or maybe give away the razor (IIS) and make money on the blades (IE) Huh? Hey! M$ got it wrong AGAIN!
There a multidude of ways (read distributors) of Linux. Ever tried getting windows NT from anybody else then MicroShit?
If you have bad experiences with one company goto another. That is basis of the free market. Once M$ ties yours hands (read hardware) you can not ever start using anything else (without loosing your entire previous investment).
When you get tired of Red Hat, go get your Linux elsewhere.
Nice dream. Linux will never be as easy as the mac or windows though.
.NET he would not have the right to continue using that old version of DOS or WordPerfect 4.3 and ...
.NET or you would still be paying for the ancient software it runs. That is, if you weren't forced to buy a couple of new systems along the way and throw away a perfectly good PIII.
Mac OS X _IS_ Linux... (well, sort of)
I have written some simple programs for my grandfather (age 76) that he runs on an ancient 8086 (yes, there is no digit missing). He does it very nice.
With the M$ sceme called
And even more: technically it would be impossible.
Now imagine it is april 2011. Your ancient Intel PIII 1Ghz. Is still collecting dust as part of your Domotica system... Good thing you didn't convert it to
Right on target! :-)
Guess he/she didn't think about that one.
They have made some really good things those Swiss.
Belgium: ... 33%
normal tax rate 21% (or was it 21.5%)
luxury goods like cars, juwelary,
food, reading material (but not music nor videos) 6%
"normal" or "luxury" (like lobster for example) food, cold or hot, bagged or on plate all are 6%.
And never forget incom tax: up to 51% average 40-45%
As always correct me if I'm wrong, I like to know.
Did you notice the "Master of Bachelors from the Marriage Institute of America." in the 'fine print'? That's the best part to me.
Yeah, AND somebody did great efforts to create a really good website about it.
It was obvious, but very well done.
Congratulations guys.
Did you read the last line? (Just above the sig)
Actually I am an Oracle user also :-) (I even managed to do a 100% generation with Designer!!).
:-). They use HyperCard and Filemaker on their systems (historical reasons). :-(
The Filemaker came afterwards, in my hobby club (with 9000 Memebers not just any "corner of the street club
But "porting" the HyperCard 'applications' to Filemaker will/would probably be my problem
Since none of the people at hte office ever used Windows (let alone Unix) Oracle is not an option: I can not be around all of the time. (And I will not even think of the price)
Back to professional use of DBs:
Recently I was put on a project at a new client. They told me to test my designs in Access (of all things). Boy was I (not?) surprised that this peace of sh* doesn't even support a simple recursive relation!!!! I allmost dragged the sysadmin over his desk to grant me 'resource' on an Oracle DB. The guy was surprised that I knew the commands by hart... I hope to leave this sinking ship of a client real soon.
About HC still being around: It (still) works and nobody want's to change anything, so...
I've got to fix that sig
So I'll have to transfer all that to filemaker?
Ow, how the users are going to looooove that...
Do you actually use flash?????? /. First of all it wastes 75% of the screen size on a blank border (is 1024*768 really that high a resolution?). then there is some tekst on the left. Only when you move the mouse over it you can see that it in fact are buttons: there is no border or other specific, recognisable rendering. Clicking on these "planes" (since it are no buttons) opens some lines of text (20 at most) in the right half of the "interface", toghether with some stamp sized pictures. Since those pictures have very light contrast and have some explenatory tekst over them I thought they were "buttons" to get more info with a bigger picture... No such luck!
I hate it.
It is used in two ways:
The first is the so called "intro animation". that takes only valuable surfing time and bandwidth away. A site with a flash intro but without a "skip intro" button well be closed immediatly, never to be visited again.
the second use is to define some nifty looking interface. All GUIs currently follow the thought set out by Xerox (dektop analogy and so forth). In any current GUI (Mac, X, Win*, Solaris, whatever) we have gotten used to some standars interface elements: buttons for one example. Now every website designer (no longer a "technician" but an "artist") is creating sites where you have to move the mouse allover and look at the pointer to see where you have to click.
Take for example the website about that bird-frying mirror yesterday on
The info on that website surely fits in a single html-only webpage. With links to full screen images that would be so much easier to navigate and find interesting info. HTML was designed to navigate ALL websites in the same way. And that "way" would be only determined by the browser/terminal you use (Surrfing is quite a different experience when you're blind).
So I say: thank all those websites buildes that also provide html only versions of their 'flashed' sites. But they still are 99% more stupid than a 'simple' html website coder!