You mean you weren't thrown off by the passive voice?
"It has been known" rather obviously leaves out *who* is doing the knowing... unfortunately that's rather key info, isn't it? But if the GP *had* some respectable source, I'm pretty damned sure it we'd know it already.
Damn, you're right... no more medical analogies, idiots!
I can offer a better analogy than the GP anyway.
I do all my STEERING before I leave the driveway -- that way I can focus better on working the clutch.
(Actually, seriously, that's part of why sending text messages while driving is so dangerous... you're already multitasking to some degree; throwing another task in there perhaps isn't wise).
You're free to click on my sig if you want to know more. I actually read through a decent chunk of that, including getting into the COSA interpreter that attempts to implement your ideas.
I certainly didn't read it all exhaustively, but it doesn't at all seem to fix the problems you're outlining at the start. And a completely graphical development environment? Connect objects together visually? Ouch. How does that work (even conceptually) putting together systems of any real complexity? More specifically, where the processing you need to implement is *already* complex and extremely rule-heavy, not the extra complexity that arises is poorly-designed software....
Leave aside all of the academic constructions for the moment, and imagine actually using the thing, minute by minute, solving an entire real-world problem all the way through.
but now you also have the traffic pattern data for any of those sites that didn't use google analytics already, that's definitely valuable. No, they don't. Look again at how caching works. The first time a given browser hits a site that uses Prototype, for example, it'll pull the JS from Google (so Google sees that single site). The browser then hits 20 other sites that also use Prototype... and Google has no clue, because the JS is already cached.
In fact, the cache headers specify that the JS libs don't expire for A YEAR, so Google will only see the first site you visit with X library Y version in an entire year.
Is this information really that valuable?
Mind you, this assumes you're hard-coding the google-hosted URLs to the JS libs, instead of using http://www.google.com/jsapi -- but that's a perfectly valid and supported approach.
If you use their tools to wildcard the library version, etc. etc. then they get a ping each time that JSAPI script is loaded (again, no huge amount of info for them, but still you can decide whether you want the extra functionality or not).
The first thing that pops into my head nowadays in any discussion of 1st/2nd/3rd person was a line from a song that was played incessantly at the gym I went to for a while:
I'm the first person You're the second person Earlier today, I was in the third person
Heh. Friggin annoying song, but the line made me smile the first time I heard it.
How that justifies another? Well. If they have no problem with packing along something as useless as the dbus examples in the defaults, what's the problem with adding a feature a substantial number of users are actually asking for? The problem is that the excuse about "clutter" reeks from hypocracy. I'm not a Pidgin developer; I'm a user. I think they're both clutter, so going from one mostly useless default plugin to two is twice as bad. Where's the hypocrisy?
And btw, you should read a bit more carefully. "Also explain how that isn't "clutter" while the plugin for resetting the inputbox to sanity is." Ie, the inputbox needs it's sane behaviour returned, not me. The inputbox isn't sentient. Maybe you're saying the developers were insane to go with the new behavior? I can simplify and say that bringing "sanity" into it at all is over the top.
But then you wouldn't have had any possibility to indulge yourself in cheap name calling, right? What names did I call? The worst I can find is saying a statement was "a bit hysterical"... but you disavow it anyway, so you're all clear, no?
I do notice that you didn't answer the question about what usage is actually being broken by the new behavior.
Please be my guest, just explain first why they for instance ship that lame "dbus examples plugin" as a default plugin, while refusing this one which a lot of people explicitly are asking for. Also explain how that isn't "clutter" while the plugin for resetting the inputbox to sanity is. I'm not the GP poster, but I'd say the dbus examples plugin IS clutter -- and if they already have one piece of clutter there, how does that justify another?
Saying you require this feature for your "sanity" is a bit hysterical, anyway. Is your sanity is that fragile? I use Pidgin, and didn't notice the missing feature.... What are people communicating by IM that uses more than the 500 or so characters you have to enter before you'll get a scrollbar anyway?
I use Pidgin, and I didn't even notice the change.
Personally, I'm pretty damned sure the fork will wither and die... but unfortunately for Pidgin, its download site will probably sit out there for a very long time, confusing users who search for Pidgin and find this site touting "WE"RE LIKE PIDGIN BUT BETTER!!!1!" but whose last release is years ago.
I do feel the Pidgin devs should probably build a plugin, but *not* make it a default. New users won't even know the old functionality existed and thus won't be accustomed to it (which seems like basically the only reason you'd strongly want it to work that way...) and will not be confused by this incredibly random and difficult to explain plugin.
And the complainers can take 30 extra seconds to download it separately.
Tcha. Then make it a compile time option and let the people who feel that strongly about the issue enable or disable it at build time. Or, cleaner: make a plugin to enable it?
They *do* have a plugin API that supports more than just additional protocols -- I'm not sure if it'd allow this kind of tweak, but to placate the madding crowd it might even make sense to make some internal changes to allow it.
It's not as if they don't still have the code for the old behavior.
Quite right; though so many people confuse the models with reality itself. We build models that map onto the real world, and we consider them more or less "true" as our predictions match up with observations.
We structure math with rules to make it *internally* consistent, but the mathematical models we build of the world do not always work.
Another example of models that don't match correctly: "paradoxes", such as the well-known Zeno's.
Try analyzing them with the understanding that: * our words and numbers are NOT reality; they are a model of it * the model is often limited or flawed...and they're trivial to dismantle. You simply find the flaw in the model - you don't assume that reality much be wrong (e.g., concluding "all movement is illusory").
That's where the browser on the thumbdrive comes in handy... but seriously, it's so damned easy for people with cheap keyloggers (hardware OR software) to grab enough passwords with no real work involved that simply putting a few minor complications into your password entry will protect you in the vast majority of cases. It's just so trivial to steal passwords from most users, they have no reason to bother with you.
The bastards! Fortunately, it's just the index page of the archive that they're redirecting, so I wrote a bookmarklet to just show today's archive page: http://blog.robwhelan.com/2008/04/25/avoiding-getting-flashed-by-dilbert/..of course, they'll break that soon (or simply stop updating the archives...), but for now it works.
If the keypad numbers on your bank's "visual keypad" are randomly arranged in the grid with every page load, that narrows the attack vector somewhat. Yup, I have an account at a bank that does this.
This does not work, as many "keyloggers" have transformed to read POST data to websites, not just password fields. Particularly effective when the website has anything saying:) But are they sniffing HTTP, or is the browser compromised? If they're just monitoring the HTTP traffic, that's what SSL is for.
...It's infuriating that they're stopping producing 4:3 screens just because stylish Beckham lookalikes think widescreen is slick, and because some people (not all, not 99%, I know I'm not alone on this) think they're practical to their style of wasting space on things they aren't doing. Reading books, you want 4:3 upended. Movies, you might want widescreen. Coding, depends on what you're doing -- single page of code? Sure, 4:3. Page of code plus reference, or debugging output, or browser window, or specs, etc. etc.?
It's apparently not part of your habits, but many people need to look at multiple things more or less simultaneously. This is particularly common with debugging & optimization work; you're watching a lot of things at once. It's not nice to have to flip back and forth every 3 seconds. I want to click through things in a web application, for example, *while* watching logs, breakpoints etc, not stopping one to check on the other.
That said, on a LAPTOP I don't want widescreen. My eyes can't handle high resolutions on little screens, so side by side anything is impossible, and I'd rather have a lower res, normal single page width + a bit, but be able to see more vertically.
Then again, It'd drive me crazy if I had to do much serious work on a laptop screen. Do you actually do your normal work with only a little laptop screen? If all I could get were a widescreen laptop, I'd appreciate the better keyboard and bitch about the screen when I had to use it... but it wouldn't have a large impact on my life. I have to use my current laptop screen probably 1-2 days a year.
That and because I'm an angry Internet man. Ah ha! OutRAGEous! It's people like you what cause unrest.
Uh, maybe instead of getting all cranky, you might just consider that different people have different working styles.
The whole point of this article is NOT that we must somehow choose a single screen size ratio for everyone. It's that widescreen seems to be taking over.
And (interestingly enough) some developers like the widescreen format (as it suits their working style) and others don't (because it doesn't).
Fascinating!
And some just flame each other and send the straw men flying because they apparently have different working styles.
I was reconsidering my decision to give up reading Dilbert because of the switch to Flash, but now that I have read about this exploit I think I will stick to my No-Flash policy. Just don't read it at dilbert.com. Try this instead.
Slashdot Mirror
See "borken" or swedish chef, perhaps.
It's been known for years that
[Citation needed]
You mean you weren't thrown off by the passive voice?
"It has been known" rather obviously leaves out *who* is doing the knowing... unfortunately that's rather key info, isn't it? But if the GP *had* some respectable source, I'm pretty damned sure it we'd know it already.
Damn, you're right... no more medical analogies, idiots!
I can offer a better analogy than the GP anyway.
I do all my STEERING before I leave the driveway -- that way I can focus better on working the clutch.
(Actually, seriously, that's part of why sending text messages while driving is so dangerous... you're already multitasking to some degree; throwing another task in there perhaps isn't wise).
I certainly didn't read it all exhaustively, but it doesn't at all seem to fix the problems you're outlining at the start. And a completely graphical development environment? Connect objects together visually? Ouch. How does that work (even conceptually) putting together systems of any real complexity? More specifically, where the processing you need to implement is *already* complex and extremely rule-heavy, not the extra complexity that arises is poorly-designed software....
Leave aside all of the academic constructions for the moment, and imagine actually using the thing, minute by minute, solving an entire real-world problem all the way through.
Seriously, anyone want to place bets on how long we have before the penis "enlargement" industry starts mentioning this in their spam?
ExTEND YUOR "MEMBER"! Did you hear that hot airport security worker snickering and pointing at your tiny P3N!S when they scanned you?????
Buy now!! Upto 8 inchs loonger!!!! http://as09s8asdfasl.djssef909.com/
Actually... I've been seeing this "Anonymous Coward" guy around for a very long time; he may well HAVE been the first to troll /. ....
I think the API key is optional (since the URL clearly works without it) but I haven't dug around on that.
One thing I did notice -- that API JS has headers to avoid caching, so I think it will be reloaded on each page.
So I certainly have no plans to use it... but the straight-access URLs are easy to find and the concept is very good, so I'll probably adopt that!
http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/documentation/#AjaxLibraries
The google-hosted JS libraries have headers that will only make your browser resolve & hit the server once a YEAR per library version.
This is different from analytics and ad servers for that reason -- those are NEVER cached because they want every browser to hit them, every time.
In fact, the cache headers specify that the JS libs don't expire for A YEAR, so Google will only see the first site you visit with X library Y version in an entire year.
Is this information really that valuable?
Mind you, this assumes you're hard-coding the google-hosted URLs to the JS libs, instead of using http://www.google.com/jsapi -- but that's a perfectly valid and supported approach.
If you use their tools to wildcard the library version, etc. etc. then they get a ping each time that JSAPI script is loaded (again, no huge amount of info for them, but still you can decide whether you want the extra functionality or not).
The first thing that pops into my head nowadays in any discussion of 1st/2nd/3rd person was a line from a song that was played incessantly at the gym I went to for a while:
I'm the first person
You're the second person
Earlier today, I was in the third person
Heh. Friggin annoying song, but the line made me smile the first time I heard it.
I do notice that you didn't answer the question about what usage is actually being broken by the new behavior.
Saying you require this feature for your "sanity" is a bit hysterical, anyway. Is your sanity is that fragile? I use Pidgin, and didn't notice the missing feature.... What are people communicating by IM that uses more than the 500 or so characters you have to enter before you'll get a scrollbar anyway?
I use Pidgin, and I didn't even notice the change.
Personally, I'm pretty damned sure the fork will wither and die... but unfortunately for Pidgin, its download site will probably sit out there for a very long time, confusing users who search for Pidgin and find this site touting "WE"RE LIKE PIDGIN BUT BETTER!!!1!" but whose last release is years ago.
I do feel the Pidgin devs should probably build a plugin, but *not* make it a default. New users won't even know the old functionality existed and thus won't be accustomed to it (which seems like basically the only reason you'd strongly want it to work that way...) and will not be confused by this incredibly random and difficult to explain plugin.
And the complainers can take 30 extra seconds to download it separately.
They *do* have a plugin API that supports more than just additional protocols -- I'm not sure if it'd allow this kind of tweak, but to placate the madding crowd it might even make sense to make some internal changes to allow it.
It's not as if they don't still have the code for the old behavior.
Quite right; though so many people confuse the models with reality itself. We build models that map onto the real world, and we consider them more or less "true" as our predictions match up with observations.
...and they're trivial to dismantle. You simply find the flaw in the model - you don't assume that reality much be wrong (e.g., concluding "all movement is illusory").
We structure math with rules to make it *internally* consistent, but the mathematical models we build of the world do not always work.
Another example of models that don't match correctly: "paradoxes", such as the well-known Zeno's.
Try analyzing them with the understanding that:
* our words and numbers are NOT reality; they are a model of it
* the model is often limited or flawed
That's where the browser on the thumbdrive comes in handy... but seriously, it's so damned easy for people with cheap keyloggers (hardware OR software) to grab enough passwords with no real work involved that simply putting a few minor complications into your password entry will protect you in the vast majority of cases. It's just so trivial to steal passwords from most users, they have no reason to bother with you.
The bastards! Fortunately, it's just the index page of the archive that they're redirecting, so I wrote a bookmarklet to just show today's archive page: ..of course, they'll break that soon (or simply stop updating the archives...), but for now it works.
http://blog.robwhelan.com/2008/04/25/avoiding-getting-flashed-by-dilbert/
...It's infuriating that they're stopping producing 4:3 screens just because stylish Beckham lookalikes think widescreen is slick, and because some people (not all, not 99%, I know I'm not alone on this) think they're practical to their style of wasting space on things they aren't doing. Reading books, you want 4:3 upended. Movies, you might want widescreen. Coding, depends on what you're doing -- single page of code? Sure, 4:3. Page of code plus reference, or debugging output, or browser window, or specs, etc. etc.?It's apparently not part of your habits, but many people need to look at multiple things more or less simultaneously. This is particularly common with debugging & optimization work; you're watching a lot of things at once. It's not nice to have to flip back and forth every 3 seconds. I want to click through things in a web application, for example, *while* watching logs, breakpoints etc, not stopping one to check on the other.
That said, on a LAPTOP I don't want widescreen. My eyes can't handle high resolutions on little screens, so side by side anything is impossible, and I'd rather have a lower res, normal single page width + a bit, but be able to see more vertically.
Then again, It'd drive me crazy if I had to do much serious work on a laptop screen. Do you actually do your normal work with only a little laptop screen? If all I could get were a widescreen laptop, I'd appreciate the better keyboard and bitch about the screen when I had to use it... but it wouldn't have a large impact on my life. I have to use my current laptop screen probably 1-2 days a year. That and because I'm an angry Internet man. Ah ha! OutRAGEous! It's people like you what cause unrest.
Uh, maybe instead of getting all cranky, you might just consider that different people have different working styles.
The whole point of this article is NOT that we must somehow choose a single screen size ratio for everyone. It's that widescreen seems to be taking over.
And (interestingly enough) some developers like the widescreen format (as it suits their working style) and others don't (because it doesn't).
Fascinating!
And some just flame each other and send the straw men flying because they apparently have different working styles.
What are you all so excited about?
Here's the link I've been using for years -- hasn't the dilbert.com homepage always been annoying?
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/index.html
Well, but, uh, Sun is probably behind it somehow, those evil bastards. It's something to do with their hatred of open source.
Didn't you get the memo?
Heh.
Try this instead.
Slashdot articles are all submitted by users.
So...