you can't beat the intuitiveness of "giving orders to the computer".
Today's "virtual assistant" programs are essentially command lines, just with a more "natural language" style interface. We've seen the same approach in older command line interfaces like Lotus HAL. No matter how advanced the GUI, you're not going to beat setting alarms and appointments with a quick voice command. It's as intuitive as it gets.
Here is a video showing what happened; not just the pepper spraying, but everything leading up to it. Around 7:30 you can see the officer telling the protestors individually that if they do not move, they will be sprayed and then saying "Do you understand?" Yeah, how horrible of him, giving them every chance to avoid being sprayed.
Let's assume you're telling the truth. (I haven't seen the video in years.)
There is still absolutely no justification for the officer's disturbingly violent actions. Stop blaming the victims.
This is the kind of thing you'd expect from a school-yard bully. 'Gimme your milk money or I'll give you a knuckle sandwich'. Should we excuse the black-eye just because the bully gave the kid a choice?
. That's the point of studies like this - it takes away yet another nonsensical argument
I think that it's foolish to believe that this will disarm them in any way. (Was their any question about majority consensus in the first place?) Rather, I suspect it will reinforce their beliefs regarding dishonestly and corruption, given what we can see in this thread.
At the same time, we can embrace the future, adopt emerging technologies, and become the leaders in the new energy economy.
I've often thought that since climate change was such a contentious issue, that it might make more sense to sell solutions, like new energy, on their other merits. The result would be the same (e.g. less coal, more wind and solar) but it would avoid the divisive and politically changed issue altogether.
I think the AC was complaining, like so many other ACs here, that there are problems with the study (specific methodological problems, and fundamental philosophical problems [the importance of consensus to the veracity of AGW] ) that make it questionable.
That is, the AC is saying that you can and should criticize this study for being poor science, particularly if you hold the consensus position, as using bad science to support good science isn't rational. (From the third sentence in the AC's second paragraph.)
I'll agree with the AC that consensus is meaningless. Try to understand that this is being conflated with Gore's infamous 'the science is settled' line. It should be obvious that the very idea of 'settled science' is antithetical to science, and the consensus claim is intended to bolster that dangerously anti-science assertion. The consensus point, then, is intended to lend credibility to AGW claims without reference to any actual science. (I may be stretching the AC's "supporting science with anti-science" line a bit, but I think I'm on the mark.)
So, the AC is saying that the study is poor and should be criticized and that even if the study was properly done that it should have no influence on your beliefs about AGW.
As to the AC's beliefs about AGW, I can't find anything specific that would let me say if the AC supports it or is against it. That may have been you stretching things a bit.
I don't know that we're going to find much common ground. It seems that we're interested in completely different aspects of the problem. Thanks for taking the time to clarify your position, though.
Do you believe that you should be fired for supporting gay marriage?
Eich wasn't fired. He resigned, of his own accord with no pressure from the board, because he believed it was in Mozilla's best interest.
When you're the public face of an organization, your actions and beliefs reflect on that organization. Eich knew this and willingly resigned to prevent further conflict. I disagree with his views on Prop 8, but I'll applaud his commitment to Mozilla.
Another problem with PDF is the fixed document size. You can make it whatever you want, but it can't change dynamically. It might be okay if everyone used a desktop with a graphical browser to access the web, but there was a fairly small window of time when that could be generally assumed. It's no secret that reading PDF's on a smartphone is very frustrating -- I'd hate to see the same happen to websites just to make it easier to develop application-like pages.
Right now, with a modern browser, it's pretty simple to build a page with just html and css that adjusts perfectly to fit the viewport, scaling everything (text included) as though you were scaling vector image as the size and aspect ratio of the viewport changes. (Yes, even across browsers, desktop and mobile, given support for current standards.) The problem, unfortunately, is that this isn't a terribly good solution given the wide range of devices that people use to access the web today. I'd have supported an idea like yours 15 years ago, I probably even wished for something like that myself, but it doesn't make much sense to me now.
What I'd rather see is far less control over formatting and layout and more emphasis on semantic markup, leaving the layout and final appearance up to the browser. We'd lose a bit of creative freedom, but there's already very little variation in the basic layout of websites today. In exchange, we'd gain a more web far more useful and accessible across a wider range of devices.
For example, it's an absolute nightmare to use the web with a screen reader. Reading a forum involves slowly slogging past a lot of content you'd normally not even notice on a desktop. Before I could read your post, I'd hear "Re colon Rant colon REBOOT the WEB open parenthesis Score colon 3 close parenthesis by Tablizer open parenthesis 95088 close parenthesis Friend on Tuesday April 12, 2016 at 11 12PM open parenthesis pound 51897031 close parenthesis Journal" before getting to "Sorry," Grab a copy of NVDA (it's free) to experience it for yourself. The heavy emphasis on formatting and layout at the expense of semantic information is a big part of the problem.
I'd offer that a compromise where a greater degree of control in layout and formatting could be had with a suitably sophisticated style language would be a possible positive solution to the problem, though we'd need to pay for it in complexity.
You're right the the standards are a mess, though even if we could get all of the major players to agree to a new set of standards, and developers to adopt them en masse, I'd wager that it would take 20+ years before we'd see the opportunity for the big players to drop support for existing standards. That is, we'll be stuck with what we have for a while. Still, it would be nice to see a serious effort to produce a better set of standards for the web.
Let's also not forget that Chrome comes bundled Ask Toolbar style (it even sets itself as the default browser) with many popular utilities like Avast Antivirus and CCleaner.
And now their next endeavor is to basically reskin Chrome and call it Firefox.
This is informative? It's about as incorrect as it could possibly get. It's pointed out in the article and in early posts in this thread. I can see how you'd get that impression from the flamebait title and summary, but restating prominent misinformation sure as hell isn't informative!
They've gone from a technical group to a political group.
I'm not convinced. I suspect you're referring to the Brendan Eich issue? If so, that's foolish. Mozilla had to respond in some way as they were already under-fire from outside groups for promoting Eich in the first place. So, aside from Eich voluntarily stepping down (he was not fired or asked to resign by the board; he did it all on his own), do you have any justification for calling Mozilla a political group?
I don't want politics in a browser.
Then you're safe using Firefox. The only politics you'll find there are the ones you've put there yourself.
A long time ago, Slashdot was very popular and influential. I'll even give Slashdot credit for the early success of Google.
How popular? A link from the Slashdot homepage could bring down a webserver. A DDoS attack we called a 'Slashdotting' (alt. 'Slashdot effect') as the fraction of users that did read the articles flooded the site. On 9/11, while every news site was drowning, Slashdot was still accessible. They were well prepared for massive traffic. It spawned countless imitators, but few managed to grow in Slashdot's shadow.
Today, of course, Slashdot has a much smaller audience and virtually no influence. It's easy to think things were always this way, just a tiny relic of the past catering to a few curmudgeons who don't understand Reddit.
It's fallen pretty hard. Remember the "Slashdot effect"? It's no longer a thing. I had a personal project hit Hack-a-day, Reddit, and Slashdot all within a month. I got a massive boost of traffic. Though, at it's peek, the traffic from Slashdot that month was well-under the traffic I still get from Reddit when someone links to it in a comment. It was even under the traffic I got from a tiny one-word link buried in a long blog post on textfiles.com! I get more traffic from the post on Hack-a-day monthly (over 2 years later) than I got from the article on the front page of Slashdot.
So, yeah, I can see why you'd think that Slashdot couldn't possibly have influenced or shaped the web in any meaningful way today. That would be impossible. But at one point, they were a real powerhouse that could make or break a project like that.
The fact that a bunch of whiny crybabies want to deprive some manufacturer of his rights
What rights? Amazon is in no way obligated to carry products from any specific supplier. Forcing Amazon to carry a product, however, would be a violation of their rights.
has nothing to do with the "invisible hand". The invisible hand doesn't need petitions.
I hate to break it to you, but markets don't work by magic. Consumers play a pretty damned important role. Their collective actions, as it happens, are the hand that decides what products and services succeed and fail.
This is a bunch of people that can't handle the fact that the market isn't conforming to their pet political agenda.
Yes. That's why they're using their power as consumers to create change. That's what boycotts are all about. Consumers are a powerful market force. By banding together, they can even make their voices heard. The market always bends to the will of the consumers.
Maybe it's the free speech part you don't like? It does appear that way. It's clear that you're against people freely choosing to buy products and services from whatever businesses they so choose, and against their right to voice their opinion about the practices of other businesses.
Repeating it won't make any difference. It's still incomprehensible.
Why do people boycott an business? Because they want some aspect of that business to change. People might boycott a business because they want them to stop sponsoring a particular television program. They might boycott a business because they want to stop particular labor practices in their supply chain. They might boycott a business because they want them to stop carrying a particular product for various reasons.
In any and all cases, a boycott is intended to encourage the business to change in some way. Most of the time, that involves third-parties with which the business chooses to work. From sponsors to suppliers.
Why else have a boycott if you didn't expect the business to change their practices? What would the purpose of a boycott be otherwise?
Slashdot Mirror
Very true. There is no panacea.
You missed this part:
you can't beat the intuitiveness of "giving orders to the computer".
Today's "virtual assistant" programs are essentially command lines, just with a more "natural language" style interface. We've seen the same approach in older command line interfaces like Lotus HAL. No matter how advanced the GUI, you're not going to beat setting alarms and appointments with a quick voice command. It's as intuitive as it gets.
Oh, those poor students. They had to walk a few extra feet to enter the "blocked" building. Hang the protestors!
THEY chose not to comply, and deserve the consequences
I didn't know the police had been granted authority to convict, decide, and carry out sentences. I guess we can dispense with the courts then.
That's absurd.
Here is a video showing what happened; not just the pepper spraying, but everything leading up to it. Around 7:30 you can see the officer telling the protestors individually that if they do not move, they will be sprayed and then saying "Do you understand?" Yeah, how horrible of him, giving them every chance to avoid being sprayed.
Let's assume you're telling the truth. (I haven't seen the video in years.)
There is still absolutely no justification for the officer's disturbingly violent actions. Stop blaming the victims.
This is the kind of thing you'd expect from a school-yard bully. 'Gimme your milk money or I'll give you a knuckle sandwich'. Should we excuse the black-eye just because the bully gave the kid a choice?
Can you provide an example of a number that is prime in base 2, but not prime when converted to base 10?
No, no you can not.
. That's the point of studies like this - it takes away yet another nonsensical argument
I think that it's foolish to believe that this will disarm them in any way. (Was their any question about majority consensus in the first place?) Rather, I suspect it will reinforce their beliefs regarding dishonestly and corruption, given what we can see in this thread.
I suppose I don't. Still, it would be useful to others reading this if you'd explain more fully why you think Mozilla has become a "political group".
At the same time, we can embrace the future, adopt emerging technologies, and become the leaders in the new energy economy.
I've often thought that since climate change was such a contentious issue, that it might make more sense to sell solutions, like new energy, on their other merits. The result would be the same (e.g. less coal, more wind and solar) but it would avoid the divisive and politically changed issue altogether.
I think the AC was complaining, like so many other ACs here, that there are problems with the study (specific methodological problems, and fundamental philosophical problems [the importance of consensus to the veracity of AGW] ) that make it questionable.
That is, the AC is saying that you can and should criticize this study for being poor science, particularly if you hold the consensus position, as using bad science to support good science isn't rational. (From the third sentence in the AC's second paragraph.)
I'll agree with the AC that consensus is meaningless. Try to understand that this is being conflated with Gore's infamous 'the science is settled' line. It should be obvious that the very idea of 'settled science' is antithetical to science, and the consensus claim is intended to bolster that dangerously anti-science assertion. The consensus point, then, is intended to lend credibility to AGW claims without reference to any actual science. (I may be stretching the AC's "supporting science with anti-science" line a bit, but I think I'm on the mark.)
So, the AC is saying that the study is poor and should be criticized and that even if the study was properly done that it should have no influence on your beliefs about AGW.
As to the AC's beliefs about AGW, I can't find anything specific that would let me say if the AC supports it or is against it. That may have been you stretching things a bit.
... huh?
I don't know if you can write a check for a fraction of a cent.
I don't know that we're going to find much common ground. It seems that we're interested in completely different aspects of the problem. Thanks for taking the time to clarify your position, though.
I didn't like how I had to word some of that either
That would explain it. I though someone was doing an odd impersonation of you.
Do you believe that you should be fired for supporting gay marriage?
Eich wasn't fired. He resigned, of his own accord with no pressure from the board, because he believed it was in Mozilla's best interest.
When you're the public face of an organization, your actions and beliefs reflect on that organization. Eich knew this and willingly resigned to prevent further conflict. I disagree with his views on Prop 8, but I'll applaud his commitment to Mozilla.
Well ... what do you want? What would convince you? Be specific here, as I can't even begin to guess what would satisfy you.
Another problem with PDF is the fixed document size. You can make it whatever you want, but it can't change dynamically. It might be okay if everyone used a desktop with a graphical browser to access the web, but there was a fairly small window of time when that could be generally assumed. It's no secret that reading PDF's on a smartphone is very frustrating -- I'd hate to see the same happen to websites just to make it easier to develop application-like pages.
Right now, with a modern browser, it's pretty simple to build a page with just html and css that adjusts perfectly to fit the viewport, scaling everything (text included) as though you were scaling vector image as the size and aspect ratio of the viewport changes. (Yes, even across browsers, desktop and mobile, given support for current standards.) The problem, unfortunately, is that this isn't a terribly good solution given the wide range of devices that people use to access the web today. I'd have supported an idea like yours 15 years ago, I probably even wished for something like that myself, but it doesn't make much sense to me now.
What I'd rather see is far less control over formatting and layout and more emphasis on semantic markup, leaving the layout and final appearance up to the browser. We'd lose a bit of creative freedom, but there's already very little variation in the basic layout of websites today. In exchange, we'd gain a more web far more useful and accessible across a wider range of devices.
For example, it's an absolute nightmare to use the web with a screen reader. Reading a forum involves slowly slogging past a lot of content you'd normally not even notice on a desktop. Before I could read your post, I'd hear "Re colon Rant colon REBOOT the WEB open parenthesis Score colon 3 close parenthesis by Tablizer open parenthesis 95088 close parenthesis Friend on Tuesday April 12, 2016 at 11 12PM open parenthesis pound 51897031 close parenthesis Journal" before getting to "Sorry," Grab a copy of NVDA (it's free) to experience it for yourself. The heavy emphasis on formatting and layout at the expense of semantic information is a big part of the problem.
I'd offer that a compromise where a greater degree of control in layout and formatting could be had with a suitably sophisticated style language would be a possible positive solution to the problem, though we'd need to pay for it in complexity.
You're right the the standards are a mess, though even if we could get all of the major players to agree to a new set of standards, and developers to adopt them en masse, I'd wager that it would take 20+ years before we'd see the opportunity for the big players to drop support for existing standards. That is, we'll be stuck with what we have for a while. Still, it would be nice to see a serious effort to produce a better set of standards for the web.
Let's also not forget that Chrome comes bundled Ask Toolbar style (it even sets itself as the default browser) with many popular utilities like Avast Antivirus and CCleaner.
Chrome is indistinguishable from spyware.
It's called "PDF" and it doesn't work well on the web.
And now their next endeavor is to basically reskin Chrome and call it Firefox.
This is informative? It's about as incorrect as it could possibly get. It's pointed out in the article and in early posts in this thread. I can see how you'd get that impression from the flamebait title and summary, but restating prominent misinformation sure as hell isn't informative!
They've gone from a technical group to a political group.
I'm not convinced. I suspect you're referring to the Brendan Eich issue? If so, that's foolish. Mozilla had to respond in some way as they were already under-fire from outside groups for promoting Eich in the first place. So, aside from Eich voluntarily stepping down (he was not fired or asked to resign by the board; he did it all on his own), do you have any justification for calling Mozilla a political group?
I don't want politics in a browser.
Then you're safe using Firefox. The only politics you'll find there are the ones you've put there yourself.
A long time ago, Slashdot was very popular and influential. I'll even give Slashdot credit for the early success of Google.
How popular? A link from the Slashdot homepage could bring down a webserver. A DDoS attack we called a 'Slashdotting' (alt. 'Slashdot effect') as the fraction of users that did read the articles flooded the site. On 9/11, while every news site was drowning, Slashdot was still accessible. They were well prepared for massive traffic. It spawned countless imitators, but few managed to grow in Slashdot's shadow.
Today, of course, Slashdot has a much smaller audience and virtually no influence. It's easy to think things were always this way, just a tiny relic of the past catering to a few curmudgeons who don't understand Reddit.
It's fallen pretty hard. Remember the "Slashdot effect"? It's no longer a thing. I had a personal project hit Hack-a-day, Reddit, and Slashdot all within a month. I got a massive boost of traffic. Though, at it's peek, the traffic from Slashdot that month was well-under the traffic I still get from Reddit when someone links to it in a comment. It was even under the traffic I got from a tiny one-word link buried in a long blog post on textfiles.com! I get more traffic from the post on Hack-a-day monthly (over 2 years later) than I got from the article on the front page of Slashdot.
So, yeah, I can see why you'd think that Slashdot couldn't possibly have influenced or shaped the web in any meaningful way today. That would be impossible. But at one point, they were a real powerhouse that could make or break a project like that.
The fact that a bunch of whiny crybabies want to deprive some manufacturer of his rights
What rights? Amazon is in no way obligated to carry products from any specific supplier. Forcing Amazon to carry a product, however, would be a violation of their rights.
has nothing to do with the "invisible hand". The invisible hand doesn't need petitions.
I hate to break it to you, but markets don't work by magic. Consumers play a pretty damned important role. Their collective actions, as it happens, are the hand that decides what products and services succeed and fail.
This is a bunch of people that can't handle the fact that the market isn't conforming to their pet political agenda.
Yes. That's why they're using their power as consumers to create change. That's what boycotts are all about. Consumers are a powerful market force. By banding together, they can even make their voices heard. The market always bends to the will of the consumers.
Maybe it's the free speech part you don't like? It does appear that way. It's clear that you're against people freely choosing to buy products and services from whatever businesses they so choose, and against their right to voice their opinion about the practices of other businesses.
Ill say it one more time
Repeating it won't make any difference. It's still incomprehensible.
Why do people boycott an business? Because they want some aspect of that business to change. People might boycott a business because they want them to stop sponsoring a particular television program. They might boycott a business because they want to stop particular labor practices in their supply chain. They might boycott a business because they want them to stop carrying a particular product for various reasons.
In any and all cases, a boycott is intended to encourage the business to change in some way. Most of the time, that involves third-parties with which the business chooses to work. From sponsors to suppliers.
Why else have a boycott if you didn't expect the business to change their practices? What would the purpose of a boycott be otherwise?