English might not be the first language of most computer users, but English is definitely the lingua franca of the internet. This explains why I am able to read the President of India's web site, or why LKML is conducted strictly in English, despite having participants from every continent. Increased adoption of the Dvorak layout could benefit anyone who spends a lot of time online.
As for coders, there's no need to stop with that distinction. I spend a lot of time coding Ruby. Certainly the best layout for me would have very little in common with that of someone who writes Java for a living (no semicolons for me!) I've often toyed with the idea of hacking together a quick-n-dirty genetic algorithm that would build an optimal layout based on analysis of your source files. Alas, too few minutes in the day:-)
I don't know much about how these things work, but FWIW, they confronted this issue last time with a 1-for-4 reverse split. Maybe the could do that again?
Also, it's really difficult to trust someone who cannot spell the word equivalent. It seems like that word would come up a lot in the field of, you know, science.
I'm the guy that posted what you were responding to. I just wanted to write and say: thank you for proving my point. Have a wonderful day; you've definitely made mine.
Yep, "you people". That's right, I am racist against republicans. Sue me.
The rest of your post is so nonsensical that it does not even merit refutation. "Someone's op-ed" was, in fact, written in the party organ itself; and actually I do have an idea if that is true, because your own people said it. Please refer to my other post, where I confront someone equally as dense with the cold, hard facts. I realize they're hard to swallow when they don't swing your way, but it's time to gradually transition you people (there it is again!) out of the la-la land you've been living in for the past six years and into a more, erm, reality-based existence. Absent that, I fear 2009 will be a rude awakening indeed.:-)
Thank you, you really hit the nail on the head. It's pretty obvious where I stand politically, but I can honestly say that were I a total independent, there would be absolutely zero ethical equivalence in my mind between this presidency and the one before it. Politicians are politicians, fine. And the Clintons certainly aren't winning any points for honestly. But rarely did the cross they line into flagrant abuses of executive power, willful obstruction of justice, shameless cronyism. I feel like I'm living in the Ulysses S. Grant administration every time I pick up the paper. The pardons are one example where I'd say they did, but the pardons simply rise to the level of this administration does on a weekly basis.
What really cracks me up about all this is that, all through the 90s, it was Newt Gingrich and other Contract With America signatories who were assailing the democratic party for its "moral relativism." My, how the tables have turned. Somewhere along the way, Bush apologists decided that their guy's peccadilloes weren't any better or worse than anyone else's--just different. "It's all relative," you can almost hear them saying. Well, I never was a relativist, and I'm here to say there damn well are moral absolutes. The question of is this president more moral than others is a valid one which has definitive answer. And who here has any doubt what the historical judgment will be?
Jesus christ, did you even read the fucking quote? It's right there in print. A Bush justice department official telling the Wall Street Journal nothing was permanently lost, and there was no evidence of a conspiracy. What the fuck more do you want? Cheney singing it in verse on Limbaugh?
And btw, hah. You know you've won the argument when the other side starts trotting out grievances dating back to the Civil War.
Sure. First, browsers (at least the old ones, back when I cared about this issue) won't render tables until the whole table source, including all the images it contains, have loaded. Separating your content into blocks allows the page to render progressively. This makes a huge difference. Second, using a table layout essentially embeds all your styling in each page, greatly increasing download times. Moving this out into a CSS file allows it to be cached, so it's basically loaded once and that's it. In my experience the raw.html files are 25-33% as big when you move to a table-free layout.
(Typical wingerdom on display here folks... draw a flawed analogy to something "the democrats" did, add a pithy response, and voila! Sleazy republicans, absolved of guilt. Don't buy into it.)
I can't think of no better way to refute this sort of spew than to quote one if its finest purveyors back at you. Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2005:
After a long investigation, however, Justice says the picture that emerged is of a man who knowingly and recklessly violated the law in handling classified documents, but who was not trying to hide any evidence. Prosecutors believe Mr. Berger genuinely wanted to prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission but felt he was somehow above having to spend numerous hours in the Archives as the rules required, and that he didn't exactly know how to return the documents once he'd taken them out.
More than a few conservatives have been crying foul, or whitewash, in part because Mr. Berger's plea means he'll likely avoid jail and lose his security clearance for only three years. So we called Justice Department Public Integrity chief prosecutor Noel Hillman, who assured us that Mr. Berger did not deny any documents to history. "There is no evidence that he intended to destroy originals," said Mr. Hillman. "There is no evidence that he did destroy originals. We have objectively and affirmatively confirmed that the contents of all the five documents at issue exist today and were made available to the 9/11 Commission." Sandy Berger was punished and the final result of his actions was, uhh, nothing. No information was permanently lost. Whichever one of Karl's minions clicked "delete" willfully and permanently erased years worth of evidence in a criminal investigation, and when the resulting obstruction charge is handed down, it's going to be extremely gratifying.
So, recapping: your analogy is flawed, your point is wrong, and my guess is you knew all of this and went ahead and said it anyways. Cuz that's how you people operate. Lie till you get caught, then go on the offensive when you do.
I haven't read TFA or even ever heard of HTML 5, but I really hope they get it right this time. Some many things in XHTML and CSS just leave you scratching your head, especially if you come from a print background.
Why are columns so hard? Why can't I just write <column>::stuff::</column>? This is like the the most common use case in all web design, and the current implementation completely whiffs.
Why do floats suck? Why don't they automagically cause their containing box to expand? I read the explanation for this once, somewhere, but I can't remember it now. And it just seems silly.
Why can I only have one background image per block? Or why can't I specify a bunch of "adjoining" images, so I don't have to make five nested div's every time I want to add a drop shadow?
Why can't I vertically align things (not just text) in a block? Ugh.
And so forth. Certain other things that other people have called for, I'm more agnostic about, like built in support for drop shadows and rounded corners, but there'll be no love lost on my part when they finally replace the current standards.
Meh. First, you're talking gross. What's his margin on those $1600 worth of orders? If it's "standard" retail, let's say 5%. So $80 bucks a day. Now, how much extra time and effort did it take you, the developer, to support browsers that are almost a decade old and that, by your own admission, affect roughly 2% of the userbase? My guess is at least a couple thousand dollars, unless you adopted a lowest-common-denominator approach, in which case the site must look unappealingly 1997. More importantly, what sort of tradeoffs were you forced to make? Have you studied at all how much business your client is forgoing by not leveraging the current "formatting fanciness"? Here are a couple points to consider.
People like sites that are clean looking and easy to use. Marketing studies have consistently shown that people will pay more for the exact same item from a place that sells it in a more aesthetically pleasing manner. (I'm not saying this can't be done with HTML 3.2 or whatever, but it's much harder.)
Standards-compliant sites that use semantic markup place higher in search engines, netting more impressions and more sales.
Table-based layouts are slow and unresponsive. How many people here remember good old NS 4 sitting there blank-faced, cranking away on the old, complicated table layouts of yore. I do. Responsiveness is huge; people have come to expect it as the rule, not the exception--a marked departure from the dark days of IE5 and NS4.
I hate to break it to you, but neither one person nor fifty speak for an entire movement. If you're going to tar us all with the same brush, permit me to do the same for my favorite pariahs, the wingers:
I don't believe in open-mindedness -- Limbaugh
[paraphrasing] All muslims are evil -- Virgil Goode
Homosexuals reproduce sexually by molesting children -- Mel Gibson
I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much. -- Ann Coulter, on 9/11 widows
They are racists, murderers, sexual deviants and supporters of Al-Qaeda -- Pat Robertson, on liberal professors (I'm just going from memory here; this isn't some circlejerk e-mail forward or whatever it is you've vomited up.)
Chances are that you don't agree with all of the above. By the same token, there are lots of environmentalists who are moderate and who would appreciate a little respect. It's not as if our goals are especially devious--not destroying the very natural environment that enables us to, you know, go on living, is as selfishly appealing as I can make it sound for all the libertarians out there. (And there are a lot, here on the net. One wonders why you don't show your mugs more in public.)
At the same time, there are grains of truth to the sentiments expressed in those quotes. Environmentalists do a very bad job of articulating their views on economics, and in so doing tend to come off as anti-capitalist lefties who won't be happy until we've forcibly relocated everyone onto organic farming communes. The basic point is that the brand of economics practiced by western capitalism for the last 200 years is predicated on some very flawed assumptions. Almost no effort goes into valuing biodiversity, water supply, land use practices, or fossil fuel consumption. The cost of, say, strip mining, has traditionally been viewed as the cost of physically extracting the resource. No thought has been given to the value of streams, mountains, open space, wildlife preservation--nada.
Most of the environmentalists I know aren't asking anybody to force anyone else to do anything. We're simply asking for a fairer valuation of our actions, one which incorporates a more expansive world view than existed at the birth of industrial capitalism, 200 years ago. We have faith that, when viewed through this lends, the choices become obvious, and they swing in our favor.
No, I don't think Ford will disappear. 100 years' worth of brand equity is certainly worth something, even if the last 30 are synonymous with ugliness, unreliability and inefficiency. Someone--Toyota?--will come snap them up in a few year's time, scrap the entire product line, and sell rebadged versions of their own products--a foreign car in disguise. In fact I've heard rumors that Toyota is absolutely champing at the bit to do this, because it would remove the last major hurdle for a lot people to buying a Toyota.
But the Ford as know it is a dead duck, as is US auto production in general. American deindustrialization is a trend that will carry forward as far into the future as you care to look. If you really believe politics can stand in the way of that, ask yourself how we got to where we are today, when 60 years ago Americans produced nearly every car in existence, Union membership was probably 6x (at least three) as high as it is today, and UAW was one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. Efficiency, capitalism, big business and money run the show in this country, and together they demand that our autos be made somewhere where the reservation wage is a lot, lot lower than Ohio or Michigan. And I also question the political feasibility of a protective tariff anyways, when half the cars we buy are made overseas. Also, the US is already on record with the WTO as opposing tariffs on auto parts when China tried to do just that.
Your point about homeland security is well taken, but really, how tenuous are our trade relations with Asia (excepting China)? How much does this impact homeland security preparations? Whatever the case, I still don't see this issue standing in the way of the triumphant march of the almighty buck.
Can you link to those studies? Every one I've ever read has pretty conclusively refuted this red herring. Above all, solar radiance has been constant for the last 30 years. I agree with you that there is uncertainty, and by that very logic, a rational being must begin to think probabilistically. By far the most probable culprit for what we are witnessing is our own behavior, and our response should be weighted accordingly.
The facts support my opinion, dipshit. I'm tired of seeing sound research and an overwhelming plurality of scientists being backed into a corner by a small, vocal minority of agenda peddlers proclaiming their persecution at every turn. Yes you are entitled to your opinion, yes you are entitled to dissent, but the act of your dissenting in no way strengthens your case beyond proportion: you are one solitary voice, lost amongst a chorus of those say you are wrong. The lack of total consensus doesn't invalidate underlying debate, no matter how much you wish it.
So if you have something constructive to add, I'm all ears. The world awaits you, and you'd best hurry, because the tide of opinion is fast turning against you. OTOH, if you're content with sniping from behind the AC facade, well, that's rather telling, isn't it?
I sure hope not. It's a little unnerving that (not that I'm accusing you personally of this) the very same people who play devil's advocate by pointing out how little we know about the mechanisms of climate change, are the ones foisting up such silly technological quick fixes as this. Great idea, guys: since we've got such a firm grasp on what the effects of our last 200 gradually altering the climate have been, why not go ahead and decrease insolation by, I dunno, call it x, x in (0,1], (your guess is as good as mine where), in the span of a few months. That oughta be a fun ride.
Technology is not going to come to our rescue on this one, Slashdot. The sine qua non of all engineering is first fully understanding the problem, and we're nowhere close to that point. Our only guide then, is the past. There is an incontrovertible link between our industrial activity, atmospheric CO2 levels, and global warming--do not let the partisans on this site, or anywhere else, convince you otherwise. We need to cut our emissions and general ecological profile to levels more closely resembling a long, long time ago if we are to have any hope of averting this catastrophe.
and is the same government that earlier this year slammed open source software for being useless and buggy. What, whuh? I realize this is Slashdot and all, but still... I mean, when equating opponents of open source with fascism, try and be a little more subtle next time.
Nothing wrong with his reasoning. It's impossible to prove the converse, so we only have his word to go on anyway. And really, what could be more reliable when it comes to justifying one's own illicit behavior?
There can be no question that it's not worth spending $500-$800 on Photoshop if your only purpose is to resize images. Thank you for pointing that out. For the rest of us, there are a great many areas where Photoshop far and away beats the competition and which would cause us to take a long, hard look at buying it if it wasn't readily available for free. Things like ACR, 32-bit (HDR) support, web conversion, layer effects, etc. I have heard numerous photographers I know justify their pirated copy of Photoshop using exactly the logic of the parent poster, and it strikes me as utter crap. The features they've come to rely on don't exist anywhere else, and yet they're suggesting their price elasticity of demand is infinite. It's a joke.
Slashdot Mirror
English might not be the first language of most computer users, but English is definitely the lingua franca of the internet. This explains why I am able to read the President of India's web site, or why LKML is conducted strictly in English, despite having participants from every continent. Increased adoption of the Dvorak layout could benefit anyone who spends a lot of time online.
:-)
As for coders, there's no need to stop with that distinction. I spend a lot of time coding Ruby. Certainly the best layout for me would have very little in common with that of someone who writes Java for a living (no semicolons for me!) I've often toyed with the idea of hacking together a quick-n-dirty genetic algorithm that would build an optimal layout based on analysis of your source files. Alas, too few minutes in the day
Microsoft and Apple are competitors!!
Ka-wow!
I don't know much about how these things work, but FWIW, they confronted this issue last time with a 1-for-4 reverse split. Maybe the could do that again?
Also, it's really difficult to trust someone who cannot spell the word equivalent. It seems like that word would come up a lot in the field of, you know, science.
Hi,
I'm the guy that posted what you were responding to. I just wanted to write and say: thank you for proving my point. Have a wonderful day; you've definitely made mine.
Yep, "you people". That's right, I am racist against republicans. Sue me.
:-)
The rest of your post is so nonsensical that it does not even merit refutation. "Someone's op-ed" was, in fact, written in the party organ itself; and actually I do have an idea if that is true, because your own people said it. Please refer to my other post, where I confront someone equally as dense with the cold, hard facts. I realize they're hard to swallow when they don't swing your way, but it's time to gradually transition you people (there it is again!) out of the la-la land you've been living in for the past six years and into a more, erm, reality-based existence. Absent that, I fear 2009 will be a rude awakening indeed.
Thank you, you really hit the nail on the head. It's pretty obvious where I stand politically, but I can honestly say that were I a total independent, there would be absolutely zero ethical equivalence in my mind between this presidency and the one before it. Politicians are politicians, fine. And the Clintons certainly aren't winning any points for honestly. But rarely did the cross they line into flagrant abuses of executive power, willful obstruction of justice, shameless cronyism. I feel like I'm living in the Ulysses S. Grant administration every time I pick up the paper. The pardons are one example where I'd say they did, but the pardons simply rise to the level of this administration does on a weekly basis.
What really cracks me up about all this is that, all through the 90s, it was Newt Gingrich and other Contract With America signatories who were assailing the democratic party for its "moral relativism." My, how the tables have turned. Somewhere along the way, Bush apologists decided that their guy's peccadilloes weren't any better or worse than anyone else's--just different. "It's all relative," you can almost hear them saying. Well, I never was a relativist, and I'm here to say there damn well are moral absolutes. The question of is this president more moral than others is a valid one which has definitive answer. And who here has any doubt what the historical judgment will be?
Jesus christ, did you even read the fucking quote? It's right there in print. A Bush justice department official telling the Wall Street Journal nothing was permanently lost, and there was no evidence of a conspiracy. What the fuck more do you want? Cheney singing it in verse on Limbaugh?
And btw, hah. You know you've won the argument when the other side starts trotting out grievances dating back to the Civil War.
Sure. First, browsers (at least the old ones, back when I cared about this issue) won't render tables until the whole table source, including all the images it contains, have loaded. Separating your content into blocks allows the page to render progressively. This makes a huge difference. Second, using a table layout essentially embeds all your styling in each page, greatly increasing download times. Moving this out into a CSS file allows it to be cached, so it's basically loaded once and that's it. In my experience the raw .html files are 25-33% as big when you move to a table-free layout.
What, you mean this? I think not.
I can't think of no better way to refute this sort of spew than to quote one if its finest purveyors back at you. Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2005: After a long investigation, however, Justice says the picture that emerged is of a man who knowingly and recklessly violated the law in handling classified documents, but who was not trying to hide any evidence. Prosecutors believe Mr. Berger genuinely wanted to prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission but felt he was somehow above having to spend numerous hours in the Archives as the rules required, and that he didn't exactly know how to return the documents once he'd taken them out.
More than a few conservatives have been crying foul, or whitewash, in part because Mr. Berger's plea means he'll likely avoid jail and lose his security clearance for only three years. So we called Justice Department Public Integrity chief prosecutor Noel Hillman, who assured us that Mr. Berger did not deny any documents to history. "There is no evidence that he intended to destroy originals," said Mr. Hillman. "There is no evidence that he did destroy originals. We have objectively and affirmatively confirmed that the contents of all the five documents at issue exist today and were made available to the 9/11 Commission." Sandy Berger was punished and the final result of his actions was, uhh, nothing. No information was permanently lost. Whichever one of Karl's minions clicked "delete" willfully and permanently erased years worth of evidence in a criminal investigation, and when the resulting obstruction charge is handed down, it's going to be extremely gratifying.
So, recapping: your analogy is flawed, your point is wrong, and my guess is you knew all of this and went ahead and said it anyways. Cuz that's how you people operate. Lie till you get caught, then go on the offensive when you do.
Seeing as we're a mouse click away from forming our own judgements.. what's the site?
And so forth. Certain other things that other people have called for, I'm more agnostic about, like built in support for drop shadows and rounded corners, but there'll be no love lost on my part when they finally replace the current standards.
Because it gets you published and, thus, increases your chance for tenure, that from which all blessings flow.
[paraphrasing] All muslims are evil -- Virgil Goode
Homosexuals reproduce sexually by molesting children -- Mel Gibson
I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much. -- Ann Coulter, on 9/11 widows
They are racists, murderers, sexual deviants and supporters of Al-Qaeda -- Pat Robertson, on liberal professors (I'm just going from memory here; this isn't some circlejerk e-mail forward or whatever it is you've vomited up.)
Chances are that you don't agree with all of the above. By the same token, there are lots of environmentalists who are moderate and who would appreciate a little respect. It's not as if our goals are especially devious--not destroying the very natural environment that enables us to, you know, go on living, is as selfishly appealing as I can make it sound for all the libertarians out there. (And there are a lot, here on the net. One wonders why you don't show your mugs more in public.)
At the same time, there are grains of truth to the sentiments expressed in those quotes. Environmentalists do a very bad job of articulating their views on economics, and in so doing tend to come off as anti-capitalist lefties who won't be happy until we've forcibly relocated everyone onto organic farming communes. The basic point is that the brand of economics practiced by western capitalism for the last 200 years is predicated on some very flawed assumptions. Almost no effort goes into valuing biodiversity, water supply, land use practices, or fossil fuel consumption. The cost of, say, strip mining, has traditionally been viewed as the cost of physically extracting the resource. No thought has been given to the value of streams, mountains, open space, wildlife preservation--nada.
Most of the environmentalists I know aren't asking anybody to force anyone else to do anything. We're simply asking for a fairer valuation of our actions, one which incorporates a more expansive world view than existed at the birth of industrial capitalism, 200 years ago. We have faith that, when viewed through this lends, the choices become obvious, and they swing in our favor.
Except I have a feeling most people would rather watch 1080p Donahue than blocky, artifact-laden shows that are stimulating and thought-provoking.
No, I don't think Ford will disappear. 100 years' worth of brand equity is certainly worth something, even if the last 30 are synonymous with ugliness, unreliability and inefficiency. Someone--Toyota?--will come snap them up in a few year's time, scrap the entire product line, and sell rebadged versions of their own products--a foreign car in disguise. In fact I've heard rumors that Toyota is absolutely champing at the bit to do this, because it would remove the last major hurdle for a lot people to buying a Toyota.
But the Ford as know it is a dead duck, as is US auto production in general. American deindustrialization is a trend that will carry forward as far into the future as you care to look. If you really believe politics can stand in the way of that, ask yourself how we got to where we are today, when 60 years ago Americans produced nearly every car in existence, Union membership was probably 6x (at least three) as high as it is today, and UAW was one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. Efficiency, capitalism, big business and money run the show in this country, and together they demand that our autos be made somewhere where the reservation wage is a lot, lot lower than Ohio or Michigan. And I also question the political feasibility of a protective tariff anyways, when half the cars we buy are made overseas. Also, the US is already on record with the WTO as opposing tariffs on auto parts when China tried to do just that.
Your point about homeland security is well taken, but really, how tenuous are our trade relations with Asia (excepting China)? How much does this impact homeland security preparations? Whatever the case, I still don't see this issue standing in the way of the triumphant march of the almighty buck.
Ten years from production don't mean shit when your company is three years from oblivion.
Can you link to those studies? Every one I've ever read has pretty conclusively refuted this red herring. Above all, solar radiance has been constant for the last 30 years. I agree with you that there is uncertainty, and by that very logic, a rational being must begin to think probabilistically. By far the most probable culprit for what we are witnessing is our own behavior, and our response should be weighted accordingly.
The facts support my opinion, dipshit. I'm tired of seeing sound research and an overwhelming plurality of scientists being backed into a corner by a small, vocal minority of agenda peddlers proclaiming their persecution at every turn. Yes you are entitled to your opinion, yes you are entitled to dissent, but the act of your dissenting in no way strengthens your case beyond proportion: you are one solitary voice, lost amongst a chorus of those say you are wrong. The lack of total consensus doesn't invalidate underlying debate, no matter how much you wish it.
So if you have something constructive to add, I'm all ears. The world awaits you, and you'd best hurry, because the tide of opinion is fast turning against you. OTOH, if you're content with sniping from behind the AC facade, well, that's rather telling, isn't it?
I sure hope not. It's a little unnerving that (not that I'm accusing you personally of this) the very same people who play devil's advocate by pointing out how little we know about the mechanisms of climate change, are the ones foisting up such silly technological quick fixes as this. Great idea, guys: since we've got such a firm grasp on what the effects of our last 200 gradually altering the climate have been, why not go ahead and decrease insolation by, I dunno, call it x, x in (0,1], (your guess is as good as mine where), in the span of a few months. That oughta be a fun ride.
Technology is not going to come to our rescue on this one, Slashdot. The sine qua non of all engineering is first fully understanding the problem, and we're nowhere close to that point. Our only guide then, is the past. There is an incontrovertible link between our industrial activity, atmospheric CO2 levels, and global warming--do not let the partisans on this site, or anywhere else, convince you otherwise. We need to cut our emissions and general ecological profile to levels more closely resembling a long, long time ago if we are to have any hope of averting this catastrophe.
There can be no question that it's not worth spending $500-$800 on Photoshop if your only purpose is to resize images. Thank you for pointing that out. For the rest of us, there are a great many areas where Photoshop far and away beats the competition and which would cause us to take a long, hard look at buying it if it wasn't readily available for free. Things like ACR, 32-bit (HDR) support, web conversion, layer effects, etc. I have heard numerous photographers I know justify their pirated copy of Photoshop using exactly the logic of the parent poster, and it strikes me as utter crap. The features they've come to rely on don't exist anywhere else, and yet they're suggesting their price elasticity of demand is infinite. It's a joke.