The IWP was created by the ISPs to avoid Government interference. The "choice" put in front of the ISPs was either self-censor or have a censorship regime imposed that would most likely destroy their business. Some will say this is a victory for the free market, other less deluded people will note that this allows the Government to impose censorship without the trouble of getting a bill through Parliament (mere threats don't require prior debate).
As such it is in the ISPs' (and so the IWP's) interests to occasionally censor the odd high profile site. This shows the Government and it's reactionary supporters that The System Works. They backed down on the record cover when it became clear that commercial sites would have to be censored as well as the non-profit Wikipedia. Commercial sites that could afford to sue. Targeting images from dead sites, hosted by a non-profit entity is a win-win scenario for the IWP. They show everyone how they are helping to keep our children safe from poor defined threats and they don't offend anyone who can sue them.
Well yes, and if you drive a car instead of flying a plane you never need to learn to land. As I said: you can do things in native code that can't be done in a scripting language (or can't be done in anything approaching an optimal manner).
Most of what people want to do on the web can be handled by HTML/CSS, some requires Javascript and some Flash (or its equivalents). Being able to run sandboxed native code opens the door to new functionality. Most of this new functionality will suck but some might be quite good. There's no harm in providing this sandbox and seeing what people can do with it.
As an aside, C/C++ is an incredibly complex build environment...
C/C++ are programming languages, not build environments. There's nothing to stop developers using qmake, or Jam, or one of many more user friendly build systems. The fact that the examples don't is more indicative of the intended audience (expert native-code developers) than anything else.
As to "why build this at all"... because they can, they want to and it has the possibility to provide a feature set not currently available. No one who isn't a graphic designer likes websites made entirely out of flash; but flash games are undoubtedly popular and fun. In general I don't like the use of Javascript (if I see another stupid fading menu I'm going to hunt down the developer who wrote it and kill them as they sleep) but I love the GMail interface and wouldn't be without it.
The web is nothing if not Darwinian. If this technology has no real use it will go the way of Java applets and VRML. If a killer app can be found it will become part of the landscape and we'll all forget what it like to live without it.
Firstly, most of the movements that are "opposed" to fascism (Marxism, socialism) are themselves fascist. If you don't like being called a fascist, stop spouting their propaganda like it's a universal truth.
Secondly, you talk about "society" like it's a physical entity, it's not. Society is nothing but the sum total of all the individuals within it. Killing someone is demonstrably harming them, so killing is banned. One person sending their child to a fee paying school is not demonstrably harming anyone and so it is legal. Banning activities on the sole basis of belief is bad for the individual and so bad for society.
Thirdly, there is no universal definition of "fair". There are elements of the concept that are widely agreed upon, but to speak of it as some kind of natural law is fallacious. You (and others) believe that private education is unfair, I (and others) believe that banning private education is unfair. We are both entitled to our views but not to enforce them on others without their consent. To call for a right to be abrogated on the basis of "fairness" is no different from calling for same sex marriage to be banned as "immoral": one that would do either is more dangerous than any amount of private schooling.
Because there were no written exams in Europe until the late 18th century. Prior to that the student would be questioned (orally) and graded on their answers (much like modern vivas).
There is a difference between providing a social safety net (health care, education, shelter, etc) and banning people who can afford it from accessing superior versions of basic necessities (private heath care, fee paying schools, private housing, etc).
The former respects the rights of the individual and is classically liberal, the latter is fascism. I support the former system, you the latter. Go figure.
It's what happens when you replace exams with seventy metric tonnes of coursework for every subject. I understand the need for coursework at higher levels of education, indeed my degree (Computer Science) wouldn't have made much academic sense without it. But at GCSE level it turns in to a game of "who has the most interest/best educated parent".
Mathematics is a language, it provides an unambitious way of explaining processes that is (relatively) independent of general purposes languages (e.g. English, Mandarin, etc).
Without a good grounding in maths you're barring yourself from all but the lowest rungs of Science, Engineering and associated disciplines like Computer Science. Even the great cash cow that is the City of London requires a decent knowledge of maths in most high paying positions (except Risk Manager it would seem).
Not that there's anything wrong with taking other paths: a good liberal arts education can go a long way. But just as scientists benefit from skills other than pure number crunching (the ability to explain their results to non-experts for a start), everyone benefits from understanding basic (i.e. A-Level) maths.
If people understood compound interest maybe we wouldn't have such a problem with personal debt levels.
The Tories start this with their "conversion" of polytechnics in to universities. They turned decent, vocationally oriented institutions in to terrible universities. The sooner this (the UK) nation realises that the majority of people aren't particularly strong academically and allows them to take truly vocational courses (with the same funding that the academic courses receive), the better off we'll all be.
Can I sign under "I allow people to chose where to educate their children because I'm not an arrogant fascist who claims to know the solution to society's woes?"
No justification is require for sending children to private schools. It is a parent's right to do so and the only "horrible" people are those jack booted authoritarians who believe that all individual rights must be subservient to their twisted view of a "just" world.
The problem is that the Heather Crowe page quotes no useful sources. I refuse to believe that after decades of this discussion, only Enstrom and Kabat have performed a study that even approaches useful. Small scale studies and anecdotal evidence are pretty much useless for determining correlation, let alone causality.
For something that we all (mostly) accept to be fact, there's not a vast amount of literature (to be found on the internet at least) backing it up.
Proof please. Ideally from a large scale, long term study that takes in to account variables other than long-term exposure to second-hand smoke.
I've been Googling around trying to find some. But aside from the Enstrom/Kabat study that was found to have methodological issues (and suggested that there was no consistent link between exposure to second-hand smoke and cancer), there's no a lot out there. The entire "debate" seems to be anti-ban/tax lobby shouting about civil liberties (which is a fair point, but does not constitute proof of any sort) and the anti-smoking lobby claiming that anyone who disagrees with them is an idiot/fraud/Phillip Morris employee (which is also devoid of proof).
"The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialling wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now."
As someone who's 6'1" and 170 pounds, I'd suggest that the problem isn't entirely Apple's fault. Though it is strange that the iPhone doesn't have a fat fingered option, it's a software keyboard after all.
We will never get things right down here because no two people can agree on what is "right". Using your reasoning we should therefore cease all technological development until a consensus is reached on what needs "fixing".
Better we use our finite resources to further Man's knowledge of the universe than waste them on a pipe dream of global unity and happiness.
Starvation, deprivation and warfare are a old as humanity. We will never be fully rid of them, short of killing all but one person and hoping they're not schizophrenic.
But how long will Clegg be in charge for? His politics aren't bad, he was one of the Orange Book authors after all; but his support from the rest of the party is not exactly whole hearted and universal. The fundamental problem is that the Liberal Democrats are trying to be all things to all people and in doing so there policies are an inconsistent mess. They need to decide whether they are Labour-lite or liberals.
I will be voting for whoever is most likely to unseat the incumbent apparatchik. Sadly this is likely to be some policy free rent-a-Tory. On the upside, even a Tory is likely to vote against the introduction of ID cards. So they won't be quite as awful as Linton.
As for "we vote for MPs, not parties": this is one of the many problems with our electoral system. An MP doesn't have a great deal of power in their constituency. That lies with central government as a whole and the local authority; MPs are nothing but bodies who vote in Parliament. As long as the whip system persists and free votes are a rarity, the MP's own values will be subservient to those of their party. Even more damaging is the first past the post system which tends towards large majorities. If the ruling party votes as a single block (which they usually do) then the opposition might as well not be there. What is needed is a system that produces coalition governments and so forces the largest party to reach compromises with one or more opposition parties. Any system that allows the party with 40% of the popular vote to exercise 100% of the power is a poor system, but there's no incentive for governments to change it as they benefit from its existence once in power.
Because the third biggest party is a schizophrenic mess. If it was just the Liberal Party and followed the policy ideas laid out in the Orange Book, I would vote for them at every opportunity. As it stands the Liberal Democrats can't decide if they are truly Liberal or are actually Social Democrats (i.e. socialists). Depending on who's in charge and what's in the papers, the party seems to be trying to occupy the entire political spectrum. How can one be expected to vote for a party that's probably performed a policy volte-face during the walk to the polling station?
Frankly, all the major (and most of the minor) parties in the UK occupy the same ground. Those that don't tend to be extremists (e.g. the BNP) or one issue parties (e.g. UKIP). Some combination of the Tories and the Lib Dems would be the ideal solution: the low taxes and minimal market interference of the post-ERM Tories, combined with the social liberalism and non-parochial attitudes of the Liberals. A true alternative to the ultra-centralising, outright authoritarian "Labour" Party.
If by "long before" you mean eighteen months then you're completely right. The original 48K Speccy was identical to the 16K model in everything except RAM (you could buy a kit to upgrade your 16K model). The Spectrum 48K+ was just a restyling to make the Speccy resemble a mini QL. The keyboard was still a crappy membrane model, but with individual keys glued on top instead of a rubber sheet.
And what's worse/better is that the US didn't hold up to it's part of the bargain and sign up to a similar agreement.
Not that I'm defending this treaty in anyway, nor the period during which it was unilateral, but the US Senate signed off on it last year. Apparently the Senate was concerned that the UK might use the treaty to extradite IRA members who had fled to the US and that would apparently be a bad thing.
Well there are five people in my office (in London) who use Linux to browse the web and are regular visitors to the BBC web site. If you believe the BBC's figures, that means 8% of their Linux using audience are in one small department of a relatively small company. I realise that anecdotal evidence isn't worth much, but it's pretty fucking unlikely.
It's much more likely that the BBC are following their usual mode of operation when faced with criticism: to lie and hope nobody calls them on it.
It was Signal 11; after Slashdot he started trolling ku5oshin but disappeared from view a few years ago. Not the greatest loss the World's ever endured.
Bicycles are constructed of rubber, plastic, metals and composite materials. The mining, refinement and production of said materials, combined with the construction of the bicycle produce unacceptable levels of pollution. Clearly these machines of death should be banned; if you want to get somewhere you can run or walk.
Lichtenstein is not viable as a completely independent country, it exists at the sufferance of its neighbours and is essentially a (small) extension of Switzerland. Saudi in its current form is clearly not sustainable and the massive investment in deep well irrigation projects is proof that the regime there is attempting to rectify the problem.
City states are only viable during times of peace or when they can project sufficient power to defend their supply lines. A drop in global food production (which leaves larger nations with no surplus to export), a loss of foreign earnings with which to buy food, or a change in the balance of power (that cuts off food supply lines) will cause a city state to collapse much faster than a nation that has the capability to feed its own people. Look at how quickly the Mediterranean city states declined once they lost their dominance of the seas; a similar period of isolation for England did not have the same effect as (at the time) the English could easily feed themselves.
Newsflash: nowadays everyone can produce entirely too much food, so, as is the case when supply vastly outstrips demand, prices are all the way down in the cellar. The world nowadays is split into countries which subsidize their agriculture, and countries where their farmers went bankrupt and just import the food.
Don't forget countries that used to have a massive food surplus but whose Government decided to redistribute the farms from experienced commercial farmers to urbanite apparatchiks, thus resulting in a massive food shortage and a loss of export earnings that could have paid for imported food. A small but important group, if only to serve as a warning to others.
On a more serious note, every country should endeavour to produce at least enough food to support its own population. Relying on other countries to feed your population means you're only a blockade away from mass starvation. Look how close the UK came to collapse in 1940 or how Germany did collapse in 1918. You can never have too many people who know how to grow food.
Slashdot Mirror
The IWP was created by the ISPs to avoid Government interference. The "choice" put in front of the ISPs was either self-censor or have a censorship regime imposed that would most likely destroy their business. Some will say this is a victory for the free market, other less deluded people will note that this allows the Government to impose censorship without the trouble of getting a bill through Parliament (mere threats don't require prior debate).
As such it is in the ISPs' (and so the IWP's) interests to occasionally censor the odd high profile site. This shows the Government and it's reactionary supporters that The System Works. They backed down on the record cover when it became clear that commercial sites would have to be censored as well as the non-profit Wikipedia. Commercial sites that could afford to sue. Targeting images from dead sites, hosted by a non-profit entity is a win-win scenario for the IWP. They show everyone how they are helping to keep our children safe from poor defined threats and they don't offend anyone who can sue them.
I'd be interested to see proof as well. The only reports of antenna related fatalities I've been able to find involve people falling off them.
Well yes, and if you drive a car instead of flying a plane you never need to learn to land. As I said: you can do things in native code that can't be done in a scripting language (or can't be done in anything approaching an optimal manner).
Most of what people want to do on the web can be handled by HTML/CSS, some requires Javascript and some Flash (or its equivalents). Being able to run sandboxed native code opens the door to new functionality. Most of this new functionality will suck but some might be quite good. There's no harm in providing this sandbox and seeing what people can do with it.
C/C++ are programming languages, not build environments. There's nothing to stop developers using qmake, or Jam, or one of many more user friendly build systems. The fact that the examples don't is more indicative of the intended audience (expert native-code developers) than anything else.
As to "why build this at all" ... because they can, they want to and it has the possibility to provide a feature set not currently available. No one who isn't a graphic designer likes websites made entirely out of flash; but flash games are undoubtedly popular and fun. In general I don't like the use of Javascript (if I see another stupid fading menu I'm going to hunt down the developer who wrote it and kill them as they sleep) but I love the GMail interface and wouldn't be without it.
The web is nothing if not Darwinian. If this technology has no real use it will go the way of Java applets and VRML. If a killer app can be found it will become part of the landscape and we'll all forget what it like to live without it.
Firstly, most of the movements that are "opposed" to fascism (Marxism, socialism) are themselves fascist. If you don't like being called a fascist, stop spouting their propaganda like it's a universal truth.
Secondly, you talk about "society" like it's a physical entity, it's not. Society is nothing but the sum total of all the individuals within it. Killing someone is demonstrably harming them, so killing is banned. One person sending their child to a fee paying school is not demonstrably harming anyone and so it is legal. Banning activities on the sole basis of belief is bad for the individual and so bad for society.
Thirdly, there is no universal definition of "fair". There are elements of the concept that are widely agreed upon, but to speak of it as some kind of natural law is fallacious. You (and others) believe that private education is unfair, I (and others) believe that banning private education is unfair. We are both entitled to our views but not to enforce them on others without their consent. To call for a right to be abrogated on the basis of "fairness" is no different from calling for same sex marriage to be banned as "immoral": one that would do either is more dangerous than any amount of private schooling.
Because there were no written exams in Europe until the late 18th century. Prior to that the student would be questioned (orally) and graded on their answers (much like modern vivas).
There is a difference between providing a social safety net (health care, education, shelter, etc) and banning people who can afford it from accessing superior versions of basic necessities (private heath care, fee paying schools, private housing, etc).
The former respects the rights of the individual and is classically liberal, the latter is fascism. I support the former system, you the latter. Go figure.
It's what happens when you replace exams with seventy metric tonnes of coursework for every subject. I understand the need for coursework at higher levels of education, indeed my degree (Computer Science) wouldn't have made much academic sense without it. But at GCSE level it turns in to a game of "who has the most interest/best educated parent".
Mathematics is a language, it provides an unambitious way of explaining processes that is (relatively) independent of general purposes languages (e.g. English, Mandarin, etc).
Without a good grounding in maths you're barring yourself from all but the lowest rungs of Science, Engineering and associated disciplines like Computer Science. Even the great cash cow that is the City of London requires a decent knowledge of maths in most high paying positions (except Risk Manager it would seem).
Not that there's anything wrong with taking other paths: a good liberal arts education can go a long way. But just as scientists benefit from skills other than pure number crunching (the ability to explain their results to non-experts for a start), everyone benefits from understanding basic (i.e. A-Level) maths. If people understood compound interest maybe we wouldn't have such a problem with personal debt levels.
The Tories start this with their "conversion" of polytechnics in to universities. They turned decent, vocationally oriented institutions in to terrible universities. The sooner this (the UK) nation realises that the majority of people aren't particularly strong academically and allows them to take truly vocational courses (with the same funding that the academic courses receive), the better off we'll all be.
Can I sign under "I allow people to chose where to educate their children because I'm not an arrogant fascist who claims to know the solution to society's woes?"
No justification is require for sending children to private schools. It is a parent's right to do so and the only "horrible" people are those jack booted authoritarians who believe that all individual rights must be subservient to their twisted view of a "just" world.
The problem is that the Heather Crowe page quotes no useful sources. I refuse to believe that after decades of this discussion, only Enstrom and Kabat have performed a study that even approaches useful. Small scale studies and anecdotal evidence are pretty much useless for determining correlation, let alone causality.
For something that we all (mostly) accept to be fact, there's not a vast amount of literature (to be found on the internet at least) backing it up.
Second-hand smoke kills too.
Proof please. Ideally from a large scale, long term study that takes in to account variables other than long-term exposure to second-hand smoke.
I've been Googling around trying to find some. But aside from the Enstrom/Kabat study that was found to have methodological issues (and suggested that there was no consistent link between exposure to second-hand smoke and cancer), there's no a lot out there. The entire "debate" seems to be anti-ban/tax lobby shouting about civil liberties (which is a fair point, but does not constitute proof of any sort) and the anti-smoking lobby claiming that anyone who disagrees with them is an idiot/fraud/Phillip Morris employee (which is also devoid of proof).
"The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialling wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now."
As someone who's 6'1" and 170 pounds, I'd suggest that the problem isn't entirely Apple's fault. Though it is strange that the iPhone doesn't have a fat fingered option, it's a software keyboard after all.
We will never get things right down here because no two people can agree on what is "right". Using your reasoning we should therefore cease all technological development until a consensus is reached on what needs "fixing". Better we use our finite resources to further Man's knowledge of the universe than waste them on a pipe dream of global unity and happiness.
Starvation, deprivation and warfare are a old as humanity. We will never be fully rid of them, short of killing all but one person and hoping they're not schizophrenic.
But how long will Clegg be in charge for? His politics aren't bad, he was one of the Orange Book authors after all; but his support from the rest of the party is not exactly whole hearted and universal. The fundamental problem is that the Liberal Democrats are trying to be all things to all people and in doing so there policies are an inconsistent mess. They need to decide whether they are Labour-lite or liberals.
I will be voting for whoever is most likely to unseat the incumbent apparatchik. Sadly this is likely to be some policy free rent-a-Tory. On the upside, even a Tory is likely to vote against the introduction of ID cards. So they won't be quite as awful as Linton.
As for "we vote for MPs, not parties": this is one of the many problems with our electoral system. An MP doesn't have a great deal of power in their constituency. That lies with central government as a whole and the local authority; MPs are nothing but bodies who vote in Parliament. As long as the whip system persists and free votes are a rarity, the MP's own values will be subservient to those of their party. Even more damaging is the first past the post system which tends towards large majorities. If the ruling party votes as a single block (which they usually do) then the opposition might as well not be there. What is needed is a system that produces coalition governments and so forces the largest party to reach compromises with one or more opposition parties. Any system that allows the party with 40% of the popular vote to exercise 100% of the power is a poor system, but there's no incentive for governments to change it as they benefit from its existence once in power.
How about wanting to ban all Muslims (of which there are about 2 million in the UK) from flying in or out of Britain?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/05/uk.advertising
Because the third biggest party is a schizophrenic mess. If it was just the Liberal Party and followed the policy ideas laid out in the Orange Book, I would vote for them at every opportunity. As it stands the Liberal Democrats can't decide if they are truly Liberal or are actually Social Democrats (i.e. socialists). Depending on who's in charge and what's in the papers, the party seems to be trying to occupy the entire political spectrum. How can one be expected to vote for a party that's probably performed a policy volte-face during the walk to the polling station?
Frankly, all the major (and most of the minor) parties in the UK occupy the same ground. Those that don't tend to be extremists (e.g. the BNP) or one issue parties (e.g. UKIP). Some combination of the Tories and the Lib Dems would be the ideal solution: the low taxes and minimal market interference of the post-ERM Tories, combined with the social liberalism and non-parochial attitudes of the Liberals. A true alternative to the ultra-centralising, outright authoritarian "Labour" Party.
Zombie Lloyd George for PM!
If by "long before" you mean eighteen months then you're completely right. The original 48K Speccy was identical to the 16K model in everything except RAM (you could buy a kit to upgrade your 16K model). The Spectrum 48K+ was just a restyling to make the Speccy resemble a mini QL. The keyboard was still a crappy membrane model, but with individual keys glued on top instead of a rubber sheet.
And what's worse/better is that the US didn't hold up to it's part of the bargain and sign up to a similar agreement.
Not that I'm defending this treaty in anyway, nor the period during which it was unilateral, but the US Senate signed off on it last year. Apparently the Senate was concerned that the UK might use the treaty to extradite IRA members who had fled to the US and that would apparently be a bad thing.
It's much more likely that the BBC are following their usual mode of operation when faced with criticism: to lie and hope nobody calls them on it.
It was Signal 11; after Slashdot he started trolling ku5oshin but disappeared from view a few years ago. Not the greatest loss the World's ever endured.
Bicycles are constructed of rubber, plastic, metals and composite materials. The mining, refinement and production of said materials, combined with the construction of the bicycle produce unacceptable levels of pollution. Clearly these machines of death should be banned; if you want to get somewhere you can run or walk.
Lichtenstein is not viable as a completely independent country, it exists at the sufferance of its neighbours and is essentially a (small) extension of Switzerland. Saudi in its current form is clearly not sustainable and the massive investment in deep well irrigation projects is proof that the regime there is attempting to rectify the problem.
City states are only viable during times of peace or when they can project sufficient power to defend their supply lines. A drop in global food production (which leaves larger nations with no surplus to export), a loss of foreign earnings with which to buy food, or a change in the balance of power (that cuts off food supply lines) will cause a city state to collapse much faster than a nation that has the capability to feed its own people. Look at how quickly the Mediterranean city states declined once they lost their dominance of the seas; a similar period of isolation for England did not have the same effect as (at the time) the English could easily feed themselves.
Don't forget countries that used to have a massive food surplus but whose Government decided to redistribute the farms from experienced commercial farmers to urbanite apparatchiks, thus resulting in a massive food shortage and a loss of export earnings that could have paid for imported food. A small but important group, if only to serve as a warning to others.
On a more serious note, every country should endeavour to produce at least enough food to support its own population. Relying on other countries to feed your population means you're only a blockade away from mass starvation. Look how close the UK came to collapse in 1940 or how Germany did collapse in 1918. You can never have too many people who know how to grow food.