"As a constituent, one is opted-in to one's representative's messages by default."
Why? I don't give a flying cockroach dingleberry whom you are, if I don't feel like listening to you, there's no law that says I have to. Period. End of argument. "Your right to your fist ends at my nose." sums it up perfectly. You have every right to say what-ever you want, and I will defend with my life your right to say it, but no matter WHAT you have to say, I do NOT have to listen to you spew it.
"A civic duty, it is debatable only whether it should even be possible to opt out. "
Sorry, wrong answer. There's the newspaper - get your message published in it, and I'll read it when I have the time and inclination to do so. Otherwise, I'm subsidizing your message, and if I don't care about your message, I sure as hell won't give you my money in order to vocalize it. Even if I *DID* vote for you (and I do vote, thanks), it's MY choice to listen to you or ignore you like the carbunckle on the arse of Life that politicians are.
"It's bad enough not to read an email from your representative, though that is your right. But if you opt out of the direct notification, and opt to get your government info through only, say, Fox News, perhaps you should also give up your 911 phone service, and maybe even your subscription to the police."
Nice try, but maybe you should ease up off the crack pipe. I get my news online. MSNBC, CNN, API, Reuters, NYT, The Register, The Independant (UK), The San Jose Mercury, SiliconValley.com, GrokLaw, PioneerPress, & Wired News Daily, among others. I don't need, and rarely use, television or local newspapers, because I preferr to get as balanced an input as possible. I get a better, more accurate, & timely picture of "my local government" as well as "my government over-all" through global news sources, than by relying upon local services only. So why the HELL would I want to limit myself to listening to the tripe the congress critter is spewing in my email, when I can filter through a half dozen global news sources and get an infinitely clearer picture of the crap they've been up to? Actions speak louder than words, so if thier words don't jive with thier actions, what conclusion can you come to? My Emergency Services (Fire & Police) have nothing to do with whether I choose to listen to some politician spouting off at the mouth. My taxes are willingly paid to the police & fire to do thier job, and they are willing to do thier job as paid for. Try saying the same of politicians without breaking out into convulsions of laughter...
"The fire department will have to keep coming, to protect your subscribed neighbors, but they might not have to rescue you or your pets."
They'd better not. If my house is on fire and they refuse to assist, there'd better be a DAMN good reason, or the local courts will have various firefighting personnel up against a wall with a pair of super-heated vice-grips to thier painfull parts.... My taxes pay them to do thier job. THEY seem to be able to do it, so why can't our politicians? Oh yeah, it's because the fire & police are relatively honest, while you'd be hard-pressed to find ANYONE in Office that could pass a lie detector test without bribing the test-giver...
"We need *more* and *better* government communication, not more constituent alienation."
And for this you advocate spam? I agree -they SHOULD communicate more- but NOT if it means adding to my daily overload of spam filtering...
"Bulling only gets worst when parents get involved. Just tell kids to ignore it, and the bullies will move on to someone else after awhile."
My son is in accellerated learning courses (7th grade, doing 10th grade Science & Math, and 11th grade English), so can be construed as a reasonably intelligent young man.
Last year, one of his fellow students decided to bully & pester him incessantly.
My son did what I felt was an appropriate escalation of response:
1) Attempted to talk to the young man, trying to get to the root of WHY the bullying was happening
2) Told his teacher that the young man was bothering him & asked for either the bully to be moved or offered to move himself to another section of the classroom
3) Complained to his Student Counselor about the bully.
NONE of these actions stopped the bully. NO ONE made ANY attempt to punish the little thug.
So, when one day during a test, my son noticed the bully trying to cheat off him, my son curled his arm around his test paper in such a way as to prevent the peaking. The bully reached out, grabbed my son's arm, and moved it saying "Don't do that, I can't see when you do that."
My son snapped, and promptly stabbed his Number 2 pencil through the little twits sweater nailing his arm to the desk yelling "LEAVE ME ALONE, DAMN IT!"
They tried to suspend my son for being physically violent, yet when the fact that the bully had been pestering my son for nearly six months unchecked came to light, I offered to press charges against the school for allowing the situation to continue in the first place. ("Let me get this straight. You've known that this boy has been bullying my son for six months and never bothered to tell anyone about it? My son has reported to you that [the bully] followed him home saying he was going to kick [my son's] ass, and you didn't bother to contact ME? I've got news for you, folks, there isn't a lawyer on the planet that wouldn't drool like a Pavlovian dog over the level of fsck-up on your part, and the amounts of money THEY could make prosecuting you into a very deep hole. Yes, what my son did was wrong, but against the actions of the bully and YOU, they so pale in comparison as to be meaningless.")
Both my son and I accepted the fact that his actions were wrong, stabbing someone isn't right unless it's in defense of your life, but we accepted it ONLY on the condition that the School accept the fact that they shirked their duties in maintaining a protected atmosphere condusive to learning. (Their words, not mine, in their "Parent Teacher Agreement" forms we had to sign upon registering him for school in the first place.)
In the end, they expelled the bully, set him AND his parents to counseling, and suspended my son for *one day* ("to reflect on what he'd done").
Since then, my son has improved his ability to deal with idiots, his grades have gotten better, and he's MUCH more likely to become a well-adjusted adult knowing that he doesn't have to "take it" from idiots who deserve to have their asses handed to them.
Martial arts classes have helped him remain calm, focused, and in control of his anger, as well as giving him the knowledge of body mechanics to do more "acceptable" methods of showing someone that he's not interested in being picked upon. (There's nothing like having him offer his hand to shake, and suddenly finding yourself lying in a heap a few feet away, on your back, cartoon stars twirling about your head, and the chirping of birds filling your ears as you realize that an *eleven year old* just flipped you like a rag dool. heheheh)
So parental intervention is sometimes a VERY good way to keep matters from escalating into acts of violence (ESPECIALLY if the school isn't doing it's job in the first place) between students.
Granted, not in EVERY case, but I'd be willing to bet more often than not.
Google shows linux.org as the first non-paid link, and it's obvious that it is. "Above the fold", and right in the middle of your screen.
MSN didn't show linux.org until the fifth unpaid-link, at the very bottom of the first page, and it is NOT obvious that it's a non-advertising link, since it's in the same background/font/colour combo as everything else.
Google showed me relevant links within seconds, all in the first five pages.
MSN, until you've clicked through to listing number 256 where it suddenly claims there are now 15,842,902 links, is a PITA to wade through. (Interestingly enough, as I clicked through to each new page, the total results kept decreasing until it said I'd just seen all "255 of 255" hits, when the very next page suddenly manages to find another 15,842,459 hits... Someone's on crack, YesSireeBob! hehe)
Google took 0.13seconds to reply with nearly Ninety-Seven Billion hits, while it took nearly five minutes of clicking on MSN to weed through the chaff.
More importantly, what business does MS have in monitoring the lives of their employees when said people aren't on the clock?
When I'm at work, fine, I expect you to be VERY concerned about what I do. My actions in the office directly reflect upon, and effect the lives of, everyone else I work with and, ultimately, my Employer.
But the minute I clock out, get your [CENSORED] nose out of my life. I don't care if I decide to take up live chainsaw juggling, while bouncing on a trampoline, drunk off my arse, naked-but-covered-in-peanutbutter & being bitten by rabbid squirrels. It has NO reflection upon my employer, and is, more to the point, *none of their damned business*. Sure, my work says I can't take pictures of anything inside the office, can't take anything from the office home with me that hasn't been cleared by Security & approved by management, and am not supposed to discuss what I do at work with anyone not AT my work... But if I come to work 30 minutes early, take pictures of the flower garden & fountain-and-Koi-pond outside of the cafeteria (a publicly accessable space), and then post my critique of the architecture on my website when I get home, my employer has NO right to terminate my employment for my having done so.
Ok, so he took a photo of the inside of a delivery truck. It showed NOTHING proprietary, no internal trade secrets, no MS personnel, nothing that could, in any way, be identified except the G5 logos on the boxes. If it weren't for his admission that it was taken at work, and then identifying that "work" was MS, there's no way you'd ever know where the pic was taken.
So, as I see it, we've got someone who posts an innocculous picture on their blog, from their own machine, on their own bandwidth, on their own time, and when they show up for work, Employer fires them.
Where does it say that ANY employer is allowed to terminate your employment for something you've done OUTSIDE of work that wasn't illegal?
I have one, & I use it to carry around my laptop in. If you buy one in a solid colour (black or silver) then your son can put stickers on it, draw on it in various permanent (Sharpie) markers, and generally personalize it to suit his own tastes... Mine's a matte black case with a giant International-Safety-Orange BIOHAZZARD warning logo across both sides... You'd be surprised at how willing people are to leave it the hell alone for some reason... (MUH HAHahaha)
Anyway, the adjustable foam blocking allows you to create niches "just the right size" for every piece you need to fit in there & pads it *very* well against shock... The case itself protects against the elements, and being sealed it doesn't hurt if some dingus spills their soda all over it while you're standing in line at the airport ticket counter... (Yes this has happened to me, unfortunately.)
I've got my laptop, power supply, an inverter, international power adapters, spare batteries, a USB optical mouse, an external storage device, and still have enough room left over for a decent collection of DVD's inside the case, and after two years of traveling, my laptop has *never* suffered any damage...
For that reason alone, the Pelican case has been worth it's weight in gold.
Check my profile, read my previous post about sites that use FLASH and don't offer anything else to those who won't or *CAN'T* run it...
The site you mentioned (homestarrunner.com) has *NO* accessability in it, loads slower than petrifying amber, and I got so many script-warnings popping up everywhere it makes me wonder what you/they were trying to do...
No thanks, I'd rather visit a site that someone used a modicum of forethought on & considered the fact that not everyone under the sun has a fat pipe and the ability to see flashy crap.
Look, it's up to you what you use to build your site...
If you're a private site, then do what you will...
But if you're a business and are actually interested in DOING business, then don't use the things that completely alienate a considerable market force out there by using bits that may not be compatible with their online experience...
It just goes without saying that it's a good idea to offer a text-only front-end to your site, and let the visitor decide if they want to continue browsing your site in "maximum compatability" mode, or "all the visual bells & whistles" mode - and then don't skimp on the text-only content, as that sends the clear message you consider such people so as beneath you...
If, for *what-ever* reason someone can't access your site's flashier bits, then why turn them away with nothing at all?
My site is 99% text, with "bells & whistles" options available *to those who want them*...
If they don't want them, that doesn't make them substandard, it just means they don't want to spend the bandwidth on all the stuff they don't care to see at the moment...
But you, Cebe, are a complete and utter Smeghead... You wrote "...text only browsers lusers..."
I know this is a quick way to lose some MASSIVE Karma... (Heavy Sigh)
May you be struck blind.
Maybe THEN you'll find out just EXACTLY why those who are forced to use text-only browsers and screen reader programs like JAWS *loathe* the people who refuse to even give a passing nod to accessability...
And it's not just private sites, which you can shrug off and go find something else to browse, but banks, credit card company "customer service" pages, library search sites, and a thousand other little resources that are made instantly *worthless* because they insist on writing in flash, frames, and ninety percent text-as-images-with-no-alt-tags so there's nothing FOR a program like JAWS to tell them about...
(Steps down off his soapbox, and goes back to cuddling with his blind girlfriend who's a Special Education Teacher, and *damned* proud of her...)
Slashdot Mirror
"As a constituent, one is opted-in to one's representative's messages by default."
Why? I don't give a flying cockroach dingleberry whom you are, if I don't feel like listening to you, there's no law that says I have to.
Period.
End of argument.
"Your right to your fist ends at my nose." sums it up perfectly.
You have every right to say what-ever you want, and I will defend with my life your right to say it, but no matter WHAT you have to say, I do NOT have to listen to you spew it.
"A civic duty, it is debatable only whether it should even be possible to opt out. "
Sorry, wrong answer.
There's the newspaper - get your message published in it, and I'll read it when I have the time and inclination to do so.
Otherwise, I'm subsidizing your message, and if I don't care about your message, I sure as hell won't give you my money in order to vocalize it.
Even if I *DID* vote for you (and I do vote, thanks), it's MY choice to listen to you or ignore you like the carbunckle on the arse of Life that politicians are.
"It's bad enough not to read an email from your representative, though that is your right. But if you opt out of the direct notification, and opt to get your government info through only, say, Fox News, perhaps you should also give up your 911 phone service, and maybe even your subscription to the police."
Nice try, but maybe you should ease up off the crack pipe.
I get my news online. MSNBC, CNN, API, Reuters, NYT, The Register, The Independant (UK), The San Jose Mercury, SiliconValley.com, GrokLaw, PioneerPress, & Wired News Daily, among others.
I don't need, and rarely use, television or local newspapers, because I preferr to get as balanced an input as possible.
I get a better, more accurate, & timely picture of "my local government" as well as "my government over-all" through global news sources, than by relying upon local services only.
So why the HELL would I want to limit myself to listening to the tripe the congress critter is spewing in my email, when I can filter through a half dozen global news sources and get an infinitely clearer picture of the crap they've been up to? Actions speak louder than words, so if thier words don't jive with thier actions, what conclusion can you come to?
My Emergency Services (Fire & Police) have nothing to do with whether I choose to listen to some politician spouting off at the mouth.
My taxes are willingly paid to the police & fire to do thier job, and they are willing to do thier job as paid for.
Try saying the same of politicians without breaking out into convulsions of laughter...
"The fire department will have to keep coming, to protect your subscribed neighbors, but they might not have to rescue you or your pets."
They'd better not. If my house is on fire and they refuse to assist, there'd better be a DAMN good reason, or the local courts will have various firefighting personnel up against a wall with a pair of super-heated vice-grips to thier painfull parts....
My taxes pay them to do thier job.
THEY seem to be able to do it, so why can't our politicians?
Oh yeah, it's because the fire & police are relatively honest, while you'd be hard-pressed to find ANYONE in Office that could pass a lie detector test without bribing the test-giver...
"We need *more* and *better* government communication, not more constituent alienation."
And for this you advocate spam?
I agree -they SHOULD communicate more- but NOT if it means adding to my daily overload of spam filtering...
"Bulling only gets worst when parents get involved. Just tell kids to ignore it, and the bullies will move on to someone else after awhile."
My son is in accellerated learning courses (7th grade, doing 10th grade Science & Math, and 11th grade English), so can be construed as a reasonably intelligent young man.
Last year, one of his fellow students decided to bully & pester him incessantly.
My son did what I felt was an appropriate escalation of response:
1) Attempted to talk to the young man, trying to get to the root of WHY the bullying was happening
2) Told his teacher that the young man was bothering him & asked for either the bully to be moved or offered to move himself to another section of the classroom
3) Complained to his Student Counselor about the bully.
NONE of these actions stopped the bully. NO ONE made ANY attempt to punish the little thug.
So, when one day during a test, my son noticed the bully trying to cheat off him, my son curled his arm around his test paper in such a way as to prevent the peaking. The bully reached out, grabbed my son's arm, and moved it saying "Don't do that, I can't see when you do that."
My son snapped, and promptly stabbed his Number 2 pencil through the little twits sweater nailing his arm to the desk yelling "LEAVE ME ALONE, DAMN IT!"
They tried to suspend my son for being physically violent, yet when the fact that the bully had been pestering my son for nearly six months unchecked came to light, I offered to press charges against the school for allowing the situation to continue in the first place.
("Let me get this straight. You've known that this boy has been bullying my son for six months and never bothered to tell anyone about it? My son has reported to you that [the bully] followed him home saying he was going to kick [my son's] ass, and you didn't bother to contact ME? I've got news for you, folks, there isn't a lawyer on the planet that wouldn't drool like a Pavlovian dog over the level of fsck-up on your part, and the amounts of money THEY could make prosecuting you into a very deep hole. Yes, what my son did was wrong, but against the actions of the bully and YOU, they so pale in comparison as to be meaningless.")
Both my son and I accepted the fact that his actions were wrong, stabbing someone isn't right unless it's in defense of your life, but we accepted it ONLY on the condition that the School accept the fact that they shirked their duties in maintaining a protected atmosphere condusive to learning. (Their words, not mine, in their "Parent Teacher Agreement" forms we had to sign upon registering him for school in the first place.)
In the end, they expelled the bully, set him AND his parents to counseling, and suspended my son for *one day* ("to reflect on what he'd done").
Since then, my son has improved his ability to deal with idiots, his grades have gotten better, and he's MUCH more likely to become a well-adjusted adult knowing that he doesn't have to "take it" from idiots who deserve to have their asses handed to them.
Martial arts classes have helped him remain calm, focused, and in control of his anger, as well as giving him the knowledge of body mechanics to do more "acceptable" methods of showing someone that he's not interested in being picked upon. (There's nothing like having him offer his hand to shake, and suddenly finding yourself lying in a heap a few feet away, on your back, cartoon stars twirling about your head, and the chirping of birds filling your ears as you realize that an *eleven year old* just flipped you like a rag dool. heheheh)
So parental intervention is sometimes a VERY good way to keep matters from escalating into acts of violence (ESPECIALLY if the school isn't doing it's job in the first place) between students.
Granted, not in EVERY case, but I'd be willing to bet more often than not.
At 2300Hrs PST 2003-11-17:
:)P hehehehe
Search Phrase: LINUX
Google returns 96,900,000 hits.
MSN returns 443.
Google shows linux.org as the first non-paid link, and it's obvious that it is. "Above the fold", and right in the middle of your screen.
MSN didn't show linux.org until the fifth unpaid-link, at the very bottom of the first page, and it is NOT obvious that it's a non-advertising link, since it's in the same background/font/colour combo as everything else.
Google showed me relevant links within seconds, all in the first five pages.
MSN, until you've clicked through to listing number 256 where it suddenly claims there are now 15,842,902 links, is a PITA to wade through.
(Interestingly enough, as I clicked through to each new page, the total results kept decreasing until it said I'd just seen all "255 of 255" hits, when the very next page suddenly manages to find another 15,842,459 hits... Someone's on crack, YesSireeBob! hehe)
Google took 0.13seconds to reply with nearly Ninety-Seven Billion hits, while it took nearly five minutes of clicking on MSN to weed through the chaff.
Now, anyone wonder why MS wants to buy Google?
Google gets you where you wanted to go... today
MSN gets you there... eventually
"How did his manager find out about his website?"
More importantly, what business does MS have in monitoring the lives of their employees when said people aren't on the clock?
When I'm at work, fine, I expect you to be VERY concerned about what I do. My actions in the office directly reflect upon, and effect the lives of, everyone else I work with and, ultimately, my Employer.
But the minute I clock out, get your [CENSORED] nose out of my life.
I don't care if I decide to take up live chainsaw juggling, while bouncing on a trampoline, drunk off my arse, naked-but-covered-in-peanutbutter & being bitten by rabbid squirrels. It has NO reflection upon my employer, and is, more to the point, *none of their damned business*.
Sure, my work says I can't take pictures of anything inside the office, can't take anything from the office home with me that hasn't been cleared by Security & approved by management, and am not supposed to discuss what I do at work with anyone not AT my work...
But if I come to work 30 minutes early, take pictures of the flower garden & fountain-and-Koi-pond outside of the cafeteria (a publicly accessable space), and then post my critique of the architecture on my website when I get home, my employer has NO right to terminate my employment for my having done so.
Ok, so he took a photo of the inside of a delivery truck. It showed NOTHING proprietary, no internal trade secrets, no MS personnel, nothing that could, in any way, be identified except the G5 logos on the boxes. If it weren't for his admission that it was taken at work, and then identifying that "work" was MS, there's no way you'd ever know where the pic was taken.
So, as I see it, we've got someone who posts an innocculous picture on their blog, from their own machine, on their own bandwidth, on their own time, and when they show up for work, Employer fires them.
Where does it say that ANY employer is allowed to terminate your employment for something you've done OUTSIDE of work that wasn't illegal?
Drop me a line, let's see what we can do to create a group!
ub3rg33k.MONTY@PYTHON.hotmail.com(No.Movie)
I have one, & I use it to carry around my laptop in. If you buy one in a solid colour (black or silver) then your son can put stickers on it, draw on it in various permanent (Sharpie) markers, and generally personalize it to suit his own tastes... Mine's a matte black case with a giant International-Safety-Orange BIOHAZZARD warning logo across both sides... You'd be surprised at how willing people are to leave it the hell alone for some reason... (MUH HAHahaha)
Anyway, the adjustable foam blocking allows you to create niches "just the right size" for every piece you need to fit in there & pads it *very* well against shock...
The case itself protects against the elements, and being sealed it doesn't hurt if some dingus spills their soda all over it while you're standing in line at the airport ticket counter... (Yes this has happened to me, unfortunately.)
I've got my laptop, power supply, an inverter, international power adapters, spare batteries, a USB optical mouse, an external storage device, and still have enough room left over for a decent collection of DVD's inside the case, and after two years of traveling, my laptop has *never* suffered any damage...
For that reason alone, the Pelican case has been worth it's weight in gold.
Check my profile, read my previous post about sites that use FLASH and don't offer anything else to those who won't or *CAN'T* run it...
The site you mentioned (homestarrunner.com) has *NO* accessability in it, loads slower than petrifying amber, and I got so many script-warnings popping up everywhere it makes me wonder what you/they were trying to do...
No thanks, I'd rather visit a site that someone used a modicum of forethought on & considered the fact that not everyone under the sun has a fat pipe and the ability to see flashy crap.
Look, it's up to you what you use to build your site... If you're a private site, then do what you will... But if you're a business and are actually interested in DOING business, then don't use the things that completely alienate a considerable market force out there by using bits that may not be compatible with their online experience... It just goes without saying that it's a good idea to offer a text-only front-end to your site, and let the visitor decide if they want to continue browsing your site in "maximum compatability" mode, or "all the visual bells & whistles" mode - and then don't skimp on the text-only content, as that sends the clear message you consider such people so as beneath you... If, for *what-ever* reason someone can't access your site's flashier bits, then why turn them away with nothing at all? My site is 99% text, with "bells & whistles" options available *to those who want them*... If they don't want them, that doesn't make them substandard, it just means they don't want to spend the bandwidth on all the stuff they don't care to see at the moment... But you, Cebe, are a complete and utter Smeghead... You wrote "...text only browsers lusers..." I know this is a quick way to lose some MASSIVE Karma... (Heavy Sigh) May you be struck blind. Maybe THEN you'll find out just EXACTLY why those who are forced to use text-only browsers and screen reader programs like JAWS *loathe* the people who refuse to even give a passing nod to accessability... And it's not just private sites, which you can shrug off and go find something else to browse, but banks, credit card company "customer service" pages, library search sites, and a thousand other little resources that are made instantly *worthless* because they insist on writing in flash, frames, and ninety percent text-as-images-with-no-alt-tags so there's nothing FOR a program like JAWS to tell them about... (Steps down off his soapbox, and goes back to cuddling with his blind girlfriend who's a Special Education Teacher, and *damned* proud of her...)