It's pretty sad when someone considers fighting for justice to be outdated.
On of the things I really like in Smallville is you see Clark keep always trying to do the right thing, one of the defining things about Superman. The setting may be updated, but it is actually the traditional core of the character, and ties right into all that corny fighting for justice stuff.
As for "Comics are always made by people based on the time's moral standards and public expectations." Well Duh. You could replace comics with "films" or "books" or any popular entertainment.
As for focusing on personal problems, that isn't new. The films you cite are based on Marvel properties, and that is a part of Marvel's style, less earthsahking powers and more focus on the personal side. They have been doing that for decades.
On top of that, the real Superman, Clark W. Kent, died in the comic books years ago. So did Bruce Wayne, the original Batman.
Comic book characters die, and come back to life, all the time. Spuerman was dead for a bit, but came back soon after. I'm not aware of Bruce Wayne ever dieing in main continuity.
Of course, they get killed is some non-continuity Elseworlds stuff. Plus back when DC had parralel univerese (they all got merged in Crisis on Infiniate Earth) Bruce Wayne died in Earth-2, but not the 'main' Earth.
Characters like Superman and Batman are pretty archetypal. Subsequent generation re-invent them to suit the times, that is what happens with mythlogy, it keeps it alive and relevant, and IMO is much better than just leaving them alone.
You can't kill creationist 'theory' because it isn't, in scientific terms, a theory. Evolution is a theory, Relativity is a theory, they both have the backing of enough evidence to be theories.
Creationism isn't even a good scientific hypothesis, your violating Occam's Razor by introducing unecessary new entities (God, Creator, whatever), and not trying to make a model from the observations. Instead it's all about trying to squeeze 'facts' into fitting a view the person finds more comfortable becuase they don't understand how evolution could happen, or it doesn't fit with their religous beleifs.
There have been, are, and will be lots of occastions where human beings struggle to undestand how something happens. Yet only in the areas of the creation of the universe and life do we get so called 'scientists' claming God did it.
People taking part in ILB already know it is for Halo 2, so how is anyone being duped? You seem to have a serious hate on for any marketing, even though in this case people know exactlty what it is, what it is for, and are enjoying it.
Nobody is being duped or suckered here, and some people are having a lot of fun. So what is so bad? Just because it is marketing it must be evil?
I know there was that slahdot article recently about malformed HTML crashing browsers, but claiming it crahses every sixth pages is an over exageration of staerring proportions.
I use firefox all the time, and I've not found any actual web page that crashes the 0.9 - 1.0PR versions.
The only page I've found with rendering gliches is Gamespot, that flickers all over the place while loading, but is OK once done. My Slashdot problems have stopped since 1.0PR.
It already can properly render most of the web. Also if a web page is actually broken, there is no way to properly render it. At best you can best guess what maybe it is supposed to be.
Or a "we need to create documents compatable with MS Office problem". Unless you don't deal with other companies who use MS.
The time to complain would have been when the picked Access as their solution,
In many cases at my work that was years ago, long before Linux was any sort of viable alternative. If you are talking about a migration you have to live in the real world with what you have, not a hypothetical where you start from scratch. If other companies are like ours, the business often put together Access databases by themselves, without any IT control or imput (they are often badly done too, but that is another matter).
If you have a server running Access, it's unlikely such garbage will be installed on it. This in no way forces you to keep Windows for desktop systems.
You clearly haven't suffered with Access, it isn't server based, it runs on the client. It either uses the internal Jet engine database, and a flat file with no sever (although the file may live on a file server) or is a front end to an ODBC database or SQL Server. Even then queries, forms, Macros, VB code modules etc live in Access, and run on the client. It very much forces you to keep Windows (or something that runs Access) on the desktop. It isn't like running Oracle or MySQL where you can change the client apps and OS with ease.
Where I work we are trying to kill Access and replace it with a server based, web-plug in architecture (Brio), but it is costly and painful. All the client side Access sutff has to be rewritten onto server reports, and it is all horrible custom MS stuff, even the SQL queries.
Again, you're pushing a product instead of solving a problem. Please describe how VB is used for custom development that cannot be matched by other tools.
The orginal article poster already has an MS network. If we are talking about moving to Linux you have to consider the costs. Chances are there is lots of custom code in VB around that someone has to re-work into something else if you move away from MS. Not to mention loads of power user types know VB for doing Office macros, even if you have another technology, their is a cost of making up the knowledge.
I mean, seriously, if you have 200 people who are screwing around on non-work enough to cause you malware headaches, they're clearly people that need to be "refocussed",
It only takes a few people installing a few programs, or even going to the wrong websites with IE, to get their machines screwed up. Pleny of people work plenty hard, and can still manage to screw their machines up with a bit of browsing, or installing the odd piece of software that looked cool or useful (like Hotbar).
That doesn't mean you have mass laziness or an office full of slackers.
Linux probably provides all the good they need to actually do their job without all the bad that comes with crufty ol' Windows.
If you are starting from scratch, sure. You can probably do as much for less cost, and be more secure with lower maintenance. However, the OP said "Move people to a good, maintained Linux Distro. Yes, it is possible.". Key word here move.
You seem to want to ignore all the cost involved of moving, and pretend you don't have to worry about being compatable with any other companies using MS (probably true for some companies). Pointing out their are non-MS equivilents doesn't magically remove the costs of moving to them. The move is possible, but the costs of moving may be more than you save by doing it, so it may not be a smart decision, even with the downsides of staying MS.
They aren't taking away your PC privileges becuase it isn't your PC.
I'm not a LAN admin (although I worked breifly for LAN support years ago), I'm a developer. I need all sorts of non-standard software on my PC, and I have admin rights to do so, everyone does. I'ts handy when I want to install something, but I'm unselfish enough to realise the security implications.
Keeping machines locked down helps stops the adware, spyware, worms and viruses, that all cost the companies time and money. It also stops illegal copies, something the company is liable for. I'm sure, like every other user, you are convinced you won't mess anything up, aren't stupid, and won't cause trouble with admin rights.
Know what? All the people who brought problems onto corporate networks probably thought that too. Maybe you would suggest a test to see who should get rights? The "all-mighty-admin" has to approve things to make sure it isn't going to stuff up your machine, or the network. Plus the software isn't free, their are issues of future compatability and support across the company, does the company have an agreement with a vendor etc.
How often do you need new software to do your job? Why don't you know in advance and have it ready?
You aren't left alone, beucase going by your post you clearly can't be trusted. You would just stick whatever you thought you needed on your machine without any though of the consequences. That ends up costing much more than your so called lost productivity.
racial stereotyping, even if you find it funny, is racism.
Racial stereotyping can be racist, that doesn't mean it automatically is. There is a racial stereotype of Geramans being efficient and hard working, is that racist?
People really come from different cultures, that really are different. There are certainly unpleasant, racist stereotypes (and unpleasantly, racist people who use thme), but lets not pretend that most racial, or more acurately cutural, stereotypes don't have some basis in fact.
Stereotypes are shorthands, we use them all the time, along with archetypes. Their usage donesn't mean the user thinks everyone of that group fits into the stereotype, the OP certain doesn't imply that. I can't tell what the poster thinks of all Indians from that comment.
Unless you want to start stereotpying people who use stereotypes...
Children are pretty much the only group in society that have basically no rights whatsoever!
Children have plenty of rigths, at least in most civilised countries where people in general have rights. That's why you have laws against child labour, child abuse etc.
You see, the thing about discrimination is it is unfairly picking out a group for different treatment. Children however really are different, and really are (in general) less capable of making decisions and being responsible. Some individuals may be, but you have to go with generalites for things like this.
Children have less rights for the same reason the mentally ill do, to protect them and to protect everyone else.
I get so sick of hearing all these damn minorities , and women (who make up 51% of the population and are therefore not a minority) bitching about how they have no rights, when in fact they have more rights than any child will ever have
So becuase they have more rights then children they should just shut up and not complain about discrimination? Only minorities can be discriminated agains? Slashdot moderation sometimes baffles me, but I have no idea how yu got rated +5 with this sort of logic.
Big database vendors will never stick to a standard, adding extra features is what sells. It also makes life easier for programers. For example, Oracle's tree building queries are completely proprietary, and a godsend if that is what you want to do. I'd much rather have it available, than not have it becuase it isn't standard.
How many different databases does a developer work with in one job anyway? Most places probably just use one or two.
I've work on databases professionally for 5 years, and studied them at unviersity as part of my CS degree.
The only people I ever met who cared about relational algebra where academics. It has never once been relevant to any actual database work.
Nulls are a bit of a pain sometimes, and a bit of a hack for dealing with unknown data, but in practice work pretty well. If you also want Nulls returned from a query you just add "or column_name is null" to it.
I'm sure SQL can be improved on, but when I read these things about the problems of Nulls in relational databases (almost always written by academics, rather than guys who write SQL) I feel I must be really missing something, becuase I never met anything that isn't solved by adding some is/is not null tests, and I've dealt with some very complex SQL.
Why not give people the freedom to invest money how they choose is tax deductable funds?
Well, back when I did economics at college one of the reasons give for not doing as you suggested is that many people won't. Which leads to the next point.
Social security (for retirement, and for people who make a certain $$ a year) is nothing but a safety net for people who are financially irresponsible.
I agree, and yet I'm in favour of social security. The alternative is what? You let people live (and die) in poverty becuase they were irresponsible? That seems to me rather... barbaric. The waste and the cost are the price society pays for some humanitarianism.
You can try an target welfare better, but that requires things like means testing and more money spent on running the system, you trade one inefficiency for another.
Poverty also has other social costs, crime, disease etc, but it would be naive to suggest welfare stops those, at best it may reduce them a little.
The efficient welfare state that only aids the 'deserving' is impossible. So a society has to decide, shoulder the costs, or throw the irresponsible and unfortunate to the wolves.
I like browsing through record stores. It isn't like I'd drive into town just to do it, but I usually go in anyway at the weekend, so I'm going to do the whole drive there and back if I walk into the record shop or not.
I still don't by much in record shops though, unless they have a sale. Not liking very mainstream stuff (L.A. Punk and European Goth/Metal at the moment) I have real trouble finding stuff I like, and then it is usually a very expensive import.
I also think you are simplifying the download side. If you download leaglly, it can be hard to find stuff you want, particulalry outside the US. Then you can't play it on every one of your music devices, unless all your music devices come from a very limited selection.
If you go the illegal route, you can spend ages trying to find stuff only getting crappy quality or deliberately mangled copies.
I usually by CDs cheap online. Much, much better selection than any download store, cheap and I get something I can rip and play on everything I own.
Music downloads are still a very long way from being as convenient as you make out, and they could be. I'm sure the more convenient they get, the more they will eat into traditional retail.
Listening to a studio album is very different thing from watching a live gig. I love live gigs, but they are not way interchangable with listening to an album, which is vastly more convenient.
Watching artists perfom and listening to their albums are complementary things (for the vast majority of people), not somehow in opposition. People don't get an album instead of seeing a gig, or vice versa.
What is more, if I'm listening to music at home/work/car/walking around I'll take the studio album almost every time over a live recording. I'm hardly unique, the music industry is right in this sense, people in general want studio albums much more than they want to see live gigs.
From the artists perspective you a largely right about the value. For many bands, they make bugger all from the albums as the record companies take their costs from the band's cut. From their point of view they are more to get people to come to the live shows where they make the money.
There is a lot of effort to make realistic looking graphics in games, but they are very, very far away from trying to emulate real life. Even open ended gameplay is not about emulating real life. Choice and combinatins are ofen min/maxing minigames to get effective characters.
The things people enjoy in games are often very different from real life. I love Burnout 3, but I wouldn't want to crash my car in real life. Obviously any fantasy or sci-fi setting is impossible. Real life rarely has a good narrative, or satisisfying closure.
People want elements of reality it their games so they can relate, but the want elements of escapism too. If you are going to knock games for the escapist element stopping them improving thier life, you have to knock theater, movies, TV, books, hell, almost every form of human entertainment ever created. Even sports let you concentrate on the team/players/match and forget about 'real life'.
Obviously if you are so caught up in escapism it stops you improving your quality of life it is a problem. For most people though, it is a balance, and their quality of life is improved by some escapism. Video games (and other escapist entertainment) aren't a substitute for doing something in real, but a way of experiencing something you couldn't or wouldn't want to.
People need to eat, have shelter, cloths and that generally means jobs. Its great if you get one you love, but there is nothing that says the availablity of such jobs is going to match up with what people want. All through human history people have had to do stuff they haven't enjoyed to get by.
Yes, obsession with consumerism is bad, staying in a bad job to buy stuff you need is dumb. However, people have to put up with all kinds of crap in life they can't help or control, a bit of healthy escapism like video games is a good thing. The real world can be rich and inviting, but it can also be harsh, cruel and painful. You certainly shouldn't use video games to hide from it, but you can use them to make your journey through it a more enjoyable one.
You rather sound like a recruiter for some wacky cult.
Filesharers have no such agreement. Therefore they are in violation of copyright law. This has nothing to do with what media companys say or how much they have paid to politicians.
Maybe you haven't noticed, but the media companies have been heavily pushing politicians to make copyright longer, heavier penalities and so on. They have been suceeding too.
In short, media companies (and the politians they pay) are in no small part responsible for modern copyright law. Copyright law was created for the public interest, but now it is entirely about the media companies' interests.
Copyright law is supposed to balance making things available to the public and encouraging creators. Yet in the music industry it is all about the middlemen getting lots of money and having control. Any copyright regieme is going to be something of a compromise, but the current laws seem badly out of balance.
I guess AAC and m4p must be really small. My iRivir is 40GB, I rip at a fairly high vbr, works out about 1.5M a minute, and about 3000 songs has half filled it.
5. That is partly bad writing, if you write it well it will degrade OK. You can harldy blame the technology for naff implementaion.
Also, at some point you have to give up support for older browsers, or you never get anywhere. If you write for IE5.5+ and Mozilla it's pretty easy (bar some IE gotchas). A degraded site may not look as nice as a pure HTML one on old browsers, but it will look a hell of a lot better on mobile appliances (if done properly).
4. You do know that browser download the css and javascript files at the same time as the HTML right? Plus once downloaded they are cached. The multiple files are quicker and reduce bandwidth.
Viewing the page as it downloaded was only possible becuase the pages were so simple back then.
3. HTML is not simple. I'm a profestional web developer, and I work on our companies e-commerce site written largely pre-CSS HTML. To get the look required there are multiple nested tables every where, spacer gifs, font tags and all sorts of horrible, complex stuff. The "My Web Page" I had a university was simple, many modern websites are not.
I recently worked on an offline version to run from a CD and got to re-write parts of it to use CSS. Much cleaner, much more simple.
HTML is only simple if the page is simple, and then the XHTML/HTML + CSS is simple too. For complex pages using CSS makes the code much simplier. What is easier, a defining the font in a few places in the CSS, or sticking FONT tags everywhere? Positioned DIV tags, or nested tables? People think HTML and for some reason think basic pages like the early internet.
2. "People" were tarting up pages before CSS, and doing things like web pages in Flash. As the internet matures there is an expectation of more polished web sites. This is apart from the technology used. At least CSS makes it easier to to make slick sites (not easy, not simple, but easier than pure HTML). Anyone can use personal style sheets, if their browser supports it.
1. Who are these people? Where do you base this on? This is a non-complaint, the button only takes up a bit of space, nobody forces you to go a follow the link a read about standard. Part of CSS is seperating style from content, once you set it up for a site, it becomes easier to write new content.
If these are the top problems with CSS it has no problems. I'd say as a developer the top problem is it can be fiddly to debug, and figure out what rules are applying to what elements. I find the Firefox/Mozilla DOM inspector and developer toolbad a godsend here.
The average consumer may also notice their mp3s now sound like crap, having been converted between lossy formats, and into ATRAC, that seems to come out the worst in quality in listening tests.
Maybe the average consumer won't care, maybe they will.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read TFA you would know it is mircons across.
It's pretty sad when someone considers fighting for justice to be outdated.
On of the things I really like in Smallville is you see Clark keep always trying to do the right thing, one of the defining things about Superman. The setting may be updated, but it is actually the traditional core of the character, and ties right into all that corny fighting for justice stuff.
As for "Comics are always made by people based on the time's moral standards and public expectations." Well Duh. You could replace comics with "films" or "books" or any popular entertainment.
As for focusing on personal problems, that isn't new. The films you cite are based on Marvel properties, and that is a part of Marvel's style, less earthsahking powers and more focus on the personal side. They have been doing that for decades.
On top of that, the real Superman, Clark W. Kent, died in the comic books years ago. So did Bruce Wayne, the original Batman.
Comic book characters die, and come back to life, all the time. Spuerman was dead for a bit, but came back soon after. I'm not aware of Bruce Wayne ever dieing in main continuity.
Of course, they get killed is some non-continuity Elseworlds stuff. Plus back when DC had parralel univerese (they all got merged in Crisis on Infiniate Earth) Bruce Wayne died in Earth-2, but not the 'main' Earth.
Characters like Superman and Batman are pretty archetypal. Subsequent generation re-invent them to suit the times, that is what happens with mythlogy, it keeps it alive and relevant, and IMO is much better than just leaving them alone.
My understanding was allofmp3 payed what was required under Russian law.
So that wouldn't be stealling, that would be buying.
You can't kill creationist 'theory' because it isn't, in scientific terms, a theory. Evolution is a theory, Relativity is a theory, they both have the backing of enough evidence to be theories.
Creationism isn't even a good scientific hypothesis, your violating Occam's Razor by introducing unecessary new entities (God, Creator, whatever), and not trying to make a model from the observations. Instead it's all about trying to squeeze 'facts' into fitting a view the person finds more comfortable becuase they don't understand how evolution could happen, or it doesn't fit with their religous beleifs.
There have been, are, and will be lots of occastions where human beings struggle to undestand how something happens. Yet only in the areas of the creation of the universe and life do we get so called 'scientists' claming God did it.
How would this help against URL spoofing?
People taking part in ILB already know it is for Halo 2, so how is anyone being duped? You seem to have a serious hate on for any marketing, even though in this case people know exactlty what it is, what it is for, and are enjoying it.
Nobody is being duped or suckered here, and some people are having a lot of fun. So what is so bad? Just because it is marketing it must be evil?
I know there was that slahdot article recently about malformed HTML crashing browsers, but claiming it crahses every sixth pages is an over exageration of staerring proportions.
I use firefox all the time, and I've not found any actual web page that crashes the 0.9 - 1.0PR versions.
The only page I've found with rendering gliches is Gamespot, that flickers all over the place while loading, but is OK once done. My Slashdot problems have stopped since 1.0PR.
It already can properly render most of the web. Also if a web page is actually broken, there is no way to properly render it. At best you can best guess what maybe it is supposed to be.
"We need to create documents" problem.
Or a "we need to create documents compatable with MS Office problem". Unless you don't deal with other companies who use MS.
The time to complain would have been when the picked Access as their solution,
In many cases at my work that was years ago, long before Linux was any sort of viable alternative. If you are talking about a migration you have to live in the real world with what you have, not a hypothetical where you start from scratch. If other companies are like ours, the business often put together Access databases by themselves, without any IT control or imput (they are often badly done too, but that is another matter).
If you have a server running Access, it's unlikely such garbage will be installed on it. This in no way forces you to keep Windows for desktop systems.
You clearly haven't suffered with Access, it isn't server based, it runs on the client. It either uses the internal Jet engine database, and a flat file with no sever (although the file may live on a file server) or is a front end to an ODBC database or SQL Server. Even then queries, forms, Macros, VB code modules etc live in Access, and run on the client. It very much forces you to keep Windows (or something that runs Access) on the desktop. It isn't like running Oracle or MySQL where you can change the client apps and OS with ease.
Where I work we are trying to kill Access and replace it with a server based, web-plug in architecture (Brio), but it is costly and painful. All the client side Access sutff has to be rewritten onto server reports, and it is all horrible custom MS stuff, even the SQL queries.
Again, you're pushing a product instead of solving a problem. Please describe how VB is used for custom development that cannot be matched by other tools.
The orginal article poster already has an MS network. If we are talking about moving to Linux you have to consider the costs. Chances are there is lots of custom code in VB around that someone has to re-work into something else if you move away from MS. Not to mention loads of power user types know VB for doing Office macros, even if you have another technology, their is a cost of making up the knowledge.
I mean, seriously, if you have 200 people who are screwing around on non-work enough to cause you malware headaches, they're clearly people that need to be "refocussed",
It only takes a few people installing a few programs, or even going to the wrong websites with IE, to get their machines screwed up. Pleny of people work plenty hard, and can still manage to screw their machines up with a bit of browsing, or installing the odd piece of software that looked cool or useful (like Hotbar).
That doesn't mean you have mass laziness or an office full of slackers.
Linux probably provides all the good they need to actually do their job without all the bad that comes with crufty ol' Windows.
If you are starting from scratch, sure. You can probably do as much for less cost, and be more secure with lower maintenance. However, the OP said "Move people to a good, maintained Linux Distro. Yes, it is possible.". Key word here move.
You seem to want to ignore all the cost involved of moving, and pretend you don't have to worry about being compatable with any other companies using MS (probably true for some companies). Pointing out their are non-MS equivilents doesn't magically remove the costs of moving to them. The move is possible, but the costs of moving may be more than you save by doing it, so it may not be a smart decision, even with the downsides of staying MS.
They aren't taking away your PC privileges becuase it isn't your PC.
I'm not a LAN admin (although I worked breifly for LAN support years ago), I'm a developer. I need all sorts of non-standard software on my PC, and I have admin rights to do so, everyone does. I'ts handy when I want to install something, but I'm unselfish enough to realise the security implications.
Keeping machines locked down helps stops the adware, spyware, worms and viruses, that all cost the companies time and money. It also stops illegal copies, something the company is liable for. I'm sure, like every other user, you are convinced you won't mess anything up, aren't stupid, and won't cause trouble with admin rights.
Know what? All the people who brought problems onto corporate networks probably thought that too. Maybe you would suggest a test to see who should get rights? The "all-mighty-admin" has to approve things to make sure it isn't going to stuff up your machine, or the network. Plus the software isn't free, their are issues of future compatability and support across the company, does the company have an agreement with a vendor etc.
How often do you need new software to do your job? Why don't you know in advance and have it ready?
You aren't left alone, beucase going by your post you clearly can't be trusted. You would just stick whatever you thought you needed on your machine without any though of the consequences. That ends up costing much more than your so called lost productivity.
Great, if the average PC user didn't want windows pre-installed.
The sort of people clogged up with spyware aren't the technical users who want to use something other then widows, or install any OS themselves.
racial stereotyping, even if you find it funny, is racism.
Racial stereotyping can be racist, that doesn't mean it automatically is. There is a racial stereotype of Geramans being efficient and hard working, is that racist?
People really come from different cultures, that really are different. There are certainly unpleasant, racist stereotypes (and unpleasantly, racist people who use thme), but lets not pretend that most racial, or more acurately cutural, stereotypes don't have some basis in fact.
Stereotypes are shorthands, we use them all the time, along with archetypes. Their usage donesn't mean the user thinks everyone of that group fits into the stereotype, the OP certain doesn't imply that. I can't tell what the poster thinks of all Indians from that comment.
Unless you want to start stereotpying people who use stereotypes...
Children are pretty much the only group in society that have basically no rights whatsoever!
Children have plenty of rigths, at least in most civilised countries where people in general have rights. That's why you have laws against child labour, child abuse etc.
You see, the thing about discrimination is it is unfairly picking out a group for different treatment. Children however really are different, and really are (in general) less capable of making decisions and being responsible. Some individuals may be, but you have to go with generalites for things like this.
Children have less rights for the same reason the mentally ill do, to protect them and to protect everyone else.
I get so sick of hearing all these damn minorities , and women (who make up 51% of the population and are therefore not a minority) bitching about how they have no rights, when in fact they have more rights than any child will ever have
So becuase they have more rights then children they should just shut up and not complain about discrimination? Only minorities can be discriminated agains? Slashdot moderation sometimes baffles me, but I have no idea how yu got rated +5 with this sort of logic.
Big database vendors will never stick to a standard, adding extra features is what sells. It also makes life easier for programers. For example, Oracle's tree building queries are completely proprietary, and a godsend if that is what you want to do. I'd much rather have it available, than not have it becuase it isn't standard.
How many different databases does a developer work with in one job anyway? Most places probably just use one or two.
I've work on databases professionally for 5 years, and studied them at unviersity as part of my CS degree.
The only people I ever met who cared about relational algebra where academics. It has never once been relevant to any actual database work.
Nulls are a bit of a pain sometimes, and a bit of a hack for dealing with unknown data, but in practice work pretty well. If you also want Nulls returned from a query you just add "or column_name is null" to it.
I'm sure SQL can be improved on, but when I read these things about the problems of Nulls in relational databases (almost always written by academics, rather than guys who write SQL) I feel I must be really missing something, becuase I never met anything that isn't solved by adding some is/is not null tests, and I've dealt with some very complex SQL.
Why not give people the freedom to invest money how they choose is tax deductable funds?
Well, back when I did economics at college one of the reasons give for not doing as you suggested is that many people won't. Which leads to the next point.
Social security (for retirement, and for people who make a certain $$ a year) is nothing but a safety net for people who are financially irresponsible.
I agree, and yet I'm in favour of social security. The alternative is what? You let people live (and die) in poverty becuase they were irresponsible? That seems to me rather... barbaric. The waste and the cost are the price society pays for some humanitarianism.
You can try an target welfare better, but that requires things like means testing and more money spent on running the system, you trade one inefficiency for another.
Poverty also has other social costs, crime, disease etc, but it would be naive to suggest welfare stops those, at best it may reduce them a little.
The efficient welfare state that only aids the 'deserving' is impossible. So a society has to decide, shoulder the costs, or throw the irresponsible and unfortunate to the wolves.
I like browsing through record stores. It isn't like I'd drive into town just to do it, but I usually go in anyway at the weekend, so I'm going to do the whole drive there and back if I walk into the record shop or not.
I still don't by much in record shops though, unless they have a sale. Not liking very mainstream stuff (L.A. Punk and European Goth/Metal at the moment) I have real trouble finding stuff I like, and then it is usually a very expensive import.
I also think you are simplifying the download side. If you download leaglly, it can be hard to find stuff you want, particulalry outside the US. Then you can't play it on every one of your music devices, unless all your music devices come from a very limited selection.
If you go the illegal route, you can spend ages trying to find stuff only getting crappy quality or deliberately mangled copies.
I usually by CDs cheap online. Much, much better selection than any download store, cheap and I get something I can rip and play on everything I own.
Music downloads are still a very long way from being as convenient as you make out, and they could be. I'm sure the more convenient they get, the more they will eat into traditional retail.
Listening to a studio album is very different thing from watching a live gig. I love live gigs, but they are not way interchangable with listening to an album, which is vastly more convenient.
Watching artists perfom and listening to their albums are complementary things (for the vast majority of people), not somehow in opposition. People don't get an album instead of seeing a gig, or vice versa.
What is more, if I'm listening to music at home/work/car/walking around I'll take the studio album almost every time over a live recording. I'm hardly unique, the music industry is right in this sense, people in general want studio albums much more than they want to see live gigs.
From the artists perspective you a largely right about the value. For many bands, they make bugger all from the albums as the record companies take their costs from the band's cut. From their point of view they are more to get people to come to the live shows where they make the money.
There is a lot of effort to make realistic looking graphics in games, but they are very, very far away from trying to emulate real life. Even open ended gameplay is not about emulating real life. Choice and combinatins are ofen min/maxing minigames to get effective characters.
The things people enjoy in games are often very different from real life. I love Burnout 3, but I wouldn't want to crash my car in real life. Obviously any fantasy or sci-fi setting is impossible. Real life rarely has a good narrative, or satisisfying closure.
People want elements of reality it their games so they can relate, but the want elements of escapism too. If you are going to knock games for the escapist element stopping them improving thier life, you have to knock theater, movies, TV, books, hell, almost every form of human entertainment ever created. Even sports let you concentrate on the team/players/match and forget about 'real life'.
Obviously if you are so caught up in escapism it stops you improving your quality of life it is a problem. For most people though, it is a balance, and their quality of life is improved by some escapism. Video games (and other escapist entertainment) aren't a substitute for doing something in real, but a way of experiencing something you couldn't or wouldn't want to.
People need to eat, have shelter, cloths and that generally means jobs. Its great if you get one you love, but there is nothing that says the availablity of such jobs is going to match up with what people want. All through human history people have had to do stuff they haven't enjoyed to get by.
Yes, obsession with consumerism is bad, staying in a bad job to buy stuff you need is dumb. However, people have to put up with all kinds of crap in life they can't help or control, a bit of healthy escapism like video games is a good thing. The real world can be rich and inviting, but it can also be harsh, cruel and painful. You certainly shouldn't use video games to hide from it, but you can use them to make your journey through it a more enjoyable one.
You rather sound like a recruiter for some wacky cult.
Filesharers have no such agreement. Therefore they are in violation of copyright law. This has nothing to do with what media companys say or how much they have paid to politicians.
Maybe you haven't noticed, but the media companies have been heavily pushing politicians to make copyright longer, heavier penalities and so on. They have been suceeding too.
In short, media companies (and the politians they pay) are in no small part responsible for modern copyright law. Copyright law was created for the public interest, but now it is entirely about the media companies' interests.
Copyright law is supposed to balance making things available to the public and encouraging creators. Yet in the music industry it is all about the middlemen getting lots of money and having control. Any copyright regieme is going to be something of a compromise, but the current laws seem badly out of balance.
The 20 gig iPod holds 10,000 songs.
I guess AAC and m4p must be really small. My iRivir is 40GB, I rip at a fairly high vbr, works out about 1.5M a minute, and about 3000 songs has half filled it.
The appeal for me was coop. Sit down with a buddy on the couch, infront of the TV and play the coop levels. A total blast.
Sure, you can network PCs up, or play online, but it isn't as fun (for me) as playing with someone sitting right there next to you./p?
5. That is partly bad writing, if you write it well it will degrade OK. You can harldy blame the technology for naff implementaion.
Also, at some point you have to give up support for older browsers, or you never get anywhere. If you write for IE5.5+ and Mozilla it's pretty easy (bar some IE gotchas). A degraded site may not look as nice as a pure HTML one on old browsers, but it will look a hell of a lot better on mobile appliances (if done properly).
4. You do know that browser download the css and javascript files at the same time as the HTML right? Plus once downloaded they are cached. The multiple files are quicker and reduce bandwidth.
Viewing the page as it downloaded was only possible becuase the pages were so simple back then.
3. HTML is not simple. I'm a profestional web developer, and I work on our companies e-commerce site written largely pre-CSS HTML. To get the look required there are multiple nested tables every where, spacer gifs, font tags and all sorts of horrible, complex stuff. The "My Web Page" I had a university was simple, many modern websites are not.
I recently worked on an offline version to run from a CD and got to re-write parts of it to use CSS. Much cleaner, much more simple.
HTML is only simple if the page is simple, and then the XHTML/HTML + CSS is simple too. For complex pages using CSS makes the code much simplier. What is easier, a defining the font in a few places in the CSS, or sticking FONT tags everywhere? Positioned DIV tags, or nested tables? People think HTML and for some reason think basic pages like the early internet.
2. "People" were tarting up pages before CSS, and doing things like web pages in Flash. As the internet matures there is an expectation of more polished web sites. This is apart from the technology used. At least CSS makes it easier to to make slick sites (not easy, not simple, but easier than pure HTML). Anyone can use personal style sheets, if their browser supports it.
1. Who are these people? Where do you base this on? This is a non-complaint, the button only takes up a bit of space, nobody forces you to go a follow the link a read about standard. Part of CSS is seperating style from content, once you set it up for a site, it becomes easier to write new content.
If these are the top problems with CSS it has no problems. I'd say as a developer the top problem is it can be fiddly to debug, and figure out what rules are applying to what elements. I find the Firefox/Mozilla DOM inspector and developer toolbad a godsend here.
The average consumer may also notice their mp3s now sound like crap, having been converted between lossy formats, and into ATRAC, that seems to come out the worst in quality in listening tests.
Maybe the average consumer won't care, maybe they will.
Except you can run C# on Linux with Mono
Still, lets not let the facts get in the way of a joke ;)