This majority you speak of, is 0.2%. The other 99.8 percent of people don't give a shit. Try replacing "majority" with "extreme minority" then post again.
Reread what I said. I'm not defending the 0.2%, in fact I'm well within that 99.8% of people who don't give a shit. However, there is some reason for FCC standards, though nowhere near as low as the 0.2% wants. I'm also saying the "change the channel" argument doesn't work if snuff films are on every channel, and that using public resources (airwaves) requires some public accountability. Even moreso than decency, accountability also includes some degree of somewhat educational or news programming.
That said, I'll be the first to admit that free market economics requires that a successful show requires a pretty sizeable number of people watching it. So it's unlikely a true majority outrage would surround a successful show, though it's possible.
If there is something that you are offended by on TV, no one is making you watch it.
To give a more reasoned opposition view, the airwaves are public. I'm not obligated to watch, no - but since they're serving the public, they should have to present things the majority of the public actually wants and won't be mortally offended by seeing while they flip by. Your argument is more appropriate to an unlimited medium resource like cable, and in fact cable is lightly regulated.
Of course, the people acually bitching are really annoying paternalistic bastards who think they know what's good for the rest of us. Unfortunately, they don't have a monopoly on that attitude.
There are two issues. 1) Does/. spread FUD about Opera? 2) Does/. ignore Opera? Seeing as how these issues are contradictory, they can't both be true. To sum up,/. doesn't spread "FUD," and we do as a whole ignore Opera - as most of the world does.
The "FUD" you cited was a legit news story. Financials, and the impacts of them, can be argued to death. That's not FUD. You point out that Opera's revenues are higher than ever. However, their losses are too. If/. is guilty of FUD, you are of astroturfing as neither of you successfully summed up the article. The difference is I know you actually read it. Opera is spending money to try to get market share, which is a risk and is rightly reported as such. At best, you have a case of a misleading/. headline. If you spend any time around here, you'll realize that's not an attempt at FUD, that's simply editorial incompetence. And honestly, since we don't really care about Opera, the question remains of why we'd bother FUDding at all.
As far as Opera's cutting edge status, you first mention that Opera isn't old, but follow that up with mentioning how Opera innovated things that all modern browsers take for granted. I'm sure it did, in 1992. I'm not impressed, and that's no reason to choose a browser. Gotta try harder. Your "geek appeal" point is made by noting that Opera is available to Linux and FreeBSD? Good Lord, that's lame. So is Firefox, and if that's the "geek"-iest thing you have, you're in trouble. As for the Opera skin for Firefox, think hard about what that means. It means that people who got to know and love Opera back in the day are now using Firefox. The relevant question is whether there's a Firefox skin for Opera.
As for fighting Microsoft, I'm sure they try, but what's the trend in their marketshare over the last 10 years? Your share is flat and there's no real reason other than optimism to see it increasing. People want to back a horse with a chance.
As for getting press because Opera defined what a modern browser should be...well, I'm sure the folks at Wiki care, but in case you missed it,/. is a NEWS site, not an encyclopedia. If someone does a retrospective on the browser, I'm sure Opera will make it. As for that being of great concern to those who know what they're talking about...well, I think, oddly enough, that Netscape and IE were the real players there, and people know all about that. Opera was always the little company that couldn't. Will that change? Maybe, but I see no reason to believe it will now. Your best arguments for Opera to get marketshare and press are historical. That's like saying Ford should always get press, and I should always buy them, because they innovated the mass-produced automobile. Lame.
Look, I can see you really care about your browser - for some reason - and you want people to use it. But the marketplace has spoken. In the case of/., it's because Opera embodies absolutely none of the values that these people believe so much in. You can't fight that. You can evangelize all day long, and it doesn't change that fact. It's closed source, fee-based, adware that has little market share, showing no market growth. Opera has two major problems: One, zealots who aren't using it now won't start because they identify more strongly with its principles. For the most part, only people who used it in 1995 will continue to do so. Two, non-zealots will never use it because it isn't free. It's hard to sell iceboxes to eskimos, but damned if Opera isn't trying.
But I'm sure you'll label me a FUDder like you probably have anyone else who attempted to explain to you, in unbiased terms, why people don't care about Opera. We don't FUD, we don't care. You should be happy it merited a story at all.
Opera is not just a browser, and it has massive geek appeal. And people do pay for Opera, otherwise it would be going out of business.
And if it had such massive geek appeal, it wouldn't be getting slammed on/. as you claim. You may be a geek, you may like it massively, but that's not massive geek appeal. As for Opera being more than a browser...OK. I don't want my browser to do other things. That's bloat, and why I don't just use Mozilla.
Don't kid yourself with your lame open-source fantasies. People even pay money for Linux distributions, even though they can be downloaded for free. Why? Convenience. Opera offers a convenient way to install a smaller download than Firefox, with all features available right away. I'm not going to waste my time with crappy extensions and building my own browser when Opera has already done it for me.
For what it's worth, I don't give a shit about OSS, but/. as a whole does, and that's what we're talking about. However... 1. Most people on/. *don't* pay for linux, and those who do so do it for donation purposes, not convenience. 2. Firefox really is a lot easier to install than a linux distro, the comparison is completely ludicrous. 3. A smaller download? I suppose, for those who lack any form of broadband access. And how much smaller? I can't imagine anyone really used that as their reason for choosing Opera. Straw-grasping here.
Slashdot has ads..
True. But for whatever reason, people don't see it as the same. Adware has a bad name. Web ads don't. Hard to fight perception.
I've already mentioned several closed-source companies that are hyped on Slashdot. And Opera is available for Linux, too.
Few. And as others already pointed out to you, it's generally companies that either 1) donate to open source, or 2) actively fight MS. Opera does neither, so the OSS freaks here don't get behind it.
There is nothing logical about Firefox stealing market share from IE, therefore Slashdot must ignore Opera, or spread anti-Opera FUD.
As for the logic, by extension Firefox would get a lot less attention if it weren't stealing marketshare. Regarding Nintendo, it's never been the sort of "evil empire" MS is. I've seen little discussion of Nintendo on this board. This is an anti-MS zone, first and foremost. That defines everything about/., and that is not arguable. Also, I've never seen anti-Opera FUD here. I've seen people say they don't want to use Opera because of various features, but that's not the same thing. Second, which is it - FUD or ignoring? Contradicting yourself here. Third, it's not why slashdot should ignore Opera - it's more of why should we pay attention? Opera has been operating forever on more or less the same small market share. For various reasons, people don't like it, or don't like it enough to pay for it. You may disagree, but you can't argue with taste. As such, there's little reason to discuss a small product making no impact produced by a company whose values are against those of a large portion of the community. I have nothing, in general, against Opera. I just have no burning desire to use it. I'd say your biggest problem isn't FUD, it's apathy.
Why does Slashdot spread FUD about Opera? It's an all-round "nice player" and has stayed that way for nearly ten years.
As I said, it's not FUD. I'd like examples of some campaign executed to actually spread either F, U, or D. I've not seen it. You probably do get people telling you to go away when you go into Opera evangelism mode, which shouldn't be surprising. As for the "nice player" point, you answered your own question again. Nice players don't get press. Opera needs to do something new to get news coverage. That's why they call it "NEWs."
Bottom line: The Opera browser is a product sold for a fee in a market dominated by products sold for free. It is closed source. It is adware. It is
...is that he self-medicated for a long time. If he had gone to a doctor right from the start, he'd be probably fine by now. Seriously.
No, the problem is that he went to a doctor at the start, who told him nothing was wrong. He repeated that about 10 times. In the meantime, he tried to find out what was wrong with him because 1) he has more time than the GPs and crappy specialists he saw, 2) he cares more than them about his health, and 3) most doctors don't think creatively because they aren't trained to.
As someone who has had a hard-to-diagnose health problem, Patrick's course of action is the only one that works. You have to do your own research, and pester the hell out of doctors to get them to actually try to diagnose you. Otherwise, they either tell you nothing's wrong, or they refer you to someone else who repeats the whole process and refers you again.
Patrick didn't self medicate. He's just trying to get these damned doctors to take his condition seriously.
So, it's closed-source, but it is also "the third browser", and has been around since the days of Mosaic.
Most reasons have been mentioned such as 1) no one's paying for a browser anymore, 2) no one likes adware, and 3) this is an OSS place.
In addition, you answered your own question. So 4), people want something to beat MS and throw their support behind it. Opera's been around forever, and has never mounted any contest against MS. Firefox just hit 1.0, and it's stealing share from MS. Ergo,/. likes firefox, not opera.
I mean, my 90-year-old granny's a Debian admin with her own website and broadband connection, isn't yours?
Fuck yeah she's a l33+ h4XoR! Biotch totally 0wnz0r3d my damn box last April fools. I'll get her good next year, packing her off to a home. See who's laughing.
Nice stock, off-topic troll. DOn't know who you're responding to, but it wasn't my post. To respond, however, I'm pretty sure Americans don't worry economically about Europe. Your poor support of higher education and stifling social programs will ensure it.
On the contrary, a lot of people think the US will suffer because they won't be in the newly formed 'carbon market.'
Those people are math-challenged, or those who are trying to spin. The US would have, for the forseeable future, been a buyer on the carbon market. So yes, we'll be out of the carbon market, in the sense that we won't be paying other countries for the privelege of doing what we're doing now.
As for Russia, they did not sign out of altruistic purposes. They did because their current carbon emissions are over 30% below that of 1990, the benchmark for establishing the carbon market. This is the case not because they have developed clean fuel, or learned to reduce consumption, but because their economy completely imploded. So basically, Europe won't change much, nor will Russia, but the rest of Europe will end up paying Russia money.
That's why Russia ratified. It's free money. Why wouldn't they do it?
I wish that were the case. Jams are a function not of population - or even density - but of urban planning. I lived in a city of 50K for 4 years - and it was the largest city within 50 miles - that had horrible traffic problems because of terrible urban planning.
I live in LA now. We have some mass transit, but because this city developed after the advent of the car, pop density is actually very low for a metro area of this size. Also, because property values are so high, people have to live in the sticks and work nearer the core. Result? Long commutes and jams. Mass transit isn't an answer.
I don't want to write a book, but I'll say that more than pop density goes into traffic jams. There are a lot of cities with pop density too low for effective mass transit but urban planning too poor to prevent jams.
merica, may I introduce you to the concept of useable mass, public transport.
May I introduce you to the concept of population density? America does have mass transport damn near everywhere we have real cities. In other areas, it won't work.
You have to recall that the population spread in Europe was determined before any sort of faster than horse transportation existed. Therefore, cities tend to be denser and transit works. Here, that's not the case.
And it's not all attitudinal - I hate driving, I'd love transit. But in most areas, it doesn't work.
We don't use Lexis-Nexis in the sciences (although I remember it from my debate days), but I believe this could seriously damage Web of Science by ISI. The searches on that are so horrible that I was using Google instead *before* google scholar came out. I could literally pick up a paper, select words from the title, enter them in the search, and WOS won't find the paper. Look it up by the authors, *then* it finds it. Piece of shit.
I likely won't use WOS again, especially since they won't let me export references as BibTeX format anymore.
If your going to base your view of the world and events that happen on a TV show, you have bigger problems then what TV show to base it on.
I agree, but if we're talking about people on juries, it seems we all share this problem.
CSI is a TV show, its entertaining, not educational. It doesn't do the job of educating at all, let alone doing a good or bad job of it. Its a TV show, its meant to be exciting and entertaining for an hour, thats it.
That's a very black-and-white view of things. TV can certainly be educational, even fiction. Neal Stephenson's books would be a good example to the slashdot crowd. Having read the first two books of the baroque cycle, I know a lot more about Europe in the late 1600's/early 1700's, including the revolutions in finance and science that happened then.
I think if a fair but easy test of forensics science knowledge were attempted, for the general populace, those who regularly watch CSI would do better than those who don't. Thus, while being entertained, they've been inadvertently educated. Not as experts, but educated to some degree.
Let's talk about how easily and accurately one can estimate the time of death of a corpse, shall we?
If you believe these shows, it's an easy and exact science. In reality, it's neither.
I've never seen the show indicate that time of death is that easy - they tend to use the word "about," and often provide a reasonable window. I've seen tmies where they set it up so the time of death was muddy enough to just let the alibi stand, at which point they had to build a case using other evidence.
If your 'little forensics training' indicates otherwise, please inform us... but if you really are trained, you'll know that these shows are quite wrong often on this detail.
True, some shows better than others. I've found CSI to be a bit better than a lot of shows. I've also seen them explore some interesting research, for example the work derived from the professor at the University of Tennessee who runs the "body farm." They also throw cutting edge intrumentation on the show occasionally, such as an episode solved by an "electronic nose." I can personally say that treatment in particular was dumbed-down and unrealistic, because I develop such devices. But they can't go in depth on the show, for time constraints, so introducing such techniques is a good start.
They are the first popular show that I know of to explain the science of what they're doing. They do sometimes get things wrong, but not usually, and the attempt is a good one. Blood spatter, glass fracture, and ballistics tests are examples of classic analyses they've introduced. Is it as easy as they set it up on the show? No, because you have to make it obvious to the viewer how it works.
These are short TV shows, with TV show hack script writers and limited schedules. Facts are frequently bent to make a better story. Real forensics experts have a hard time watching these shows, they're so full of mistakes.
I'm not saying CSI is a Nova special. I'm saying it's the best of TV fiction. And I think it has a net positive influence on people, if only that CSI has also made other, more informative nonfiction shows that much more popular. Shows that do in fact get the science right. And again, I don't usually see CSI portray time of death estimates as solidly as you suggest.
As a chemist who's had a little forensics training, the science is not bad.
As for the submitter's question, eyewitness accounts are usually the absolute worst forms of evidence. It's especially bad when the witness doesn't actually know the defendant.
And I would say relevations regarding the liberties taken by cops with the Bill of Rights and Miranda have shaken faith in confessions more than shows like CSI have.
I'd say that having juries full of self-styled experts based on TV knowledge ain't great. But it's better than it was in the 90's, when you could snow over a jury with science evidence debate they don't understand. Used to be an easy way to get reasonable doubt.
All in all, I don't think education is a bad thing, and as I said CSI doesn't do a bad job. As long as the juries don't think they're experts, it should be OK.
not to be a killjoy, but has it occurred to anyone that ashcroft is resigning as attorney general so as to prepare himself for a nomination to the supreme court?
So Ashcorft resigns and you tinfoil hat nuts automatically assume he's gunning for the supreme court? Maybe the man needs a vacation. And look, this has nothing - nothing! - to do with Rehnquist's poor health. Really. I swear.
Shit. Marge, get a case of beer and my tinfoil hat. Gonna be a long couple of decades.
First, though, I'd say the message needs tailoring to those who don't know - and almost certainly don't care - what OSS is.
For them, point 8 doesn't matter at all. They don't see MS as evil because they don't pay attention and don't care.
These people also don't know what W3C is, and all that matters to them is that everything renders in IE because sites have to be IE compatible. If a site is W3C noncompliant - but renders correctly in IE and not in Firefox - whose problem is it? So point 2 won't win anyone either.
I'd say point 6 won't work either - since IE hasn't changed in 5 years, continuity is something they definitely have! The innovation angle could work, but not so well for the average user. Remember, they just want the internet to work. For them, the browser is the internet.
Points 3 and 7 are marginal. It will work for the Mac crowd, but the very reason that windows users use IE now is because they don't feel like screwing with their browser, either to get a new skin or a new plugin. IE supports the plugins that 99% of the population needs already.
Points 1,4,and 5 are the winners. Security, lack of spyware crap, and lack of popups. Pimp the hell out out these points. I'd also add tabbed browsing if you can show it to someone, also the native RSS support (though firefox could make that a lot cooler than it is in 1.0).
I'd keep the message short and simple, and tailored to the things that people hate about IE right now, and that services like Earthlink and finally AOL are starting to sell.
For what it's worth, I just converted two people this morning.
So anyone know why this puts their share price http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=3m&l=off&z= m&q=l&c= up 15% on the day and it looks like 25% on the week? Seems to me someone out there thinks they could still make money if they'd just sell some of their great software instead of wasting their money on this lawsuit. *snicker*
Your view of "the rest of the world" appears to include only Europe.
Actually, even just western Europe, consisting principally of France, Germany, and Britain.
It notably does not include Russia - most of whose population lives (I believe) in Europe - and whose leader (Putin) supports Bush. It also does not consist of many of the central and southern European countries who have done the same.
Good one! Groklaw allows posts from the public? Uhm, no. Groklaw deletes any post that does not (1) cast SCO in the worst possible light; and (2) kiss PJ's ass.
After that Linux insurance scam she ran with her employer, OSRM, I don't know how anyone trusts her or her site.
I expect that's meant to be a troll, but outside of the anarchist bit (which I disagree with) you certainly described me perfectly. And indeed, I use slack for all my linux needs.;)
But I am writing this on a powerbook, so I'm not sure how that works out with your theory.
Yes, that people with money and power are frequently just indifferent to how their use of it affects people as long as they get what they want. Are you sure that's a step up from malice?
Take the tinfoil hat off. First, it was a fuckup. That's clear, they admitted it, end of story. Second, "what they want" in this case is for pedophiles to stop using Nintendo to screw up kids. I think I'm on board there. Third, there's no case for indifference because they did everything they could to fix the fuckup.
I know it screws up the schemas of the slashdot crowd, but there's really not this global conspiracy to screw you personally.
Slashdot Mirror
Reread what I said. I'm not defending the 0.2%, in fact I'm well within that 99.8% of people who don't give a shit. However, there is some reason for FCC standards, though nowhere near as low as the 0.2% wants. I'm also saying the "change the channel" argument doesn't work if snuff films are on every channel, and that using public resources (airwaves) requires some public accountability. Even moreso than decency, accountability also includes some degree of somewhat educational or news programming.
That said, I'll be the first to admit that free market economics requires that a successful show requires a pretty sizeable number of people watching it. So it's unlikely a true majority outrage would surround a successful show, though it's possible.
To give a more reasoned opposition view, the airwaves are public. I'm not obligated to watch, no - but since they're serving the public, they should have to present things the majority of the public actually wants and won't be mortally offended by seeing while they flip by. Your argument is more appropriate to an unlimited medium resource like cable, and in fact cable is lightly regulated.
Of course, the people acually bitching are really annoying paternalistic bastards who think they know what's good for the rest of us. Unfortunately, they don't have a monopoly on that attitude.
The "FUD" you cited was a legit news story. Financials, and the impacts of them, can be argued to death. That's not FUD. You point out that Opera's revenues are higher than ever. However, their losses are too. If /. is guilty of FUD, you are of astroturfing as neither of you successfully summed up the article. The difference is I know you actually read it. Opera is spending money to try to get market share, which is a risk and is rightly reported as such. At best, you have a case of a misleading /. headline. If you spend any time around here, you'll realize that's not an attempt at FUD, that's simply editorial incompetence. And honestly, since we don't really care about Opera, the question remains of why we'd bother FUDding at all.
As far as Opera's cutting edge status, you first mention that Opera isn't old, but follow that up with mentioning how Opera innovated things that all modern browsers take for granted. I'm sure it did, in 1992. I'm not impressed, and that's no reason to choose a browser. Gotta try harder. Your "geek appeal" point is made by noting that Opera is available to Linux and FreeBSD? Good Lord, that's lame. So is Firefox, and if that's the "geek"-iest thing you have, you're in trouble. As for the Opera skin for Firefox, think hard about what that means. It means that people who got to know and love Opera back in the day are now using Firefox. The relevant question is whether there's a Firefox skin for Opera.
As for fighting Microsoft, I'm sure they try, but what's the trend in their marketshare over the last 10 years? Your share is flat and there's no real reason other than optimism to see it increasing. People want to back a horse with a chance.
As for getting press because Opera defined what a modern browser should be...well, I'm sure the folks at Wiki care, but in case you missed it, /. is a NEWS site, not an encyclopedia. If someone does a retrospective on the browser, I'm sure Opera will make it. As for that being of great concern to those who know what they're talking about...well, I think, oddly enough, that Netscape and IE were the real players there, and people know all about that. Opera was always the little company that couldn't. Will that change? Maybe, but I see no reason to believe it will now. Your best arguments for Opera to get marketshare and press are historical. That's like saying Ford should always get press, and I should always buy them, because they innovated the mass-produced automobile. Lame.
Look, I can see you really care about your browser - for some reason - and you want people to use it. But the marketplace has spoken. In the case of /., it's because Opera embodies absolutely none of the values that these people believe so much in. You can't fight that. You can evangelize all day long, and it doesn't change that fact. It's closed source, fee-based, adware that has little market share, showing no market growth. Opera has two major problems: One, zealots who aren't using it now won't start because they identify more strongly with its principles. For the most part, only people who used it in 1995 will continue to do so. Two, non-zealots will never use it because it isn't free. It's hard to sell iceboxes to eskimos, but damned if Opera isn't trying.
But I'm sure you'll label me a FUDder like you probably have anyone else who attempted to explain to you, in unbiased terms, why people don't care about Opera. We don't FUD, we don't care. You should be happy it merited a story at all.
And if it had such massive geek appeal, it wouldn't be getting slammed on /. as you claim. You may be a geek, you may like it massively, but that's not massive geek appeal. As for Opera being more than a browser...OK. I don't want my browser to do other things. That's bloat, and why I don't just use Mozilla.
Don't kid yourself with your lame open-source fantasies. People even pay money for Linux distributions, even though they can be downloaded for free. Why? Convenience. Opera offers a convenient way to install a smaller download than Firefox, with all features available right away. I'm not going to waste my time with crappy extensions and building my own browser when Opera has already done it for me.
For what it's worth, I don't give a shit about OSS, but /. as a whole does, and that's what we're talking about. However... 1. Most people on /. *don't* pay for linux, and those who do so do it for donation purposes, not convenience. 2. Firefox really is a lot easier to install than a linux distro, the comparison is completely ludicrous. 3. A smaller download? I suppose, for those who lack any form of broadband access. And how much smaller? I can't imagine anyone really used that as their reason for choosing Opera. Straw-grasping here.
Slashdot has ads..
True. But for whatever reason, people don't see it as the same. Adware has a bad name. Web ads don't. Hard to fight perception.
I've already mentioned several closed-source companies that are hyped on Slashdot. And Opera is available for Linux, too.
Few. And as others already pointed out to you, it's generally companies that either 1) donate to open source, or 2) actively fight MS. Opera does neither, so the OSS freaks here don't get behind it.
There is nothing logical about Firefox stealing market share from IE, therefore Slashdot must ignore Opera, or spread anti-Opera FUD.
As for the logic, by extension Firefox would get a lot less attention if it weren't stealing marketshare. Regarding Nintendo, it's never been the sort of "evil empire" MS is. I've seen little discussion of Nintendo on this board. This is an anti-MS zone, first and foremost. That defines everything about /., and that is not arguable. Also, I've never seen anti-Opera FUD here. I've seen people say they don't want to use Opera because of various features, but that's not the same thing. Second, which is it - FUD or ignoring? Contradicting yourself here. Third, it's not why slashdot should ignore Opera - it's more of why should we pay attention? Opera has been operating forever on more or less the same small market share. For various reasons, people don't like it, or don't like it enough to pay for it. You may disagree, but you can't argue with taste. As such, there's little reason to discuss a small product making no impact produced by a company whose values are against those of a large portion of the community. I have nothing, in general, against Opera. I just have no burning desire to use it. I'd say your biggest problem isn't FUD, it's apathy.
Why does Slashdot spread FUD about Opera? It's an all-round "nice player" and has stayed that way for nearly ten years.
As I said, it's not FUD. I'd like examples of some campaign executed to actually spread either F, U, or D. I've not seen it. You probably do get people telling you to go away when you go into Opera evangelism mode, which shouldn't be surprising. As for the "nice player" point, you answered your own question again. Nice players don't get press. Opera needs to do something new to get news coverage. That's why they call it "NEWs."
Bottom line: The Opera browser is a product sold for a fee in a market dominated by products sold for free. It is closed source. It is adware. It is
I'm going with a UTI, although with Frank, we can't rule out syphilis either.
No, the problem is that he went to a doctor at the start, who told him nothing was wrong. He repeated that about 10 times. In the meantime, he tried to find out what was wrong with him because 1) he has more time than the GPs and crappy specialists he saw, 2) he cares more than them about his health, and 3) most doctors don't think creatively because they aren't trained to.
As someone who has had a hard-to-diagnose health problem, Patrick's course of action is the only one that works. You have to do your own research, and pester the hell out of doctors to get them to actually try to diagnose you. Otherwise, they either tell you nothing's wrong, or they refer you to someone else who repeats the whole process and refers you again.
Patrick didn't self medicate. He's just trying to get these damned doctors to take his condition seriously.
Most reasons have been mentioned such as 1) no one's paying for a browser anymore, 2) no one likes adware, and 3) this is an OSS place.
In addition, you answered your own question. So 4), people want something to beat MS and throw their support behind it. Opera's been around forever, and has never mounted any contest against MS. Firefox just hit 1.0, and it's stealing share from MS. Ergo, /. likes firefox, not opera.
Fuck yeah she's a l33+ h4XoR! Biotch totally 0wnz0r3d my damn box last April fools. I'll get her good next year, packing her off to a home. See who's laughing.
Nice stock, off-topic troll. DOn't know who you're responding to, but it wasn't my post. To respond, however, I'm pretty sure Americans don't worry economically about Europe. Your poor support of higher education and stifling social programs will ensure it.
Those people are math-challenged, or those who are trying to spin. The US would have, for the forseeable future, been a buyer on the carbon market. So yes, we'll be out of the carbon market, in the sense that we won't be paying other countries for the privelege of doing what we're doing now.
As for Russia, they did not sign out of altruistic purposes. They did because their current carbon emissions are over 30% below that of 1990, the benchmark for establishing the carbon market. This is the case not because they have developed clean fuel, or learned to reduce consumption, but because their economy completely imploded. So basically, Europe won't change much, nor will Russia, but the rest of Europe will end up paying Russia money.
That's why Russia ratified. It's free money. Why wouldn't they do it?
I live in LA now. We have some mass transit, but because this city developed after the advent of the car, pop density is actually very low for a metro area of this size. Also, because property values are so high, people have to live in the sticks and work nearer the core. Result? Long commutes and jams. Mass transit isn't an answer.
I don't want to write a book, but I'll say that more than pop density goes into traffic jams. There are a lot of cities with pop density too low for effective mass transit but urban planning too poor to prevent jams.
May I introduce you to the concept of population density? America does have mass transport damn near everywhere we have real cities. In other areas, it won't work.
You have to recall that the population spread in Europe was determined before any sort of faster than horse transportation existed. Therefore, cities tend to be denser and transit works. Here, that's not the case.
And it's not all attitudinal - I hate driving, I'd love transit. But in most areas, it doesn't work.
I likely won't use WOS again, especially since they won't let me export references as BibTeX format anymore.
I agree, but if we're talking about people on juries, it seems we all share this problem.
CSI is a TV show, its entertaining, not educational. It doesn't do the job of educating at all, let alone doing a good or bad job of it. Its a TV show, its meant to be exciting and entertaining for an hour, thats it.
That's a very black-and-white view of things. TV can certainly be educational, even fiction. Neal Stephenson's books would be a good example to the slashdot crowd. Having read the first two books of the baroque cycle, I know a lot more about Europe in the late 1600's/early 1700's, including the revolutions in finance and science that happened then.
I think if a fair but easy test of forensics science knowledge were attempted, for the general populace, those who regularly watch CSI would do better than those who don't. Thus, while being entertained, they've been inadvertently educated. Not as experts, but educated to some degree.
If you believe these shows, it's an easy and exact science. In reality, it's neither.
I've never seen the show indicate that time of death is that easy - they tend to use the word "about," and often provide a reasonable window. I've seen tmies where they set it up so the time of death was muddy enough to just let the alibi stand, at which point they had to build a case using other evidence.
If your 'little forensics training' indicates otherwise, please inform us... but if you really are trained, you'll know that these shows are quite wrong often on this detail.
True, some shows better than others. I've found CSI to be a bit better than a lot of shows. I've also seen them explore some interesting research, for example the work derived from the professor at the University of Tennessee who runs the "body farm." They also throw cutting edge intrumentation on the show occasionally, such as an episode solved by an "electronic nose." I can personally say that treatment in particular was dumbed-down and unrealistic, because I develop such devices. But they can't go in depth on the show, for time constraints, so introducing such techniques is a good start.
They are the first popular show that I know of to explain the science of what they're doing. They do sometimes get things wrong, but not usually, and the attempt is a good one. Blood spatter, glass fracture, and ballistics tests are examples of classic analyses they've introduced. Is it as easy as they set it up on the show? No, because you have to make it obvious to the viewer how it works.
These are short TV shows, with TV show hack script writers and limited schedules. Facts are frequently bent to make a better story. Real forensics experts have a hard time watching these shows, they're so full of mistakes.
I'm not saying CSI is a Nova special. I'm saying it's the best of TV fiction. And I think it has a net positive influence on people, if only that CSI has also made other, more informative nonfiction shows that much more popular. Shows that do in fact get the science right. And again, I don't usually see CSI portray time of death estimates as solidly as you suggest.
As for the submitter's question, eyewitness accounts are usually the absolute worst forms of evidence. It's especially bad when the witness doesn't actually know the defendant.
And I would say relevations regarding the liberties taken by cops with the Bill of Rights and Miranda have shaken faith in confessions more than shows like CSI have.
I'd say that having juries full of self-styled experts based on TV knowledge ain't great. But it's better than it was in the 90's, when you could snow over a jury with science evidence debate they don't understand. Used to be an easy way to get reasonable doubt.
All in all, I don't think education is a bad thing, and as I said CSI doesn't do a bad job. As long as the juries don't think they're experts, it should be OK.
Maybe yours doesn't - but theirs did.
So Ashcorft resigns and you tinfoil hat nuts automatically assume he's gunning for the supreme court? Maybe the man needs a vacation. And look, this has nothing - nothing! - to do with Rehnquist's poor health. Really. I swear.
Shit. Marge, get a case of beer and my tinfoil hat. Gonna be a long couple of decades.
For them, point 8 doesn't matter at all. They don't see MS as evil because they don't pay attention and don't care.
These people also don't know what W3C is, and all that matters to them is that everything renders in IE because sites have to be IE compatible. If a site is W3C noncompliant - but renders correctly in IE and not in Firefox - whose problem is it? So point 2 won't win anyone either.
I'd say point 6 won't work either - since IE hasn't changed in 5 years, continuity is something they definitely have! The innovation angle could work, but not so well for the average user. Remember, they just want the internet to work. For them, the browser is the internet.
Points 3 and 7 are marginal. It will work for the Mac crowd, but the very reason that windows users use IE now is because they don't feel like screwing with their browser, either to get a new skin or a new plugin. IE supports the plugins that 99% of the population needs already.
Points 1,4,and 5 are the winners. Security, lack of spyware crap, and lack of popups. Pimp the hell out out these points. I'd also add tabbed browsing if you can show it to someone, also the native RSS support (though firefox could make that a lot cooler than it is in 1.0).
I'd keep the message short and simple, and tailored to the things that people hate about IE right now, and that services like Earthlink and finally AOL are starting to sell.
For what it's worth, I just converted two people this morning.
So anyone know why this puts their share price http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=3m&l=off&z= m&q=l&c= up 15% on the day and it looks like 25% on the week? Seems to me someone out there thinks they could still make money if they'd just sell some of their great software instead of wasting their money on this lawsuit. *snicker*
Actually, even just western Europe, consisting principally of France, Germany, and Britain.
It notably does not include Russia - most of whose population lives (I believe) in Europe - and whose leader (Putin) supports Bush. It also does not consist of many of the central and southern European countries who have done the same.
After that Linux insurance scam she ran with her employer, OSRM, I don't know how anyone trusts her or her site.
Nice turf, Darl!
But I am writing this on a powerbook, so I'm not sure how that works out with your theory.
Take the tinfoil hat off. First, it was a fuckup. That's clear, they admitted it, end of story. Second, "what they want" in this case is for pedophiles to stop using Nintendo to screw up kids. I think I'm on board there. Third, there's no case for indifference because they did everything they could to fix the fuckup.
I know it screws up the schemas of the slashdot crowd, but there's really not this global conspiracy to screw you personally.
Nah. CD's cost ~$15, CD players ~$75. Similar cost, similar ratio, and people pirate the shit out of them.