Yeah..... only B covers a lot of them and A covers most of the rest.
It's going to get to the point some time soon when Apache will have a cool feature that recognises an opening tag followed by a closing tag with no text inbetween, like DW produces all the time, and just doesn't serve it to the browser.
DW also still uses FONT tags. I think that says everything you need to know about DreamWeaver. My company's main web designer uses it, but I prefer pico.
This is a political, not a technological, matter and it needs a political solution rather than a technological one.
The political solution as I see it is to mandate full documentation of file formats and suchlike. I don't doubt that MS will squeal at this, but the simple fact is, they have to obey the laws like everyone else.
At the moment, Mac and Linux users have a problem with hardware and software interoperability. HW manufacturers are refusing to release details of how to interface to their hardware, and SW manufacturers {read: Microsoft} are refusing to release details of how to parse and generate their file formats.
My first printer came with a manual filled with code samples and explaining how to use each of the different print effects it was capable of. My last printer came with a manual saying it only worked with Windows {a blatant lie - I remembered enough stuff from the 8-bit days to get text effects and even graphics mode working from DOS} and not detailing anywhere the control code sequences to send for its various effects.
In the past I have successfully obtained printer escape sequences using a combination of a printer with a hex dump mode and an Amiga {only because I had acquired a used printer without the manual, not because anyone was trying to hide anything}. One of the Amiga's cool features was that no matter what printer you were using, you just sent the same escape sequences to the printer driver device and they would be translated by the driver. So you would send ESC [1m for bold, and the printer might see ESC E if it's an Epson, or a bunch of characters with backspaces if it's a Generic Text Only, or something else entirely. Getting text effect ones like bold, underlining and NLQ was easy, graphics were more fun.....
If it was the law that hardware manufacturers had to publish full documentation enabling a competent person to write code that would talk to their fancy graphics card / scanner / printer / camera / electronic arse wiping device, because these details essentially form part of the operating instructions and are not proprietary secrets, then we wouldn't see the problem where we Linux users have a limited subset of hardware to choose from. I'm not saying it would be in everyone's best interests to receive the full programmer's documentation with the appliance {most users aren't going to need it}, but it should be available to those who request it, for a reasonable fee. And failure to comply should be punished simply by the grant of explicit permission to reverse-engineer any driver code &c. associated with the said appliance.
Likewise for file formats used by software. I've written code to take a PADS-PowerPCB ASCII file and extract useful data from it, so the prod. eng. people didn't have to punch in data by hand that CAD had to extract by hand. That wasn't too bad because it was an ASCII format to begin with, with a known structure - headers, delimiters and so forth. And I've even tried to generate RTFs that would load into MS Word, with varying degrees of success. Again, that was easy, because it is a text-based format. In both cases I had to generate documents with a single known feature and work out how that feature shew up in the save file..... then add something else, save again and analyse..... in other words, a total ball-ache, but it was still better than doing it by hand.
Of course, the software companies may feel they have more to lose from widespread reverse engineering..... and if the only thing they can legally do to stop it is to publish the file formats, then that is what they will have to do.
How is the GPL evil? GPL stops programmers from witholding their work. Just because an idea came through your mind, does NOT mean you have the right to prevent anyone else using it.
Closed source is evil, because it allows people to profit from inspiration rather than perspiration.
That is the problem, and it has both a technological and a social solution.
The social solution is for legislatures worldwide to pass laws that requires publically-accessible content on the Internet be compliant with published standards on pain of a hefty fine -- and judiciaries and executives worldwide to enforce them. This might well require a UN resolution to be passed beforehand, stating that if a person in country "A" serves up content on the Internet that aimed at an audience in country "B", and is acting in the employ of someone in country "B", then the laws of country "B" should apply. {This should help in the fight against spam as well. If not restricted to the Internet, it might mean that goods manufactured in one country using practices [sweatshop labour for instance] that would be illegal in another country could not be exported to that country. I can't see any decent person opposing that idea.}
The technological solution is to acquire a dossier of sites known not to work with any browser save IE, and use this as justification for reverse-engineering IE {such a thing as reasonable force, don't you know, and I really am dying to see this one get tested in a court of law}.
If Joe Average already has a web browser on their system which works adequately, there's not much incentive to get something new.
Exactly. I put Mozilla on someone's machine at work the other day {Win 98 SE -- we can't use XP 'cause it breaks some of our software and some of our hardware, though we're looking to migrate to Linux if we can get / write drivers} and she was well impressed with the tabbed browsing. I'm actually tempted to pay for Opera, because it has some reeeeeally cool stuff {mouse gestures!}, but if I did so it would be the first piece of software I have ever paid for in my life {barring 8-bit cassette games} and that's a pretty big duck to break.
Don't forget, Konqueror can send anything as the user agent string. It's likely that people are setting it to masquerade as IE5 on W98, because any other configuration is likely to break with poorly-designed web sites such as this one.
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
on
Corn-Based Plastic
·
· Score: 1
What I firmly believe is that the government opposes hemp production only because they consider it would be too much trouble to have to check all the fields to ensure that somone isn't hiding high-THC hemp among the crop. For that, we have the Pot Heads to thank.
Why would they have to check for high-THC varieties exactly? Just what is the problem with letting people get high? If Blair gets his way with the "Twix Tax" {because it's not at all hypocritical to tax something that is bad for people knowing full well they will continue to do it and pour money into your coffers all the while they're at it, is it?} the Government could do very well out of legalising cannabis..... to say nothing of the fact that once people are buying dope in licenced outlets, they won't be so easily coerced into buying anything "a bit stronger".
Mind you, pot would cease to be an option for teenage rebellion once it was legal..... but pretending something is really bad when it isn't that bad, just so you have something to disapprove of, is still lying and ultimately no good can come of it.
Um..... I just glanced sideways and saw the topic.....
Programmers have the right to not release their software at all. Once they waive that right, it's all over. No person has the right to prevent anyone from benefitting from their contribution to humankind. This whole crazy mess started when someone got the half-arsed idea that making money for a few people was more important than doing good for many people.
WTH??
You claim that you don't want your country to be run by a foreign power. Well, as a Northerner, I have to laugh because that is already the case here. Every decision the "British" government makes supposedly in the interests of "Britain" is in fact in the interests of London, even when that would be at the expense of the North. Parts of this country are actually closer geographically to the continent than they are to London.
London is polished up for the tourists. If you travel a few tens of km up the M1 or along the M4, you will see a very different picture. What Thatcher started, and Blair is continuing, is the turning of Britain into a nation of middlemen. No manufacturing industry, just service industries staffed by nose-poking, pen-pushing types who set more store by the policy manual than the customers who pay their wages.
On the other hand, Britain is still my home and I won't stand to see anyone knock it.
As opposed to RMS, whose basic position is never reasonable.
And you think Ballmer is reasonable?
Richard Stallman is not meant to be reasonable - that's the point. He is a person of very high ideals, and he prefers to keep himself "pure" rather than compromise his beliefs. I would go so far as to say it is a matter of religious belief. In this respect I would liken the FSF to a monastic order, whereas the OSI is more like an inner-city church that has to be satisfied with saving just a few souls.
It's all a matter of how close you think you can get to perfection. RMS is a spiritual leader. He has to believe the GNU project will succeed, otherwise he will lose his followers.
I took it to mean we'd be getting all the oil and gas we needed from within Europe, until we perfected a way of making artificial oil and gas from plant and animal matter - but quicker than Nature did, obviously;-)
Maize, wheat, rye and all cereals are basically genetically modified grass. OK, the genetic modification was done the slow way:-) but it's still genetic modification.
However, I am not a biologist.
Could someone enlighten me as to a test that would distinguish between genetic modification by selective breeding and random mutation, and genetic modification carried out using modern techniques?
Or you could just invest in a more durable bag - biodegradable canvas, or non-biodegradable-but-long-lasting nylon, for example - that can be used for more than one journey from store to home.....
Imagine something that can replace styrofoam cups, but that doesn't take centuries to degrade.
What, like china cups, for instance, that you can use over and over again until they eventually break?
Re:This comment made from corn, so not offtopic
on
Corn-Based Plastic
·
· Score: 1
CHIPS, as they are PROPERLY called, originated in BELGIUM, where they are traditionally served with mayonnaise. Legend has it that when the first chips were imported across the north sea to this country, the mayo went wonky so we just doused them with salt and vinegar.
Next on the list is glass, which currently takes around 1 million.
You can reuse a glass container again and again until it gets broken. Ask your co-op milkman. When it does break, you can melt it down and reuse it.
Being silicon dioxide, glass doesn't do anything all that harmful anyway. Just slap a whopping great tax on manufacturing anything from raw materials that could be made from recycled ones. Within a few years, people will be mining landfill sites.
Uh, not just shit..... you need a few bits of dead body too..... Some humans like to pretend they can live without eating animals, and some even manage to die of other things before this catches up with them. But plants need minerals such as you get from blood and bones. That's why you can't be a true vegan and a true believer in organic farming at the same time.
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
on
Corn-Based Plastic
·
· Score: 1
Marijuana is a powerful drug. It makes people behave really irrationally even when they don't smoke it!
The facts about cannabis hemp are not widely acknowledged, because it's illegal. There has been some literature, most famously The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer. This book points out the coincidence {?} between hemp prohibition and the development of industrial competitors -- but is it attributing to malice what could be explained by stupidity?
I firmly believe that hemp prohibition is evil. But every anti-druggie seems to think that I only want it legalised {for non-smoking uses} just so I can get stoned! Duh - I already get stoned, and it took the slamming of a cell door to remind me it was illegal! But there is no way I am going to eschew the wonders of getting stoned just so I can promote the virtues of the other things this plant is useful for.
It would be entirely possible to drive a hemp-based-bodied car to a supermarket built from hemp-based bricks, stock up with hemp burgers and sausages, fill the tank up with hemp fuel on the way home and pay for it with money printed on hemp paper. Before drawing the hemp curtains, stripping off your hemp clothes and climbing into bed between hemp sheets, turning off the light in its hemp shade and easing the load on the hemp-fuelled power stations just a little.
And if I want to have a chuff on a funny-fag every now and again, how does that make any of the above any less valid?
Maybe what is needed is a technological solution to the problem of getting high..... a machine that produces the same sort of effects on the mind and body as dope. It's got to really work, obviously..... because then the playing field will be level again, once hemp is competing against technology on all levels. If people prefer the "artificial joint" to real ones, nobody is going to care about hemp getting you off your tits anymore..... and it can be seriously evaluated once again.
Why does a pen need to be biodegradable? Why not just make it to last forever? It runs out of ink - you fill it with ink from a glass bottle. The bottle runs out of ink - you refill it from a tanker. The nib breaks - you fit a new nib and recycle the old one.
Not rocket science, is it?
Re:biodegradable containers have been around for a
on
Corn-Based Plastic
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Hmm..... but why have disposable cutlery at all?
Just have the catering stalls not supply any, and rely on the customers to bring their own metal cutlery..... or learn to eat without it..... As long as people were made aware of it from day one, why should it be a problem? You could always sell reusable metal cutlery and plastic or metal plates within the festival.
Think: disposable bad, biodegradable not so bad, recyclable good, reusable better.
Legend has it the ice cream cone was invented when someone ran out of containers and spoons - they were originally made of some unleaded bread type thing, if I remember correctly. The ultimate in biodegradable packaging..... when you've eaten the food inside it, you can eat the container! Now that is cool.
Re:Yeah, what about ethanol?
on
Corn-Based Plastic
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You can even get the heat for distilling the alcohol from burning plant matter, which makes absolutely no contribution to climate change {for reasons that your O-level chemistry teacher explained in the 3rd year}. And you only need to heat it to 78.5 degrees, unlike many fuel-from-other-stuff jobs. Theoretically you could use an alcohol still as part of the cooling system from another high-temperature industrial process!
Actually, in UK English the name of the letter H is pronounced "aitch", giving "aitch-tee-em-el", which takes "an" as the preceding indefinite article.
Seems to me that if you put a $5000 piece of equipment that easily fits in a suitcase into a hotel room, you're just begging to get ripped off. They'd have to wire each of these with alarm sensors to detect removal.
Yeah..... but you'd make it totally non-standard and incompatible with any normal kit. For a start, you might use a normal-ish-looking 3-pin power plug but swap the phase and earth over {so anyone plugging a standard kettle lead sends the chassis live}. Wire the 21-pin AV connector up differently too..... perhaps with mains on the pins that might conventionally be used for auto-switching or audio out..... and don't use the accepted PAL standard, make your own up. {Or you could have the distribution loop scrambled, with the decoder in the monitor - it has no requirement to display an unscrambled picture}.
Doesn't stop anyone depriving you of the things, but it'll sure as hell mean they won't be able to have any fun with them!
It was my understanding that Homo sapiens caucasius and Homo sapiens niger were two disctinct subspecies of Homo sapiens...
Even if that were true, you wouldn't be allowed to say it. Remember, kids, there is an agenda of political correctness to be pushed here. Hell, do you think that if some scientist discovered that smoking one fag a day actually did you some good, that they would ever be allowed to publish it?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah ..... only B covers a lot of them and A covers most of the rest.
It's going to get to the point some time soon when Apache will have a cool feature that recognises an opening tag followed by a closing tag with no text inbetween, like DW produces all the time, and just doesn't serve it to the browser.
DW also still uses FONT tags. I think that says everything you need to know about DreamWeaver. My company's main web designer uses it, but I prefer pico.
This is a political, not a technological, matter and it needs a political solution rather than a technological one.
.....
..... then add something else, save again and analyse ..... in other words, a total ball-ache, but it was still better than doing it by hand.
..... and if the only thing they can legally do to stop it is to publish the file formats, then that is what they will have to do.
The political solution as I see it is to mandate full documentation of file formats and suchlike. I don't doubt that MS will squeal at this, but the simple fact is, they have to obey the laws like everyone else.
At the moment, Mac and Linux users have a problem with hardware and software interoperability. HW manufacturers are refusing to release details of how to interface to their hardware, and SW manufacturers {read: Microsoft} are refusing to release details of how to parse and generate their file formats.
My first printer came with a manual filled with code samples and explaining how to use each of the different print effects it was capable of. My last printer came with a manual saying it only worked with Windows {a blatant lie - I remembered enough stuff from the 8-bit days to get text effects and even graphics mode working from DOS} and not detailing anywhere the control code sequences to send for its various effects.
In the past I have successfully obtained printer escape sequences using a combination of a printer with a hex dump mode and an Amiga {only because I had acquired a used printer without the manual, not because anyone was trying to hide anything}. One of the Amiga's cool features was that no matter what printer you were using, you just sent the same escape sequences to the printer driver device and they would be translated by the driver. So you would send ESC [1m for bold, and the printer might see ESC E if it's an Epson, or a bunch of characters with backspaces if it's a Generic Text Only, or something else entirely. Getting text effect ones like bold, underlining and NLQ was easy, graphics were more fun
If it was the law that hardware manufacturers had to publish full documentation enabling a competent person to write code that would talk to their fancy graphics card / scanner / printer / camera / electronic arse wiping device, because these details essentially form part of the operating instructions and are not proprietary secrets, then we wouldn't see the problem where we Linux users have a limited subset of hardware to choose from. I'm not saying it would be in everyone's best interests to receive the full programmer's documentation with the appliance {most users aren't going to need it}, but it should be available to those who request it, for a reasonable fee. And failure to comply should be punished simply by the grant of explicit permission to reverse-engineer any driver code &c. associated with the said appliance.
Likewise for file formats used by software. I've written code to take a PADS-PowerPCB ASCII file and extract useful data from it, so the prod. eng. people didn't have to punch in data by hand that CAD had to extract by hand. That wasn't too bad because it was an ASCII format to begin with, with a known structure - headers, delimiters and so forth. And I've even tried to generate RTFs that would load into MS Word, with varying degrees of success. Again, that was easy, because it is a text-based format. In both cases I had to generate documents with a single known feature and work out how that feature shew up in the save file
Of course, the software companies may feel they have more to lose from widespread reverse engineering
How is the GPL evil? GPL stops programmers from witholding their work. Just because an idea came through your mind, does NOT mean you have the right to prevent anyone else using it.
Closed source is evil, because it allows people to profit from inspiration rather than perspiration.
The social solution is for legislatures worldwide to pass laws that requires publically-accessible content on the Internet be compliant with published standards on pain of a hefty fine -- and judiciaries and executives worldwide to enforce them. This might well require a UN resolution to be passed beforehand, stating that if a person in country "A" serves up content on the Internet that aimed at an audience in country "B", and is acting in the employ of someone in country "B", then the laws of country "B" should apply. {This should help in the fight against spam as well. If not restricted to the Internet, it might mean that goods manufactured in one country using practices [sweatshop labour for instance] that would be illegal in another country could not be exported to that country. I can't see any decent person opposing that idea.}
The technological solution is to acquire a dossier of sites known not to work with any browser save IE, and use this as justification for reverse-engineering IE {such a thing as reasonable force, don't you know, and I really am dying to see this one get tested in a court of law}. Exactly. I put Mozilla on someone's machine at work the other day {Win 98 SE -- we can't use XP 'cause it breaks some of our software and some of our hardware, though we're looking to migrate to Linux if we can get / write drivers} and she was well impressed with the tabbed browsing. I'm actually tempted to pay for Opera, because it has some reeeeeally cool stuff {mouse gestures!}, but if I did so it would be the first piece of software I have ever paid for in my life {barring 8-bit cassette games} and that's a pretty big duck to break.
Don't forget, Konqueror can send anything as the user agent string. It's likely that people are setting it to masquerade as IE5 on W98, because any other configuration is likely to break with poorly-designed web sites such as this one.
Mind you, pot would cease to be an option for teenage rebellion once it was legal
Um
What do you mean?
Programmers have the right to not release their software at all. Once they waive that right, it's all over. No person has the right to prevent anyone from benefitting from their contribution to humankind. This whole crazy mess started when someone got the half-arsed idea that making money for a few people was more important than doing good for many people.
WTH??
You claim that you don't want your country to be run by a foreign power. Well, as a Northerner, I have to laugh because that is already the case here. Every decision the "British" government makes supposedly in the interests of "Britain" is in fact in the interests of London, even when that would be at the expense of the North. Parts of this country are actually closer geographically to the continent than they are to London.
London is polished up for the tourists. If you travel a few tens of km up the M1 or along the M4, you will see a very different picture. What Thatcher started, and Blair is continuing, is the turning of Britain into a nation of middlemen. No manufacturing industry, just service industries staffed by nose-poking, pen-pushing types who set more store by the policy manual than the customers who pay their wages.
On the other hand, Britain is still my home and I won't stand to see anyone knock it.
Richard Stallman is not meant to be reasonable - that's the point. He is a person of very high ideals, and he prefers to keep himself "pure" rather than compromise his beliefs. I would go so far as to say it is a matter of religious belief. In this respect I would liken the FSF to a monastic order, whereas the OSI is more like an inner-city church that has to be satisfied with saving just a few souls.
It's all a matter of how close you think you can get to perfection. RMS is a spiritual leader. He has to believe the GNU project will succeed, otherwise he will lose his followers.
I took it to mean we'd be getting all the oil and gas we needed from within Europe, until we perfected a way of making artificial oil and gas from plant and animal matter - but quicker than Nature did, obviously ;-)
Maize, wheat, rye and all cereals are basically genetically modified grass. OK, the genetic modification was done the slow way :-) but it's still genetic modification.
However, I am not a biologist.
Could someone enlighten me as to a test that would distinguish between genetic modification by selective breeding and random mutation, and genetic modification carried out using modern techniques?
Or you could just invest in a more durable bag - biodegradable canvas, or non-biodegradable-but-long-lasting nylon, for example - that can be used for more than one journey from store to home .....
CHIPS, as they are PROPERLY called, originated in BELGIUM, where they are traditionally served with mayonnaise. Legend has it that when the first chips were imported across the north sea to this country, the mayo went wonky so we just doused them with salt and vinegar.
Being silicon dioxide, glass doesn't do anything all that harmful anyway. Just slap a whopping great tax on manufacturing anything from raw materials that could be made from recycled ones. Within a few years, people will be mining landfill sites.
Marijuana is a powerful drug. It makes people behave really irrationally even when they don't smoke it!
..... a machine that produces the same sort of effects on the mind and body as dope. It's got to really work, obviously ..... because then the playing field will be level again, once hemp is competing against technology on all levels. If people prefer the "artificial joint" to real ones, nobody is going to care about hemp getting you off your tits anymore ..... and it can be seriously evaluated once again.
The facts about cannabis hemp are not widely acknowledged, because it's illegal. There has been some literature, most famously The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer. This book points out the coincidence {?} between hemp prohibition and the development of industrial competitors -- but is it attributing to malice what could be explained by stupidity?
I firmly believe that hemp prohibition is evil. But every anti-druggie seems to think that I only want it legalised {for non-smoking uses} just so I can get stoned! Duh - I already get stoned, and it took the slamming of a cell door to remind me it was illegal! But there is no way I am going to eschew the wonders of getting stoned just so I can promote the virtues of the other things this plant is useful for.
It would be entirely possible to drive a hemp-based-bodied car to a supermarket built from hemp-based bricks, stock up with hemp burgers and sausages, fill the tank up with hemp fuel on the way home and pay for it with money printed on hemp paper. Before drawing the hemp curtains, stripping off your hemp clothes and climbing into bed between hemp sheets, turning off the light in its hemp shade and easing the load on the hemp-fuelled power stations just a little.
And if I want to have a chuff on a funny-fag every now and again, how does that make any of the above any less valid?
Maybe what is needed is a technological solution to the problem of getting high
Why does a pen need to be biodegradable? Why not just make it to last forever? It runs out of ink - you fill it with ink from a glass bottle. The bottle runs out of ink - you refill it from a tanker. The nib breaks - you fit a new nib and recycle the old one.
Not rocket science, is it?
Hmm ..... but why have disposable cutlery at all?
..... or learn to eat without it ..... As long as people were made aware of it from day one, why should it be a problem? You could always sell reusable metal cutlery and plastic or metal plates within the festival.
..... when you've eaten the food inside it, you can eat the container! Now that is cool.
Just have the catering stalls not supply any, and rely on the customers to bring their own metal cutlery
Think: disposable bad, biodegradable not so bad, recyclable good, reusable better.
Legend has it the ice cream cone was invented when someone ran out of containers and spoons - they were originally made of some unleaded bread type thing, if I remember correctly. The ultimate in biodegradable packaging
You can even get the heat for distilling the alcohol from burning plant matter, which makes absolutely no contribution to climate change {for reasons that your O-level chemistry teacher explained in the 3rd year}. And you only need to heat it to 78.5 degrees, unlike many fuel-from-other-stuff jobs. Theoretically you could use an alcohol still as part of the cooling system from another high-temperature industrial process!
Doesn't stop anyone depriving you of the things, but it'll sure as hell mean they won't be able to have any fun with them!
The "H" is at the beginning of the abreviation, so it gets pronounced as a consonant