This may well go on to be the worst World Cup, and after this the Champions League finals may go on to eclipse the World Cup finals.
In terms of quality of football, (as opposed to overall spectacle, etc) the CL has in my opinion eclipised the WC for at least as long as I've watched the CL (which is about a decade).
The WC is not the pinnacle of footballing quality. I know people like to puff it up as "all the best players in the world facing off" and suchlike, but it's really not true.
For starters, there are some of the best players in the world missing because they come from very weak footballing nations. But more than that, we don't even get the best footballing nations - if we had strictly the best teams in the world we'd have mostly Europe and South America. The likes of New Zealand wouldn't get through if it weren't "rigged" with a regional system of qualifying to ensure that someone from each part of the world does get through. So some of the best players are missing because they're from nations located in parts of the world with a surplus of even better footballing nations (random example, Ryan Giggs).
Next, some of the best players in the world are injured right now - whereas leagues spanning a whole season gives time for recovery and at least some sort of appearance in the competition. Next, some of the best players in the world aren't picked for whatever reason: disagreement with their coaches/managers, not enough room in this team for the both of us, etc. Brazil right now would probably be a pretty decent example.
Finally, you get down to the players who are there - and I don't mean to give the impression all the above results in any lack of talent, even despite all that clearly we do see many of the finest players - well, they're still not playing their best football.
National teams simply do not train and play together enough to produce their most dazzling football. Club squads are more consistent and work with each other week in, week out. The level of unspoken understanding between players is almost always visibly higher. England are a good example of this. Players like Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney are creative, free-flowing and often apparently telepathic for their clubs. In the national side they match this slickness only sporadically, more often seeming a bit disjointed.
This is not intended to denigrate the WC. It still scores highly for "big occasion" value. The sheer fact that more people, "normal" people who wouldn't follow domestic or European leagues, get interested in the games makes it interesting. And the national pride angle adds importance, for people who believe in that sort of thing (which is most people, sadly). In that sense the WC is obviously untouchable.
But for pure quality of football? All told, the CL consistently kicks the WC's arse from here to Jo'burg and back, and has done for years already.
This is a glorious phrase, thank you. I apologise in advance for using it myself without thorough citation. (Sorry, but "hey! said..." won't scan properly in meetings.)
Setting aside your disregard for the Star Wars reference (turn in your geek card as you leave)
Let's get this straight: referencing the solution to:
Consider an n-dimensional hypercube, and connect each pair of vertices to obtain a complete graph on 2n vertices. Then colour each of the edges of this graph using only the colours red and black. What is the smallest value of n for which every possible such colouring must necessarily contain a single-coloured complete sub-graph with 4 vertices which lie in a plane?
is not geeky, but awareness of a mainstream hollywood kids action movie is?
Someone must have changed the definition of geekiness while I wasn't looking.
I don't know whether to blame GP for jamming together two discrete concepts (diesel trains and impure subway air) in such a way that a sloppy reader may infer causation, or to blame you for being a sloppy reader ("similarly" != "therefore") and failing to spend five seconds googling to confirm your healthy scepticism instead of spending it posting "Seriously?".
I didn't watch some woman blather for fifteen minutes, when if I had the opportunity, I could read the same shit in three. Posting video links is stupid, Ted Talks is stupid for not having transcripts, and their website sucks for requiring Javascript.
I was sure Ted Talks did have transcripts. I'm sure I remember making a similar objection in the past and somebody putting me in my place with a link to exactly that. On this occasion, however, I scoured the page and couldn't see one. So either I'm being really dim, or you're absolutely right.
(The one time I was persuaded, on the basis that TED talks are really intellectual and insightful and whatnot, to set aside my "videos are (usually) a fucking retarded means of information intake" prejudice and watch a TED talk, some guy rambled for several minutes restating the same tiny concept which could have been stated in a sentence shorter than this one. Seriously, five minutes to cover 10, maybe 12 seconds worth of reading time... even if you're the type who needs to use a finger and move your lips. That's where I reinstated my prejudice and regular policy of ignoring video links.)
WTF!? Please tell me this is exaggeration. I cannot fathom the idea of a TWENTY MINUTE ad break in a film. I've practically given up on TV because the 4-5 minutes we get here are too annoying for me. Do people really tolerate 20 minutes? Rather makes me fear for the future of the human race, if so.
I have an interesting example of that sort of thing.
I was recently looking at the wikipedia page of a band I like, and it contained a claim as to their total worldwide record sales, followed by the legendary [citation needed]. I thought I'd be helpful and add the requested citation -- I was very sure I remembered reading that factoid in an interview with a certain magazine. Said magazine has online archives, so I rapidly found the interview in question, and.... um... no such statement. Oops. Not wanting to give up, I copy/pasted the sentence under debate into google looking for some other source. Result (unsurprisingly) - dozens and dozens of pages which quoted that wikipedia article verbatim. Not only sites which systematically mirror / reuse wikipedia content (last.fm, answers.com, etc) with clear declaration of source & GFDL status -- but also many other sites, some with more of a reputation for credibility and/or original research, such as the BBC.
At this point I started getting a strange "now waaaaaaiiiiiiiit a minute" feeling, so I plunged into the history of the wikipedia article, diffing versions until I found the original addition of the sentence in question. Guess what? I wrote it.
I was rather amused to see this factoid which, although I'd written it with honest intentions and a genuine belief I'd read it in a credible source, apparently turned out to be made up out of my stoned imagination, quoted so consistently across the web by sources WP itself would rate as "notable".
What would stop me from adding that BBC regurgitation (for example) as the requested citation? Well, my conscience. But (excepting the fact I relate this story now) I'm the only person who would know the story of how that "fact" came to be, so what stops someone else from adding that citation with a clear conscience? Nothing.
Of course, this story is not without precedent, but to have it happen with my own words drove the point home somewhat.
Thanks for the information. It is simply pathetic that half the time I open a story on slashdot, the first comment serves to point out the headline and/or summary are essentially complete horseshit. Fair enough on a pure UGC site like reddit, but this place has editors - paid editors. Really, though, it seems that calling them "editors" is about as accurate as saying Google have "blocked" Scroogle.
Because everyone in this country is still hung up on class. The working class would never vote for tories, and the middle/upper class would never vote labour.
Sorry, but that is a ridiculously false statement. Are you actually naive / ill-informed enough to believe this, or were you shooting for a Funny?
The Sun solidly backed Cameron; if you think this was because Murdoch is cosy with the Tories you're right, but if you think it was ONLY due to this, despite the entire (mostly working-class) readership of the paper thinking all the while "WTF why are they backing the tories I hate them" you are in dreamland. Not even Murdoch can get away with wholly flying in the face of his readership's leanings. On the contrary, there is a decent chunk of working class (self employed White Van Man, etc) who are Thatcherite/Tory for various reasons: disagrees with the welfare state ("I'm a self made man who didn't need no handouts"), disagrees with Europe/immigration ("Cheapo Polish builders taking all my clients"), etc.
Meanwhile, look at the stereotype of the New-Labour-voting Islington dinner party brigade. (Upper) middle class to a tee. Do you really think Labour had the last 13 years in govt without any middle class votes whatsoever? Relying solely on that traditional unionised working class base which... um... hardly exists anymore, what with the decline in our manufacturing industries? More dreamland.
Your ludicrously simplistic class-based analysis is at best extremely dated (certainly pre-Blair, perhaps even pre-Thatcher), and quite probably was never really accurate. In an international forum like this where people who don't know better are liable to take you at face value, I feel it's almost irresponsible to trot out this utter nonsense with a straight face.
Why are you asking someone to justify something which was clearly a rhetorical construction and not something they actually believe?
Hint: just before the bit you selectively quoted, "IF you mean that power should be divided by land area... then that is fine." Just after the bit you selectively quoted: "BUT if you think that power should be divided equally amongst the citizens...then the existing system is not fine"
Try reading the entire paragraph before "arguing" with it (aka restating what GP was obviously getting at themselves).
You don't need cable for Dave (formerly UKTV G2), it's on Freeview. And if "Freeview" means nothing to you, then having cable probably won't help you either (wrong market).
Try and get a Google account without submitting a verifiable mobile number.
What sort of Google account do you mean?
I've got several Gmail accounts without ever being asked for a mobile number. AFAIK those Gmail accounts serve as "google accounts" for their other services. Youtube, maps, groups, analytics - I've been able to use all of these without ever being asked for a mobile number.
Nor can this be a "but it's changed lately" thing, because the last gmail account I signed up for, sans mobile number, was only about 10 days ago (wanted another pseudonymous throwaway email).
If you mean an android service then I'm lost - you want to get a mobile phone without the mobile phone provider knowing your mobile phone number?
Awful, awful analogy, on just about every level, lord only knows how it is at +5 insightful.
GP said he wanted to be able to do one of the simplest, most fundamental building blocks of video editing in this software, not master the entire art of video editing (which he already knows and wishes to transfer) nor master the entire piece of software.
So it's more like knowing how to ride a bike, getting a new bike, spending 30 minutes and not being able to figure out how you even sit on the bike, and deciding that particular bike is rubbish.
Very interesting read, indeed. Thanks BeardedChimp.
I am British, but I still don't speak like that;-) It's a legal document after all...
While we're talking UK/US, I found it interesting that a US judge/case was cited in point 34. I was also interested to see Orwell and Milton referenced!
All in all, I agree, it is highly readable, and as such I would encourage all to read this pdf rather than comment on this story here or elsewhere on the basis of second-hand / journalistic accounts.
Or go count the respective # of matches for ".gif" vs ".png" in the source code of amazon.com's homepage.
Re:Smalltalk and LISP for the History Major
on
Metaprogramming Ruby
·
· Score: 1
As someone who is not an experienced programmer in all those languages, merely someone who has dabbled in a handful of them and read about programming much more than he's actually done it... Well, in the abstract, your argument is enticing, convincing even. However there is one glaring counterargument which stands out to even a peon like me, which you have apparently not addressed. It's this:
When you think about it, you have to be kind of an asshole to want to create a new language with all that we have out there. It'd be one thing if it was so radically different as that would represent revolution, but Ruby is so derivative that I often wonder what value added.
If Smalltalk Already Did It (Better)®, and Smalltalk has been around for x decades, then how come Ruby has come into widespread use in a way that Smalltalk never managed in all that time?
I don't pretend to know the answer to that. I just think whatever the answer is, there's your answer to what value Ruby added.
If your answer is merely "hype and marketing, -sneer-" then I'm afraid you immediately lose credibility in my eyes. For one thing, perhaps I'm naive but I'd like to think there has to be more to it than that. (It's not like developers make a habit of choosing their stack based on lifestyle ads in colour supplements.) For another, it's not an answer anyway, because there was nothing stopping Smalltalk advocates employing the same hype and marketing.
When Internet Explorer 6 was released, way back in 2001, it included two different rendering modes. The old 5.5 rendering mode, retroactively dubbed "quirks mode", and the new 6.0 mode. The new mode was only triggered on pages that included a modern doctype. The new mode gets centring right. The old mode gets centring wrong.
Thank you for informing me of the exact nuance at work.
So what you have done by asserting that Internet Explorer 6 gets centring wrong is tell everybody you've inadvertently been targeting Internet Explorer 5.5 by not using a modern doctype and not being aware of something the rest of the world has known about since 2001.
No thank you for this entirely unfounded and, as it happens, entirely incorrect speculation.
From the facts you were aware of, there are at least two possible explanations. One, that I was serving the text-align fix because I needed it because I wasn't using doctypes. Two, that I was serving the text-align fix even though I didn't need it anymore because I was using doctypes. Guess which was the case? Not the one you fell over yourself to accuse me of.
FWIW my sites of the last few years have ticked all the usual doctype, well-formed, validated, best practice type boxes. (At least as they leave my hands, I must admit they don't always stay that way once UGC and other editors get involved.) Anyway, I took the text-align out of my css and sure enough, the div stayed centred in IE6.
So on that point I stand corrected. I had not realised that my improvements on the doctype front had had the side effect of fixing this one IE6 rendering quirk, so I hadn't hurried to remove those 18 characters from my CSS. Then again, since I still see visits from IE5.5, and the penalty for keeping those 18 standards-compliant, heavily-cached characters around the place is essentially nonexistent, I wouldn't have hurried to remove those 18 characters anyway, and I still won't today.
Conclusion: I appreciate the informative part of your post, but if you could refrain from jumping to baseless conclusions of complete cluelessness, that would be lovely.
Are you sure you wouldn't like to sound just a teeny tiny bit more patronising and pompous? Perhaps you could use a word like "indubitably", or begin with "Tsk, tsk" - that might just about pull it off.
What are you quibbling about? Did you miss the memo where it was declared that everything you can view, read, listen or interface with on the internet will henceforth be known as a website?
It was in that same memo where we decided to standardise on "download" for all verbs referring to interactions with computers.
Hold on, I'll see if I can find the document on my CPU and then I'll download it to a website for you to check it out yourself.
Weird. Okay, so IE6 seems to be using text-align: center (on the parent div) to center the child div. Odd. FF doesn't do that. text-align: center on the parent div DOES center align the text inside the child div, which I would expect.
I don't know what the CSS specs specify here - I thought text-align was ONLY for inline elements, not block elements
Basically - The specs say to do what FF does. (Or, well, FF does what the specs say, really.) The way IE6 uses text-align to center block-level children is, as you say, "odd". Tis nothing to do with the spec, just IE6 being FUBAR as usual.
Those are two different things. text-align: center centers stuff in a div. the margin: 0 auto you set to a div to center that block (the div) in its container.
Per the standards, correct.
Even IE6 works correctly with this, so I don't know what the issue is here.
IE6 doesn't work correctly with that. Margin:auto won't center a div (even though it should); text-align:center on the parent will (even though as you note, it shouldn't.)
Slashdot Mirror
This may well go on to be the worst World Cup, and after this the Champions League finals may go on to eclipse the World Cup finals.
In terms of quality of football, (as opposed to overall spectacle, etc) the CL has in my opinion eclipised the WC for at least as long as I've watched the CL (which is about a decade).
The WC is not the pinnacle of footballing quality. I know people like to puff it up as "all the best players in the world facing off" and suchlike, but it's really not true.
For starters, there are some of the best players in the world missing because they come from very weak footballing nations. But more than that, we don't even get the best footballing nations - if we had strictly the best teams in the world we'd have mostly Europe and South America. The likes of New Zealand wouldn't get through if it weren't "rigged" with a regional system of qualifying to ensure that someone from each part of the world does get through. So some of the best players are missing because they're from nations located in parts of the world with a surplus of even better footballing nations (random example, Ryan Giggs).
Next, some of the best players in the world are injured right now - whereas leagues spanning a whole season gives time for recovery and at least some sort of appearance in the competition. Next, some of the best players in the world aren't picked for whatever reason: disagreement with their coaches/managers, not enough room in this team for the both of us, etc. Brazil right now would probably be a pretty decent example.
Finally, you get down to the players who are there - and I don't mean to give the impression all the above results in any lack of talent, even despite all that clearly we do see many of the finest players - well, they're still not playing their best football.
National teams simply do not train and play together enough to produce their most dazzling football. Club squads are more consistent and work with each other week in, week out. The level of unspoken understanding between players is almost always visibly higher. England are a good example of this. Players like Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney are creative, free-flowing and often apparently telepathic for their clubs. In the national side they match this slickness only sporadically, more often seeming a bit disjointed.
This is not intended to denigrate the WC. It still scores highly for "big occasion" value. The sheer fact that more people, "normal" people who wouldn't follow domestic or European leagues, get interested in the games makes it interesting. And the national pride angle adds importance, for people who believe in that sort of thing (which is most people, sadly). In that sense the WC is obviously untouchable.
But for pure quality of football? All told, the CL consistently kicks the WC's arse from here to Jo'burg and back, and has done for years already.
Lack of drama is the hallmark of competency.
This is a glorious phrase, thank you. I apologise in advance for using it myself without thorough citation. (Sorry, but "hey! said..." won't scan properly in meetings.)
Setting aside your disregard for the Star Wars reference (turn in your geek card as you leave)
Let's get this straight: referencing the solution to:
Consider an n-dimensional hypercube, and connect each pair of vertices to obtain a complete graph on 2n vertices. Then colour each of the edges of this graph using only the colours red and black. What is the smallest value of n for which every possible such colouring must necessarily contain a single-coloured complete sub-graph with 4 vertices which lie in a plane?
is not geeky, but awareness of a mainstream hollywood kids action movie is?
Someone must have changed the definition of geekiness while I wasn't looking.
They use diesel on the London Underground?
No
Seriously?
No
Most subways are electric-powered.
So is the london underground.
Heck, most modern commuter trains run off electricity. Third rail, much?
London Underground actually uses a four-rail system. It's one better.
I don't know whether to blame GP for jamming together two discrete concepts (diesel trains and impure subway air) in such a way that a sloppy reader may infer causation, or to blame you for being a sloppy reader ("similarly" != "therefore") and failing to spend five seconds googling to confirm your healthy scepticism instead of spending it posting "Seriously?".
I didn't watch some woman blather for fifteen minutes, when if I had the opportunity, I could read the same shit in three. Posting video links is stupid, Ted Talks is stupid for not having transcripts, and their website sucks for requiring Javascript.
I was sure Ted Talks did have transcripts. I'm sure I remember making a similar objection in the past and somebody putting me in my place with a link to exactly that. On this occasion, however, I scoured the page and couldn't see one. So either I'm being really dim, or you're absolutely right.
(The one time I was persuaded, on the basis that TED talks are really intellectual and insightful and whatnot, to set aside my "videos are (usually) a fucking retarded means of information intake" prejudice and watch a TED talk, some guy rambled for several minutes restating the same tiny concept which could have been stated in a sentence shorter than this one. Seriously, five minutes to cover 10, maybe 12 seconds worth of reading time... even if you're the type who needs to use a finger and move your lips. That's where I reinstated my prejudice and regular policy of ignoring video links.)
when the break had lasted for some twenty minutes
WTF!? Please tell me this is exaggeration. I cannot fathom the idea of a TWENTY MINUTE ad break in a film. I've practically given up on TV because the 4-5 minutes we get here are too annoying for me. Do people really tolerate 20 minutes? Rather makes me fear for the future of the human race, if so.
I never will lend anything from a library again.
Unless you're a librarian, that's a given.
Perhaps you meant borrow.
Here you go.
Protip: this was the first result of googling "etymology quiz", which is actually 3 fewer characters to type than "[citation needed]".
I have an interesting example of that sort of thing.
I was recently looking at the wikipedia page of a band I like, and it contained a claim as to their total worldwide record sales, followed by the legendary [citation needed]. I thought I'd be helpful and add the requested citation -- I was very sure I remembered reading that factoid in an interview with a certain magazine. Said magazine has online archives, so I rapidly found the interview in question, and.... um... no such statement. Oops. Not wanting to give up, I copy/pasted the sentence under debate into google looking for some other source. Result (unsurprisingly) - dozens and dozens of pages which quoted that wikipedia article verbatim. Not only sites which systematically mirror / reuse wikipedia content (last.fm, answers.com, etc) with clear declaration of source & GFDL status -- but also many other sites, some with more of a reputation for credibility and/or original research, such as the BBC.
At this point I started getting a strange "now waaaaaaiiiiiiiit a minute" feeling, so I plunged into the history of the wikipedia article, diffing versions until I found the original addition of the sentence in question. Guess what? I wrote it.
I was rather amused to see this factoid which, although I'd written it with honest intentions and a genuine belief I'd read it in a credible source, apparently turned out to be made up out of my stoned imagination, quoted so consistently across the web by sources WP itself would rate as "notable".
What would stop me from adding that BBC regurgitation (for example) as the requested citation? Well, my conscience. But (excepting the fact I relate this story now) I'm the only person who would know the story of how that "fact" came to be, so what stops someone else from adding that citation with a clear conscience? Nothing.
Of course, this story is not without precedent, but to have it happen with my own words drove the point home somewhat.
Thanks for the information. It is simply pathetic that half the time I open a story on slashdot, the first comment serves to point out the headline and/or summary are essentially complete horseshit. Fair enough on a pure UGC site like reddit, but this place has editors - paid editors. Really, though, it seems that calling them "editors" is about as accurate as saying Google have "blocked" Scroogle.
Because everyone in this country is still hung up on class. The working class would never vote for tories, and the middle/upper class would never vote labour.
Sorry, but that is a ridiculously false statement. Are you actually naive / ill-informed enough to believe this, or were you shooting for a Funny?
The Sun solidly backed Cameron; if you think this was because Murdoch is cosy with the Tories you're right, but if you think it was ONLY due to this, despite the entire (mostly working-class) readership of the paper thinking all the while "WTF why are they backing the tories I hate them" you are in dreamland. Not even Murdoch can get away with wholly flying in the face of his readership's leanings. On the contrary, there is a decent chunk of working class (self employed White Van Man, etc) who are Thatcherite/Tory for various reasons: disagrees with the welfare state ("I'm a self made man who didn't need no handouts"), disagrees with Europe/immigration ("Cheapo Polish builders taking all my clients"), etc.
Meanwhile, look at the stereotype of the New-Labour-voting Islington dinner party brigade. (Upper) middle class to a tee. Do you really think Labour had the last 13 years in govt without any middle class votes whatsoever? Relying solely on that traditional unionised working class base which... um... hardly exists anymore, what with the decline in our manufacturing industries? More dreamland.
Your ludicrously simplistic class-based analysis is at best extremely dated (certainly pre-Blair, perhaps even pre-Thatcher), and quite probably was never really accurate. In an international forum like this where people who don't know better are liable to take you at face value, I feel it's almost irresponsible to trot out this utter nonsense with a straight face.
Why?
Why are you asking someone to justify something which was clearly a rhetorical construction and not something they actually believe?
Hint: just before the bit you selectively quoted, " IF you mean that power should be divided by land area... then that is fine." Just after the bit you selectively quoted: " BUT if you think that power should be divided equally amongst the citizens...then the existing system is not fine"
Try reading the entire paragraph before "arguing" with it (aka restating what GP was obviously getting at themselves).
1. That's actually what he said in the first place: "open standards usually follow proprietary"
Otherwise: yes, mod parent up, etc.
You don't need cable for Dave (formerly UKTV G2), it's on Freeview. And if "Freeview" means nothing to you, then having cable probably won't help you either (wrong market).
Dave (TV channel)
Try and get a Google account without submitting a verifiable mobile number.
What sort of Google account do you mean?
I've got several Gmail accounts without ever being asked for a mobile number. AFAIK those Gmail accounts serve as "google accounts" for their other services. Youtube, maps, groups, analytics - I've been able to use all of these without ever being asked for a mobile number.
Nor can this be a "but it's changed lately" thing, because the last gmail account I signed up for, sans mobile number, was only about 10 days ago (wanted another pseudonymous throwaway email).
If you mean an android service then I'm lost - you want to get a mobile phone without the mobile phone provider knowing your mobile phone number?
In short: eh? wat?
Awful, awful analogy, on just about every level, lord only knows how it is at +5 insightful.
GP said he wanted to be able to do one of the simplest, most fundamental building blocks of video editing in this software, not master the entire art of video editing (which he already knows and wishes to transfer) nor master the entire piece of software.
So it's more like knowing how to ride a bike, getting a new bike, spending 30 minutes and not being able to figure out how you even sit on the bike, and deciding that particular bike is rubbish.
Very interesting read, indeed. Thanks BeardedChimp.
I am British, but I still don't speak like that ;-) It's a legal document after all...
While we're talking UK/US, I found it interesting that a US judge/case was cited in point 34. I was also interested to see Orwell and Milton referenced!
All in all, I agree, it is highly readable, and as such I would encourage all to read this pdf rather than comment on this story here or elsewhere on the basis of second-hand / journalistic accounts.
Really? Which web are you using?
The icon on this very story, right here on Slashdot, bastion of OSS and software-patent-hating, is... er... a GIF.
http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicpatents.gif
Or go count the respective # of matches for ".gif" vs ".png" in the source code of amazon.com's homepage.
As someone who is not an experienced programmer in all those languages, merely someone who has dabbled in a handful of them and read about programming much more than he's actually done it... Well, in the abstract, your argument is enticing, convincing even. However there is one glaring counterargument which stands out to even a peon like me, which you have apparently not addressed. It's this:
When you think about it, you have to be kind of an asshole to want to create a new language with all that we have out there. It'd be one thing if it was so radically different as that would represent revolution, but Ruby is so derivative that I often wonder what value added.
If Smalltalk Already Did It (Better)®, and Smalltalk has been around for x decades, then how come Ruby has come into widespread use in a way that Smalltalk never managed in all that time?
I don't pretend to know the answer to that. I just think whatever the answer is, there's your answer to what value Ruby added.
If your answer is merely "hype and marketing, -sneer-" then I'm afraid you immediately lose credibility in my eyes. For one thing, perhaps I'm naive but I'd like to think there has to be more to it than that. (It's not like developers make a habit of choosing their stack based on lifestyle ads in colour supplements.) For another, it's not an answer anyway, because there was nothing stopping Smalltalk advocates employing the same hype and marketing.
To clarify this peevish response:
When Internet Explorer 6 was released, way back in 2001, it included two different rendering modes. The old 5.5 rendering mode, retroactively dubbed "quirks mode", and the new 6.0 mode. The new mode was only triggered on pages that included a modern doctype. The new mode gets centring right. The old mode gets centring wrong.
Thank you for informing me of the exact nuance at work.
So what you have done by asserting that Internet Explorer 6 gets centring wrong is tell everybody you've inadvertently been targeting Internet Explorer 5.5 by not using a modern doctype and not being aware of something the rest of the world has known about since 2001.
No thank you for this entirely unfounded and, as it happens, entirely incorrect speculation.
From the facts you were aware of, there are at least two possible explanations. One, that I was serving the text-align fix because I needed it because I wasn't using doctypes. Two, that I was serving the text-align fix even though I didn't need it anymore because I was using doctypes. Guess which was the case? Not the one you fell over yourself to accuse me of.
FWIW my sites of the last few years have ticked all the usual doctype, well-formed, validated, best practice type boxes. (At least as they leave my hands, I must admit they don't always stay that way once UGC and other editors get involved.) Anyway, I took the text-align out of my css and sure enough, the div stayed centred in IE6.
So on that point I stand corrected. I had not realised that my improvements on the doctype front had had the side effect of fixing this one IE6 rendering quirk, so I hadn't hurried to remove those 18 characters from my CSS. Then again, since I still see visits from IE5.5, and the penalty for keeping those 18 standards-compliant, heavily-cached characters around the place is essentially nonexistent, I wouldn't have hurried to remove those 18 characters anyway, and I still won't today.
Conclusion: I appreciate the informative part of your post, but if you could refrain from jumping to baseless conclusions of complete cluelessness, that would be lovely.
Are you sure you wouldn't like to sound just a teeny tiny bit more patronising and pompous? Perhaps you could use a word like "indubitably", or begin with "Tsk, tsk" - that might just about pull it off.
What are you quibbling about? Did you miss the memo where it was declared that everything you can view, read, listen or interface with on the internet will henceforth be known as a website?
It was in that same memo where we decided to standardise on "download" for all verbs referring to interactions with computers.
Hold on, I'll see if I can find the document on my CPU and then I'll download it to a website for you to check it out yourself.
Weird. Okay, so IE6 seems to be using text-align: center (on the parent div) to center the child div. Odd. FF doesn't do that. text-align: center on the parent div DOES center align the text inside the child div, which I would expect. I don't know what the CSS specs specify here - I thought text-align was ONLY for inline elements, not block elements
Basically - The specs say to do what FF does. (Or, well, FF does what the specs say, really.) The way IE6 uses text-align to center block-level children is, as you say, "odd". Tis nothing to do with the spec, just IE6 being FUBAR as usual.
Those are two different things. text-align: center centers stuff in a div. the margin: 0 auto you set to a div to center that block (the div) in its container.
Per the standards, correct.
Even IE6 works correctly with this, so I don't know what the issue is here.
IE6 doesn't work correctly with that. Margin:auto won't center a div (even though it should); text-align:center on the parent will (even though as you note, it shouldn't.)
Has access to your medical records
How?