When I was in high school, a teacher handed around a rock for us to see, and once it was 2/3 of the way around class, said 'oh, if you think you might be pregnant... don't touch that. It's mildly radioactive'
I'm thinking Dilbert... when the rumor that alien lizards from the planet Zorb were gong to buy the company (and Wally made himself a giant corndog...) but I dunno...
Most folks do not still want text only pages. I know that this is a raw deal for blind folks and the like. The fact is, most clients are not interested in websites that look like they are from 1996.
I actually try to build 2 years behind, so older browsers can handle my code, and a reasonable amount of time for upgrades is allowed.
I am a _huge_ believer in standards, actually, but dealing with clients (in both business and browser sense) that are not is exceptionally difficult.
Unfortunately, web technology was not designed for the disabled to use easily. This is slowly being worked on now, but it's not something that will be fixed overnight. Again, that's a pretty shitty deal, but it is what it is.
I understand your anger, although I think you misunderstand me; you might be better off _not_ assuming malice or insensitivity on my part. You would also be mistaken in assuming that I make 'flashy' sites. I try to make them as usable as possible. Good developers/designers will do that. But it is impossible to cater to all possible audiences right now.
Your points are good, but bear in mind the complexity of the situation before assuming that I'm just some insensitive bastard, ok?
News flash: Web-based technologies change monthly, if not weekly. If we waited for them all to mature, we'd still be viewing Lynx compatible pages.
Also, those of us who build for the web have to deal with an incredibly variable environment (OS, browser, connect speed, screen size, language, etc). Some high level abstraction is necessary, unless we want to target just 1 small audience (sadly, many web developers do so).
Idealism is nice, but standing on a soapbox screaming 'Be Patient!' is not really practical given the tech-o-the-week world that the web is right now.
I don't expect the best social skills (we're geeks, that's not what we do), but you could at least try to see the big picture before you espouse ivory tower philosophies.
(whew, I can feel my karma draining, but it's worth it).
Actually (not to nitpick, but to give the asker a flavor of Mr. Adams work), our heroes had a ship that moved via improbability. A couple of nasty things were about to do bad things to our heroes, when they flipped the switch and the most unlikely thing happened...
the 2 nasty things turned into a whale and somwe flowers. Unfortunately, neither can fly...
Re:Java is bad for our industry
on
Head First Java
·
· Score: 1
That's always fun... maintaining code used by someone who didn't know what it did anyway...
(Off topic): we had a guy here who had a DHTML snowflake thing for Xmas. He borrowed the code, and didn't know what it did. When I told him to 'slow that thing down', by changing the delay variable (as in, setTimeout delay), he changed it from 200 (ms) to 20, thinking this would slow it down. I _told_ him not to publish code when he didn't speak the language, but...
Within 30 minutes he had crashed 500 machines on out corp. intranet and the only thing stopping more damage was a brief shutdown of the webserver and remove the offending code.
We're not allowed snowflakes anymore:)
Re:Java is bad for our industry
on
Head First Java
·
· Score: 1
I don't think this applies to Perl very much. In my experience, folks either love it or hate it, due to its quirkiness. Those who love it continue to use it and advance their skills beyond cut 'n paste.
Hmm, I was thinking (and didn't specify) of the first minute or so, before the plane was going particularly fast. But I suppose as long as you spun the jet engines up beforehand, you'd be OK.
That's pretty bitchin'... I like the idea of using a 747 to get a lift, and saving all that fuel/weight.
Given the wings it has, and that they don't look to generate much lift, I wonder if this thing goes 'nose up' upon release, like a standard rocket? or does it 'fly' to high altitude? I think a 747 has a ceiling of 50,000 feet, so the ship still has a loooong way to go.
Also, if that tow line breaks early in launch, the crew is fairly well screwed... doesn't look to be much of a glider to me.
Exactly... this is of course how the book ended, and so the producers are forgiven:)
I don't quite know why everyone is so mad about the cliffhanger in reloaded... It was made VERY well known that it was a cliffhanger weeks beforehand, and I don't have any problem with such a move. If there were 5 years between movies, or was not announced, it would have been annoying.
My only bitch is the 'bum dum bummmmmm' stinger at the end. Was this really necessary? I'd rather have had some cool fade to the scrolling matrix code and then credits.
Quoth the poster:
A homosexual in a family group increases the adult/child ratio therefore improving care and survivability of the child. The family group passes on the recessive genes of the homosexual who does not reproduce.
What is this based on? Have there been such studies, or is this a case of 'people who don't have kids help others take care of theirs' ?
Re:ADD Version
on
The Red Queen
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Evolution promotes that which enables a creature to breed more than others. That's it. There is no 'good' or 'true' in any moral sense.
I have wondered, though... how exactly are pro-gay genes promoted? I assume that they are recessive genes (no judgement here... just that gay folks are in the vast minority), and as such aren't likely to last long, since true homosexuality would prevent breeding, right?
Please no flames on this, I am not passing judgement (at least not negatively. I have zero problem with homosexuality)... it just seems to me that this trait would not have perpetuated, y'know?
I imagine the truth is more along the lines of the 'sexuality as a continuum' theory than any gay/straight binary condition...
The 3 laws were much more complex (according to Asimov) than the simple 1 liners we know and love. These 'laws' are a representation of a complex interaction of 'potentials', or motivations within the robot psyche. I believe the definition of human was so low level that you could not force the robot to change it.
The 'imminent threat' _might_ allow for robots to harm humans under the 0th law, but the # of people involved (and if we're talking about a country, it's in the millions) would make it very unlikely for the robot to be able to push the button, as it were. Also, only a few of the late-model robot's had/understood the 0th law.
'hacking' a system as complex as a positronic brain (which approaches the complexity of a human one) would certainly be difficult. The 'robo-psychologist' (Susan somethingIcan'tremember) in Asimov's stories was certainly able to manipulate them, though...
Actually, this was a major theme in Asimov's short stories of the 40s and 50s. Sometimes a robot would be driven to the equivalent of instanity, because it witnessed a human death and couldn't stop it.
Sometimes our heroes would have to reason or trick the robot into letting them do something dangerous (say, spacewalking to repair the ship) so that they didn't die (when the ship collided with a planet, or whatever).
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding 1. , Diet Soda isn't terrible. I drink diet coke all day, and it has no calories.
:)
That said, it taste bad and destroys your teeth, but it has a little more caffeine than regular soda
I'm a HUGE fan of Mountain Dew, but if I drank it like I drink diet coke (coupla litres a day), I'd be a HUGE fan, if you catch my meaning...
Also, they make sugar free red bull, which is ok, and has 1/10 the calories of the fully leaded stuff.
Sorry, by usenet law, you lose!
It happens. Given how irresponsible teens sometimes are about sex, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more.
When I was in high school, a teacher handed around a rock for us to see, and once it was 2/3 of the way around class, said 'oh, if you think you might be pregnant... don't touch that. It's mildly radioactive'
Thanks prof!
I'm thinking Dilbert... when the rumor that alien lizards from the planet Zorb were gong to buy the company (and Wally made himself a giant corndog...) but I dunno...
Um... yeah, ok. Misusing that metaphor isn't making the point, and I'm tired of this. fuck off.
Ah, but the insightful one gets the point :)
The standard for web development has moved past Lynx. You may not like it, but 'tis true.
Incidently, few websites expect the 'widest number of people possible' to visit. Most have a fairly specific demographic.
Ok, someone call off the Lynx hounds!!!
It IS a disadvantage.
Most folks do not still want text only pages. I know that this is a raw deal for blind folks and the like. The fact is, most clients are not interested in websites that look like they are from 1996.
I actually try to build 2 years behind, so older browsers can handle my code, and a reasonable amount of time for upgrades is allowed.
I am a _huge_ believer in standards, actually, but dealing with clients (in both business and browser sense) that are not is exceptionally difficult.
Unfortunately, web technology was not designed for the disabled to use easily. This is slowly being worked on now, but it's not something that will be fixed overnight. Again, that's a pretty shitty deal, but it is what it is.
I understand your anger, although I think you misunderstand me; you might be better off _not_ assuming malice or insensitivity on my part. You would also be mistaken in assuming that I make 'flashy' sites. I try to make them as usable as possible. Good developers/designers will do that. But it is impossible to cater to all possible audiences right now.
Your points are good, but bear in mind the complexity of the situation before assuming that I'm just some insensitive bastard, ok?
News flash: Web-based technologies change monthly, if not weekly. If we waited for them all to mature, we'd still be viewing Lynx compatible pages.
Also, those of us who build for the web have to deal with an incredibly variable environment (OS, browser, connect speed, screen size, language, etc). Some high level abstraction is necessary, unless we want to target just 1 small audience (sadly, many web developers do so).
Idealism is nice, but standing on a soapbox screaming 'Be Patient!' is not really practical given the tech-o-the-week world that the web is right now.
I don't expect the best social skills (we're geeks, that's not what we do), but you could at least try to see the big picture before you espouse ivory tower philosophies.
(whew, I can feel my karma draining, but it's worth it).
Actually (not to nitpick, but to give the asker a flavor of Mr. Adams work), our heroes had a ship that moved via improbability. A couple of nasty things were about to do bad things to our heroes, when they flipped the switch and the most unlikely thing happened...
the 2 nasty things turned into a whale and somwe flowers. Unfortunately, neither can fly...
That's always fun... maintaining code used by someone who didn't know what it did anyway...
:)
(Off topic): we had a guy here who had a DHTML snowflake thing for Xmas. He borrowed the code, and didn't know what it did. When I told him to 'slow that thing down', by changing the delay variable (as in, setTimeout delay), he changed it from 200 (ms) to 20, thinking this would slow it down. I _told_ him not to publish code when he didn't speak the language, but...
Within 30 minutes he had crashed 500 machines on out corp. intranet and the only thing stopping more damage was a brief shutdown of the webserver and remove the offending code.
We're not allowed snowflakes anymore
I don't think this applies to Perl very much. In my experience, folks either love it or hate it, due to its quirkiness. Those who love it continue to use it and advance their skills beyond cut 'n paste.
Good point. IE is a completely standalone product... uh huh...
If you don't care for the mail client, etc., try mozilla firebird. It's just the browser.
Ostensibly that shouldn't be a problem... but that is a failure of ethics, not design.
Hmm, I was thinking (and didn't specify) of the first minute or so, before the plane was going particularly fast. But I suppose as long as you spun the jet engines up beforehand, you'd be OK.
Thanks for the info!
Probably because governmental agencies are not supposed to make decisions based on profit.
:)
You may all scoff now
That's pretty bitchin'... I like the idea of using a 747 to get a lift, and saving all that fuel/weight.
Given the wings it has, and that they don't look to generate much lift, I wonder if this thing goes 'nose up' upon release, like a standard rocket? or does it 'fly' to high altitude? I think a 747 has a ceiling of 50,000 feet, so the ship still has a loooong way to go.
Also, if that tow line breaks early in launch, the crew is fairly well screwed... doesn't look to be much of a glider to me.
Exactly... this is of course how the book ended, and so the producers are forgiven :)
I don't quite know why everyone is so mad about the cliffhanger in reloaded... It was made VERY well known that it was a cliffhanger weeks beforehand, and I don't have any problem with such a move. If there were 5 years between movies, or was not announced, it would have been annoying.
My only bitch is the 'bum dum bummmmmm' stinger at the end. Was this really necessary? I'd rather have had some cool fade to the scrolling matrix code and then credits.
Quoth the poster:
A homosexual in a family group increases the adult/child ratio therefore improving care and survivability of the child. The family group passes on the recessive genes of the homosexual who does not reproduce.
What is this based on? Have there been such studies, or is this a case of 'people who don't have kids help others take care of theirs' ?
Evolution promotes that which enables a creature to breed more than others. That's it. There is no 'good' or 'true' in any moral sense.
I have wondered, though... how exactly are pro-gay genes promoted? I assume that they are recessive genes (no judgement here... just that gay folks are in the vast minority), and as such aren't likely to last long, since true homosexuality would prevent breeding, right?
Please no flames on this, I am not passing judgement (at least not negatively. I have zero problem with homosexuality)... it just seems to me that this trait would not have perpetuated, y'know?
I imagine the truth is more along the lines of the 'sexuality as a continuum' theory than any gay/straight binary condition...
So what.... are we posting transcripts from AOL chatrooms now???
The line "Monkeys look down on you" just about killed me... very nice!
The 3 laws were much more complex (according to Asimov) than the simple 1 liners we know and love. These 'laws' are a representation of a complex interaction of 'potentials', or motivations within the robot psyche. I believe the definition of human was so low level that you could not force the robot to change it.
The 'imminent threat' _might_ allow for robots to harm humans under the 0th law, but the # of people involved (and if we're talking about a country, it's in the millions) would make it very unlikely for the robot to be able to push the button, as it were. Also, only a few of the late-model robot's had/understood the 0th law.
'hacking' a system as complex as a positronic brain (which approaches the complexity of a human one) would certainly be difficult. The 'robo-psychologist' (Susan somethingIcan'tremember) in Asimov's stories was certainly able to manipulate them, though...
Actually, this was a major theme in Asimov's short stories of the 40s and 50s. Sometimes a robot would be driven to the equivalent of instanity, because it witnessed a human death and couldn't stop it.
Sometimes our heroes would have to reason or trick the robot into letting them do something dangerous (say, spacewalking to repair the ship) so that they didn't die (when the ship collided with a planet, or whatever).
They don't. That's what sky marshalls are for...
but marshalls can't intercept incoming fighters...
Use the right too for the right job.