Gavin Schmidt, notable NASA climate scientist, provides a nice reality check on this story, concluding with this:
"So in summary, what we have is a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at. Seriously, if that's the best they can do, the EPA's ruling is on pretty safe ground."
indeed, leaving IE completely in the lurch is kind of unfriendly to the benighted masses - and the poor victims of backwards corporate browser policies:)
my preferred approach is to use CSS progressive enhancement, with IE-specific CSS hacks where necessary, so my sites look great and work perfectly in modern browsers, and look reasonable and are at least functional in IE.
as for accessibility, i couldn't agree more that it's what the web is about. but we're talking about cosmetics here - vertical alignment in a table cell. the alternative - using markup for non-tabular content simply to cater for visual layout deficiencies in IE - is where we start talking about poor accessibility.
The lesson is clear: stay out of movie theaters and you won't get arrested.
i agree, this is one of the most boneheaded things michael has said in recent times, and that's saying something.
sigh... flamebait i suppose.
but really, it's pretty poor comment from a/. admin to implicitly support a guy who was clearly trying to steal a movie, probably for profit.
OK, the movie probably sucked. OK, the pirate version probably sucked even more.
but having been involved in indie movie making in the past i am pretty unimpressed with this kind of theft. i'm no apologist for some of the MPAA stupidity (DVD regions etc), but i don't support unlicenced distribution.
spammers, n. pl. lying thieving pig-licking toilet blockages with feet.
i believe this form of words was first discovered by Dan of Dan's Data. he also used the phrase "scum-sucking uncle-rapers", which has a certain charm.
Props to the Australian government if they're merely codifying de facto policies so that everyone knows what the rules are. Jeers if they're trying to overreach the equivalent meatspace jurisdiction because FUD says violent protestors are inherently more dangerous on the internet than in real life
unfortunately, you should jeer. FUD over the internet is exactly the kind of line usually taken by the current bunch of luddite fools in power in Australia. examples:
the ban on Internet gambling in Australia, a spectacular show of fear-of-the-new, given that existing land-based gambling in Australia is a huge social problem (the worst in the world, in dollars per head), and properly regulated internet gambling could have provided a much better approach to most of the gambling addiction problems (proof of identity, bet and loss limits, etc).
the attempted ban on Internet pornography, when similar porn is permitted in print and video. an utter failure, and again primarily fuelled by fear of the Internet more than anything else.
some might be tempted to say it's a generational thing, but it's not. it's a result of this Prime Minister making cynical and callous appointments to important ministries. Richard Alston, Luddite extraordinary, has been the minister responsible for the above decisions. and appointing Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey as Minister of the Environment was basically spitting in the face of anyone who cares about the environment. it's a bit like making the Chinese president responsible for the protection and promotion of Tibetan culture.
true, there is no oil in Afghanistan to speak of (though there is some gas) - but oil and gas are a crucially important part of the current unpleasantness there.
why? simple. there are very large oil and gas reserves in Turkmenistan (and surrounding nations), directly to the north of Afghanistan, and for years American oil companies have been maneouvring to have a pipeline built from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, south to Pakistan and thence to the giant markets in North America, Europe, etc.
by "very large", read oil deposits similar to those of Saudi Arabia, and the largest gas reserves in the world.
when the stakes are this high, a lot of the strange stuff going on in this region recently starts to make sense...
correct if i'm wrong, but it seems to me that this is venturing into the realms of quantum behaviour... where predictability, reliability, etc etc all fall in a heap.
without getting into the *advantages* of quantum scale computing - e.g. entanglement - isn't this creeping to the edge of the precipice?
(caveat - i am a total lay person with no serious technical knowledge of quantum effects)
i found back pain quite a problem until a few months ago, when i tried a radical solution, which has worked brilliantly well.
i now never have any trouble, even after a 12 hour session.
... and the solution is: to work standing up!
i've put my monitor up on a chest-of-drawers on my desk so it's at my head level when i'm standing, and i've set up a desk surface (a good deal higher than the 'real' desk) for my keyboard and mouse, at a comfortable height.
give it a try! it takes a bit of getting used to, but it worked really well for me.
...after all, we didn't evolve sitting in chairs - we were standing or lying down most of the time...
Slashdot Mirror
Gavin Schmidt, notable NASA climate scientist, provides a nice reality check on this story, concluding with this:
"So in summary, what we have is a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at. Seriously, if that's the best they can do, the EPA's ruling is on pretty safe ground."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/
Blinding someone driving at high speed through a roadblock... oh yeah, that sounds non-lethal.
indeed, leaving IE completely in the lurch is kind of unfriendly to the benighted masses - and the poor victims of backwards corporate browser policies :)
my preferred approach is to use CSS progressive enhancement, with IE-specific CSS hacks where necessary, so my sites look great and work perfectly in modern browsers, and look reasonable and are at least functional in IE.
as for accessibility, i couldn't agree more that it's what the web is about. but we're talking about cosmetics here - vertical alignment in a table cell. the alternative - using markup for non-tabular content simply to cater for visual layout deficiencies in IE - is where we start talking about poor accessibility.
cheating and applying a display: table-cell style rule to the container, which is not supported by IE
er... using the universally-agreed standard is "cheating", because a 7-year-old browser is too broken to support it?
riiight.
i agree, this is one of the most boneheaded things michael has said in recent times, and that's saying something.
sigh... flamebait i suppose.
but really, it's pretty poor comment from a /. admin to implicitly support a guy who was clearly trying to steal a movie, probably for profit.
OK, the movie probably sucked. OK, the pirate version probably sucked even more.
but having been involved in indie movie making in the past i am pretty unimpressed with this kind of theft. i'm no apologist for some of the MPAA stupidity (DVD regions etc), but i don't support unlicenced distribution.
i'm no DB admin, and i found phpmyadmin to be incredibly easy and powerful to use. a nice FOSS web-based front end to MySQL.
i think MySQL plus phpmyadmin make a nice friendly - and inherently robust - solution that's easily accessible for the casual user.
i didn't do this mod, but just for your information, someone who does a mod in a story cannot post in the same story.
"They're spammers, so they're lying thieving pig-licking toilet blockages with feet"
OK, just tune the megatransmitter to a hiphop station for the structural elements...
classical for the smooth solar sails...
and talkback for all the crap that has to be cleared off the building site.
- the ban on Internet gambling in Australia, a spectacular show of fear-of-the-new, given that existing land-based gambling in Australia is a huge social problem (the worst in the world, in dollars per head), and properly regulated internet gambling could have provided a much better approach to most of the gambling addiction problems (proof of identity, bet and loss limits, etc).
- the attempted ban on Internet pornography, when similar porn is permitted in print and video. an utter failure, and again primarily fuelled by fear of the Internet more than anything else.
some might be tempted to say it's a generational thing, but it's not. it's a result of this Prime Minister making cynical and callous appointments to important ministries. Richard Alston, Luddite extraordinary, has been the minister responsible for the above decisions. and appointing Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey as Minister of the Environment was basically spitting in the face of anyone who cares about the environment. it's a bit like making the Chinese president responsible for the protection and promotion of Tibetan culture.true, there is no oil in Afghanistan to speak of (though there is some gas) - but oil and gas are a crucially important part of the current unpleasantness there.
why? simple. there are very large oil and gas reserves in Turkmenistan (and surrounding nations), directly to the north of Afghanistan, and for years American oil companies have been maneouvring to have a pipeline built from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, south to Pakistan and thence to the giant markets in North America, Europe, etc.
by "very large", read oil deposits similar to those of Saudi Arabia, and the largest gas reserves in the world.
when the stakes are this high, a lot of the strange stuff going on in this region recently starts to make sense...
Pipeline Politics: Oil, gas and the US interest in Afghanistan
Oil and Gas International editorial
Control of Central Asia's oil is the real goal
The oil behind Bush and Son's campaigns
one molecule thick?!
correct if i'm wrong, but it seems to me that this is venturing into the realms of quantum behaviour... where predictability, reliability, etc etc all fall in a heap.
without getting into the *advantages* of quantum scale computing - e.g. entanglement - isn't this creeping to the edge of the precipice?
(caveat - i am a total lay person with no serious technical knowledge of quantum effects)
how long until we see a PC sim for this? ;-)
i found back pain quite a problem until a few months ago, when i tried a radical solution, which has worked brilliantly well.
i now never have any trouble, even after a 12 hour session.
... and the solution is: to work standing up!
i've put my monitor up on a chest-of-drawers on my desk so it's at my head level when i'm standing, and i've set up a desk surface (a good deal higher than the 'real' desk) for my keyboard and mouse, at a comfortable height.
give it a try! it takes a bit of getting used to, but it worked really well for me.
...after all, we didn't evolve sitting in chairs - we were standing or lying down most of the time...