one good reason is that generally opera works with ie-specific javascript, whereas firefox doesn't; my company for instance has websites which were produced for use with ie (corporate sites etc) and will not work well with firefox - in many cases you cannot even login. With opera, however, they work fine.
"WEP is like gun laws in the US. They only keep the honest people from having guns. What a great society we live in."
You say that as if no 'honest' person ever shot anyone. Or as if everyone in the world is either 'honest' or 'dishonest' with nothing inbetween.
Sometimes nice guys kill people. Sometimes bad guys do good things. The world is a complex place - but it only gets more complex, and the stakes only ever go up, when everyone has a gun.
Re:As much as it pains me to say this...
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PDF Tracking On the Way
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· Score: 2, Insightful
the difference is that for a website to know your IP, you have to explicitly and wilfully visit the site, in the knowledge that your visit will be logged.
with this technology, you're not wilfully visiting anything - the document is on your own machine (or network) and unless there's a popup box giving you the information (which the article implies there won't be), you've no way of knowing that your IP is about to be transmitted.
essentially, for a website, you're a willing client asking for a service to be delivered back to your address from a remote point. the simple act of asking for information to be sent to you is an implicit acknowledgement that your IP is available to the server for its own use. for -this- technology, you'd be an unwilling server sending out information without your knowledge to an, effectively, unknown client. that seems like a big difference to me.
Most sites, and by inference most broken sites, were written using IE. That means anything that was broken, but rendered well in IE, is likely to remain in place.
I'm sure there are plenty of non-compliant sites written using firefox or opera or safari, too - and the relevant browser will display each better than IE would, purely because the sites in question were built with a specific browser used for development.
That doesn't make IE better at rendering broken code, it just means that most current broken mark-up is more likely to work well with IE. Not the same thing.
Although, in my experience, IE is the hardest browser to get anything to render well with, broken or not. And I hand code my HTML, so I'm not using apps (like, say, FrontPage) which cater only to one browser. It has so many quirks of its own (box model, anyone?) that unless you cater for them specifically, no page of any complexity at all will render properly.
I never used it or hacked from in the town I lived in
so, you NEVER hacked in your home town? were there other towns nearby where you never hacked from? if not, it'd be pretty easy to spot a pattern...
"Look here Bill; none of these attacks ever came from Huntston; they came from every other town in the area, but this spot here is clear of all activity - the only such 'dead' spot!"
that's like a flashing neon sign, surely?
it's like all bank robberies being at least 10 miles from a certain town, or all murders being within a 10-mile radius of a certain village. it would have been better to hack from your home town about as often as you hacked from other towns.
"billie seems to think people have no other incentive in innovating than profit"
Bang on - and you know why? Cos that's how -he- thinks. He innovates* with MS purely for profit. He's a businessman who likes innovation because it makes him money, and he doesn't understand (or at least won't admit) that innovation for its own sake a) does society good, and b) is actually enjoyable for many people (ie the open source community).
Presumably his favourite saying is: "You scratch my back, and I'll sue your ass! Not only have I patented the scratching of backs, but my back is protected under DRM and may only be scratched using a license-approved MS Scratching Center [(c) Microsoft plc]. Only communists scratch each other's backs. Pah!"
* Innovative use of slander, misrepresentation and marketing of inferior products, that is:)
so, picture the scene... an average joe walking along the street finds a wallet with such a piece of paper in it, and thinks: "aha, this is obviously a password cipher for online passwords - sucker! now i just need to guess where his accounts are, guess his username for each one, and guess his four-letter passphrase! now all your information is belong to me! muahahaha!"
seriously! it ain't gonna happen.
this is just the sort of obtuse thinking that mystifies me - why do you presume someone finding that paper is somehow divinely aware of it's purpose? or any of the related information needed to make use of it? realistically, someone finding that paper would either a) ignore it, and throw it away or b) look at it for 3 seconds, and throw it away.
it's security through misdirection - theoretically it might not be perfect, but in practice it works very well. in fact, just having a paper with a list of 20 passwords on them, and nothing else, would work far better than you might think - as long as it wasn't titled 'my passwords, by bill freeman' and was cross referenced by a list of username and account details. of course, keeping that piece of paper next to a computer would make it more obvious, but then that's hardly what he suggested, is it?
I started using gentoo because of portage, but i keep on using it largely because of the user community; it's true that you may run into more problems with gentoo than other distros, but this is mainly because you're more likely to keep it up to date by updating (ie changing) stuff. Whenever i've had a problem, i've always found the answer in the gentoo forums, and usually within a matter of hours - sometimes minutes, even if posting a new question. i run gentoo on my thinkpad, where portage being so up to date is very important, to take advantage of the latest ACPI/APM/bluetooth/WiFi/GFX packages.
i used to use suse and was happy with it, but try updating suse to new gcc or glibc, then try the same with gentoo. i spent far more time searching suse's help pages than a full system update takes in gentoo (several hours fruitless searching vs having it all done automatically while sleeping). i've thought about trying debian every now and then, but i know i wouldn't get the same level of community support as i do with gentoo.
"His dog Eric, quietly approached the car, slipped into the open window and then roared like a bear, scaring the crap out of the couple who drove off in a hurry."
So, the couple drove off with a barking dog in their car!? Doesn't seem too bright, that - either the couple OR the dog... funny mental picture, though:)
beowulf was set well before the medieval period and was probably also written before the medieval period (the oldest copy of it still surviving is from the early 11th century, but it was probably composed much before then). whether you class it as 'medieval literature' or not, it is not set during the medieval period, but during the 'dark ages' of pre-christian europe.
Actually the 'Medieval' slant you refer to isn't what Tolkien was interested in - he was actually interested in writing a 'great myth' for england (britain?), which would place it much much earlier than the medieval period. He was inspired by scandanavian epics such as Beowulf and the Finnish Kalevala (sic), and wanted to try creating something similar for england, as all the great celtic myths of the british isles have now been long forgotten. As others have mentioned his speciality was ancient languages, and the stories and histories he wrote (barring, i suppose, the hobbit, which he wrote for his children) were created largely to give his languages somewhere to 'live'.
I used to work in military research here in the UK, and worked on a project not *too* dissimilar to the COMBATSS/InfoScene bit mentioned in this article (I probably shouldn't divulge exactly how similar or not, for obvious reasons:) ). At least, from the brief mention in the article, it seems to be a similar kind of system, in principle at least.
Our stuff was written as a kind of proof of concept, with a fairly basic GUI (x/motif iirc), and most of the work being done on the data processing to ensure it was an accurate representation of reality.
we once had a meeting with a team from the US who were working on a similar system to our own, the plan being to see if we could benefit from each other's work. they gave us a demonstration of their product, which initially seemed much closer to completion than our own. it had a beautiful 3D interface (much like the screen shot in the article) and they demonstrated how a user could easily pan round in real time and see what was happening with a simple drag-and-click of the mouse.
then we asked them about how they actually processed the data, as this was the most important part of the system (obviously, no matter how good the interface it's a bit pointless if the stuff you're looking at is just plain wrong), which is where things fell apart a little. the actual backend of their system had hardly been started - the stuff we were seeing was all manufactured data created for demos, which kind of negated the entire point of the exercise from our point of view. they had a much larger team working with a much bigger budget than we did, but had effectively just come up with a nice GUI - and it didn't actually do anything that our basic motif GUI didn't, it just had more colours and more 3D stuff. we weren't really interested after that...
the point being that even in the military, even if something looks great on screen is no indication of whether it's actually any use or not. our system was actually deployed and used (on a testing basis) by the UK armed forces - what became of it since then i couldn't say as i got another job soon after, but it was clear that the US system was many months behind our own in terms of usefulness.
and on a slight tangent...
the whole thing reminds me of the well publicised FIST system that was featured on UK TV a few years back - basically trying to bring the infantry soldier into the 21st century using in-helmet HUDs and super smart targeting/comms systems etc... it was developed at the same place I worked but had so many problems i think it was shelved - after huge spending. but then, it did use windows as the underlying OS (don't ask me why), which for a mission-critical system always seemed a bit... stupid.
I often wonder for some of these things whether they were instigated by military ppl out of necessity or genuine improvement, or by politicians who just want things to look good
I decided to buy a new laptop from the US around christmas last year for the same reason - the low USD coupled with exhorbitant prices in the UK meant i stood to make a saving of around 30%. I considered flying to NYC and making a weekend of it, but after deciding I wanted a thinkpad there was little point in flying to the states when I would still have to buy it mail order and still pay VAT, so I had it shipped over with FedEx. Bought it from a place called Euclid Computers which was the cheapest I could find (which had a good reputation from other ppl, and which had a phone-contactable head office and sales dept), didn't have to pay any sales tax on it but declared it and paid VAT on importing it to the UK (personal computers aren't liable to other import taxes for the UK).
In the end I paid around GBP1800, including all taxes and delivery charges. In the UK the same model costs well over GBP3000 - a massive saving. Because I bought a 'business' model from a decent manufacturer i also have the standard 3-year worldwide warranty. The power supply has a detachable lead which my PlayStation2 power lead fits perfectly, so the only anomoly is the keyboard, which i could replace but have now got used to. The main hassle was phoning the company in the states to check stock levels and confirm order details etc, but i'd now hesitate before buying a laptop (or similar) from the UK, even without the low dollar. apart from the fact that the states is a bigger market and is home to more manufacturers, UK pricing in general tends to be way more than anywhere else. Also true for cars, CDs / DVDs, clothing, etc etc, despite repeated 'investigations' by the relevant authorities.
hopefully more people will start doing this and persuade UK vendors to lower their profit margins somewhat, but it probably won't happen
Incidentally, I used to buy a lot of CD singles (I don't anymore as I object to paying GBP4 for one song), and would sometimes have to pay a premium for an 'import' product, which seemed to be common with singles several years old. When i went to NYC on holiday once I was surprised to find the same 'imports' in manhattan, which begs the question - if these things aren't being imported from the states, where ARE they imported from? I've seen them in most european countries, the UK and the US... is it just my natural cynicism or are these 'imports' just shipped from place to place to justify a higher price?
Re:Examples of heresies about America
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 0
you just proved his point quite nicely...
a very popular tactic people use when their cherished notions are criticized is to say "we're seen as either the worst or the best, and we're neither". well that *may* be true, but it's also possible that you ARE the worst (or the best); likewise it's possible that america really is the most ignorant nation, that islam is the most backward religion, that black men have bigger penises and that blondes have more fun (but are stupid).
supporting the common view seems to be heresey these days, and while often the common view is knee-jerk and reactionary, sometimes it's also true. not usually, not even very often, but occasionally - the point being that just because something is hurtful, or against your opinion, or unfair, doesn't mean it's untrue. that seems to be the whole point of this article, one which you seem to have missed...
"...pregnant 12-year-olds are bad..."
why?
under-age sex seems to be one of the strongest taboos of modern society, and while it intrinsically seems right to me (that it's taboo), and I'm hoping that ppl at work don't see me typing this, I'm not sure why. Putting aside the obvious stuff like paedophilia, why is it wrong for a 12 year old to be pregnant? Who knows best in this regard, modern society, or nature? If girls are ready (physically) to have children at, say, 12 years old, and boys are ready to father them at 12 years, why is it considered wrong for that to happen? It's happened throughout history, and still happens in other parts of the world, so why has it become taboo here? Why is the legal age of consent (in the UK) 16? why not 12? or 19? or 7?
you're missing the point here i think. the relative complexity of programming on each platform is irrelevant to everyone in the entire world, except programmers. people *want* simplicity, and for good reason - the whole reason why ready-to-serve meals sell well is because of convenience, and that's the same reason windows sells. not because it's better or faster or nicer or whatever, it's simply more convenient, and that's what people want. give the customer what they want - ever heard of that?
and your analogy is misleading: people don't learn to play the violin because playing the violin is complex, they play it because it sounds nice. likewise people use windows not because it's powerful or complex but because it does what they want it to do conveniently. people use *nix because it does what they want it to do, conveniently - even if that is learning about programming or networks or just using the GIMP and OpenOffice.
The culture difference comes from why these products exist. Windows is a commercial product designed to attract paying customers, and is therefore (perceived as) useful to a mass market, and convenient. Unix was designed as a functional tool to get things done, so it appeals to functional types (ie engineers of various descriptions) and excels in getting things done. As long as those two groups of people don't overlap too much - and i can't see it happening anytime soon - these two products will be dissimilar and the subjects of these debates.
I use linux and solaris because it does what i want it to do: i can use it to productively manipulate databases, communicate over networks, learn more about programming etc. i dislike windows' instability, unresponsiveness, lack of security and proprietary nature, but i still use it on occasion when i want to do mass-market things, like play games. and i recognise that for it's market, windows is better than unix is for the same market. yes, better. likewise, unix is better for it's own market.
to use your example, no matter how much you tell me that cooking with fresh ingredients in a good oven will make my meal taste better, if i'm walking past a supermarket and need something i can eat in the next 3 minutes i'm going to buy a sandwich. which one is better depends entirely on the user and their circumstances. and i for one am not sold on bringing linux to the masses as a replacement for windows; if the cooking starts tasting bland and the available ingredients disappear to make it more like a sandwich, and the sandwich suddenly needs cooking in an oven so that you can customise it and make sure it's safe to eat... maybe i'll forget the cooking AND the sandwich and just find an apple tree somewhere. if that pisses off the chefs and the shop-keepers, well tough
Yeah I know what you mean with that fetish thing. I chanced across porn on my cable TV by noticing that keying in the Fantasy Channel, then the 'subscribe' key, then instead of pressing 'cancel' i keyed in my PIN... and what's strange is, i keep ending up there every night without ever knowing how!:)
You're wrong about no normal European tourists going to Africa - North Africa is packed with Europeans. Tunisia is one of the most popular package holiday destinations for the Brits, and the Spanish and French travel to northern Morocco in huge swathes, especially during school holidays (I know cos i was there in May this year and had trouble getting a hotel because they were full of French and Spanish tourists). Egypt is also very popular, and there are even a few resorts in Libya (including some used by the company I work for). I'd guess Algeria is the least touristy because of the ongoing situation there, but even that would have a lot of people coming and going from France.
So it's not like there isn't a market there as far as tourism is concerned, plus you have to remember that there are thousands of families which are seperated by the mediterranean (Spanish/Moroccan and French/Algerian immigration etc), and many more North Africans travel to Europe regularly for work. The only issue I would see wouldn't be economic, but to do with immigration. There's already a huge people-smuggling operation going on to get poor North Africans into 'rich' Europe for work etc; at the moment many of them risk their lives (and often lose them) making night crossings of the med. in overcrowded boats trying to avoid the authorities. If Britain had problems with illegal immigrants sneaking thru the channel tunnel, imagine what would happen with one between Europe and N.Africa!
the difference is that a billboard doesn't hide in the bushes until you're about to cross the street, then jump up in front of you blocking your vision with an advert for anti-billboard products.
we have adverts because we live in a world where money is king; they may be ugly but they're one of things that makes our world work in the way it does - adverts pay, indirectly, for many things we take for granted, such as TV. no adverts? no TV.
pop-ups on the other hand in general don't pay for anything, are willfully obtrusive, and have no beneficial side-effects as do many regular adverts.
Slashdot Mirror
one good reason is that generally opera works with ie-specific javascript, whereas firefox doesn't; my company for instance has websites which were produced for use with ie (corporate sites etc) and will not work well with firefox - in many cases you cannot even login. With opera, however, they work fine.
you're *so* right - no one was ever insulted by a corpse.
"WEP is like gun laws in the US. They only keep the honest people from having guns. What a great society we live in."
You say that as if no 'honest' person ever shot anyone. Or as if everyone in the world is either 'honest' or 'dishonest' with nothing inbetween.
Sometimes nice guys kill people. Sometimes bad guys do good things. The world is a complex place - but it only gets more complex, and the stakes only ever go up, when everyone has a gun.
the difference is that for a website to know your IP, you have to explicitly and wilfully visit the site, in the knowledge that your visit will be logged.
with this technology, you're not wilfully visiting anything - the document is on your own machine (or network) and unless there's a popup box giving you the information (which the article implies there won't be), you've no way of knowing that your IP is about to be transmitted.
essentially, for a website, you're a willing client asking for a service to be delivered back to your address from a remote point. the simple act of asking for information to be sent to you is an implicit acknowledgement that your IP is available to the server for its own use. for -this- technology, you'd be an unwilling server sending out information without your knowledge to an, effectively, unknown client. that seems like a big difference to me.
But is it cause or effect?
Most sites, and by inference most broken sites, were written using IE. That means anything that was broken, but rendered well in IE, is likely to remain in place.
I'm sure there are plenty of non-compliant sites written using firefox or opera or safari, too - and the relevant browser will display each better than IE would, purely because the sites in question were built with a specific browser used for development.
That doesn't make IE better at rendering broken code, it just means that most current broken mark-up is more likely to work well with IE. Not the same thing.
Although, in my experience, IE is the hardest browser to get anything to render well with, broken or not. And I hand code my HTML, so I'm not using apps (like, say, FrontPage) which cater only to one browser. It has so many quirks of its own (box model, anyone?) that unless you cater for them specifically, no page of any complexity at all will render properly.
it works fine on my T41 with ALSA
i emerged it a couple of days ago, used it, no problems (apart from it using Qt - ugly).
so, you NEVER hacked in your home town? were there other towns nearby where you never hacked from? if not, it'd be pretty easy to spot a pattern...
"Look here Bill; none of these attacks ever came from Huntston; they came from every other town in the area, but this spot here is clear of all activity - the only such 'dead' spot!"
that's like a flashing neon sign, surely?
it's like all bank robberies being at least 10 miles from a certain town, or all murders being within a 10-mile radius of a certain village. it would have been better to hack from your home town about as often as you hacked from other towns.
"billie seems to think people have no other incentive in innovating than profit"
:)
Bang on - and you know why? Cos that's how -he- thinks. He innovates* with MS purely for profit. He's a businessman who likes innovation because it makes him money, and he doesn't understand (or at least won't admit) that innovation for its own sake a) does society good, and b) is actually enjoyable for many people (ie the open source community).
Presumably his favourite saying is: "You scratch my back, and I'll sue your ass! Not only have I patented the scratching of backs, but my back is protected under DRM and may only be scratched using a license-approved MS Scratching Center [(c) Microsoft plc]. Only communists scratch each other's backs. Pah!"
* Innovative use of slander, misrepresentation and marketing of inferior products, that is
you should try the new xorg-wife; not as radical as Y but it tidies up some loose ends with the X version, and the pre-nup ain't half as bad!
100 million romans can't be wrong! ;)
"Innovation speaks louder than marketing."
er, i think you'll find that marketing speaks louder. Betamax, anyone?
so, picture the scene... an average joe walking along the street finds a wallet with such a piece of paper in it, and thinks: "aha, this is obviously a password cipher for online passwords - sucker! now i just need to guess where his accounts are, guess his username for each one, and guess his four-letter passphrase! now all your information is belong to me! muahahaha!"
seriously! it ain't gonna happen.
this is just the sort of obtuse thinking that mystifies me - why do you presume someone finding that paper is somehow divinely aware of it's purpose? or any of the related information needed to make use of it? realistically, someone finding that paper would either a) ignore it, and throw it away or b) look at it for 3 seconds, and throw it away.
it's security through misdirection - theoretically it might not be perfect, but in practice it works very well. in fact, just having a paper with a list of 20 passwords on them, and nothing else, would work far better than you might think - as long as it wasn't titled 'my passwords, by bill freeman' and was cross referenced by a list of username and account details. of course, keeping that piece of paper next to a computer would make it more obvious, but then that's hardly what he suggested, is it?
I started using gentoo because of portage, but i keep on using it largely because of the user community; it's true that you may run into more problems with gentoo than other distros, but this is mainly because you're more likely to keep it up to date by updating (ie changing) stuff. Whenever i've had a problem, i've always found the answer in the gentoo forums, and usually within a matter of hours - sometimes minutes, even if posting a new question. i run gentoo on my thinkpad, where portage being so up to date is very important, to take advantage of the latest ACPI/APM/bluetooth/WiFi/GFX packages.
i used to use suse and was happy with it, but try updating suse to new gcc or glibc, then try the same with gentoo. i spent far more time searching suse's help pages than a full system update takes in gentoo (several hours fruitless searching vs having it all done automatically while sleeping). i've thought about trying debian every now and then, but i know i wouldn't get the same level of community support as i do with gentoo.
"His dog Eric, quietly approached the car, slipped into the open window and then roared like a bear, scaring the crap out of the couple who drove off in a hurry." So, the couple drove off with a barking dog in their car!? Doesn't seem too bright, that - either the couple OR the dog... funny mental picture, though :)
beowulf was set well before the medieval period and was probably also written before the medieval period (the oldest copy of it still surviving is from the early 11th century, but it was probably composed much before then). whether you class it as 'medieval literature' or not, it is not set during the medieval period, but during the 'dark ages' of pre-christian europe.
Actually the 'Medieval' slant you refer to isn't what Tolkien was interested in - he was actually interested in writing a 'great myth' for england (britain?), which would place it much much earlier than the medieval period. He was inspired by scandanavian epics such as Beowulf and the Finnish Kalevala (sic), and wanted to try creating something similar for england, as all the great celtic myths of the british isles have now been long forgotten. As others have mentioned his speciality was ancient languages, and the stories and histories he wrote (barring, i suppose, the hobbit, which he wrote for his children) were created largely to give his languages somewhere to 'live'.
I used to work in military research here in the UK, and worked on a project not *too* dissimilar to the COMBATSS/InfoScene bit mentioned in this article (I probably shouldn't divulge exactly how similar or not, for obvious reasons :) ). At least, from the brief mention in the article, it seems to be a similar kind of system, in principle at least.
Our stuff was written as a kind of proof of concept, with a fairly basic GUI (x/motif iirc), and most of the work being done on the data processing to ensure it was an accurate representation of reality.
we once had a meeting with a team from the US who were working on a similar system to our own, the plan being to see if we could benefit from each other's work. they gave us a demonstration of their product, which initially seemed much closer to completion than our own. it had a beautiful 3D interface (much like the screen shot in the article) and they demonstrated how a user could easily pan round in real time and see what was happening with a simple drag-and-click of the mouse.
then we asked them about how they actually processed the data, as this was the most important part of the system (obviously, no matter how good the interface it's a bit pointless if the stuff you're looking at is just plain wrong), which is where things fell apart a little. the actual backend of their system had hardly been started - the stuff we were seeing was all manufactured data created for demos, which kind of negated the entire point of the exercise from our point of view. they had a much larger team working with a much bigger budget than we did, but had effectively just come up with a nice GUI - and it didn't actually do anything that our basic motif GUI didn't, it just had more colours and more 3D stuff. we weren't really interested after that...
the point being that even in the military, even if something looks great on screen is no indication of whether it's actually any use or not. our system was actually deployed and used (on a testing basis) by the UK armed forces - what became of it since then i couldn't say as i got another job soon after, but it was clear that the US system was many months behind our own in terms of usefulness.
and on a slight tangent...
the whole thing reminds me of the well publicised FIST system that was featured on UK TV a few years back - basically trying to bring the infantry soldier into the 21st century using in-helmet HUDs and super smart targeting/comms systems etc... it was developed at the same place I worked but had so many problems i think it was shelved - after huge spending. but then, it did use windows as the underlying OS (don't ask me why), which for a mission-critical system always seemed a bit... stupid.
I often wonder for some of these things whether they were instigated by military ppl out of necessity or genuine improvement, or by politicians who just want things to look good
In the end I paid around GBP1800, including all taxes and delivery charges. In the UK the same model costs well over GBP3000 - a massive saving. Because I bought a 'business' model from a decent manufacturer i also have the standard 3-year worldwide warranty. The power supply has a detachable lead which my PlayStation2 power lead fits perfectly, so the only anomoly is the keyboard, which i could replace but have now got used to. The main hassle was phoning the company in the states to check stock levels and confirm order details etc, but i'd now hesitate before buying a laptop (or similar) from the UK, even without the low dollar. apart from the fact that the states is a bigger market and is home to more manufacturers, UK pricing in general tends to be way more than anywhere else. Also true for cars, CDs / DVDs, clothing, etc etc, despite repeated 'investigations' by the relevant authorities.
hopefully more people will start doing this and persuade UK vendors to lower their profit margins somewhat, but it probably won't happen
Incidentally, I used to buy a lot of CD singles (I don't anymore as I object to paying GBP4 for one song), and would sometimes have to pay a premium for an 'import' product, which seemed to be common with singles several years old. When i went to NYC on holiday once I was surprised to find the same 'imports' in manhattan, which begs the question - if these things aren't being imported from the states, where ARE they imported from? I've seen them in most european countries, the UK and the US... is it just my natural cynicism or are these 'imports' just shipped from place to place to justify a higher price?
you just proved his point quite nicely... a very popular tactic people use when their cherished notions are criticized is to say "we're seen as either the worst or the best, and we're neither". well that *may* be true, but it's also possible that you ARE the worst (or the best); likewise it's possible that america really is the most ignorant nation, that islam is the most backward religion, that black men have bigger penises and that blondes have more fun (but are stupid). supporting the common view seems to be heresey these days, and while often the common view is knee-jerk and reactionary, sometimes it's also true. not usually, not even very often, but occasionally - the point being that just because something is hurtful, or against your opinion, or unfair, doesn't mean it's untrue. that seems to be the whole point of this article, one which you seem to have missed...
"...pregnant 12-year-olds are bad..." why? under-age sex seems to be one of the strongest taboos of modern society, and while it intrinsically seems right to me (that it's taboo), and I'm hoping that ppl at work don't see me typing this, I'm not sure why. Putting aside the obvious stuff like paedophilia, why is it wrong for a 12 year old to be pregnant? Who knows best in this regard, modern society, or nature? If girls are ready (physically) to have children at, say, 12 years old, and boys are ready to father them at 12 years, why is it considered wrong for that to happen? It's happened throughout history, and still happens in other parts of the world, so why has it become taboo here? Why is the legal age of consent (in the UK) 16? why not 12? or 19? or 7?
you're missing the point here i think. the relative complexity of programming on each platform is irrelevant to everyone in the entire world, except programmers. people *want* simplicity, and for good reason - the whole reason why ready-to-serve meals sell well is because of convenience, and that's the same reason windows sells. not because it's better or faster or nicer or whatever, it's simply more convenient, and that's what people want. give the customer what they want - ever heard of that?
and your analogy is misleading: people don't learn to play the violin because playing the violin is complex, they play it because it sounds nice. likewise people use windows not because it's powerful or complex but because it does what they want it to do conveniently. people use *nix because it does what they want it to do, conveniently - even if that is learning about programming or networks or just using the GIMP and OpenOffice.
The culture difference comes from why these products exist. Windows is a commercial product designed to attract paying customers, and is therefore (perceived as) useful to a mass market, and convenient. Unix was designed as a functional tool to get things done, so it appeals to functional types (ie engineers of various descriptions) and excels in getting things done. As long as those two groups of people don't overlap too much - and i can't see it happening anytime soon - these two products will be dissimilar and the subjects of these debates.
I use linux and solaris because it does what i want it to do: i can use it to productively manipulate databases, communicate over networks, learn more about programming etc. i dislike windows' instability, unresponsiveness, lack of security and proprietary nature, but i still use it on occasion when i want to do mass-market things, like play games. and i recognise that for it's market, windows is better than unix is for the same market. yes, better. likewise, unix is better for it's own market.
to use your example, no matter how much you tell me that cooking with fresh ingredients in a good oven will make my meal taste better, if i'm walking past a supermarket and need something i can eat in the next 3 minutes i'm going to buy a sandwich. which one is better depends entirely on the user and their circumstances. and i for one am not sold on bringing linux to the masses as a replacement for windows; if the cooking starts tasting bland and the available ingredients disappear to make it more like a sandwich, and the sandwich suddenly needs cooking in an oven so that you can customise it and make sure it's safe to eat... maybe i'll forget the cooking AND the sandwich and just find an apple tree somewhere. if that pisses off the chefs and the shop-keepers, well tough
Yeah I know what you mean with that fetish thing. I chanced across porn on my cable TV by noticing that keying in the Fantasy Channel, then the 'subscribe' key, then instead of pressing 'cancel' i keyed in my PIN... and what's strange is, i keep ending up there every night without ever knowing how! :)
You're wrong about no normal European tourists going to Africa - North Africa is packed with Europeans. Tunisia is one of the most popular package holiday destinations for the Brits, and the Spanish and French travel to northern Morocco in huge swathes, especially during school holidays (I know cos i was there in May this year and had trouble getting a hotel because they were full of French and Spanish tourists). Egypt is also very popular, and there are even a few resorts in Libya (including some used by the company I work for). I'd guess Algeria is the least touristy because of the ongoing situation there, but even that would have a lot of people coming and going from France. So it's not like there isn't a market there as far as tourism is concerned, plus you have to remember that there are thousands of families which are seperated by the mediterranean (Spanish/Moroccan and French/Algerian immigration etc), and many more North Africans travel to Europe regularly for work. The only issue I would see wouldn't be economic, but to do with immigration. There's already a huge people-smuggling operation going on to get poor North Africans into 'rich' Europe for work etc; at the moment many of them risk their lives (and often lose them) making night crossings of the med. in overcrowded boats trying to avoid the authorities. If Britain had problems with illegal immigrants sneaking thru the channel tunnel, imagine what would happen with one between Europe and N.Africa!
we have adverts because we live in a world where money is king; they may be ugly but they're one of things that makes our world work in the way it does - adverts pay, indirectly, for many things we take for granted, such as TV. no adverts? no TV.
pop-ups on the other hand in general don't pay for anything, are willfully obtrusive, and have no beneficial side-effects as do many regular adverts.