Promises do have applications in all sorts of async tasks though.
[ begin_rant ]
I agree they're over-used, but it's hardly the end of the world. Even the polyfill versions of them are performant enough that you're unlikely to hit their limits. And if you are, it's a good sign that you're abusing them!
Personally, I think a much bigger problem is the clusterfuck way in which stuff gets standardized into JS (now ES). From Promises (yes, I sort of agree with you!) to the insane drag-and-drop API, it seems like the JS world tends to simply pick whichever implementation "got there first" and standardize on that, with nary a consideration for whether the resulting API is sane to use. I mean, when IE 5.x is your reference impl, you just *know* that something is up... That's how you end up with "oh, none of this works until you return false to this handler" and shit like that. And why you have both 'dragover' and 'dragenter'. I guess because the Outlook web team didn't want to maintain event counters?
One of the best programmers I know -- responsible for some *seriously* widespread libraries that pretty much swept the games industry -- always says: "try to write the calling/usage code before you write your library. Because if you as a future caller can't use the API you had in mind, it's crap."
And I tend to agree with him. There's a lot of stuff where that falls over, and I can only imagine it was because the spec/lib authors didn't really think through a real-world use-case for the stuff that they were turning out. If they did, they'd probably have made some changes. (Even Sun, who did a great job with some stuff like the Collections API, has plenty of these architectural brain-farts, particularly surrounding authentication and authorization. They built something super complex and flexible that nobody in their right mind can actually use, so everybody uses a third party lib or two which offer a simple, sane API.)
React actually isn't too bad, particularly compared to Angular or similar! As a functional programming fanboy, I dig the "data drives UI changes" model and the one-way data flow. But "native" DnD, file upload? It's pretty clear that nobody thought through how it is to be on the receiving end of those APIs before ship time. Is it doable? Sure. I've written plenty of code that deals with the "raw" DnD API. But it's damn sure not easy or pleasant! It's hack city because too much was left up to the browsers, and across three browsers you got four opinions on what events should look like. Not to mention the flat-out bugs that nobody cares about fixing because, fuck it, handling backwards compat. is hard! Yeah, you can do it (or use a lib if your use case fits it -- ours didn't), but for something that should be simple and should be a total non-issue, god*damn* did they make it complex.
The interesting thing about JS is that new additions are rarely straight-up terrible. They're usually just sort of "death of a thousand papercuts" bad. No one standout, but a bunch of really annoying bits that make the whole experience an exercise in pain compared to, say, writing for Cocoa or even.NET. I mean... I'll still do it, 'cause I need a paycheck. But for stuff on my own, I tend to shy away from painful APIs... and I imagine that sort of casual dev loss times however many opinionated programmers there are out there is a significantly non-zero number. Maybe not enough to get the ES spec authors to care, but it's still not something that they should take lightly. That's the thing about us old grumpy bastards... we're starting to move into "influencer" positions where we can shoo our junior members away from tech that we know is labour-intensive...
On the other hand, ESWhatever got just about everything right with lambdas, so it's very much a mixed bag. Not quite right on the JIT optimizations (at least on FF), but I'm sure they'll sort that out soon enough!
So yeah, go lambdas. React? Eh, getting there. Drag model? Fuck that noise.
Maybe I'm more optimistic, but I'll at least try briefly. Yeah, I'll give up if 30 seconds seems like it's not making progress, but fuck it I may as well try, right?
So the analogy I use is this:
A programming language is an instrument. I can use it to express ideas, but the instrument itself isn't the focus of my work. It's what I can create with the instrument So if I learn some language that alone doesn't mean much. It's what I do with the instrument (programming anguage) that makes the whole thing worthwhile. [If you're talking to an artist, replace "instrument" with "brush" or "sculpting tool".]
It's all about finding non-threatening parallels that the person you're speaking to can relate to. I mean, yeah, we can "not bother", but that doesn't really help the stereotype of the socially-ignorant, aloof nerd, does it?
This should not be surprising to any user for two reasons:
1) Most of the *coins* are not anonymous. Or rather, they're not private. The ledgers are public, which means that:
2) You're only anonymous if you *never* do anything that connects to you. And as any Coinbase user knows, you have to supply a bunch of identifying and relatively-hard-to-fake info when you sign up. So as soon as you trade on their platform(s?) you are tying your coins to the info they have on you. If you don't want to give up your privacy in exchange for the services they provide, the time to bring out the pitchforks is during signup. After you give your SSN and/or gov. ID, you can't really feign shock and horror when they supply the info to the IRS just like they warned they might in their ToS. I mean, personally I'm cool with that since I do report my cap. gains to the IRS, but yeah, if you're dodging taxes I can see how this is terrible news. But the answer isn't "hate on Coinbase", it's "pay your damn taxes." Shit, cap. gains are a joke in the US anyways... it's not gonna eat into your mad Bitcoin profits that much to pay them... And if you think it is, read on:
3) There are anonymous ways to cash out BTC (not so sure about ETH or LTC). You'll pay a fat premium for them though, and honestly I can't think of any reason to do so aside from strict adherence to libertarian philosophies or ill-gotten gains. Personally my cryptocurrency involvement has been strictly speculation and all above-board, so I'm already de-anonymized as soon as I buy the coins. But I'll grant you if you mine them the equation might be different... if you do, I can at least see the argument for keeping your identity anonymous, if only because anonymity is a nice thing to have in general.
But yeah, no Coinbase user should be surprised by this. They all but come out and warn you that they'll report to your country's tax agency on demand during signup. You can't be pissed when they go and do just that!
That, magically, Blackberry is supposed to commit to and compete with a marketplace that has offered 1080p, N wireless, wimax, NFC, and an open API with a product that still requires a hobbled network of randomly unavailable email proxies for its devices explicit use.
Uh oh, it looks like you don't know what you're talking about.
The last devices to go through RIM's NOC were the old BlackBerries. The ones running BlackBerry 10 didn't, nor do the Android BlackBerries.
Then they can have a soda once in a while.. assuming it's cane sugar-sweetened, not HFCS, not aspartame, not sucralose. In my opinion, stevia is OK, but as with most things YMMV.
Or, since aspartame and sucralose are both GRAS (the former after decades of intense scrutiny), have a soda as often as you'd like provided it's a sugar-free one.
While it's true that bad maintenance procedures led to the failure, the crash would have been avoidable if the pilot or FO had reacted correctly. Instead of increasing the throttle position of the remaining engines and using it to get the plane to where it could land safely, however, he reduced throttle and stalled out.
Maintenance caused the failure, but it was unquestionably pilot error that caused the crash.
I can easily afford even the most expensive Apple watch, no problem. I still think it's a near-useless waste of money...
.
... for me. So I won't buy one. If you want one, buy one. I might think it's a waste of money for you too, but then it's not my money, so why should I care?
My only conclusion is that the frequent bailouts they've received has allowed them to institutionalize failures in their business models. We need to stop "Saving" industries/businesses.
Interesting, then, that you cite the Asian and Middle Eastern airlines as examples of the "right" way, as many of them are heavily subsidized.
What they haven't done is anything justifying this gigantic shitpile of hate and threats. Which exists because of misogyny. And you have to know you're lying if you claim otherwise.
You're right. They don't deserve threats. Few, if any, people do.
But they *have* done things that deserve media attention. Zoe in particular seems to have behaved rather reprehensibly in a couple different ways. (I have no idea about whether she sleeps around, and frankly I couldn't care less. I'm referring to the stores of her DMCA [ab]use, trying to muscle out competing game jams, etc.)
Professional gaming journalism sucks for many reasons (anyone remember Gamespot axing a reviewer because he didn't review a sponsoring game well enough?), and this is one of them.
We shouldn't give a free pass to crap journalistic standards and assholes who can't play nice in the community just because some other set of assholes threatened the first set.
As a counterpoint, Apple likes LLVM. They've modified it, and they're selling their proprietary fork as XCode. They've found great value in the freedom afforded them by the BSD license. The users of XCode, however, aren't seeing much benefit from the BSD license, because it never got to them. Apple ate it along the way.
As a correction to the counterpoint: Apple has paid for full time development of Clang + LLVM, as they use it. Despite being under no legal obligation to share the source back to the community they have done so; in essence donating their time and money to a BSD project. Their users benefit (by having a better compiler), and other Free software users benefit (by having a better compiler, plus the ability to build their own IDE around the same underying compiler tech. as Xcode).
There are plenty of examples of BSD software getting "eaten" by a proprietary stack, but much of Apple's usage is actually one of the worse examples you could provide, as they often do contribute quite a lot back.
The BSD people would be better if it weren't for the existance of copyright. That changes everything, Stallman understands that, I don't think the BSD people do.
Some of us do. We just don't all have the same zealous pursuit of Free software as others.
For me at least, I write stuff under the BSD license because it means that more developers can use my projects to build theirs. Simple as that. With the GPL or LGPL, the number of potential users shrinks.
In short, I want to write software for other developers regardless of whether they're committed to the cause of Free software. BSD lets me do that, GPL doesn't. Simple enough.
That's why it's GPLed, so the work of free software developer does not help those who want to shrink our freedom.
And that right there is the difference between GPL and BSD developers.
I develop stuff under the BSD license because I want to help people regardless of whether or not I view their projects as being congruent with my views on software distribution.
Unless things have changed I never paid Qt any attention because it is dually licensed and therefore not truly free software and its ownership keeps changing between commercial companies. Last I checked Qt is "free" for open source projects but requires an expensive commercial license for anything else.
You last checked about a decade ago, then.
Here's how it works now (and has worked for a while now): Qt is Free. Not "free", but Free. It's under the LGPL. And the GPL.
"But it's owned by a commercial company, and they can just close off the source."
Nope. Still stays open. Back a few years ago, the KDE group got a special concession from Nokia. They set up the KDE Free Qt Foundation; if the commercial owners of Qt (Digia) stop releasing Qt under the LGPL and GPL3, KDE has the right to make the whole thing BSD. Irrevocably. And the agreement stays, even if Digia is sold, bought, etc. Read the link if you'd like to know more.
Basically, Qt is Free. If the owners ever stop releasing it for Free, KDE gets to release it under an even more Free license.
Qt has been Free for a while. Qt is still Free. It will remain Free
By any reasonable standard the roughly $400m spent on implementing this was incredibly excessive. If a private company had wanted to build this system for profit, it would have been done for under $100m.
And if it cost that much, it would be!
If, on the other hand, the numbers that your referencing came from... say... a couple journalists incorrect understanding of the total bid cost (based on both delivery and subsequent modifications and years of projected upkeep) and not instead from the actual cost to get what we currently have...... well then in that case, it might not be such a sound strategy of attack.
The big mistake of the ACA was that it did not allow for the creation of privately run and owned exchanges.
The ACA didn't need to do anything -- that's the status quo. There's been literally nothing preventing something like that from being set up since the invention of the web.
But hey, since we know that the free market always comes up with the best solution, clearly the lack of such exchanges means that people didn't want something like this, right?
I never thought that desire for fiscal responsibility, constitutional rule, and limited concentration of power would be masked over with such a contrived caricature.
They're not.
The "Tea Party", on the other hand, is -- as well they should be.
It started as a populist movement with some people advocating the things that you stated. And that was a noble goal. But like many "grassroots" movements, it was co-opted by powerful (read: rich) influences, and has been steered instead towards their current position: a rabid, economically-ignorant (yet politically-involved) group for which the merits of an idea are trumped by whether or not their "team" endorsed it (Democrat: bad, "Republican": good.)
I have no love for either mainstream US party, and initially I thought that the Tea Party idea might end up developing into a viable third party platform with values closer to those of classic liberal philosophy. (Note: "liberal" here is used in its original form, not as a synonym for Democrat). Sadly, they turned out nothing like that -- and the folks who currently wear the label are worthy of the scorn they get.
I'm about to start thumbing through my US constitution, can someone give me a head start by suggesting where I read in the constitution about the federal govt being empowered to mold its citizens behavior through forced fines and taxes? I could swear I've never seen it there before, but I might have overlooked it.....
Are you actually asking, or just trying to get in a good old "government bad!" rant?
If you're actually asking, the answer is Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, the passage which reads:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Now you could argue that "welfare" shouldn't be interpreted for something like this -- and I wouldn't necessarily disagree -- but historically this clause has been interpreted as giving Congress the power to impose taxes for basically whatever they identify as a "common good".
By nicely you mean very little content compared to today. By nicely you mean not able to make money. It's the obnoxious, intrusive and privacy-stealing ads that are the problem.
That's part of the problem yes.
The other part of the problem is that people such as yourself see "not able to make money" as part of the "problem" with the pre-hyper-commercialized web.
Not everything needs to be squeezed until it makes a buck, but as long as people keep seeing everything in the world with fucking dollar signs in their eyes the problem will continue.
Was part of the "problem" with gas handle pumps that they didn't have space for another ad? 'cause we solved that problem.
How about airliner tray tables? They couldn't make money, but we sure addressed that one.
And long stretches of road with greenery and shit visible? The issue there was it just wasn't making money! But don't worry, we fixed it.
Advertising is societal corrosion. It eats away at our experiences, it reshapes our thoughts, it homogenizes and neuters our culture, and it's all because people such as yourself see "not making any money" as an inherent problem with all sorts of aspects of our lives.
Slashdot Mirror
Promises do have applications in all sorts of async tasks though.
[ begin_rant ]
I agree they're over-used, but it's hardly the end of the world. Even the polyfill versions of them are performant enough that you're unlikely to hit their limits. And if you are, it's a good sign that you're abusing them!
Personally, I think a much bigger problem is the clusterfuck way in which stuff gets standardized into JS (now ES). From Promises (yes, I sort of agree with you!) to the insane drag-and-drop API, it seems like the JS world tends to simply pick whichever implementation "got there first" and standardize on that, with nary a consideration for whether the resulting API is sane to use. I mean, when IE 5.x is your reference impl, you just *know* that something is up... That's how you end up with "oh, none of this works until you return false to this handler" and shit like that. And why you have both 'dragover' and 'dragenter'. I guess because the Outlook web team didn't want to maintain event counters?
One of the best programmers I know -- responsible for some *seriously* widespread libraries that pretty much swept the games industry -- always says: "try to write the calling/usage code before you write your library. Because if you as a future caller can't use the API you had in mind, it's crap."
And I tend to agree with him. There's a lot of stuff where that falls over, and I can only imagine it was because the spec/lib authors didn't really think through a real-world use-case for the stuff that they were turning out. If they did, they'd probably have made some changes. (Even Sun, who did a great job with some stuff like the Collections API, has plenty of these architectural brain-farts, particularly surrounding authentication and authorization. They built something super complex and flexible that nobody in their right mind can actually use, so everybody uses a third party lib or two which offer a simple, sane API.)
React actually isn't too bad, particularly compared to Angular or similar! As a functional programming fanboy, I dig the "data drives UI changes" model and the one-way data flow. But "native" DnD, file upload? It's pretty clear that nobody thought through how it is to be on the receiving end of those APIs before ship time. Is it doable? Sure. I've written plenty of code that deals with the "raw" DnD API. But it's damn sure not easy or pleasant! It's hack city because too much was left up to the browsers, and across three browsers you got four opinions on what events should look like. Not to mention the flat-out bugs that nobody cares about fixing because, fuck it, handling backwards compat. is hard! Yeah, you can do it (or use a lib if your use case fits it -- ours didn't), but for something that should be simple and should be a total non-issue, god*damn* did they make it complex.
The interesting thing about JS is that new additions are rarely straight-up terrible. They're usually just sort of "death of a thousand papercuts" bad. No one standout, but a bunch of really annoying bits that make the whole experience an exercise in pain compared to, say, writing for Cocoa or even .NET. I mean... I'll still do it, 'cause I need a paycheck. But for stuff on my own, I tend to shy away from painful APIs... and I imagine that sort of casual dev loss times however many opinionated programmers there are out there is a significantly non-zero number. Maybe not enough to get the ES spec authors to care, but it's still not something that they should take lightly. That's the thing about us old grumpy bastards... we're starting to move into "influencer" positions where we can shoo our junior members away from tech that we know is labour-intensive...
On the other hand, ESWhatever got just about everything right with lambdas, so it's very much a mixed bag. Not quite right on the JIT optimizations (at least on FF), but I'm sure they'll sort that out soon enough!
So yeah, go lambdas. React? Eh, getting there. Drag model? Fuck that noise.
Maybe I'm more optimistic, but I'll at least try briefly. Yeah, I'll give up if 30 seconds seems like it's not making progress, but fuck it I may as well try, right?
So the analogy I use is this:
A programming language is an instrument. I can use it to express ideas, but the instrument itself isn't the focus of my work. It's what I can create with the instrument So if I learn some language that alone doesn't mean much. It's what I do with the instrument (programming anguage) that makes the whole thing worthwhile. [If you're talking to an artist, replace "instrument" with "brush" or "sculpting tool".]
It's all about finding non-threatening parallels that the person you're speaking to can relate to. I mean, yeah, we can "not bother", but that doesn't really help the stereotype of the socially-ignorant, aloof nerd, does it?
Coinbase user here:
This should not be surprising to any user for two reasons:
1) Most of the *coins* are not anonymous. Or rather, they're not private. The ledgers are public, which means that:
2) You're only anonymous if you *never* do anything that connects to you. And as any Coinbase user knows, you have to supply a bunch of identifying and relatively-hard-to-fake info when you sign up. So as soon as you trade on their platform(s?) you are tying your coins to the info they have on you. If you don't want to give up your privacy in exchange for the services they provide, the time to bring out the pitchforks is during signup. After you give your SSN and/or gov. ID, you can't really feign shock and horror when they supply the info to the IRS just like they warned they might in their ToS. I mean, personally I'm cool with that since I do report my cap. gains to the IRS, but yeah, if you're dodging taxes I can see how this is terrible news. But the answer isn't "hate on Coinbase", it's "pay your damn taxes." Shit, cap. gains are a joke in the US anyways... it's not gonna eat into your mad Bitcoin profits that much to pay them... And if you think it is, read on:
3) There are anonymous ways to cash out BTC (not so sure about ETH or LTC). You'll pay a fat premium for them though, and honestly I can't think of any reason to do so aside from strict adherence to libertarian philosophies or ill-gotten gains. Personally my cryptocurrency involvement has been strictly speculation and all above-board, so I'm already de-anonymized as soon as I buy the coins. But I'll grant you if you mine them the equation might be different... if you do, I can at least see the argument for keeping your identity anonymous, if only because anonymity is a nice thing to have in general.
But yeah, no Coinbase user should be surprised by this. They all but come out and warn you that they'll report to your country's tax agency on demand during signup. You can't be pissed when they go and do just that!
You mean aside from Silence, which
1) Is entirely open source.
2) Is based on SMS, not IP (plus or minus, depending on whether you view SMS as being the more universally-available transport in your area)
3) Does not have a central server.
4) Supports easy, in-person key exchange.
5) Requires no Google anything, and is the default messaging app for several Android spins that have no Google integration.
That, magically, Blackberry is supposed to commit to and compete with a marketplace that has offered 1080p, N wireless, wimax, NFC, and an open API with a product that still requires a hobbled network of randomly unavailable email proxies for its devices explicit use.
Uh oh, it looks like you don't know what you're talking about.
The last devices to go through RIM's NOC were the old BlackBerries. The ones running BlackBerry 10 didn't, nor do the Android BlackBerries.
Or, since aspartame and sucralose are both GRAS (the former after decades of intense scrutiny), have a soda as often as you'd like provided it's a sugar-free one.
Welcome to 2012! as it was when compressed memory was introduced in Linux.
AA 191 isn't the best example to cite here.
While it's true that bad maintenance procedures led to the failure, the crash would have been avoidable if the pilot or FO had reacted correctly. Instead of increasing the throttle position of the remaining engines and using it to get the plane to where it could land safely, however, he reduced throttle and stalled out.
Maintenance caused the failure, but it was unquestionably pilot error that caused the crash.
I can easily afford even the most expensive Apple watch, no problem. I still think it's a near-useless waste of money...
.
... for me. So I won't buy one. If you want one, buy one. I might think it's a waste of money for you too, but then it's not my money, so why should I care?
Mod parent up. Zoe and some of her supporters aren't always innocent...
My only conclusion is that the frequent bailouts they've received has allowed them to institutionalize failures in their business models. We need to stop "Saving" industries/businesses.
Interesting, then, that you cite the Asian and Middle Eastern airlines as examples of the "right" way, as many of them are heavily subsidized.
What they haven't done is anything justifying this gigantic shitpile of hate and threats. Which exists because of misogyny. And you have to know you're lying if you claim otherwise.
You're right. They don't deserve threats. Few, if any, people do.
But they *have* done things that deserve media attention. Zoe in particular seems to have behaved rather reprehensibly in a couple different ways. (I have no idea about whether she sleeps around, and frankly I couldn't care less. I'm referring to the stores of her DMCA [ab]use, trying to muscle out competing game jams, etc.)
Professional gaming journalism sucks for many reasons (anyone remember Gamespot axing a reviewer because he didn't review a sponsoring game well enough?), and this is one of them.
We shouldn't give a free pass to crap journalistic standards and assholes who can't play nice in the community just because some other set of assholes threatened the first set.
As a counterpoint, Apple likes LLVM. They've modified it, and they're selling their proprietary fork as XCode. They've found great value in the freedom afforded them by the BSD license. The users of XCode, however, aren't seeing much benefit from the BSD license, because it never got to them. Apple ate it along the way.
As a correction to the counterpoint: Apple has paid for full time development of Clang + LLVM, as they use it. Despite being under no legal obligation to share the source back to the community they have done so; in essence donating their time and money to a BSD project. Their users benefit (by having a better compiler), and other Free software users benefit (by having a better compiler, plus the ability to build their own IDE around the same underying compiler tech. as Xcode).
There are plenty of examples of BSD software getting "eaten" by a proprietary stack, but much of Apple's usage is actually one of the worse examples you could provide, as they often do contribute quite a lot back.
The BSD people would be better if it weren't for the existance of copyright. That changes everything, Stallman understands that, I don't think the BSD people do.
Some of us do. We just don't all have the same zealous pursuit of Free software as others.
For me at least, I write stuff under the BSD license because it means that more developers can use my projects to build theirs. Simple as that. With the GPL or LGPL, the number of potential users shrinks.
In short, I want to write software for other developers regardless of whether they're committed to the cause of Free software. BSD lets me do that, GPL doesn't. Simple enough.
That's why it's GPLed, so the work of free software developer does not help those who want to shrink our freedom.
And that right there is the difference between GPL and BSD developers.
I develop stuff under the BSD license because I want to help people regardless of whether or not I view their projects as being congruent with my views on software distribution.
Just like you can buy a glorified desktop from IBM as a "tower server" rather than having to go to Lenovo
"Having to go to Lenovo"?
What exactly do you think those tower System x boxes are, anyways?
Unless things have changed I never paid Qt any attention because it is dually licensed and therefore not truly free software and its ownership keeps changing between commercial companies.
Last I checked Qt is "free" for open source projects but requires an expensive commercial license for anything else.
You last checked about a decade ago, then.
Here's how it works now (and has worked for a while now): Qt is Free. Not "free", but Free. It's under the LGPL. And the GPL.
"But it's owned by a commercial company, and they can just close off the source."
Nope. Still stays open. Back a few years ago, the KDE group got a special concession from Nokia. They set up the KDE Free Qt Foundation; if the commercial owners of Qt (Digia) stop releasing Qt under the LGPL and GPL3, KDE has the right to make the whole thing BSD. Irrevocably. And the agreement stays, even if Digia is sold, bought, etc. Read the link if you'd like to know more.
Basically, Qt is Free. If the owners ever stop releasing it for Free, KDE gets to release it under an even more Free license.
Qt has been Free for a while. Qt is still Free. It will remain Free
By any reasonable standard the roughly $400m spent on implementing this was incredibly excessive. If a private company had wanted to build this system for profit, it would have been done for under $100m.
And if it cost that much, it would be!
If, on the other hand, the numbers that your referencing came from... say... a couple journalists incorrect understanding of the total bid cost (based on both delivery and subsequent modifications and years of projected upkeep) and not instead from the actual cost to get what we currently have... ... well then in that case, it might not be such a sound strategy of attack.
The big mistake of the ACA was that it did not allow for the creation of privately run and owned exchanges.
The ACA didn't need to do anything -- that's the status quo. There's been literally nothing preventing something like that from being set up since the invention of the web.
But hey, since we know that the free market always comes up with the best solution, clearly the lack of such exchanges means that people didn't want something like this, right?
I never thought that desire for fiscal responsibility, constitutional rule, and limited concentration of power would be masked over with such a contrived caricature.
They're not.
The "Tea Party", on the other hand, is -- as well they should be.
It started as a populist movement with some people advocating the things that you stated. And that was a noble goal. But like many "grassroots" movements, it was co-opted by powerful (read: rich) influences, and has been steered instead towards their current position: a rabid, economically-ignorant (yet politically-involved) group for which the merits of an idea are trumped by whether or not their "team" endorsed it (Democrat: bad, "Republican": good.)
I have no love for either mainstream US party, and initially I thought that the Tea Party idea might end up developing into a viable third party platform with values closer to those of classic liberal philosophy. (Note: "liberal" here is used in its original form, not as a synonym for Democrat). Sadly, they turned out nothing like that -- and the folks who currently wear the label are worthy of the scorn they get.
It boggles the mind that their Chinese based operations can be so stupid as not to realize the damage they do to their brand every time this happens.
Not to be that guy, but the "Chinese-based" ThinkPad headquarters are located in Morrisville, North Carolina. USA.
I'm about to start thumbing through my US constitution, can someone give me a head start by suggesting where I read in the constitution about the federal govt being empowered to mold its citizens behavior through forced fines and taxes? I could swear I've never seen it there before, but I might have overlooked it.....
Are you actually asking, or just trying to get in a good old "government bad!" rant?
If you're actually asking, the answer is Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, the passage which reads:
Now you could argue that "welfare" shouldn't be interpreted for something like this -- and I wouldn't necessarily disagree -- but historically this clause has been interpreted as giving Congress the power to impose taxes for basically whatever they identify as a "common good".
We know what happens when a currency undergoes massive deflation - Germany in the 1930's or, more recently, Zimbabwe happens.
Well... at least you were modded "Interesting" instead of "Informative".
Both of those were examples of hyper-*inflation*, not *deflation*
By nicely you mean very little content compared to today. By nicely you mean not able to make money.
It's the obnoxious, intrusive and privacy-stealing ads that are the problem.
That's part of the problem yes.
The other part of the problem is that people such as yourself see "not able to make money" as part of the "problem" with the pre-hyper-commercialized web.
Not everything needs to be squeezed until it makes a buck, but as long as people keep seeing everything in the world with fucking dollar signs in their eyes the problem will continue.
Was part of the "problem" with gas handle pumps that they didn't have space for another ad? 'cause we solved that problem.
How about airliner tray tables? They couldn't make money, but we sure addressed that one.
And long stretches of road with greenery and shit visible? The issue there was it just wasn't making money! But don't worry, we fixed it.
Advertising is societal corrosion. It eats away at our experiences, it reshapes our thoughts, it homogenizes and neuters our culture, and it's all because people such as yourself see "not making any money" as an inherent problem with all sorts of aspects of our lives.
As opposed to actual Model Ms which are still made. With the same switch design. By many of the same workers. On the same machines.
http://www.unicomp.com/
Why bother "emulating" the buckling spring feel when you can get a brand new keyboard with real buckling springs. Oh, and it's made in the USA too!
(Also, they have keyboard layouts that offer the Ctrl key in the correct location. 'cause it's about damn time...)
> If it is legal to edit the source of a web page on the fly, why is it illegal for media boxes to skip advertisements on television programmes?
Because it's not illegal to do that.