Well, yes and no. Yes, there are some noted areas where JavsScript VMs leak memory, but its still possible for sites to leak it on their own, especially considering how common it is to leave a page up without closing the browser window.
"Yes, if you really want the bug fixed that much then you need to go the extra distance to help the developers reproduce it."
Its much easier to just switch to Opera. I have nothing riding on the success of Firefox. The ones that do are the Mozilla foundation. Coincidentally, since they have access to the source code, they are in the best position to find these bugs.
Also, most organizations put their products through stress tests which reveal these sorts of errors. If Mozilla's developers cannot find these rather common situations, I suspect Mozilla's tests need some work to reproduce working conditions.
"Well unless you expect someone to manually trace through every possible code path in the source code to look for the bug"
There are much easier ways to find performance problems that are difficult to reproduce than that.
"When given a choice between spending a month tracking down 1 hard to reproduce bug and actually fixing 50 easily reproducable bugs the 50 will win nearly every time."
Yes, thats a fundemental fault with open source software.
">Disregarding them on the assumption that the people reporting them are just making up lies about the product you know to be perfect isn't going to help anyone.
I don't think anyone's saying that. "
You must be new here. Welcome to the world of slashdot.
"
Images do actually take up a lot of memory - particularly since the browser probably holds a reference to the uncompressed bitmap, not the original image, so if you've got a lot of images open on a lot of tabs, you _will_ use a lot of memory. It's also possible that when that memory is released it is not actually reclaimed by the operating system untill such time as it's really needed, and depending on how you're measuring the memory usage of an application, it might appear that the memory has not been freed. That's what I mean by having a different understanding of what a leak is."
Who said it had to be a memory leak? Its perfectly possible the browser has just become too bloated and ends up using too much memory on its own. That doesn't make it any less of a problem.
Well what exactly do you expect people to do? Record every web site they visit, every key they press, every mouse movement they make, so that when the browser's memory usage eventually gets too high there is a clear record of what has happened? Its not like there is a secret key everyone (except apparently you, since you are one of the few people I know to claim to have never seen memory problems in Firefox) is pressing that magically causes the browser to hog ram. At least whenever I have seen it, it appears to be something that slowly creeps up over time, eventually getting to the point where the browser has to be restarted. Now some of that may well be in scripts within web pages that leak memory (many web developers seem to be unaware that you even can leak memory in JavaScript), but some of it is certainly in the browser.
I hate to break it to you, but not every software bug can be easily reproduced (especially when you are dealing with performance related bugs like this). You often have to deal with things that are sporadic at best. Disregarding them on the assumption that the people reporting them are just making up lies about the product you know to be perfect isn't going to help anyone.
"Talking about something about which you have little knowledge as if you do know all about it is just as irresponsible as lying."
Only if you know you have little knowledge on the subject matter. If they honestly believe they know everything about VOIP, then while it is fairly dumb of them, it certainly isn't intentional misleading, and nothing near outright lying.
He probably works for Vonage, and is trying to hurt Comcast's reputation.
On a more serious note, I've talked to many customer service reps who didn't know what they are talking about. I don't know that you can call it lying, it is perfectly possible this guy thought these things were true. Or maybe this guy is just a jerk who will be in the unemployment lines in a few weeks (every company has these, probably even Vonage). Bottom line is, you can't trust someone who calls you up during dinner to try to sell you a product. Just as you can't trust a single blogger that claims Comcast is running a massive campaign of disinformation because of a single experience.
"It is not when the language is interpreted and the security issue under discussion comes from the interpreter itself rather than code which was passed to it."
Well yes, the security hole in the story that started this conversation is in the interpreter, but we have moved beyond that after someone mentioned this as a reason he uses an extension to block JavaScript and another poster critized him for not using a feature because it was not implemented well in Firefox. I countered him by arguing that there were plenty of other reasons to avoid JavaScript unless it was absolutely neccessary.
"Are we still talking about JavaScript here? How do you leak memory in an interpreted language which doesn't expect you to allocate your own memory and doesn't expect you to explicitly pass pointers everywhere in the first place?"
Trust me, its perfectly possible to leak memory using JavaScript. In my short career as a web developer, I've seen it happen and even done it myself (though I like to think that each of those times, I was able to catch the problem before I ever checked it in). You ever open up Task Manager and see that your browser it taking up half a gig of memory? Often that is due to a memory leak somewhere in someone's JavaScript. One way is to create lots of objects and keep references so the garbage collector (or whatever it is called in the JS virtual machine) cannot get rid of them. The idea that only direct use of pointers can leak memory (and thus is only a problem for C developers) is a very dangerous fallacy.
"There wouldn't be a lot of point in JavaScript if it couldn't generate arbitary HTML."
Actually I was talking about web apps that do that, which can result in XSS problems.
"Anyone can write insecure code in any language - that's not the issue"
That absolutely is the issue. There is a difference between bad code writtn in JavaScript and bad code written in C. I for one am not in the habit of running arbitrary C programs I find lying around that may or may not crash my computer. Unfortunately, the way the web is set up today, that is not the case with Javascript. As long as you have it enabled (which you usually need in order to access many applications), your browser will run any JavaScript code it comes across.
Bottom line is, what the browser does when you visit a web page, any web page, needs to be fairly secure. You cannot just rely on the guy who wrote the app to know enough about programming (and many do not, often web designers are not the most experienced software developers) to not leak a shitload of memory or write arbitrary text in the HTML code.
Yes I do. Thats why I didn't say it would be an easy thing to do.
"Forget all the cool things you can do manipulating the DOM tree, it's back to web pages that have to reload the whole page every time someone clicks a button so you wnat to change the UI."
Oh boo hoo. You will have to wait a fraction of a second for the page to reload. Have people really become so spoiled that they can't use a site without JavaScript? Have you already forgotten what the web was like back in the "Web 1.0" days? Its not like submitting forms and reloading pages caused World War 3 to break out. And BTW, there are ways to get that functionality without JavaScript (and no, I am not talking about applets or flash).
"It's like "securing" online banking by going back to paper and phone."
I think most people would agree with me that having to use a standard web site without neat looking AJAX controls is not comparable with going all the way back to paper and phone.
And a scenario similar to yours would be a county going back to paper ballots after security flaws in computer systems were found. Guess what many districts are doing?
"As annoying as Javascript is..."
If you think the problem with JavaScript is in its annoyances, you have not been reading this thread.
"No... the only real way to fix it is to leave it there, so you can keep finding and fixing the problems. Removing something doesn't fix it... it removes it and all the functionality that it provides."
Well my point was that the technology itself is flawed, and that just patching up these problems as they come up will not solve anything. As I told the last guy, many of these problems in JavaScript are not implementation specific, but are problems in applications that use them. No amount of patches to the JavaScript VM will prevent applications from hogging resources or from explosing an XSS vulnerability. The fact that people think all the problems are because the guys working for Microsoft or Mozilla can't write a decent VM are part of the problem, they are the ones who usually leak memory or output user defined input or query params directly in the html. Adding in how common these security vulnerabilites (and the comments by Mozilla developers themselves on the quality of the VM code) just further illustrates the problems with allowing random sites to execute arbitrary code in your browser.
Even with an ideal implementation, memory leaks or endless loops or XSS vulnerabilites are perfectly possible. Those are not flaws in any browser's particular implementation, those are flaws in individual applications.
Well if you want to make it secure, the only real way to fix the javascript implementation is to remove it. Aside from all these vulnerabilities in the browser, problems in web applications like XSS vulnerabilites are all too common. And lets not forget about non-security issues such as memory leaks or endless loops that kill the browser. The plain fact of the matter is, I don't want to execute code from some random website. Just because I trust them enough to read their content does not mean I trust them enough to execute a program on their webpage.
Well, I would certainly oppose banning certain chemicals or organizing a boycott or mass protest based on insufficient evidence, but what is wrong with using it in a ranking system they post on their webpage? I can see how avoiding a certian chemical because of fears of its effects on the environment can be seen as being "environmentally friendly", which seems to be what Greenpeace is trying to rank. Yeah, they may have higher standards than most people would use, but I have news for you. Greenpeace is generally considered a fairly liberal environmental organization. Thats what they are known for.
Well aside from the differences in quality, the additional flexibility of CDs, and the fact you get an actual physical object, most people have been collecting CDs for years (wheras these online services have not even been around for more than a few years). I personally have built up a collection over the past 10 years or so, so the cost has been distributed over a long period of time. I didn't just buy them all last week so I could fill up my new mp3 player. No, I'm not suggesting you steal music, but if you want to build up a decent sized music collection just for a specific device, iTunes is a very un-economical solution.
Well if you don't like the subscription model of getting songs for your Zune (or whatever music player you buy, its not like Zune is the only alternative to iPods), you can still just buy them for $.99 like iTunes (actually I think if you go with Yahoo, you can get them for less) and play them on your Zune. Or you can just base your entire music collection on CDs you bought instead. These are not really unseperatable from the subscription music services.
I'm curious, as someone who is in "itunes for the long haul", what percentage of your music is really purchased from iTunes? I mean at a buck a song, maybe 5 megs a song, and a 30 gig player, you are looking at a couple grand just to fill a fraction of it.
"Becuase if you did, you would know that there are a lot of things you cannot test simply with JUnit"
Please tell me where I said you could automate everything. In fact I said no such thing. I specifically said you could automate a lot of it, thus a lot of the work does not have to be repeated for each platform. Thus adding another platform does not double your work.
Mine had one that was optional, had I been willing to pay the extra $200 for it (it was cheaper to buy a line out adapter and have it professionally installed, and that works better since all I wanted the tape deck for was to use it with my XM radio). I didn't see many cars that had one standard.
Well, aside from the fact that all three operating systems mentioned are Linux and thus the platform dependent issues you mention are rather moot...
Most of the errors that come up during testing are not platform dependent, but occur on any operating system. Thus you will find most of them on the first OS you test on, and it will account for most of the effort used in your testing. And furthermore, much of testing is usually automated, so aside from setting everything up, you only have to work on it once. You don't have to rewrite all your JUnits for each operating system.
And no, I don't really care what the wikipedia has to say on the matter. I have real experience in the subject.
"It's entirely different from trying to convert someone religiously--it's not like we're saying "If you don't use this software instead, you're going to HELL!!!"."
Actually I've seen many people out there who do treat open source software as a religous subject. Just google "Microsoft evil" or "Bill Gates devil" if you don't believe me.
"It's just saying "Hey, in case you're interested, there is software that's free, useful, and developed cooperatively for the fun of it, instead of by companies.""
Actually, thats not true at all. Much of the production level open source software (Linux, Apache, OpenOffice, Eclipse, Firefox, etc) are produced by people working for corporations. There are many people out there who get paid big bucks to develop OSS, it is not just written "for the fun of it".
So should we go on a crusade to convince people around the world to get pet lizards in order to stop cancer (like you are doing with regard to dogs in the workplace)?
"Instead of trying to wall ourselves off as a "special being" rather than a mammal that can share our space with other mammals of different genus, we should be trying to integrate them more into our lives. Just the $$$ saved would be enormous."
But while you have yet to show dogs in the workplace can provide any benefit, numerous people here have outlined why they could easily be harmful. The increased hygiene problems, distractions from one's work, and even people who would be unable to work at all due to extreme phobias or allergies... You have one potential, unsubstantiated benefit vs. numerous very real problems.
"The act of walking a dog on a leash on a regular basis can't hurt (unless you get hit by a truck while walking the dog, or some similar accident); just the break from the 8-hour-sit-in-one-place routine, along with the chance to get away from the desk and let the problem sort of "gel" in the back of your mind, should be enough of a financial and health incentive to encourage dogs in the corporate environment."
You don't need a dog to go for a walk. I know many people at work who like to take a break in the day to go to the gym or take a nice walk. The difference is that if they for some reason can't make it to the gym, no one is going to pee on the carpet.
Which, as I stated, had nothing to do with your claim (in fact, it even suggests the benefits from owning a pet continue even when you are at work and away from your dog, rendering the idea of keeping it with you to get maximum benefits wrong).
If you believe there is a study out there that does show dogs have a positive net effect (net effect is a key here, dogs decreasing the frequency of arguments doesn't do anything if they distract people from their work instead) on office productivity and employee health, then feel free to find it and at least give where/when it was published. But until you do, I maintain my BS call on your claim. And don't just tell us to spend all day in the library searching for a journal (which you have yet to identify) containing some study (whose title or authors or any other identifiable information you have yet to provide) that we really have no reason to believe exists. I mean what do you expect us to do? Start from scratch and read every study in every journal on psychology (there are a lot of them out there)?
I mean I could just say that I'm sure there is a study out there that says having a pet lizard decreases your risk for cancer, and just tell every who doubts me to go to the library and look for it.
I am not a physical therapist, but I believe the point of them is that they exercise your core muscles by forcing you to keep your balance while you sit (even if you think you are sitting still, your muscles will still be subconsiously stabilizing you), not just to force you to sit up straight. Then with those muscles strengthened, it will be easier to keep good posture.
No, you made the claim that pets help out in the workplace, you provide the backing research that establishes it. I'm not going to research every wild theory I heard on Internet message boards. You can't make some wild claim, come up a link to an irrelevant study (and then link to two other stories discussing that study to make it look like there is a lot of research on the subject), and then make other people come up with the research that will actually establish whether or not your claim is true. You have to provide the support for your claims yourself. If what you want isn't available online, fine. Cite the researcher, journal it was published in, date, etc., so others can go an verify your facts. Giving a vauge description just isn't enough. Or if you don't feel like doing all that work, just admit you are not sure about the details, but that you heard of a study in which dogs in meeting rooms increase productivity. We probably still won't believe you, but at least you havn't made a completley disingenuous argument like your previous post.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yes and no. Yes, there are some noted areas where JavsScript VMs leak memory, but its still possible for sites to leak it on their own, especially considering how common it is to leave a page up without closing the browser window.
"Yes, if you really want the bug fixed that much then you need to go the extra distance to help the developers reproduce it."
Its much easier to just switch to Opera. I have nothing riding on the success of Firefox. The ones that do are the Mozilla foundation. Coincidentally, since they have access to the source code, they are in the best position to find these bugs.
Also, most organizations put their products through stress tests which reveal these sorts of errors. If Mozilla's developers cannot find these rather common situations, I suspect Mozilla's tests need some work to reproduce working conditions.
"Well unless you expect someone to manually trace through every possible code path in the source code to look for the bug"
There are much easier ways to find performance problems that are difficult to reproduce than that.
"When given a choice between spending a month tracking down 1 hard to reproduce bug and actually fixing 50 easily reproducable bugs the 50 will win nearly every time."
Yes, thats a fundemental fault with open source software.
">Disregarding them on the assumption that the people reporting them are just making up lies about the product you know to be perfect isn't going to help anyone.
I don't think anyone's saying that. "
You must be new here. Welcome to the world of slashdot.
" Images do actually take up a lot of memory - particularly since the browser probably holds a reference to the uncompressed bitmap, not the original image, so if you've got a lot of images open on a lot of tabs, you _will_ use a lot of memory. It's also possible that when that memory is released it is not actually reclaimed by the operating system untill such time as it's really needed, and depending on how you're measuring the memory usage of an application, it might appear that the memory has not been freed. That's what I mean by having a different understanding of what a leak is."
Who said it had to be a memory leak? Its perfectly possible the browser has just become too bloated and ends up using too much memory on its own. That doesn't make it any less of a problem.
Well what exactly do you expect people to do? Record every web site they visit, every key they press, every mouse movement they make, so that when the browser's memory usage eventually gets too high there is a clear record of what has happened? Its not like there is a secret key everyone (except apparently you, since you are one of the few people I know to claim to have never seen memory problems in Firefox) is pressing that magically causes the browser to hog ram. At least whenever I have seen it, it appears to be something that slowly creeps up over time, eventually getting to the point where the browser has to be restarted. Now some of that may well be in scripts within web pages that leak memory (many web developers seem to be unaware that you even can leak memory in JavaScript), but some of it is certainly in the browser.
I hate to break it to you, but not every software bug can be easily reproduced (especially when you are dealing with performance related bugs like this). You often have to deal with things that are sporadic at best. Disregarding them on the assumption that the people reporting them are just making up lies about the product you know to be perfect isn't going to help anyone.
"As I may have said, ignorance is not a valid excuse."
Thats probably why I didn't offer it as an excuse, but as an alternative explanation to them lying to or intentionally misleading customers.
"Talking about something about which you have little knowledge as if you do know all about it is just as irresponsible as lying."
Only if you know you have little knowledge on the subject matter. If they honestly believe they know everything about VOIP, then while it is fairly dumb of them, it certainly isn't intentional misleading, and nothing near outright lying.
He probably works for Vonage, and is trying to hurt Comcast's reputation.
On a more serious note, I've talked to many customer service reps who didn't know what they are talking about. I don't know that you can call it lying, it is perfectly possible this guy thought these things were true. Or maybe this guy is just a jerk who will be in the unemployment lines in a few weeks (every company has these, probably even Vonage). Bottom line is, you can't trust someone who calls you up during dinner to try to sell you a product. Just as you can't trust a single blogger that claims Comcast is running a massive campaign of disinformation because of a single experience.
"It is not when the language is interpreted and the security issue under discussion comes from the interpreter itself rather than code which was passed to it."
Well yes, the security hole in the story that started this conversation is in the interpreter, but we have moved beyond that after someone mentioned this as a reason he uses an extension to block JavaScript and another poster critized him for not using a feature because it was not implemented well in Firefox. I countered him by arguing that there were plenty of other reasons to avoid JavaScript unless it was absolutely neccessary.
"Are we still talking about JavaScript here? How do you leak memory in an interpreted language which doesn't expect you to allocate your own memory and doesn't expect you to explicitly pass pointers everywhere in the first place?"
Trust me, its perfectly possible to leak memory using JavaScript. In my short career as a web developer, I've seen it happen and even done it myself (though I like to think that each of those times, I was able to catch the problem before I ever checked it in). You ever open up Task Manager and see that your browser it taking up half a gig of memory? Often that is due to a memory leak somewhere in someone's JavaScript. One way is to create lots of objects and keep references so the garbage collector (or whatever it is called in the JS virtual machine) cannot get rid of them. The idea that only direct use of pointers can leak memory (and thus is only a problem for C developers) is a very dangerous fallacy.
"There wouldn't be a lot of point in JavaScript if it couldn't generate arbitary HTML."
Actually I was talking about web apps that do that, which can result in XSS problems.
"Anyone can write insecure code in any language - that's not the issue"
That absolutely is the issue. There is a difference between bad code writtn in JavaScript and bad code written in C. I for one am not in the habit of running arbitrary C programs I find lying around that may or may not crash my computer. Unfortunately, the way the web is set up today, that is not the case with Javascript. As long as you have it enabled (which you usually need in order to access many applications), your browser will run any JavaScript code it comes across.
Bottom line is, what the browser does when you visit a web page, any web page, needs to be fairly secure. You cannot just rely on the guy who wrote the app to know enough about programming (and many do not, often web designers are not the most experienced software developers) to not leak a shitload of memory or write arbitrary text in the HTML code.
"Have you any idea how much that'd break?"
Yes I do. Thats why I didn't say it would be an easy thing to do.
"Forget all the cool things you can do manipulating the DOM tree, it's back to web pages that have to reload the whole page every time someone clicks a button so you wnat to change the UI."
Oh boo hoo. You will have to wait a fraction of a second for the page to reload. Have people really become so spoiled that they can't use a site without JavaScript? Have you already forgotten what the web was like back in the "Web 1.0" days? Its not like submitting forms and reloading pages caused World War 3 to break out. And BTW, there are ways to get that functionality without JavaScript (and no, I am not talking about applets or flash).
"It's like "securing" online banking by going back to paper and phone."
I think most people would agree with me that having to use a standard web site without neat looking AJAX controls is not comparable with going all the way back to paper and phone.
And a scenario similar to yours would be a county going back to paper ballots after security flaws in computer systems were found. Guess what many districts are doing?
"As annoying as Javascript is..."
If you think the problem with JavaScript is in its annoyances, you have not been reading this thread.
"No... the only real way to fix it is to leave it there, so you can keep finding and fixing the problems. Removing something doesn't fix it... it removes it and all the functionality that it provides."
Well my point was that the technology itself is flawed, and that just patching up these problems as they come up will not solve anything. As I told the last guy, many of these problems in JavaScript are not implementation specific, but are problems in applications that use them. No amount of patches to the JavaScript VM will prevent applications from hogging resources or from explosing an XSS vulnerability. The fact that people think all the problems are because the guys working for Microsoft or Mozilla can't write a decent VM are part of the problem, they are the ones who usually leak memory or output user defined input or query params directly in the html. Adding in how common these security vulnerabilites (and the comments by Mozilla developers themselves on the quality of the VM code) just further illustrates the problems with allowing random sites to execute arbitrary code in your browser.
Even with an ideal implementation, memory leaks or endless loops or XSS vulnerabilites are perfectly possible. Those are not flaws in any browser's particular implementation, those are flaws in individual applications.
Well if you want to make it secure, the only real way to fix the javascript implementation is to remove it. Aside from all these vulnerabilities in the browser, problems in web applications like XSS vulnerabilites are all too common. And lets not forget about non-security issues such as memory leaks or endless loops that kill the browser. The plain fact of the matter is, I don't want to execute code from some random website. Just because I trust them enough to read their content does not mean I trust them enough to execute a program on their webpage.
Well, I would certainly oppose banning certain chemicals or organizing a boycott or mass protest based on insufficient evidence, but what is wrong with using it in a ranking system they post on their webpage? I can see how avoiding a certian chemical because of fears of its effects on the environment can be seen as being "environmentally friendly", which seems to be what Greenpeace is trying to rank. Yeah, they may have higher standards than most people would use, but I have news for you. Greenpeace is generally considered a fairly liberal environmental organization. Thats what they are known for.
Well aside from the differences in quality, the additional flexibility of CDs, and the fact you get an actual physical object, most people have been collecting CDs for years (wheras these online services have not even been around for more than a few years). I personally have built up a collection over the past 10 years or so, so the cost has been distributed over a long period of time. I didn't just buy them all last week so I could fill up my new mp3 player. No, I'm not suggesting you steal music, but if you want to build up a decent sized music collection just for a specific device, iTunes is a very un-economical solution.
Well if you don't like the subscription model of getting songs for your Zune (or whatever music player you buy, its not like Zune is the only alternative to iPods), you can still just buy them for $.99 like iTunes (actually I think if you go with Yahoo, you can get them for less) and play them on your Zune. Or you can just base your entire music collection on CDs you bought instead. These are not really unseperatable from the subscription music services.
I'm curious, as someone who is in "itunes for the long haul", what percentage of your music is really purchased from iTunes? I mean at a buck a song, maybe 5 megs a song, and a 30 gig player, you are looking at a couple grand just to fill a fraction of it.
"The fact it was posted with the Monty Python foot should be enough for anyone to know it shouldn't be taken seriously."
So if they didn't include the Monty Python foot, people would have seriously thought there was a giant bug in Germany?
"Becuase if you did, you would know that there are a lot of things you cannot test simply with JUnit"
Please tell me where I said you could automate everything. In fact I said no such thing. I specifically said you could automate a lot of it, thus a lot of the work does not have to be repeated for each platform. Thus adding another platform does not double your work.
It took an existing idea and added a bunch of buzzwords to make it sound new and cool. Isn't that the very definition of "Web 2.0"?
Mine had one that was optional, had I been willing to pay the extra $200 for it (it was cheaper to buy a line out adapter and have it professionally installed, and that works better since all I wanted the tape deck for was to use it with my XM radio). I didn't see many cars that had one standard.
Well, aside from the fact that all three operating systems mentioned are Linux and thus the platform dependent issues you mention are rather moot...
Most of the errors that come up during testing are not platform dependent, but occur on any operating system. Thus you will find most of them on the first OS you test on, and it will account for most of the effort used in your testing. And furthermore, much of testing is usually automated, so aside from setting everything up, you only have to work on it once. You don't have to rewrite all your JUnits for each operating system.
And no, I don't really care what the wikipedia has to say on the matter. I have real experience in the subject.
"It's entirely different from trying to convert someone religiously--it's not like we're saying "If you don't use this software instead, you're going to HELL!!!"."
Actually I've seen many people out there who do treat open source software as a religous subject. Just google "Microsoft evil" or "Bill Gates devil" if you don't believe me.
"It's just saying "Hey, in case you're interested, there is software that's free, useful, and developed cooperatively for the fun of it, instead of by companies.""
Actually, thats not true at all. Much of the production level open source software (Linux, Apache, OpenOffice, Eclipse, Firefox, etc) are produced by people working for corporations. There are many people out there who get paid big bucks to develop OSS, it is not just written "for the fun of it".
"They could."
So should we go on a crusade to convince people around the world to get pet lizards in order to stop cancer (like you are doing with regard to dogs in the workplace)?
"Instead of trying to wall ourselves off as a "special being" rather than a mammal that can share our space with other mammals of different genus, we should be trying to integrate them more into our lives. Just the $$$ saved would be enormous."
But while you have yet to show dogs in the workplace can provide any benefit, numerous people here have outlined why they could easily be harmful. The increased hygiene problems, distractions from one's work, and even people who would be unable to work at all due to extreme phobias or allergies... You have one potential, unsubstantiated benefit vs. numerous very real problems.
"The act of walking a dog on a leash on a regular basis can't hurt (unless you get hit by a truck while walking the dog, or some similar accident); just the break from the 8-hour-sit-in-one-place routine, along with the chance to get away from the desk and let the problem sort of "gel" in the back of your mind, should be enough of a financial and health incentive to encourage dogs in the corporate environment."
You don't need a dog to go for a walk. I know many people at work who like to take a break in the day to go to the gym or take a nice walk. The difference is that if they for some reason can't make it to the gym, no one is going to pee on the carpet.
"Hey, I included links to one study"
Which, as I stated, had nothing to do with your claim (in fact, it even suggests the benefits from owning a pet continue even when you are at work and away from your dog, rendering the idea of keeping it with you to get maximum benefits wrong).
If you believe there is a study out there that does show dogs have a positive net effect (net effect is a key here, dogs decreasing the frequency of arguments doesn't do anything if they distract people from their work instead) on office productivity and employee health, then feel free to find it and at least give where/when it was published. But until you do, I maintain my BS call on your claim. And don't just tell us to spend all day in the library searching for a journal (which you have yet to identify) containing some study (whose title or authors or any other identifiable information you have yet to provide) that we really have no reason to believe exists. I mean what do you expect us to do? Start from scratch and read every study in every journal on psychology (there are a lot of them out there)?
I mean I could just say that I'm sure there is a study out there that says having a pet lizard decreases your risk for cancer, and just tell every who doubts me to go to the library and look for it.
I am not a physical therapist, but I believe the point of them is that they exercise your core muscles by forcing you to keep your balance while you sit (even if you think you are sitting still, your muscles will still be subconsiously stabilizing you), not just to force you to sit up straight. Then with those muscles strengthened, it will be easier to keep good posture.
No, you made the claim that pets help out in the workplace, you provide the backing research that establishes it. I'm not going to research every wild theory I heard on Internet message boards. You can't make some wild claim, come up a link to an irrelevant study (and then link to two other stories discussing that study to make it look like there is a lot of research on the subject), and then make other people come up with the research that will actually establish whether or not your claim is true. You have to provide the support for your claims yourself. If what you want isn't available online, fine. Cite the researcher, journal it was published in, date, etc., so others can go an verify your facts. Giving a vauge description just isn't enough. Or if you don't feel like doing all that work, just admit you are not sure about the details, but that you heard of a study in which dogs in meeting rooms increase productivity. We probably still won't believe you, but at least you havn't made a completley disingenuous argument like your previous post.