When my Internet gets "choppy" and starts dropping more than 1-2% of packets, most "non-simple" web sites including/. slow down horribly. Simple ones slow down tolerably.
This is one reason (accessibility for the blind is another) why all web sites must have a "simple" version for those who need it.
Logged in users should be able to use any "version" of the Slashdot look-and-feel that hasn't already been permanently retired, subject to things like "new features may not be added to deprecated "versions" and "deprecated versions may not work well or look good on devices/screen sizes they weren't designed for."
In short, don't take away any "version" that already exists until long after it's officially "deprecated," and don't take it away until the number of users in the last few months has dropped below a very small percentage of logged-in users.
And always, always, maintain a "simple version" that can work with a plain-old mid-1990s-standards web browser which provides at least the basic capabilities like logging in, reading, posting, and submitting stories. This isn't just for universal compatibility, but it's also to make sure that blind people or those who are on very slow or erratic internet connections can still participate. After all, when I'm connecting to Slashdot from outer space or Antarctica, my connection probably won't be the best and I'll be looking for simplicity over functionality.
Non-logged in versions should always have the ability to click on a link called "simple" or "basic" or type in a specific URL modifier like...?version=simple to get the simple interface. Hehe, better yet, call it ?version=HTML2.0:).
Nuclear is far from clean, it's just a different kind of dirty.
Solar/wind/hydro/etc. are "relatively" clean and may be "literally" non-polluting once the plant is built, but they rarely have anything close to zero ecological impact.
One nearly-inherent aspect of renewables is that they won't "run out" like fossil fuels and uranium. Some carbon-based fuels, such as burning fast-growing plants, are "renewable" in this sense but are far from pollution-free.
I won't pay for "general news" because by definition other news outlets could pick it up if they wanted to. If no major news outlet picks it up then it's either not important or not of general interest.
I would consider paying for specialized-interest news like hyper-local news, very-niche-interest news ("Lintball Newsletter," etc. - and yes I just made that up), and good analysis/opinion.
Bottom line: If you are a general-interest online newspaper, unless you've got some local opinion/analysis that I find very attractive or you've got local content that other online sources simply aren't interested in carrying because it's not local to them, I'm not going to give you money. As for local content, it will have to be of specific interest to me. If you are my hometown-as-a-kid paper, the paper of a town or a loved one lives in now, or a town I'm considering moving to, we'll talk. Otherwise, if you want me to see your ads, don't charge me for content.
If you are my current hometown paper, I can get local content for free on the radio or TV, so you better have good opinion/analysis for me to want to give you money. However, I've got a deal for you: I'll pay $3/month if you give me $3 in coupons to buy a print paper. I'll also be more likely to buy a print paper if it comes with a 48-hour pass to access to a PDF of that day's paper and copy-and-paste-able text and images of every article in that day's paper. That will save me the trouble of scanning the paper when I want to send a copy to my Aunt in Boise (yes, I made that up too - I don't have an Aunt in Boise).
Oh wait, I just read the freaking article, and that's exactly what they are using.
The only question I have is "Why is the industry just now getting around to this? With respect to broadcast-FM non-satellite radio, wasn't this technology available in 1997 when the Emergency Alert System replaced the Emergency Broadcast System?"
They used lead solder back in those days, assuming the floppy drive isn't too dusty and your boot disk is intact.
When Steve Jobs died I booted a mid-80s Mac and it came up fine. MacPaint (source code here) was an amazing feat given that it had to run in 128KB (really 192KB - like most Mac applications of its time, it made extensive use of the code that was in the 64KB of ROM).
So was the "disk copy" program that could copy a 400KB (400,000 byte) disk in only 4 passes. It stole a large chunk of the 22KB RAM normally allocated to video to do it.
So his voice is about to crack, he's skinny, and no woman would dare date him for fear of going to prison? What adult wants that?
Yeah, 12 was kind of fun when the bullies weren't around, but even if I had a magic wand I wouldn't want to revisit that age again, at least not for more than a few days.
Do you know what else came in green and amber? 1970s/1980s monochrome computer monitors. Yes, I'm a nerd. But this is Slashdot, so you already knew that.
I guess the terms is so new that its definition is evolving. From what I've been exposed to, "gender" and "sex" (as a biological state, not the thing you do in the bedroom) are the same thing. Sexual orientation is who you prefer to have sexual or romantic relations with. Gender identity or sexual identity is your "mental sex." Those are three different concepts.
Absent qualifying words or context, "sexual minority" and "gender minority" have their obvious meaning - someone who is of a biological sex that is neither a majority nor, if there is no majority, a plurality. Technically speaking, either males or females are probably a majority or plurality, leaving everyone else a minority. Practically speaking (and absent high levels of gender-specific childhood deaths e.g. female infanticide) males and females are approximately equal in numbers, so calling either one a "gender minority" is kind of silly. That leaves those who are neither unambiguously male nor unambiguously female.
You can legitimately argue that those whose gender identity doesn't match their body are also gender minorities if you take the view that the brain (vs. the mind) has a "gender." One day this will be "settled science" but I don't think it's quite there yet.
However, I don't think you can make the same argument about a person who is male or female: A gay man is almost always a man in his genes, in his reproductive organs, and in his head. A lesbian woman is almost always a woman in her genes, her reproductive organs, and in her head.
Another distinct concept is the group of people who are disenfranchised or dis-empowered merely because of their gender, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation. You don't have to be a minority to fall into this category: In many parts of the world females are technically a majority but hold relatively little political power.
At probably less than 1% of the population, people with chromosomes other than XY or XX are the real gender minorities.
Them and people whose reproductive biology is neither clearly male nor clearly female and people whose biology is clearly one gender but their chromosomes are the other gender.
I would suggest all states to take up legislation putting an end to deed restrictions after a reasonable number of years. Your thoughts?
This is a good idea in principle but unless existing covenants were grandfathered in, it would be a political non-starter and subject to expensive court challenges, challenges the state might very well lose.
The future social contract will probably evolve into something like this:
"When you go to a restaurant, leave your animals at home. Bona fide medically necessary animals like guide dogs are exempt."
"When you go to a movie or the changing rooms at the local swimming pool, turn off your cameras or at least don't point them at the screen during a movie. Bona fide medical technology used for bona fide medical reasons* is exempt."
*If you are blind man using a camera to see and you turn on the recording feature in the movie theater so you can upload it to the Internet later, that's not a bona fide medical reason.
In some states they would've had the right to sue the property owner, in this case the bank, to compel compliance.
I don't think bank presidents like being hauled into court for contempt.
When I moved I made a point of finding a place without a HOA
I feel the same way you do. In some areas, it's hard to avoid HOAs and restrictive covenants. Where it's unavoidable or the only non-HOA homes are undesirable for other reasons, I factor in the reduction in my ability to enjoy my property when I make my bid.
The deed restrictions may read something like "Must be a member of the HOA" AND "must abide by these other deed restrictions like no above-ground utilities."
Even if the HOA is dissolved, the remaining deed restrictions remain in force, and the property owners of the properties that were in the now-defunct HOA may still have standing to take you to court to enforce them. I say "may" - if the HOA extended over a mile in width, the guy a mile away from you may not have standing if your violating the covenant doesn't affect his enjoyment of his property or the value of the property. But your next-door neighbor and the guy down the block almost certainly would have a valid claim.
The *only* way where you can get away with changing the CC&R's without 100% of the lot owners agreeing to it is *if* the existing CC&R's have a way to edit them that doesn't require everybody to agree.
It's not going to happen in this case, but there are at least two other ways to change a covenant without the agreement of all or any property owners: * Invalidate the section you want removed by statute * Invalidate the section you want removed by court action
Unless the proponent of the change is politically connected, the first is a non-starter.
Unless the proponent of the change is legally correct AND has deep enough pockets to file suit and see it through the appeals process, the second is a non-starter.
Some 20th-century examples of both are the Congressional actions and federal-court cases in the Civil-Rights Era (roughly the 1950s to the 1970s) that removed race-based deed restrictions from properties all across America.
But back to the topic at hand: I agree with you: As for getting the "no above ground utilities" deed restrictions changed by passing a city ordinance or state law or getting a court to invalidate it, "good luck with that," 'cause it ain't gonna happen.
We accept the things like General and Special Relativity and the tweaks and add-on theories that came afterwards because they are the best theories we have for explaining what we see, and they haven't been dis-proven yet, at least not to the satisfaction of the scientific community.
But what if we are wrong? What if there is evidence we haven't seen that disproves the theories of the universe that we - meaning the general scientific consensus - agree are probably true?
Don't laugh, it happened to Newton's theories when it became possible to measure things that went very fast or which were very small.
In short, the "if this, then that" statement in the summary is not an "if" that we should take for granted.
Slashdot Mirror
When my Internet gets "choppy" and starts dropping more than 1-2% of packets, most "non-simple" web sites including /. slow down horribly. Simple ones slow down tolerably.
This is one reason (accessibility for the blind is another) why all web sites must have a "simple" version for those who need it.
Logged in users should be able to use any "version" of the Slashdot look-and-feel that hasn't already been permanently retired, subject to things like "new features may not be added to deprecated "versions" and "deprecated versions may not work well or look good on devices/screen sizes they weren't designed for."
In short, don't take away any "version" that already exists until long after it's officially "deprecated," and don't take it away until the number of users in the last few months has dropped below a very small percentage of logged-in users.
And always, always, maintain a "simple version" that can work with a plain-old mid-1990s-standards web browser which provides at least the basic capabilities like logging in, reading, posting, and submitting stories. This isn't just for universal compatibility, but it's also to make sure that blind people or those who are on very slow or erratic internet connections can still participate. After all, when I'm connecting to Slashdot from outer space or Antarctica, my connection probably won't be the best and I'll be looking for simplicity over functionality.
Non-logged in versions should always have the ability to click on a link called "simple" or "basic" or type in a specific URL modifier like ...?version=simple to get the simple interface. Hehe, better yet, call it ?version=HTML2.0 :).
... cigarettes?
Nuclear is far from clean, it's just a different kind of dirty.
Solar/wind/hydro/etc. are "relatively" clean and may be "literally" non-polluting once the plant is built, but they rarely have anything close to zero ecological impact.
One nearly-inherent aspect of renewables is that they won't "run out" like fossil fuels and uranium. Some carbon-based fuels, such as burning fast-growing plants, are "renewable" in this sense but are far from pollution-free.
I won't pay for "general news" because by definition other news outlets could pick it up if they wanted to. If no major news outlet picks it up then it's either not important or not of general interest.
I would consider paying for specialized-interest news like hyper-local news, very-niche-interest news ("Lintball Newsletter," etc. - and yes I just made that up), and good analysis/opinion.
Bottom line: If you are a general-interest online newspaper, unless you've got some local opinion/analysis that I find very attractive or you've got local content that other online sources simply aren't interested in carrying because it's not local to them, I'm not going to give you money. As for local content, it will have to be of specific interest to me. If you are my hometown-as-a-kid paper, the paper of a town or a loved one lives in now, or a town I'm considering moving to, we'll talk. Otherwise, if you want me to see your ads, don't charge me for content.
If you are my current hometown paper, I can get local content for free on the radio or TV, so you better have good opinion/analysis for me to want to give you money. However, I've got a deal for you: I'll pay $3/month if you give me $3 in coupons to buy a print paper. I'll also be more likely to buy a print paper if it comes with a 48-hour pass to access to a PDF of that day's paper and copy-and-paste-able text and images of every article in that day's paper. That will save me the trouble of scanning the paper when I want to send a copy to my Aunt in Boise (yes, I made that up too - I don't have an Aunt in Boise).
Oh wait, I just read the freaking article, and that's exactly what they are using.
The only question I have is "Why is the industry just now getting around to this? With respect to broadcast-FM non-satellite radio, wasn't this technology available in 1997 when the Emergency Alert System replaced the Emergency Broadcast System?"
They used lead solder back in those days, assuming the floppy drive isn't too dusty and your boot disk is intact.
When Steve Jobs died I booted a mid-80s Mac and it came up fine. MacPaint (source code here) was an amazing feat given that it had to run in 128KB (really 192KB - like most Mac applications of its time, it made extensive use of the code that was in the 64KB of ROM).
So was the "disk copy" program that could copy a 400KB (400,000 byte) disk in only 4 passes. It stole a large chunk of the 22KB RAM normally allocated to video to do it.
It's just a matter of when. Perhaps long after I die, perhaps even later.
I now have the body of a 12 year old
So his voice is about to crack, he's skinny, and no woman would dare date him for fear of going to prison? What adult wants that?
Yeah, 12 was kind of fun when the bullies weren't around, but even if I had a magic wand I wouldn't want to revisit that age again, at least not for more than a few days.
Amber? are people too.
Do you know what else came in green and amber? 1970s/1980s monochrome computer monitors. Yes, I'm a nerd. But this is Slashdot, so you already knew that.
I guess the terms is so new that its definition is evolving. From what I've been exposed to, "gender" and "sex" (as a biological state, not the thing you do in the bedroom) are the same thing. Sexual orientation is who you prefer to have sexual or romantic relations with. Gender identity or sexual identity is your "mental sex." Those are three different concepts.
Absent qualifying words or context, "sexual minority" and "gender minority" have their obvious meaning - someone who is of a biological sex that is neither a majority nor, if there is no majority, a plurality. Technically speaking, either males or females are probably a majority or plurality, leaving everyone else a minority. Practically speaking (and absent high levels of gender-specific childhood deaths e.g. female infanticide) males and females are approximately equal in numbers, so calling either one a "gender minority" is kind of silly. That leaves those who are neither unambiguously male nor unambiguously female.
You can legitimately argue that those whose gender identity doesn't match their body are also gender minorities if you take the view that the brain (vs. the mind) has a "gender." One day this will be "settled science" but I don't think it's quite there yet.
However, I don't think you can make the same argument about a person who is male or female: A gay man is almost always a man in his genes, in his reproductive organs, and in his head. A lesbian woman is almost always a woman in her genes, her reproductive organs, and in her head.
Another distinct concept is the group of people who are disenfranchised or dis-empowered merely because of their gender, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation. You don't have to be a minority to fall into this category: In many parts of the world females are technically a majority but hold relatively little political power.
At probably less than 1% of the population, people with chromosomes other than XY or XX are the real gender minorities.
Them and people whose reproductive biology is neither clearly male nor clearly female and people whose biology is clearly one gender but their chromosomes are the other gender.
These are the real gender minorities.
Pity the poor guy named A. D. Mindell who wants to use his real name on a Dell-oriented forum, but they don't allow spaces or punctuation.
They want their mushrooms back.
I would suggest all states to take up legislation putting an end to deed restrictions after a reasonable number of years. Your thoughts?
This is a good idea in principle but unless existing covenants were grandfathered in, it would be a political non-starter and subject to expensive court challenges, challenges the state might very well lose.
"If it was revealed their sales staff ate human body parts and molested captive giant squid
Keep your cotton-pickin' hands off me and my configuration files!
The future social contract will probably evolve into something like this:
"When you go to a restaurant, leave your animals at home. Bona fide medically necessary animals like guide dogs are exempt."
"When you go to a movie or the changing rooms at the local swimming pool, turn off your cameras or at least don't point them at the screen during a movie. Bona fide medical technology used for bona fide medical reasons* is exempt."
*If you are blind man using a camera to see and you turn on the recording feature in the movie theater so you can upload it to the Internet later, that's not a bona fide medical reason.
I'm also smart enough to know that if you're gonna habitually fuck a farm animal, you keep that fucker in the house!
And you know this because ....???
In some states they would've had the right to sue the property owner, in this case the bank, to compel compliance.
I don't think bank presidents like being hauled into court for contempt.
When I moved I made a point of finding a place without a HOA
I feel the same way you do. In some areas, it's hard to avoid HOAs and restrictive covenants. Where it's unavoidable or the only non-HOA homes are undesirable for other reasons, I factor in the reduction in my ability to enjoy my property when I make my bid.
Restraints on alienation based on ethnicity are illegal.
When the grandparent post said
Sometimes even the allowed colors of home purchasers are controlled.
I assume "Sometimes" meant "before such restrictions were invalidated."
I think he was talking to people with time machines that went forwards AND backwards.
The deed restrictions may read something like "Must be a member of the HOA" AND "must abide by these other deed restrictions like no above-ground utilities."
Even if the HOA is dissolved, the remaining deed restrictions remain in force, and the property owners of the properties that were in the now-defunct HOA may still have standing to take you to court to enforce them. I say "may" - if the HOA extended over a mile in width, the guy a mile away from you may not have standing if your violating the covenant doesn't affect his enjoyment of his property or the value of the property. But your next-door neighbor and the guy down the block almost certainly would have a valid claim.
The *only* way where you can get away with changing the CC&R's without 100% of the lot owners agreeing to it is *if* the existing CC&R's have a way to edit them that doesn't require everybody to agree.
It's not going to happen in this case, but there are at least two other ways to change a covenant without the agreement of all or any property owners:
* Invalidate the section you want removed by statute
* Invalidate the section you want removed by court action
Unless the proponent of the change is politically connected, the first is a non-starter.
Unless the proponent of the change is legally correct AND has deep enough pockets to file suit and see it through the appeals process, the second is a non-starter.
Some 20th-century examples of both are the Congressional actions and federal-court cases in the Civil-Rights Era (roughly the 1950s to the 1970s) that removed race-based deed restrictions from properties all across America.
But back to the topic at hand: I agree with you: As for getting the "no above ground utilities" deed restrictions changed by passing a city ordinance or state law or getting a court to invalidate it, "good luck with that," 'cause it ain't gonna happen.
Yes, but only if this guy orders it to.
Someone once said that World War Four would be fought with spears and stones or some such.
We accept the things like General and Special Relativity and the tweaks and add-on theories that came afterwards because they are the best theories we have for explaining what we see, and they haven't been dis-proven yet, at least not to the satisfaction of the scientific community.
But what if we are wrong? What if there is evidence we haven't seen that disproves the theories of the universe that we - meaning the general scientific consensus - agree are probably true?
Don't laugh, it happened to Newton's theories when it became possible to measure things that went very fast or which were very small.
In short, the "if this, then that" statement in the summary is not an "if" that we should take for granted.