Read about how the scientists attributed as having agreed upon the existence of global warming were named without their consent, nor had they voiced any such affirmation on the matter.
Global warming is a fallacy; a red herring being used to line pockets and consolidate power in global policy bodies like the UN. If you have actually bothered to step outside recently or looked at temperature trends for the past several years, you'd notice we are amidst a global cooling trend. This has nothing to do with greenhouse gases. It is due to lower levels of solar output, particularly in relation to sunspot activity.
Oh, and by the way, the new scare term is "global climate change".
Carbon footprint is the son of the-artist-formerly-known-as-global-warming and inheritor to the throne of red herrings. Carbon dioxide, which is purported to be at the center of the crisis, is a life gas. Many people might argue that having stuff around that promotes life is a good thing. More carbon dioxide contributes to greater plant growth and oxygen production, which helps us be more active and think more clearly. Carbon dioxide is at the lowest levels it has been in recorded history. It is hardly a problem. If anything, we need more carbon dioxide, and less scare-mongering pseudo-science... and maybe a refresher in seventh grade earth sciences.
That said, we have a planet awash with hydrocarbons, wind, solar radiation, and water. All of these are energy sources we can harness today and simply don't, or constrain our production of raw material or energy derived from those sources.
Look, we are on a planet which has teamed with life for millions of years. Given that oil derives from living matter, it is inconceivable that we have managed to locate or use anywhere near all of it in the last century. Even if this were not the case, we have a plethora of known oil reserves we've yet to tap which have been put off limits to drilling for little or no reason, other than the duplicity of politicians and oil companies. Have a look at the U.S. National Geological Survey maps.
Water is a hydrogen fuel storage source with its own combustive catalyst, oxygen, built right in. I mean, we drink what could potentially be our most inexhaustible terrestrial fuel source. The planet is more than two-thirds covered with ocean, and we have even more locked up in tundra ice, freshwater, and cloud systems. It's as insane we don't make use of it as it is that we don't use more steam-powered engines capable of more work for less energy.
Supplemented with wind turbines and solar converters, we'd be so completely independent of energy concerns that we wouldn't even be having this discussion on power savings.
You want to save some energy, get a hybrid conversion kit for you vehicle that lets it use water as a supplemental fuel source. Get a small wind turbine or solar panels and pull your deficit off the grid during your peak usages and sell power to the electric company by pushing your excess out to the grid during low usage. Insulate, insulate, insulate.
Oh, and anyone who doesn't like me exhaling because it raises my carbon footprint and contributes to global warming... well, they can just hold it in until they are blue in the face.
What I don't get is why people even bothered with IE 6 "standards mode"?
Microsoft's documentation and documented quirks/workaround all over the web clearly laid out the case for using quirks mode for both IE 5 and 6 and waiting until at least IE 7 came out to implement any sort of "standards mode" rendering shift using the DOCTYPE switch.
Microsoft said quirks mode WOULD NOT CHANGE and that standards mode WOULD CHANGE with new browser versions. It was a NO BRAINER for any (competent) developer wanting their pages not to break with IE 7 or other future IE release to induce quirks mode (IE 5 rendering) in IE 6 using an HTML comment or XML processing instruction before the strict DOCTYPE and then using standards-compliant markup and CSS, with a separate compatibility stylesheet for fixing browser bugs targeted specifically to "lte IE 6" using conditional comments.
People having done this wouldn't have had to even touch the HTML again when/if a new IE browser version came out. The pages would render in standards-compliant mode for all current and future browsers that followed standards. The hacks/compatibility workarounds for non-standard IE issues would already have been dutifully contained and locked to the specific browser versions with the issues.
It's funny how it worked out that IE 7 suddenly started to render XHTML pages like this PROPERLY in standards mode, having fixed the XML processing instruction bug that triggered the IE 5/6 quirks mode for XHTML strict documents. HTML pages using the HTML comment before the DOCTYPE still render properly and in quirks mode in IE 7. All of this WITHOUT CHANGING ANYTHING.
There is absolutely no reason pages should have broken when IE 7 came out if developers were competent to begin with and coded defensively. I mean, come on, the information has been available since IE 6 came out and quirks mode rendering workarounds have been increasingly available throughout this time for use in your conditional-comments targeted stylesheets.
On another note: it is the very people at A List Apart who recommended this ignorant meta tag proposal to Microsoft, that were also responsible for teaching so many unsuspecting novices to standards-compliant web development to trigger and use IE 6 "standards mode" knowing full well that that mode was far from compliant and was subject to future breakage as the mode was updated with each future IE release (at least until IE caught up to modern standards-based rendering levels).
I mean, do you think their solution could possibly be well-conceived when their foresight is obviously so bad?
Come on, Microsoft! Open up a discussion on this issue before blindly taking the first potential solution that falls in your lap and forcing us web developers and customers whom are both yours and ours to deal with the potentially massive blowback!
The Answer: Value Your People, Value Yourself
on
Understanding Burnout
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
From the abstract:
Probably the most surprising thing learned from reading this article is that work load is not the best predictor of burnout. Instead it has more to do with perceived 'return on investment' of effort.
How this is a surprise is precisely the root of the problem.
The biggest reason for burnout, from the perspective of one who has suffered a lot of burnout, is almost entirely the return on investment issue.
When you work long, hard, thankless hours, or do work that others have no idea how to do, and do not get either of adequate recognition, appropriate remuneration, or personal satisfaction, it piles on you until, one day, you end up looking at where you've been and where you are now, and see that your standard of living is not any better (possibly worse), or that you don't have the respect or position you feel you have earned, or you simply do not feel that you are achieving what matters to you in your life. And on that day, you feel either inadequate, slighted, or unappreciated. The result, in all of those cases, is that you burn out.
While some people might tell you to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and take life by the horns, it is not always so easy to do --- especially if you try and try and nothing seems to change. It can be demoralizing at best, and the peception of getting nowhere just makes it ever harder to pick yourself up and try again.
The answer for employers who want to stem the effects of burnout is to help their employees achieve meaningful, real satisfaction from their work.
Providing wages that (at least) keep up with cost of living, making available opportunities to advance one's position, offering employees ways to share in the profits of their work, supporting employee achievement of what is important to them, giving them recognition and appreciation for their contributions, and simply respecting them as people are the tools you need. A nice chair doesn't hurt, but it doesn't stop the burnout. Burnout is more psychological than physical.
Now, employers don't have to just give things to their employees on a silver platter, either. It's all about reciprocating peoples' efforts in a meaningful way. Unless they're starving, a holiday turkey once a year isn't as meaningful as some people think. Neither is a gold watch after thirty or more years of work. If employees can look back just one year and honestly say to themselves that they are better off now and are on the road to achieivng what is important to them, you'll see the burnout rate go down and the productivity rate go up (probably exponentially).
Most people actually thrive on a challange, but only when the potential reward is right. While stress plays a factor in burnout, it is simply contributing to the phychological complications that are at the root of the problem. A sense of achievement is a very real queller of stress. People can handle schedules, deadlines, and crazy hours. It just has to be worth it to them.
Now, if you are the one suffering from burnout, what you need to do is to take proactive measures to accomplish something meaningful in your life. It can be all at once or baby steps. It doesn't matter which. It doesn't have to contibute to getting that mansion on the beach, or the expensive sports car, or even popularity and fame. You just need something to reaffirm that you are capable of getting to where you want to be in life and that you are getting something from your work --- that you are not just a slave to the grind.
If your mind constantly wanders to money issues, look for a better income opportunity or some supplemental income opportunities, like moonlighting, freelancing, or merchandising. If you yearn for more respect, appreciation, or personal satisfaction, you would be amazed how much you get from doing some charity work or pitching in to help out with community projects. If you just need to get some inkling of enjoyment from what you've earned instead of funnel
"Terra" is generic "ground" in Latin. During the height of this word's popular usage, no distinction was made between the ground and the surface of the planet itself, just as we sometimes refer to soil as "earth".
"Luna" is generic "moon" in Latin. During the height of this word's popular usage, no distinction was made between the moon orbiting our planet and a moon orbiting any other body in space, since only our one moon was conclusively known to exist.
Other variants for "Earth" are "Tellur" (ancient Latin form of modern Latin derivitive "Terra") and "Gaia" (Greek). Another variant for "The Moon" is "Selene" (Greek).
The significance of English vs. Latin names:
English is very prevalent in modern technical/scientific disciplines due to its articulative flexibility through use of the root/prefix/suffix language construction derived from its Romantic/Latin heritage. Since Latin proper has mostly been replaced in the western world by Romantic language variants and dialects, English has become the language of much normative information in scientific circles. The reason is simple: articulative ability in a commonspeak language.
However, as in medicine, Latin is used as a disambiguation language. That is, one which contrasts sharply with commonspeak so as to instantly confer information without the ambiguities introduced by commonspeak language, such as homonyms or figures of speech. Hence, in scientific documentation, such as astronomical data, Latin designations are used to disambiguate the meaning of things, like planet names and moons, while providing a clear base for universally translating the correct meaning to other languages as needed for native language comprehension.
Interesting sidenotes:
Luna, root word for common word "lunatic" - one who is crazed due to the influence of our planet's moon
Terra, phrase root for common phrase "Terra Firma" - solid ground
if I make a basic software package[,]... I can then release it to the community, where someone else will likely improve it....Remember, software itself doesn't really have any value --
raehl
... liken this to charging, convicting, and sentencing, for potential murder, everyone in possession of an object capable of rendering harm.
They are effectively taxing on the basis of potential, rather than executing their obvious duties as lawmakers in overhauling the copyright laws made obsolete by ubiquitous technology. Not only is this entirely against the public interest -- the very foundation of the copyright institution -- but, it is, also, taxation which neither funds public infrastructure nor implements a public service.
This is entirely unethical, morally bankrupt, and represents an astounding and inexcusable level of incompetence after ignorance. What manner of deliberation would not lead to the conclusion that this half-headed logic opens up a Pandora's Box, short of none?
Using potential infraction of the law, or even the past infractions of a vast multitude, as a compelling basis upon which to preemptively adjudicate for any crime, which may occur in the future, is maddeningly ludicrous.
Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But, just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers.
Ayn Rand, Nineteen Eighty Four
All governments are rule of the masses by a choice few - to wit.
Until wealth, education, liberties, and opportunity are evenly distributed amongst the population, there shall always be the choice few.
Even then:
People will form parties around certain schools of thought.
Parties will naturally gravitate toward other parties of like thought.
Parties of like thought will merge over time, shedding minor differences to gain political clout.
Parties will, undoubtedly, follow the leader which is most widely percieved to represent their interests.
A few-party system will emerge.. which cannot merge further because they are not of like schools of thought (theoretically, since not everyone agrees on everything - hence, at least two parties)...
Guess what? You have oligarchy, again - few parties, few leaders... wild inbreeding, stained dresses, and leaders who mispronounce "nuclear".
Now, as for what the United States is ACTUALLY:
Hmm, democracy...
I vote: [X] not on your life.
Republic...
Corrupted as hell, like all republics in history have ever been... the Yeas have it.
Constitutional Federal Republic...
Sure, if you accept that the constitution is not being reprinted upon this administration's bathroom tissue.
* FBI breaks in citing Homeland Security concerns *
Bureaucracy...
We'll notify you when an agreement is reached.
Pleutocracy...
I remember when we used to ask kids, "What do you want to be when you grow up". Anymore, it seems more appropriate to ask, "Who do you want to work for when you grow up?
And now, the wisdom of the sages:
"There's no way to rule innocent men....When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted... and you create a nation of law-breakers.
...Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."- Ayn Rand
Well, I can't speak for Slashdot or anyone else. But , in my experience, PNG is a great format suffering from a few problems not of the format's making.
There is the infamous lack of alpha support in MSIE. That is fine. You can use 256 colors with 1 binary transparency color. Except, there is also the gamma correction problem.
Gammas on different computers being different, the gamma correction in PNG is supposed to take care of inconsistencies, providing a correctly displayed image across the various displays. However, this is not the case. Because the gamma correction relies on correct interpretation of the gamma value (embedded in the PNG) by the display system in order to make the correction. Effectively, this makes it a suggestion, not the law. As we all know, this opens up a can of worms. As one might expect, some display systems handle the gamma correction correctly, most do not. The net result is that you get slight intensity differences in the color matching of the background and the 'transparent' color of your 256-color PNG. This makes a shoddy-looking block around your image. This is probably undesireable.
GIF has no such correction scheme, but as such, triggers no mishandling of a gamma value. Instead, most display systems match the transparent value to the nearest color on the current palette. The result is (sometimes) a slightly off-color GIF. But, this is not a problem, since people detect differences in intensity of light, not subtle color change. The alterations go unnoticed. In Web browsers, the CSS color palette is (most often) used to do this color alteration. Hence, you get a GIF whose transparent color precisely matches the background it appears over. This is an advantage.
For fairness in our consideration, there is still the fact that many times PNG can get smaller file sizes than GIF. But, there are other times GIF beats PNG. It's all a matter of the number of colors saved in the palette of the image and the level of dithering used to maintain the desired clarity of the image (because many dithering algorithms increase the amount of data saved per row of pixles in the bitmap, due to the way areas of like color are compressed).
PNG vs. JPEG
Now, there are many times PNG is smaller than JPEG. This is the case when large areas of the image are close in color and intensity. The bulk of the size in the PNG is reserved for the detailed areas. Given that PNG can be lossless, you can maintain a higher-quality image at a given file size than JPEG in these circumstances.
However, JPEG excells in details.. and will usually beat a PNG for 24 bit images with low contrast or large areas of precision detail. JPEG can simply handle detail better, since PNG gains its greatest efficiency in storing and regenerating larger areas of like color and intensity.
CONCLUSIONS
So it comes down to this:
* If you want transparent images for the Web that work in all browsers: GIF
* If you want non-transparent images for the Web with large areas of like color or intensity and that work in all browsers: PNG
* If you want non-transparent images for the Web with large amounts of detail and that work in all browsers: test between PNG and JPEG
* If you want alpha-transparent images for the Web that work in all browsers: wait for hell to freeze over;)
ONE MORE THING...
Oh, yeah. As for which format one should use -- its a matter of pragmatism. You may well decide that this is a FOSS vs. EvilEmpire thing, but most cannot afford the luxury of basing all of our decisions on politics/philosophy.
In a slightly more perfect world where the formats are unencumbered by implementation and outside factors, many more people may well have been inclined to choose based on our personal convictions. The best one can hope for is that we put our convictions front and center when we do have a choice. I would like to think that when a JPEG and PNG are similar in file size and image quality FOSS supporters and other idealists would use the PNG on principle.
OBLIGATORY WORDS OF WISDOM(?)
Remember, nothing casts a greater shadow upon principle than pragmatism.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of "duh"...
Read about how the scientists attributed as having agreed upon the existence of global warming were named without their consent, nor had they voiced any such affirmation on the matter.
Global warming is a fallacy; a red herring being used to line pockets and consolidate power in global policy bodies like the UN. If you have actually bothered to step outside recently or looked at temperature trends for the past several years, you'd notice we are amidst a global cooling trend. This has nothing to do with greenhouse gases. It is due to lower levels of solar output, particularly in relation to sunspot activity.
Oh, and by the way, the new scare term is "global climate change".
Carbon footprint is the son of the-artist-formerly-known-as-global-warming and inheritor to the throne of red herrings. Carbon dioxide, which is purported to be at the center of the crisis, is a life gas. Many people might argue that having stuff around that promotes life is a good thing. More carbon dioxide contributes to greater plant growth and oxygen production, which helps us be more active and think more clearly. Carbon dioxide is at the lowest levels it has been in recorded history. It is hardly a problem. If anything, we need more carbon dioxide, and less scare-mongering pseudo-science... and maybe a refresher in seventh grade earth sciences.
That said, we have a planet awash with hydrocarbons, wind, solar radiation, and water. All of these are energy sources we can harness today and simply don't, or constrain our production of raw material or energy derived from those sources.
Look, we are on a planet which has teamed with life for millions of years. Given that oil derives from living matter, it is inconceivable that we have managed to locate or use anywhere near all of it in the last century. Even if this were not the case, we have a plethora of known oil reserves we've yet to tap which have been put off limits to drilling for little or no reason, other than the duplicity of politicians and oil companies. Have a look at the U.S. National Geological Survey maps.
Water is a hydrogen fuel storage source with its own combustive catalyst, oxygen, built right in. I mean, we drink what could potentially be our most inexhaustible terrestrial fuel source. The planet is more than two-thirds covered with ocean, and we have even more locked up in tundra ice, freshwater, and cloud systems. It's as insane we don't make use of it as it is that we don't use more steam-powered engines capable of more work for less energy.
Supplemented with wind turbines and solar converters, we'd be so completely independent of energy concerns that we wouldn't even be having this discussion on power savings.
You want to save some energy, get a hybrid conversion kit for you vehicle that lets it use water as a supplemental fuel source. Get a small wind turbine or solar panels and pull your deficit off the grid during your peak usages and sell power to the electric company by pushing your excess out to the grid during low usage. Insulate, insulate, insulate.
Oh, and anyone who doesn't like me exhaling because it raises my carbon footprint and contributes to global warming... well, they can just hold it in until they are blue in the face.
Yes. In fact, that is exactly what is happening at the moment. At least the vocal majority is in utter opposition. See the IE Blog.
Also:
I am calling on the development community for solid alternative proposals:
Alternatives NOW!
What I don't get is why people even bothered with IE 6 "standards mode"?
Microsoft's documentation and documented quirks/workaround all over the web clearly laid out the case for using quirks mode for both IE 5 and 6 and waiting until at least IE 7 came out to implement any sort of "standards mode" rendering shift using the DOCTYPE switch.
Microsoft said quirks mode WOULD NOT CHANGE and that standards mode WOULD CHANGE with new browser versions. It was a NO BRAINER for any (competent) developer wanting their pages not to break with IE 7 or other future IE release to induce quirks mode (IE 5 rendering) in IE 6 using an HTML comment or XML processing instruction before the strict DOCTYPE and then using standards-compliant markup and CSS, with a separate compatibility stylesheet for fixing browser bugs targeted specifically to "lte IE 6" using conditional comments.
People having done this wouldn't have had to even touch the HTML again when/if a new IE browser version came out. The pages would render in standards-compliant mode for all current and future browsers that followed standards. The hacks/compatibility workarounds for non-standard IE issues would already have been dutifully contained and locked to the specific browser versions with the issues.
It's funny how it worked out that IE 7 suddenly started to render XHTML pages like this PROPERLY in standards mode, having fixed the XML processing instruction bug that triggered the IE 5/6 quirks mode for XHTML strict documents. HTML pages using the HTML comment before the DOCTYPE still render properly and in quirks mode in IE 7. All of this WITHOUT CHANGING ANYTHING.
There is absolutely no reason pages should have broken when IE 7 came out if developers were competent to begin with and coded defensively. I mean, come on, the information has been available since IE 6 came out and quirks mode rendering workarounds have been increasingly available throughout this time for use in your conditional-comments targeted stylesheets.
On another note: it is the very people at A List Apart who recommended this ignorant meta tag proposal to Microsoft, that were also responsible for teaching so many unsuspecting novices to standards-compliant web development to trigger and use IE 6 "standards mode" knowing full well that that mode was far from compliant and was subject to future breakage as the mode was updated with each future IE release (at least until IE caught up to modern standards-based rendering levels).
I mean, do you think their solution could possibly be well-conceived when their foresight is obviously so bad?
Come on, Microsoft! Open up a discussion on this issue before blindly taking the first potential solution that falls in your lap and forcing us web developers and customers whom are both yours and ours to deal with the potentially massive blowback!
From the abstract:
How this is a surprise is precisely the root of the problem.
The biggest reason for burnout, from the perspective of one who has suffered a lot of burnout, is almost entirely the return on investment issue.
When you work long, hard, thankless hours, or do work that others have no idea how to do, and do not get either of adequate recognition, appropriate remuneration, or personal satisfaction, it piles on you until, one day, you end up looking at where you've been and where you are now, and see that your standard of living is not any better (possibly worse), or that you don't have the respect or position you feel you have earned, or you simply do not feel that you are achieving what matters to you in your life. And on that day, you feel either inadequate, slighted, or unappreciated. The result, in all of those cases, is that you burn out.
While some people might tell you to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and take life by the horns, it is not always so easy to do --- especially if you try and try and nothing seems to change. It can be demoralizing at best, and the peception of getting nowhere just makes it ever harder to pick yourself up and try again.
The answer for employers who want to stem the effects of burnout is to help their employees achieve meaningful, real satisfaction from their work.
Providing wages that (at least) keep up with cost of living, making available opportunities to advance one's position, offering employees ways to share in the profits of their work, supporting employee achievement of what is important to them, giving them recognition and appreciation for their contributions, and simply respecting them as people are the tools you need. A nice chair doesn't hurt, but it doesn't stop the burnout. Burnout is more psychological than physical.
Now, employers don't have to just give things to their employees on a silver platter, either. It's all about reciprocating peoples' efforts in a meaningful way. Unless they're starving, a holiday turkey once a year isn't as meaningful as some people think. Neither is a gold watch after thirty or more years of work. If employees can look back just one year and honestly say to themselves that they are better off now and are on the road to achieivng what is important to them, you'll see the burnout rate go down and the productivity rate go up (probably exponentially).
Most people actually thrive on a challange, but only when the potential reward is right. While stress plays a factor in burnout, it is simply contributing to the phychological complications that are at the root of the problem. A sense of achievement is a very real queller of stress. People can handle schedules, deadlines, and crazy hours. It just has to be worth it to them.
Now, if you are the one suffering from burnout, what you need to do is to take proactive measures to accomplish something meaningful in your life. It can be all at once or baby steps. It doesn't matter which. It doesn't have to contibute to getting that mansion on the beach, or the expensive sports car, or even popularity and fame. You just need something to reaffirm that you are capable of getting to where you want to be in life and that you are getting something from your work --- that you are not just a slave to the grind.
If your mind constantly wanders to money issues, look for a better income opportunity or some supplemental income opportunities, like moonlighting, freelancing, or merchandising. If you yearn for more respect, appreciation, or personal satisfaction, you would be amazed how much you get from doing some charity work or pitching in to help out with community projects. If you just need to get some inkling of enjoyment from what you've earned instead of funnel
Just to be clear:
"Terra" is generic "ground" in Latin. During the height of this word's popular usage, no distinction was made between the ground and the surface of the planet itself, just as we sometimes refer to soil as "earth".
"Luna" is generic "moon" in Latin. During the height of this word's popular usage, no distinction was made between the moon orbiting our planet and a moon orbiting any other body in space, since only our one moon was conclusively known to exist.
Other variants for "Earth" are "Tellur" (ancient Latin form of modern Latin derivitive "Terra") and "Gaia" (Greek). Another variant for "The Moon" is "Selene" (Greek).
The significance of English vs. Latin names:
English is very prevalent in modern technical/scientific disciplines due to its articulative flexibility through use of the root/prefix/suffix language construction derived from its Romantic/Latin heritage. Since Latin proper has mostly been replaced in the western world by Romantic language variants and dialects, English has become the language of much normative information in scientific circles. The reason is simple: articulative ability in a commonspeak language.
However, as in medicine, Latin is used as a disambiguation language. That is, one which contrasts sharply with commonspeak so as to instantly confer information without the ambiguities introduced by commonspeak language, such as homonyms or figures of speech. Hence, in scientific documentation, such as astronomical data, Latin designations are used to disambiguate the meaning of things, like planet names and moons, while providing a clear base for universally translating the correct meaning to other languages as needed for native language comprehension.
Interesting sidenotes:
Read more at Wikipedia:
Sure there is. Consider the following HTML, carefully:
<p>
Schroedinger's cat is <blink>not</blink> in the box.
</p>
Um, when exactly would be the "right" moment?
Hmm... http://kerneltrap.org/node/4484?from=150&comments_ per_page=50#comment-18399
It would seem that raehl, IBM and I have reached the same conclusion regarding the value of software and the nature of software as a commodity.
Hope it's contagious...
Hehe, yeah, got my quotes mixed up... copy 'n pasted from a text file with a lot of my favorite quotes.
... see how it's contagious ;)
Had I not been so incensed by his rampant continuation of stupidity, I'd have probably not perpetrated such stupidity on my own part...
They are effectively taxing on the basis of potential, rather than executing their obvious duties as lawmakers in overhauling the copyright laws made obsolete by ubiquitous technology. Not only is this entirely against the public interest -- the very foundation of the copyright institution -- but, it is, also, taxation which neither funds public infrastructure nor implements a public service. This is entirely unethical, morally bankrupt, and represents an astounding and inexcusable level of incompetence after ignorance. What manner of deliberation would not lead to the conclusion that this half-headed logic opens up a Pandora's Box, short of none?
Using potential infraction of the law, or even the past infractions of a vast multitude, as a compelling basis upon which to preemptively adjudicate for any crime, which may occur in the future, is maddeningly ludicrous.
Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden...
Oligarchy?
All governments are rule of the masses by a choice few - to wit.
Until wealth, education, liberties, and opportunity are evenly distributed amongst the population, there shall always be the choice few.
Even then:
Guess what? You have oligarchy, again - few parties, few leaders... wild inbreeding, stained dresses, and leaders who mispronounce "nuclear".
Now, as for what the United States is ACTUALLY:
Hmm, democracy...I vote: [X] not on your life.
Republic...Corrupted as hell, like all republics in history have ever been... the Yeas have it.
Constitutional Federal Republic...Sure, if you accept that the constitution is not being reprinted upon this administration's bathroom tissue.
* FBI breaks in citing Homeland Security concerns *
Bureaucracy...We'll notify you when an agreement is reached.
Pleutocracy...I remember when we used to ask kids, "What do you want to be when you grow up". Anymore, it seems more appropriate to ask, "Who do you want to work for when you grow up?
And now, the wisdom of the sages:
PNG vs. GIF
;)
Well, I can't speak for Slashdot or anyone else. But , in my experience, PNG is a great format suffering from a few problems not of the format's making.
There is the infamous lack of alpha support in MSIE. That is fine. You can use 256 colors with 1 binary transparency color. Except, there is also the gamma correction problem.
Gammas on different computers being different, the gamma correction in PNG is supposed to take care of inconsistencies, providing a correctly displayed image across the various displays. However, this is not the case. Because the gamma correction relies on correct interpretation of the gamma value (embedded in the PNG) by the display system in order to make the correction. Effectively, this makes it a suggestion, not the law. As we all know, this opens up a can of worms. As one might expect, some display systems handle the gamma correction correctly, most do not. The net result is that you get slight intensity differences in the color matching of the background and the 'transparent' color of your 256-color PNG. This makes a shoddy-looking block around your image. This is probably undesireable.
GIF has no such correction scheme, but as such, triggers no mishandling of a gamma value. Instead, most display systems match the transparent value to the nearest color on the current palette. The result is (sometimes) a slightly off-color GIF. But, this is not a problem, since people detect differences in intensity of light, not subtle color change. The alterations go unnoticed. In Web browsers, the CSS color palette is (most often) used to do this color alteration. Hence, you get a GIF whose transparent color precisely matches the background it appears over. This is an advantage.
For fairness in our consideration, there is still the fact that many times PNG can get smaller file sizes than GIF. But, there are other times GIF beats PNG. It's all a matter of the number of colors saved in the palette of the image and the level of dithering used to maintain the desired clarity of the image (because many dithering algorithms increase the amount of data saved per row of pixles in the bitmap, due to the way areas of like color are compressed).
PNG vs. JPEG
Now, there are many times PNG is smaller than JPEG. This is the case when large areas of the image are close in color and intensity. The bulk of the size in the PNG is reserved for the detailed areas. Given that PNG can be lossless, you can maintain a higher-quality image at a given file size than JPEG in these circumstances.
However, JPEG excells in details.. and will usually beat a PNG for 24 bit images with low contrast or large areas of precision detail. JPEG can simply handle detail better, since PNG gains its greatest efficiency in storing and regenerating larger areas of like color and intensity.
CONCLUSIONS
So it comes down to this:
* If you want transparent images for the Web that work in all browsers: GIF
* If you want non-transparent images for the Web with large areas of like color or intensity and that work in all browsers: PNG
* If you want non-transparent images for the Web with large amounts of detail and that work in all browsers: test between PNG and JPEG
* If you want alpha-transparent images for the Web that work in all browsers: wait for hell to freeze over
ONE MORE THING...
Oh, yeah. As for which format one should use -- its a matter of pragmatism. You may well decide that this is a FOSS vs. EvilEmpire thing, but most cannot afford the luxury of basing all of our decisions on politics/philosophy.
In a slightly more perfect world where the formats are unencumbered by implementation and outside factors, many more people may well have been inclined to choose based on our personal convictions. The best one can hope for is that we put our convictions front and center when we do have a choice. I would like to think that when a JPEG and PNG are similar in file size and image quality FOSS supporters and other idealists would use the PNG on principle.
OBLIGATORY WORDS OF WISDOM(?)
Remember, nothing casts a greater shadow upon principle than pragmatism.
Best Regards