PZ Meyers is correct, the book author is a crank. The suit is frivolous and doesn't deserve to pass an initial sniff test from a judge. And it couldn't have happened to a nicer prick. It's about time PZ Meyers got slapped for his galloping asshole-ness. The man's blog is dripping in scorn and insults. The quality of the posts and the discourse is no better than a bad old episode of CNN's Crossfire. PZ is a very intelligent man it's too bad he feels the need to dress up his intellect in childish invective.
In practically any forum other than a stage or a blog PZ's comments would have met with scorn. The guy is a dick. I hope PZ keeps his day job and learns that insults are no substitute for intelligent discussion.
"As for the USSR, their resolve at the time could be measured by the Cuban missile crisis in 1962"
Russia was willing to use the nuclear missles based in Cuba in the event of an American invasion. Castro wanted it and had specifically asked for the use of nuclear weapons. Castro understood that at the very least Cuba would be utterly destroyed. Castro still begged Moscow to launch. Soviet subs patrolling the waters around Cuba during the crisis were armed with nuclear torpedoes and had been given the arming codes. The captains were ordered to use the nuclear torpedoes in event that they were attacked or sufficiently provoked.
None of this is speculation, rumor, interpretation, or tales from indirect sources. This is all easily verified from public first-hand accounts and documents. WE, aka the United States, had no idea just how close everyone came to all-out nuclear war. We all came within a proveribal inch of total destruction. I would also point out that there is as yet no evidence that any of the major leaders and policy makers in Washington, Moscow, or Havana at any time thought the Cuban Missile Crisis was a bluff. All sides assumed that all-out nuclear war was imminent.
"Would they?"
Yes. Based on the evidence Moscow would have launched if sufficiently provoked and so would we. China is a tougher call. I would point you toward two lessons illuminated in the documentary "Fog of War" and the additional commentary provided by it's subject, Robert S. McNamara, who was Secretary of War at the time of the crisis.
- Rationality Will Not Save Us - The indefinite combinations of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations.
This is not a precedent. This is a well established point of law. The defendent in this case is not the first person to destroy destroy evidence and get smacked down for it.
Why not? For the same reason jet engines aren't designed to withstand a blade-shattering turbine failure. Ever see pictures of a jet turbine that shatters a blade while powered up? Looks like 4-year when crazy with some scisors and construction paper. In both cases the forces involved are so insane that proper protection would prevent the vehicle from operating. We can either make the object safe or you can make it useful. At this point we can't do both.
The only reasonable options are first try really hard to prevent failures and second buy lots of insurance.
Hey, anybody remember the good old days when arguments like this were used to discredit grids & clusters? Let's not forget VoIP.
Maybe - just maybe - the conjunction of cheap hardware, free OS, and decent routing software will open up new ways of implementing enterprise class routing. Software routers don't necessarily need to emulate Cisco & Juniper to clean their clocks.
I don't really know if Intel is much of a competitor in the video card market. Intel graphics adaptors are for people who don't care about video performance.
Huh!? Intel is the #1 supplier of desktop and laptop motherboards to OEM's. Nearly every desktop & laptop board Intel makes ships with integrated graphics. The vast majority of people who play games on their PC's do so with unmodified OEM boxes that use Intel graphics. Intel owns almost the entire market for graphics chipsets.
One of the big reasons for google's success is that it doesn't give you a "rich user experience".
Wrong. You are equating a rich user experience with a fancy design. An experience is characterized by a continum of interaction. A "rich" or "positive" experience is a continum that satisfies the needs of the individual. A design that supports such an experience is not necessarily fancy.
"When a company pays $250,000 for a website they want it to look the way they want it to look... end of story."
Truth. No excuse is good enough when serious money is on the line. Yes. it's damn unfair that the designer screwed up or the client thinks that web pages are print pages. The developer's job is to make it look right. It's amazing what being off by one pixel can do to a design. It really doesn't matter if the design is full of pretty pictures or just lines fields of color. A designer's job is to viually tie elemets together. Precise alignment is always important. Off by one is not acceptable to most paying clients. Some clients are willing to discuss options and slight changes to design. But most are not. Most will demand the fix be made gratis.
Re:This is why I couldn't stomach web programming!
on
Dvorak Rants on CSS
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· Score: 1
The HTML, CSS separation makes sense for documents. Most web sites are nothing more than a collection of documents so this works pretty well. The seperation of content from presentation has been a common good practice for a long time. I'm sure you'r already aware of LaTex, SGML,..etc so I won't press the point. Still, even for web documents there's lots of room for improvement in CSS & HTML.
Now for application development? CSS, HTML, and JavaScript!?
God how I love you Flash fan-boys. You've been beating this horse for years now. Guess what. It's still dead. Yes, Flash does have a place on the Web but it's not as a complete replacement for markup, stylesheets, and scripting. Flash is niche and always will be despite the fact that it's installed on 9x% of machines. I've been building corporate websites, web-based advertising, and web applications for software and technology companies for 15 years now. I've happily worked with some of the best Flash designers and developers in the US. Flash has never been a threat to my job and I don't see that ever changing.
SGI has been in serious financial trouble for years. The bankruptcy filing is not a surprise. There has been talk of SGI completely disappearing from the marketplace for years. Not idle talk either. Very serious talk about SGI getting bought, carved up, or just disappearing.
So I have to ask...
Why did the Dutch Weather Service invest in an Altix? Why did you take the risk? I agree the Altix is very nice and well suited to your needs but there are other financially stable vendors that could have provided similar performance without the risk that manufacturer will disappear and leave you without support.
"I've never known Microsoft to allow any arbitrary Office user to phone them up..."
Then you've never tried. Microsoft does have call center support and the phone number is public. Whether or not you will be charged depends on your license and the problem.
1. Certs are entirely too easy to obtain. 2. Because of #1 the only thing a cert proves is that the hostname matches what's in the cert. 3. Phishers have been using faked yet secure websites for years now they'll just switch to emails.
It'll get fixed. The PRC government went to a lot of trouble & expense to put the firewall in place. No expense will be spared to surpress freedom. That's a Chinese tradition which predates the PRC by about a thousand years.
Because the success rate would have to be 100%. There is a vast difference between a minefield that has been redered safe for crossing by an army and one that is safe for crossing by people fetching water or grain. How would you react if someone told you that your daily commute to work crossed several mine fields that are 99% deactivated? Would you continue to drive the same route or go around?
At 99% ineffective mines are still effective area denial weapons.
"...there's a difference between using mines for clear military purposes and just sowing the countryside to see if you can kill a few kids."
Too bad then that the most common way for militaries to enplace mines is by automated dispersal from a shell or aircraft. Carefully planned and mapped minefields are found more often in fiction than real life.
"An artillery barrage will detonate all of the mines, regardless of whether they want to be detonated or not."
This is not correct. Artillery is used to clear a minefield sufficently for crossing. Artillery will not detonate every mine. There are plenty of limbless people in SouthEast Asia and the Far East that would be happy to provide you with proof.
1. Not everyone who gets a subpoena is automatically guilty
2. There are plenty of reasons why a law-abiding innocent person would choose to destroy information rather than have it revealed
3. There is nothing stopping Microsoft from handing the information over without a subpoena.
4. An individual may have the opportunity to destroy the information prior to receiving the subpoena
Your hypothetical suffers from the common phallacy of "If you're not guilty then you have nothing to hide." If you don't understand why that is such a dangerous assumption then there is nothing I can say to communicate my point.
In fact it is something to complain about for two reasons. 1. It's still in Beta so there's time to fix the problem 2. The rendering engine was supposed to be complete at Beta 2
Slashdot Mirror
PZ Meyers is correct, the book author is a crank. The suit is frivolous and doesn't deserve to pass an initial sniff test from a judge. And it couldn't have happened to a nicer prick. It's about time PZ Meyers got slapped for his galloping asshole-ness. The man's blog is dripping in scorn and insults. The quality of the posts and the discourse is no better than a bad old episode of CNN's Crossfire. PZ is a very intelligent man it's too bad he feels the need to dress up his intellect in childish invective.
In practically any forum other than a stage or a blog PZ's comments would have met with scorn. The guy is a dick. I hope PZ keeps his day job and learns that insults are no substitute for intelligent discussion.
"As for the USSR, their resolve at the time could be measured by the Cuban missile crisis in 1962"
Russia was willing to use the nuclear missles based in Cuba in the event of an American invasion. Castro wanted it and had specifically asked for the use of nuclear weapons. Castro understood that at the very least Cuba would be utterly destroyed. Castro still begged Moscow to launch. Soviet subs patrolling the waters around Cuba during the crisis were armed with nuclear torpedoes and had been given the arming codes. The captains were ordered to use the nuclear torpedoes in event that they were attacked or sufficiently provoked.
None of this is speculation, rumor, interpretation, or tales from indirect sources. This is all easily verified from public first-hand accounts and documents. WE, aka the United States, had no idea just how close everyone came to all-out nuclear war. We all came within a proveribal inch of total destruction. I would also point out that there is as yet no evidence that any of the major leaders and policy makers in Washington, Moscow, or Havana at any time thought the Cuban Missile Crisis was a bluff. All sides assumed that all-out nuclear war was imminent.
"Would they?"
Yes. Based on the evidence Moscow would have launched if sufficiently provoked and so would we. China is a tougher call. I would point you toward two lessons illuminated in the documentary "Fog of War" and the additional commentary provided by it's subject, Robert S. McNamara, who was Secretary of War at the time of the crisis.
- Rationality Will Not Save Us
- The indefinite combinations of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations.
I am NOT descended from Humans!
Why not? For the same reason jet engines aren't designed to withstand a blade-shattering turbine failure. Ever see pictures of a jet turbine that shatters a blade while powered up? Looks like 4-year when crazy with some scisors and construction paper. In both cases the forces involved are so insane that proper protection would prevent the vehicle from operating. We can either make the object safe or you can make it useful. At this point we can't do both.
The only reasonable options are first try really hard to prevent failures and second buy lots of insurance.
Puritans aren't so bad. The modern ones will even let you choose the type of wood you prefer for your pyre.
Hey, anybody remember the good old days when arguments like this were used to discredit grids & clusters? Let's not forget VoIP.
Maybe - just maybe - the conjunction of cheap hardware, free OS, and decent routing software will open up new ways of implementing enterprise class routing. Software routers don't necessarily need to emulate Cisco & Juniper to clean their clocks.
Huh!? Intel is the #1 supplier of desktop and laptop motherboards to OEM's. Nearly every desktop & laptop board Intel makes ships with integrated graphics. The vast majority of people who play games on their PC's do so with unmodified OEM boxes that use Intel graphics. Intel owns almost the entire market for graphics chipsets.
Wrong. You are equating a rich user experience with a fancy design. An experience is characterized by a continum of interaction. A "rich" or "positive" experience is a continum that satisfies the needs of the individual. A design that supports such an experience is not necessarily fancy.
Truth. No excuse is good enough when serious money is on the line. Yes. it's damn unfair that the designer screwed up or the client thinks that web pages are print pages. The developer's job is to make it look right. It's amazing what being off by one pixel can do to a design. It really doesn't matter if the design is full of pretty pictures or just lines fields of color. A designer's job is to viually tie elemets together. Precise alignment is always important. Off by one is not acceptable to most paying clients. Some clients are willing to discuss options and slight changes to design. But most are not. Most will demand the fix be made gratis.
The HTML, CSS separation makes sense for documents. Most web sites are nothing more than a collection of documents so this works pretty well. The seperation of content from presentation has been a common good practice for a long time. I'm sure you'r already aware of LaTex, SGML,..etc so I won't press the point. Still, even for web documents there's lots of room for improvement in CSS & HTML.
Now for application development? CSS, HTML, and JavaScript!?
Meh
You're right on the money. They suck.
God how I love you Flash fan-boys. You've been beating this horse for years now. Guess what. It's still dead. Yes, Flash does have a place on the Web but it's not as a complete replacement for markup, stylesheets, and scripting. Flash is niche and always will be despite the fact that it's installed on 9x% of machines. I've been building corporate websites, web-based advertising, and web applications for software and technology companies for 15 years now. I've happily worked with some of the best Flash designers and developers in the US. Flash has never been a threat to my job and I don't see that ever changing.
SGI has been in serious financial trouble for years. The bankruptcy filing is not a surprise. There has been talk of SGI completely disappearing from the marketplace for years. Not idle talk either. Very serious talk about SGI getting bought, carved up, or just disappearing.
So I have to ask...
Why did the Dutch Weather Service invest in an Altix?
Why did you take the risk?
I agree the Altix is very nice and well suited to your needs but there are other financially stable vendors that could have provided similar performance without the risk that manufacturer will disappear and leave you without support.
I think the parent doesn't quite understand how compounded probablity.
"I've never known Microsoft to allow any arbitrary Office user to phone them up..."
Then you've never tried. Microsoft does have call center support and the phone number is public. Whether or not you will be charged depends on your license and the problem.
What's key here is not so much the number of people fired but how each decision was made. In my experience mass layoffs hide a lot of revenge.
1. Certs are entirely too easy to obtain.
2. Because of #1 the only thing a cert proves is that the hostname matches what's in the cert.
3. Phishers have been using faked yet secure websites for years now they'll just switch to emails.
Certs are worse than useless, they're misleading.
And yet the lack of such an app is a major impediment to the adoption of ODF.
It'll get fixed. The PRC government went to a lot of trouble & expense to put the firewall in place. No expense will be spared to surpress freedom. That's a Chinese tradition which predates the PRC by about a thousand years.
Because the success rate would have to be 100%. There is a vast difference between a minefield that has been redered safe for crossing by an army and one that is safe for crossing by people fetching water or grain. How would you react if someone told you that your daily commute to work crossed several mine fields that are 99% deactivated? Would you continue to drive the same route or go around?
At 99% ineffective mines are still effective area denial weapons.
Too bad then that the most common way for militaries to enplace mines is by automated dispersal from a shell or aircraft. Carefully planned and mapped minefields are found more often in fiction than real life.
This is not correct. Artillery is used to clear a minefield sufficently for crossing. Artillery will not detonate every mine. There are plenty of limbless people in SouthEast Asia and the Far East that would be happy to provide you with proof.
1. Not everyone who gets a subpoena is automatically guilty 2. There are plenty of reasons why a law-abiding innocent person would choose to destroy information rather than have it revealed 3. There is nothing stopping Microsoft from handing the information over without a subpoena. 4. An individual may have the opportunity to destroy the information prior to receiving the subpoena Your hypothetical suffers from the common phallacy of "If you're not guilty then you have nothing to hide." If you don't understand why that is such a dangerous assumption then there is nothing I can say to communicate my point.
Records stored by Microsoft will survive destruction of your computer.
In fact it is something to complain about for two reasons.
1. It's still in Beta so there's time to fix the problem
2. The rendering engine was supposed to be complete at Beta 2
If you don't complain - it won't get fixed.