Do we actually need to encourage [innovation and creativity]? Do we need to create laws that give inventors a way to profit from their inventions more than others?
Most people can't afford to work without payment, so if all ideas were up for grabs, only philanthropists would invent.
I resent patents for denying people who invent something that happens to have been patented from using their invention.
How can you invent something after it's been patented? That's not possible by definition.
Last time I checked board members of nonprofits don't draw a salary.
"Non profit" just means they'll have a zero budget balance, i.e., no money to share after the year is up. It's not the same as a charity. Your point is still valid, and personally I've gone from eagerly awaiting the give-one-get-one program in Europe to no interest at all.
Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. The Salmon of Doubt, by Douglas Adams
From what I could see in the first article, accessibility can be added as an afterthought, and it even concludes that "PDF accessibility is OK some of the time when it's handled by competent authors with what few tools are available." Not an impressive sentiment. (X)HTML, on the other hand, is quite accessible by default, since you'd have to work really hard to avoid any semantic markup at all.
What is also often forgotten in this discussion is that as long as the LHC works at all it will get us at least one huge step forward in particle physics. It is poised to reveal which of the competing theories of the day is right, but if none of them are right (i.e., no Higgs particle, no extra dimensions, no black holes), that would be the biggest surprise of all - The physicists would have to go back to the drawing board and come up with completely different theories.
Re:I don't understand...
on
The Future of XML
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Maybe another comparison would help: QWERTY vs. Dvorak. The one "everyone" knows and uses - and, incidentally, design keyboard shortcuts according to; I'm looking at you, Vim - was designed to avoid jams in mechanical keyboards way back in the ass-end of time, while the other was designed to be efficient on electronic hardware.
A "Dvorak solution" for XML would have to solve some fundamental problem while keeping all the good attributes (no pun intended) of the original. IMO, that would mean more readable cdata separators, less or no attributes (most data is not truly atomic, and having lists in attributes is just ugly), and doctype declarations moved to the XML header.
I'm from Norway, but the situation should be quite similar. And I believe it should be quite easy: There should be relatively little paperwork, since the borders are quite open in Europe.
Most Scandinavians speak and understand English well enough to converse and trade in other countries. You will find that the general public (and knowledge workers even more) are quite critical to the way the U.S. is run, many now to the degree that they would not set foot there if they can avoid it. You'll also find that any effort to learn the local language is appreciated. For example, in Sweden you'd say "Tjena - Hur mår ni?" ("Hi - How are you?") as "Tyehna - Hoor moore nih?":)
I have to say, getting EU citizenship is looking more appealing all the time.
A word of warning before crossing the pond:
Police won't be carrying guns at all times, so they will provide absolutely no protection.
You'll have to deal with a lot of people who actually know the difference between "their", "there", and "they're". And you might even have to learn a whole new language to deal with those who don't.
Don't plan to get rich - Even billionaires have to pay taxes here.
Gun-toting rednecks are few and far between, so don't expect much interesting company. And forget about monster trucks!
The Germans, Russians and Italians are just waiting for their chance - Don't let all this openness, good food/drink, and friendly faces fool you!
Most people prefer Belgian or Swiss chocolate to Mars bars, Belgian, Polish, German or Czech beer to Bud, and pasta, sauerkraut, fondue or smoked salmon to a Big Mac.
In rural places a lot of people don't even lock their doors, so naturally theft, rape and murder are rampant.
The taxpayers' money is spent on lots of useless stuff - Schools, health insurance and those too lazy to work.
But if this is not too daunting, you're very welcome to join!
You can include HTML inside XHTML, by changing the namespace for that content in the container element or using includes. The browser should then parse the contents as HTML, and you can get the best of both standards.
Another option is to make sure comments cannot be submitted until they contain valid XHTML. You could use a WYSIWYG editor, fall back to/. mode when JavaScript is disabled, and help the user along by auto-correcting (when using WYSIWYG editor) or hinting (e.g., in "You need to end the strong tag by adding '</strong>') when validation fails.
Ditto, for 8 years, and the deal breakers were first networking (10 mbit w/DHCP was plug'n'play on Windows, one week for a *nix newbie on Debian), and then surround sound via IEC958, aka. S/PDIF (worked for days on Mandrake, SuSE, Fedora, FreeBSD and others without success). Ubuntu Feisty was the first to support stereo, and lo!, even without text file hacking. Gutsy is the first to support 5.1, but only using an obscure hack and extra command parameters for games like Quake Wars. But for the first time, optical 5.1 is easier in GNU/Linux than Windows - Go Ubuntu!
Space programs are what have given us many daily-use things, and even if they were not invented for space, they were improved by space research.
In that vein, SETI has given us grid software (BOINC) before it was called the grid (and it actually works), and probably lots of other advancements such as antenna technology or noise reduction algorithms.
[S]ecurity experts claim that the less smart a phone is, the less vulnerable it is.
Next they'll be telling us that "smart" functionality is a buzzword-compliant euphemism for complex code, that complex code is harder to debug than simple code, and that code which is hard to debug often has a lot of, surprise, vulnerabilities. How is this news?
Even worse is that once you break one of the unreasonable policies (no admin logon on a developer machine, say), it's hard to keep any respect for the more reasonable ones. A bit of trust and leniency would go a long way toward respect. You could for example tell employees that they should avoid spending a lot of bandwidth during peak hours, and give people plenty warning if they're hogging all the gas.
Oh, and help them out a little by hinting about things like KeePass for passwords, TrueCrypt for sensitive data, and MD5 Password generator.
The rest of the world did not get the U.S. government they deserve. You've got an obligation to the countries which have been fucked over by the U.S. to set things right.
And you seriously need to get your current administration behind iron bars. Your administration is like the three kids at school who are allowed to terrorize everyone without recourse.
Or when you want to get 5.1 surround sound via IEC958 (aka. S/PDIF) - I've worked days on this on Ubuntu Feisty, FreeBSD, Mandriva, and SUSE, without success. Documentation is either highly technical (e.g., "Just roll your own using this library") or vague (e.g., "Try tweaking foo, bar, and baz."), and I've yet to see a single example of a working setup.
There are still lots of interesting small games being produced, but it's the kind that get spread by hearsay (or reddit et al), like Downhill Pakoon (downhill racing, open source, Windows only), Scorched 3D (tanks, open source), the Yeti games (precision, Flash), Crazy Cube (puzzle, Flash), and Bloxorz (puzzle, Flash).
The statistics for CERN yesterday: 90% rejected, 7% (manually) moved to spam folder, 3% good mails. And that's not even including those that are just deleted without being moved to the spam folder. Scary tendency.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people can't afford to work without payment, so if all ideas were up for grabs, only philanthropists would invent.
I resent patents for denying people who invent something that happens to have been patented from using their invention.How can you invent something after it's been patented? That's not possible by definition.
"Non profit" just means they'll have a zero budget balance, i.e., no money to share after the year is up. It's not the same as a charity. Your point is still valid, and personally I've gone from eagerly awaiting the give-one-get-one program in Europe to no interest at all.
The Salmon of Doubt, by Douglas Adams
Some relevant links - Horrible plug, but at least there are no ads.
Alright, maybe this is useful to someone...
Shell scripts:
Other projects include an ISO mount/unmount script for Nautilus, XForms data entry and the LHC installation circular dashboard.
Look at (no pun intended) the current web accessibility and weep...
From what I could see in the first article, accessibility can be added as an afterthought, and it even concludes that "PDF accessibility is OK some of the time when it's handled by competent authors with what few tools are available." Not an impressive sentiment. (X)HTML, on the other hand, is quite accessible by default, since you'd have to work really hard to avoid any semantic markup at all.
What is also often forgotten in this discussion is that as long as the LHC works at all it will get us at least one huge step forward in particle physics. It is poised to reveal which of the competing theories of the day is right, but if none of them are right (i.e., no Higgs particle, no extra dimensions, no black holes), that would be the biggest surprise of all - The physicists would have to go back to the drawing board and come up with completely different theories.
Maybe another comparison would help: QWERTY vs. Dvorak. The one "everyone" knows and uses - and, incidentally, design keyboard shortcuts according to; I'm looking at you, Vim - was designed to avoid jams in mechanical keyboards way back in the ass-end of time, while the other was designed to be efficient on electronic hardware.
A "Dvorak solution" for XML would have to solve some fundamental problem while keeping all the good attributes (no pun intended) of the original. IMO, that would mean more readable cdata separators, less or no attributes (most data is not truly atomic, and having lists in attributes is just ugly), and doctype declarations moved to the XML header.
I'm from Norway, but the situation should be quite similar. And I believe it should be quite easy: There should be relatively little paperwork, since the borders are quite open in Europe.
Most Scandinavians speak and understand English well enough to converse and trade in other countries. You will find that the general public (and knowledge workers even more) are quite critical to the way the U.S. is run, many now to the degree that they would not set foot there if they can avoid it. You'll also find that any effort to learn the local language is appreciated. For example, in Sweden you'd say "Tjena - Hur mår ni?" ("Hi - How are you?") as "Tyehna - Hoor moore nih?" :)
Good news about citizenship: [C]itizenship is acquired at birth if one parent is a Swedish citizen.
Dunno about pets, but they shouldn't need more than a check-up and maybe some time in quarantine.
A word of warning before crossing the pond:
But if this is not too daunting, you're very welcome to join!
You can include HTML inside XHTML, by changing the namespace for that content in the container element or using includes. The browser should then parse the contents as HTML, and you can get the best of both standards.
Another option is to make sure comments cannot be submitted until they contain valid XHTML. You could use a WYSIWYG editor, fall back to /. mode when JavaScript is disabled, and help the user along by auto-correcting (when using WYSIWYG editor) or hinting (e.g., in "You need to end the strong tag by adding '</strong>') when validation fails.
Ditto, for 8 years, and the deal breakers were first networking (10 mbit w/DHCP was plug'n'play on Windows, one week for a *nix newbie on Debian), and then surround sound via IEC958, aka. S/PDIF (worked for days on Mandrake, SuSE, Fedora, FreeBSD and others without success). Ubuntu Feisty was the first to support stereo, and lo!, even without text file hacking. Gutsy is the first to support 5.1, but only using an obscure hack and extra command parameters for games like Quake Wars. But for the first time, optical 5.1 is easier in GNU/Linux than Windows - Go Ubuntu!
TTY programs were mentioned several times earlier - Surely they will be tons easier to develop on GNU/Linux than on DOS / Windows?
Well, you very probably learned a whole lot of hand-eye coordination, grammar, spelling, and netiquette, all of which are very useful skills.
In that vein, SETI has given us grid software (BOINC) before it was called the grid (and it actually works), and probably lots of other advancements such as antenna technology or noise reduction algorithms.
Next they'll be telling us that "smart" functionality is a buzzword-compliant euphemism for complex code, that complex code is harder to debug than simple code, and that code which is hard to debug often has a lot of, surprise, vulnerabilities. How is this news?
Other interesting magnet & strengths.
Even worse is that once you break one of the unreasonable policies (no admin logon on a developer machine, say), it's hard to keep any respect for the more reasonable ones. A bit of trust and leniency would go a long way toward respect. You could for example tell employees that they should avoid spending a lot of bandwidth during peak hours, and give people plenty warning if they're hogging all the gas.
Oh, and help them out a little by hinting about things like KeePass for passwords, TrueCrypt for sensitive data, and MD5 Password generator.
The rest of the world did not get the U.S. government they deserve. You've got an obligation to the countries which have been fucked over by the U.S. to set things right.
And you seriously need to get your current administration behind iron bars. Your administration is like the three kids at school who are allowed to terrorize everyone without recourse.
Or when you want to get 5.1 surround sound via IEC958 (aka. S/PDIF) - I've worked days on this on Ubuntu Feisty, FreeBSD, Mandriva, and SUSE, without success. Documentation is either highly technical (e.g., "Just roll your own using this library") or vague (e.g., "Try tweaking foo, bar, and baz."), and I've yet to see a single example of a working setup.
There are still lots of interesting small games being produced, but it's the kind that get spread by hearsay (or reddit et al), like Downhill Pakoon (downhill racing, open source, Windows only), Scorched 3D (tanks, open source), the Yeti games (precision, Flash), Crazy Cube (puzzle, Flash), and Bloxorz (puzzle, Flash).
Aaaaargh?
The statistics for CERN yesterday: 90% rejected, 7% (manually) moved to spam folder, 3% good mails. And that's not even including those that are just deleted without being moved to the spam folder. Scary tendency.