Probably the best solution is to have fewer meetings and make them shorter and more focused.
Which is kinda hard when half of your audience is busy being elsewhere with their thoughts.
You have to start somewhere. Speaking as someone who is leading meetings on a regular basis, I would gladly take any and all technological solutions to shut down all electronic devices in the room. After a few meetings without, I'm sure people would notice how much more focussed, efficient and thus shorter these meetings can be - but getting there is the problem. And no, convincing people doesn't work, we've tried that. People are too deluded about their own abilities ("oh, no problem, I can listen at the same time I'm typing on the computer. What was it you said?").
I'm not sure. Was Pot Pol an atheist? Stalin probably was.
So? What hair colour did Pol Pot have? Or Stalin, Hitler, whoever? Would you call anyone who writes an article about "brown-headed fanatic regimes have an unrivaled kill count" a nutjob? Or maybe we should go by the colour of their underwear, or their shoe-size?
If you want to claim that atheism kills (as the article author does), then you have to show causation, or at the very least demonstrate a strong correlation.
Causation as well as correlation is easily shown for religious nutjobs and their crimes. For atheism, I've yet to see one. Even if you substract the cases where the religion was used as a cover. (*)
(*) strictly speaking, you can not exclude them, you must ask yourself why religion provided such a good cover that it could be used as an excuse for murder. If you go out killing people because they wear brown shoes, size 5, you'll be called an insane murderer. If you kill people because they pray to a slightly different version of your god, there will be debates whether that's taking the faith a little too far. The difference is striking.
One could point out that there are still a lot of random variables and perhaps god is in those. They could say their god has influence on the mutations in evolutionary processes, or the unknown variables in weather systems, etc. I'm not saying that is the case. I'm just pointing out that just because it rains "due to atmospherics" doesn't rule out that it wasn't "because god is angry".
Again, check the Nietzsche argument. If god is indescernable from pure randomness, then you can remove him without changing anything. If you can remove him and it makes no difference, then he's not "there" in any meaningful sense.
It's a bit like those parties where if nobody saw you there, you weren't there.:-)
But the god believers could say that at one point god decided to throw in a random mutation that eventually caused multi-cellular organisms.
He who makes extraordinary claims must provide extraordinary proof.
I claim it was me, going back in time one lazy sunday afternoon, and I lost a hair back in 5 billion BC and that served as the starting point of intelligent life here on earth.
Now prove me wrong or worship me as your god.:-)
And all of that ignores a god who maybe caused the big bang to happen in such a way that it caused everything to happen how it has (including me writing this post and pointing that out). But that gets into the whole no free will thing which I don't want to get into right now.
I thought Lamarcks demon had been killed a hundred times by now. Don't they teach this shit at school anymore?
This argument sounds a lot like the idea that a tree falling in a forest doesn't make any noise if there isn't anyone there to hear it.
There's a subtle but important difference: The tree argument relies entirely on simplification to be interesting, and does not survive a look at the involved complexity. The Nietzsche argument does. (think sound = sound waves and their effects which go beyond hearing, then extend "anyone" likewise)
How about another question: Are there aliens?
By sheer numbers, it is likely that there are. However, if they can not ever affect us (e.g. their and our light cones never meet) then they do not "exist" in any meaningful sense for us, nor we for them.
Here's another question: how was the Universe created? There's the Big Bang theory, and all its attendant parts about expansion and whatever, but what came before that? Was that directed by something of intelligence, or not?
That's the standard strawman argument of the creationists that have retreated so far that they're trying to stage a final fight at the creation of the universe. The argument is great, because it shows that the thinker has not improved much beyond his scriptures 2000 year old model of thinking. The Big Bang was a four dimensional explosion, meaning that there is a singularity in time as well as in space there. The question "what came before that?" is entirely meaningless, and thus can not be answered. Creationists abuse that rhetorically, saying things like "see, you don't know either! I win!" But that's a pure linguistic shortcoming of english. In chinese, for example, there would be a very precise answer ("mu" - untranslatable as a word, roughly "the question can not be answered" or "the question makes no sense").
Time began at the Big Bang. There is no "before". There is no "direction". There is not even a need for direction.
I think, it's pretty ridiculous IMO to suggest that we have the answer to that question.
We do not have "the answer". What we do have is a shortlist of theories that "check out". The god theory, on the other hand, has failed so many tests that anyone still defending it is crazy.
Lastly, as far as the effects of a god, can you prove that people who miraculously have their cancer disappear don't owe their healing to a god?
Why should I be the one responsible for the proof? He who makes the claim is the one who needs to provide the proof.
What have you proven with your experiment? Nothing.
Please? What has that got to do with anything? This is why we have peer-review, why experiments are repeated, and why everyone within the scientific community readily agrees that results of experiments need to be checked carefully, especially if the results are unexpected. Are you so desperate that you have to hide your little god in lab experiment errors?
The only sane answer to the existence of god(s), higher beings, etc. is "I don't know".
That is strict agnosticism. The answer is, however, incomplete. The full, correct answer is "I do not know for sure, but it doesn't seem very likely."
The simple "I don't know" answer is celebrated by desperate believers as if it meant there's a 50:50 chance. But it doesn't. I also don't know if there's a giant polar bear in my bedroom right now, because I can't look and it could be gone when I get up. But - like god - it just isn't very likely.
There are other people groups in history who used facts and solid arguments to justify the seclusion and destruction of entire religions and people groups too.
Actually, most of these are examples of pseudo-science and pseudo-logic. Just like ID. In most cases (euthanasia, for example), the rational argument can be re-examined and falsified.
I don't care how logical you think it is, when you get to the point of calling someone's belief system criminal (and he does), then you're off the rails I'm willing to follow.
Crime is not defined by what you think, but what you do (intentionally). When you use the term in this context, he is quite right. The history of christianity, especially but not exclusively that of the catholic church, is choke full of crimes. In fact, we would call any non-religious organisation with that amount of past and current criminal activity a mafia.
Science does not answer "who" - its answers show that there is no "who". They also show that there is no need for a "why".
That's why religious nuts hate science so much - they can deal with people having other answers to those questions. You can assimilate them, burn them, drive them out of your lands or use any of the other time-tested methods. Science doesn't come with a different answer and doesn't join the chorus of different variations of the theme - it tells them that they're all crazies.
Who's to say that there isn't a god, and he/she/it didn't design evolution?
Nietzsche, and very brilliantly.
The argument goes roughly like this (though he puts it a lot better than I can):
Existence is defined by the effects something has on the rest of the world. If we take a hypothetical something, call it "thing an sich" or "god" or whatever else you like, which has no effect on anything else, then due to it not affecting anything, we can not verify its existence. Also, its existence makes no difference whatsoever. Therefore, it does not exist in any meaningful sense of the word.
Now you might have noticed that "god" is on the retreat. Vast areas that were clearly "gods domain" a thousand years ago are now the domain of science. Science does not only prove "how", it also proves "who" in the sense that there is no "who". Evolution works perfectly well without any guiding hand. It rains due to atmospherics, not because god is angry. Kids are made by biological events, not given by a supreme being. Whenever science is sufficiently "done" with any of its research areas, there is no "effect" of a hypothetical god left. In the end, we will end up with a "god" that has no effect whatsoever, and therefore does not exist.
That article you link to is one of the worst pieces of journalism I've seen in a long time. Just check this:
Over the 20th century, atheist political regimes racked up an appalling (and unmatched) record for violence.
Yeah, right. Evidence? Names? Numbers? Oh, none. Wonder why that is. The rest isn't much better.
The God Delusion certainly is to the point with no holds barred. But "hate speech"? Define what you mean by that. If you do, check your linked article, because I'd be very surprised if you managed to come up with a definition that includes Dawkin without att the same time including Bunting.
his 2006 book "The God Delusion," and public statements on the theory of evolution demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking
No, you fucktards, your attitude is the intolerant one. Mr. Dawkins makes claims, cites the supporting evidence, and draws conclusions, and then arrives at an opinion that he can solidly argue. And - from what I've seen of him - he does not mind listening to those who have a different opinion, and doesn't deny them forum.
Oh yes, he also doesn't belong to a group of people with a thousand year history of silencing and killing its opponent. Like you.
If the penalty for stupidity were death, Oklahoma would have to hold new elections.
2. You don't need any of them - the applications you have installed do. So, when it all comes down, why should you bother at all?
3. Yes, it is the package. However, do not forget that most of the drivers actually are 3rd party drivers, written by the hardware manufacturers themselves. There is no "HTML driver" because HTML isn't a hardware device.
4. No, it isn't. That is the whole point. MS is a monopoly. As such it can not freely decide, and negotiations between the OEMs and MS are not on a level playing field. That's what all the antitrust laws are all about. Again, bringing Suse in as a comparison misses the entire point. Suse is not a monopoly player, as such different rules apply.
Yes, partially. The part where it says "pixels" or defines colours in RGB triplets doesn't really leave much for the user agent to decide, as well as many other parts. The box model is pretty tight, as is positioning. Most of the visible differences between user agents are due to flaws.
Also it occurred to me after I posted that if you ensure Windows has no method of interpreting HTML out of the box, then you will assuredly end up with tens or hundreds of different HTML engines. Each must be updated, patched and managed. I don't believe this is a reasonable approach. HTML is common enough that I believe it should be a basic part of a client OS.
This is where code monkeys and law monkeys meet, and talk in different languages.
Yes, from a technical POV, having just one API, engine, etc. is better. Your scenario of hundreds of different engines is horror for the techy.
That same scenario, however, is how a free market is supposed to work! Everyone who wants to compete, can. And if his product is better than the others, it gains market share. There may be - in fact, there should be - many competitors.
The solution, of course, isn't to reduce choice, but to channel it. The magic word is "standards". There are probably hundreds of companies manufacturing screws and screwdrivers, and yet they all magically fit. How is that possible? Because they're all manufactured to the same standard.
Now, the matter of hundreds of different HTML rendering engines would be just as magically turned into a non-problem if only we had a standard that describes this "HTML" thing, that specifies just which tags exist, what they mean and how they should be rendered. If only we had such a... oh, wait...
One, Ford does not have a monopoly, therefore they are not subject to the restrictions put on monopoly players.
Two, does it really make a difference to you if you have three or four render engines on your desktop? The space used is negliegable today. Different from the different GUI systems you list for comparison, you'd not notice very much anyways.
Three, the file-manager-monopoly is entirely misleading. Having a monopoly is not illegal. Leveraging it to drive out competition is.
Four, this is not a matter of quality. Even if IE were the absolut best browser around, it would still be the same problem, except maybe that MS wouldn't drag the matter out over years and do every legal and some illegal tricks on the book to avoid a judgement, because they actually could win in the market. Again, this is not a matter of quality, but of protecting the free market from one of its worst enemies: A monopoly player.
And there's the reason for the EU getting involved right there.
You - and a million other developers - are glad to take whatever ships with the system. Which means MS can, and has, leveraged its monopoly in the OS market into the browser market.
Which is illegal by both american and european law.
It really is as simple as that. It gets a little more complicated when you ask for why that is illegal (has to do with market efficiencies and monopoly rent), but your convenience translates directly into damage for all of us, you included. A typical "tragedy of the commons" problem.
True, while a judge would possibly convict you based on some BS law, just because it is in fact law, a jury might see how unfair and improper the law is and find you innocent solely based on their unwillingness to prosecute based on such law.
Or it might convict you despite you being innocent, because you're black, they don't like your mug, and they're under public pressure to put the "guilty bloke" behind bars. Or because they don't understand the fact and/or the law correctly, get confused by the attornies arguing at them, or one of a million other factors.
The point isn't making a list of advantages and shortcomings. It's checking how well the thing performs in the real world. For all I know, there is no significant difference in either false positive nor false negative rate.
Also, don't know your opinion but I have seen, in person, a couple of trials at the highest labor law court here in Germany, and the judges there are pretty impressive, including their ability to not judge "by the book" but by what is right and then find the proper stuff in the book to build a great legal reasoning for that.
Theoretically, maybe. In practice, the systems are not so much different, as juries are not "perfect" either, are often biased, easily convinced through rhetorics, not truth, and so on.
"Usability" is another word for "safe for newbies and those too lazy to read the manual".
No, it isn't. You might want to read up on literature.
Intuitive usability is important for some areas of interaction, especially where manuals are not appropriate. Elevators, door handles, light switches - the kind of stuff where you can't seriously expect people to read a manual first. Some pieces of software fall into that category, they should explain themselves.
More complex software should still be easy to use. And that's the whole point. You can make the same operation easy or difficult to use, depending on whether you care, put some effort into it or understand something about usability, HCI, etc.
Does anybody honestly think that the traditional Unix filesystem heirarchy makes an ounce of sense in 2009?
Actually, yes (mostly).
Usability does not necessarily mean you have to change the system structure. You can also display it differently. For example, on the low level, OS X knows files and folders, just like every other OS. However, on the higher levels, it will display some folders as if they were applications, and allow you to interact with them as if they were a third kind of filesystem entity that does not actually exist on the lower levels (e.g. double-clicking on a normal folder opens it, double-clicking on a folder with an app inside will launch the app, even though the actual binary is in some sub-folder).
The higher courts in Germany are very often quite smart and experienced at cutting through the bullshit and finding (and then ruling on) the actual matter. There are actually several such "highest courts", since only certain matters can go to the BVG, and in most areas of the law the specialist top-court is just that. In the words of one judge of the BAG (the highest court for labor law): "Above us, there's only god".
This is another fine piece. If you can read german, I strongly recommend reading the full reasoning once its out.
How can you possibly answer "no" to that question? Do you want your stuff actually being, you know, used by people? There's a reason it's called "usability" and not bumblebee.
sometimes all the attacker needs is the JS code (obviously not secure) to see what url to hit and what parameters to send.
And if the obscurity of your URL and parameters is what you call "security", then you probably shouldn't be writing any apps, and PHP, Ajax or whatever is not where your problem is.
I can see where bundling iexplore.exe causes all sorts of anti-trust problems. Not that I agree, but it's a reasonable argument, and iexplore could easily be replaced with Firefox or Chrome or whatever other browser. However, I'm pretty sure that no browser other than IE extends the same support for an embedded browser without you having to include that browser itself, in its entirety, with your program. Hating IE is one thing, but there's not really an alternative for developers wanting simple HTML rendering in an application.
And that, exactly, is what this is all about.
MS being a monopoly leveraged its monopoly to put its own rendering engine in as the de-facto standard. There never was any competition, never was any chance for the free market to work and pick out the best offering, never was any opportunity to weed out the crap.
And that's illegal. Simple as that. It's illegal because while yes, it's great for developers to have easy access to a rendering engine, it would be much better for them if there had been choice about which engine that is, according to the laws of free market. See above.
But that's the point. You're not asking me to call a spade a spade, you're asking me to call a hammer a spade because they're both tools.
Yes, stealing is stealing. A hen is a hen. But not every act of illegal enrichment is stealing. Not every bird is a hen.
If you don't see the difference and insist it's nitpicking, I'll gladly trade my sparrows for your hens and wait until you realize they don't lay the same kind of eggs.
And that's not a matter of grammar. It's a matter of semantics, if you insist on bringing linguistics into the argument.
Those that just out and out steal (yes it is appropriate, because it means taking something without paying, regardless of the lack of a physical item taken).
It is still inappropriate, because it is not taking. It is copying. Physical item or not (I agree that is immaterial, pun intended) the important difference is whether or not the original owner is left with or without his original.
Stealing is actually legally defined (at least in my country) not as taking, but as "taking away" (precisely, "taking away with the intent to make your own", but that's nitpicking). If you are not "taking away", then it is not stealing in the legal sense.
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Probably the best solution is to have fewer meetings and make them shorter and more focused.
Which is kinda hard when half of your audience is busy being elsewhere with their thoughts.
You have to start somewhere. Speaking as someone who is leading meetings on a regular basis, I would gladly take any and all technological solutions to shut down all electronic devices in the room. After a few meetings without, I'm sure people would notice how much more focussed, efficient and thus shorter these meetings can be - but getting there is the problem. And no, convincing people doesn't work, we've tried that. People are too deluded about their own abilities ("oh, no problem, I can listen at the same time I'm typing on the computer. What was it you said?").
I'm not sure. Was Pot Pol an atheist? Stalin probably was.
So?
What hair colour did Pol Pot have? Or Stalin, Hitler, whoever? Would you call anyone who writes an article about "brown-headed fanatic regimes have an unrivaled kill count" a nutjob? Or maybe we should go by the colour of their underwear, or their shoe-size?
If you want to claim that atheism kills (as the article author does), then you have to show causation, or at the very least demonstrate a strong correlation.
Causation as well as correlation is easily shown for religious nutjobs and their crimes. For atheism, I've yet to see one. Even if you substract the cases where the religion was used as a cover. (*)
(*) strictly speaking, you can not exclude them, you must ask yourself why religion provided such a good cover that it could be used as an excuse for murder. If you go out killing people because they wear brown shoes, size 5, you'll be called an insane murderer. If you kill people because they pray to a slightly different version of your god, there will be debates whether that's taking the faith a little too far. The difference is striking.
One could point out that there are still a lot of random variables and perhaps god is in those. They could say their god has influence on the mutations in evolutionary processes, or the unknown variables in weather systems, etc. I'm not saying that is the case. I'm just pointing out that just because it rains "due to atmospherics" doesn't rule out that it wasn't "because god is angry".
Again, check the Nietzsche argument. If god is indescernable from pure randomness, then you can remove him without changing anything. If you can remove him and it makes no difference, then he's not "there" in any meaningful sense.
It's a bit like those parties where if nobody saw you there, you weren't there. :-)
But the god believers could say that at one point god decided to throw in a random mutation that eventually caused multi-cellular organisms.
He who makes extraordinary claims must provide extraordinary proof.
I claim it was me, going back in time one lazy sunday afternoon, and I lost a hair back in 5 billion BC and that served as the starting point of intelligent life here on earth.
Now prove me wrong or worship me as your god. :-)
And all of that ignores a god who maybe caused the big bang to happen in such a way that it caused everything to happen how it has (including me writing this post and pointing that out). But that gets into the whole no free will thing which I don't want to get into right now.
I thought Lamarcks demon had been killed a hundred times by now. Don't they teach this shit at school anymore?
This argument sounds a lot like the idea that a tree falling in a forest doesn't make any noise if there isn't anyone there to hear it.
There's a subtle but important difference: The tree argument relies entirely on simplification to be interesting, and does not survive a look at the involved complexity. The Nietzsche argument does. (think sound = sound waves and their effects which go beyond hearing, then extend "anyone" likewise)
How about another question: Are there aliens?
By sheer numbers, it is likely that there are. However, if they can not ever affect us (e.g. their and our light cones never meet) then they do not "exist" in any meaningful sense for us, nor we for them.
Here's another question: how was the Universe created? There's the Big Bang theory, and all its attendant parts about expansion and whatever, but what came before that? Was that directed by something of intelligence, or not?
That's the standard strawman argument of the creationists that have retreated so far that they're trying to stage a final fight at the creation of the universe.
The argument is great, because it shows that the thinker has not improved much beyond his scriptures 2000 year old model of thinking. The Big Bang was a four dimensional explosion, meaning that there is a singularity in time as well as in space there. The question "what came before that?" is entirely meaningless, and thus can not be answered. Creationists abuse that rhetorically, saying things like "see, you don't know either! I win!" But that's a pure linguistic shortcoming of english. In chinese, for example, there would be a very precise answer ("mu" - untranslatable as a word, roughly "the question can not be answered" or "the question makes no sense").
Time began at the Big Bang. There is no "before". There is no "direction". There is not even a need for direction.
I think, it's pretty ridiculous IMO to suggest that we have the answer to that question.
We do not have "the answer". What we do have is a shortlist of theories that "check out". The god theory, on the other hand, has failed so many tests that anyone still defending it is crazy.
Lastly, as far as the effects of a god, can you prove that people who miraculously have their cancer disappear don't owe their healing to a god?
Why should I be the one responsible for the proof? He who makes the claim is the one who needs to provide the proof.
What have you proven with your experiment? Nothing.
Please? What has that got to do with anything? This is why we have peer-review, why experiments are repeated, and why everyone within the scientific community readily agrees that results of experiments need to be checked carefully, especially if the results are unexpected. Are you so desperate that you have to hide your little god in lab experiment errors?
The only sane answer to the existence of god(s), higher beings, etc. is "I don't know".
That is strict agnosticism. The answer is, however, incomplete. The full, correct answer is "I do not know for sure, but it doesn't seem very likely."
The simple "I don't know" answer is celebrated by desperate believers as if it meant there's a 50:50 chance. But it doesn't. I also don't know if there's a giant polar bear in my bedroom right now, because I can't look and it could be gone when I get up. But - like god - it just isn't very likely.
There are other people groups in history who used facts and solid arguments to justify the seclusion and destruction of entire religions and people groups too.
Actually, most of these are examples of pseudo-science and pseudo-logic. Just like ID. In most cases (euthanasia, for example), the rational argument can be re-examined and falsified.
I don't care how logical you think it is, when you get to the point of calling someone's belief system criminal (and he does), then you're off the rails I'm willing to follow.
Crime is not defined by what you think, but what you do (intentionally). When you use the term in this context, he is quite right. The history of christianity, especially but not exclusively that of the catholic church, is choke full of crimes. In fact, we would call any non-religious organisation with that amount of past and current criminal activity a mafia.
I'm an athiest myself but I find his pushy nature to be a bit much soemtimes.
You want to watch Dawkins on Militant Atheism where he explains very well why he has that attitude.
It is by far not that easy.
Science does not answer "who" - its answers show that there is no "who". They also show that there is no need for a "why".
That's why religious nuts hate science so much - they can deal with people having other answers to those questions. You can assimilate them, burn them, drive them out of your lands or use any of the other time-tested methods. Science doesn't come with a different answer and doesn't join the chorus of different variations of the theme - it tells them that they're all crazies.
Who's to say that there isn't a god, and he/she/it didn't design evolution?
Nietzsche, and very brilliantly.
The argument goes roughly like this (though he puts it a lot better than I can):
Existence is defined by the effects something has on the rest of the world. If we take a hypothetical something, call it "thing an sich" or "god" or whatever else you like, which has no effect on anything else, then due to it not affecting anything, we can not verify its existence. Also, its existence makes no difference whatsoever. Therefore, it does not exist in any meaningful sense of the word.
Now you might have noticed that "god" is on the retreat. Vast areas that were clearly "gods domain" a thousand years ago are now the domain of science. Science does not only prove "how", it also proves "who" in the sense that there is no "who". Evolution works perfectly well without any guiding hand. It rains due to atmospherics, not because god is angry. Kids are made by biological events, not given by a supreme being. Whenever science is sufficiently "done" with any of its research areas, there is no "effect" of a hypothetical god left. In the end, we will end up with a "god" that has no effect whatsoever, and therefore does not exist.
QED.
That article you link to is one of the worst pieces of journalism I've seen in a long time. Just check this:
Over the 20th century, atheist political regimes racked up an appalling (and unmatched) record for violence.
Yeah, right. Evidence? Names? Numbers? Oh, none. Wonder why that is. The rest isn't much better.
The God Delusion certainly is to the point with no holds barred. But "hate speech"? Define what you mean by that. If you do, check your linked article, because I'd be very surprised if you managed to come up with a definition that includes Dawkin without att the same time including Bunting.
his 2006 book "The God Delusion," and public statements on the theory of evolution demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking
No, you fucktards, your attitude is the intolerant one. Mr. Dawkins makes claims, cites the supporting evidence, and draws conclusions, and then arrives at an opinion that he can solidly argue. And - from what I've seen of him - he does not mind listening to those who have a different opinion, and doesn't deny them forum.
Oh yes, he also doesn't belong to a group of people with a thousand year history of silencing and killing its opponent. Like you.
If the penalty for stupidity were death, Oklahoma would have to hold new elections.
2. You don't need any of them - the applications you have installed do. So, when it all comes down, why should you bother at all?
3. Yes, it is the package. However, do not forget that most of the drivers actually are 3rd party drivers, written by the hardware manufacturers themselves. There is no "HTML driver" because HTML isn't a hardware device.
4. No, it isn't. That is the whole point. MS is a monopoly. As such it can not freely decide, and negotiations between the OEMs and MS are not on a level playing field. That's what all the antitrust laws are all about. Again, bringing Suse in as a comparison misses the entire point. Suse is not a monopoly player, as such different rules apply.
Yes, partially. The part where it says "pixels" or defines colours in RGB triplets doesn't really leave much for the user agent to decide, as well as many other parts. The box model is pretty tight, as is positioning. Most of the visible differences between user agents are due to flaws.
Also it occurred to me after I posted that if you ensure Windows has no method of interpreting HTML out of the box, then you will assuredly end up with tens or hundreds of different HTML engines. Each must be updated, patched and managed. I don't believe this is a reasonable approach. HTML is common enough that I believe it should be a basic part of a client OS.
This is where code monkeys and law monkeys meet, and talk in different languages.
Yes, from a technical POV, having just one API, engine, etc. is better. Your scenario of hundreds of different engines is horror for the techy.
That same scenario, however, is how a free market is supposed to work! Everyone who wants to compete, can. And if his product is better than the others, it gains market share. There may be - in fact, there should be - many competitors.
The solution, of course, isn't to reduce choice, but to channel it. The magic word is "standards". There are probably hundreds of companies manufacturing screws and screwdrivers, and yet they all magically fit. How is that possible? Because they're all manufactured to the same standard.
Now, the matter of hundreds of different HTML rendering engines would be just as magically turned into a non-problem if only we had a standard that describes this "HTML" thing, that specifies just which tags exist, what they mean and how they should be rendered. If only we had such a... oh, wait...
So many strawmen, so little time...
One, Ford does not have a monopoly, therefore they are not subject to the restrictions put on monopoly players.
Two, does it really make a difference to you if you have three or four render engines on your desktop? The space used is negliegable today. Different from the different GUI systems you list for comparison, you'd not notice very much anyways.
Three, the file-manager-monopoly is entirely misleading. Having a monopoly is not illegal. Leveraging it to drive out competition is.
Four, this is not a matter of quality. Even if IE were the absolut best browser around, it would still be the same problem, except maybe that MS wouldn't drag the matter out over years and do every legal and some illegal tricks on the book to avoid a judgement, because they actually could win in the market. Again, this is not a matter of quality, but of protecting the free market from one of its worst enemies: A monopoly player.
And there's the reason for the EU getting involved right there.
You - and a million other developers - are glad to take whatever ships with the system.
Which means MS can, and has, leveraged its monopoly in the OS market into the browser market.
Which is illegal by both american and european law.
It really is as simple as that. It gets a little more complicated when you ask for why that is illegal (has to do with market efficiencies and monopoly rent), but your convenience translates directly into damage for all of us, you included. A typical "tragedy of the commons" problem.
True, while a judge would possibly convict you based on some BS law, just because it is in fact law, a jury might see how unfair and improper the law is and find you innocent solely based on their unwillingness to prosecute based on such law.
Or it might convict you despite you being innocent, because you're black, they don't like your mug, and they're under public pressure to put the "guilty bloke" behind bars. Or because they don't understand the fact and/or the law correctly, get confused by the attornies arguing at them, or one of a million other factors.
The point isn't making a list of advantages and shortcomings. It's checking how well the thing performs in the real world. For all I know, there is no significant difference in either false positive nor false negative rate.
Also, don't know your opinion but I have seen, in person, a couple of trials at the highest labor law court here in Germany, and the judges there are pretty impressive, including their ability to not judge "by the book" but by what is right and then find the proper stuff in the book to build a great legal reasoning for that.
Theoretically, maybe. In practice, the systems are not so much different, as juries are not "perfect" either, are often biased, easily convinced through rhetorics, not truth, and so on.
"Usability" is another word for "safe for newbies and those too lazy to read the manual".
No, it isn't. You might want to read up on literature.
Intuitive usability is important for some areas of interaction, especially where manuals are not appropriate. Elevators, door handles, light switches - the kind of stuff where you can't seriously expect people to read a manual first. Some pieces of software fall into that category, they should explain themselves.
More complex software should still be easy to use. And that's the whole point. You can make the same operation easy or difficult to use, depending on whether you care, put some effort into it or understand something about usability, HCI, etc.
Does anybody honestly think that the traditional Unix filesystem heirarchy makes an ounce of sense in 2009?
Actually, yes (mostly).
Usability does not necessarily mean you have to change the system structure. You can also display it differently. For example, on the low level, OS X knows files and folders, just like every other OS. However, on the higher levels, it will display some folders as if they were applications, and allow you to interact with them as if they were a third kind of filesystem entity that does not actually exist on the lower levels (e.g. double-clicking on a normal folder opens it, double-clicking on a folder with an app inside will launch the app, even though the actual binary is in some sub-folder).
For one, I'm proud to live here.
The higher courts in Germany are very often quite smart and experienced at cutting through the bullshit and finding (and then ruling on) the actual matter. There are actually several such "highest courts", since only certain matters can go to the BVG, and in most areas of the law the specialist top-court is just that. In the words of one judge of the BAG (the highest court for labor law): "Above us, there's only god".
This is another fine piece. If you can read german, I strongly recommend reading the full reasoning once its out.
should they focus more on usability?
Errr... yes?
How can you possibly answer "no" to that question? Do you want your stuff actually being, you know, used by people? There's a reason it's called "usability" and not bumblebee.
sometimes all the attacker needs is the JS code (obviously not secure) to see what url to hit and what parameters to send.
And if the obscurity of your URL and parameters is what you call "security", then you probably shouldn't be writing any apps, and PHP, Ajax or whatever is not where your problem is.
I can see where bundling iexplore.exe causes all sorts of anti-trust problems. Not that I agree, but it's a reasonable argument, and iexplore could easily be replaced with Firefox or Chrome or whatever other browser. However, I'm pretty sure that no browser other than IE extends the same support for an embedded browser without you having to include that browser itself, in its entirety, with your program. Hating IE is one thing, but there's not really an alternative for developers wanting simple HTML rendering in an application.
And that, exactly, is what this is all about.
MS being a monopoly leveraged its monopoly to put its own rendering engine in as the de-facto standard. There never was any competition, never was any chance for the free market to work and pick out the best offering, never was any opportunity to weed out the crap.
And that's illegal. Simple as that. It's illegal because while yes, it's great for developers to have easy access to a rendering engine, it would be much better for them if there had been choice about which engine that is, according to the laws of free market. See above.
call a spade a spade!
But that's the point. You're not asking me to call a spade a spade, you're asking me to call a hammer a spade because they're both tools.
Yes, stealing is stealing. A hen is a hen.
But not every act of illegal enrichment is stealing. Not every bird is a hen.
If you don't see the difference and insist it's nitpicking, I'll gladly trade my sparrows for your hens and wait until you realize they don't lay the same kind of eggs.
And that's not a matter of grammar. It's a matter of semantics, if you insist on bringing linguistics into the argument.
Please, do get your facts right.
Those that just out and out steal (yes it is appropriate, because it means taking something without paying, regardless of the lack of a physical item taken).
It is still inappropriate, because it is not taking. It is copying. Physical item or not (I agree that is immaterial, pun intended) the important difference is whether or not the original owner is left with or without his original.
Stealing is actually legally defined (at least in my country) not as taking, but as "taking away" (precisely, "taking away with the intent to make your own", but that's nitpicking). If you are not "taking away", then it is not stealing in the legal sense.
Here's the legal reference, if you can read german: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__242.html