No, no, that can't be right. We all know patents encourage innovation and Progress.
To suggest otherwise means countries with lax IP laws (like China now and the USA for most of its history) are where the real development and innovation happens, and that the USA is now in the process of shortsightedly stuffing it's own economy by handing what amounts to a stranglehold on technology and culture to a bunch of unaccountable corporate interests as a prelude to a long, slow fall into obscurity and irrelevance, and everyone knows that's just misguided deceitful pinko liberal anti-globalist terrorist propaganda...
It's not infeasible, what's being talked about in TFA, but I'd view the information and conclusions with your Tabloid-ometer turned up to full. It was the following snippet that first made me wonder:
"This massive internal network will be fast, but it will also be built by a single, state-owned company and easy to filter at every step. Its addressing system (known as IPv6) is scarcely used in the United States and may make parts of the Chinese Internet and the rest of the world mutually unreachable."
As I recall, the only reason the rest of the world doen't use IPv6 is because we're too half-arsed to upgrade our existing infrastructure. I don't know a lot about v6, but I do seem to recall reading it was what everyone was "supposed" to use in the near future, and that we (with such a large already-established infrastructure) were unreasonably dragging our feet.
In other words, the chinese are doing it right, but according to Slate this is somehow a bad thing.
Hmmm, I smell inadequate research or downright sensationalism.
"Again, I misrepresented my opinion and ideas on bin Laden when I said that, and I corrected it in other parts of this thread."
Fair enough - I haven't read much else of this thread (esp. since we passed the 10 screen-fulls-per-post stage;-)
"I would be interested in understanding his motivations but not interested in excusing his behavior."
That's all I'm trying to do, too - explain/investigate/understand the motivations without simply dismissing them out of hand.
I think part of the problem might be my use of the word "understandable". This was meant literally (as in "it is possible to comprehend"), not to excuse any action or opinion (as in "this is acceptable in the circumstances").
"That's what Arab kids are told. That Jews grind up children and use their blood to make matzo... Feeling threatened by and afraid of the encroachment of an alien and terrifying culture that is 180 degrees the opposite of your own is completely understandable. It's one of America's primary motivations for fighting communism for 60 years. As you wrly note below, that doesn't make it "alright". "
No, but it does make it "not entirely irrationally insane".;-p
Swap "America" for "Terrorists" and "communism" for "western culture" and you've stated my position perfectly.;-)
"Granted. Perhaps I characterized the wrong element of this debate as "insane." It's tough for me, as a classic liberal, to equate social evolution, de-taboo-izing human sexuality, and giving people freedom to determine their own destinies as being a threat to anybody except old school established totalitarian power regimes."
Indeed, and "organised religion" is about the oldest-school, most established and most totalitarian regime ever. It's existed for thousands of years, commands fanatical unquestioning obedience in sections of its following, is accountable to no-one, and often (may be read as being) violently xenophobic towards any other (rival) faiths.
"I will submit, however, that those people don't know most of this stuff either. I think your typical jihadist that is blowing himself to pieces at the Sbarro's in Tel Aviv is coming at this from a very strictly religious and somewhat brainwashed point of view...."
Granted, but when talking about The War On Terror do you really mean the brainwashed fanatic walking up to the checkpoint with bombs strapped to his chest, or do you mean the leaders, stretegists, handlers, brainwashers and the entire support network that allows them to function?
Take out the leaders and strategists and the threat they're capable of presenting crumbles for lack of resources, but take out all the suicide-bombers-in-training in the world, and they'll have entire camp-fulls more within months.
When talking about "the terrorists" I mean the leaders - the movers and shakers. True, the actual footsoldiers are often brainwashed/duped/fanatical/call-it-what-you-will, but they're more symptoms of the struggle than a cause in their own right.
"It has nothing to do with understandable and justifiable anger of the past transgressions of an imperial nation. That may be why bin Laden is doing this, but bin Laden hasn't yet blown himself up, has he?"
No, because he's the brains behind it. And I'd be very surprised indeed if OBL wasn't using exactly these arguments when "brainwashing" the troops. If you've ever seen a non-USA translation of an OBL broadcast, it's surprisingly intellectual and well-argued stuff. The guy's a monster, no doubt about it, but he can debate well, and he's got a good grasp of history and realpolitik.
And I was serious about the non-USA translation - several months ago I read the US translation of one of the OBL broadcasts, and dismissed him as a nutjob. Then soon after (by pure chance) I happened to see an al-Jazeera translation, and they were nothing alike. In the a
"Demonizing? You mean by calling people who blow themselves up in an effort to murder other innocent people "crazy"? Then yes, there's nothing quite like it."
Not specifically, since I also think religious fundamentalists (of any flavour) are crazy. However, the phrases "He had a reason, but it's irrational and insane... the motivations... are incomprehensible to reasonable, logical thinkers". seems pretty dismissive. It was the "he's just nuts, we've done nothing wrong, we've just have to get rid of him (without any self-examination necessary)" angle that I was trying to object to.
Also, from the GP: "You're attempting to explain the actions of terrorists through logic. "We deserve it," for some reason. "We caused this. This is our fault, if we hadn't (done whatever), then they wouldn't have done this"" (implying this is bad).
Not to suggest for a second that America had done anything to deserve an atrocity like 9/11, but (poor analogy time) if a guy from down the block breaks into my house, screams imprecations at me, punches me in the head and legs it, I might wonder if I'd done anything to upset him. Especially if it's impossible for it to be a case of mistaken identity. Dismissing him as insane without trying to understand his motivations misses the point that I might very well have done something to deserve some retribution, even if his was over-the-top.
"(Cultural erosion is something) that's happening here, this isn't a phenomenon unique to the Middle East. I look at half-dressed 13 year old girls at shopping malls and think, "how in the world do their mothers allow them out of the house looking like that?""
I think you're missing a great deal of context, here. We're the ones causing that erosion. Sure, some branches of our culture might be moving faster than others (so you're mildly disapproving), but it's still christian/atheist/capitalist/scientific/western culture. It's got to be very different when it's a completely alien culture - imagine your young kids were eating brains, fucking on the sidewalk and murdering old people for fun - that's the kind of revulsion-level they're experiencing.
Once again, I'm not suggesting they're right to feel like this, but it is understandable. They may have "insane" axioms they're starting from, but the reasoning from there is perfectly comprehensible.
"But I'm not strapping explosives to myself and murdering everybody shopping at The Gap."
No, but (to take another example), Pro-Life campaigners(!) have murdered doctors. That's even more fucking insane, but you can understand the motivation (it just takes a complete lack of self-examination not to notice the hypocrisy).
"This information is all readily available in American libraries and has been for decades. I respectfully submit that your impression of American information suppression is based too much on what's on our television stations. Interested Americans have easy access to all the resources they want."
Fair play, and I didn't mean to suggest you couldn't do it - I meant you'd have an easier time of it, is all. You're right, I (lacking direct experience) do base my assessment on your mass-media. Unfortunately, that's the only place many of your countrymen get their information too, though. Thanks to the net, the mass media of other countries is also now available to them, as a counterbalance, for a lot less effort than leaving the house and conducting a library search - that was all I meant by it;-)
"This is almost all legacies of the Cold War and fighting Soviet encroachment."
So that makes it alright?
"Pinochet is a classic example. America has a history of supporting a brutal dictator because the regime in question is anti-Soviet."
Pinochet's a great example - he was anti-communist, true. He violently deposed an elected Marxist government, and was propped up by the US
Aaaah. Nothing quite like demonising your opponent, is there? It allows you to safely ignore any trace of humanity on their part or consider addressing your own side's shortcomings.
Upfront, I should state I'm no al Quaeda apologist, or even USA-hater. Nor am I a "Pr0-USA!!! Ye4!!!" cheerleader. I am merely an informed, educated and interested British citizen, with a comparatively unbiased (state-owned!) media and a basic grasp of history.
Now, why would Bin Laden hate the USA so much?
"He had a reason, but it's irrational and insane. He's religious fundamentalist, and the motivations of such people are incomprehensible to reasonable, logical thinkers."
Yes, he hates the US. Yes, he hates them in part because of the western cultural imperialism that's eroding the fundmentalist culture of the middle east.
This isn't the US's fault - it's not deliberate, and it's unfair to blame you for the attractiveness of your civilisation, especially to young people. However, when the older fundamentalist generation sees their cultures values being eroded, and sees their children becoming more and more influenced by a culture that embodies (to them) everything immoral and evil (half-naked women, religious tolerance, blasphemy, drug/alcohol consumption, etc, etc, etc), you start to see where dislike might start.
However, are you aware that the entire destabilised state of the present-day middle east is due almost entirely to British and US involvement? Seriously - The British, French and several others moved in and took over an area that was mostly the preserve of "unofficial" thenic groups (sometimes even semi-nomadic tribes) - nothing even so organised as a nation. We/they owned most of the middle east, for quite a while, right through the beginning of the 20th century. Somewhere around WWII (my precise dates are hazy) we pulled out in short order, and apart from setting up a few unrepresentative, unpopular puppet governments, we basically left the region to collapse into chaos.
At about this time the US steps in. Not, it must be said, to promote decency, democracy or peace. Throughout most of this century the US has waged an intensively invasive foreign policy, actively encouraging and supplying rebellions and terrorism, destabilising governments and economically ruining states, solely to secure supplies of cheap, plentiful oil.
This is not left-wing propaganda or make-believe - this is all documented history. FWIW, if you try to look this up you'll have a much easier time using non-US sources. US culture has practiced self-censorship (through a mixture of isolationist disinterest and active suppression) for years, and it's only recently become aware of it itself.
The US has both encouraged and directly committed probably more terrorist acts than you have had directed against you, even now. The US has unashamedly befriended, propped up, supplied and even encouraged dictators, wilfully ignoring their horiffic human-rights records because they found it expedient to do so. As examples, do the names Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden mean anything to you? Guess who trained, encouraged and supplied them both in the 70s and 80s? The CIA, and US foreign policy.
Also look at Israel - I started off highly pro-Israel (culturally normal) as a kid, but as I've grown up their increasing bullying, over-use of force and (yes, admit it) horiffic human-rights abuses (especially in Palestine) have shown them to be overbearing, over-aggressive and invasive. They are (for historical reasons) hated by arab nations. However, they have (on occasion) gone far beyond even reasonable retaliation, and the US has backed them all the way.
From the middle-eastern perspective, the US meddles and destabilises entire regimes, causing untold human sufering and atrocities, so you can have a few cents off your tank of gas. They commit horiffic human rights violations (Guantanamo - even now!), and actively support others who do the same, all the wh
"I was going to take time, read his piece and post an actual reply to him,"
Yeah - you hadn't bothered before. So you thought it was a great idea to fire off a quick knee-jerk reaction flame before you'd even bothered to read what he was saying?
And, after jumping to conclusions and publicly telling him to sit down and shut up (without actually having a clue what he was saying), the fact that afterwards you were going to read it properly forms some kind of justification?
Sorry - not following you there. You post a baseless and hurtful flame without reading the source, and the fact that you planned to read it later is a defence?
"but you've just made me change my mind about it, so i only have two words for you: 'fuck' and 'you'."
Fine, fuck me all you like. But I don't see how my defence of someone else's writing should stop you from reading what they wrote. That's exactly like punching someone because you disagree with what his mate said - completely irrational.
I'd honestly suggest you read it, regardless of your feelings for me - it's actually very good, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice to ignore it out of petulance.
"And i also would like you to know that i'd fucking foe you if it wasn't for my principles (never foe anyone!) and the fact that it'd be a waste of perfectly good friend points."
That's admirable - and I subscribe to a similar ethic myself (I have only one foe, and that took several prolonged bouts of ass-hattery and much regret before I finally did it).
Perhaps I should apologise if my post was overly-abusive (or if, in fact, you were being amusing/dead-pan/disingenuous and I just didn't get it). However, it appears from here that the sequence goes:
* Person A posts a very long, very carefully thought-out public letter on a very important issue.
* Person B jumps in with a baseless, unfair personal attack on them, while admitting to not even having read the original post.
* Person C jumps in and tells Person B not to be such a fucking asshat, recommending they actually read what they're slagging off, in a way that deliberately references their original post in a mild attempt at humour.
* Person C is then an arsehole.
As I said, I'm open to the idea I was in the wrong, but somehow I really, really can't see it... Can you (constructively) enlighten me?
"If TV doesn't reinvent itself as an internet business soon, the reprocussions could be of Napster proportions!"
What, you mean it'll be a wonderful (if ethically dubious) resource for the techno-elite, which (as soon as it hits the mainstream) is sued into oblivion and comes back years later as a nice, safe, controlled, pre-packaged way for Big Media to shovel more bland and unwanted crap down our throats?
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, right? Bollocks - you'll be buying "The Revolution" action figures for your kids.
There's practically nothing that can't be absorbed, lobotomised and safely fed back to the fat 'n' stupid public, given enough money, time, legal clout and a large enough portfolio of purchased public representatives.
Apologies, I appear to be a little more than usually pessimistic today...
Frankly if you can't recognise three or four pages of well-reasoned argument, logical conclusions drawn from those arguments, and can't comprehend of someone taking the time to write a lucid explanation of such an important issue with the aim of avoiding one of the more cataclysmic developments in modern computing, maybe you're the one who should stop posting. Deal?
And for reference, I read the whole thing, and found it fascinating (if slightly repetitive and in need of some proofreading). Fuckwit.
I suppose it depends on whether you're using "AD" to mean literally "Anno Domini" ("The Year Of Our Lord..."), or (seeing as how it's a foreign phrase co-opted into the English language as a single entity) whether you're using it as a general signifier in its own right. For example, many people consider it perfectly correct to write "CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research)", also though it technically stands for "Centre European pour Researche Nucleare" (sp?).
It's just one of those "common usage" vs. "technically correct" things, and since I haven't seen a date represented as "AD$date" for years, one could make a persuasive argument that it was now the de-facto correct usage;-)
Really? This method works on every browser I've tried it on, including FF with all ad-blocking turned on. And, to be fair, most people don't have the slightest clue what window.open() means - by "most people" here I think you mean "the very, very bleeding-edge of the technically literate, who also use Firefox and don't find the built-in popup-blocking functionality good enough".
"Most people" here, in fact, means "practically no-one";-)
Even so, as a rule most Adblockers I've seen seem to permit window.open()s, as long as they come fro ma user-initiated action (onclick event handler, etc).
As I said, it's not foolproof, but then nothing ever is. What you can say about this is that it conforms to the specs, it separates content and behaviour, it validates, it's the best option available, and it works on about 90+% of the people who'll be browsing your site.
I'm with you on this, AC. This decision doesn't say anything about the legality (or otherwise) of malware - TFA specifically states:
"Though the case did not directly address consumer frustration over adware, which often gets onto computers without their owners' full knowledge, the court said it viewed WhenU's ads as authorized."
To me, this is something of a victory - it says nothing about the legality of malware/spyware (how the adware gets on your machine). However, it does enshrine in law your right to modify how content is displayed once it hits your machine.
Basically, the decision says "it is legal to privately modify the content of a website for your own viewing pleasure". Think of this a a protective legal precedent for screenscraping, GreaseMonkey, etc, etc, etc.
Now, we know that adware is usually installed without educated user permission, but that's an entirely different case. We've been given the permission to (at least privately) modify/remix/mash-up content. Now all we need is to make covertly installing adware against the law and the law will have at last got this/these issue(s) right.
FFS strap down that jerking knee before you do someone an injury.
Yes, lawyers get involved in things too easily these days.
Yes, the legal profession is sucking the money, time and vitality from american (world?) culture, and fattening up on their ill-gotten gains.
Yes, lawyers themselves often come off as objectionable, closed-minded, grabby little bastards (with apologies to the GP).
However... this is someone who uncovers prolonged, well-known and deliberate, immoral and illegal behaviour by the company he works for.
The software in question (IIRC) was written by the very people he's writing the memo to.
They clearly understand and appreciate they're doing something shady (if not outright illegal), and he basically calls them on it, to their faces.
If this memo was written as a resignation letter, fair play (although the implications are a little threatening - I know you're doing illegal stuff, here's how much trouble you'd get into if anyone found out, BTW I'm quite clearly pissed off with you and I'm resigning...).
If it wasn't offered as a resignation letter, it's extremely stupidly-written. Sure, the company has gone way overboard and are clearly a bunch of shameless criminal cunts, but read the letter again - did he ever, under any circumstances actually expect them to thank him for the memo and pat him on the head?
No - he's clearly telling them he knows what they're doing, he's clearly stating how much trouble they'd be in, and stating his position as diametrically opposed to them.
Sure, it could harm his professional credibility if/when it came out, so he should have resigned quietly, or gone straight to the authorities. Given the company's position on the matter he's clearly never going to persuade them to stop what they're doing, so his job was pretty much gone from the moment he decided he couldn't tolerate their behaviour.
Sending this not-resignation letter, requesting (presumably) he be assigned to another project, then explicitely threatening them with legal action?
I have all the sympathy in the world, but well, he's basically asking for trouble.
Just to clear up: I have every sympathy for Chip, and I sincerely hope these criminal fuckwads get everything coming to them, but yes, consulting with a lawyer would have been a no-brainer, and yes, he fucked up.
"It's better than FrontPage which is saying quite a bit."
Really? I dunno if Frontpage has improved beyond recognition over the last couple of years, but last time I looked at it the phrase "better then Frontpage" said nothing at all.;-)
"The link editor doesn't let you specify the target for the new link so you have to add it by hand..."
The TARGET attribute of links has been deprecated according to XHTML 1.0 Strict - this is part of an effort to separate content, presentation and behaviour.
Instead, you should code a normal link to the destination, but add a javascript event handler that disables the link and opens a new window with the same link in it.
This way, browsers that don't understand javascript follow the link like normal, but javascript-aware ones execute the javascript instead.
The "sanctioned" solution to this problem is as follows:
The HREF attribute allows non-javascript (or just people using "open link in new window") to open the link correctly.
The onclick event handler grabs control in javascript-aware browsers, and opens a new window.
Returning false from the event handler prevents the onclick event from "succeeding", so the parent browser window doesn't also follow the HREF link.
The upshot of this is that this code degrades gracefully to a normal link for non-JS browsers, but for JS browsers it opens the link in a new window and leaves the current window at the same location. Oh yeah, and you can also still see the link destination in the status bar when mouseovering (mousing-over?) it. (Yay! Pet hate!)
As a final refinement (as I always do), instead of calling window.open() directly you could just call a javascript function that takes the URL, windowname and chrome settings, and calls window.open() itself. This allows you precise control over the window settings without cluttering up your code, and moves more of the javascript logic out of your HTML file and into a separate.JS file (again, separating content and behaviour).
They aren't a portal - Yahoo is a portal - a huge, sprawling mess with a search box lost somewhere on it.
Google is a search company - a clean, sparse search engine homepage with some (~10) links to other projects they own - a very different design philosophy.
Yahoo is a "media" company - they lost sight of search a long time ago, and have only recently started actively pushing it again (how long were they syndicating Google - or others' - results for?). This loss of emphasis on what made them big is what made them lose relevance as a search engine, but what gained them relevance for the unwashed masses (who lap up astrology, dating services, etc, etc, etc).
Google is, first and foremost, a search company (well, ok, an advertising company, but one that understands it can only survive by focusing on "search"). They may also produce or acquire innovations in other areas, but these are generally either subsets of "Search" (News, Local, Adwords/sense, etc) or fit well within the same conceptual framework (ie, large datasets they can mine - Orkut, GMail, etc).
True, Google does now offer a portal homepage, but that's very different to "being a portal" IMO...
I hate SEO with a passion (and I have to do it as part of my job), but you're right.
The way I see it, SEO is a tool - nothing more, nothing less. It isn't inherently evil or inherently good - it's how you use it and what you use it for that matters.
If you've got a good site on... i dunno... aardvark polishing for fun and profit, then you should rank highly on Google. If you don't rank well on Google, it's probably because your site is lacking one of fame, content or clean code. All of these are necessary for (or inevitable side-products of) a good site that does what people want.
Conversely, a good site will probably have many inbound links, clean semantic markup, well-focused pages full of good content and so on. This is simply good site design (or, like the links, a side-effect of it), but it's also the very ethical end of the SEO spectrum.
Now, you also get evil scumbag fuckwits-for-hire who specialise in link-farming, keyword stuffing, cloaking and other black-hat techniques, and sell their services to shitty pr0n or spam sites. This is spam - no doubt about it - but it only represents the black-hat side of SEO.
The black-hat SEOers, it must be admitted, are the one which gets all the attention. They're the ones advertising like mad, making overblown claims, spamming search engines with crap listings and generally getting in people's faces. However, just because these people use SEO doesn't make SEO bad. Before SEO they were likely sending e-mail spams until that got too hard, but you don't unilaterally brand professionally-looking e-mails or people who sell mailing-list managers as evil, do you?
As Google et al. get their acts in gear and revamp their algorithms, "SEO" is increasingly overlapping with "good site design" - this was always the intention, and even now "white-hat SEO" and "good site design" are pretty much synonymous.
SEO isn't the problem - the problem is a combination of shithead black-hat SEOers, Search Engines inadequately assessing a page's worth and ill-educated types who shortsightedly blame the gun or bullet instead of the guy who fired it at them.
Nah, it's still be too easy to just regexp for UserAgents that match/google/ and/bot/.
It might be against the Robots Exclusion Standards to deliberately fake your UserAgent header, but that's mostly so you can contact the robot's owner if it goes wrong and accidentally DOSes your site.
I doubt severely anyone would mind if Google did an occasional, low-impact, slow, back-up crawl disguised as IE (presumably also from an IP address block not known to belong to Google), especially since GoogleBot has only ever been well-behaved (at least as far as my sites' logs indicate)...
When the name of the game is cross-browser-support[1], then yes, functionality known to be broken on the browser that still has 90% market share is indeed cheating.
Or just not doing your job.
Now, as to whether it's fair that we should have to produce broken, sketchy, brain-damaged code to support an ancient, obsolete and crumbling browser that's nevertheless obstinately squatting on the web browser market, impeding the development of the entire world wide web... no, it's not fair.
But then since when was life, especially web design, and very especially web design that has to go anywhere near IE, ever fair?
Footnotes:
[1] Remember that concept? Accessibility? It's only, like, the fundamental tenet of the entire web... <:-/
That's a lovely idea, but it's completely useless for drawing notice to a particular article, only to a particular story. That isn't always what you want, and entails further effort than simply noting an interesting story and firing off a quick/. submission (which is 99% likely to get rejected anyway, so the time you spend on it is 99% likely to be wasted).
If the NYT login bothers you that much, do what everyone else does and download the BugMeNot Firefox plugin.
This way the poster doesn't waste time unnecessarily (so they aren't discouraged from submitting further articles), BugMeNot gets another convert (which is good, because it's a brilliant service), and NYTimes' user-demographics go further out of whack thanks to their stupid and obnoxious sign-in requirement... I count that as a win all-round...
And if you insist on getting a perfectly balanced view of an issue, you, personally, can always choose to search Google news for other accounts of it, without wasting the time of everyone who'd rather just click and see a single article from a known source...
When did the spelling and grammar of 'leetspeak get standardised? I must have missed that meeting.
I thought the whole point of leetspeak was that you proved how much of a rebel you were by intentionally disregarding restrictive and arbitrary rules... like spelling, grammar and basic comprehensibility...
I just meant that someone stupid enough to think that casing a joint by looking at a picture of the front of the building on a web page was good enough preparation for an assassination was probably stupid enough to try to flush the sniper rifle afterwards to hide the evidence.
Ie, if they're that impossibly stupid then I severely doubt they'd be able to complete the crime without bungling it and/or getting caught.
I dunno, it was just an amusing mental image - door busted down, armed police peering into the bathroom, where the would-be assassin stands crouched over the toilet, repeatedly and desperately trying to flush the whole rifle down the loo.
Slashdot Mirror
No, no, that can't be right. We all know patents encourage innovation and Progress.
To suggest otherwise means countries with lax IP laws (like China now and the USA for most of its history) are where the real development and innovation happens, and that the USA is now in the process of shortsightedly stuffing it's own economy by handing what amounts to a stranglehold on technology and culture to a bunch of unaccountable corporate interests as a prelude to a long, slow fall into obscurity and irrelevance, and everyone knows that's just misguided deceitful pinko liberal anti-globalist terrorist propaganda...
No, wait...
It's not infeasible, what's being talked about in TFA, but I'd view the information and conclusions with your Tabloid-ometer turned up to full. It was the following snippet that first made me wonder:
"This massive internal network will be fast, but it will also be built by a single, state-owned company and easy to filter at every step. Its addressing system (known as IPv6) is scarcely used in the United States and may make parts of the Chinese Internet and the rest of the world mutually unreachable."
As I recall, the only reason the rest of the world doen't use IPv6 is because we're too half-arsed to upgrade our existing infrastructure. I don't know a lot about v6, but I do seem to recall reading it was what everyone was "supposed" to use in the near future, and that we (with such a large already-established infrastructure) were unreasonably dragging our feet.
In other words, the chinese are doing it right, but according to Slate this is somehow a bad thing.
Hmmm, I smell inadequate research or downright sensationalism.
"Again, I misrepresented my opinion and ideas on bin Laden when I said that, and I corrected it in other parts of this thread."
;-)
;-p
;-)
Fair enough - I haven't read much else of this thread (esp. since we passed the 10 screen-fulls-per-post stage
"I would be interested in understanding his motivations but not interested in excusing his behavior."
That's all I'm trying to do, too - explain/investigate/understand the motivations without simply dismissing them out of hand.
I think part of the problem might be my use of the word "understandable". This was meant literally (as in "it is possible to comprehend"), not to excuse any action or opinion (as in "this is acceptable in the circumstances").
"That's what Arab kids are told. That Jews grind up children and use their blood to make matzo... Feeling threatened by and afraid of the encroachment of an alien and terrifying culture that is 180 degrees the opposite of your own is completely understandable. It's one of America's primary motivations for fighting communism for 60 years. As you wrly note below, that doesn't make it "alright". "
No, but it does make it "not entirely irrationally insane".
Swap "America" for "Terrorists" and "communism" for "western culture" and you've stated my position perfectly.
"Granted. Perhaps I characterized the wrong element of this debate as "insane." It's tough for me, as a classic liberal, to equate social evolution, de-taboo-izing human sexuality, and giving people freedom to determine their own destinies as being a threat to anybody except old school established totalitarian power regimes."
Indeed, and "organised religion" is about the oldest-school, most established and most totalitarian regime ever. It's existed for thousands of years, commands fanatical unquestioning obedience in sections of its following, is accountable to no-one, and often (may be read as being) violently xenophobic towards any other (rival) faiths.
"I will submit, however, that those people don't know most of this stuff either. I think your typical jihadist that is blowing himself to pieces at the Sbarro's in Tel Aviv is coming at this from a very strictly religious and somewhat brainwashed point of view...."
Granted, but when talking about The War On Terror do you really mean the brainwashed fanatic walking up to the checkpoint with bombs strapped to his chest, or do you mean the leaders, stretegists, handlers, brainwashers and the entire support network that allows them to function?
Take out the leaders and strategists and the threat they're capable of presenting crumbles for lack of resources, but take out all the suicide-bombers-in-training in the world, and they'll have entire camp-fulls more within months.
When talking about "the terrorists" I mean the leaders - the movers and shakers. True, the actual footsoldiers are often brainwashed/duped/fanatical/call-it-what-you-will, but they're more symptoms of the struggle than a cause in their own right.
"It has nothing to do with understandable and justifiable anger of the past transgressions of an imperial nation. That may be why bin Laden is doing this, but bin Laden hasn't yet blown himself up, has he?"
No, because he's the brains behind it. And I'd be very surprised indeed if OBL wasn't using exactly these arguments when "brainwashing" the troops. If you've ever seen a non-USA translation of an OBL broadcast, it's surprisingly intellectual and well-argued stuff. The guy's a monster, no doubt about it, but he can debate well, and he's got a good grasp of history and realpolitik.
And I was serious about the non-USA translation - several months ago I read the US translation of one of the OBL broadcasts, and dismissed him as a nutjob. Then soon after (by pure chance) I happened to see an al-Jazeera translation, and they were nothing alike. In the a
"Demonizing? You mean by calling people who blow themselves up in an effort to murder other innocent people "crazy"? Then yes, there's nothing quite like it."
... are incomprehensible to reasonable, logical thinkers". seems pretty dismissive. It was the "he's just nuts, we've done nothing wrong, we've just have to get rid of him (without any self-examination necessary)" angle that I was trying to object to.
;-)
Not specifically, since I also think religious fundamentalists (of any flavour) are crazy. However, the phrases "He had a reason, but it's irrational and insane... the motivations
Also, from the GP: "You're attempting to explain the actions of terrorists through logic. "We deserve it," for some reason. "We caused this. This is our fault, if we hadn't (done whatever), then they wouldn't have done this"" (implying this is bad).
Not to suggest for a second that America had done anything to deserve an atrocity like 9/11, but (poor analogy time) if a guy from down the block breaks into my house, screams imprecations at me, punches me in the head and legs it, I might wonder if I'd done anything to upset him. Especially if it's impossible for it to be a case of mistaken identity. Dismissing him as insane without trying to understand his motivations misses the point that I might very well have done something to deserve some retribution, even if his was over-the-top.
"(Cultural erosion is something) that's happening here, this isn't a phenomenon unique to the Middle East. I look at half-dressed 13 year old girls at shopping malls and think, "how in the world do their mothers allow them out of the house looking like that?""
I think you're missing a great deal of context, here. We're the ones causing that erosion. Sure, some branches of our culture might be moving faster than others (so you're mildly disapproving), but it's still christian/atheist/capitalist/scientific/western culture. It's got to be very different when it's a completely alien culture - imagine your young kids were eating brains, fucking on the sidewalk and murdering old people for fun - that's the kind of revulsion-level they're experiencing.
Once again, I'm not suggesting they're right to feel like this, but it is understandable. They may have "insane" axioms they're starting from, but the reasoning from there is perfectly comprehensible.
"But I'm not strapping explosives to myself and murdering everybody shopping at The Gap."
No, but (to take another example), Pro-Life campaigners(!) have murdered doctors. That's even more fucking insane, but you can understand the motivation (it just takes a complete lack of self-examination not to notice the hypocrisy).
"This information is all readily available in American libraries and has been for decades. I respectfully submit that your impression of American information suppression is based too much on what's on our television stations. Interested Americans have easy access to all the resources they want."
Fair play, and I didn't mean to suggest you couldn't do it - I meant you'd have an easier time of it, is all. You're right, I (lacking direct experience) do base my assessment on your mass-media. Unfortunately, that's the only place many of your countrymen get their information too, though. Thanks to the net, the mass media of other countries is also now available to them, as a counterbalance, for a lot less effort than leaving the house and conducting a library search - that was all I meant by it
"This is almost all legacies of the Cold War and fighting Soviet encroachment."
So that makes it alright?
"Pinochet is a classic example. America has a history of supporting a brutal dictator because the regime in question is anti-Soviet."
Pinochet's a great example - he was anti-communist, true. He violently deposed an elected Marxist government, and was propped up by the US
Aaaah. Nothing quite like demonising your opponent, is there? It allows you to safely ignore any trace of humanity on their part or consider addressing your own side's shortcomings.
Upfront, I should state I'm no al Quaeda apologist, or even USA-hater. Nor am I a "Pr0-USA!!! Ye4!!!" cheerleader. I am merely an informed, educated and interested British citizen, with a comparatively unbiased (state-owned!) media and a basic grasp of history.
Now, why would Bin Laden hate the USA so much?
"He had a reason, but it's irrational and insane. He's religious fundamentalist, and the motivations of such people are incomprehensible to reasonable, logical thinkers."
Yes, he hates the US. Yes, he hates them in part because of the western cultural imperialism that's eroding the fundmentalist culture of the middle east.
This isn't the US's fault - it's not deliberate, and it's unfair to blame you for the attractiveness of your civilisation, especially to young people. However, when the older fundamentalist generation sees their cultures values being eroded, and sees their children becoming more and more influenced by a culture that embodies (to them) everything immoral and evil (half-naked women, religious tolerance, blasphemy, drug/alcohol consumption, etc, etc, etc), you start to see where dislike might start.
However, are you aware that the entire destabilised state of the present-day middle east is due almost entirely to British and US involvement? Seriously - The British, French and several others moved in and took over an area that was mostly the preserve of "unofficial" thenic groups (sometimes even semi-nomadic tribes) - nothing even so organised as a nation. We/they owned most of the middle east, for quite a while, right through the beginning of the 20th century. Somewhere around WWII (my precise dates are hazy) we pulled out in short order, and apart from setting up a few unrepresentative, unpopular puppet governments, we basically left the region to collapse into chaos.
At about this time the US steps in. Not, it must be said, to promote decency, democracy or peace. Throughout most of this century the US has waged an intensively invasive foreign policy, actively encouraging and supplying rebellions and terrorism, destabilising governments and economically ruining states, solely to secure supplies of cheap, plentiful oil.
This is not left-wing propaganda or make-believe - this is all documented history. FWIW, if you try to look this up you'll have a much easier time using non-US sources. US culture has practiced self-censorship (through a mixture of isolationist disinterest and active suppression) for years, and it's only recently become aware of it itself.
The US has both encouraged and directly committed probably more terrorist acts than you have had directed against you, even now. The US has unashamedly befriended, propped up, supplied and even encouraged dictators, wilfully ignoring their horiffic human-rights records because they found it expedient to do so. As examples, do the names Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden mean anything to you? Guess who trained, encouraged and supplied them both in the 70s and 80s? The CIA, and US foreign policy.
Also look at Israel - I started off highly pro-Israel (culturally normal) as a kid, but as I've grown up their increasing bullying, over-use of force and (yes, admit it) horiffic human-rights abuses (especially in Palestine) have shown them to be overbearing, over-aggressive and invasive. They are (for historical reasons) hated by arab nations. However, they have (on occasion) gone far beyond even reasonable retaliation, and the US has backed them all the way.
From the middle-eastern perspective, the US meddles and destabilises entire regimes, causing untold human sufering and atrocities, so you can have a few cents off your tank of gas. They commit horiffic human rights violations (Guantanamo - even now!), and actively support others who do the same, all the wh
"I was going to take time, read his piece and post an actual reply to him,"
Yeah - you hadn't bothered before. So you thought it was a great idea to fire off a quick knee-jerk reaction flame before you'd even bothered to read what he was saying?
And, after jumping to conclusions and publicly telling him to sit down and shut up (without actually having a clue what he was saying), the fact that afterwards you were going to read it properly forms some kind of justification?
Sorry - not following you there. You post a baseless and hurtful flame without reading the source, and the fact that you planned to read it later is a defence?
"but you've just made me change my mind about it, so i only have two words for you: 'fuck' and 'you'."
Fine, fuck me all you like. But I don't see how my defence of someone else's writing should stop you from reading what they wrote. That's exactly like punching someone because you disagree with what his mate said - completely irrational.
I'd honestly suggest you read it, regardless of your feelings for me - it's actually very good, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice to ignore it out of petulance.
"And i also would like you to know that i'd fucking foe you if it wasn't for my principles (never foe anyone!) and the fact that it'd be a waste of perfectly good friend points."
That's admirable - and I subscribe to a similar ethic myself (I have only one foe, and that took several prolonged bouts of ass-hattery and much regret before I finally did it).
Perhaps I should apologise if my post was overly-abusive (or if, in fact, you were being amusing/dead-pan/disingenuous and I just didn't get it). However, it appears from here that the sequence goes:
* Person A posts a very long, very carefully thought-out public letter on a very important issue.
* Person B jumps in with a baseless, unfair personal attack on them, while admitting to not even having read the original post.
* Person C jumps in and tells Person B not to be such a fucking asshat, recommending they actually read what they're slagging off, in a way that deliberately references their original post in a mild attempt at humour.
* Person C is then an arsehole.
As I said, I'm open to the idea I was in the wrong, but somehow I really, really can't see it... Can you (constructively) enlighten me?
"If TV doesn't reinvent itself as an internet business soon, the reprocussions could be of Napster proportions!"
What, you mean it'll be a wonderful (if ethically dubious) resource for the techno-elite, which (as soon as it hits the mainstream) is sued into oblivion and comes back years later as a nice, safe, controlled, pre-packaged way for Big Media to shovel more bland and unwanted crap down our throats?
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, right? Bollocks - you'll be buying "The Revolution" action figures for your kids.
There's practically nothing that can't be absorbed, lobotomised and safely fed back to the fat 'n' stupid public, given enough money, time, legal clout and a large enough portfolio of purchased public representatives.
Apologies, I appear to be a little more than usually pessimistic today...
Fuckwit.
Frankly if you can't recognise three or four pages of well-reasoned argument, logical conclusions drawn from those arguments, and can't comprehend of someone taking the time to write a lucid explanation of such an important issue with the aim of avoiding one of the more cataclysmic developments in modern computing, maybe you're the one who should stop posting. Deal?
And for reference, I read the whole thing, and found it fascinating (if slightly repetitive and in need of some proofreading). Fuckwit.
I can see the adverts now.
"Microsoft Heart XP, making the BSOD literal since 2055..."
Pedant. ;-p
;-)
I suppose it depends on whether you're using "AD" to mean literally "Anno Domini" ("The Year Of Our Lord..."), or (seeing as how it's a foreign phrase co-opted into the English language as a single entity) whether you're using it as a general signifier in its own right. For example, many people consider it perfectly correct to write "CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research)", also though it technically stands for "Centre European pour Researche Nucleare" (sp?).
It's just one of those "common usage" vs. "technically correct" things, and since I haven't seen a date represented as "AD$date" for years, one could make a persuasive argument that it was now the de-facto correct usage
Really? This method works on every browser I've tried it on, including FF with all ad-blocking turned on. And, to be fair, most people don't have the slightest clue what window.open() means - by "most people" here I think you mean "the very, very bleeding-edge of the technically literate, who also use Firefox and don't find the built-in popup-blocking functionality good enough".
;-)
"Most people" here, in fact, means "practically no-one"
Even so, as a rule most Adblockers I've seen seem to permit window.open()s, as long as they come fro ma user-initiated action (onclick event handler, etc).
As I said, it's not foolproof, but then nothing ever is. What you can say about this is that it conforms to the specs, it separates content and behaviour, it validates, it's the best option available, and it works on about 90+% of the people who'll be browsing your site.
To me, this is something of a victory - it says nothing about the legality of malware/spyware (how the adware gets on your machine). However, it does enshrine in law your right to modify how content is displayed once it hits your machine.
Basically, the decision says "it is legal to privately modify the content of a website for your own viewing pleasure". Think of this a a protective legal precedent for screenscraping, GreaseMonkey, etc, etc, etc.
Now, we know that adware is usually installed without educated user permission, but that's an entirely different case. We've been given the permission to (at least privately) modify/remix/mash-up content. Now all we need is to make covertly installing adware against the law and the law will have at last got this/these issue(s) right.
"You still occasionally see this in old place names. For example, the Spotswood hotel near here has embedded into its concrete "Spottiswoode"."
;-p
Olde English? Wow - how old is that concrete?
FFS strap down that jerking knee before you do someone an injury.
Yes, lawyers get involved in things too easily these days.
Yes, the legal profession is sucking the money, time and vitality from american (world?) culture, and fattening up on their ill-gotten gains.
Yes, lawyers themselves often come off as objectionable, closed-minded, grabby little bastards (with apologies to the GP).
However... this is someone who uncovers prolonged, well-known and deliberate, immoral and illegal behaviour by the company he works for.
The software in question (IIRC) was written by the very people he's writing the memo to.
They clearly understand and appreciate they're doing something shady (if not outright illegal), and he basically calls them on it, to their faces.
If this memo was written as a resignation letter, fair play (although the implications are a little threatening - I know you're doing illegal stuff, here's how much trouble you'd get into if anyone found out, BTW I'm quite clearly pissed off with you and I'm resigning...).
If it wasn't offered as a resignation letter, it's extremely stupidly-written. Sure, the company has gone way overboard and are clearly a bunch of shameless criminal cunts, but read the letter again - did he ever, under any circumstances actually expect them to thank him for the memo and pat him on the head?
No - he's clearly telling them he knows what they're doing, he's clearly stating how much trouble they'd be in, and stating his position as diametrically opposed to them.
Sure, it could harm his professional credibility if/when it came out, so he should have resigned quietly, or gone straight to the authorities. Given the company's position on the matter he's clearly never going to persuade them to stop what they're doing, so his job was pretty much gone from the moment he decided he couldn't tolerate their behaviour.
Sending this not-resignation letter, requesting (presumably) he be assigned to another project, then explicitely threatening them with legal action?
I have all the sympathy in the world, but well, he's basically asking for trouble.
Just to clear up: I have every sympathy for Chip, and I sincerely hope these criminal fuckwads get everything coming to them, but yes, consulting with a lawyer would have been a no-brainer, and yes, he fucked up.
Knee feel any better yet?
"It's better than FrontPage which is saying quite a bit."
;-)
.JS file (again, separating content and behaviour).
;-)
Really? I dunno if Frontpage has improved beyond recognition over the last couple of years, but last time I looked at it the phrase "better then Frontpage" said nothing at all .
"The link editor doesn't let you specify the target for the new link so you have to add it by hand..."
The TARGET attribute of links has been deprecated according to XHTML 1.0 Strict - this is part of an effort to separate content, presentation and behaviour.
Instead, you should code a normal link to the destination, but add a javascript event handler that disables the link and opens a new window with the same link in it.
This way, browsers that don't understand javascript follow the link like normal, but javascript-aware ones execute the javascript instead.
The "sanctioned" solution to this problem is as follows:
<a href="http://link-destination" onclick="window.open('http://link-destination'); return false;">pop-up link</a>
The HREF attribute allows non-javascript (or just people using "open link in new window") to open the link correctly.
The onclick event handler grabs control in javascript-aware browsers, and opens a new window.
Returning false from the event handler prevents the onclick event from "succeeding", so the parent browser window doesn't also follow the HREF link.
The upshot of this is that this code degrades gracefully to a normal link for non-JS browsers, but for JS browsers it opens the link in a new window and leaves the current window at the same location. Oh yeah, and you can also still see the link destination in the status bar when mouseovering (mousing-over?) it. (Yay! Pet hate!)
As a final refinement (as I always do), instead of calling window.open() directly you could just call a javascript function that takes the URL, windowname and chrome settings, and calls window.open() itself. This allows you precise control over the window settings without cluttering up your code, and moves more of the javascript logic out of your HTML file and into a separate
Hope this helps
They aren't a portal - Yahoo is a portal - a huge, sprawling mess with a search box lost somewhere on it.
Google is a search company - a clean, sparse search engine homepage with some (~10) links to other projects they own - a very different design philosophy.
Yahoo is a "media" company - they lost sight of search a long time ago, and have only recently started actively pushing it again (how long were they syndicating Google - or others' - results for?). This loss of emphasis on what made them big is what made them lose relevance as a search engine, but what gained them relevance for the unwashed masses (who lap up astrology, dating services, etc, etc, etc).
Google is, first and foremost, a search company (well, ok, an advertising company, but one that understands it can only survive by focusing on "search"). They may also produce or acquire innovations in other areas, but these are generally either subsets of "Search" (News, Local, Adwords/sense, etc) or fit well within the same conceptual framework (ie, large datasets they can mine - Orkut, GMail, etc).
True, Google does now offer a portal homepage, but that's very different to "being a portal" IMO...
I hate SEO with a passion (and I have to do it as part of my job), but you're right.
The way I see it, SEO is a tool - nothing more, nothing less. It isn't inherently evil or inherently good - it's how you use it and what you use it for that matters.
If you've got a good site on... i dunno... aardvark polishing for fun and profit, then you should rank highly on Google. If you don't rank well on Google, it's probably because your site is lacking one of fame, content or clean code. All of these are necessary for (or inevitable side-products of) a good site that does what people want.
Conversely, a good site will probably have many inbound links, clean semantic markup, well-focused pages full of good content and so on. This is simply good site design (or, like the links, a side-effect of it), but it's also the very ethical end of the SEO spectrum.
Now, you also get evil scumbag fuckwits-for-hire who specialise in link-farming, keyword stuffing, cloaking and other black-hat techniques, and sell their services to shitty pr0n or spam sites. This is spam - no doubt about it - but it only represents the black-hat side of SEO.
The black-hat SEOers, it must be admitted, are the one which gets all the attention. They're the ones advertising like mad, making overblown claims, spamming search engines with crap listings and generally getting in people's faces. However, just because these people use SEO doesn't make SEO bad. Before SEO they were likely sending e-mail spams until that got too hard, but you don't unilaterally brand professionally-looking e-mails or people who sell mailing-list managers as evil, do you?
As Google et al. get their acts in gear and revamp their algorithms, "SEO" is increasingly overlapping with "good site design" - this was always the intention, and even now "white-hat SEO" and "good site design" are pretty much synonymous.
SEO isn't the problem - the problem is a combination of shithead black-hat SEOers, Search Engines inadequately assessing a page's worth and ill-educated types who shortsightedly blame the gun or bullet instead of the guy who fired it at them.
Nah, it's still be too easy to just regexp for UserAgents that match /google/ and /bot/.
It might be against the Robots Exclusion Standards to deliberately fake your UserAgent header, but that's mostly so you can contact the robot's owner if it goes wrong and accidentally DOSes your site.
I doubt severely anyone would mind if Google did an occasional, low-impact, slow, back-up crawl disguised as IE (presumably also from an IP address block not known to belong to Google), especially since GoogleBot has only ever been well-behaved (at least as far as my sites' logs indicate)...
Hmmm... All your space are belong to us?
When the name of the game is cross-browser-support[1], then yes, functionality known to be broken on the browser that still has 90% market share is indeed cheating.
Or just not doing your job.
Now, as to whether it's fair that we should have to produce broken, sketchy, brain-damaged code to support an ancient, obsolete and crumbling browser that's nevertheless obstinately squatting on the web browser market, impeding the development of the entire world wide web... no, it's not fair.
But then since when was life, especially web design, and very especially web design that has to go anywhere near IE, ever fair?
Footnotes:
[1] Remember that concept? Accessibility? It's only, like, the fundamental tenet of the entire web... <:-/
That's a lovely idea, but it's completely useless for drawing notice to a particular article, only to a particular story. That isn't always what you want, and entails further effort than simply noting an interesting story and firing off a quick /. submission (which is 99% likely to get rejected anyway, so the time you spend on it is 99% likely to be wasted).
If the NYT login bothers you that much, do what everyone else does and download the BugMeNot Firefox plugin.
This way the poster doesn't waste time unnecessarily (so they aren't discouraged from submitting further articles), BugMeNot gets another convert (which is good, because it's a brilliant service), and NYTimes' user-demographics go further out of whack thanks to their stupid and obnoxious sign-in requirement... I count that as a win all-round...
And if you insist on getting a perfectly balanced view of an issue, you, personally, can always choose to search Google news for other accounts of it, without wasting the time of everyone who'd rather just click and see a single article from a known source...
When did the spelling and grammar of 'leetspeak get standardised? I must have missed that meeting.
I thought the whole point of leetspeak was that you proved how much of a rebel you were by intentionally disregarding restrictive and arbitrary rules... like spelling, grammar and basic comprehensibility...
Now, now, I think it's important that everyone's able to air their views. No sense in letting it wind (think about it ;-) you up...
And that should be a warning right there.
"Coming to bed darling?"
"Hold on - just got to finish debugging the router/configuring the firewall/recompiling the kernel/watching this Babylon 5 marathon..."
<five hours later>
"Phew, all done! Man, that was fun. Shit, I'm sure there was something I was going to do..."
I just meant that someone stupid enough to think that casing a joint by looking at a picture of the front of the building on a web page was good enough preparation for an assassination was probably stupid enough to try to flush the sniper rifle afterwards to hide the evidence.
Ie, if they're that impossibly stupid then I severely doubt they'd be able to complete the crime without bungling it and/or getting caught.
I dunno, it was just an amusing mental image - door busted down, armed police peering into the bathroom, where the would-be assassin stands crouched over the toilet, repeatedly and desperately trying to flush the whole rifle down the loo.