Great plan! I'm sure the state of Florida will stand up against some multinational conglomarate that controls the vast majority of software development world wide and provide a viable market in which that company is not allowed to interfere with it's competitors via strong arming the market with it's monopoly.
I'm sure if a company like MS were unregulated, that a single state could impose meaningful sanctions against them that would allow for competitors inside Florida to remain in business./sarcasm
It's a global market, that's the whole idea behind Laissez-faire free market. But free markets only work where everyone plays by the same rules. If a vendor can exploit cheap labor in one region, they will, even if that labor is illegal in another region. If a vendor can exploit influence or market share over a competitor in another region, they will, and provided neither of them have head quarters in your State, there is squat you are going to do about it. The whole concept of free market and state level regulation is ridiculous and will only further the 'boom or bust' economic trends in the US. If anything, the opposite is required to improve the free market. More international trade agreements that establish a base level of regulation that everyone must follow, the the aggressive enforcement of those regulations.
I'm glad you feel that way. And just imagine a life were everyone could live that way.
I mean, wouldn't it be liberating to wake up and get an electric bill for 50c/KW hour because of complete de-regulation of the electricity generation market? And how free I would feel when all those crappy last mile ISP's are bought out by the back bone owners and all of my traffic gets tiered, filtered, and over charged.
And just think about how cool it would be if the government got it's fat nose out of the way so that we could have 1 supreme software development company that could use it's control of the desktop market to crush any of those pesky competitors.
Yeah, the combination of libertarian reduction of government ideals with the open market theory and the republican 'business first!' attitude... that would truly be an inspiring country.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for the reduction of government in some arenas, but the idea of having a fire sale of all of the federal government's powers is not the way to do it. All that will result in is shifting power from the government to a small number of corporations. And corporations as we all know, can not be held accountable, have no morals, and have a responsibility only to the stock holders' investments.
My wife has a cat. Cat is the wrong word for it though. Foul retching hell beast, spawn of Satan, demon of the abyss, etc... are more appropriate descriptors. The thing is ancient (it's unnaturally long lifespan obviously due to some pact with the devil), demanding, cunning, and smarter then it has any right to be.
Anyways, Saturday night I went up to the bedroom to tuck in for the night and I saw that the foul hell beast had harfed all over my favorite jeans. When I informed my wife about what the demon spawn had done, her reply was "at least she didn't puke on the bed" with a smile.
Point being, cat harf is cat harf and political BS is political BS, regardless of where it lands and how long it took to come up with. The only thing of value is the response.
Yeah, not that they were right next to eachother, two of them where what, a couple of kilometers apart. Not side by side, but close enough that a single ship dragging an acre could take out both. Just saying that a chain of events could easily create this same situation.
The primary point remains though, it is not incredible that 3 undersea cables were cut by ships dragging anchors. It is incredible that 3 were cut in such a short timeframe, but the fact that they were cut in such a way is pretty much to be expected. Unless the previous replier was correct, and that ManBearPig HAS learned to swim. But if that is the case... we're all doomed.
How many ways are there to cut a cable buried at the bottom of the ocean? Saying that it is improbablr for them to be cut in the same way is absurd. That's like saying it's improbably for 3 people to be shot by a gun, as opposed to beat to death or suffocated with it.
It is improbable for 3 cables to be cut in such a short time frame, but the manner in which they were cut is entirely plausible and expected.
More importantly, look at what did cause it. Are the lines running under high traffic waters? If so, why did it take this long for one of the lines to get caught? If not, why were those boats trying to anchor there? What was causing the movement of the anchor? Storms? Idiots? Tides?
And truly, it's really not even that unlikely. Running cables next to each other makes maintenance easier, so it would lie in reason that if you are dragging an anchor across one, you are likely going to drag across the other. And once you cut the line, you are going to wind up with more vehicles in the area attempt to repair and investigate the situation. And with more traffic you increase the likelihood of another accident.
I worked a contract gig a few years back for a non-consumer bank. Their average transactions were on the order of tens of thousands to millions of dollars. The IT director was a lady who loathed Microsoft. Not that she ever really explained her hatred of MS, but she stuck to it. As a result, they were using Netware 3.0 for all of their networking needs. Now, that in and of itself isn't a major problem, Netware was a solid system in it's time. The problem though was that while I was working that contract the latest version of Netware had just been released, v6.0. Yup, they were using a 10 year old networking system. Not only that, but it was version 3.0, not the fully patched 3.3. The IT direct railed against MS for their security shortcomings while touting a network that was so archaic that her only security was the obscurity of her software.
If you want to get into the legal specifics of it, Libel, and all forms of defamation are Civil Torts under federal law. 17 states DO have CRIMINAL LAWS against defamation though.
Defamation has NOTHING to do with dissenting speech, and in the US has a number of minimal criteria that must be met. For instance, saying "In my opinion, President Bush is a total douche bag" is NOT defamation. On the other hand (for sample only, I do not believe the following sentence to be true in any sense) "President Bush looks at kiddie porn, and I have logs to prove it!" could be libel, or at least it would be if not clearly presented in this context. You can insult people, you can oppose their point of view, you can let your opinion be known. But you can't make inaccurate statements about people that you know to be false in a factual manner, well you can, but if those statements go on to cause harm, you can be held liable (either civilly or criminally) for your statements.
In the United States, you are protected from libel, whether you take it onto yourself to sue the attacker in civil court, or if you reside in one of the states where defamation is a criminal act AND you can convince a DA to push the charges.
Libel is libel, whether written by a known author, or anonymously. Libel is a crime. There for, anonymous libel is a crime. So even if they had spread anonymous pamphlets or emails, it would still be libel and the perpetrator would still be criminally liable.
Seeing as how there was a crime, how is it wrong for this girl to do what she can to find out who it was and have her day in court? She has a lead, let her follow it. If the providers don't have the logs, sucks to be her, but if they do, they should cough them up for the subpoena.
That's fine that you feel that way. Now show me a news report, white paper, press release, or ANYTHING that backs those numbers up.
The only press release that I could find that had actual numbers on it said that 5w was the goal of the product line by 2010. So if you have something better to go by than armchair techno-forecasting, please, go ahead and post it.
VIA's Pico-ITX full systems (not just the chip) have already by clocked at 14w idle, 16w max in pre-release reviews from 6 months ago. The previous generation C7s can easily be throttled back to stay at 5w on the proc as needed. I'm not sure if such functionality is available on the new Pico systems though.
Intel is "shooting for" a 5w processor (no clarification if this is max load, or idle) in 2010.
VIA's Pico-ITX is already available at 1ghz, and the previous generation C7's are available up to 2ghz.
Intel's Silverthorne processor is also aiming for the Pentium M era performance (900mhz - 2.3ghz).
Yes, the initial Silverthorne release is slated for Q1-Q2 2008, but the performance goals you mentioned aren't slated until 2010. So what I'm saying here, is that you can already buy everything that Intel is "shooting for" 2 years before they plan on reaching those goals. With all likelihood, the 2008 release of the Silverthorne will be a 1ghz proc sucking down 20w at peak. Which will put it right in competitive range of the C7 and new Pico-ITX.
There is a huge difference between my (almost) 4-year old son, sitting on my lap, taking turns with me running from the cops in NFS, than plopping a 4-year old in a play room with a Nintendo unsupervised for hours on end.
And as much fun as crashing into the bus station at 90mph is in NFS, it's not as entertaining as the mock-reenactment in which my son crashes into me and erupts in an explosion of laughter from the ensuing tickle fight. But hey, that's what he gets for blowing up daddy's gas station!
-Rick
PS: Other fun lines to teach small children to say over vent: -You're such a newb -For the horde! -Blame the tank -Did you die again?
He started off at http://pbskids.org/ playing the bunny games on the Teletubby page (move mouse, bunnies hope and make sound). One day I came home and he had managed to figure out how to navigate around the teletubby page, so I helped him learn how to play the games that required mouse clicking. Not long after that, he figured out how to navigate the PBSKids page and get to the pages for other brands. But I was really amazed when he managed to find Caiyou(sp?)'s train game, and beat it. It's a basic puzzle game, a train track that is missing some pieces, you have to drag differently shaped piece onto the track to complete the path. And here's a 2.5 year old kid who's having a blast doing it.
My wife and I also play World of Warcraft. We usually wait until after he goes to bed to fire up the ol' addiction, but some slow weekend afternoons we'll play for a bit while he's up. He was interested, so we gave him his own little toon. My wife leveled up a warlock to level 5 and got him an imp (imp is automatically defensive). So he runs around the newblet area killing wolves and cheering "For the horde!". You do have to keep an eye on him though as there are other people around, and they will try to talk to him. Not that he can read most of the words they say (he's not quite 4 yet), but I'd prefer to not have people trying to cyber with my toddler. WoW also get's reinacted in the living room as he chases imaginary beasts down and loots their corpses. It is a very energetic, noisy, and humorous game.
And recently he's been brushing up on his driving skills with Need For Speed. And while his driving skills in the game have been improving amazingly, his non-computer racing games with matchbox cars, and sprinting around the house have also improved his motor imitation sound, and his running ability;)
Anyways, I'm with you and the GP. Games are fine, so long as we, the parents, are involved and we balance the computer time with active time and more directly educational time.
And what would happen if one of the bid winners licensed existing TV stations to broadcast over some specific frequency just as they already are? Sure, it's not innovative or revolutionary, but the broadcast TV model has already proven profitable, and there are a LOT of people in the US with out HD TV's/Converters. Seems like there could be a rather solid market out there to continue the status quo, at least for a while until the HD penetration numbers rise.
I think that is an excellent post from the point of view of an IT professional, web developer, or web administrator.
I agree that the worst case on this is not an end of the world issue. It could have ramifications though, and in today's environment of litigation before logic, it makes sense to limit all liabilities, even those that have a extremely unlikely worst case scenario.
Take a look at it from the point of view of the users, of the CIOs, of the small business owners, and from MS's side. There is a fair amount of risk involved in this change over, and the temporary (and sweet jebus do I hope it's temporary) use of a stop-gap can absolutely remove all of that risk, for an insignificant investment.
I'm not saying this by way of self-promotion; I just need to be clear that this is not an opinion I'm just tossing off at the first jerk of a knee. With more time, I could explain the economics of it all, emphasising the fact that saving money in the short term - no matter the budget - is often the wrong response. In my experience, wise investment always trumps short-term savings.
But this isn't about past money savings. Yes, MS should have followed the standards, but they didn't. So developers had 2 options, stick rigorously to the standard, and have a page that failed to render exactly as desired for 90% of you web traffic. Or design the page with IE6/7 strict mode limitations in mind so that it would render correctly for 99% of your web traffic. In that situation, it is cheapest to design solely for the standard, and damn the nuances of IE and FF, but doing so will leave you with a page that fails to render correctly in either. The 'wise investment' is to code a page in such a way that it renders correctly with the prominent technology.
Now the problem comes in when the standard remains the same, but the rendering engines change. In order to preserve legacy functionality, the proper decision would be to use the legacy engine with legacy doctypes by default, and to use the new engine with new doctypes by default.
Lets put this example in a different scenario, one that has more clearly defined boarders, but shares the exact same limitations. Let's say that MS/Intel came up with a new way of processing 32b instructions. This new way of processing could increase performance of 90% of 32b instructions by 10%, but it would also decrease the performance of 10% of 32b instructions by 200%. If MS/Intel were to force all 32b instructions to be processed in the new way by default, everyone would have to test every single 32b application ever developed to see if it still ran acceptable. That means digging out decade old applications that have been chuging along merrily for years with out maintenance, full testing cycles on every app from calculators to office apps, to databases, video games, media players, etc... everything running on 32b instructions would have to be tested. And once you find all apps that were effected by that 10% issue, you have to find the vendor, who may or may not still be in business, the code, which may or may not be in a code repository, and someone familiar with the technology to fix the problem.
The cost of doing such a thing would be astronomical!
If however, MS/Intel offered a choice between which 32b instruction engine to use, defaulted to the existing system, and allowing developers to pass specific commands to change the instruction engine to the new one, they could avoid dealing with all of their legacy apps. Sure, the developers will have to pass an extra command while coding for 32b systems (obviously 64b, 128b, etc... systems would not require the use of that command), but since that would be done on applications that are actively being worked on, the investment to do so is trivial and the test cycle will be performed regardless of the instruction engine.
Small, non-IT companies do face a burden making even the smallest changes, true. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't reap what they've sown.
So what you're saying is that any developer who in the last 4 years has developed a website using a strict doctype and working to ensure the page renders correctly in both IE and FF using browser specific nuances to do so while remaining as close to the standard as possible should be liable for any damages that may occur to any of their clients due to MS changing their rendering engine years after they developed the web site?
I find it slightly ironic that the people who argue so strongly against quirks mode are so in favor of crucifying developers who used strict mode.
As far as my business is concerned, I'd do it free of charge, and treat is as nothing more than a maintenance issue.
I will grant you that it is unfortunate that there are so many organisations and people who have been suckered into thinking that a random blodge of tag soup is good enough for them. While I despise the condition, I agree that it's really not the website owner's fault for actually believing what he's told. But my sympathy only extends so far.
I'm not sure I follow you there. I'm not talking about MyPage-esc crap piles of disjointed MS Word generated HTML. I'm talking about professionally developed web sites that were generated using a strict doc type, the IE's dominant market share in mind.
I fail to see anything wrong with what you're describing.
Okay, so users having a bad experience, service providers losing sales, any even more lawsuits involving Microsoft are good in your opinion? Sure, suing MS is good fun an all, but the user experience and market value of e-commerce sites are slightly higher on my priority than vicasiously living out my vengence on MS through some 3rd party shopping cart vendor that lost 3 million in revenues due to a rendering difference between IE7 and IE8.
I say no. I say damn the torpedoes and let some sites look ugly (that is the worst-case, after all).
Negative, looking ugly, as you put it is a rather critical issue when it is your menu and navigation system that suddenly 'looks ugly'. Or if it is your shoping cart confirmation page that 'looks ugly'. Or a captcha that looks, err, well, uglier than usual.
Point being, the only way to be positive that your site ISN'T effected is to visit every single page in IE8 to ensure the functionality remains stable. Which, as I've said before, it not that big of a deal for companies with an IT department and/or a web savey employee. But for organizations with out such resources, detecting the issue could be delayed months, and correcting it could be a costly afair with a consulting firm.
I say as well that the cost to individual website owners will not be nearly as calamitous as you seem to think
The cheapest I was ever billed at for IT related consulting in Wisconsin was $88/hr. Back on the east coast, a solid web developer could be had for the price of $125+/hr. And if you wanted someone with experience, well, it would go up from there. And most consultants, being technological purists, like yourself, and billed hourly, would find the issue being non-standards compliant HTML being rendered differently in IE7 and IE8. Given the choice between enabling a flag in a meta tag for each page, or correcting the HTML code, most consultants would lean towards correcting the code. So for a brisk 40 hour week of work determining the problem areas, correcting them, testing them, and publishing the changes, an organization could be looking at a $3500 to $6000 bill. Heck, even if they just set the flag on each and every page, assuming they were still safe about it and not changing production pages, you could still wind up with 4+ hours of work for a $350-$600 bill. Which for a small non-IT focused organization, could be 10% of their annual IT budget.
No, I think a lot of/.er's a missing just how big of a fiscal impact this would truely represent. Which is understandable. Most/.er's are techies, we spend our days writing code, punching wires, setting up beowulf clusters, etc... Accounting is not a strong suit of the/. crowd.
Now we're proposing to make our stuff work again by fscking things up even more.'
You're looking at it from the programer's point of view. Look at it from the end user's point of view. If MS made IE8 render existing strict doctypes differently than IE7, and it makes the page "look ugly", then Microsoft has then "fscked things up". Regardless of what technologies exist behind the page, the end result is that the users of IE are unhappy. By adding a meta tag requirement to existing doctypes to get the new rendering engine, it prevents just th
I don't think that's a good idea, because it'll create a hell of a lot more work in the long run, even if it is one line.
Hmmm, adding one line HTTP header to a server for all new development web sites, or testing every single legacy web site to see if there is a rendering issue... hmm, which sounds like it would be more work... hmmm.... one line, one time, or loading every single page of every single site... hmmm... toughie there.
It's one line that shouldn't have to be there, and one line more that's going to take up space in the document (from a bandwidth point of view, though compression would help this). Woh, I would call that a straw man, but at ~40B, I don't think I could even call it a toothpick.
It would be a lot less work to retroactively fix the websites and applications that are currently IE-only (websites being a minority in this case (no self-respecting organization these days has an IE-only website); This doesn't apply to IE only websites specifically. This applies to any website that has a strict doctype and renders differently between IE7 and IE8. Also, how many websites are there in the world? Billions? Trillions? How many websites are currently under active development? Millions? How on earth could it be "a lot less work" to fix all of the currently live sites as opposed to fixing those that are in active development?
Apps would likely have someone maintaining them and thus capable of making the change trivially, profit or non) Yes, for companies that don't have an IT department, I can see how getting a site wide update done could be considered "trivial". no, wait... I can't. Sorry, my bust.
than to force all web developers to add this tag in the future from now til forever, just because IE6 didn't implement the DOCTYPE properly and is now broken. Ideally, IE8 would not require the tag for doctypes that are released after IE8 is released. At that point you force people to stick to the standards. I'm not sure what MS's plan at that point is, but I sure hope that after IE8 is released, any new doctypes that are released will automatically render in the (more) standards compliant mode.
Why not add a rendering mode flag to the standard? Rendering engines, browsers, and standards don't always ship at the same time. Having a rendering mode flag in the standard would allow people to develop HTML pages against a set standard with a set rendering mode, and know that no matter how much browsers change over time, their page will always render the same./shrug
One line change. Works for every site hosted. Still too hard for you? For the love of all things, none of this is hard for ME. There are thousands of organizations in the world that have websites that don't have web admins. It's not a matter of "hard" for them. They won't even know that a problem exists until one of the employees goes to the site from a home computer. And even when they do find out there is an issue, they don't have the knowledge to understand the cause. Sure, they can hire a consultant for $100+/hour to take a look, and hopefully the person is smart enough (and honest!) to find and correct the issue in very short order.
The issue is of all of the legacy websites out there that may be effected by this change. If any of those sites are effected in a way that effects their visitors experience, it is bad for users. If the changes in the user's experience changes their service requests from the web site's owner, it is bad for the organization. If it causes a financial hardship to the organization, what is to keep that company from suing MS? Sure, the lawsuit might not go far, but it would take resources to fight or pay to go away.
By forcing IE7 behavior by default and standards compliant behavior with a flag, they completely eliminate this risk.
The User has the same experience they always have.
The Organizations don't have to invest in their website.
Microsoft doesn't get yet another black eye for releasing a browser that "breaks" websites.
Developers looking for a more standards compliant rendering in existing doctypes can add a tag and pass ACID2.
No risk. No significant investments going forward. No investment at all for legacy apps.
And for those of us who have to justify to our bosses what the budget should be spent on. Or when we have to make a decision between new hardware or reviewing all of our web systems. Or when I have to tell my old clients that they're going to have to take money out of a scholarship program or a nature conservancy project to pay a consultant to come in an audit their website...
Yeah, and people call ME an asshole.
MS f'd up in the first place. And now they're trying to make it right in a way that takes the least amount of risk and work. To bad they screwed it up to start with, but at least they are being logical in their attempt to finally fix it.
You pick your battles. Take the avenue of least resistance.
Altering our system of time measurement would be great and all, but the force required to do so would be incomprehensible. So we fix the technical issue.
In this situation:
Option A) Altering IE8 to render in the IE7 way by default takes no investment on our part.
Altering IE8 to accept a non-standard tag to force standards compliant mode on pre-existing doctypes takes a minimal effort.
-or-
Option B) Reviewing and possibly altering every existing web page with a strict doc type would require a significant investment in both IT resources and cash. An investment that many organizations are unable to make.
Gee, I wonder why MS would want to go with Option A. No risk, tiny investment requirements by developers, vs huge risk and significant investment... Wow! How would they ever come to that conclusion.
the user will simply need to switch the flag. And when I tell Aunt Edna she needs to switch a flag to make the fan site for her favorite soap opera to render correctly, she's going to go to her porch, take down the stars and stripes, and put up a maple leaf. All the while, wondering what the heck the Canadian flag has to do with her computer.
Point being, this isn't the kind of stuff you pester a user with. If IE8 hits a webpage with a doctype released prior to it's release, it should default to IE7 rendering. If it encounters the IE8 specific tag, or a doctype that was released after IE8, it should use the IE8 Standards Compliant rendering engine.
Frankly, it's not different than the amount of hands-on attention they should already be giving their browsing - with filters, security levels, plugins, etc. Frankly, it's not different than the amount of hands-on attention they should already be giving their car.
What is the Octane rating of the fuel in your car? What is the weight of the oil? What is the winter weight of the oil? What is the air pressure in each of your tires? What is the oil level? How many months has it been since your last oil change? How many miles since your last oil change? How many months since your coolant has been flushed? How many miles/months since your tranny fluid has be flushed? Miles on your diff fluid?
How many of those can you rattle off? How many of those can your friends rattle off? How many of those can your Grandparent rattle off?
What people have against it is that you dont modify a standard by decreeing a new tag - especially to force "strict standards". It's highly ironic and dilbertesqe. And the funny thing about Dilbert, is that quite often it is true. And sometimes, it's true for a very good reason.
Slashdot Mirror
Great plan! I'm sure the state of Florida will stand up against some multinational conglomarate that controls the vast majority of software development world wide and provide a viable market in which that company is not allowed to interfere with it's competitors via strong arming the market with it's monopoly.
/sarcasm
I'm sure if a company like MS were unregulated, that a single state could impose meaningful sanctions against them that would allow for competitors inside Florida to remain in business.
It's a global market, that's the whole idea behind Laissez-faire free market. But free markets only work where everyone plays by the same rules. If a vendor can exploit cheap labor in one region, they will, even if that labor is illegal in another region. If a vendor can exploit influence or market share over a competitor in another region, they will, and provided neither of them have head quarters in your State, there is squat you are going to do about it. The whole concept of free market and state level regulation is ridiculous and will only further the 'boom or bust' economic trends in the US. If anything, the opposite is required to improve the free market. More international trade agreements that establish a base level of regulation that everyone must follow, the the aggressive enforcement of those regulations.
-Rick
I'm glad you feel that way. And just imagine a life were everyone could live that way.
I mean, wouldn't it be liberating to wake up and get an electric bill for 50c/KW hour because of complete de-regulation of the electricity generation market? And how free I would feel when all those crappy last mile ISP's are bought out by the back bone owners and all of my traffic gets tiered, filtered, and over charged.
And just think about how cool it would be if the government got it's fat nose out of the way so that we could have 1 supreme software development company that could use it's control of the desktop market to crush any of those pesky competitors.
Yeah, the combination of libertarian reduction of government ideals with the open market theory and the republican 'business first!' attitude... that would truly be an inspiring country.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for the reduction of government in some arenas, but the idea of having a fire sale of all of the federal government's powers is not the way to do it. All that will result in is shifting power from the government to a small number of corporations. And corporations as we all know, can not be held accountable, have no morals, and have a responsibility only to the stock holders' investments.
-Rick
My wife has a cat. Cat is the wrong word for it though. Foul retching hell beast, spawn of Satan, demon of the abyss, etc... are more appropriate descriptors. The thing is ancient (it's unnaturally long lifespan obviously due to some pact with the devil), demanding, cunning, and smarter then it has any right to be.
Anyways, Saturday night I went up to the bedroom to tuck in for the night and I saw that the foul hell beast had harfed all over my favorite jeans. When I informed my wife about what the demon spawn had done, her reply was "at least she didn't puke on the bed" with a smile.
Point being, cat harf is cat harf and political BS is political BS, regardless of where it lands and how long it took to come up with. The only thing of value is the response.
-Rick
He is saying two things:
1) I have no plan
2) I plan to have no plan
He's a quasi libertarian, the whole goal of him reaching the white house is to reduce the federal government's role in pretty much everything.
-Rick
Yeah, not that they were right next to eachother, two of them where what, a couple of kilometers apart. Not side by side, but close enough that a single ship dragging an acre could take out both. Just saying that a chain of events could easily create this same situation.
The primary point remains though, it is not incredible that 3 undersea cables were cut by ships dragging anchors. It is incredible that 3 were cut in such a short timeframe, but the fact that they were cut in such a way is pretty much to be expected. Unless the previous replier was correct, and that ManBearPig HAS learned to swim. But if that is the case... we're all doomed.
-Rick
How many ways are there to cut a cable buried at the bottom of the ocean? Saying that it is improbablr for them to be cut in the same way is absurd. That's like saying it's improbably for 3 people to be shot by a gun, as opposed to beat to death or suffocated with it.
It is improbable for 3 cables to be cut in such a short time frame, but the manner in which they were cut is entirely plausible and expected.
More importantly, look at what did cause it. Are the lines running under high traffic waters? If so, why did it take this long for one of the lines to get caught? If not, why were those boats trying to anchor there? What was causing the movement of the anchor? Storms? Idiots? Tides?
And truly, it's really not even that unlikely. Running cables next to each other makes maintenance easier, so it would lie in reason that if you are dragging an anchor across one, you are likely going to drag across the other. And once you cut the line, you are going to wind up with more vehicles in the area attempt to repair and investigate the situation. And with more traffic you increase the likelihood of another accident.
-Rick
I worked a contract gig a few years back for a non-consumer bank. Their average transactions were on the order of tens of thousands to millions of dollars. The IT director was a lady who loathed Microsoft. Not that she ever really explained her hatred of MS, but she stuck to it. As a result, they were using Netware 3.0 for all of their networking needs. Now, that in and of itself isn't a major problem, Netware was a solid system in it's time. The problem though was that while I was working that contract the latest version of Netware had just been released, v6.0. Yup, they were using a 10 year old networking system. Not only that, but it was version 3.0, not the fully patched 3.3. The IT direct railed against MS for their security shortcomings while touting a network that was so archaic that her only security was the obscurity of her software.
-Rick
or on drugs.
If you want to get into the legal specifics of it, Libel, and all forms of defamation are Civil Torts under federal law. 17 states DO have CRIMINAL LAWS against defamation though.
For more information, I would recommend reading the Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation and check out this handy map on world wide defamation legality: http://www.article19.org/advocacy/defamationmap/map/
Defamation has NOTHING to do with dissenting speech, and in the US has a number of minimal criteria that must be met. For instance, saying "In my opinion, President Bush is a total douche bag" is NOT defamation. On the other hand (for sample only, I do not believe the following sentence to be true in any sense) "President Bush looks at kiddie porn, and I have logs to prove it!" could be libel, or at least it would be if not clearly presented in this context. You can insult people, you can oppose their point of view, you can let your opinion be known. But you can't make inaccurate statements about people that you know to be false in a factual manner, well you can, but if those statements go on to cause harm, you can be held liable (either civilly or criminally) for your statements.
In the United States, you are protected from libel, whether you take it onto yourself to sue the attacker in civil court, or if you reside in one of the states where defamation is a criminal act AND you can convince a DA to push the charges.
-Rick
Libel is libel, whether written by a known author, or anonymously. Libel is a crime. There for, anonymous libel is a crime. So even if they had spread anonymous pamphlets or emails, it would still be libel and the perpetrator would still be criminally liable.
Seeing as how there was a crime, how is it wrong for this girl to do what she can to find out who it was and have her day in court? She has a lead, let her follow it. If the providers don't have the logs, sucks to be her, but if they do, they should cough them up for the subpoena.
-Rick
That's fine that you feel that way. Now show me a news report, white paper, press release, or ANYTHING that backs those numbers up.
The only press release that I could find that had actual numbers on it said that 5w was the goal of the product line by 2010. So if you have something better to go by than armchair techno-forecasting, please, go ahead and post it.
-Rick
VIA's Pico-ITX full systems (not just the chip) have already by clocked at 14w idle, 16w max in pre-release reviews from 6 months ago. The previous generation C7s can easily be throttled back to stay at 5w on the proc as needed. I'm not sure if such functionality is available on the new Pico systems though.
Intel is "shooting for" a 5w processor (no clarification if this is max load, or idle) in 2010.
VIA's Pico-ITX is already available at 1ghz, and the previous generation C7's are available up to 2ghz.
Intel's Silverthorne processor is also aiming for the Pentium M era performance (900mhz - 2.3ghz).
Yes, the initial Silverthorne release is slated for Q1-Q2 2008, but the performance goals you mentioned aren't slated until 2010. So what I'm saying here, is that you can already buy everything that Intel is "shooting for" 2 years before they plan on reaching those goals. With all likelihood, the 2008 release of the Silverthorne will be a 1ghz proc sucking down 20w at peak. Which will put it right in competitive range of the C7 and new Pico-ITX.
-Rick
I checked the web site to try to catch the trailor. Fire Fox choked hard and after 5 minutes I finally just killed the FF process.
:(
Teh suck
-Rick
An absolutely great point!
There is a huge difference between my (almost) 4-year old son, sitting on my lap, taking turns with me running from the cops in NFS, than plopping a 4-year old in a play room with a Nintendo unsupervised for hours on end.
And as much fun as crashing into the bus station at 90mph is in NFS, it's not as entertaining as the mock-reenactment in which my son crashes into me and erupts in an explosion of laughter from the ensuing tickle fight. But hey, that's what he gets for blowing up daddy's gas station!
-Rick
PS: Other fun lines to teach small children to say over vent:
-You're such a newb
-For the horde!
-Blame the tank
-Did you die again?
Heh, my kid is a mini gammer as well.
;)
He started off at http://pbskids.org/ playing the bunny games on the Teletubby page (move mouse, bunnies hope and make sound). One day I came home and he had managed to figure out how to navigate around the teletubby page, so I helped him learn how to play the games that required mouse clicking. Not long after that, he figured out how to navigate the PBSKids page and get to the pages for other brands. But I was really amazed when he managed to find Caiyou(sp?)'s train game, and beat it. It's a basic puzzle game, a train track that is missing some pieces, you have to drag differently shaped piece onto the track to complete the path. And here's a 2.5 year old kid who's having a blast doing it.
My wife and I also play World of Warcraft. We usually wait until after he goes to bed to fire up the ol' addiction, but some slow weekend afternoons we'll play for a bit while he's up. He was interested, so we gave him his own little toon. My wife leveled up a warlock to level 5 and got him an imp (imp is automatically defensive). So he runs around the newblet area killing wolves and cheering "For the horde!". You do have to keep an eye on him though as there are other people around, and they will try to talk to him. Not that he can read most of the words they say (he's not quite 4 yet), but I'd prefer to not have people trying to cyber with my toddler. WoW also get's reinacted in the living room as he chases imaginary beasts down and loots their corpses. It is a very energetic, noisy, and humorous game.
And recently he's been brushing up on his driving skills with Need For Speed. And while his driving skills in the game have been improving amazingly, his non-computer racing games with matchbox cars, and sprinting around the house have also improved his motor imitation sound, and his running ability
Anyways, I'm with you and the GP. Games are fine, so long as we, the parents, are involved and we balance the computer time with active time and more directly educational time.
-Rick
Thanks for the answer! That makes a lot of sense, even if it does mean no Google TV ;)
-Rick
And what would happen if one of the bid winners licensed existing TV stations to broadcast over some specific frequency just as they already are? Sure, it's not innovative or revolutionary, but the broadcast TV model has already proven profitable, and there are a LOT of people in the US with out HD TV's/Converters. Seems like there could be a rather solid market out there to continue the status quo, at least for a while until the HD penetration numbers rise.
-Rick
I think that is an excellent post from the point of view of an IT professional, web developer, or web administrator.
I agree that the worst case on this is not an end of the world issue. It could have ramifications though, and in today's environment of litigation before logic, it makes sense to limit all liabilities, even those that have a extremely unlikely worst case scenario.
Take a look at it from the point of view of the users, of the CIOs, of the small business owners, and from MS's side. There is a fair amount of risk involved in this change over, and the temporary (and sweet jebus do I hope it's temporary) use of a stop-gap can absolutely remove all of that risk, for an insignificant investment.
-Rick
I'm not saying this by way of self-promotion; I just need to be clear that this is not an opinion I'm just tossing off at the first jerk of a knee. With more time, I could explain the economics of it all, emphasising the fact that saving money in the short term - no matter the budget - is often the wrong response. In my experience, wise investment always trumps short-term savings.
But this isn't about past money savings. Yes, MS should have followed the standards, but they didn't. So developers had 2 options, stick rigorously to the standard, and have a page that failed to render exactly as desired for 90% of you web traffic. Or design the page with IE6/7 strict mode limitations in mind so that it would render correctly for 99% of your web traffic. In that situation, it is cheapest to design solely for the standard, and damn the nuances of IE and FF, but doing so will leave you with a page that fails to render correctly in either. The 'wise investment' is to code a page in such a way that it renders correctly with the prominent technology.
Now the problem comes in when the standard remains the same, but the rendering engines change. In order to preserve legacy functionality, the proper decision would be to use the legacy engine with legacy doctypes by default, and to use the new engine with new doctypes by default.
Lets put this example in a different scenario, one that has more clearly defined boarders, but shares the exact same limitations. Let's say that MS/Intel came up with a new way of processing 32b instructions. This new way of processing could increase performance of 90% of 32b instructions by 10%, but it would also decrease the performance of 10% of 32b instructions by 200%. If MS/Intel were to force all 32b instructions to be processed in the new way by default, everyone would have to test every single 32b application ever developed to see if it still ran acceptable. That means digging out decade old applications that have been chuging along merrily for years with out maintenance, full testing cycles on every app from calculators to office apps, to databases, video games, media players, etc... everything running on 32b instructions would have to be tested. And once you find all apps that were effected by that 10% issue, you have to find the vendor, who may or may not still be in business, the code, which may or may not be in a code repository, and someone familiar with the technology to fix the problem.
The cost of doing such a thing would be astronomical!
If however, MS/Intel offered a choice between which 32b instruction engine to use, defaulted to the existing system, and allowing developers to pass specific commands to change the instruction engine to the new one, they could avoid dealing with all of their legacy apps. Sure, the developers will have to pass an extra command while coding for 32b systems (obviously 64b, 128b, etc... systems would not require the use of that command), but since that would be done on applications that are actively being worked on, the investment to do so is trivial and the test cycle will be performed regardless of the instruction engine.
Small, non-IT companies do face a burden making even the smallest changes, true. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't reap what they've sown.
So what you're saying is that any developer who in the last 4 years has developed a website using a strict doctype and working to ensure the page renders correctly in both IE and FF using browser specific nuances to do so while remaining as close to the standard as possible should be liable for any damages that may occur to any of their clients due to MS changing their rendering engine years after they developed the web site?
I find it slightly ironic that the people who argue so strongly against quirks mode are so in favor of crucifying developers who used strict mode.
As far as my business is concerned, I'd do it free of charge, and treat is as nothing more than a maintenance issue.
Gre
I will grant you that it is unfortunate that there are so many organisations and people who have been suckered into thinking that a random blodge of tag soup is good enough for them. While I despise the condition, I agree that it's really not the website owner's fault for actually believing what he's told. But my sympathy only extends so far.
I'm not sure I follow you there. I'm not talking about MyPage-esc crap piles of disjointed MS Word generated HTML. I'm talking about professionally developed web sites that were generated using a strict doc type, the IE's dominant market share in mind.
I fail to see anything wrong with what you're describing.
Okay, so users having a bad experience, service providers losing sales, any even more lawsuits involving Microsoft are good in your opinion? Sure, suing MS is good fun an all, but the user experience and market value of e-commerce sites are slightly higher on my priority than vicasiously living out my vengence on MS through some 3rd party shopping cart vendor that lost 3 million in revenues due to a rendering difference between IE7 and IE8.
I say no. I say damn the torpedoes and let some sites look ugly (that is the worst-case, after all).
Negative, looking ugly, as you put it is a rather critical issue when it is your menu and navigation system that suddenly 'looks ugly'. Or if it is your shoping cart confirmation page that 'looks ugly'. Or a captcha that looks, err, well, uglier than usual.
Point being, the only way to be positive that your site ISN'T effected is to visit every single page in IE8 to ensure the functionality remains stable. Which, as I've said before, it not that big of a deal for companies with an IT department and/or a web savey employee. But for organizations with out such resources, detecting the issue could be delayed months, and correcting it could be a costly afair with a consulting firm.
I say as well that the cost to individual website owners will not be nearly as calamitous as you seem to think
The cheapest I was ever billed at for IT related consulting in Wisconsin was $88/hr. Back on the east coast, a solid web developer could be had for the price of $125+/hr. And if you wanted someone with experience, well, it would go up from there. And most consultants, being technological purists, like yourself, and billed hourly, would find the issue being non-standards compliant HTML being rendered differently in IE7 and IE8. Given the choice between enabling a flag in a meta tag for each page, or correcting the HTML code, most consultants would lean towards correcting the code. So for a brisk 40 hour week of work determining the problem areas, correcting them, testing them, and publishing the changes, an organization could be looking at a $3500 to $6000 bill. Heck, even if they just set the flag on each and every page, assuming they were still safe about it and not changing production pages, you could still wind up with 4+ hours of work for a $350-$600 bill. Which for a small non-IT focused organization, could be 10% of their annual IT budget.
/.er's a missing just how big of a fiscal impact this would truely represent. Which is understandable. Most /.er's are techies, we spend our days writing code, punching wires, setting up beowulf clusters, etc... Accounting is not a strong suit of the /. crowd.
No, I think a lot of
Now we're proposing to make our stuff work again by fscking things up even more.'
You're looking at it from the programer's point of view. Look at it from the end user's point of view. If MS made IE8 render existing strict doctypes differently than IE7, and it makes the page "look ugly", then Microsoft has then "fscked things up". Regardless of what technologies exist behind the page, the end result is that the users of IE are unhappy. By adding a meta tag requirement to existing doctypes to get the new rendering engine, it prevents just th
-Rick
Why not add a rendering mode flag to the standard? Rendering engines, browsers, and standards don't always ship at the same time. Having a rendering mode flag in the standard would allow people to develop HTML pages against a set standard with a set rendering mode, and know that no matter how much browsers change over time, their page will always render the same. /shrug
just a thought.
-Rick
The issue is of all of the legacy websites out there that may be effected by this change. If any of those sites are effected in a way that effects their visitors experience, it is bad for users. If the changes in the user's experience changes their service requests from the web site's owner, it is bad for the organization. If it causes a financial hardship to the organization, what is to keep that company from suing MS? Sure, the lawsuit might not go far, but it would take resources to fight or pay to go away.
By forcing IE7 behavior by default and standards compliant behavior with a flag, they completely eliminate this risk.
The User has the same experience they always have.
The Organizations don't have to invest in their website.
Microsoft doesn't get yet another black eye for releasing a browser that "breaks" websites.
Developers looking for a more standards compliant rendering in existing doctypes can add a tag and pass ACID2.
No risk. No significant investments going forward. No investment at all for legacy apps.
-Rick
And for those of us who have to justify to our bosses what the budget should be spent on. Or when we have to make a decision between new hardware or reviewing all of our web systems. Or when I have to tell my old clients that they're going to have to take money out of a scholarship program or a nature conservancy project to pay a consultant to come in an audit their website...
Yeah, and people call ME an asshole.
MS f'd up in the first place. And now they're trying to make it right in a way that takes the least amount of risk and work. To bad they screwed it up to start with, but at least they are being logical in their attempt to finally fix it.
-Rick
You pick your battles. Take the avenue of least resistance.
Altering our system of time measurement would be great and all, but the force required to do so would be incomprehensible. So we fix the technical issue.
In this situation:
Option A)
Altering IE8 to render in the IE7 way by default takes no investment on our part.
Altering IE8 to accept a non-standard tag to force standards compliant mode on pre-existing doctypes takes a minimal effort.
-or-
Option B)
Reviewing and possibly altering every existing web page with a strict doc type would require a significant investment in both IT resources and cash. An investment that many organizations are unable to make.
Gee, I wonder why MS would want to go with Option A. No risk, tiny investment requirements by developers, vs huge risk and significant investment... Wow! How would they ever come to that conclusion.
-Rick
Point being, this isn't the kind of stuff you pester a user with. If IE8 hits a webpage with a doctype released prior to it's release, it should default to IE7 rendering. If it encounters the IE8 specific tag, or a doctype that was released after IE8, it should use the IE8 Standards Compliant rendering engine. Frankly, it's not different than the amount of hands-on attention they should already be giving their browsing - with filters, security levels, plugins, etc. Frankly, it's not different than the amount of hands-on attention they should already be giving their car.
What is the Octane rating of the fuel in your car? What is the weight of the oil? What is the winter weight of the oil? What is the air pressure in each of your tires? What is the oil level? How many months has it been since your last oil change? How many miles since your last oil change? How many months since your coolant has been flushed? How many miles/months since your tranny fluid has be flushed? Miles on your diff fluid?
How many of those can you rattle off? How many of those can your friends rattle off? How many of those can your Grandparent rattle off? What people have against it is that you dont modify a standard by decreeing a new tag - especially to force "strict standards". It's highly ironic and dilbertesqe. And the funny thing about Dilbert, is that quite often it is true. And sometimes, it's true for a very good reason.
-Rick