Since we censor ourselves on/. through the use of our viewing preferences, and since most people don't read/. on -1, does that mean most of us favor censorship in some way shape or form?
Moderation is to select the comments that stand out above the rest, so that, we, with our finite amount of time, do not have to sift through the hundreds of posts to read the few we might consider gems. But by trivializing one viewpoint over another in moderation, is that not a form of censorship in and of itself?
China has always been a dictatorship. Even the so-called "nationalist government" was little better than a congregation of power-grubbing warlords. Democracy in Taiwan only works because it's so small. And that's where things are different from the US. Chinese prefer one ruler over multiple regional warlords. Because if history is any indication, multiple rulers means war and strife. And that has happened so many times in the past that the peaceful periods in between the wars are more than welcome. Democracy brings about instability. It is, by its very nature, unstable. It is undesirable, and the reason why the populace fled to the communists in the 30's and 40's. Communism promised stability.
Besides, democracy doesn't exist in Chinese thought. Confucian values dominate, and Confucious was very strict on following the hierarchy of the faily (grandparents, parents, older siblings, self, younger siblings, children, grandchildren, etc.). This comes from the still-living tradition of ancestral worship, and makes absolute sense in that framework. Democracy has no place in this ideology.
No, the military should not be doing it. Terrorism should be fought at a community level. Students are reminded to report potential shooters and teachers are taught how to help the distruntled students before it becomes too late. Subway conductors in NYC are constantly reminding people to look out for suspicious behavior or suspicious packages (NYC, being what it is, behavior would have to really stand out and be really threatening to be considered suspicious).
Community watch programs, citizen patrols, these are the things that stop terrorism.
Military action, if Iraq has shown us anything, only promotes it.
That having been said, you'll find that most Chinese are more conservative than fundies here. Confucian values put the Catholic church to shame. The only difference is that Chinese are not terribly vocal or intrusive about their conservativism. And despite following it, nobody takes confucian values that seriously.
B), Microsoft will do like what they ddi with the internet and intentionally render it incorrectly. Since they have the lion's share of the market, this "not to standard" rendering will of course be the standard, and competitors will be forced to guess at how microsoft intentionally broke the standard in order to display Microsoft Office generated OOXML files, or just not display them correctly at all. This is an argument against OOXML that gets trotted out every time an OOXML story makes/. headlines. The thing is, it doesn't really make a lot of sense.
By the same token, Microsoft can just as easily break ODF. They did it to HTML, didn't they, and that was pretty open. Sure, Office 2010's ODF export is not standards-compliant. But what can anyone else do about it other than point fingers and cry foul? Pretty much everybody's been doing that since Microsoft began as a company, and look where Microsoft is, and where SGI, Lotus, DEC, Corel, etc. are, not to mention Sun, IBM, Novell, and even Apple... Is there anything the industry can do to prevent Microsoft from breaking ODF if they so wanted? Until Microsoft loses their market dominance, I very much doubt it.
The one and only reason Microsoft pushed OOXML out as a standard is because numerous national and local governments were suddenly mandating that their document software save to standardized file formats. To be able to sell to these government agencies, Microsoft Office would have to be standards compliant. However, they would be able to break ODF and follow the "standards compliant" rule at the same time, so they effectively created their own where they could remain anti-competitive while being standards compliant.
All that those arguing against OOXML being a standard only need to and should point out is that it fails as a standard in and of itself, either by being too vague and hence not a standard at all but perhaps an outline of one, or by not encompassing the full domain that a document standard should cover, in which case it is incomplete.
The argument that Microsoft breaks file formats unfortunately holds no water, and only makes the other arguments weaker (guilt by association).
You know, GP can drop the "Christian" part and still make perfect sense. It's against GP's morality to kill other human beings, probably in any situation other than in self-defense (but I cannot truly speak for the GP on this matter). The military exists to do just that. Killing another person isn't a requisite to being in the military, but it is an expectation. And the other side has the same expectations as well. And if killing another person is against someone's morals (like GP's) regardless of whatever logical or illogical basis, then that's that.
Oh, and a soldier is NOT like a policeman. Police exist to keep the peace by enforcing the laws, and provide assistance to citizens in need. In an ideal situation, police serve the public, though that isn't always true. But generally speaking, they serve the law, whatever the law might be. They are not trained to kill, and certainly not trained to survive. To claim that police and military are the same means you either have a warped sense of the place and purpose of soldiers, the place and purpose of law enforcement, or both.
Finally, stop being pedantic. Firearms are designed for maiming and killing, be it human or any other animal. GP is not talking about other "guns". Glue guns have the word "gun" in the name too, but I'm pretty sure when someone puts military and gun together, they don't think about a nozzle that ejects a hot, sticky substance. Have you any other uses for a firearm (not explosives or some other appratus that otherwise uses explosives to propelled projectiles) besides killing or maiming? And don't tell me target practice.
Seesh...I don't know if it's Monday or what, but the mods need to get their shit together.
Just remember that the GPL is valid to the extend of copyright law. That is, if copyrights are encouraged to become worthless, the punishment GLP violations won't be terribly discouraging.
What really gets me is when they take a commonly known herbal medicine and patent that, and only because the economically dominant half of the world burnt their herbalists a few centuries ago. That kind of "research" is like Christopher Columbus's "discovery."
That's fair, considering that she actually came for him, assuming it actually was for him and not for the life-sized poster of Brad Pitt on the ceiling.
It's relevant, certainly. But, I'll bet you'd be surprised if a/. headline read:
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica Attempts to Explain Everyday Physical Observations and then proceeded to wonder if this book could change the field of physics forever.
On a site that's "news for nerds," events that were made public 2 years ago would hardly be called news. That, and this might just be a dupe that was spaced so far apart nobody can remember the original (worse than the dupe on SHA1 being cracked).
I smell mindless regurgitation, zealotry or both.
The language of the Constitution is as plain and Copyright is a created right we no longer need. With this one statement, you have demonstrated that you completely and unconditionally fail to understand the intent and purpose of copyright.
The purpose of copyright as originally defined, in line with the purpose of the constitution itself, is to protect the weak from the strong. It is easy for a person or entity of means to steal a creative work. And when I say steal, I don't mean copyright infringement, I mean actual deprivation, actual stealing.
Remember that if you say something loudly enough and often enough, it has a tendency to become true. If you create a work, say, a literary work, or a piece of music, copyright protects you from having your work usurped a person or corporation that is much wealthier and resourceful than you. Essentially, without copyright, anyone can take your work and publish it, use it, and make money with it, money that rightfully belongs to you, the creator. Imagine a large record company taking your newly written song, giving it to a singer the company endorses, and then making loads of money off of it as the new hit single of that singer. While this is what's happening now despite copyright, here's the most important part: they credit the singer as the creator of the song, completely taking you out of the picture.
Imagine you are a fiction writer whose sent your first draft to a publisher to proofread (under contract no less). The publisher proofreads it, and then publishes it without your name on the work. Since you hold no copyright, despite being under contract, the publisher would not be breeching contract by publishing its own version of your work. Without a copyright, it wasn't your work to begin with, and the contract doesn't apply.
Copyright is important. In this world where the division between those with means and those without is so great, copyright exists to protect the emerging artist from the establishment. In fact, the whole concept of intellectual property exist for this purpose. And finally, the internet is capable of eliminating an establishment altogether, where the power of distribution has returned to the individual and is no longer consolidated in the hands of a few.
Without a doubt, copyright in its current incarnation is wrong. It has become twisted and perverted by the very entities it was meant to protect the people from. By extending copyright beyond the life of the creator, it serves to create establishments. Disney is a prime example of everything wrong with copyrights. Not only was it a product of poor copyright laws, it has contributed to the further perversion of copyright.
That doesn't mean we should eliminate it. What needs to be done is to return it to its original intent and purpose. For starters, copyright needs to be shortened. Infringement needs to be redefined, to again apply only to commercial copying. And despite being seemingly unrelated, it is most important that net neutrality remain.
Yes, and if they lose, all that'll happen is that the music labels will be slapped with a fine totalling $2 billion--to be completely paid for in CD's.
Countersuits are great as a deterrent against their driftnet, and the publicity of such actions sway public opinion against the RIAA. However, what really needs to happen is for the labels to be marginalized. And bands like NIN and Radiohead, along with countless indie bands and distribution channels have done far more to this end than any amount of lawsuits will ever do.
It's not about how much blood we can draw from these dinosaurs; it't about how to starve them to death.
That's stupid. They'll arrest you right on the spot.
What you have to do is constantly post hints about being sympathetic to al-queada on various message boards, occasionally visit anti-american websites, like this or do searches like this and soon you'll have your own bodyguards. Oh, and make donations to the NRA. That'll confuse them plenty, and it'll keep them perpetually stuck in front of your house.
They do this already. If you smoke, you'll pay a higher premium.
However, driving dangerously (or over the speed limit) is a choice, regardless of how we are naturally mentally predisposed. Being born a certain way, and falling ill because of that, is not.
People who speed want to speed, people who tailgate want to tailgate, and people who drive otherwise dangerously want to drive dangerously. Nobody wants cancer.
Note to all anti-ID people, not all propositions can be tested by scientists. Especially alleged miracles, which are by definition one-off phenomena caused by an external agent that is itself inscrutable to human-devised experimentation.
And that's what makes it irrelevant to science, and more importantly, not science.
And if you're saying that miracles can be used to show ID is viable, then I think you'd agree that it shouldn't be taught with science in a science class. Maybe it should be taught in a class called, oh, I don't know, theology perhaps?
Here's something that you can do and in fact has been done over a timeframe of the past 50 years:
Take a large pool of bacteria, start killing them off with antibiotics, rinse, and repeat.
Now, the bacteria is your organism, the antibiotics the selective pressure. Natural selection dictates that eventually through random mutations, there will be bacteria that will no longer be susceptible to antibiotics.
Lo and behold, this has exactly happened. The overuse of common antibiotics has resulted in an outbreak of what doctors call superbugs--bacteria that are resistant to those same common antibiotics. And where are we most likely to find these superbugs? Hospitals, where antibiotics are most used. Why do you think they try to get patients out of the hospital as quickly as possible? It's not just because they need the beds. It's largely because, barring any need for specialized monitoring or equipment, the outside is a safer environment for the sick to heal than inside. 50 years ago when antibiotics just began to be used, the opposite was true.
So if you've gotten this far, you now have proof of natural selection, proof you can see with your very own eyes. And this is just the most simple, most mundane case. There is a more extreme case involving frogs where natural selection has resulted in speciation within a hundred years.
Innocent until proven guilty is not by any means a recent concept. The concept was around even during ancient greece.
This idea is key to democracy, as otherwise, there can be no freedom if everyone has to prove their innocence at every turn. Because the US is turning into a guilty until proven innocent state, especially where heinous crimes like terrorism or child abuse are concerned (and Iraq--musn't forget Iraq), it is exactly the kind of indicator that this country is turning away from democracy and into something far worse.
Agreed. Webmail should have filters that limit the e-mail sent based on common spam behaviors. For example, limiting the number of recipients based on a certain criteria (e.g. unlimited the first message, +10 recipients for every minute after a message with over 50 recipients), limiting the recipients to only people in the address book, etc.
As for spam on boards and comments systems,/. has a decent system of CAPTCHAs and filters. It's not perfect (I'd rather be able to post anon more frequently), but it keeps everything but the trolls away.
But the cost is the same whether you are making it accessible or not.
The costs are not the same. Additonal time and energy has to be spent, and regardless of how negligable this is per instance, it still adds up over a large body of content, and a long period of time. For an example of a costly implementation, the addition of an MP3 CAPTCHA on top of the visual CAPTCHA like what/. has takes considerable resources.
In addition, a new set of interface tools must be developed to allow the blind to "read" the text on the screen in the first place, and the costs for this is certainly not trivial. In this case, these costs are covered largely by the generic user as is the case with the tools included in Windows or Office, or by the handicapped users themselves through the purchase of a 3rd party product.
The only reason for commercial sites to go out of their way to make content accessible is the good PR it brings, which may or may not be reason enough to do so. The only other reason (and this applies to a minority of the commercial websites out there) is to fulfill legal requirements.
HTML is an example of an inherently accessible medium (when used properly) but anything stored on a computer as text is inherently accessible. It is only the short-sightedness of some developers that makes it inaccessible.
It's not short-sightedness at all. It's simple laziness or a lack of financial incentive. It is, however, short-sighted to think that everything on the WWW can or should be reduced to text.
And, being a big fan of the Postal videogame series, I think he is the PERFECT director to bring its warped sense-of-humor to the screen. I look forward to seeing the end result.
I can tell you right now that the events in Tibet are a direct result of the Dali Lama's inceased visibility abroad. Why? Let's look at all of the events:
1) Dali Lama goes around giving speeches. 2) China protests. 3) Tibetians get all riled up. 4) Tibetians find their protests do not go beyond the great firewall. 5) Tibetians see the olympics as an opportunity to be heard. 6) Tibetians riot before the Olympics.
And it is a riot. If members of an ethnic minority in the US (or France for that matter) took to the streets in protest, we call that a mob. If they started burning things down and killing random passerbys, we call that a riot.
Oh, and people who attack or threaten to attack civilians for political purposes? We call them terrorists.
But I digress. Now, we can go further back and say that China's annexation of Tibet is the reason why the Dali Lama is going around making speeches. However, China isn't the one talking about peace and non-violence. We all know the tactics China will use to stamp out dissent, and they're not pretty. The Dali Lama, on the other hand, is going on about non-violence at the same time he is inciting it, albeit indirectly, though he is probably well aware of what his actions are causing.
So the question is, would you prefer to graze in a field with a wolf, or with a wolf in sheep's clothing?
Slashdot Mirror
Since we censor ourselves on /. through the use of our viewing preferences, and since most people don't read /. on -1, does that mean most of us favor censorship in some way shape or form?
Moderation is to select the comments that stand out above the rest, so that, we, with our finite amount of time, do not have to sift through the hundreds of posts to read the few we might consider gems. But by trivializing one viewpoint over another in moderation, is that not a form of censorship in and of itself?
Wrong.
China has always been a dictatorship. Even the so-called "nationalist government" was little better than a congregation of power-grubbing warlords. Democracy in Taiwan only works because it's so small. And that's where things are different from the US. Chinese prefer one ruler over multiple regional warlords. Because if history is any indication, multiple rulers means war and strife. And that has happened so many times in the past that the peaceful periods in between the wars are more than welcome. Democracy brings about instability. It is, by its very nature, unstable. It is undesirable, and the reason why the populace fled to the communists in the 30's and 40's. Communism promised stability.
Besides, democracy doesn't exist in Chinese thought. Confucian values dominate, and Confucious was very strict on following the hierarchy of the faily (grandparents, parents, older siblings, self, younger siblings, children, grandchildren, etc.). This comes from the still-living tradition of ancestral worship, and makes absolute sense in that framework. Democracy has no place in this ideology.
Yes, we should fight terrorism.
No, the military should not be doing it. Terrorism should be fought at a community level. Students are reminded to report potential shooters and teachers are taught how to help the distruntled students before it becomes too late. Subway conductors in NYC are constantly reminding people to look out for suspicious behavior or suspicious packages (NYC, being what it is, behavior would have to really stand out and be really threatening to be considered suspicious).
Community watch programs, citizen patrols, these are the things that stop terrorism.
Military action, if Iraq has shown us anything, only promotes it.
That having been said, you'll find that most Chinese are more conservative than fundies here. Confucian values put the Catholic church to shame. The only difference is that Chinese are not terribly vocal or intrusive about their conservativism. And despite following it, nobody takes confucian values that seriously.
By the same token, Microsoft can just as easily break ODF. They did it to HTML, didn't they, and that was pretty open. Sure, Office 2010's ODF export is not standards-compliant. But what can anyone else do about it other than point fingers and cry foul? Pretty much everybody's been doing that since Microsoft began as a company, and look where Microsoft is, and where SGI, Lotus, DEC, Corel, etc. are, not to mention Sun, IBM, Novell, and even Apple... Is there anything the industry can do to prevent Microsoft from breaking ODF if they so wanted? Until Microsoft loses their market dominance, I very much doubt it.
The one and only reason Microsoft pushed OOXML out as a standard is because numerous national and local governments were suddenly mandating that their document software save to standardized file formats. To be able to sell to these government agencies, Microsoft Office would have to be standards compliant. However, they would be able to break ODF and follow the "standards compliant" rule at the same time, so they effectively created their own where they could remain anti-competitive while being standards compliant.
All that those arguing against OOXML being a standard only need to and should point out is that it fails as a standard in and of itself, either by being too vague and hence not a standard at all but perhaps an outline of one, or by not encompassing the full domain that a document standard should cover, in which case it is incomplete.
The argument that Microsoft breaks file formats unfortunately holds no water, and only makes the other arguments weaker (guilt by association).
You know, GP can drop the "Christian" part and still make perfect sense. It's against GP's morality to kill other human beings, probably in any situation other than in self-defense (but I cannot truly speak for the GP on this matter). The military exists to do just that. Killing another person isn't a requisite to being in the military, but it is an expectation. And the other side has the same expectations as well. And if killing another person is against someone's morals (like GP's) regardless of whatever logical or illogical basis, then that's that.
Oh, and a soldier is NOT like a policeman. Police exist to keep the peace by enforcing the laws, and provide assistance to citizens in need. In an ideal situation, police serve the public, though that isn't always true. But generally speaking, they serve the law, whatever the law might be. They are not trained to kill, and certainly not trained to survive. To claim that police and military are the same means you either have a warped sense of the place and purpose of soldiers, the place and purpose of law enforcement, or both.
Finally, stop being pedantic. Firearms are designed for maiming and killing, be it human or any other animal. GP is not talking about other "guns". Glue guns have the word "gun" in the name too, but I'm pretty sure when someone puts military and gun together, they don't think about a nozzle that ejects a hot, sticky substance. Have you any other uses for a firearm (not explosives or some other appratus that otherwise uses explosives to propelled projectiles) besides killing or maiming? And don't tell me target practice.
Seesh...I don't know if it's Monday or what, but the mods need to get their shit together.
Just remember that the GPL is valid to the extend of copyright law. That is, if copyrights are encouraged to become worthless, the punishment GLP violations won't be terribly discouraging.
I'm sure nobody would die without Viagra.
What really gets me is when they take a commonly known herbal medicine and patent that, and only because the economically dominant half of the world burnt their herbalists a few centuries ago. That kind of "research" is like Christopher Columbus's "discovery."
That's fair, considering that she actually came for him, assuming it actually was for him and not for the life-sized poster of Brad Pitt on the ceiling.
On a site that's "news for nerds," events that were made public 2 years ago would hardly be called news. That, and this might just be a dupe that was spaced so far apart nobody can remember the original (worse than the dupe on SHA1 being cracked).
I wonder what would that Rinzai guy show to a sexual predator.
Chloroform.
pretty much everyone ... refers to "crackers" as "hackers" now.
What does skin color have to do with technology?
The purpose of copyright as originally defined, in line with the purpose of the constitution itself, is to protect the weak from the strong. It is easy for a person or entity of means to steal a creative work. And when I say steal, I don't mean copyright infringement, I mean actual deprivation, actual stealing.
Remember that if you say something loudly enough and often enough, it has a tendency to become true. If you create a work, say, a literary work, or a piece of music, copyright protects you from having your work usurped a person or corporation that is much wealthier and resourceful than you. Essentially, without copyright, anyone can take your work and publish it, use it, and make money with it, money that rightfully belongs to you, the creator. Imagine a large record company taking your newly written song, giving it to a singer the company endorses, and then making loads of money off of it as the new hit single of that singer. While this is what's happening now despite copyright, here's the most important part: they credit the singer as the creator of the song, completely taking you out of the picture.
Imagine you are a fiction writer whose sent your first draft to a publisher to proofread (under contract no less). The publisher proofreads it, and then publishes it without your name on the work. Since you hold no copyright, despite being under contract, the publisher would not be breeching contract by publishing its own version of your work. Without a copyright, it wasn't your work to begin with, and the contract doesn't apply.
Copyright is important. In this world where the division between those with means and those without is so great, copyright exists to protect the emerging artist from the establishment. In fact, the whole concept of intellectual property exist for this purpose. And finally, the internet is capable of eliminating an establishment altogether, where the power of distribution has returned to the individual and is no longer consolidated in the hands of a few.
Without a doubt, copyright in its current incarnation is wrong. It has become twisted and perverted by the very entities it was meant to protect the people from. By extending copyright beyond the life of the creator, it serves to create establishments. Disney is a prime example of everything wrong with copyrights. Not only was it a product of poor copyright laws, it has contributed to the further perversion of copyright.
That doesn't mean we should eliminate it. What needs to be done is to return it to its original intent and purpose. For starters, copyright needs to be shortened. Infringement needs to be redefined, to again apply only to commercial copying. And despite being seemingly unrelated, it is most important that net neutrality remain.
s/books/chairs/i
Yes, and if they lose, all that'll happen is that the music labels will be slapped with a fine totalling $2 billion--to be completely paid for in CD's.
Countersuits are great as a deterrent against their driftnet, and the publicity of such actions sway public opinion against the RIAA. However, what really needs to happen is for the labels to be marginalized. And bands like NIN and Radiohead, along with countless indie bands and distribution channels have done far more to this end than any amount of lawsuits will ever do.
It's not about how much blood we can draw from these dinosaurs; it't about how to starve them to death.
That's stupid. They'll arrest you right on the spot.
What you have to do is constantly post hints about being sympathetic to al-queada on various message boards, occasionally visit anti-american websites, like this or do searches like this and soon you'll have your own bodyguards. Oh, and make donations to the NRA. That'll confuse them plenty, and it'll keep them perpetually stuck in front of your house.
They do this already. If you smoke, you'll pay a higher premium.
However, driving dangerously (or over the speed limit) is a choice, regardless of how we are naturally mentally predisposed. Being born a certain way, and falling ill because of that, is not.
People who speed want to speed, people who tailgate want to tailgate, and people who drive otherwise dangerously want to drive dangerously. Nobody wants cancer.
This is matter, outside the black hole, being accelerated and hurtled outwards by the forces of the black hole.
That somehow sounds far worse.
Note to all anti-ID people, not all propositions can be tested by scientists. Especially alleged miracles, which are by definition one-off phenomena caused by an external agent that is itself inscrutable to human-devised experimentation.
And that's what makes it irrelevant to science, and more importantly, not science.
And if you're saying that miracles can be used to show ID is viable, then I think you'd agree that it shouldn't be taught with science in a science class. Maybe it should be taught in a class called, oh, I don't know, theology perhaps?
Wow, and this junk got modded insightful?
Here's something that you can do and in fact has been done over a timeframe of the past 50 years:
Take a large pool of bacteria, start killing them off with antibiotics, rinse, and repeat.
Now, the bacteria is your organism, the antibiotics the selective pressure. Natural selection dictates that eventually through random mutations, there will be bacteria that will no longer be susceptible to antibiotics.
Lo and behold, this has exactly happened. The overuse of common antibiotics has resulted in an outbreak of what doctors call superbugs--bacteria that are resistant to those same common antibiotics. And where are we most likely to find these superbugs? Hospitals, where antibiotics are most used. Why do you think they try to get patients out of the hospital as quickly as possible? It's not just because they need the beds. It's largely because, barring any need for specialized monitoring or equipment, the outside is a safer environment for the sick to heal than inside. 50 years ago when antibiotics just began to be used, the opposite was true.
So if you've gotten this far, you now have proof of natural selection, proof you can see with your very own eyes. And this is just the most simple, most mundane case. There is a more extreme case involving frogs where natural selection has resulted in speciation within a hundred years.
Wish I had mod points myself.
Innocent until proven guilty is not by any means a recent concept. The concept was around even during ancient greece.
This idea is key to democracy, as otherwise, there can be no freedom if everyone has to prove their innocence at every turn. Because the US is turning into a guilty until proven innocent state, especially where heinous crimes like terrorism or child abuse are concerned (and Iraq--musn't forget Iraq), it is exactly the kind of indicator that this country is turning away from democracy and into something far worse.
Agreed. Webmail should have filters that limit the e-mail sent based on common spam behaviors. For example, limiting the number of recipients based on a certain criteria (e.g. unlimited the first message, +10 recipients for every minute after a message with over 50 recipients), limiting the recipients to only people in the address book, etc.
/. has a decent system of CAPTCHAs and filters. It's not perfect (I'd rather be able to post anon more frequently), but it keeps everything but the trolls away.
As for spam on boards and comments systems,
But the cost is the same whether you are making it accessible or not.
/. has takes considerable resources.
The costs are not the same. Additonal time and energy has to be spent, and regardless of how negligable this is per instance, it still adds up over a large body of content, and a long period of time. For an example of a costly implementation, the addition of an MP3 CAPTCHA on top of the visual CAPTCHA like what
In addition, a new set of interface tools must be developed to allow the blind to "read" the text on the screen in the first place, and the costs for this is certainly not trivial. In this case, these costs are covered largely by the generic user as is the case with the tools included in Windows or Office, or by the handicapped users themselves through the purchase of a 3rd party product.
The only reason for commercial sites to go out of their way to make content accessible is the good PR it brings, which may or may not be reason enough to do so. The only other reason (and this applies to a minority of the commercial websites out there) is to fulfill legal requirements.
HTML is an example of an inherently accessible medium (when used properly) but anything stored on a computer as text is inherently accessible. It is only the short-sightedness of some developers that makes it inaccessible.
It's not short-sightedness at all. It's simple laziness or a lack of financial incentive. It is, however, short-sighted to think that everything on the WWW can or should be reduced to text.
And, being a big fan of the Postal videogame series, I think he is the PERFECT director to bring its warped sense-of-humor to the screen. I look forward to seeing the end result.
Please record your reaction and post on youtube.
I can tell you right now that the events in Tibet are a direct result of the Dali Lama's inceased visibility abroad. Why? Let's look at all of the events:
1) Dali Lama goes around giving speeches.
2) China protests.
3) Tibetians get all riled up.
4) Tibetians find their protests do not go beyond the great firewall.
5) Tibetians see the olympics as an opportunity to be heard.
6) Tibetians riot before the Olympics.
And it is a riot. If members of an ethnic minority in the US (or France for that matter) took to the streets in protest, we call that a mob. If they started burning things down and killing random passerbys, we call that a riot.
Oh, and people who attack or threaten to attack civilians for political purposes? We call them terrorists.
But I digress. Now, we can go further back and say that China's annexation of Tibet is the reason why the Dali Lama is going around making speeches. However, China isn't the one talking about peace and non-violence. We all know the tactics China will use to stamp out dissent, and they're not pretty. The Dali Lama, on the other hand, is going on about non-violence at the same time he is inciting it, albeit indirectly, though he is probably well aware of what his actions are causing.
So the question is, would you prefer to graze in a field with a wolf, or with a wolf in sheep's clothing?