If you sign away your right to sue, it's gone. You have entered into a binding contract; contract law in Canada is pretty straightforward.
IANAL, and I don't know much about Canadian law specifically, so no one should simply take my word on this without consulting further, preferably with a competent Canadian barrister who works in contract law. That said, I'm pretty sure Canadian contract law follows the main gist of common law in this area like the rest of the anglosphere, and that would mean that
Unless the severance package is more than he is otherwise legally entitled to, then this 'contract' is null and void on its face. This is because a valid contract is always an exchange - it requires that both parties receive a benefit. Therefore if they are only offering what he is already legally entitled to, either by contract or statute, this is not a legal contract and would be laughed out of court.
Judges tend to take a fairly dim view of contracts that would limit the judges ability to try any case they want. That is to say, even if it is a legal contract, if it went before a judge that for any reason whatsoever decided he'd rather try it, he would have no difficulty coming up with a pretext to void it. Judges have been doing that for many years.
So I must disagree with your statement quoted above.
That said, this guy definately needs to talk with a canadian contract lawyer and receive competent and specific legal advise before he signs anything!
Obviously the people that don't like Opera to begin with aren't going to be very helpful with their comments. I, on the other hand, love Opera with a passion, so maybe my opinion will be more helpful.
I did switch, just a few days ago. My reason was good, but it probably doesn't apply to you. I just moved everything over to my new computer, and it happens to be a Macintosh. Opera for Mac just isn't ready yet, there's a beta, I tried it first, but it's not there. Mozilla is, and honestly, it's damn good.
I'm assuming you are on some MsWin system? Opera rules on that platform. No, I wouldn't switch if I were you, although I'd still give Mozilla a whirl if you have time, just to see for yourself how good it really has gotten. I honestly expect that, even on Windows, it will eventually be the best. It is Free Software, it's a damn good product, and a lot more people are working on it than those wonderful people at Opera Software could ever afford to hire as a result. But not quite yet, not on that platform.
Opera doesn't do that. Great browser on windows. I'd be using it right now, but I'm on a Mac, and the Mac port isn't that good yet.
Mozilla does pretty well, and you can use the workarounds posted. I'd be REAL happy if it could be told to behave like Opera so far as ALWAYS opening tabs instead of new browsers, but if there is a way I haven't found it yet. The workaround for that isn't too bad though.
Would also be really nice to get it to save session states like Opera does, again, there may be a way but so far I haven't found it. And, again, the workaround isn't too horribly painful.
The only major problem I've had with it so far is that after the last reboot it screwed all the fonts up. Only two or three now show under each option in preferences, and they pretty much all look like crap. Boggles the mind. Surely something strange I did, though I haven't a clue what. I'm sure I'll figure out how to fix it soon enough.
Art isn't about pretention, or about ego. Real art eschews both.
By not trying to be pretentious, you've at least come closer to producing some than most people that try ever do.
I won't say if it's art or not, that's a judgement best deferred to the next generation, but I do like it. Nice clean code, the 'art' meaning the screenshots is well presented, flanked by the explanatory text just right, and if I were blind and came across that in my browser, obviously I wouldn't see the images, but I'd have no trouble understanding what the page was about.
Secondly, all of these "standards" are interpreted differently by the different browsers, so you can't insure consistent look and feel without kludges.
You're not supposed to be able to. That's not what HTML does.
HTML is a content language. The whole beauty of it is that the final presentation is NOT THE DESIGNERS RESPONSIBILITY. No web site will look the same on all platforms - that's the point.
Finally, I've always thought that they made writing to standards compliance sound easier then it actually is, because even though it's called a standard, it rarely exhibits standard and consistent behavior across the various platforms. Most art directors and graphic designers - specifically those that migrated from print or traditional design - tend to be exteremly unyielding in the way their designs are interpreted on the web, leaving developers with few options that are fully supported by these so-called standards.
The people you are talking about are not 'web designers' - cannot be, because they don't have a clue what the web is. If you cannot accept the fact that your content can be presented different ways (including to blind people) as appropriate to each individual client, you have no business on the web. Make.pdf files or something.
I know someone will interpret this as flamebait, and someone else will probably tell me to 'get with the real world' or the like, but in fact I am just telling you the truth, and I'm quite grounded in the real world. There has been no shortage of people explaining these simple facts about what HTML and the Web are, in simple terms and moderate tones, from the very beginning - and sadly there has been an overabundance of self-styled 'designers' that refuse to understand the medium and insist on trying to make it what they want it to be, instead of what it is. REAL designers work with their medium, they take the time to learn how it works and why, and they produce designs that are appropriate to it, rather than insisting that every media work the way their favourite one does and breaking it every time they touch it. And that is something that every decent art teacher in the world tries to teach his students. Sadly, the students, particularly the ones that go into web design, don't often listen. I'm not trying to pick on you personally, but your clueless post makes an excellent example I must admit.
'Designers' that couldn't be bothered to understand the medium of the web before proceeding to dump their work on it have done great damage to the web, and that's something I happen to care about quite deeply. Your ad-hominen attacks and dismissals of Zeldman aside, he makes a point that is absolutely true, and will have real economic consequences. All that patched up proprietary spaghetti code of mal-formed HTML-abuse IS coming down. While standards compliant pages from the very earliest days of the web still display perfectly in the latest nightly builds of Mozilla, the pages written by people with the philosophy your post shows ARE becoming obsolete, very quickly. In a way, the 'designers' that can't be bothered to learn their medium have won - the new standards will allow them to do what they always wanted to do, and what HTML was never designed to do - to specify layout and 'look and feel' issues. But it will require them to do it in ways that consistent with the underlying philosophy of HTML and the web - something they've never shown any interest in doing before. I expect to hear a lot of whining from that corner in the coming years, but don't look to me for sympathy.
Remember, WEP is not the be all and end all of wireless security. Just because those networks don't have WEP doesn't mean they aren't secured in another, quite possibly better, way.
Of course, they could also be totally open. No way to know without taking your laptop on a walk I suppose... let us know what you find out if you do.
Now tell me she is not a cutie and a little bit of a tard!
She's a cutie alright, but she's no tard. You need to get out more, she's obviously just a cute little stoner chick. Probably above average IQ actually... from the looks of it she's been smoking some primo dank buds, and those can be difficult to get... heheh.
Oh, we don't disagree that this is what they have done. What you're apparently not grasping, however, is that this is precisely what they've been telling developers NOT to do all along. And, IMOP, they've been right all along. But they can't have it both ways. They criticise, for instance, winamp, and rightly so - but then they build the same mistakes they point out in winamp into QT.
This is what their designers call a 'consumer interface' and the major problems are two. The thinking behind such interfaces, of course, is that since they are copied from common interfaces outside the computer world, the average person will recognise them and apply their knowledge seamlessly. But this doesn't always happen - the consumer may just as likely NOT recognise the similarities with the meatspace equivelants, since they are symbolic, not actual, and will obviously not be able to transfer the UI knowledge built from the otherwise consistent Mac interface to them, since they don't share that interface either. Furthermore, the interface that copies from meatspace inevitably is limited artificially, since it copies from an interface built in part in response to limitations that don't apply to the computer.
Of course, QT 4 was the epitome of these mistakes, and the current version has retracted many of them - it does now have a menu bar, and the stupid thumbwheel has been replaced with a slider bar, for instance. Several of the most glaring and unforgiveable errors in the QT 4 design have been quietly retracted, and that's for the good, but if you read this critique of the QT 4 interface with QT6 up to compare with, obviously some of the criticisms are still very valid.
It's a good thing, of course, that the worst of the problems have been fixed, I was just pointing out, and I think it needs to be said, that Apple is still being quite hypocritical in this case - they are still not practicing what they preach. Every designer thinks they know a better way, and Apple needs to maximise their credibility when they tell them to repress their urges in that regard and make their interfaces standard and consistent - when Apples own interfaces are less than perfect in that regard it just sends a signal to the designers that it's fine to be less than perfect themselves. Which, I would think, is the last signal Apple should really be sending them.
You just need to increase the tracking speed a little. Once the mouse is properly calibrated it's the easiest thing in the world, a quick flick of the wrist takes you to the menu every time, and you never overshoot and have to back down slowly to hit the menu.
Seriously, give it a try, once you get used to it it's hard to go back.
I agree with you mostly. But not entirely, of course.
Quicktime and iTunes, well, you admit they are screwed up, but you discount it. It's a major black-eye to Apple in terms of their credibility with developers when they violate their own rules so flagrantly. QT and iTunes are the motes that Apple needs plucked out of their own eye before they criticise anyone else. Really, they're textbook examples of what NOT to do, and they're flagship applications!
I also disagree with you, and with Apple, on MDI. MDI has its place, when used properly it's a great boon to usability. I will grant it's easy to misuse (look at excel) but programs where it is appropriate should definately use it. Web browsers are the most obvious example - Opera in windows (sadly the Mac version is not up to snuff yet) or Mozilla's 'tabbed browsing' are great examples, they allow the user to have a number of different browsers open with their own state and content without it becoming such a massive cluttered unusable mess, as it does in browsers without MDI.
I think you are overstating your case a bit. A strong case can be made that the term "people" when used in the Constitution is synonomous with "citizen."
Not so. The Constitution uses the word 'citizen' numerous times. The President must be a citizen. The VP too, Senators, and so on down the line.
'Person' and 'People' were used in the Bill of Rights specifically to contrast with 'citizen'.
Two of your examples come from the Bill of Rights, the other from the Preamble, but none are from the Constition proper. This is not accident.
So tell me about that 'strong case' again, why don't you? I think you're imagining it.
He also found that the Fourth Amendment did not apply to the computers, "because they are the property of a non- resident and located outside the United States," or to the data -- at least until it was transmitted to the United States.
Go look up the fourth amendment. It doesn't say 'residents'. In fact, neither 'resident' nor 'citizen' occurs in the bill of rights - referred to instead are 'people'. This entire notion that the bill of rights doesn't apply to foreigners is sheer fabrication - but one we've seen a lot of recently and one I sadly predict we'll be seeing a lot more of before things get better...
The Yugoslavian crack was a nice troll, but I think you're partially right, at least, on the hardware end - Intel/AMD hardware gives very good cost/power ratio because of economy of scale, but there is some cost for it elsewhere for sure. That's not Linux' fault - Linux runs very happily on SPARC, PPC, etc.
Like it or not, the success of Wintel has conditioned people to think of computers as perishable goods that have to be replaced every year or two anyway - and with that assumption in place it becomes silly to buy anything else.
Check out the ninth amendment. That's the spot for the literal minded. Since the Constitution doesn't give the federal government any authority to prevent the states from leaving the union, they clearly retain all authority over the matter.
There's also no lack of evidence that at the time of Constitutional ratification the union was understood by all to be a consensual and not necessarily perpetual one (in fact the words 'perpetual union' found in the Articles of Confederation were conspicuously dropped in the Constitution) and, indeed, that had it not been understood that way not a single state would have ever ratified. Virginia, for one, was paranoid enough to state that clearly in the instrument by which she ratified the Constitution. On at least two major occasions prior to the one in question, it had been the New England states that had experienced oppression and had been not at all shy about threatening to secede and reform the old New England Confederation if their demands were not met. Somehow when New England wanted to secede, everyone agreed they could do it and the effort to stop them was one of pursuasion, not force. Only when South Carolina finally seceded (she had been threatening to for decades, because of her outrageous treatment in terms of federal tax burdens) under Lincolns administration did the north suddenly 'discover' that states didn't have the right to secede.
You can use googles cache, for instance
http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:MhRKUQN18GsC: www.freeciv.org/download.phtml+freebsd+site:www.fr eeciv.org&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 for the cached version of the downloads page - I think most or all of the links there are offsite and so still might be working. Also several ftp mirrors that might help: ftp.netc.pt/pub/freeciv/ http://www.freeciv.de ftp://ftp.doc.cs.univ-paris8.fr/mirrors/ftp.freeci v.org/ Just remember that slashdot likes to put random spaces in URLs (why? don't ask me) so you may have to play with the URLs a little after copying.
No, it's not a port of civ2. It's a very different game really, inspired by civ2, but it's very different. It's a much better game for network play, really optimised for that, and (last I checked at least) not really built for solo play at all. It's more like Civ3s more social cousin...
Thanks to the lame so-called lameness filter my post was rejected. I don't have the time or inclination to try and figure out why it's breaking. You can read my reply, and reply if you wish, here.
Slashdot Mirror
IANAL, and I don't know much about Canadian law specifically, so no one should simply take my word on this without consulting further, preferably with a competent Canadian barrister who works in contract law. That said, I'm pretty sure Canadian contract law follows the main gist of common law in this area like the rest of the anglosphere, and that would mean that
Judges tend to take a fairly dim view of contracts that would limit the judges ability to try any case they want. That is to say, even if it is a legal contract, if it went before a judge that for any reason whatsoever decided he'd rather try it, he would have no difficulty coming up with a pretext to void it. Judges have been doing that for many years.
So I must disagree with your statement quoted above.
That said, this guy definately needs to talk with a canadian contract lawyer and receive competent and specific legal advise before he signs anything!
Obviously the people that don't like Opera to begin with aren't going to be very helpful with their comments. I, on the other hand, love Opera with a passion, so maybe my opinion will be more helpful.
I did switch, just a few days ago. My reason was good, but it probably doesn't apply to you. I just moved everything over to my new computer, and it happens to be a Macintosh. Opera for Mac just isn't ready yet, there's a beta, I tried it first, but it's not there. Mozilla is, and honestly, it's damn good.
I'm assuming you are on some MsWin system? Opera rules on that platform. No, I wouldn't switch if I were you, although I'd still give Mozilla a whirl if you have time, just to see for yourself how good it really has gotten. I honestly expect that, even on Windows, it will eventually be the best. It is Free Software, it's a damn good product, and a lot more people are working on it than those wonderful people at Opera Software could ever afford to hire as a result. But not quite yet, not on that platform.
Opera doesn't do that. Great browser on windows. I'd be using it right now, but I'm on a Mac, and the Mac port isn't that good yet.
Mozilla does pretty well, and you can use the workarounds posted. I'd be REAL happy if it could be told to behave like Opera so far as ALWAYS opening tabs instead of new browsers, but if there is a way I haven't found it yet. The workaround for that isn't too bad though.
Would also be really nice to get it to save session states like Opera does, again, there may be a way but so far I haven't found it. And, again, the workaround isn't too horribly painful.
The only major problem I've had with it so far is that after the last reboot it screwed all the fonts up. Only two or three now show under each option in preferences, and they pretty much all look like crap. Boggles the mind. Surely something strange I did, though I haven't a clue what. I'm sure I'll figure out how to fix it soon enough.
He may be an AC but he's right on, aside from a common typo or two.
Art isn't about pretention, or about ego. Real art eschews both.
By not trying to be pretentious, you've at least come closer to producing some than most people that try ever do.
I won't say if it's art or not, that's a judgement best deferred to the next generation, but I do like it. Nice clean code, the 'art' meaning the screenshots is well presented, flanked by the explanatory text just right, and if I were blind and came across that in my browser, obviously I wouldn't see the images, but I'd have no trouble understanding what the page was about.
Keep up the good work.
...who don't understand what HTML is.
You're not supposed to be able to. That's not what HTML does.
HTML is a content language. The whole beauty of it is that the final presentation is NOT THE DESIGNERS RESPONSIBILITY. No web site will look the same on all platforms - that's the point.
The people you are talking about are not 'web designers' - cannot be, because they don't have a clue what the web is. If you cannot accept the fact that your content can be presented different ways (including to blind people) as appropriate to each individual client, you have no business on the web. Make .pdf files or something.
I know someone will interpret this as flamebait, and someone else will probably tell me to 'get with the real world' or the like, but in fact I am just telling you the truth, and I'm quite grounded in the real world. There has been no shortage of people explaining these simple facts about what HTML and the Web are, in simple terms and moderate tones, from the very beginning - and sadly there has been an overabundance of self-styled 'designers' that refuse to understand the medium and insist on trying to make it what they want it to be, instead of what it is. REAL designers work with their medium, they take the time to learn how it works and why, and they produce designs that are appropriate to it, rather than insisting that every media work the way their favourite one does and breaking it every time they touch it. And that is something that every decent art teacher in the world tries to teach his students. Sadly, the students, particularly the ones that go into web design, don't often listen. I'm not trying to pick on you personally, but your clueless post makes an excellent example I must admit.
'Designers' that couldn't be bothered to understand the medium of the web before proceeding to dump their work on it have done great damage to the web, and that's something I happen to care about quite deeply. Your ad-hominen attacks and dismissals of Zeldman aside, he makes a point that is absolutely true, and will have real economic consequences. All that patched up proprietary spaghetti code of mal-formed HTML-abuse IS coming down. While standards compliant pages from the very earliest days of the web still display perfectly in the latest nightly builds of Mozilla, the pages written by people with the philosophy your post shows ARE becoming obsolete, very quickly. In a way, the 'designers' that can't be bothered to learn their medium have won - the new standards will allow them to do what they always wanted to do, and what HTML was never designed to do - to specify layout and 'look and feel' issues. But it will require them to do it in ways that consistent with the underlying philosophy of HTML and the web - something they've never shown any interest in doing before. I expect to hear a lot of whining from that corner in the coming years, but don't look to me for sympathy.
Remember, WEP is not the be all and end all of wireless security. Just because those networks don't have WEP doesn't mean they aren't secured in another, quite possibly better, way.
Of course, they could also be totally open. No way to know without taking your laptop on a walk I suppose... let us know what you find out if you do.
She's a cutie alright, but she's no tard. You need to get out more, she's obviously just a cute little stoner chick. Probably above average IQ actually... from the looks of it she's been smoking some primo dank buds, and those can be difficult to get... heheh.
Oh, we don't disagree that this is what they have done. What you're apparently not grasping, however, is that this is precisely what they've been telling developers NOT to do all along. And, IMOP, they've been right all along. But they can't have it both ways. They criticise, for instance, winamp, and rightly so - but then they build the same mistakes they point out in winamp into QT.
This is what their designers call a 'consumer interface' and the major problems are two. The thinking behind such interfaces, of course, is that since they are copied from common interfaces outside the computer world, the average person will recognise them and apply their knowledge seamlessly. But this doesn't always happen - the consumer may just as likely NOT recognise the similarities with the meatspace equivelants, since they are symbolic, not actual, and will obviously not be able to transfer the UI knowledge built from the otherwise consistent Mac interface to them, since they don't share that interface either. Furthermore, the interface that copies from meatspace inevitably is limited artificially, since it copies from an interface built in part in response to limitations that don't apply to the computer.
Of course, QT 4 was the epitome of these mistakes, and the current version has retracted many of them - it does now have a menu bar, and the stupid thumbwheel has been replaced with a slider bar, for instance. Several of the most glaring and unforgiveable errors in the QT 4 design have been quietly retracted, and that's for the good, but if you read this critique of the QT 4 interface with QT6 up to compare with, obviously some of the criticisms are still very valid.
It's a good thing, of course, that the worst of the problems have been fixed, I was just pointing out, and I think it needs to be said, that Apple is still being quite hypocritical in this case - they are still not practicing what they preach. Every designer thinks they know a better way, and Apple needs to maximise their credibility when they tell them to repress their urges in that regard and make their interfaces standard and consistent - when Apples own interfaces are less than perfect in that regard it just sends a signal to the designers that it's fine to be less than perfect themselves. Which, I would think, is the last signal Apple should really be sending them.
I realise that. And it's not only available to 'digital hub apps' - you can get most applications to use it with some minor hacking.
It's still a textbook example of what not to do, and a very bad decision from Apple.
You just need to increase the tracking speed a little. Once the mouse is properly calibrated it's the easiest thing in the world, a quick flick of the wrist takes you to the menu every time, and you never overshoot and have to back down slowly to hit the menu.
Seriously, give it a try, once you get used to it it's hard to go back.
I agree with you mostly. But not entirely, of course.
Quicktime and iTunes, well, you admit they are screwed up, but you discount it. It's a major black-eye to Apple in terms of their credibility with developers when they violate their own rules so flagrantly. QT and iTunes are the motes that Apple needs plucked out of their own eye before they criticise anyone else. Really, they're textbook examples of what NOT to do, and they're flagship applications!
I also disagree with you, and with Apple, on MDI. MDI has its place, when used properly it's a great boon to usability. I will grant it's easy to misuse (look at excel) but programs where it is appropriate should definately use it. Web browsers are the most obvious example - Opera in windows (sadly the Mac version is not up to snuff yet) or Mozilla's 'tabbed browsing' are great examples, they allow the user to have a number of different browsers open with their own state and content without it becoming such a massive cluttered unusable mess, as it does in browsers without MDI.
Not so. The Constitution uses the word 'citizen' numerous times. The President must be a citizen. The VP too, Senators, and so on down the line.
'Person' and 'People' were used in the Bill of Rights specifically to contrast with 'citizen'.
Two of your examples come from the Bill of Rights, the other from the Preamble, but none are from the Constition proper. This is not accident.
So tell me about that 'strong case' again, why don't you? I think you're imagining it.
Go look up the fourth amendment. It doesn't say 'residents'. In fact, neither 'resident' nor 'citizen' occurs in the bill of rights - referred to instead are 'people'. This entire notion that the bill of rights doesn't apply to foreigners is sheer fabrication - but one we've seen a lot of recently and one I sadly predict we'll be seeing a lot more of before things get better...
The Yugoslavian crack was a nice troll, but I think you're partially right, at least, on the hardware end - Intel/AMD hardware gives very good cost/power ratio because of economy of scale, but there is some cost for it elsewhere for sure. That's not Linux' fault - Linux runs very happily on SPARC, PPC, etc.
Like it or not, the success of Wintel has conditioned people to think of computers as perishable goods that have to be replaced every year or two anyway - and with that assumption in place it becomes silly to buy anything else.
Oh really? I don't use the services you mentioned, but I'm certainly shocked to hear that most gnutella users are involved in a commercial enterprise.
Check out the ninth amendment. That's the spot for the literal minded. Since the Constitution doesn't give the federal government any authority to prevent the states from leaving the union, they clearly retain all authority over the matter.
There's also no lack of evidence that at the time of Constitutional ratification the union was understood by all to be a consensual and not necessarily perpetual one (in fact the words 'perpetual union' found in the Articles of Confederation were conspicuously dropped in the Constitution) and, indeed, that had it not been understood that way not a single state would have ever ratified. Virginia, for one, was paranoid enough to state that clearly in the instrument by which she ratified the Constitution. On at least two major occasions prior to the one in question, it had been the New England states that had experienced oppression and had been not at all shy about threatening to secede and reform the old New England Confederation if their demands were not met. Somehow when New England wanted to secede, everyone agreed they could do it and the effort to stop them was one of pursuasion, not force. Only when South Carolina finally seceded (she had been threatening to for decades, because of her outrageous treatment in terms of federal tax burdens) under Lincolns administration did the north suddenly 'discover' that states didn't have the right to secede.
Actually I believe it does have calls to do UI-level actions - mouse clicks for instance.
You're right on otherwise, but the word you are looking for is not amnesty. It's asylum.
You can use googles cache, for instance http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:MhRKUQN18GsC: www.freeciv.org/download.phtml+freebsd+site:www.fr eeciv.org&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 for the cached version of the downloads page - I think most or all of the links there are offsite and so still might be working. Also several ftp mirrors that might help: i v.org/
ftp.netc.pt/pub/freeciv/
http://www.freeciv.de
ftp://ftp.doc.cs.univ-paris8.fr/mirrors/ftp.freec
Just remember that slashdot likes to put random spaces in URLs (why? don't ask me) so you may have to play with the URLs a little after copying.
Of course they are. What more blatant example is there? Patents and copyrights are explicit state monopoly grants.
If you think the government is going to do anything useful about MS I have a big section of seaside property in Oklahoma to sell you.
What exactly does that mean? Anyone know?
No, it's not a port of civ2. It's a very different game really, inspired by civ2, but it's very different. It's a much better game for network play, really optimised for that, and (last I checked at least) not really built for solo play at all. It's more like Civ3s more social cousin...
Of course. Both with and without GTK+. Sites slashdotted but the download page in googles cache will give you the pointers...
Thanks to the lame so-called lameness filter my post was rejected. I don't have the time or inclination to try and figure out why it's breaking. You can read my reply, and reply if you wish, here.