Re:If PHP was a horse in the prog language race
on
PHP Next Generation
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The problem with everything you say, every comment you make on PHP and Javascript is that it goes along the lines of:
"Still waiting for at least a half-decent argument that it "sucks". (I've seen the fractal article, and then I fact-checked it. Guess what I think about it now?)"
Please elaborate. Tell us what you found not to be true in that article, tell us what your fact checking discovered. Don't just say "I fact-checked it" and then that obviously means it wrong. Guess what you think about it now? I've no idea given that you've never ever managed to counter it at all, are you perhaps thinking "Fuck it's right, but I can't rebut it, so I'll just pretend it's wrong"? Did I guess right?
"More than 80% of websites seem to agree."
Where is the evidence? Even if true what proportion of major players use PHP? Very few serious players who have to maximise stability, performance and security do - Twitter? Nope, Google? Nope, eBay? Nope, Amazon? Nope, Slashdot? Nope, BBC? Nope, Microsoft's sites? Nope, Apple? Nope, YouTube? Nope, Blogger? Nope, LinkeIn? Nope. Facebook goes near it but even they've been translating it to C++, or trying to convert it into Java with a JIT for the last 5 years. Other than that there's what, Wikipedia and Yahoo? Fact is in major sites even Python has more of a showing than PHP. Even if PHP is used in more sites, it's used in less serious sites that actually matter so sure PHP may be prolific in first time or throw away sites, but if you're doing anything as a business, if you're doing anything where you want security, stability, and performance, then PHP is not a viable option. You don't find PHP in banking or most of the major eCommerce sites for example, it's Java for the most part.
Look, I'm not saying you're wrong about PHP, but you're infuriating to have this discussion with because no matter how hard I or anyone else tries you just never back up your claims. You just make comments like "There's nothing wrong with PHP", "The fractal article is nearly all wrong", but you can never prove it, you can never elaborate, you can never expand on it. I can't tell if you're a shill or a troll, I find it hard to believe you're anything else for the simple fact that you're so utterly evasive in justifying your arguments.
The "PHP is a fractal of bad design" article is a long well argued piece on PHP. If you want to have it declared wrong you similarly need to take at least some time to tear it apart. Simply saying something is wrong doesn't make it so, you have to explain why and how it is wrong.
Until you can start backing up your claims, one can only assume you're simply full of shit - a troll, a shill, a fanboy, whatever. You need to start justifying your claims - those criticising PHP have done so time and time again, and many just point to fractal precisely because it saves them having to repeat those already well established points. I've yet to see anything that can counter it, the best I attempt I saw was this forum rebuttal:
The problem is, the author of it only manages to demonstrate how little he knows about software and programming, rather than demonstrating that article he's disputing is wrong in many, or even any ways. I would love to have my knowledge expanded by being informed as to the many ways in which fractal is wrong but all those of you that claim to have this knowledge seem unwilling to provide it, is there some curse on it? will the world end if you tell us why fractal is wrong or something?
Long story short, less fanboy, more facts please, and if you're not willing to start arguing your case with facts then stfu because I'm sick of seeing PHP articles flooded with unsubstantiated fanboy nonsense. You're like the annoying religious guy who argues that god exists just because he does and that's all there is to it, you can't justify the claim, you can't explain why, but you've decided in your head he's real without any justification so that's it he absolutely must be.
"If Amazon employs bodies in a physical location then of course it has to follow employment law in that location."
But if a company takes data from a region it doesn't have to follow data laws for that region? What?
"The Right to be Forgotten idea is silly as no local paper will be permitted to have archives any more."
Oh so you're one of those, one who has no idea what the right to be forgotten is actually about, or even what it is. I'll forgive your ignorance then. Where did you even get that idea from? No court ruling nor no written law has ever said newspapers cannot have archives anymore. Did you just make that up or what?
"The European Union isn't perfect either, as this "Right to Be Forgotten" law also seems to want to establish national law when the dealings are with foriegn companies that essentially only have sub-offices over here. "
Yeah, because it's not like they're making any money over here off the data they gather here on the citizens that live here or anything is it?
I mean really, you think companies should be free to make profit in a nation off that nations citizens but not be bound by it's laws. You realise how stupid that idea is right? What next? Amazon doesn't have to pay the UK's minimum wage to it's warehouse staff because well, all it has is a bunch of warehouses here...
If you want to make profit in a country, you better damn well abide by the laws in that country.
So I've bought a Nintendo game, I find it's retardedly difficult at one point because of shit game design or the sorts, and you're telling me despite having already shelled out for the game itself, I also now have to pay Nintendo (through ad views) to figure out how to get past a certain point too? That no one is allowed to show me?
How much do Nintendo pay you to make such a stupid pro-Nintendo, anti-consumer argument?
"Publishers are wrong a lot. That's why there are dozens of them. Most authors who get officially published try more then one before they get their book published."
None of which changes the fact there's bound to be tons of great literature that just never ever gets published. Harry Potter was maybe only a couple more rejections away from never seeing the light of day. That's pretty close, how much other great literature falls off the edge because of publishers?
"The problem is figuring out which bits of the masses would actually read your book, and then convincing them to try."
There's no real need, if it's decent it'll find it's way up the ratings and sales lists on Amazon (and numerous book review sites and other retailers) by itself. If publishers rightly go the way of the dodo then everyone is on an even footing and you no longer have to rely on having them tell you what's good and what isn't, you can finally rely on what real actual readers think - i.e. the only opinion that actually matters.
"Thus, despite the theoretical ability of anyone to be the best-known author ever without using a publisher every author you actually know the name of has at least one publisher."
Of course they do, because publishers control the book distribution chain entirely, and that's really what is being bitched about here isn't it? "Wah wah, we're going to lose our cartel-like grasp on the distribution chain.". This is a great thing.
Your argument is premised on the idea that we need publishers because publishers have taken control of the market and made sure no one can compete without them. Sorry, but that's actually the precise reason we don't need publishers.
"Sometimes people vandalize because they have a petty axe to grind, but other vandalism is just totally pointless, like replacing entire paragraphs with the word "penis"."
Some would simply call this childish humour. Just because you don't find it amusing doesn't mean it's done to upset people. The motivation could be just as much to amuse people.
The problem is that what is offensive and distasteful to one, could be comedic to another, and it's entirely subjective to just declare that because you don't find something funny that it's psycopathic behaviour.
You're using your own moral standards to define anything you disagree with as psycopathy or sociopathy, that's absolute nonsense. You simply do not know why people have done things, you assume there's nothing to gain, but maybe the person on Wikipedia in question was an extremely useful contributor to the site and got sick of idiot editors screwing up his perfectly good articles and so chose to rebel in a way he personally felt was amusing to teach a lesson? Maybe he simply disagreed with the fact the article in question wasn't controlled better to prevent trolling so he trolled it himself in a most blatant way to try and help push that agenda? One person's griefing is another's way of making a potentially valid point. You're jumping to conclusions based on lack of information.
What if the publisher is wrong? What if a publisher tells an author a book is shit and it's never ever published? How is that better than self-publishing after paying an editor and letting the actual intended audience decide?
It's ironic that you mention JK Rowling as an example of an ultra-successful author who doesn't have to do much work to shift books as she was a victim of exactly this. She was rejected by 12 publishers over Harry Potter until she found one. Post Harry Potter she wrote under a pseudonym and was rejected once more by a number of publishers:
So frankly, there's every argument publishers are actually stifling great literature. It seems perfectly plausible we'd actually get more great stories without them.
The guy is defending publishers not because they're his friend, but because he doesn't know any better. Because all his working life he's become dependent on them and just doesn't know anything else. That doesn't mean it's good for him, nor does it mean it's good for the industry.
I'm not keen on Amazon either, god only knows do I hate the fact they're an unaccountable monstrosity in the UK who flout consumer protection laws left and right, as well as being responsible for putting other companies out of business, not because they out-competed them by offering a better service to customers, but simply because they committed tax avoidance (and possibly even evasion) which the competitor couldn't compete against because they didn't similarly have the resource to do the same. But none of this makes publishers a good thing, they're still ultimately just parasites that introduce nothing other than inefficiency.
"It's not that your wrong, it's just that when every response to emotion is biochemically and electrically analysed, we will all still be human beings, and the suffering or joy won't be anly less real. Is there anything wrong with praying because you are happy or grateful?"
I think I can answer this. Yes, there is. You see, people pray because they want to pretend they're doing something good, they want to satisfy themselves that they're achieving something.
Effectively it's an excuse you give to yourself to either give credit to yourself for doing something you didn't, or because you can't be arsed to do anything more worthwhile.
Given that what the GP said is true, that there is no evidence that praying makes any difference whatsoever, it would make more sense to instead spend the time doing something that does make a difference. If all the hours wasted in the world praying, and going to church were instead spent helping fix an elderly neighbours fence, doing a charity run, or learning about medicine to become a doctor, the world would be a whole lot better place.
So yes, praying is a bad thing, it is selfish self-appeasement that uses up time that could instead be invested in real actual genuinely good causes that actually make people's lives better, rather than exist just to pretend you're making someone elses life better. It's an excuse for inaction, or for assuaging guilt and nothing more.
Isn't there a risk that a combination of the violence of earthquakes breaking it up coupled with sea floor gas seepage or thermal vents caused by earthquakes could indeed lift it back up to a depth where currents could carry it?
Presumably it'd only work if you could guarantee that whatever contained the materials could cope with the pressure, crushing action from earthquakes, potential magma melting, salt corrosion, and finally that could do so for an extended duration (potentially thousands of years until it's finally dragged below the crust free from being re-ejected by undersea earthquake or eruption. You also have to make sure it drops where you want it to and does get carried if you just drop it off the side of a boat, though this is a much smaller problem of course.
But I guess that's where it becomes pointless anyway, because if we can produce such a resilient long lasting container then might we as well not just store it underground in the first place where we can keep more of an eye on it, and even get at it again if we need to?
I think this fundamentally is the crux of the problem, it's not so much where you put it that's the issue. It's about producing something that can contain it against forces of nature for thousands of years. That's something that I'm sure is still required even for deep ocean burial no?
Only just got back to this post, but others have already answered in the same way I would anyway. The two aren't mutually exclusive, the answer is both. The guy wasn't hacking because of his principles, but for attention, he blabbed to the authorities because he wasn't hacking for principles.
So the reason I call him a little shit is because everything he's done is for attention, and not for anything principled and he's ruined his life and that of many others in the process - he's ruined the lives of hackers that were genuinely principled, and he's ruined the lives of victims of his attention whoring. That makes him the worst of both worlds. Nothing good came from this guy, it was just a whole stream of negative regardless of the side of the debate you're on.
Given the level of attention whore the little shit is I suspect he'll be his own worst enemy and start telling us about how awesome he was for raising awareness of corporate and government abuse on the internet but also how he decided he had to be a real good guy in the end "do what's right".
I'll be genuinely surprised if someone this utterly desperate for attention manages to keep his mouth shut about his life for more than 5 minutes after he completes his sentence.
The only reason he ever got caught was because he was so cocky and couldn't ever keep his mouth shut about anything. Then he got caught, and seems to have spent the last year blabbing everything and anything he knew to the authorities. Is there really any reason to think he'll suddenly realise he needs to keep his mouth shut to stay out of trouble now?
Actually it depends who they're spying on. Both countries are signatories to and have ratified the covenants stemming from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UK the European Declaration of Human Rights also. This means both nations are bound by law to respect article 12, specifically:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
As it's impossible to argue that their spying programs aren't arbitrary, they're clearly in breach of this.
Not that it matters, because it's getting harder to find any article in the UDHR that is actually respected (honestly, peruse the articles, it's not hard to think of examples of breaches by the UK/US for nearly all of them: http://www.un.org/cyberschoolb...), but fundamentally the idea that there is any kind of legal basis for arbitrary interception of data by either nation regardless of the target - national or international, is wrong. It's in their interest to pretend that's not the case, that GCHQ "works within legal frameworks" and so forth, but they're lying. Not just twisting the truth a bit, not just telling a half truth, not using a loophole, no, they're just outright lying when they say what they do is legal.
Note that this doesn't mean they cannot spy, spying for the purpose of determining if a suspect is a criminal, isn't arbitrary. Spying on everyone and anyone they may feel like, is and that's the problem with both nation's programmes and that's where they fall foul of the law - they're indiscriminate, and that makes them illegal. They can fix this simply by sticking the intelligence back into intelligence agencies - there's nothing intelligent about blanket surveillance, on the contrary it's the reason the likes of the Boston bombings still happen - because there is such thing is too much information, such that the important stuff gets missed.
There is no legal, ethical, or moral basis for blanket spying. It's ineffective and illegal.
Nonsense, the German invasion of Poland is widely recognised as the start of the war because you don't require a declaration to start a war - an act of war is enough, and the Germans very clearly committed one by invading Poland.
The British declaration of war came two days after that along with the same by the French, by New Zealand, and by Australia. Pretending the British somehow started it shows an inherent bias as by the metric of formal declaration of war you might as well just argue the French started it if your metric is a formal declaration.
Whilst I'm not defending the methodology, it does seem a bit arbitrary (but then, so are most rankings used by fanboys on both sides comparing Apple vs. Google so no change there), I don't really understand much of the point of the rest of your post:
"Notice that the WPP web site is badly coded. It doesn't adjust for font size choices in browser configuration. The web site has, to my eyes, an ugly, cheap look. "
What has this got to do with anything? It sounds like you're implying WPP is some fly by night company with a site that's been set up quickly and in a rush. You realise WPP is one of, if not the single biggest PR agency in the world right? I'm not defending it in terms of ethics, because some of the names of the firms it owns are known for the wrong reasons here (e.g. Burson-Marsteller who were running Microsoft's massive shill campaign here). But what WPP absolutely isn't is some irrelevant little upstart, it's an absolutely massive company.
"Look at the comments. I'm not the only person to think something has become crazy at Google."
What are we meant to be looking for? I can only see the usual stuff - a few off-topic comments dotted amongst the usual suspects either defending or attacking Google. What has changed here?
"Maybe this Slashdot story is about a PR release paid for by Google? Or Millward Brown is trying to advertise itself?"
Of course it is, but this isn't a new thing, in fact, the only new thing is that Google is now doing it. This is a game that Microsoft, Oracle, Apple et. al. have been playing for a very long time, it looks like Google has had enough of trying to "do no evil" in this respect and has decided to go down the same lame old route.
A few years back we were getting almost weekly news stories like "iPhone survives fall from aeroplane", "iPhone used by boy to save himself in well", "iPhone used to diagnose cancer" or whatever else. Many of these stories could never be corroborated, there was no evidence of the people involved in question, no pictures, just a story that frankly was almost certainly made up in most cases. If you tried to dig deeper and find out names, pictures, locations of these events you just hit a dead end. Similarly there was a massive Microsoft first post FUD campaign here, and we also saw a massive amount of Oracle shills during the original Java trial. We've seen the same from the likes of Sony and so forth even too.
It's not new. The amusing thing is this is precisely why WPP is so successful - it makes a fortune running FUD campaigns against a target for a client with one subsidiary then gets another to sell a counter campaign to the target of the original FUD campaign. It's good money if you can get it - running an arms race where you're selling to both sides of the battle with thinly veiled pretences of independence of subsidiaries of the parent company, but it's not ethical, and it's not new.
I just wish Virgin was more widespread, I've never lived anywhere where it's been available in various places across the country. It seems they only hit up extremely high density inner city areas for the most part so large parts of suburbia across the country are ignored.
I think we'll get BT fibre soon at least, there's even an old Virgin cabinet here just down the road but it's not active and I'd snap it up tomorrow if they bothered with it but they're scared of reaching BT levels and facing the OFCOM scrutiny that brings with it, and understandable so.
It highlights what a farce OFCOM is in cutting back BT's monopoly - it does the exact opposite, it's regulation against "major market players" as they are deemed when they reach that size scares anyone else off from becoming big enough to compete with BT when OFCOM is supposed to do the exact opposite - encourage and support competition.
I don't think it's a binary either or. I think some will stop using Netflix, some will stop using Firefox.
There are people who pay for services like Netflix but only use them rarely, not working would be enough to push for cancellation. Would Firefox come off worse in terms of lost users? Maybe, but it's a well funded non-profit fulfilling it's mission goal so the loss doesn't matter. In contrast Netflix has to explain it's loss of subscribers as a for profit commercial entity.
Yep. Can't really avoid it in the UK, I don't think anyone will sell you a line without voice, I don't even know if the network is designed to be able to not have voice in all honesty.
It's quite annoying because we have to pay BT or whoever like £10 a month for voice we may never use (because we all use our mobiles) and then go find an ISP afterwards. There are companies that offer bundles but the underlying voice cost always seems to be there and on the few occasions it's not it's because it's a budget ISP with shit caps and stuff.
Have been through ADSL, ADSL+, ADSL Max, and currently ASDL2. All need microfilters to prevent excessive line noise resulting in drastically decreased sync speeds.
It's not the trade tarrifs that are the bulk of the problem (though they are a major part of the problem). It's the fact that far more paperwork becomes involved to handle the import such that the cost of exporting to the EU would increase and make British companies less competitive. If you're in France, why buy from a British company when they have to charge an extra 5% and take an extra day to deal with all the paperwork when you can just buy from Germany and have it a day earlier and 5% cheaper?
I know this because I worked for an engineering firm that did a lot of exporting. Having seen how much of a headache it can be to get some products to their country of destination compared to the EU simply cannot be underestimated. You're one rogue customs officer who has a beef with your country and decides to delay it for a couple of days to "inspect it" away from losing a multi-million pound per month customer for good. That can't happen in the EU because there are laws in place to prevent it, and there are courts in place to deal with such disputes.
That's before you factor in things like business travel if you have to start having staff to organise visas ahead of time, and what happens if some incompetent didn't organise the visa and your staff member can't attend an important sales pitch? Everything becomes more bureaucratic without free trade agreements and the EU is an extremely well oiled machine in streamlining exports to Europe making us more competitive there.
The call out charge is disturbing at first but I'm not sure BT ever charge it unless the BT guy finds it really is something completely braindead (like you haven't plugged in your ADSL router via a microfilter).
I had an issue with ever decreasing sync speeds and it took my ISP 9 months to not fix it (in the end I got them to bodge it by just making them fix the target SnR lower than it used to be, because the error rate wasn't high enough for me to care - it didn't fix the real actual problem, but at least it got me back to square one).
Despite having about 10 technicians visits, all unable to fix the fault, some claiming no fault found they didn't even try and charge me.
Of course they had no right to because it was a problem on my network, but certainly it seems to take more than just their technicians say so to trigger the billing cost. I think they have to actually be able to fix the issue and prove that the fix was something the user could have or should have done to be able to bill, so unless they can outright show it was something that was obviously the users fault then they really don't charge. They basically say it to scare people into make damn fucking sure that they really aren't doing anything utterly stupid.
But in general I agree, they're inept. There's no communication within BT, as I say 9 months and the problem still wasn't resolved - the ISP (PlusNet) send out BT, BT say the line is fine and PlusNet say it's not at their end and so send out BT again and the whole cycle repeats. The people they send out are generally just bottom of the pile numpties whose skillset barely extends beyond plugging in line test equipment and running a test and maybe crimping phone cable and punching cable into RJ11 sockets. Okay to be fair much of the reason it took 9 months to get nowhere was because of the incompetents at PlusNet just doing steps 1 - 3 on their idiot sheet or whatever without reading back the massive long history log that explained that steps 1 - 3 had already been done at least a thousand times, but the fact that when the BT engineers came out they were completely and utterly useless really didn't help either.
I'm certain to this day the issue I face is an issue at the exchange, but the exchanges seem to be unmanned beasts whom no one is ever allowed to enter under any circumstances ever. At least that's how the ISPs and technicians that come to your door make it sound - you say something like "Can you please just finally now after 9 months get someone to check the exchange?" and the reply is "Oh well that's nothing to do with us, we've no idea how we'd get someone to have a look there".
My line is currently undergoing the exact same problem again after 2 years of stability, so I'm about to go through the whole process again, which will not be fun.
Worst part is for the amount of staff time my line problems are taking up it wouldn't be far off cost effective for BT to just fucking upgrade my local cabinet to fibre and deal with the problem once and for all - the next cabinet a mere 100 yards down the road from it has it, so the upgrade wouldn't cost any more than around £10,000.
The only saving grace this time is that I enabled internet on my second line, so even though my first one is going shitty again I still have my backup. Phew.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with everything you say, every comment you make on PHP and Javascript is that it goes along the lines of:
"Still waiting for at least a half-decent argument that it "sucks". (I've seen the fractal article, and then I fact-checked it. Guess what I think about it now?)"
Please elaborate. Tell us what you found not to be true in that article, tell us what your fact checking discovered. Don't just say "I fact-checked it" and then that obviously means it wrong. Guess what you think about it now? I've no idea given that you've never ever managed to counter it at all, are you perhaps thinking "Fuck it's right, but I can't rebut it, so I'll just pretend it's wrong"? Did I guess right?
"More than 80% of websites seem to agree."
Where is the evidence? Even if true what proportion of major players use PHP? Very few serious players who have to maximise stability, performance and security do - Twitter? Nope, Google? Nope, eBay? Nope, Amazon? Nope, Slashdot? Nope, BBC? Nope, Microsoft's sites? Nope, Apple? Nope, YouTube? Nope, Blogger? Nope, LinkeIn? Nope. Facebook goes near it but even they've been translating it to C++, or trying to convert it into Java with a JIT for the last 5 years. Other than that there's what, Wikipedia and Yahoo? Fact is in major sites even Python has more of a showing than PHP. Even if PHP is used in more sites, it's used in less serious sites that actually matter so sure PHP may be prolific in first time or throw away sites, but if you're doing anything as a business, if you're doing anything where you want security, stability, and performance, then PHP is not a viable option. You don't find PHP in banking or most of the major eCommerce sites for example, it's Java for the most part.
Look, I'm not saying you're wrong about PHP, but you're infuriating to have this discussion with because no matter how hard I or anyone else tries you just never back up your claims. You just make comments like "There's nothing wrong with PHP", "The fractal article is nearly all wrong", but you can never prove it, you can never elaborate, you can never expand on it. I can't tell if you're a shill or a troll, I find it hard to believe you're anything else for the simple fact that you're so utterly evasive in justifying your arguments.
The "PHP is a fractal of bad design" article is a long well argued piece on PHP. If you want to have it declared wrong you similarly need to take at least some time to tear it apart. Simply saying something is wrong doesn't make it so, you have to explain why and how it is wrong.
Until you can start backing up your claims, one can only assume you're simply full of shit - a troll, a shill, a fanboy, whatever. You need to start justifying your claims - those criticising PHP have done so time and time again, and many just point to fractal precisely because it saves them having to repeat those already well established points. I've yet to see anything that can counter it, the best I attempt I saw was this forum rebuttal:
http://forums.devshed.com/php-...
The problem is, the author of it only manages to demonstrate how little he knows about software and programming, rather than demonstrating that article he's disputing is wrong in many, or even any ways. I would love to have my knowledge expanded by being informed as to the many ways in which fractal is wrong but all those of you that claim to have this knowledge seem unwilling to provide it, is there some curse on it? will the world end if you tell us why fractal is wrong or something?
Long story short, less fanboy, more facts please, and if you're not willing to start arguing your case with facts then stfu because I'm sick of seeing PHP articles flooded with unsubstantiated fanboy nonsense. You're like the annoying religious guy who argues that god exists just because he does and that's all there is to it, you can't justify the claim, you can't explain why, but you've decided in your head he's real without any justification so that's it he absolutely must be.
Except it's not that is it? You're making that argument up as Nintendo has even been hitting people who have just done clips, not the full game.
"If Amazon employs bodies in a physical location then of course it has to follow employment law in that location."
But if a company takes data from a region it doesn't have to follow data laws for that region? What?
"The Right to be Forgotten idea is silly as no local paper will be permitted to have archives any more."
Oh so you're one of those, one who has no idea what the right to be forgotten is actually about, or even what it is. I'll forgive your ignorance then. Where did you even get that idea from? No court ruling nor no written law has ever said newspapers cannot have archives anymore. Did you just make that up or what?
"your General Practitioner as a more reliable source"
Last time I went to my GP he looked something up on Wikipedia.
I believe therefore that the people behind this study have created a paradox.
"The European Union isn't perfect either, as this "Right to Be Forgotten" law also seems to want to establish national law when the dealings are with foriegn companies that essentially only have sub-offices over here. "
Yeah, because it's not like they're making any money over here off the data they gather here on the citizens that live here or anything is it?
I mean really, you think companies should be free to make profit in a nation off that nations citizens but not be bound by it's laws. You realise how stupid that idea is right? What next? Amazon doesn't have to pay the UK's minimum wage to it's warehouse staff because well, all it has is a bunch of warehouses here...
If you want to make profit in a country, you better damn well abide by the laws in that country.
So I've bought a Nintendo game, I find it's retardedly difficult at one point because of shit game design or the sorts, and you're telling me despite having already shelled out for the game itself, I also now have to pay Nintendo (through ad views) to figure out how to get past a certain point too? That no one is allowed to show me?
How much do Nintendo pay you to make such a stupid pro-Nintendo, anti-consumer argument?
"Publishers are wrong a lot. That's why there are dozens of them. Most authors who get officially published try more then one before they get their book published."
None of which changes the fact there's bound to be tons of great literature that just never ever gets published. Harry Potter was maybe only a couple more rejections away from never seeing the light of day. That's pretty close, how much other great literature falls off the edge because of publishers?
"The problem is figuring out which bits of the masses would actually read your book, and then convincing them to try."
There's no real need, if it's decent it'll find it's way up the ratings and sales lists on Amazon (and numerous book review sites and other retailers) by itself. If publishers rightly go the way of the dodo then everyone is on an even footing and you no longer have to rely on having them tell you what's good and what isn't, you can finally rely on what real actual readers think - i.e. the only opinion that actually matters.
"Thus, despite the theoretical ability of anyone to be the best-known author ever without using a publisher every author you actually know the name of has at least one publisher."
Of course they do, because publishers control the book distribution chain entirely, and that's really what is being bitched about here isn't it? "Wah wah, we're going to lose our cartel-like grasp on the distribution chain.". This is a great thing.
Your argument is premised on the idea that we need publishers because publishers have taken control of the market and made sure no one can compete without them. Sorry, but that's actually the precise reason we don't need publishers.
"Sometimes people vandalize because they have a petty axe to grind, but other vandalism is just totally pointless, like replacing entire paragraphs with the word "penis"."
Some would simply call this childish humour. Just because you don't find it amusing doesn't mean it's done to upset people. The motivation could be just as much to amuse people.
The problem is that what is offensive and distasteful to one, could be comedic to another, and it's entirely subjective to just declare that because you don't find something funny that it's psycopathic behaviour.
You're using your own moral standards to define anything you disagree with as psycopathy or sociopathy, that's absolute nonsense. You simply do not know why people have done things, you assume there's nothing to gain, but maybe the person on Wikipedia in question was an extremely useful contributor to the site and got sick of idiot editors screwing up his perfectly good articles and so chose to rebel in a way he personally felt was amusing to teach a lesson? Maybe he simply disagreed with the fact the article in question wasn't controlled better to prevent trolling so he trolled it himself in a most blatant way to try and help push that agenda? One person's griefing is another's way of making a potentially valid point. You're jumping to conclusions based on lack of information.
What if the publisher is wrong? What if a publisher tells an author a book is shit and it's never ever published? How is that better than self-publishing after paying an editor and letting the actual intended audience decide?
It's ironic that you mention JK Rowling as an example of an ultra-successful author who doesn't have to do much work to shift books as she was a victim of exactly this. She was rejected by 12 publishers over Harry Potter until she found one. Post Harry Potter she wrote under a pseudonym and was rejected once more by a number of publishers:
http://www.independent.co.uk/a...
So frankly, there's every argument publishers are actually stifling great literature. It seems perfectly plausible we'd actually get more great stories without them.
The guy is defending publishers not because they're his friend, but because he doesn't know any better. Because all his working life he's become dependent on them and just doesn't know anything else. That doesn't mean it's good for him, nor does it mean it's good for the industry.
I'm not keen on Amazon either, god only knows do I hate the fact they're an unaccountable monstrosity in the UK who flout consumer protection laws left and right, as well as being responsible for putting other companies out of business, not because they out-competed them by offering a better service to customers, but simply because they committed tax avoidance (and possibly even evasion) which the competitor couldn't compete against because they didn't similarly have the resource to do the same. But none of this makes publishers a good thing, they're still ultimately just parasites that introduce nothing other than inefficiency.
If I had a couple of young dependants I wouldn't prat around doing something illegal just to get attention in the first place so the point is moot.
This just makes him even more of a little shit.
"It's not that your wrong, it's just that when every response to emotion is biochemically and electrically analysed, we will all still be human beings, and the suffering or joy won't be anly less real. Is there anything wrong with praying because you are happy or grateful?"
I think I can answer this. Yes, there is. You see, people pray because they want to pretend they're doing something good, they want to satisfy themselves that they're achieving something.
Effectively it's an excuse you give to yourself to either give credit to yourself for doing something you didn't, or because you can't be arsed to do anything more worthwhile.
Given that what the GP said is true, that there is no evidence that praying makes any difference whatsoever, it would make more sense to instead spend the time doing something that does make a difference. If all the hours wasted in the world praying, and going to church were instead spent helping fix an elderly neighbours fence, doing a charity run, or learning about medicine to become a doctor, the world would be a whole lot better place.
So yes, praying is a bad thing, it is selfish self-appeasement that uses up time that could instead be invested in real actual genuinely good causes that actually make people's lives better, rather than exist just to pretend you're making someone elses life better. It's an excuse for inaction, or for assuaging guilt and nothing more.
Isn't there a risk that a combination of the violence of earthquakes breaking it up coupled with sea floor gas seepage or thermal vents caused by earthquakes could indeed lift it back up to a depth where currents could carry it?
Presumably it'd only work if you could guarantee that whatever contained the materials could cope with the pressure, crushing action from earthquakes, potential magma melting, salt corrosion, and finally that could do so for an extended duration (potentially thousands of years until it's finally dragged below the crust free from being re-ejected by undersea earthquake or eruption. You also have to make sure it drops where you want it to and does get carried if you just drop it off the side of a boat, though this is a much smaller problem of course.
But I guess that's where it becomes pointless anyway, because if we can produce such a resilient long lasting container then might we as well not just store it underground in the first place where we can keep more of an eye on it, and even get at it again if we need to?
I think this fundamentally is the crux of the problem, it's not so much where you put it that's the issue. It's about producing something that can contain it against forces of nature for thousands of years. That's something that I'm sure is still required even for deep ocean burial no?
Only just got back to this post, but others have already answered in the same way I would anyway. The two aren't mutually exclusive, the answer is both. The guy wasn't hacking because of his principles, but for attention, he blabbed to the authorities because he wasn't hacking for principles.
So the reason I call him a little shit is because everything he's done is for attention, and not for anything principled and he's ruined his life and that of many others in the process - he's ruined the lives of hackers that were genuinely principled, and he's ruined the lives of victims of his attention whoring. That makes him the worst of both worlds. Nothing good came from this guy, it was just a whole stream of negative regardless of the side of the debate you're on.
Given the level of attention whore the little shit is I suspect he'll be his own worst enemy and start telling us about how awesome he was for raising awareness of corporate and government abuse on the internet but also how he decided he had to be a real good guy in the end "do what's right".
I'll be genuinely surprised if someone this utterly desperate for attention manages to keep his mouth shut about his life for more than 5 minutes after he completes his sentence.
The only reason he ever got caught was because he was so cocky and couldn't ever keep his mouth shut about anything. Then he got caught, and seems to have spent the last year blabbing everything and anything he knew to the authorities. Is there really any reason to think he'll suddenly realise he needs to keep his mouth shut to stay out of trouble now?
Actually it depends who they're spying on. Both countries are signatories to and have ratified the covenants stemming from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UK the European Declaration of Human Rights also. This means both nations are bound by law to respect article 12, specifically:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
As it's impossible to argue that their spying programs aren't arbitrary, they're clearly in breach of this.
Not that it matters, because it's getting harder to find any article in the UDHR that is actually respected (honestly, peruse the articles, it's not hard to think of examples of breaches by the UK/US for nearly all of them: http://www.un.org/cyberschoolb...), but fundamentally the idea that there is any kind of legal basis for arbitrary interception of data by either nation regardless of the target - national or international, is wrong. It's in their interest to pretend that's not the case, that GCHQ "works within legal frameworks" and so forth, but they're lying. Not just twisting the truth a bit, not just telling a half truth, not using a loophole, no, they're just outright lying when they say what they do is legal.
Note that this doesn't mean they cannot spy, spying for the purpose of determining if a suspect is a criminal, isn't arbitrary. Spying on everyone and anyone they may feel like, is and that's the problem with both nation's programmes and that's where they fall foul of the law - they're indiscriminate, and that makes them illegal. They can fix this simply by sticking the intelligence back into intelligence agencies - there's nothing intelligent about blanket surveillance, on the contrary it's the reason the likes of the Boston bombings still happen - because there is such thing is too much information, such that the important stuff gets missed.
There is no legal, ethical, or moral basis for blanket spying. It's ineffective and illegal.
Nonsense, the German invasion of Poland is widely recognised as the start of the war because you don't require a declaration to start a war - an act of war is enough, and the Germans very clearly committed one by invading Poland.
The British declaration of war came two days after that along with the same by the French, by New Zealand, and by Australia. Pretending the British somehow started it shows an inherent bias as by the metric of formal declaration of war you might as well just argue the French started it if your metric is a formal declaration.
I played it and thought the story was actually pretty crap. Farcry 3 did a far better job of the whole insanity thing.
Whilst I'm not defending the methodology, it does seem a bit arbitrary (but then, so are most rankings used by fanboys on both sides comparing Apple vs. Google so no change there), I don't really understand much of the point of the rest of your post:
"Notice that the WPP web site is badly coded. It doesn't adjust for font size choices in browser configuration. The web site has, to my eyes, an ugly, cheap look. "
What has this got to do with anything? It sounds like you're implying WPP is some fly by night company with a site that's been set up quickly and in a rush. You realise WPP is one of, if not the single biggest PR agency in the world right? I'm not defending it in terms of ethics, because some of the names of the firms it owns are known for the wrong reasons here (e.g. Burson-Marsteller who were running Microsoft's massive shill campaign here). But what WPP absolutely isn't is some irrelevant little upstart, it's an absolutely massive company.
"Look at the comments. I'm not the only person to think something has become crazy at Google."
What are we meant to be looking for? I can only see the usual stuff - a few off-topic comments dotted amongst the usual suspects either defending or attacking Google. What has changed here?
"Maybe this Slashdot story is about a PR release paid for by Google? Or Millward Brown is trying to advertise itself?"
Of course it is, but this isn't a new thing, in fact, the only new thing is that Google is now doing it. This is a game that Microsoft, Oracle, Apple et. al. have been playing for a very long time, it looks like Google has had enough of trying to "do no evil" in this respect and has decided to go down the same lame old route.
A few years back we were getting almost weekly news stories like "iPhone survives fall from aeroplane", "iPhone used by boy to save himself in well", "iPhone used to diagnose cancer" or whatever else. Many of these stories could never be corroborated, there was no evidence of the people involved in question, no pictures, just a story that frankly was almost certainly made up in most cases. If you tried to dig deeper and find out names, pictures, locations of these events you just hit a dead end. Similarly there was a massive Microsoft first post FUD campaign here, and we also saw a massive amount of Oracle shills during the original Java trial. We've seen the same from the likes of Sony and so forth even too.
It's not new. The amusing thing is this is precisely why WPP is so successful - it makes a fortune running FUD campaigns against a target for a client with one subsidiary then gets another to sell a counter campaign to the target of the original FUD campaign. It's good money if you can get it - running an arms race where you're selling to both sides of the battle with thinly veiled pretences of independence of subsidiaries of the parent company, but it's not ethical, and it's not new.
I just wish Virgin was more widespread, I've never lived anywhere where it's been available in various places across the country. It seems they only hit up extremely high density inner city areas for the most part so large parts of suburbia across the country are ignored.
I think we'll get BT fibre soon at least, there's even an old Virgin cabinet here just down the road but it's not active and I'd snap it up tomorrow if they bothered with it but they're scared of reaching BT levels and facing the OFCOM scrutiny that brings with it, and understandable so.
It highlights what a farce OFCOM is in cutting back BT's monopoly - it does the exact opposite, it's regulation against "major market players" as they are deemed when they reach that size scares anyone else off from becoming big enough to compete with BT when OFCOM is supposed to do the exact opposite - encourage and support competition.
I don't think it's a binary either or. I think some will stop using Netflix, some will stop using Firefox.
There are people who pay for services like Netflix but only use them rarely, not working would be enough to push for cancellation. Would Firefox come off worse in terms of lost users? Maybe, but it's a well funded non-profit fulfilling it's mission goal so the loss doesn't matter. In contrast Netflix has to explain it's loss of subscribers as a for profit commercial entity.
Yep. Can't really avoid it in the UK, I don't think anyone will sell you a line without voice, I don't even know if the network is designed to be able to not have voice in all honesty.
It's quite annoying because we have to pay BT or whoever like £10 a month for voice we may never use (because we all use our mobiles) and then go find an ISP afterwards. There are companies that offer bundles but the underlying voice cost always seems to be there and on the few occasions it's not it's because it's a budget ISP with shit caps and stuff.
5mbps over BT copper is broken? That's my absolute top end speed you insensitive clod!
2 miles from the exchange and that's about as good as it gets.
Be glad you even have Virgin as an alternative!
Have been through ADSL, ADSL+, ADSL Max, and currently ASDL2. All need microfilters to prevent excessive line noise resulting in drastically decreased sync speeds.
It's not the trade tarrifs that are the bulk of the problem (though they are a major part of the problem). It's the fact that far more paperwork becomes involved to handle the import such that the cost of exporting to the EU would increase and make British companies less competitive. If you're in France, why buy from a British company when they have to charge an extra 5% and take an extra day to deal with all the paperwork when you can just buy from Germany and have it a day earlier and 5% cheaper?
I know this because I worked for an engineering firm that did a lot of exporting. Having seen how much of a headache it can be to get some products to their country of destination compared to the EU simply cannot be underestimated. You're one rogue customs officer who has a beef with your country and decides to delay it for a couple of days to "inspect it" away from losing a multi-million pound per month customer for good. That can't happen in the EU because there are laws in place to prevent it, and there are courts in place to deal with such disputes.
That's before you factor in things like business travel if you have to start having staff to organise visas ahead of time, and what happens if some incompetent didn't organise the visa and your staff member can't attend an important sales pitch? Everything becomes more bureaucratic without free trade agreements and the EU is an extremely well oiled machine in streamlining exports to Europe making us more competitive there.
The call out charge is disturbing at first but I'm not sure BT ever charge it unless the BT guy finds it really is something completely braindead (like you haven't plugged in your ADSL router via a microfilter).
I had an issue with ever decreasing sync speeds and it took my ISP 9 months to not fix it (in the end I got them to bodge it by just making them fix the target SnR lower than it used to be, because the error rate wasn't high enough for me to care - it didn't fix the real actual problem, but at least it got me back to square one).
Despite having about 10 technicians visits, all unable to fix the fault, some claiming no fault found they didn't even try and charge me.
Of course they had no right to because it was a problem on my network, but certainly it seems to take more than just their technicians say so to trigger the billing cost. I think they have to actually be able to fix the issue and prove that the fix was something the user could have or should have done to be able to bill, so unless they can outright show it was something that was obviously the users fault then they really don't charge. They basically say it to scare people into make damn fucking sure that they really aren't doing anything utterly stupid.
But in general I agree, they're inept. There's no communication within BT, as I say 9 months and the problem still wasn't resolved - the ISP (PlusNet) send out BT, BT say the line is fine and PlusNet say it's not at their end and so send out BT again and the whole cycle repeats. The people they send out are generally just bottom of the pile numpties whose skillset barely extends beyond plugging in line test equipment and running a test and maybe crimping phone cable and punching cable into RJ11 sockets. Okay to be fair much of the reason it took 9 months to get nowhere was because of the incompetents at PlusNet just doing steps 1 - 3 on their idiot sheet or whatever without reading back the massive long history log that explained that steps 1 - 3 had already been done at least a thousand times, but the fact that when the BT engineers came out they were completely and utterly useless really didn't help either.
I'm certain to this day the issue I face is an issue at the exchange, but the exchanges seem to be unmanned beasts whom no one is ever allowed to enter under any circumstances ever. At least that's how the ISPs and technicians that come to your door make it sound - you say something like "Can you please just finally now after 9 months get someone to check the exchange?" and the reply is "Oh well that's nothing to do with us, we've no idea how we'd get someone to have a look there".
My line is currently undergoing the exact same problem again after 2 years of stability, so I'm about to go through the whole process again, which will not be fun.
Worst part is for the amount of staff time my line problems are taking up it wouldn't be far off cost effective for BT to just fucking upgrade my local cabinet to fibre and deal with the problem once and for all - the next cabinet a mere 100 yards down the road from it has it, so the upgrade wouldn't cost any more than around £10,000.
The only saving grace this time is that I enabled internet on my second line, so even though my first one is going shitty again I still have my backup. Phew.