> who is the average citizen supposed to trust if both sides are > trotting out 'climate experts' to disagree?
I guess the side with the experts would be a good bet.
Or, if reality doesn't agree with your point of view, how about an op-ed from a paper just this side of the Enquirer's legitimacy? The Canada Free Press is the same fine news organization that said 9-11 was a mafia plot among other "interesting" things. The op-ed author, Tom Harris, is an engineer with the High Park Group, an energy policy lobbying group. And the prof. he cites? Seems he's on Exxon's payroll and has almost no peer-reviewed publications.
> It's even funnier watching people who are completely clueless > about climate science trying to shoot down the studies of people > who have spent their whole lives studying it.
I dunno... I think it's very disturbing --like having an idiot in the room waving around live grenades. Doing the will of oil barons, pushing the idea that there's nothing wrong, sending the world climate further in the wrong direction isn't much different. It's just harder to see the direct connection. The poor of New Orleans didn't get blown up by terrorists, but they're still very dead.
Not scientifically proven? I don't care what Rush Limbaugh has been telling you... Among scientists that study climatology and related fields there's an overwhelming consensus. Those rare exceptions are typically shills being paid off by Exxon-Mobil. See http://exxonsecrets.com/ and take a look at the ulterior motives of your favorite skeptics.
Hmmm... I like the approach. Even though I'm working in Visual Studio, this would probably be a good habit --and a time saver if the company decides to support other browsers.
> It doesn't matter what the browser market share is in terms of > installed base. That's entirely irrelevant to this discussion.
Is it? Unfortunately many of us work for employers that aren't interested in W3C purity. They want the page to work in IE and they don't want to pay for it to be thoroughly tested (or even tested to work at all!) in other browsers. Thus the evil empire wins. I really don't know what business-based developers can do about the problem but publicly shame MS for doing their own thing.
> > Let me be clear: competition is a good thing > > Which is why you should welcome a new browser war. I know I do.
O.K. It's a deal. But this time can everybody just follow standards? That's all I ask. Just give me consistency in rendering and basic ECMA-compliant scripting and I would LOVE to see dozens of solutions. We could even see a lot more interesting niche browsers for specific markets and tasks without wringing our hands about the client.
I get the sense that standards aren't changing as fast as they once were, so there's no reason (except MS) that we can't expect compliance from all browsers entering the fray.
Look... I understand that hating MS is part of your core beliefs. I'm not a big fan of their tactics myself. I could have just as easily said it was a relief when IE finally went away. I was a big fan of Netscape and would much rather have had them be the winner --used Netscape until the bitter end, when they stopped updating it. I loved Netscape, but it's simply a matter of practicality.
Sheesh... The very suggestion that I'm disrespecting a sacred cow really sets you off, eh? Please folks, I think you are really misinterpreting me here. I don't want to be insulting, but I think you're being unfair and not entirely mature about our difference of opinion.
I wouldn't be so clueless as to post something unpopular like a disrespectful attitude about Linux/Java/Netscape/Firefox/OSS here. You are simply reading too much into what I'm saying and you're not understanding my post. Please try to be civil.
Thanks for the kind remarks. I love Firefox, but I don't get paid any extra to code for it. I've got a wife and kid to support, so there's not a lot of choice in the matter.
> When you say "us web developers" you must mean yourself.
O.K., O.K... I meant to say "us LAZY web developers." And I am a very lazy developer. Given a choice between making something once and moving on to the next task vs. continually reworking it for each new browser/version, I'd rather be working on new, interesting things. In the heyday of the browser wars I didn't enjoy having to recode/redesign sites because version 4.1.1.1.5 mangled things. Your milage may vary, but back in the day I didn't get paid for every fix I made to a site. I just looked bad when the latest IE or Netscape did something unexpected with JS or my page formatting.
Let me be clear: competition is a good thing, IE is a bad thing, FireFox is a good thing --we're on the same side here. But I'm a lazy developer that only wants to write it once. I know the crappy pages out there are largely due to Microsoft's ignorance of standards. But the fight against MS isn't a religion for me (die karma, die!). I don't care which browser I develop for. All I really care about is productivity. I'm not making art, I'm making money.
I gotta admit, Firefox is superior in almost every way. However I never use it, because no matter how bad IE may be, the last thing I want is another browser war. Most of us web developers breathed a huge, collective sigh of relief when Netscape finally went away. Finally we could spend more time writing code and less time trying to get it to display correctly (which, when working in multiple browsers, is like nailing Jello to a tree). If everything displayed the same on all browsers/platforms, there'd be no argument from me.
Personally, I've got a lot of fear and disgust with anyone actively opposed to knowledge.
Two hundred years from now, when kids are playing with the Mr. Evolution Biochem Kit and a device that changes water to wine fits on a key fob, these people will still be praying for a magical explanation of everything. Maybe the problem is just intellectual laziness.
One interesting thought about establishing human colonies in space and on other planets is the fact that those are radically different environments. Perhaps science will find an answer, but it would be difficult to replicate Earth's gravity, diurnal and seasonal cycles, and atmosphere.
This all makes me wonder, how many generations before our "space children" would start to diverge from the rest of the human race? How many generations before speciation would occur?
Throws an interesting kink into the idea of saving "humanity" as we know it.
I would have to agree that, although the idea is fascinating, implementing it would be a gargantuan effort. And it's unclear how difficult it would be to maintain.
I think it might be easier to approach the problem from another direction. Once a semantic A.I. like Cyc has reached a level at which it can begin categorizing and "understanding" the information on the Web, it could do the enormous chore of creating a semantic web for us.
O.K... I've got to have the doctor change my caffeine prescription. The quote (and sig.) is a clever reversal of Clarke's law. You may take the rest of my Karma points now.
Sorry to be off topic (and an annoying guy that goes around correcting people), but about your tagline... Aren't you misattributing an Arthur C. Clarke quote?
It's not suprising at all that this camera is just capturing 1 frame every second. That's fairly normal to keep storage costs down. A camera isn't going to be used to secure an area, it's just used to get pictures of the people who your security system detected comming in.
Um... Yeah... Having spent all their money on $10,000 screwdrivers, I can see how they'd be really strapped for cash. Maybe the U.S. military could have a bake sale or something to raise the money for better security systems?
With rare exceptions like Al Gore, few of our "representatives" (I use the term lightly) have the first clue about technology.
Things like this ESRB rating stupidity really boggle the mind. Do you suppose legislators would ban Cadillacs if someone created a replacement hood ornament that looks like a dildo?
Hereare a few suggestions regarding what you can do if you don't want to support the RIAA: 1- Use the tools at RIAA Radar: http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/ to avoid buying RIAA artists' work. 2- Borrow music from your local library (they often have a surprisingly good, though not up-to-date, collection). 3- Buy your music at concerts, where the artist gets most of the money instead of a handful of RIAA executives and all the pointless middlemen. 4- Put in the extra work to find free music on the Net in the form of free downloads and Creative Commons licensed tracks. (Music blogs and the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/audio) are good sources.
Other things are far more interesting than technology to most of the masses; they only care about the ends, not the means.
The Flynn Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect) can't keep up with the exponential progress of technology (and it's slowing in the 1st world). Most humans are overwhelmed trying to learn all the new tech.
Modern Western culture (e.g. US culture) demands we work and play at a more frenetic pace than ever before, leaving little time to learn or apply principles of net safety even if one IS inclined to do so.
Information overload causes most folks to shut down before they've even read the second line of text on the screen.
The banking community hasn't done enough to get PSAs about net safety to their customers and commit to stop sending links in e-mail until they have a better solution for the problem.
Perhaps we've made these critical transactions a little TOO quick, easy and convenient for the everyman. (Please tell me there isn't a cute, yet clumsy GUI for the nuclear reactor operating next door!)
That all being said... For this particular problem I don't see why we couldn't authenticate a site using something analogous to PGP security in e-mail.
It seems pretty unlikely you're going to leave the gated community of the Sims for a daytrip to City 17, but why not develop standards for creating objects (inanimate and maybe even animate) that can be used in any 3-D virtual world? All we need is a framework that lets content creators specify the materials/composition, properties (e.g. density, dimensions, etc.), destructibility hints, and other things.
Slashdot Mirror
> who is the average citizen supposed to trust if both sides are
> trotting out 'climate experts' to disagree?
I guess the side with the experts would be a good bet.
Or, if reality doesn't agree with your point of view, how about an op-ed from a paper just this side of the Enquirer's legitimacy? The Canada Free Press is the same fine news organization that said 9-11 was a mafia plot among other "interesting" things. The op-ed author, Tom Harris, is an engineer with the High Park Group, an energy policy lobbying group. And the prof. he cites? Seems he's on Exxon's payroll and has almost no peer-reviewed publications.
> It's even funnier watching people who are completely clueless
> about climate science trying to shoot down the studies of people
> who have spent their whole lives studying it.
I dunno... I think it's very disturbing --like having an idiot in the room waving around live grenades. Doing the will of oil barons, pushing the idea that there's nothing wrong, sending the world climate further in the wrong direction isn't much different. It's just harder to see the direct connection. The poor of New Orleans didn't get blown up by terrorists, but they're still very dead.
Not scientifically proven? I don't care what Rush Limbaugh has been telling you... Among scientists that study climatology and related fields there's an overwhelming consensus. Those rare exceptions are typically shills being paid off by Exxon-Mobil. See http://exxonsecrets.com/ and take a look at the ulterior motives of your favorite skeptics.
And all those folks working on doomed MS search tech SHOULD be banned from using Google.
As for everybody else at MS? Hell, they've got work to do.
> Or Microsoft could just give away their product for free, like other vendors
. aspx
> who make products that aren't "good enough" to sell to the public.
Actually... They do give it away for free, along with coding tools:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default
Hmmm... I like the approach. Even though I'm working in Visual Studio, this would probably be a good habit --and a time saver if the company decides to support other browsers.
> It doesn't matter what the browser market share is in terms of
> installed base. That's entirely irrelevant to this discussion.
Is it? Unfortunately many of us work for employers that aren't interested in W3C purity. They want the page to work in IE and they don't want to pay for it to be thoroughly tested (or even tested to work at all!) in other browsers. Thus the evil empire wins. I really don't know what business-based developers can do about the problem but publicly shame MS for doing their own thing.
> > Let me be clear: competition is a good thing
>
> Which is why you should welcome a new browser war. I know I do.
O.K. It's a deal. But this time can everybody just follow standards? That's all I ask. Just give me consistency in rendering and basic ECMA-compliant scripting and I would LOVE to see dozens of solutions. We could even see a lot more interesting niche browsers for specific markets and tasks without wringing our hands about the client.
I get the sense that standards aren't changing as fast as they once were, so there's no reason (except MS) that we can't expect compliance from all browsers entering the fray.
Look... I understand that hating MS is part of your core beliefs. I'm not a big fan of their tactics myself. I could have just as easily said it was a relief when IE finally went away. I was a big fan of Netscape and would much rather have had them be the winner --used Netscape until the bitter end, when they stopped updating it. I loved Netscape, but it's simply a matter of practicality.
Sheesh... The very suggestion that I'm disrespecting a sacred cow really sets you off, eh? Please folks, I think you are really misinterpreting me here. I don't want to be insulting, but I think you're being unfair and not entirely mature about our difference of opinion.
I wouldn't be so clueless as to post something unpopular like a disrespectful attitude about Linux/Java/Netscape/Firefox/OSS here. You are simply reading too much into what I'm saying and you're not understanding my post. Please try to be civil.
Thanks for the kind remarks. I love Firefox, but I don't get paid any extra to code for it. I've got a wife and kid to support, so there's not a lot of choice in the matter.
Good luck with your GeoCities homepage.
> When you say "us web developers" you must mean yourself.
O.K., O.K... I meant to say "us LAZY web developers." And I am a very lazy developer. Given a choice between making something once and moving on to the next task vs. continually reworking it for each new browser/version, I'd rather be working on new, interesting things. In the heyday of the browser wars I didn't enjoy having to recode/redesign sites because version 4.1.1.1.5 mangled things. Your milage may vary, but back in the day I didn't get paid for every fix I made to a site. I just looked bad when the latest IE or Netscape did something unexpected with JS or my page formatting.
Let me be clear: competition is a good thing, IE is a bad thing, FireFox is a good thing --we're on the same side here. But I'm a lazy developer that only wants to write it once. I know the crappy pages out there are largely due to Microsoft's ignorance of standards. But the fight against MS isn't a religion for me (die karma, die!). I don't care which browser I develop for. All I really care about is productivity. I'm not making art, I'm making money.
I gotta admit, Firefox is superior in almost every way. However I never use it, because no matter how bad IE may be, the last thing I want is another browser war. Most of us web developers breathed a huge, collective sigh of relief when Netscape finally went away. Finally we could spend more time writing code and less time trying to get it to display correctly (which, when working in multiple browsers, is like nailing Jello to a tree). If everything displayed the same on all browsers/platforms, there'd be no argument from me.
Personally, I've got a lot of fear and disgust with anyone actively opposed to knowledge.
Two hundred years from now, when kids are playing with the Mr. Evolution Biochem Kit and a device that changes water to wine fits on a key fob, these people will still be praying for a magical explanation of everything. Maybe the problem is just intellectual laziness.
One interesting thought about establishing human colonies in space and on other planets is the fact that those are radically different environments. Perhaps science will find an answer, but it would be difficult to replicate Earth's gravity, diurnal and seasonal cycles, and atmosphere.
This all makes me wonder, how many generations before our "space children" would start to diverge from the rest of the human race? How many generations before speciation would occur?
Throws an interesting kink into the idea of saving "humanity" as we know it.
I would have to agree that, although the idea is fascinating, implementing it would be a gargantuan effort. And it's unclear how difficult it would be to maintain.
I think it might be easier to approach the problem from another direction. Once a semantic A.I. like Cyc has reached a level at which it can begin categorizing and "understanding" the information on the Web, it could do the enormous chore of creating a semantic web for us.
O.K... I've got to have the doctor change my caffeine prescription. The quote (and sig.) is a clever reversal of Clarke's law. You may take the rest of my Karma points now.
Sorry to be off topic (and an annoying guy that goes around correcting people), but about your tagline... Aren't you misattributing an Arthur C. Clarke quote?
Sheesh. My so-called sense of humor is now considered trolling? I knew I should have added a smiley. :)
No. Next question...
With rare exceptions like Al Gore, few of our "representatives" (I use the term lightly) have the first clue about technology. Things like this ESRB rating stupidity really boggle the mind. Do you suppose legislators would ban Cadillacs if someone created a replacement hood ornament that looks like a dildo?
Hereare a few suggestions regarding what you can do if you don't want to support the RIAA:
1- Use the tools at RIAA Radar: http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/ to avoid buying RIAA artists' work.
2- Borrow music from your local library (they often have a surprisingly good, though not up-to-date, collection).
3- Buy your music at concerts, where the artist gets most of the money instead of a handful of RIAA executives and all the pointless middlemen.
4- Put in the extra work to find free music on the Net in the form of free downloads and Creative Commons licensed tracks. (Music blogs and the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/audio) are good sources.
That all being said... For this particular problem I don't see why we couldn't authenticate a site using something analogous to PGP security in e-mail.
Hmmm... I think you may be on to something there. Without ten layers of bean counters and paperwork, healthcare would certainly be cheaper.
Of course... Then there's the matter of trusting our government to do a competent job...
Yes! This is more like it.
It seems pretty unlikely you're going to leave the gated community of the Sims for a daytrip to City 17, but why not develop standards for creating objects (inanimate and maybe even animate) that can be used in any 3-D virtual world? All we need is a framework that lets content creators specify the materials/composition, properties (e.g. density, dimensions, etc.), destructibility hints, and other things.
Create once, blow up everywhere.