no laws or standards to require the content to be accessible without JS and since people who favor browsing the web with JS disabled are in the minority, frankly most companies don't give a shit.
They are monkeys following the shiniest ball. JS is not necessary for the vast majority of content, but humans like eye-candy.
But even if they realized the trade-off, there's not really a clean choice anyhow; most sites don't offer a non-JS version (or rendition). There's very little benefit to publishers in doing such unless enough readers care, and readers won't care if there's no practical choice. It's a catch-22.
The problem has less to do with the technology and more to do with the fad nature of the web industry
Amen! If JS weren't the main UI langage, something else would be causing similar churn headaches. Java applets were all the rage for a while, then Flash came along with better eye-candy and kicked Java's asslet; and then JS, browsers, and CPU's caught up to Flash, making Flash shrink. Now it's a battle of JS framework of the month.
I've seen PHB's drool over fancy-dancy JS, ignoring warnings about practicality. It's an unstoppable force. Dilbertian dystopia rules the Web.
Very few in the development space or business realize that the true cost of software development is not the initial development, but the long term support.
The UI styles/fads change often, and if it's a public-facing site, you have to keep up with the Joneses to look "in". Frameworks try to separate the UI from the rest of the system so that the UI can change with minimal impact on the rest. The results are mixed since clean separation is pipe dream.
While it's fairly easy to cross-read each kind, learning to write them is another matter. But I guess that's less important if it's informal: just write the version you know.
Mandarin (lots of speakers in many countries, though very difficult to learn due to the dependence on vowel pronunciation)
The tone inflection (pitch change) is tricky to learn, but is not the main impedance in my opinion. Mandarin grammar is simpler than English, which compensates for the tones in terms of learning time.
However, Mandarin has no consistent written form. Pinyin is one attempt to provide a phonetic written form (using Latin-derived characters), but it's not used much in China. Chinese use the pictograph-based writing system instead, in part because it's mostly cross-dialect, being non-phonetic.
Taiwan uses a simplified version of the same pictographs, but "mainland" China rejects those probably for political reasons. The simplified set is more efficient to use.
Further, Mandarin is not used much on a day-to-day basis. Most Chinese still use their local dialect as their primary language. Although, that may change as people move around for career reasons.
Ironically, pictographs are making a comeback in the form of emoji's. "Emojiese" may be the real language of the future, not Esperanto. I've even seen several emoji-based ads. Unlike most phonetic-based text, pictographs are mostly self-explanatory, or at least give more visual cues than text.
For example, past tense ("before") could be indicated by a clock with an arrow pointing counter-clockwise. Such may stump you the first time, but the second time it's pretty obvious in terms of re-triggering the concept: "Clock? backward? Oh yeah, time-shift is 'before'." Contrast this with the difficulty of remembering verb tenses, especially in languages with inconsistent rules.
Emoji's are hard to write on paper, but easy to learn to read. In a button-based world, writing is less of a burden because our machines allow us to type in our native language and get a menu of candidate emoji's. The pen is no longer the bottleneck. Further, clicking on an emoji could trigger a translation into your native language if one stumps you.
The metric system is not logical. Base 10 divides poorly by 3 and 4. Base 12 or Base 60 would be much more logical. 10 only survives because people used to count on their fingers. Damn sea-leaving tetrapod!
Oracle used to advertise they could run on a large list of OS's. In practice, they either never bothered to tune many ports: got it running just good enough to not crash (too often), and/or were many versions behind on less-used OS's. They're master spinners.
I remember when it was 6 planets... Way back in 200 BC...
We made up for it by whacking ourselves with a stick to get double vision and see 12. Without TV and Internet we improvised our entertainment. Don't even ask about the goats.
The federal and state governments think you need to throw more money at a problem and the problem will go away. When state and federal agencies decry their budget cuts when in reality you could double the amount of money they receive and still not solve any problems. The federal government is a bloated bureaucracy...
The private sector isn't solving them either. Other countries seem to use public funds relatively well. I suspect the hatred of gov't here is the reason gov't doesn't work very well: it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
only an idiot back in the '90s would believe the corporations would EVER allow workers out of their sight (or site).
If they could pay them less and reduce office rent as a trade-off; sure, they may find it in their best interest at times. It's hard to know which factors will outweigh which. It's not like predicting PHB's is an exact science.
Now, as for entitlements that go predominantly to red states: why do you think red states vote that way? They're sick of that shit. Cut off the spigot.
Not sure what you mean. I often find red-staters contradictory in what they really want. For example, they ask for better oversight and auditing at the IRS to avoid (alleged) political bias in applying tax law. Yet, they don't want to pay for extra oversight.
NN didn't keep cities from wiring their own networks, big-telecom lobbying and deep lawyers did.
I believe cities should wire "the last mile" and allow many providers to hook up to the regional nodes. That way the barrier of entry is far lower because little telecoms won't have to wire gajillion houses to be in the market. REAL competition.
Slashdot Mirror
They are monkeys following the shiniest ball. JS is not necessary for the vast majority of content, but humans like eye-candy.
But even if they realized the trade-off, there's not really a clean choice anyhow; most sites don't offer a non-JS version (or rendition). There's very little benefit to publishers in doing such unless enough readers care, and readers won't care if there's no practical choice. It's a catch-22.
Amen! If JS weren't the main UI langage, something else would be causing similar churn headaches. Java applets were all the rage for a while, then Flash came along with better eye-candy and kicked Java's asslet; and then JS, browsers, and CPU's caught up to Flash, making Flash shrink. Now it's a battle of JS framework of the month.
I've seen PHB's drool over fancy-dancy JS, ignoring warnings about practicality. It's an unstoppable force. Dilbertian dystopia rules the Web.
The UI styles/fads change often, and if it's a public-facing site, you have to keep up with the Joneses to look "in". Frameworks try to separate the UI from the rest of the system so that the UI can change with minimal impact on the rest. The results are mixed since clean separation is pipe dream.
Please don't say that again.
You are correct. I made a mistake.
While it's fairly easy to cross-read each kind, learning to write them is another matter. But I guess that's less important if it's informal: just write the version you know.
"It looks like you are making fun of our wonderful corporation. Would you like to die now or via slow torture?"
Compatibility often overrides raw merit. It's why Windows lives.
The tone inflection (pitch change) is tricky to learn, but is not the main impedance in my opinion. Mandarin grammar is simpler than English, which compensates for the tones in terms of learning time.
However, Mandarin has no consistent written form. Pinyin is one attempt to provide a phonetic written form (using Latin-derived characters), but it's not used much in China. Chinese use the pictograph-based writing system instead, in part because it's mostly cross-dialect, being non-phonetic.
Taiwan uses a simplified version of the same pictographs, but "mainland" China rejects those probably for political reasons. The simplified set is more efficient to use.
Further, Mandarin is not used much on a day-to-day basis. Most Chinese still use their local dialect as their primary language. Although, that may change as people move around for career reasons.
Ironically, pictographs are making a comeback in the form of emoji's. "Emojiese" may be the real language of the future, not Esperanto. I've even seen several emoji-based ads. Unlike most phonetic-based text, pictographs are mostly self-explanatory, or at least give more visual cues than text.
For example, past tense ("before") could be indicated by a clock with an arrow pointing counter-clockwise. Such may stump you the first time, but the second time it's pretty obvious in terms of re-triggering the concept: "Clock? backward? Oh yeah, time-shift is 'before'." Contrast this with the difficulty of remembering verb tenses, especially in languages with inconsistent rules.
Emoji's are hard to write on paper, but easy to learn to read. In a button-based world, writing is less of a burden because our machines allow us to type in our native language and get a menu of candidate emoji's. The pen is no longer the bottleneck. Further, clicking on an emoji could trigger a translation into your native language if one stumps you.
The metric system is not logical. Base 10 divides poorly by 3 and 4. Base 12 or Base 60 would be much more logical. 10 only survives because people used to count on their fingers. Damn sea-leaving tetrapod!
It even comes with a Get-Off-My-Lawn button.
Oracle used to advertise they could run on a large list of OS's. In practice, they either never bothered to tune many ports: got it running just good enough to not crash (too often), and/or were many versions behind on less-used OS's. They're master spinners.
We made up for it by whacking ourselves with a stick to get double vision and see 12. Without TV and Internet we improvised our entertainment. Don't even ask about the goats.
That's what happens when you don't use a surge protector.
Just include MS-Bob, and put it on a Zune running in a Pocket PC.
Careful, Clingons aggressively enforce their copyright laws.
They've been traced to the Twitter account of a large orange being.
The modern version of a "Kodak moment" is when you realize your crypto-currency just lost all its value.
You are cherry-picking problems. Their economy overall weathered the bank crash and recession far better than ours.
The private sector isn't solving them either. Other countries seem to use public funds relatively well. I suspect the hatred of gov't here is the reason gov't doesn't work very well: it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If they could pay them less and reduce office rent as a trade-off; sure, they may find it in their best interest at times. It's hard to know which factors will outweigh which. It's not like predicting PHB's is an exact science.
Not sure what you mean. I often find red-staters contradictory in what they really want. For example, they ask for better oversight and auditing at the IRS to avoid (alleged) political bias in applying tax law. Yet, they don't want to pay for extra oversight.
"I want free access to the cookie jar, waaaaaah!"
Then why is GOP claiming insurance co's are planning to drop out like flies? (Beyond GOP's sabotage.)
NN didn't keep cities from wiring their own networks, big-telecom lobbying and deep lawyers did.
I believe cities should wire "the last mile" and allow many providers to hook up to the regional nodes. That way the barrier of entry is far lower because little telecoms won't have to wire gajillion houses to be in the market. REAL competition.
Total hogwash.