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Comment Assumptions much? (Score 1) 507

Hey chill out man. It's far from clear that the GP is not a website developer. I mean, probably not, but it's not implied by the content of his post.

If you are one, then I don't understand your objection to what he wrote. Presumably you too would like 100% W3C compliance to be the norm, and not have to bother with all that IE-specific shite. If you can write standards-compliant code and the latest IE copes with it OK (and earlier IE that don't are in the ridiculously small minority that you can ignore), then I think you would both be in agreement that it's not a bad thing.

If you're implying that this will never be the case and IE will always be both obtusely non-standard and absurdly market-relevant then I think your position is reasonable but I personally don't think both of those conditions can remain true indefinitely.

I used to do web development back when IE5 was a thing and almost nobody used Firefox or saw the point of web standards. Have we come a long way since then or what?

Comment I always mute the ads. (Score 1) 289

And in the UK, we supposedly have regulations already. Thing is, there is no way to legislate against how fucking annoying an advert is.

So, at the start of commercial break, I hit the mute button. The five minutes of peace and quiet really helps to preserve the mood of whatever I'm watching, and there are several ads which I have absolutely no clue about, as to what they are for or even what the fuck they are trying to convey about it. And that's the way I like it.

Basically, it's my first line of defence against meme pollution.

Comment Read the section you just quoted (Score 1) 523

The way you assert it to be, it may very well be in practice, and it may very well have been upheld by the courts. But the courts have upheld a lot of laws for a long time before they were overturned, and no law, military or civil, is special in this regard.

But more than that, the situation with Bradley Manning is also clearly wrong. The requirement to obey lawful orders goes hand-in-hand with the responsibility to only give lawful orders, and that carries all the way up to the top: the commander-in-chief (i.e. the president).

Where does his authority come from? The constitution! He also swears to uphold it, and he literally has no authority to command anyone to disregard it, in whole or in part.

Or else, if the US really is about fetishizing military discipline to such a crazy extent, then fuck it. But I don't think so.

Comment Irreversible in 5 years, not 50 or -20? (Score 1) 1105

5 years to irreversible change seems oddly precise, on the timescale of the global climate.

Is this like in films where the hero is asphyxiating, drowning, dying of poison or a disease, or the ship's computer is counting down to "failure of life support systems", and if they are rescued 5 seconds before the deadline they are *completely fine* but 5 seconds later they would be *completely screwed*?

'Cause like, I think that word "irreversible" is representing a continuum of changes with varying consequences, durations and costs to either returning the system to a state we like or more likely adapting ourselves to it.

Unless they mean we have 5 years left before peak oil fucks the economy so hard that all possible technological countermeasures will be out of reach, and we just have to wait a couple of centuries until the coal is gone too and half of us have starved, when things will start getting back to normal.

Yeah, fuck that.

Comment Re:No a Linux system (Score 2) 76

So, not very useful then. I mean why choose BASIC? Or at least, why restrict it to BASIC? Would probably be a good learning or hobbyist machine if it had Python/Scheme/Ruby instead.

I mean, I loved my ZX Spectrum and the old BBC Micro, but in retrospect this was in spite of BASIC, not because of it. Nobody knew any better then.

Android

How Google Drove Samsung Away 231

itwbennett writes "The patent licensing agreement between Microsoft and Samsung this week set off a firestorm of childish tit-for-tat between Microsoft and Google. But more telling is what Samsung had to say about its relationship with Google: 'Samsung knows it can't rely on Google. We've decided to address Android IP issues on our own,' a Samsung official told The Korea Times. The only good news to come from all of this, says blogger Brian Proffitt, is that we may be headed for a courtroom showdown over just what patents Microsoft believes are in violation, which really is what should have happened to begin with." Update: 09/30 20:05 GMT by S : As it turns out, the so-called "Samsung official" cited by The Korea Times turned out to be patent blogger Florian Mueller.
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Submission + - Stephenson Mentions Slashdot in Reamde (cmdrtaco.net) 1

CmdrTaco writes: "It's total navalgazing and I wouldn't post it if I was still working here, but I thought my heirs would be pleased to know that Slashdot got a mention in Neal Stephenson's Reamde. Be proud and keep up the fight. It's page 161 if you have the hardcover."

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