FAQ's. How do I delete my account.
A: You can't.

Yet you seem to be responding to me questioning this site's integrity by taking a small part of my post in isolation, extrapolating it to a position where you can push your personal politic and adopting an intelectual high ground to create a false position where you can advertise a slippery slope argument as to what will happen ( 'atrophy' ) should I ignore you.

I also know that an objective discussion of authority must include human beings as an hierarchical animal, and that the cultures we build from this are in large part responsible for us being able to have this conversation. I don't have the time, or expertise, to question the myriad decisions made every day by people in authority which affect my life. Neither do you. A pragmatic response to this may be to choose to which hierarchies I belong.

The authority I'm questioning is this site in general. The signal to noise ratio is getting worse, encouraged by the editors who have a financial interest in the number of ad impressions generated by it. That the majority of posts in a thread about malware ( a problem which affects everyone, especially those in computing, via spam ) spreading to a previous uninfected platform is discussed with schadenfreude based on Apple's marketing that Apple users are 'different' is disappointing. I have both a mac and a PC under my desk and have noticed no change in personality as I move between them.

The wrong assumption geek/nerd = intelligent = objective is mine. I'll reexamine as a social stigma labelling I've never felt personally.

So, today was the day I lost any remaining respect for a low id, and I think with it realise that this is what /. is. Some intelligent people attempting to discuss things while being bombarded by people thinking their bias is more important than objectivity. The elder members of a community are supposed to be doing the opposite of trolling, but if you've been doing this since about 1997 then it's not likely to change.

Yes, I know, you REALLY don't care.

It's a real shame. If anyone passing by knows of a tech forum which has a higher % of discussion to zealotry, please pm me.

Yawn.

I agree. Especially when those code domains are evolving comparatively rapidly. It makes the business of making and selling websites much harder as there's no one technology which is both multimedia capable and available across all platforms. ( Flash + specialist iOS html is my current best for minimum number of versions for multimedia web delivery ). It makes choosing a speciality as a developer difficult which surely results in less specialists.

I have doubts at this stage that html5/js is the one size fits all future solution. It's fragmented before reference implementation and it's best features are unavailable on some browsers ( WebGL on IE, Etc. ).

I also have doubt that Adobe will release a sleek and secure Flash player. Though we've yet to see fallout from html/js implementation security lapses, ( http://www.us-cert.gov/current > WebGL ). We've yet to see the rise of annoying html adverts which use core browser functionality and so aren't easily disabled. Flash may yet not be the greater evil. ( Keeping multimedia in a plugin works for me. )

I wouldn't put it past Apple to sell 'Now with Flash !' at a later date either.

I want accelerated 3d to everyone who accesses it with a modern browser, I'll happily deal with differing workload per device. Currently it's not only impossible, but there is no clear way to see it happening.

One of the reasons I call myself a developer is an ability to assess suitability of technology for purpose. html5 is not production ready. It's early push by Apple in particular ( in presenting it as a viable alternative to Flash on iOS ) has led to several differing public implementations before a reference implementation.

It's currently a fragmented mess mirroring previous OS 'wars', that's being used politically by large corporations. The standards body has changed it's idea of progress to match these commercial concerns and it is not certain now these differences will ever be reconciled.

So that would put me in the 'fuck off' camp. A good standard wouldn't require me to 'get behind it', it should be an obvious choice providing uniformity when adhered to. It doesn't. It now may never.

You're voicing a strong opinion, 'hate', on the entire range of products of a company whilst admitting you have little experience of using them. Some of these products are very complex ( OSX ) and take time to learn even if you're familiar with other similar products ( OSs ). I find some of their consumer product frustrating also. The same things that annoy me about the iPad make it perfect to be my mothers first 'computer'.

I find their professional product, once learned, ( Mac Pro, OSX ) to increase my efficiency over all tested alternatives. ( tbh. I've only used BeOS a little )

The FAA didn't chose this, the airline asked them to look into the 'look into' the iPad, and no one has paid them to 'look into' any other device. You're very welcome to.

Please look at where your post could be considered a 'personal war'. It is not the responsibility of anyone here to prove anything to you, rather the opposite, it is your responsibility to prove your opinion is worthwhile by ensuring it is free from untested personal bias.

For general human rights I'm right with you. I also agree that it's very important that property rights are maintained, but I believe property rights to be a subset of human rights.

There is also an insidious creep in the reasoning for war, and in the acceptance of collateral damage ( people who have had their human rights denied in the most permanent way ).

War over human rights, war over oil, war on inanimate objects ( drugs ). You're defending the idea of war over functionality in a games console ?

I think this is worse, as it denies both human rights and property rights.

Also. As this is purportedly a science based site, the only way to keep a frog in a slowly heated pan of water is to take it's brain out first. Maybe you could use this as an analogy for your slow decent into believing war is a suitable solution to every problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

Wow. So property rights are more important than, say, the people who lost their lives in NY on 9/11 ? 'Merely individuals being injured or killed' by a 'well-defined and easy to fight' enemy ?

Let me get this straight. You think a slow erosion of the consumer rights of a society is more important than an attempted violent destruction of the entire society ?

Yes. But it's not a war. The subtle difference is that one is some functionality removed from a home appliance, and the other is your parents being blown to bloody shreds in front of you, and your children.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11660210

Harmful to, harm to others around you.

Iirc, Prof. David Nutt was the former UK government drug adviser until his arguments about the relative harmlessness of cannabis we're ignored by the government.

Microsoft is already doomed because their primary product is an OS, which seems a mostly solved problem * and isn't interesting in a time when the market is pushing a thin client model standardised around the browser. Microsoft requiring a new version of windows ( Win 7 ) to run their latest browser ( IE9 ) could be seen as a sign for this, particularly when other browsers perform comparatively without this requirement. ( Chrome is fast on XP )

Apologies, people working in interesting OS stuff, I mean the times of 'OMG overlapping windows' are past.

One of the reasons is that you can carry one machine with all current OS's on it, WinXP&7 & Linux in VMs, for testing across browsers.

The url bar on iPhone is about 60px high, tool bar at the bottom is about 45px. 10px is just about enough room to get a legible line of text with no borders/chrome/spacing.