Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Jerry Sanders (Heads of MicroSoft, Intel, and AMD, Advanced Micro Devices) were in a high-powered business meeting. During the serious, tense discussion, a beeping noise suddenly is emitted from where Jerry is sitting. Jerry says, "Oh, that's my beeper. Gentlemen, excuse me, I need to take this call." Jerry lifts his wristwatch to his ear and begins talking into the end of his tie. After completing this call, he notices the others are staring at him. Jerry explains, "Oh, this is my new personal communication system. I have an earpiece built into my watch and a microphone sewn into the end of my tie. That way I can take a call anywhere."

The others nod, and the meeting continues.

Five minutes later, the discussion is again interrupted when Andy starts beeping. He states, "Excuse me gentlemen, this must be an important call." Andy taps his earlobe and begins talking into thin air. When he completes his call, he notices the others staring at him and explains, "I also have a personal communication system. My earpiece is actually implanted in my earlobe, and the microphone is actually embedded in this fake tooth."

The others nod, and the meeting continues.

Five minutes later, the discussion is again interrupted when Bill emits a thunderous fart. He looks up at the others staring at him and says, "Somebody quickly get me a piece of paper... I'm receiving a fax!"

But I like my buns crispy on top.

uh, don't read too much into that.

I invented the "One Click" wheel.

Earth used to be a cute little sun.

But you are thinking logically, not like a PHB.

Military = Republican Welfare

I realize that there is an overlap between "document layout" issues and GUI issues, but believe that perhaps we have to separate these issues in order to focus on doing each well.

My draft GUI markup suggestion(s) uses HTML as a base because it's established and does initial layout "good enough". (Although I'd like an MDI option added: true sub-windows.) It's mostly the interaction between parts and pages that is lacking, such as drag-and-drop, scrolling tables, and value or element refreshing without re-rendering the entire page (AJAX-like without AJAX).

You can see some of these suggestions at: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GuiMark...

Darwin is wrong wrong wrong about global warming! Government scientists have hit a line-drive touchdown in their level of deceit.

Up to 60 percent of power might come from nuclear sources.

I don't think that will sell. Nuclear power has a bad rap despite the fact that objective studies show deaths per watt or medical costs per watt to be equal to or better than most alternatives.

Nuclear just gives voters the jeebies; that's the way it is.

"Big dust" is "sand". Big sand is pebbles. Big pebbles are rocks. Big rocks are boulders. Big boulders are mountains. Big mountains are planets. Big planets are stars. Big stars are something you don't want to be around.

Tools are simpler and easier to use than ever

They are? Only if you or your boss are willing to live with a generic out-of-the-box template or style. In some cases one can say, "That's all the tool allows me to do", but often the customer wants to custom-fit it to their needs and work patterns, not the example prototype. Otherwise, they'd use FileMakerPro and skip you and you'd never know about it.

And if you go outside of the box, you will realize the web is indeed "just an enormous stack of kluges upon hacks". Web GUI's that attempt to approach the power and flexibility of desktop apps are often a real pain to make, have jittery movements, break in the next browser version, and use frameworks the new guy is likely unfamiliar with because there are so many. Time for a new web GUI standard; the existing attempts keep falling on their face and try to turn JavaScript into a GUI OS language, which it wasn't meant for. We need fresh standards, dammit! Stop making excuses for the f8cking kludgeWeb. Think Different, Think desktop GUI, and Think Right.

I've kicked around ideas for a "GUI markup language" on the c2 wiki which basically takes the common desktop GUI idioms which have been around 20 odd years, and make them markup declarations so that one does not have to micro-manage GUI handling when making applications. (Granted, portable devices have created a new set of popular UI idioms, but they are not too different from prior ones.)

That's fair, geeks are excluded from touching girls.

What an interesting perspective. Pray tell, once the baby is born, but still attached via the umbilical cord, is it still a parasite you can destroy at will? I don't actually care one way or another about abortion, but I do care about consistency. From a medical standpoint, there are some specific events such as fertilization, implantation, birth, etc which could be used as a basis for drawing the line between a non-human thing (which one might describe - as you did - as a "parasite") and a human being. Thus far, the only group that seems to define that line at a medically objective point are the religious crowd (who use fertilization as their starting point). Again, consistency.

Because the people who founded this country came here seeking relief from religious oppression. Thus, when they created their own government (the one we have today), they ensured that the highest law of the land specifically restrained the government from doing to future generations what the Crown had done to them. If you don't think religious beliefs deserve special consideration, feel free to propose an amendment to the US Constitution stating so.

That would be a more challenging case to prove. The benefit of belonging to a popular religious group is that the tenants are widely known. As such, one must only then demonstrate that one actually belongs to that group (and even so, only minimally; stating as much without evidence to the contrary would typically be enough) to gain protection from government policy, law, or action which would violate that group's religious beliefs. In the Hobby Lobby case, there were 4 specific methods of birth control out of 20 which the owners maintained violated their core beliefs. In essence, they viewed those 4 specific methods as murder, but raised no objection to the other 16. The SCOTUS found those beliefs to be sincere and reasonable, and found that there was no interest at stake compelling enough to override the protections afforded to the owners of Hobby Lobby by the US Constitution. This was found in no small part due to the multitude of other options available for those seeking to attain the goals of the underlying legislation.

It's actually a pretty mundane case and shouldn't get people this riled up, but it does because the ACA and the President are attached to it. If this case involved any other law but the President's signature legislation, nobody but SCOTUS buffs would have heard a word about it.

I tend to wonder if you'd feel the same way if you owned a business and the Federal government passed a law stating you had to pay for female genital mutilation procedures for young girls and "straight camps" for gays.

Not advocating a side, just seeking consistency. Out of 20 different birth control methods, the SCOTUS ruling continues to require HL and others like them to provide coverage for 16. There were 4 specific methods which the owners found to be abhorrent to their religious convictions. In essence, they consider those 4 specific methods to be murder. The other 16 are covered without objection and if the employees just have to use those four specific methods, there's nothing in the SCOTUS ruling stating that they can't; they'll just have to bankroll them on their own.

This doesn't strike me as a case where the concept of birth control or 'reproductive health' as a whole are under attack. Rather, this seems to be a legitimate situation wherein reasonable religious conviction clashed with law passed by Congress. The impact is quite limited and thus, the SCOTUS correctly provided reasonable latitude to the religious beliefs over the law.

People on the right are blowing this case way out of proportion because they see it as a victory against the ACA. People on the left are blowing this case way out of proportion because they either don't understand what actually happened or they're convinced it's a victory against the ACA. The reality is that it isn't any such thing; rather it's a fairly mundane case which wouldn't make it to page 4 below the fold if it weren't tied to the ACA and the President. In other words, relax, it's really no big deal.