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Comment What a bunch of idiots (Score 1) 2

To save more than $100,000, 4ormat decided to skip Internet Explorer, "opting to only allow users to access its service through Mozillaâ(TM)s Firefox and Google Chrome browsers," the article states.

How is this any better than an IE-only website? It just exchanges one group of disadvantaged surfers for another. If it truly works only through Firefox and Chrome, most blind folks are out in the cold (see ELinks or Lynx), to mention only the first group that comes to mind.

What's wrong with Viewable with any browser?

Comment Re:It's all a matter of degree (Score 1) 68

My comment was in reply to RJBeery , who asks

Have you ever parked at a meter without plugging it, "hoping" that you'd not get caught? How is that different from stealing from society in other, larger ways, such as robbing a bank (beyond severity of the betrayal)?

It seemed germane to me—how society deals with defectors is an important part of the whole.

Comment It's all a matter of degree (Score 1) 68

Ever heard the expression ``a difference of degree large enough to become a difference in kind''? Certainly there are similarities between shorting a parking meter and robbing a bank, but.... To suggest that the two are not different, except in severity, is to miss the point. Some actions are bad enough that they are warrant a stint in the penitentiary, others only a $25 fine. To pretend otherwise is to fall into the ``zero-tolerance'' trap. Remember the high-school student who was expelled because she'd left a butter knife in the back of her car (after a picnic?)? That's where zero-tolerance gets you, and it's not a good place for society.

Comment Remember the Morrisons in _Scientific American_? (Score 1) 68

Decades ago, before SA became dumbed down, Philip and Phylis Morrison reviewed books for them. They'd (IIRC) do three or four each month, and with one exception they never got below a very good rating. I always assumed that was because there were way too many good books to make it worth while wasting ink on mediocre or bad ones. The reviews themselves were usually worth reading for their own sake—I learned a lot from them.

I guarantee you they were in no sense cheerleaders or shills. They just knew how to make good use of their time.

The one book with a bad review? The Bell Curve , a pseudo-scientific screed trying to justify racism. The Morrisons devoted that month to the single review, showing why it was such a disaster. (For detailed coverage of what's wrong with it, see Steven Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man .)

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