That's very near to the truth...unless you are really fond of eye candy. It's true enough that I have refused to allow flash to be installed on my system.

OTOH, some designs actually DO work better than others. It's nice to have a table of contents at the side of the page, e,g,, ... unless the page needs to be so wide that you don't have room for it on the screen on your system. Fortunately, having a site that provides versions both with and without frames solves that problem. There actually ARE so real uses for JavaScript, even though I'm not real pleased with AJAX. Most uses of AJAX would be better avoided. (Let people reload the page if they want changes, e.g.) I'm pretty much a fan of HTML 1.0, with relatively few extensions.

OTOH, that's just MY use case. Other people have other priorities. But if I've decided to use a service, I REALLY object to later having new requirements added. Having them as an option is fine, but not as a requirement.

While you have a point, it's still going to cost them. The tablet inteface rather demands a different kind of interface than does the desktop or laptop (which, though different, are similar enough that the difference can be reasonably handled).

When you get rid to the text interface (as opposed to providing the GUI one) you strongly limit the niche that your system will work in. Even Gnome is better than some of the things I've seen when used in the desktop context.

Unifying the interface between device segments guarantees that some areas are poorly served. Yes, it eases development, but not enough that it is justifiable. The reason that it's justifiable is probably ignorance rather than arrogance, but making a decision because you didn't understand the problem isn't a smart move.

As for Yahoo... I neither use the current Yahoo Groups, nor have I used the past versions. I couldn't just what had changed even were I to look. This may be either a reasonable move or a stupid one. I suspect, from the "No, you can't use the old interface" part of the report that it's both stupid and arrogant, but there's no way I could be sure. There is, however, a strong resemblence to the way that Gnome3 was foisted onto people. But people will put up with a lot from a free service that's supplying a desired service. Especially if they aren't aware of any alternatives.

UseNet was ruined by trolls. But a similar system with a distributed moderation might work. It would certainly be more difficult to implement, and would have more feedback relationship than UseNet did/does, but...

Think of it this way. If you can cancel your posts, then the basic structure is in place to allow you to vote on messages that you receive.

Yahoo was always a joke. Yahoo is the company that started around the idea of having people index the web.

OK. So (to get back to the thread) your recommendation is that non-technical users should run Apache with a custom configuration? This seems a bit silly to me.

Also, he already stated that there were technical solutions to the problem. But clearly this was just the final straw that caused him to decide that it wasn't worth running his own web site.

FWIW, I, also, don't find it worthwhile to run my own web site. I'm sure I could, but I don't want to bother. I can't even maintain enough interest to maintain a web site hosted for free on someone else's server. For every level of comitment, there's a reasonable choice. For me, it to avoid the bother. For him, it's to let someone else handle the hosting.

P.S.: I have, a few years ago, set up a website on an Apache install on my local system. So I'm pretty sure that the only thing keeping me away from running my own site is lack of interest. I could be wrong, as it wasn't an externally facing site...but I'm not interested enough to find out. But asking my wife to do even that much would be an exercise in futility. She's got a lot more interest than I do, but not enough to keep a blog running. (Well, she kept one running for 6 months or so a few years ago, but...)

Didn't you understand his point? It *is* better for him for them to copy his images than to link to them. It doesn't cost him as much.

If he were running a high volume site, and this were done by a low volume site, this wouldn't have much effect. As he's running a low volume site, it can significantly raise his expenses.

Sorry, but 1 foot isn't the worst case scenario. It's the "Probably not more than" scenario. The worst case is actually measured in meters, but is probably unlikely. (It requires massive releases of methane from submerged methyl cathlates.)

(Actually, even that isn't the worst case. A real worst case would be a dinosaur killer size asteroid impacting near Antarctica. That would lead to a tsunami perhaps a thousand feet high, and .... well, the rest wouldn't really matter. But all of Antarctica would melt. Steam might not reach the Arctic. Land strikes are much more survivable)

Well, the real problem is that if the water rises enough to submerge much of SF., it will also submerge, in salt, or brackish, water, much of the San Jouquin Valley. This is a lot of prime agricultural land.

I'm still not convinced that this is a good answer. I suppose it doesn't hurt to look at it as an option, but I think a better place to place the barrier is at the Carquinez Straits. Urban areas can be rebuilt on pilings, but that doesn't work very well for farm land.
N.B.: A dam at the Carquines Straits would also cause tremendous flooding in the San Joquin valley, but it would be flooding with fresh water (Sacramento River). There are lots of crops that would do nicely in that kind of situation. Rice, e.g., and Mangos, though they don't mind salt so much. Sugar cane. Cotton would probably need to move elsewhere, but that's not a real problem. Olives and almonds would still be good choices on the higher ground. Etc. Perhaps some aquaculture.

FWIW, we are probably already committed to considerable sea level rise from things that have already happened. The oceans are warmer. The albedo of the Arctic has decreased. etc. It's not at all clear that it's still possible to avert massive Arctic melt. Antarctica seems a bit more stable, but even there parts of it are already showing the effects of warming.

It is my suspicion that we are already committed to a thorough melting of Greenland during summers. I hope that the melting of the permafrost won't release enough methane that we're committed to further than that. Remember, these effects are slow, and there are lots of time lags built into the cycles. And there are complex feedback cycles. None of the models include all the effects. It's seriously impossible, Even if we knew enough, as it would be compuationally intractable, and what use is a prediction, if you don't finish the calculation until after the event has happened? So all the models are simplifications, even where we have the data to be more accurate.

I've supported candidates before. Some of them got in. I was uniformly disappointed. Perhaps some of the ones that didn't get in wouldn't have disappointed me. But I have speculations (based on observations which are hardly proof) that a part of the reason that some of them didn't get in was because they intended to keep their promises.

It is a characteristic of the "plurality wins" electoral system that it will settle down into a quasi-stable state with two parties. Majority wins (e.g. Condorcet or Instant Runoff Voting) do not have this characteristic. In those voting systems what the populace actually wants has a larger effect on which candidate will get elected. (We found that recently in a city election, where we were using IRV. The candidate actually elected was not the person who got a plurality during the first round, but was someone much more acceptable to the populace at large. Granted, city elections don't have a large presence of party politics, but analogs are present.

Managers are the ones who decide which jobs will be automated. So they will be the last to go. This is not an argument that they are the hardest jobs to automate, rather it's an argument analogous to "Because they decide how much each job is worth, they get the highest salaries."

How can you vote for smaller government, when the party that SAYS they stand for smaller government increase the size of the government faster than their opposition?

If there were a viable alternative, then you might have a point. If candidates were compelled to keep their campaign promises, then you might have a point. But as long as we have plurality wins voting, we're going to get one of two power mad psychotics. Just pray whoever we end up with isn't also a scociopath.

IIRC, it was the feds that first decided to make certain drugs illegal. (Well, certain communities had ordinances, but that's not the same thing.)

I think you don't understand how the drug laws were imposed in the first place. Often against tremendous public opinion. Just not active enough opinion that they would do anything about it. (Alcohol prohibition was a separate case. It's a part of the war of the sexes. When a large portion of the male population would off fighting a war, prohibition got voted in. Getting rid of it was a real problem, and we are still suffering from the after effects that it caused, e.g. a major increase in organized crime.)

P.S.: Organized crime isn't interested in a drug that doesn't carry significant penalties (or hefty import duties). Doesn't matter for this subject whether or not it's addictive, though naturally it prefers more addictive drugs. Watch out if tobacco is ever made illegal.

I would argue that if there are so many laws the average citizen can't know what's legal and what isn't, then either ignorance of the law SHOULD be an excuse, or there needs to be a reduction in the number (and complexity) of the laws.