What is the point of using all caps? For me it makes legal texts like these really annoying to read. I'm not a native English speaker, is that really correct English writing? Aren't there clear rules when to use capitalization? Like, at the beginning of sentences. Feels like they are abusing the language.
Can they just lower case the paragraphs, to make things more convenient to read? Or does that change the legal meaning? For me it would feel like they would stop screaming :-)
Apparently it comes from commercial codes from the ‘50s, which says that important text must be conspicuous [1]
Conspicuous could mean all caps, contrasting text, or different colors. My guess is that CAPITALIZATION was used because most typewriters at the time could do caps, whereas doing different font sizes, colors, bold would have required a special expensive machine. When technology evolved, lawyers being process oriented creatures, stuck with all caps because it was the way things were always done, and therefore safe to do.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. The following is not legal advice and, in particular, has not been tested in court to the best of my knowledge.
You can't use a different typeface, font size or color in a plain text document. That does not mean you have no options. The criterion is that it is “written, displayed, or presented that a reasonable person [...] ought to have noticed it.”
Consider the following:
Nihil harum autem impedit commodi ut occaecati. Nihil
quisquam ab molestiae veritatis consectetur. Quis molestias
sunt facere tempore est. Eum quia quisquam veritatis illo
minus sint atque ipsa. Omnis optio ducimus minus nemo non
deleniti voluptas. Blanditiis nisi eum eum beatae fugit
delectus. Optio neque sed nostrum veniam eos. Culpa ut no‐
bis rem est dignissimos est eum sed. Occaecati dignissimos
eveniet odit aut est ipsum minus nisi.
!! IMPORTANT !!
DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY
The software is provided "as is", without warran‐
ty of any kind, express or implied, including but
not limited to the warranties of merchantability,
fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringe‐
ment. In no event shall the authors or copyright
holders be liable for any claim, damages or other
liability, whether in an action of contract, tort
or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connec‐
tion with the software or the use or other deal‐
ings in the software.
Unde sint ab qui ut. Debitis qui deserunt fugiat aut nihil
impedit vel saepe. Et ad voluptas quia. Omnis libero ni‐
hil perferendis aut ab. Illo et neque voluptatibus. Et
animi consequatur enim eius aut at veritatis. Modi error a
ratione tempore velit inventore. Accusantium accusantium
et quam quis nemo id.
This seems rather noticeable to me, gets to the point, and is considerably more readable.
By using the all-caps sparingly, we've made way to draw attention to the heading, then offset the passage with large amounts of whitespace to draw attention to the passage itself. At the same time, this keeps readability of the actual text that you want people to read.
BUT ALL - CAPS TEXT IS EASIEST AND AT LEAST TO ME SOUND RIGHTEOUS ENOUGH. I THINK THIS IS A CLASSIC CASE OF QUOTE IT AIN'T STUPID IF IT WORKS END QUOTE.
“Easy to read” is not part of the criteria. The definition is explicit.
> "Conspicuous", with reference to a term, means so written, displayed, or presented that a reasonable person against which it is to operate ought to have noticed it. Whether a term is "conspicuous" or not is a decision for the court. Conspicuous terms include the following: (A) a heading in capitals equal to or greater in size than the surrounding text, or in contrasting type, font, or color to the surrounding text of the same or lesser size; and (B) language in the body of a record or display in larger type than the surrounding text, or in contrasting type, font, or color to the surrounding text of the same size, or set off from surrounding text of the same size by symbols or other marks that call attention to the language.
I agree so much! It is baffling to me that so many companies/schools/individuals are actively using it. It is _so_ _bad_. Messages are lost, it reboots spontaneously, it crashes, one cannot turn off emoticons (I think (the UI doesn't help)), etc. It does not even take security seriously. What is good about that software?
And then when I talk about this with colleagues, they seem to be just fine with it...
Anyway, sorry about the rant. But it is just so nice to see that there are other people also dissatisfied with it, and that is not just me.
The reason people use it is because either they don’t have a say in it or they legitimately never used anything better (such as Slack or the lesser-known competitors like Mattermost).
If your benchmark is Skype for Business or email then I guess Teams is indeed an upgrade, and Microsoft is betting on that.
It's not a horrible answer, though it wouldn't make my top 3 list. Learning different models of programming is almost always worthwhile, though how much time you put in will depend on your objectives. Languages and systems in the declarative/logical/relational vein like Prolog, minikanren, and others are worth examining at least once. If you grok them, it can be very handy with prototyping, even if it doesn't make it into production. And if you really grok them, you can Greenspun a Prolog into your system more effectively when it turns out its model is actually appropriate to a portion of the system.
With regard to this, though:
> When you modify it, you have to understand the logical world state.
That's true of any non-trivial program someone may write and/or modify. Changing without understanding is just going to get your garbage (perhaps functional garbage, but still garbage).
I thought declarative programming was the way of the future. I was wrong. It is useful in a small set of cases but generally speaking procedural programming (still) rules the roost.
It seems everybody is learning lessons learnt in the 1950s over and over again.
It’s already effectively been done away with, and it would be a multi-year societal change to bring it back. I’ve been living in Sweden for four years, and I think that’s about the same number of times I’ve even seen a coin or note.
It's far more common in the US and I certainly see it on a regular basis. But, personally, I'll go months without using it and if I'm driving somewhere I'll have some cash in the car but don't usually carry it on my person.
That train has left the station a long time ago. In Sweden, debit cards are the most common payment method at stores. Most legit companies don't want cash. It just exposes a lot of people for the risk of being robbed.
Forgot to add... They want to be able to make anyone unable to buy anything at the click of a button. Sweden is pretty much there already so now we are hoping the government doesn't turn into fascism because then we are completely unable to do anything. Keep your guns, America.
Handling cash is expensive for stores. They need to store the cash safely in-store, deploys all kinds of security measures to prevent robberies and theft, use armored cars to transport to and from the bank, pay more in insurance, etc.
GDPR and other laws are supposed to stop that, and has worked out nicely according to audits. Stores are not allowed to keep your credit card number just a reference number. (But a lot of clubs are now registered on the credit card so they can still conncet a sale to a person with out storing the credit card number.)
It was very common to rob money transfers back in the days. It kind of peaked around the big helicopter robbery +10 years ago. The use of cash has been on a decline for decades. The transports are never armed like in other countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4stberga_helicopter_robb...
Thanks for this comment. While it is a no-brainer for me to support this, I initially felt that this is hopeless and very few people care. But after seeing your comment, it pushed me to also sign :-) We shouldn't give up.
Good time to reconsider if you really should continue subscribing, I'd say. Money to them means money to the copyright holders, and they are destroying our equipment with their DRM. Perhaps better to do something else with that money and time and do something productive instead of being passively fed content for consumption.
Fair enough. I agree, that last part wasn't really necessary. You don't need to be productive and it's okay to passively consume content. If you can control that balance, that's great. I would guess though many of us can get caught in consuming a little too much, which is nice to avoid, but that's outside the point.
> Erm, no? You've visited my site that I have built, you can either use it as is, or not use it - your choice - but don't start trying to mess about with it and sending stuff, I might be terrible at writing backend side and sending things wrong blows up a server.
Just because it's your site, you shouldn't assume that you have the exclusive rights to decide what executable code that should run on my computer. If you don't want uses to mess with that, the code should be kept on the backend, because that's "your" computer and you can decide what to run there.
EDIT: Perhaps there should be a required banner for every JS-using site, telling the user that it sends you executable code, and you need to press a button to confirm that you indeed want to let the browser do that.
(joke)
I don't think it's a joke at all. A user clicking on a link usually wants to view a page, not getting sent 100's of tracking scripts (or miners, fishers, or whatever), and it's not clear at all the user has given consent or is even aware. Search engines flagging ad- and script-heavy sites would be cool, too.
That's begging the question. Advertising and tracking are not the sole business models of the web nor the ones I have any impulse to protect or cater to.
Wouldn't it be much easier to pass laws that would prohibit all these tracking scripts (e.g. GDPR) rather than writing custom Javascript for every individual website out there?
Yes, it's much easier to pass laws, but enforcement becomes a real challenge...this has been an issue for the GDPR specifically[0]:
> This means that at the time of writing this report, over a year and a half after the complaints were launched, a decision on the complaints is still far off and it is unclear when such a decision could be expected. Meanwhile, Google continues to spy on the comings and goings of millions of European consumers. Moreover, since the complaints were launched, the company has even carried out a (misleading) public PR campaign to portray itself as company that respects privacy and highlight that users are in control of their personal data.
I'm pretty sure you're joking, but the client's browser makes the request for a resource. If you're letting your browser request code you don't want to execute, that's on you.
Actually I wasn't joking. But you're right of course. It's on me, just as it's on me whether or not I will execute a proprietary executable on my computer. And if I don't want to, the solution is to just not do it.
It is still my opinion though, that if you let your browser request the resource, you should have complete control of what code should be permitted to be executed or not. Or if you want to, you should be able to mess with it freely. Because it is your computer, and you should be in control what it executes or not executes.
But the law is not with me on that in many places in the world I believe. And therefore I am happy we have free software :-)
> If you're letting your browser request code you don't want to execute, that's on you.
Indeed. We can run blockers to get rid of user hostile javascripts but we can't get rid of the web site's own code since that's likely to break everything. That's why we'll eventually have to replace them with free software.
This is one of the things that the FSF is proposing, with a method of tagging executable code under a free license. In general, you can only check that tag after retrieving the code.
> Perhaps there should be a required banner for every JS-using site, telling the user that it sends you executable code, and you need to press a button to confirm that you indeed want to let the browser do that. (joke)
IIRC, this was exactly what we had in the old days of IE4/IE5. Also for cookies, even earlier than that.
(We sort of got cookie popups back, thanks to it being easier to throw a popup than to actually obey the spirit of GDPR and be a good web citizen. I wonder if at some point same will happen with JS?)
What is the point of using all caps? For me it makes legal texts like these really annoying to read. I'm not a native English speaker, is that really correct English writing? Aren't there clear rules when to use capitalization? Like, at the beginning of sentences. Feels like they are abusing the language.
Can they just lower case the paragraphs, to make things more convenient to read? Or does that change the legal meaning? For me it would feel like they would stop screaming :-)