Dilbert Goes Flash, Readers Revolt 486
spagiola writes "The Dilbert.com website just got an extreme makeover. Gone is the old, rather clunky but perfectly functional, website, replaced by a Flash-heavy website that only Mordac the Preventer of Information Services could love. Users have been pretty unanimous in condemning the changes. Among the politer comments: 'Congrats. Vista is no more lonely at the top in the Competition For The Worst Upgrade In Computing Industry, this web site upgrade being a serious contender.' You have to register to leave comments, but many seem to have registered for the express purpose of panning the new design."
Actually, much of it is accessable. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actually, much of it is accessable. (Score:4, Informative)
non flash dilbert (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actually, much of it is accessable. (Score:5, Informative)
I thought the old site was dated but after just glancing at the new one, I definitly want the old back.
No I'm not time wasting, it takes Outlook and Eclipse about a minute+ to load, more than enough time to pop open an IE tab and glance at Dilbert.
Re:Actually, much of it is accessable. (Score:5, Informative)
I thought the old site was dated but after just glancing at the new one, I definitly want the old back.
No I'm not time wasting, it takes Outlook and Eclipse about a minute+ to load, more than enough time to pop open an IE tab and glance at Dilbert.
Here ya go. It's SYNDICATED, people. That means, dilbert.com isn't the only place to get it. Woo~.
Re:No Linux? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Deleted (Score:4, Informative)
Re:...intellectual property on the web (Score:4, Informative)
It would've been easier to just leave it a gif as before.
Re:Can't leave well enough alone (Score:5, Informative)
Don't use JavaScript, problem solved (Score:5, Informative)
Allow JavaScript to run and the whole thing blows up in your face and splatters flash everywhere.
Official RSS Feed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What a bunch of grumpy old cave trolls (Score:3, Informative)
Welcome to year 2000.
Those of us with more modern widescreen monitors prefer content that doesn't require a 1600 pixel wide screen. Because we like to multi-task and have multiple windows open without one crowding the screen. There are very few applications that I run full-screen, especially browsers or other text display programs. The text lines get too long and too difficult to read.
(A good target width - if you MUST, foolishly, design your site for a particular pixel width is between 900 and 1000 px. Better designers simply insert expansion areas and design for a minimum width of 750px but allow for content to get as wide as 1500px before it goes screwy.)
Re:Actually, much of it is accessable. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Actually, much of it is accessable. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:uhhh hello... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Don't use JavaScript, problem solved (Score:2, Informative)
RSS can be a good solution to an ugly website
Re:Well, a good, unintended slashdotting ... (Score:3, Informative)
Admittedly when it replaces an image it's not too much bigger, but when it's all over the site like it is there, I can almost guarantee the footprint of the site is much larger than it was previously.
Re:Can't leave well enough alone (Score:1, Informative)
Getting Dilbert Flash free (and in colour) (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No Linux? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Shoulda Used Quicksilver (Score:4, Informative)
Yeesh. And here I thought Slashdot had at least SOME comic book fans.
Flash [wikipedia.org]
Quicksilver [wikipedia.org]
It's a play on words around the whole "flash vs silverlight" thing, but apparently the mods here just figured someone was making a Microsoft joke or something.
Less Sucktastic Page (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actually, much of it is accessable. (Score:3, Informative)
Granted, flash SUCKS when it is used for anything where it is unnecessary such as freaking DILBERT. But it's still nice to have around when you want it.
Re:Deleted (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Heh (Score:3, Informative)
As far as I am concerned this simply takes Dilbert off my morning coffee list where it has been for 10+ years. The new webshite does not work in konqueror and does not work in firefox. In both cases the idiot who wrote it misdetects them as not having flash.
Re:One of those things is not like the others (Score:3, Informative)
To explain further, the models are based on data starting in different years, with different levels of scientific precision, and in many cases the data is not necassarilly reliable. If you start in 1810, a lot of the data from other parts of the Earth are missing. If you start later, your model does not have that much data to really predict the climate. The models that really get me are the ones that predict the weather 100 years from now based on 100 years worth of data. Thats like predicting whats going to happen in the NFL next year based on what happened this year and taking it as scientific fact.
No one really knows the future, and although models may support something, you are still using statistics which we all know that 60% of all statistics are made up. 61% maybe?
Sure, there are models out there that support global warming, but there are also models that don't. Sound scientific basis doesn't use statistics. Scientific basis in this case would be if you could prove that increased CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere increases the Earth's temperature all by itself. There are too many factors in the science of climate that makes this causation unprovable, and in addition there is no direct evidence or science that even shows a correlation. There is more evidence that smoking increases your chances of lung cancer then the claim of global warming.
This is because the climatology is in its infancy and until all the factors of the Earth's climate are figured out, you can't call it sound scientific basis. Do I reject global warming personally? Absolutly not. I do believe that we should go greener and that we should by all means do everything in our power to preserve this planet for future generations, but I also believe that in this case that the statistics used can NEVER be construed as SOUND scientific basis.
Fallacy alert (Score:4, Informative)
Just because the earth warms and cools naturally doesn't mean that human beings can't frig with the same mechanisms, and make it warm unnaturally.
The global cooling scare of the 70s was based on a few concerned scientific papers, and a lot of imaginative reporting. The press knows a good story when they see one. There was no scientific agreement on the issue - just a few papers.
The evidence for anthropogenic warming is there for anybody to look up. I spent some time trying to find the basis for the claims on "skeptic" websites. I have not found a single sound skeptic website, which actually backs its claims up, and is not full of sh1t.
Furthermore, key websites on the skeptic side of things, are run by industry lobbyists and shills who were involved in the tobacco industry mis-information campaign.
Re:uhhh hello... (Score:4, Informative)
Uhm, wrong way around. It uses about ten times as much energy during its life-time than by manufacturing...
Re:One of those things is not like the others (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds scientific basis is not what global warming has...what it has is computer modeling that supports a theory that its possible that man-kind will increase the temperature of the earth by CO2 emissions.
I love it how people toss out the phrase "computer modeling" as if that somehow makes the science uncertain.
No, global warming is based on fundamental and uncontroversial physical facts concerning the adsorption spectra of atmospheric constituents such as carbon dioxide. These facts were known long before computers as we know them even existed.
When you perform data mining on large amounts of data,
The evidence for global warming is not based on "data mining large amounts of data", it is based on trends in the observed climate, and the physics which predicts such trends.
you use something called statistics which can be scewed depending on the model you are using,
The second refuge of the skeptics ... it's based on "statistics", so therefore nobody knows what's going on.
Sorry, models predict man-made global warming regardless of whether you use a simple two equation energy balance model or a supercomputer general circulation model. The existence of statistics does not change this.
To explain further, the models are based on data starting in different years, with different levels of scientific precision, and in many cases the data is not necassarilly reliable. If you start in 1810, a lot of the data from other parts of the Earth are missing.
Yes, the error bars are larger the further back in time you go. However, they are not so large that we cannot detect the warming trend.
The models that really get me are the ones that predict the weather 100 years from now based on 100 years worth of data.
Climate models do not predict weather, they predict climate, which can be thought of as "average weather".
Thats like predicting whats going to happen in the NFL next year based on what happened this year
It's more like predicting where a falling rock is going to be in 1 second based on where it was 1 second ago.
You are confusing statistical extrapolation with physical modeling. Statistically extrapolating a historical trend is less reliable then applying physical laws to predict the behavior of a system.
No one really knows the future, and although models may support something, you are still using statistics
You don't need statistics to model the future. You do need it to calculate how big the error bars on the prediction are.
which we all know that 60% of all statistics are made up.
Right, let's bring back the statistical boogeyman. Oooh, they're using statistics, they could predict anything.
Sure, there are models out there that support global warming, but there are also models that don't.
Name one.
Sound scientific basis doesn't use statistics.
What. The. Hell.
Sound science REQUIRES statistics. It's how you quantify uncertainty.
Scientific basis in this case would be if you could prove that increased CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere increases the Earth's temperature all by itself.
Like I said, the greenhouse effect is an undisputed physical fact concerning the interaction of electromagnetic waves with atoms.
There are too many factors in the science of climate that makes this causation unprovable, and in addition there is no direct evidence or science that even shows a correlation.
This is nonsense. The observed surface warming and ocean heat uptake correlate well with the radiative forcing trend, as directly predicted by both simple conservation-of-energy arguments and by more sophisticated modeling.
I also believe that in this case that the statistics used can NEVER be construed as SOUND scientific basis.
T
Re:One of those things is not like the others (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.mruzik.com/CO2.html
There is a study for you that contridicts the CO2 theory.
Yeah, right. It's a pile of misleading statements to fool people who don't know any of the science. I think it's quite telling that you choose to cite a self-published web page which spends half its time deriding "left wing wackos", instead of citing any scientific studies. It's quite plain that your agenda is political in nature, not honest scientific skepticism.
Water vapor amplifies existing warming trends, but it cannot cause them; it is a feedback, not a forcing. You can't increase the average water vapor content of the atmosphere without first raising its temperature — otherwise, any excess water vapor would quickly precipitate back out. That's why you need forcings like long-lived greenhouse gases, solar irradiance, etc.
It's true that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere has less of an effect the more you add, because the adsorption bands start to saturate. This gives rise to the well known logarithmic relationship (Beer-Lambert law) between CO2 concentration and its radiative forcing. But it is nowhere near full saturation, which is why the curve is logarithmic rather than asymptotically constant. This is verified in laboratory experiments, in line-by-line radiative transfer codes, and IIRC in satellite observations of the atmosphere.
It is simply ridiculous to claim that CO2 causes cooling; it is at odds with both theory and observation. CO2 and warming exist in a feedback system: external influences (such as the orbital variations which set the timing for the ice age cycle) cause warming (or cooling), and CO2 amplifies that warming or cooling: warming brings more CO2 out of the oceans which leads to more warming; cooling has the opposite effect.
It is indeed quite possible that clouds contribute a negative feedback (cooling effect) in response to global warming, but that has nothing to do with the warming which is due to CO2. It just means that clouds may slow the warming beyond CO2's effect alone. There are a number of such feedbacks, both positive and negative. (Water vapor has already been mentioned as a positive feedback.) The instrumental temperature record indicates that the net feedback is significantly positive.
Let me know if you want any citations to journal articles regarding these topics. You can start with the latest IPCC report, Working Group 1.
A fact is that there is no sound scientific data that climate change and CO2 correlate.
The very web page you cite notes the strong correlation between climate change and CO2 in the ice core record. (It goes on to claim, incorrectly, that the causation is backwards, but it admits the correlation.)
Indeed, all the studies are either inconclusive or say the opposite.
Oh really? What "studies" are those? Certainly none of the ones documented here [ucar.edu].
Studies of icecaps indicate that before every iceage the earth's CO2 levels were much higher then at any time...
As I said, this doesn't mean that CO2 causes ice age. CO2 helps to warm out of ice ages, finishing what orbital variations and other climate forcings started. You can't get the large amount of warming observed in the ice age cycle if you ignore the greenhouse effect of the excess CO2. Eventually, the orbital cycle shifts into a phase of declining solar irradiance (well, it's more complicated than that; where the sunlight is concentrated and the extremes of variations contribute at least as much as the raw insolation itself), which causes temperatures to drop. A few centuries to a millennium after that, the CO2 starts dropping too, which hastens the cooling.
How many examples must I give you about statistics and how they can be misused before you will see the light?
Whee, statistics can be misused. So can mathematics, experiments, observations, and t
Re:One of those things is not like the others (Score:2, Informative)
And yet empirical evidence says otherwise. Observation indeed says co2 may cause cooling, the reason this happens is NOT understood, which is my point... Maybe it has nothing to do with the increased CO2 but some other not yet understood global climate mechanic.
"As I noted in my previous comment, climate forecasts are not based on mere statistical extrapolation, they are based on physical prediction."
What do you think data mining is? Have you ever done any of it? In the data mining field we call extrapolation (which has to do with the future) as true error. This means the error margins are IMPOSSIBLE to determine. Sure, you can state using statistics that this prediction has a 95% chance of being within 2 degrees, but that does not mean anything because using extrapolation with large amounts of data will never give you any sort of accuraccy. Like I said, no one knows the future. If you could use data mining to predict the future, these scientists would be retired as millionaires who had played the stock market correctly....
But hence, with large modeling, comes large innaccuracies. My main point is that these models are based on a correlation of temperature increase with increased CO2 and yet this doesn't seem to be the case....which makes the models in themselves suspect.
I always suspect anyone that tells me they can predict the future as suspect. Another "science" that predicts the future is palm reading, and yet we reject this...