styled text substitute for a picture that fails to load...

[Neredbojias]

With neither quill nor qualm, dorayme quothed:

oops, no I didn't, I put it at:

http://dorayme.150m.com/opinionFolder/drugLaws.html

sorry...

Uh, you didn't tell me you wrote a *book* on the subject...

Anyway, after reading for a long time, I saved the page for my later
perusal. Btw, IE "said" the page couldn't be saved, so I saved it in
Firefox, no problem. And I noticed that the little man at the end has a
very long something or other but the details are rather sketchy.

From what I did read, it appears that you are against the legal ban on
illegal drugs. When I finish the article, maybe I'll be able to
determine how on earth you came to such a determination.

 

[dorayme]

With neither quill nor qualm, dorayme quothed:


Uh, you didn't tell me you wrote a *book* on the subject...

Anyway, after reading for a long time, I saved the page for my later
perusal. Btw, IE "said" the page couldn't be saved, so I saved it in
Firefox, no problem. And I noticed that the little man at the end has a
very long something or other but the details are rather sketchy.

From what I did read, it appears that you are against the legal ban on
illegal drugs. When I finish the article, maybe I'll be able to
determine how on earth you came to such a determination.

The little person at the end has very very very long legs (legs,
Boji, legs!) for a specific purpose: to push down out of sight
and sullying range some footers added by the kind web hosting
service... at first I had lots of <br>s for this but something
tells me they are frowned upon (they are what? ugly, bad for
voice readers? I have forgotten... I use them a bit when I am
lazy... but more rarely these days...)

dorayme

 

[Toby Inkster]

<p style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;width:10em">* * * *
* * * * *</p>

as a separator.

<hr class="mysep">

HR.mysep {
content: "* * *";
text-align: center;
color: inherit;
background: transparent;
border: 0px none;
}

 

[Toby Inkster]

http://dorayme.150m.com/opinionFolder/drugLaws.html

Have you read Ben Elton's /High Society/. His argument goes along the
lines of...

If *all* drugs were legalised *tomorrow*, and taxed in much
the same way as alcohol and tobacco:

- Would you become a crack addict? Would any of your
friends or immediate family become crack addicts?

- Drug-related crime would drop. This includes the
big drug cartels, but also the heroin addict climbing
out of your window with your VCR under his arm.

- The police would have extra time to go after *real*
criminals: murderers, violent criminals, theives.

- With the extra tax money from the sale of drugs, the
government could put more money into drug rehabilitation
programmes.

- The government could also save money that it would
otherwise spend on costly legal procedures against drug
users; and on accomodation at her Majesty's pleasure.
Perhaps they could use this extra cash to lower taxes.
(Or more likely, spend on weapons of mass destruction.)

The book is well worth a read, as are all Ben Elton novels (with the
obvious exception of /Inconceivable/).

 

[Alan J. Flavell]

Have you read Ben Elton's /High Society/. His argument goes along the
lines of...
[...]
- With the extra tax money from the sale of drugs, the
government could put more money into drug rehabilitation
programmes.

And how much money from the existing taxes on tobacco and alcohol
are the present guvmint putting into effective rehabilitation schemes
for people who misuse those particular substances, riddle me that?

Nice idea as a theory, but doesn't seem to be working out. You'd
think that at least people who were intelligent and educated enough to
get into university would know better, but (outside of the buildings -
where smoking is, thank goodness, banned) the number of young students
who can be seen (and smelled) smoking around here ("here" being
Glasgow Univ, for those who can't read headers) is not exactly
impressive, quite apart from the quantity of smokers' droppings which
are always to be seen in the streets and parks.

I'm not sure that I want to see similar results with numerous other
substances.

What's this got to do with HTML?

 

[Neredbojias]

With neither quill nor qualm, dorayme quothed:

The little person at the end has very very very long legs (legs,
Boji, legs!) for a specific purpose: to push down out of sight
and sullying range some footers added by the kind web hosting
service... at first I had lots of <br>s for this but something
tells me they are frowned upon (they are what? ugly, bad for
voice readers? I have forgotten... I use them a bit when I am
lazy... but more rarely these days...)

I dunno... Using little people's legs through laziness is probably
frowned upon by those with firmer backbones also. Whatever, dudess.

Read your article, and agree more than disagree. The problem, however,
is a more general one than that associated with drug usage or even
prohibitions as a class. Let me exemplify by analogy.

According to rumor, Microsoft hires only those who graduated in the top
5% of their academics. Whether exactly true or not isn't an issue which
is particularly relevant if, as is likely, that spirit underlies the
methodology of their employment system. The result is that only top-
level students, "the cream of the crop" so to speak, work at MS.

Nevertheless, as we have seen, during the course of its history,
Microsoft has made the grossest, stupidest, most bungling errors of any
company east or west of the prime meridian. Why? Is it because their
goals are so lofty and advanced they are impossible to attain in a short
time span? No, that isn't it; it's simply because they screw up.
Again: why; why does MS screw up with such an outstandingly intelligent
cadre of employees? And again, the answer is simple. They screw up
because no limited subset of a society can successfully dictate rules
and procedures for the society as a whole. It must be a general and
generous mix from *all strata* of *social being* who guide and govern,
otherwise there is no hope for any real reliable substance to be gleaned
from an output limited by artificial selection no matter how brilliant
the source seems on the surface.

Now consider the typical legislator, his aspirations and motivations,
his personal image of himself and the image he wants publicly manifest,
and then deduce what his at-least-public attitude towards drugs is going
to be. While there have been some political martyrs in the past, my
only answer to that is "Don't hold your breath."

 

[dorayme]

<hr class="mysep">

HR.mysep {
content: "* * *";
text-align: center;
color: inherit;
background: transparent;
border: 0px none;
}

Nice one! If it worked, - I said, if it worked - I could be more
semantically correct...



dorayme

 

[dorayme]

Have you read Ben Elton's /High Society/. His argument goes along the
lines of...

No, perhaps I should though...Sounds like he would entertain me.
Mostly the arguments I use are well known and pop up in
all sorts of contexts by sensible people appalled at the
direction of governments on this issue. There are some very
sniffy people about who fancy themselves as very hard nosed
thinkers and one needs to chase them down hard and have a
backbone to the whole thing (hence the back-to-fundamentals
about the basis of the criminal law and the canvassing of all
the prohibitionist reasoning I can think of). One of the things
that most people miss is the short termedness of repressive
measures, they do not stand us in good stead for the long term.
It would take a generation or two for the massive good effects
that would flow from dismantling prohibition. The price /may/ be
some short term cons... It takes time to grow up (and mostly
stay the hell clear of drugs), prohibition is not the
environment to do this for a whole society.

dorayme

 

[dorayme]

And how much money from the existing taxes on tobacco and alcohol
are the present guvmint putting into effective rehabilitation schemes
for people who misuse those particular substances, riddle me that?

Nice idea as a theory, but doesn't seem to be working out. You'd
think that at least people who were intelligent and educated enough to
get into university would know better, but (outside of the buildings -
where smoking is, thank goodness, banned) the number of young students
who can be seen (and smelled) smoking around here ("here" being
Glasgow Univ, for those who can't read headers) is not exactly
impressive, quite apart from the quantity of smokers' droppings which
are always to be seen in the streets and parks.

I'm not sure that I want to see similar results with numerous other
substances.

An absence of prohibition does not mean "numerous other
substances" will be all over your campus like butts and smells.
There can be good and effective local controls. There can be
bans on the public use of some of these things etc. They are
banning smoking fags on some Sydney beaches now to control the
butt problem. But awful to think of the consequences of
banning smoking completely.

Anyway, you have it out of context a bit I am afraid. The rehab
may well be helping a great many people indeed. It is just that
there are not many other things in place to attack the harmful
practices. Like not only a ban on some advertising but a legal
insistence on very "plain generic" packaging, and
many other things short of making it impossibly hard for those
that really want to.

It is a rarer sight now to see people smoking. There are few
private homes I know where it is welcomed or appreciated. Why?
Because the truth about it has sunk in at long last in various
parts of the world, and individuals have taken action
voluntarily in their own lives. It is due to the "open"
information, the govt and lobby group pressure and advertising,
the prosecution of the legal tobacco businesses for dishonesty,
the terrible toll on families etc. Prohibition is not for
societies benefit long term, it protects a few of us from ugly
sights short term. Like a bandage on festering boils...

What's this got to do with HTML?

Nothing and it is naughty... but do we really have to go a
thousand different ngs on a thousand different subjects when
there is, like a little miracle on earth, a perfectly congenial
enough set of people right here...

dorayme

 

[dorayme]

Read your article, and agree more than disagree. The problem, however,
is a more general one than that associated with drug usage or even
prohibitions as a class. ....
consider the typical legislator, his aspirations and motivations,
his personal image of himself and the image he wants publicly manifest,
and then deduce what his at-least-public attitude towards drugs is going
to be. While there have been some political martyrs in the past, my
only answer to that is "Don't hold your breath."

Don't worry, I know what you are saying. I am not under any
illusion about this, I just don't want quite as many of the
generally more intelligent people in the world to think these
little dictators and the baying mobs behind them actually have
good arguments on their side...

dorayme

 

[Toby Inkster]

And how much money from the existing taxes on tobacco and alcohol
are the present guvmint putting into effective rehabilitation schemes
for people who misuse those particular substances, riddle me that?

Not sure -- probably not very much. I'm sure that if there was a public
outcry about the lack of effective rehabilitation schemes for people with
tobacco and alcohol problems, then something would be done about it.

The fact that there is no outcry indicates to be that there are already
rehabilitation schemes which are operating much to the standards we might
expect, or at least not falling *too* far short of them.

Nice idea as a theory, but doesn't seem to be working out. You'd
think that at least people who were intelligent and educated enough to
get into university would know better, but (outside of the buildings -
where smoking is, thank goodness, banned) the number of young students
who can be seen (and smelled) smoking around here ("here" being
Glasgow Univ, for those who can't read headers) is not exactly
impressive,

I woukd suggest that the current public smoking restrictions be extended
to drugs other than tobacco too. Extending the "your right to swing your
fist ends at my nose" principle, people's rights to smoke whatever they
want would end at my throat.

quite apart from the quantity of smokers' droppings which
are always to be seen in the streets and parks.

But which should be dealt with under existing littering laws rather than
by banning the drug that causes them. Personally I find chewing gum the
more annoying substance in this regard, but I wouldn't like to see chewing
gum itself banned because of it.

What's this got to do with HTML?

Dorayme has an HTML page discussing these issues. Tenuous link, I know.
"[ot]" added to subject header.

 

[Toby Inkster]

Nice one! If it worked, - I said, if it worked - I could be more
semantically correct...

Works nicely here. Some lesser browsers may have trouble with the
"content" property. You may be able to inprove support by giving it a
background image of a transparent GIF of three asterisks.

 

[dorayme]

Works nicely here. Some lesser browsers may have trouble with the
"content" property. You may be able to inprove support by giving it a
background image of a transparent GIF of three asterisks.

Ah Toby, at first I formed the theory that it was a nice joke on
me, now it is hard to shake the idea that this is a nice
elaboration!

But, apparently, I am too cynical. I made a quick search and
first saw that:

Peter-Paul Koch, freelance web developer in Amsterdam, the
Netherlands, says it is only supported by Opera and that "we
shouldn't use the content declaration at all. It adds content to
the page, and CSS is meant for adding presentation to the page,
and not content".

Perhaps this is a lousy argument as your suggestion is precisely
for adding presentational features, surely a separator is part
of styling, layout...

Seems that support is not great though... I think being
semantically correct gets to be too pricey if one has to make
gifs... My <p>* * *</p> (or at least with a div instead) is
still looking more tempting...

dorayme

 

[Toby Inkster]

Seems that support is not great though... I think being
semantically correct gets to be too pricey if one has to make
gifs... My <p>* * *</p> (or at least with a div instead) is
still looking more tempting...

OK. How about this:

<script type="text/javascript">
function hrReplace ()
{
var es = document.getElementsByTagName("HR");
var agt = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var is_opera = (agt.indexOf("opera") != -1);
for (var i = 0; es; i++)
{
if (is_opera)
es.outerHTML = "<hr class=sep>";
else
es.outerHTML = "<p class=sep>* * *<\/p>";
}
}
window.onload = hrReplace;
</script>

<style type="text/css">
HR.sep {
content: "* * *";
text-align: center;
color: red;
background: transparent;
border: 0px none;
}
P.sep {
text-align: center;
color: green;
}
</style>

<p>Foo</p>
<hr>
<p>Bar</p>

Works in IE and Opera. Anybody got an idea about how to work around
Gecko's lack of support for outerHTML?

 

[rf]

Anybody got an idea about how to work around
Gecko's lack of support for outerHTML?

Havn't been following this thread at all but... ... ... [gets nine dots,
with which to think outside of]

Wrap the offending element in a parent (span?, div?) and target the
elements parents innerHTML?

 

[dorayme]

Seems that support is not great though... I think being
semantically correct gets to be too pricey if one has to make
gifs... My <p>* * *</p> (or at least with a div instead) is
still looking more tempting...

OK. How about this:

<script type="text/javascript">
function hrReplace ()
{
var es = document.getElementsByTagName("HR");
var agt = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var is_opera = (agt.indexOf("opera") != -1);
for (var i = 0; es; i++)
{
if (is_opera)
es.outerHTML = "<hr class=sep>";
else
es.outerHTML = "<p class=sep>* * *<\/p>";
}
}
window.onload = hrReplace;
</script>

<style type="text/css">
HR.sep {
content: "* * *";
text-align: center;
color: red;
background: transparent;
border: 0px none;
}
P.sep {
text-align: center;
color: green;
}
</style>

<p>Foo</p>
<hr>
<p>Bar</p>

Works in IE and Opera. Anybody got an idea about how to work around
Gecko's lack of support for outerHTML?

Yes, this works in my IE 5.1.6 and also in iCab but not in my
Mozilla 1.3.1 (WaMCom). Well done!

But er... just to recap, there is a sure fire simple bit of
markup (like the one I actually used at
http://dorayme.150m.com/opinionFolder/drugLaws.html). But it was
not kosher in its semanticity. You are addressing this, yes? At
the cost of some javascript (and clever too it seems to me!).
Now the question is, is the price worth it? How much do I want
to be semantically correct /and/ have asterisks? The best
solution stares me in the face, forget about asterisks and go
for <hr> with the simple styling widely workable (but I don't
mean to spoil any party here...

dorayme

 

[Toby Inkster]

Wrap the offending element in a parent (span?, div?) and target the
elements parents innerHTML?

Hmm... now why didn't I think of that?!

I prefer not to add extra nodes to the DOM, but this seems a very simple
solution.

That's what I call thinking outside the box! (Well, outside the vertical
line anyway.)