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TechDirt reports:
The Cherokee County [Kansas] Sheriff's Department engaged in a fruitless 19-hour standoff with a vacant residence. On the 20th hour, the
fugitivehouse was finally taken down.[...] The write-up at The Free Thought Project contains a decent summation of the ridiculous ordeal, but the real fun comes in reading the play-by-play at the Joplin Globe, which captures the shifting narrative provided by the Sheriff's Department.
It begins on December 15th, with the site declaring "Joplin man in standoff with law enforcement in Galena".[1] Granted, this was several hours before it was discovered that a more accurate headline would have been "Joplin house in standoff with law enforcement."
[...] [The cops] used a thermal imaging camera and thought they detected someone hiding in the attic. So, the standoff began, with the sheriff confidently stating they'd be able to wait out the fugitive member of the local gang concern, "Joplin Honkies", thanks to the department's bench depth.
[...] Five hours later, Sheriff Groves admitted[1] that the man the occupants of the house had already stated wasn't in the house was, in fact, not in the house.
Cherokee County Sheriff David Groves said local, state and federal law enforcement officers late into the day on Tuesday had believed that Doug Alexius, 40, of Joplin, was inside the home and armed, although no shots had been fired.
Groves said a search that ended at 5:30 p.m. concluded that Alexius was not in the home.
Left unmentioned was the damage done to the house in search of the fugitive who wasn't there. Law enforcement officers fired flash bangs into the home and used an armored vehicle-mounted ram to punch holes in the attic. The officers also tore apart the inside of the home in their futile search.
[1] Yet another website that puts styling in their HTML (black text on a black background) then doesn't check that with a text-only browser.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by frojack on Monday December 28 2015, @05:23AM
[1] Yet another website that puts styling in their HTML (black text on a black background) then doesn't check that with a text-only browser.
Yet another pointless bit of editorializing about web sites that work just fine, by submitters using fringe tools.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday December 28 2015, @05:32AM
Yet another pointless bit of editorializing about web sites that work just fine, by submitters using fringe tools.
They are called "standards" for a reason, and that reason is that they should be standard, in that they work for everyone who follows the standards. The "fringe" is also standard, so unless you are shilling for Micro$erf distortions of standards, the editorializing is far from pointless.
(Score: 2, Troll) by frojack on Monday December 28 2015, @05:43AM
Yeah, that must be the problem, I was shilling for Microsoft, while reading the page with Firefox on Opensuse linux.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Monday December 28 2015, @05:55AM
One thing I have learned in nigh two years on SoylentNews, is never underestimate the frojack! Wait, didn't SUSE sign the Pact of Death with Microsoft only a few years ago? Oh, the HUGE Manatee! And, Standards.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2015, @06:38AM
Correct. Frojack is a person that lives to "win" arguments, going so far as to start several against straw armies on soylent every day. Never did he reach a quality education level to convince him that arguments are not a thing to win or lose, but to derive truth. To him, they are just proxy wars for his ego.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Monday December 28 2015, @06:29AM
If you're not mainstream they weren't coding for you. You're not their target market.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday December 28 2015, @06:30PM
Agreed.
I have old hardware that, for the purposes I use it for, displays text (sometimes with graphics, sometimes without). I have found that on older mobile devices, the full desktop sites work better than the mobile ones now. There are less graphics and a better display of data than the endlessly laid-out format for today's sparsely populated look.
Sites like the one in question, or the ones that briefly flash the article and then state "oh you need javascript to see the content on this site". Wait, no I don't. You just displayed the content. Now it is behind some sort of message that indicates that I need to turn on Javascript to unhide it due to the redirect to the non-js page.
Hitting stop (many browsers do not even *have* a stop button anymore) just after the content is displayed can prevent the non-js message from showing up, allowing me to view the content.
If they displayed ads on it, then great. I got ads. But forcing javascript and claiming the site cannot be used without it, despite the fact I was just displayed the site? Sorry, that's not right either.
Old hardware that conformed to a standard should still be able to render such sites. It would be nice if sites conformed to such standards.
I fear that the tabletization of the internet is going to make it even harder for sites like this to exist in a few years. Not because sites like this are not supported, but because people indoctrinated to the internet on GUI's that look like tablets will not even know sites like this, or ones with actual non-video content, even exist.
It is hard enough to convince people that servers don't have to be in a cloud owned by someone else. Many young 20 somethings I have worked with (and teenagers especially -- I do support at a few schools on occasion) couldn't imagine having local hardware--first its not safe and second its too hard. How it works is something that doesn't even occur to them. It's not something they've needed to know.
And that is why I agree that it's important that adherence to standards is how it should work, because at least if there is a problem, someone with the inclination can go look up how it is supposed to work, even if it isn't working now. If there are other special effects offered, then make it available via a plug in like flash or java if its that important. Or have it fail gracefully without the plug in -- but don't ruin the site because there is no fallback option.
This ranted on a bit, but it's been a continual pain to watch sites erode back to the "works best on netscape navigator" sort of days. I had hoped those days were over, but they're coming back with a passion.