Slashdot Mirror

It's not just that. For example, one of the complainants was ciao.co.uk, a Microsoft subsidiary which is integrated into Bing search results in exactly the same fashion as Google Shopping is into Google search results. Except that they did a rather worse job of it than Google.

Compare: Google versus Bing. If you click one of the product links in the Google search, you get a nice clean list of who sells that product and at what price. Do the same in Bing, and you get something rather less pleasant. The search results are below the fold, on one web browser information like price and retailer name is off-screen entirely, and even on something more mainstream the results take up so much vertical space that price comparison is a real pain!

Google is popular because the competition suck more.

Sorry to say, but that article was written by a clueless moron who just argues that any price comparison site must fail at SEO, which a) is obviously wrong and b) would mean that Google Products would also never warrant a top position since all its content is as problematic as the author wants to make us believe Foundem's is.

Google Products is actually much better. Compare this Foundem search and the per-product pages with Google Product and its per-product pages. The Google pages offer more useful information up-front, avoid redundant duplication, and are generally better designed.

Even this probably wouldn't warrant a top position for Google Products on most searches, and it doesn't generally get one. What Google does is use it to supplement its search results - if you make a search where Google thinks the Products search results are useful, it displays them as well as the generic web search results. This makes sense - Google wants to offer the best web search results it can, and sometimes that means presenting them in the Google Product format.

Note that Bing does exactly the same thing with ciao.co.uk, which Microsoft also owns and which was one of the other complainants. Except that Microsoft totally screwed this up - the ciao.co.uk pages lack useful information like prices and website names, making them less useful than generic internet search!

It's no wonder that Bing and ciao.co.uk have a much smaller marketshare than Google - they're useless.

There are plenty of products with the word Apple. For example, http://www.ciao.co.uk/Tesco_Value_Pure_Apple_Juice__5325278 .

Trademarks is all about registering common words for business purposes ...in a specific market.

You can't just use a word and then claim no one else is allowed to use it! Otherwise I'm claiming owner to all the words in this post. Your reply isn't allowed to use any of them :)

Then you should buy an AMD Neo notebook

It's actually aimed at thin notebooks rather than netbooks. It's an underclocked Athlon so it's a full desktop class chip with out of order execution and the like -

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/06/amd-kinda-sorta-takes-aim-at-atom-with-athlon-neo/

I think it's a great idea - a bit more power than an Atom but lots more performance. AMD are good to have around when Intel builds something that is hyped but low performance like the Atom or the P4. Actually I think I'll buy one to replace my Core2 duo notebook. Core2 is an excellent chip and easily outperforms its AMD equivalent on the high end. Still most of what I do with it is emailing and browsing the net. Atoms seem obnoxiously slow to me but I think a Neo would be fine. They're also supposed to be not that much more expensive than an Atom based netbook too.

Actually I had an of these

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Fujitsu_Siemens_LifeBook_S6010__5376461

It's a great form factor - big enough to be usable, small enough to be portable. This is where I think the sweetspot for ultraportables is, i.e. a fair bit bigger than a netbook where you have space for a decent sized keyboard and screen and can afford a few more watts in TDP to make performance bearable. And this is the form factor Neo is aimed at. If you wait Intel have Core2 ULV aimed at the same thing too.

Ah! Now I understand. Ensuring all Yahoo employees are well groomed men wearing fuzz free suits doesn't come cheap!

izal

horrible stuff but it can be left unattended in a public toilet without getting stolen. maybe it's better than nothing. maybe not.

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Izal_Toilet_Paper__Review_5481965

apparently they made a batch of it 60 years ago and its still not gone.

it is getting rare these day, but probably because public toilets are rare in the uk these days. They have mostly been replaced with Macdonalds. Around the world. MacDonalds toilets are usually clean and safe.

Well, I used to own a Toshiba Satellite 210CT. That one had a whopping 11" TFT screen featuring 800x600, I kid you not. I guess one can find that on eBay. ;-) Of course weight would kill the "netbook" status here, I think. The Libretto would be pretty cool.

I also had (still have) a Atari Portfolio, but that's from a really long time ago.

Before I got ISDN, I used one of these: http://www.ciao.co.uk/Ramp_Networks_WebRamp_300e__5439523#productdetail
Bit expensive (three phone lines connected to three external 56K modems... and you've got to find an ISP who won't bill the heck out of you for that).

Sorry mate but your post sounds a bit suspicious. I just did a quick Google to get an idea of MP3 players that support OGG.

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Portable_MP3_Players_5266512_3-ogg_vorbis~s15 lists 116 at the top of it's search list. I checked the first 2 pages of the list to make sure that all the searches did indeed have OGG support. All of these players come in various price ranges (meaning cheap to not so cheap).

Also, assuming that time is money (an economic resource); re-ripping your entire CD collection and spending time and bandwidth (re)downloading music seems like a waste of time and a rather dubious proposition than getting a cheap MP3 player that supports OGG.

Yeah, we already have a McLaren buggy (http://www.ciao.co.uk/McLaren_Techno_Buggy__52819 92) amd a Porsche pushchair (http://shop3.porsche.com/international/kids/babyc arriage/wap04050016/), why not an Intel pram.

Oh, wait...

Sorry, you're right I grabbed the wrong link. Color me red. Regardless of whether or not there are mistakes being made there are many HD-DVD titles which are listed as having region coding on them. Most HD-DVD players have the ability to update their firmware too (hackable?). So, I am beginning to believe that there are region codes in the media regardless of whehter the players honor it or not.

The right one does list the HD-DVD as region 1, I'm confused how we both found differing links on the same site... I'm linking to the Tokyo Drift version of the film on HD-DVD now rather than the DVD version. It's not just Amazon listing this title as region 1 in the US on HD-DVD though, there are other sites with it listed the same way. There are also some UK sites like SendIt that have all their HD-DVDs listed as region 2.

For those not familiar with the parent company of PC World, the former Dixons group, this is the third time that they've pulled this stunt. That is, with great ceremony, announcing that they are to stop selling a technology that is (supposedly) becoming long-in-the-tooth and obsolete, and getting lots of attention from the press, who use it as an excuse to describe the (supposed) passing of a particular technology:-

(1) Death of video recorder (i.e. VCR) in sight

(2) Dixons to end 35mm camera sales.

In the case of the VCR, their announcement was misleading at best, and more likely just a pack of lies. Dixons.co.uk (and the large-format Currys stores) *still* each sell a wide range of standalone VCRs, over 2 years later. (Visit dixons.co.uk and search for "video recorder").

IIRC the high-street Dixons stores (now called "Currys.Digital", ugh) still sold them long after the supposed phase-out date. I don't know about the 35mm cameras, but even if they were telling the truth in that case, it was a nice publicity stunt for them. Even more so for the floppy discs; you're stopping selling floppy discs and you felt the need to make a big announcement about it?!

Of course, the intention behind these announcements- besides the straight publicity- is to give the impression of Dixons and PC World as hi-tech, cutting-edge type places. When in fact they're mediocre at best; sometimes competitive, but just as often overpriced- particularly for more humble items such as USB and Ethernet cables, staffed by salespeople who like to pretend they know more than they do, flogging overpriced warranties and with a poor reputation. Online shopping is much cheaper, and with a better selection.

The Nokia 7600 is even worse. 1-5 vertically down the left side, 6-0 vertically down the right!

they come in plenty different sizes these days.
Ford
Renault
VW
Skoda

Of course the best solution of all is to get a DVD player that can be set up to switch off the Macrovision pulses altogether. Oddly enough, Samsung also used to make a player, the venerable DVD-709, that could be made both multi-region and 'VCR-friendly' with a simple remote hack. Even if you're not part of an International Analogue Piracy Gang, switching off this dreadful system can be very useful when you have an old TV with limited (or just co-axial) inputs and multiple devices to connect to it - Macrovision blocks the obvious solution of routing the DVD player through the VCR, since it messes up the 'live' signal as well as degrading recordings. Unfortunately, Macrovision-free players are becoming harder to find here in the UK, even though multi-region hacks are more common than ever (even mainstream shops now sell pre-hacked region-free players).

Smoke me a kipper...

Happy New Year to you as well

Bob

Thankfully, now no longer trading. According to a hand-written note on the door of my local 'Time' branch, they even stiffed their retail employees.

Apparently, Watford Electronics has taken over the rights to Tiny computers. Begs the question as to how important brand recognition is versus reputation. I mean, Tiny are a *big* name, but the news of their demise and the general crapness that lead to it were all over the newspapers. So are Watford doing themselves a favour? Who knows?

Odd thing is that Watford have been in the business a long time, since the BBC Micro days, so I'd have thought they'd have a good reputation. According to these reviews, their 'Savastore' website looks to be every bit as bad as Tiny.

(My only experience with this site was when I ordered something, it turned out not to be in stock, and they- at least- informed me of the problem over the phone in reasonable time. That was 3 years ago, however.)

http://www.beertravelers.com/micros/wolftongue.htm l
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4073075.stm
http://www.ineedcoffee.com/01/03/espressostout/
http://www.ciao.co.uk/Speciality_Beer_5140781_4

Linux lovers who care about freedom might want to avoid Matalan, because it makes all shoppers join a compulsory ID card scheme. You can't simply buy stuff anonymously. Yes, I have tried. Other cut-price stores.

Even our former, ID-card-loving, Home Secretary, David Blunkett, spoke out on the dangers of store cards because of the amount of personal information collected.

• They heavily advertise on TV, radio and basically everywhere
  
• They have flashy stores
  
• They have pushy salesmen
  
• They always try and sell you extended warranties, no matter what.
  
• They falsely advertise things as discounted, when they're not.
  
• They have terrible after-sales service, despite salemen promising that everything'll be fine pre-sales.
  

and lots of those big 17 inch widescreen laptops last a good 2-3 minutes (ok, that's an exhaggeration).

Actually, my toshiba p20 s-103 now lasts... about 4 minuts :)

Nescafe Hot was a flop. "In 2002, Swiss beverage maker Nestle SA tested a self-heating can holding its Nescafe Hot When You Want coffee in England. But the company ended the trial run after several months, finding the can did not heat the liquid to a consistent temperature, said Nestle spokesman Francois-Xavier Perroud. "It didn't pan out," he said. Nestle is still interested in the idea, which it believes will be popular with consumers, but it is "not aware of a self-heating can that lives up to our expectations,"

Wow, I feel old.
My Palm 1000 has 128K of ram.
http://www.ciao.co.uk/Palm_Pilot_1000__5378332

Why dont they do like Sony on their Minidisc players (recompress in their format then upload on the device)

I suppose Vorbis would be less of a pain, since you can always find software to translate from MP3 to Vorbis. But life is a lot simpler if you don't need special software to access your device. The best MP3 devices act like a plug-and-play disk drive, and let you download files with a simple copy.

You are not locked into the iPod with AAC dipshit.

AAC isn't a proprietary Apple technology, and there are other AAC players available.

My girlfriend said she really liked eatwatch, which is a palmos program written by the guy who did the hacker's diet. Is this what you've been using so far?

There sure seem to be graphs of people's weight if you search for eat-watch in google.

Here's a review that explains more details.

I wonder if there are scales that can transmit your weight back to a computer?