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I did a quick google search for "User-agent" and "Disallow" like this: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=User-agent+ Disallow&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

I chose the first title http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tut orial.htm and started reading

"User-agent

The User-agent line specifies the robot. For example:

User-agent: googlebot"

-SNIP-

"Disallow:

The second part of a record consists of Disallow: directive lines. These lines specify files and/or directories. For example..."

-SNIP-

"If you leave the Disallow line blank, it indicates that ALL files may be retrieved." -SNIP-

So, guess who is to blame ?

Forgive me for posting this URL here:

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/698

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4361260.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4660796.stm
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1 558612
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfi le=data/theuae/2006/January/theuae_January687.xml& section=theuae&col=

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=danish+cart oons+upset+muslims&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Forgive me for posting this URL here:

http://www.di2.nu/files/Muhammed_Cartoons_Jyllands _Posten.html

The site is apparantly run by idiots, judging by some of the racist sites it links to, but they are one of the few places online that I've seen the actual cartoons referred to on an almost daily basis now on sites such as:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4361260.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4660796.stm
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1 558612
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfi le=data/theuae/2006/January/theuae_January687.xml& section=theuae&col=

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=danish+cart oons+upset+muslims&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=gates+donat ions&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

A quick glimpse of the first page of results shows that he has given far more than that.

Do a bit of research before you talk shit about people please.

I can understand why you'd think that you'd need to have the same number of chromosomes, but where the hell did you get that bit about making up an all-new mating ritual?

Ah well... it's not as if you're even right about the chromosome number, anyway...

Which explains why:
GIS in AU
GIS in CA
GIS in FR
GIS in UK
GIS in RU
GIS in PL
GIS in IT
GIS in ES
GIS in JP

Are all so different, right?
That's not "cultural differences", mate. That's censorship.

We all knew that. Google told us.

Does this imply that the fuse/breaker box for a two-floor house would only have two 30A/240V breakers to serve the general-purpose power sockets on each floor?

As to the UK ring main system -- what happens if one of the two hot paths should open? You wouldn't necessarily know it, because all the outlets would still be getting power from the other path. Since the wire gauge is thinner than would be needed in a star-pattern, wouldn't an overheat and fire be more likely? Or is there some device in the breaker to detect this out-of-balance condition?

What annoys me is that this seems like selective censorship... If Google were either to stay out of China altogether, or prevent any results being returned for 'banned' topics then it'd not be so bad. But specific results are hidden, which leads to a sort of misinformation - you only see the side of the story that the Chinese government wants Google to show.

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"
http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/corporate/index.ht ml

Well, I'd certainly not call this making the world's information universally accessible!

I think that high-end notebook computers are beginning to use SATA disks (Alienware, while using SATA, doesn't explicitly say that their m7700 uses 2.5" disks but I'd doubt they fit two 3.5" drives in a notebook), so they exist. Froogle has a U.S.A. search and A U.K. search yielding a few results for 2.5" SATA disks, though I doubt these drives have a decent amount of cache or spindle speeds above 7200rpm.

So google are letting us know when they are censoring results?

Shouldn't the chinese google results look the same as the others, but letting you know which links are censored?

http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen+s quare&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=tiananmen+s quare&meta=
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=tiananmen+ square&meta=
http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=tiananmen+squa re&meta=
http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=tiananmen+squa re&meta=

Using screen - start up screen, run bittorrent, press ctrl+a d to detatch, use `screen -r` to reattach. (Google link thrown in because I was checking my spelling and found it a somewhat odd first result.)

I once owned a drinking bird, but I can't say I noticed any health benefits from my robot pet.

I prefer plants instead as they are easy to care for and bring real health benefits.

See also http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bacteriophages

Makes me sleep better, on the other hand, to see that there are music lovers even there.
You know how the saying goes: Where one sings you may sit down and sing along, bad people have no song. ;)

What? Like Aegis Defence Services security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians whilst listening to Elvis Presley?
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=iraq+trophy +video+%22elvis+presley%22&btnG=Search&meta=

Yes. A few respectible institutions have done lots of research into mental difficulties in animals due to trauma.

at least [...] BSG [...] doesn't have camera zeroing in on their asses

Yup, not much chance at all :P

It preyed on Moas, birds about 6ft tall and pretty slow. OK, it's not Africa, but when the Maoris came to NZ there would have been another creature about 6ft tall and pretty slow to prey on...

You may find a better title to show is my all-time favorite text-based/IF game, Babel. The game exudes atmosphere. The gameplay and puzzles, while challenging, never get in the way of the superb storyline. The game is short, very short, but like a good espresso, very black and very sweet.

However, you'll have a hard time sitting a 13-year-old in front of a terminal if he doesn't already have a good appreciation of the written word. I consider myself very, very lucky that I've always had a deep love of literature. I discovered Babel, also when I was 9, at about the same time I was reading H2G2 and other classics. I recently downloaded it again, and this time, finished it!

By linking to his sites, we are allowing him to participate in the ruining of a perfectly good tool. So when people Google for 'Beatles,' they're going to get his site, and all because he's abusing the Slashdot submission system.

If that's a serious problem, who's to stop you from putting a '* * Beatles Beatles' link in your sig that points to a random site of your choice? Google bombs have been successful before.

Slightly sceptical of this, I thought I'd check slashdot.org via google:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Beatles-Beatle s+writes%22+site:slashdot.org&hl=en&lr=&start=10&s a=N - "Beatles-Beatles writes"

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Beatles- Beatles+writes%22+site%3Aslashdot.org+scuttlemonke y&meta= - as above but with ScuttleMonkey in the page

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Beatles- Beatles+writes%22+site%3Aslashdot.org+-scuttlemonk ey&meta= - as first but without ScuttleMonkey in the page.

First - 126 hits: Second 125 hits: Third - 1 hit. Things that make you go "hmmmmmm....."

Slightly sceptical of this, I thought I'd check slashdot.org via google:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Beatles-Beatle s+writes%22+site:slashdot.org&hl=en&lr=&start=10&s a=N - "Beatles-Beatles writes"

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Beatles- Beatles+writes%22+site%3Aslashdot.org+scuttlemonke y&meta= - as above but with ScuttleMonkey in the page

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Beatles- Beatles+writes%22+site%3Aslashdot.org+-scuttlemonk ey&meta= - as first but without ScuttleMonkey in the page.

First - 126 hits: Second 125 hits: Third - 1 hit. Things that make you go "hmmmmmm....."

Slightly sceptical of this, I thought I'd check slashdot.org via google:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Beatles-Beatle s+writes%22+site:slashdot.org&hl=en&lr=&start=10&s a=N - "Beatles-Beatles writes"

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Beatles- Beatles+writes%22+site%3Aslashdot.org+scuttlemonke y&meta= - as above but with ScuttleMonkey in the page

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Beatles- Beatles+writes%22+site%3Aslashdot.org+-scuttlemonk ey&meta= - as first but without ScuttleMonkey in the page.

First - 126 hits: Second 125 hits: Third - 1 hit. Things that make you go "hmmmmmm....."

Complete bullshit, and yet again we see this tired old lie trotted out again and flogged until it stumbles around the ring once more... this is true ONLY if you only count "releases" as "stuff that comes out the top of the chimneys on site". Apart from the tons of highly radioactive waste (the spent fuel rods, cladding, reactor containment material etc) there's also the issue of how you decommission a nuclear station. I happen to live and work within fifteen miles of the site of the first ever nuclear power generation reactors to be decommissioned, so I take some interest in this topic. They started work in 1988/89, IIRC, and I believe work is scheduled to finish, ooh, any decade now. In fact final site clearance (leaving a 100 foot wide concrete cube containing the reactor core, which will be lethally radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years and cannot safely be disposed of elsewhere) is scheduled for completion in the year 2089. No, I'm not making this up, that's how long it's going to take. Costs? No idea, who knows? It's a blank cheque - we HAVE to clean it up, regardless of the cost; if it comes down to it, nuclear clean up must be funded ahead of the health service, education, armed forces, transport,.. *everything*, in fact. Strangely, the govt and the privatised nuclear energy company refuse to divulge cost estimates, but the BBC mentions a figure of 2.5 billion quid.

Folks: it's not worth it.

the official plans (which of course are highly optimistic and filled with disclaimers along the lines of "if nothing goes wrong" - ie., we don't have any major disruptions of civil society, loss or power or shortages of energy, skills, resources, raw materials -

I used these a couple of years back and it was fine until they got too many customers & not enough servers and the speed of my site slowed to a crawl. This lasted for about a month. Then it went down completely - no website, no email. I tried to contact the guy who runs it (James Innes) by email and fax but no response. It came back up a week or so later, but my website had been restored to a much earlier copy, and I found out later that I was missing a lot of emails. Still no response from support when I complained.

I wasn't the only one with these problems: http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.internet.prov iders.uk/browse_thread/thread/2f0c27ac4d7e133d/c48 c25268d8e6192?hl=en

Eventually I gave up .. fortunately I had registered my domain elsewhere so it was easy to change to another. (I changed to mythic beasts (http://www.mythic-beasts.com/), who have been excellent.

Like this one?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define%3Acockmast er

Justin.

The - final? - twist in the long, strange trip of the WMF bug - the vulnerability that just keeps on giving - has been revealed by H D Moore, the author of the Metasploit exploits (which is now on a third generation and even tricksier than ever!:)

After all the jokes about WINE compatibility... it turns out that WINE is vulnerable, too!!

To quote the words of a song by H D's namesake, Dudley:

Laugh? We nearly shat
We had not laughed so much since Grandma died
Or Aunty Mabel caught her left tit in the mangle...

(And I'm posting from a Thinkpad running Mandriva GNU/Linux, the first time I've been 100% Billy free at work as well as at home since 2000, so I'm allowed to laugh... no WINE for me cos I only run Free software *smug* :)

Well, that isn't as far-fetched a scenario as you make out.

If anti-virus software is so good, then why is it all closed-source?

Closed-source software companies can't rely on their product wearing out with use, like a mechanical device. They depend on other measures to simulate built-in obsolescence; such as regular file-format changes forcing users to upgrade to the same version as what their friends have got {or forgo exchangeability of documents, which frequently is not an option}. But anti-virus software can be rendered obsolete, just by writing a new virus.

The anti-virus vendors are under obligation to make money for their shareholders. If they can make money overall by arranging the release of a new virus, and the product of (fine if caught * probability of detection) is small enough, then it's economically viable for them to do so. Plus, with each new alert, they will sell anti-virus protection to new customers.

It doesn't even matter if the virus does not actually do a lot of damage -- it's enough for the warning to generate hysteria in an ignorant population. The virus need not even exist in real life -- does anyone remember sulfnbk.exe or jdbgmgr.exe? And I'm sure there was another hoax that asked you to remove a file that actually did something important {though, the long-filenames-on-FAT hack arguably was fairly critical}.

The real issue is that Windows, in its default configuration, actively listens out for things that might damage it. In any other field of endeavour beside closed-source software, that sort of behaviour would render a product unfit for its intended purpose.

Well, that isn't as far-fetched a scenario as you make out.

If anti-virus software is so good, then why is it all closed-source?

Closed-source software companies can't rely on their product wearing out with use, like a mechanical device. They depend on other measures to simulate built-in obsolescence; such as regular file-format changes forcing users to upgrade to the same version as what their friends have got {or forgo exchangeability of documents, which frequently is not an option}. But anti-virus software can be rendered obsolete, just by writing a new virus.

The anti-virus vendors are under obligation to make money for their shareholders. If they can make money overall by arranging the release of a new virus, and the product of (fine if caught * probability of detection) is small enough, then it's economically viable for them to do so. Plus, with each new alert, they will sell anti-virus protection to new customers.

It doesn't even matter if the virus does not actually do a lot of damage -- it's enough for the warning to generate hysteria in an ignorant population. The virus need not even exist in real life -- does anyone remember sulfnbk.exe or jdbgmgr.exe? And I'm sure there was another hoax that asked you to remove a file that actually did something important {though, the long-filenames-on-FAT hack arguably was fairly critical}.

The real issue is that Windows, in its default configuration, actively listens out for things that might damage it. In any other field of endeavour beside closed-source software, that sort of behaviour would render a product unfit for its intended purpose.

Sounds like an nth complexity binary loop sort of problem to me.

They're already doing that.

Many countries have an invisible 'piracy' tax on blank discs, which goes straight to the entertainment industries. It's not optional, and I've never heard of anybody successfully avoiding it or getting a rebate. The whole thing is ridiculous and I have no idea which crooked politicians sneaked that one through.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=piracy+tax+ on+blank+cd+&btnG=Search&meta=

David Brent.

Even that's doubtful...

"how to make a toy from a DVD" - zero hits.

In Bath, in the South West of England http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=bath, they are already using a system like this. 30+ cameras read your number plate as you drive around the city. A computer checks your number plate against a database and if you have no insurance, MOT or tax, a policeman on a motorbike is dispatched and you are pulled over for a game of twenty questions.

Having been caught myself once for having no MOT, I am pleased about this new system. The government suggests there are 1 in 10 drivers drive who illegally in the UK. I thought I could get away with it as the odds of getting away with it seemed good. Maybe everyone will pay their way now.

The theft of number plates is likely to rise as a result of this new system. Using stolen number plates for stealing petrol and avoiding congestion charges is already on the up.

I suggest you study the history of the procurement of the Beretta 9mm pistol, replacement for the old .45 auto. Pay careful attention to the bits about known problems with metal fatigue, and slide recoil injuring shooters.

Taking your advice, I googled for "procurement of the Beretta 9mm pistol". The first link returned (from the rec.guns FAQ) essentially said that there was no fault or problem with the gun; it said

"The two unexpected slide breakage incidents occurred with non-NATO certified ammunition during non-standard, continuous endurance firing. Field use of the weapon was limited to 3,000 rounds each while a study of the cause of the breakage was being conducted"

and, later

"both breakage incidents occurred with a suspect lot of M882 ammunition."

If the procurement problems you refer to are with respect to two slide breakages while using defective and non-standard ammunition, I find it hard to blame the gun:- one could produce faulty ammunition to break even the most well-designed of guns.

Clearly, you can easily question my reply since I am not a gun expert; I'm really just reposting what I read in the article cited above. It's possible the problems and articles addressed in the article cited above are not the ones you have in mind; if this is the case, I would appreciate being pointed to a good article on the problems you describe.

Michael

When i followed the parent's google images link, this was (and still is) the 2nd picture:

http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=tbn:7x_zMG3HNp 4J:upl.silentwhisper.net/uplfolders/upload7/weee.j pg

Here

through my extensive research
I came up with this
We've got great news for you, then! Industry sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, have let us know that Warner Home Video has both of these animated series on their radar screen for a possible mid-2006 DVD release! Look for a multi-disc set for each show, with around two dozen episodes per box.

Those russian hamsters are absolutely adorable - IMO one of the best pets. I have two Roborovskii russian hamsters and they are the best hamsters we've ever had. They never bite and are so amazingly playful.

http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=roborovskii&ie =ISO-8859-1&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images

Isn't this the sort of experimental set-up that invites demand effects?

I assume it's the European counterpart to the T1, T1s in the US are a lot cheaper, like 2% of that cost.

There's no need to guess when you can check. A quick gander at wikipedia or google define says that an E1 offers 2.048 Mbit/s of bandwidth whereas a T1 offers 1.544 Mbit/s. However your cost point is taken since an E1 obviously isn't 50 times the speed T1...

Hell, I'm British and I prefer metric to that imperial bollocks.

And besides, Google is there to help you.

Never fear, Google-lovers! This might help you survive the terrible crisis ;-)

Google's already introduced a 'quick fix' patch -- the proof of concept doesn't work, and there's a bit of HTML* in the Google News page http://news.google.co.uk/ that seems to be aimed at stopping this hack.

I'd say that's pdq in the business for fixing a problem that's not even your fault.

* For those of you who can't be bothered to find it: '<!--"/*"/*-->' before the desktop link, causing it to be read as a CSS comment and preventing it being picked up in the 'css-text' property.

Image editing isn't like databases, where there's an abstract theory behind the implementations.

I'd have to disagree. I have a book here called A Practical Guide to Digital Design which is intended to outline exactly that; the theory behind image editing. I wouldn't call it the best written design book I've ever seen, but it is extremely interesting and fairly useful nonetheless. Each section of the book talks about a different aspect of the image - placement on a page, colour, shape, lines, curves etc. and strips that aspect back to its base elements.

To take placement as an example, the book talks about simply putting a single black square in each corner of a page in turn and the immediate associations and responses that the placement makes in your mind. From a single line or square you can then work up and apply the same logic to actual images.

It's fairly light on actual implementation of the techniques - it's usually very simple use of shape and colour anyway - but it does lean towards Photoshop on Mac OS9. It's obviously not a 'how to' guide, but it's an interesting (if philosophical) way to improve your image creation skills.

!!!

and how much military action have you seen? How old are you by the way? Does your mum know you're up? To die fighting to _defend_ your country may be an honourable thing, but please... and please don't give me that "Iraq had noo-killer weapons" rubbish.

Wow, that's really interesting. Why does Google.uk have half as many results as Google.us? Either they are completely separate databases, or one updates the other on some schedule so the data stays linked. Iiiiiinteresting.

J.

See elsewhere on this thread - he's on top page of http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=george+harrison, that site is devoid of original content and full of adverts, and he runs a spamming company (and writes articles on spamming search engines)...