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Bite me

Semi Off-topic, but I've been making great use of another .gov site recently for the weather - Sure beats the hell out of the other guys with their popups getting worse each day!

I am a webmaster, and as such, hate all ad-blockers. I don't use one when I browse. Be that as it may, if you want to use one, go ahead.. But don't berate others when their opinions differ from yours.

I don't use an ad-blocker but I do use a popup blocker. I hate popups with a passion and websites that use them. Ditto for the newer flash/java thingies that walk across the webpage (I've seen them on The Weather Channel) and refuse to go away until you acknowledge them.

I don't block inline ads though because A) I might find a relevant one (and it's easy enough to tune them out with your mind -- I don't even notice them on /. anymore) and B) I want to see the website as it's author intended it.

You wouldn't consider weather.com to be credible? They annoy the life out of me...I go to check the weather and I get freakin' flying ads in my face.

Satan is still in Buffalo. Considering it's about 25 F and snowing there, I'll bet he's reaching for his winter parka.

Current conditions: 25 F

I'd say it's pretty cold .

Now that I've been running moz, I almost forget about pop-ups/unders.

I agree that the flashing and shaking ads are horribly annoying. I work at filtering those too.
One especially bad one last autumn was the jumping-jack woman on weather.com

And Jennifer Lopez is a meteorologist.

People in New York for one. 10 degrees, feels like 2 and partly cloudy. Here in Atlanta it is frequently sunny during the winter month, but rather chilly for those who live here. Hell I would buy the jacket if their site were up.

I like how you use the straw man argument: if you don't work for petro-chems, you must agree with me or you're stupid / ignorant.

I'm also rather impressed by your getting sucked into what was known on Art Bell's radio show as "The Quickening", the belief that it's worse now than it's been before and the bad things are happening more and more often.

Every generation has believed that their world is worse than the one their parents grew up in. That's natural, don't worry.

Please look at this: Averages in NYC for Dec

Note that the average temperature in NYC on Dec 24 is between a high of 42 and a low of 30. That means that the vast majority of dates in NYC on Dec 24 over the last hundred+ years have been above freezing. It would seem to me that a cold rain on Dec 24 would not, actually, be all that unusual, considering the AVERAGE daily high... Just because you don't remember any doesn't mean a thing.

But, what do I know, I don't work for the oil companies so I must be stupid. Also note, I'm not an Anonymous Coward, though I will agree with you that most of their attacks are the short, pathetic kind.

Me too! I just keep one window open with the Weather Channel, another with the Naked News, Naked News, one for Slashdot (to get the latest Windows security problems), and one for email so the users can tell me when things stop working! NOC in a box!

Goddamned terroristic weather systems!

One quick note - unless they've upgraded it, it doesn't seem to block onUnload() actions at all - I still get "exit" pop-ups from time to time. I've also noticed that The Weather Channel seems to load pop-ups differently - perhaps via a Flash ad, which the Googlebar isn't effective against, either.

You might want to try Desktop Weather from The Weather Channel.

> Now to figure out how to get real-time access to this mesh of sensors and create a really cool screensaver..."

Hey that's a really cool idea! With a few million dollars to roll out the sensors and some Uber-hacking to gain access to them we could do something like this! Wow...

Go to Weather.com and type in your zip code, then from there click map in motion. Voila. They offer satelite, doppler, and forcasting.

Save some money and use what's out there.

West Virginia might be inland, but the projected storm track puts the eye of the storm as far west as Charleston, WV.

Category 3 over the ocean, Category 2 over North Carolina, Category 1 over Virginia, Tropical Depression (and tornados) over West Virginia.

So why do we still use DDR on the desktop?

Because a home DDR kit gives me an aerobic workout without having to leave my house during a thunderstorm.

...you geeks are not challanging enough for me. I think, I will just stop posting and do something else until you gain some speed...

btw. I consider this being summer already. Losers. ...and now back to the Caipirinhas,
the summer guy

And don't forget that many of those veterans were then sent to Florida to build U.S. Highway 1 from Miami to Key West, and lots of them wound up dying for their efforts in the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, which also happened to be the strongest hurricane ever to strike the U.S. (max winds 200mph sustained), sending an already late rescue train into the Gulf of Mexico.

Maybe because we don't like forest fires.

Seriously, the twisters don't come every year, Moore just happened to get hit twice within a 4 year period. Lets not forget that the May 3rd tornado was the first F5 rated tornado to EVER hit the OKC area.

Why do people move near the Mississippi river? It seems to flood all the damn time? Why do people live in Flordia? They get hit with hurricaines and probably cost us a lot more to replace than a trailer park.

There isn't a safe place to live, period. You are just fooling yourself if you think that snow is harmless.

I've noticed even more invasive ads, more so than pop-unders or pop-ups (see this google article for their take on it). Coming to the mainstream it seems that flash ads that popup over the page itself and make some noise are becoming quite popular, and I've decided to completely stop visiting these sites, weather.com being one of them. (I think they're running an ad right now where a rhino busts through your page...wahoo.) Thankfully, the National Weather Service is ad-free! These ads are not only annoying, but make it difficult to close and take too much time when all you want is real content.

This article on Low-End Media for User Empowerment explains why simple adverstising works, and why complex doesn't.

[News Anchor]: Hello and welcome to The Weather(TM). Now for Hell-Michigan's forecast, SlashdotTroll, takes it away.

SlashdotTroll: Yeah, thankyou *BSD IS DYING Troll. Hell, Michigan (zipcode #48169) received its first below-32F freeze about November and just now what you're feeling is the warmth that'll get all those nasty people out of our county. You know who you are; the ones that instictivly begin their comment with "...when Hell freezes over". It's march for Hell-Michigan, so I recommend that anyone who says anything about us that doesn't correlate with our forecast should be immediatly flogged in public and forced to buy a postcard from our all-in-one-hole-in-the-wall GeneralStore/PostOffice/GroceryStore/Pharmacy/Auto motiveDepartment/RealEstateAgency.

SlashdotTroll: Coming up next! The forecast of Hell-Michigan's sister county: Hellhole-Idaho. If only I can remember their zipcode...anyone in our audience, of maybe 10 people, call in with that information? Enjoy the commercials...

Pigs flying: (see American Airlines.com)

Hell, Michigan (zipcode #48169) starts to freeze about November and through 'till March

Hellhole, Idaho is a zipcode I can't find-so no weather report from the Hellhole.

Here is a a link to one such announcement.

Eat Food - Well, you can't download a hot dog, but you can find things to make eating more pleasant or order food online.

Breathe Air - You could suck down the power supply exhaust, but that doesn't really count. You can however check to see if you can breathe when you go outside.

Sex - Technology has not advanced that far yet, but I've had good luck meeting new people online, then meeting up with them in person.

Ride a bicycle - Buy parts, plan routes, get maps, etc..

Walk through the woods - here you go - it's a QTVR I made a couple of years ago of a walk along a creek to the river it joins up with. All kidding aside, this one probably can have the most computer involvement. After all, you want to get topographic maps somewhere, and maybe check out an overhead view of the area you plan on walking through, not to mention sharing details of where you went with friends.

He will leave linux world with a frozen soul, for linux an os for colder climates

The sun doesn't normally double peak in its 11 year sunspot cycle but this time it has. This is an unusual event - sunspot activity should have died right down by now.

... people ought to at least be considering the possibility that this, like global warming, and the ozone hole, is a result of man's harmful ongoing activities on Earth.

quoted from Article

"MINNEAPOLIS (AP) The past few snowless, warm winters could be the beginning of a long cycle of milder winters in Minnesota, similar to an era in the 1920s when a stretch of warm winters lasted into the next decade, a meteorologist said."

You don't suppose for an instance that the weather, just like everything else on this planet is cyclic? Maybe I am just being silly, but I do not know that we really have enough data to prove global warming.

Snow? What snow :)? Suckers...

Just kidding. I hate cold in general, but I wouldn't have minded a white Christmas.

My family did most of the big Christmas stuff (opening most of the presents, getting together with relatives, spreading holiday cheer until we're exhausted) last night like we always do. Christmas Day is reserved for spending time with the immediate family and relaxing.

We've been switching back and forth between The Godfather and A Christmas Story marathons for most of the day and cooking pies and a giant turkey which we'll soon begin digging into. Truly one of the best days of the year.

Hope everyone else is enjoying themselves in a similar manner, regardless of their reasons for celebration.

Personally, I can't wait to get up in the middle of the night to watch this

:-)

Enjoy it those what can.

Maybe I'm just crazy

-CPM

I'm in Huntsville, too. Doesn't our forecast call for clouds and a chance of rain tonight?

For all of the armature astronomers out there with a passing interest in this stuff, here are some helpful links for this years storm:

Where to find a dark place to view from: DarkSky.org

The storm forecast by city (US/World) from NASA: NASA

Astronomy Links In General:

NASA's J-Pass Satellite Passes: Near earth objects(Java,Email)

NASA's SkyWatch 1.4: Excellent for finding events (Java)

Satellite Related Software: For UNIX, Mac, Windows, Palm & more

SpaceWeather.com: Plan to see the auroras

SlashDot.org: Leonid's Last Year

Weather.com: Don't forget to check before you leave

By MichaelCrawford: This /.r makes telescopes

Tips: viewing and what I bring with me.

IE5.5 SP2/WIN2K SP3

Fatz

hmm, i think you have to be "lucky" to get the butterfly chasing your mouse--try the local weather for madison, wi

my girlfriend experienced a freaky butterfly icon chasing her mouse cursor around the weather channel site...

I checked and got nothing, but then realized I was using Mozilla and tried again with IE 6. No cursor-chasing butterfly for me, but the big Flash ad was the same MSN fat guy butterfly silhouette.

Plus in the upper-right corner it says "Sponsored by MSN 8". However, the lower-right corner says "Partner All-New AOL 7.0 1000 FREE Hours!" and the lower-left corner says "Powered by WorldCom". Sheesh!

in a related note, my girlfriend experienced a freaky butterfly icon chasing her mouse cursor around the weather channel site last night. i was annoyed that they sell about half their page real estate for advertising, but after this i'm going to have to find a different source of weather!

According to weather.com, the current temperature in Toronto is 84F, or about 29C. I don't think that's cold enough for significant shrinkage.

You are an annoying zealot. Die.

Why does the major media ignore this?

That's all well and good. No complaints from me about redundant posts or anything.
What I'd like to know is if anyone has an inside lead on exactly when TWC is going to fire-sale these babies, and how to get dibs!

Epileptics are genetically inferior. We should cause offense to them at every opportunity.

If they complain, just point them to a webpage with lots of blinking .gifs on them and watch them collapse to the floor, twitching spasmodically.

Weather.com has a link to Tell them what you think. So go there, and tell them that if they use this new ooki yucki whatever they wanna call it crap, that you'll never visit their website again.

Chief Revenue Officer? I guess with as many crappy, gaudy ads as that website runs, they need a chief officer in charge of it....

Since they are a beta tester it might be good to send them feedback...

Weather.com

I write my own homepage. it has links to here, tom's, my ftp, my web site, my free spam collector, comics, and satire. I realized i didn't want to connect to the internet everytime i want to open up mozilla. so i wrote myself some html, and now my homepage is fast and i can go the places I need to in one link. I'm thinking of adding some weather and some news...

I copied your post into Google and got this. It should give you anything you want to know.

excerpts of larger copyrighted peices can be freely passed around (eg. a paragraph of text, 30 seconds of music).

This is so untrue but everyone thinks it's gospel truth. True, there is no copyright interest in collections of factual data. That is why the data in the phone book are likely to be copied and sold in another phone book, freely. One could also conceivably read weather.com and then report exactly that factual information on one's TV show without permission... It's just facts. However, there is no amount of information that can be "freely passed around." Go out and pass out millions of flyers containing a paragraph from some book, not in a review or news coverage. Wholesale copying without permission is illegal, even if it is a small amount.

Tell me this isn't cool...

This free 'lightning explorer' shows the most recent strikes in the U.S.

I don't think this one is as impressive.

You're underestimating the power of the radical environmentalist to fantasize all sorts of things.

They're hooked on the crack that exciting, if dangerous and evil, things are happening as we "destroy" earth's environment, much like the way old retirees are hooked on the excitement of the Weather Channel.