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Read TFA before posting.

GP is referring to the Kyoto Protocol.

That's what everybody says. Then they go to travelocity, and fly with the lowest bidder. If more people wanted to pay more for a better experience, there'd be more first class seats in airplanes.

Last month I flew on Jetblue and paid 10% less than anywhere else, got a huge seat and the best flight experience I'd ever had.

Oh, and I've been waiting for this:
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/787_dreamliner.html

Have you shopped for an airline ticket recently? I don't think price can be nailed down very easily either...

Actually, that is one of the advantages of the 787:
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/787_dreamliner.html

More efficient, more _consistent_ fuel usage. The plane weighs much less than comparable or competing aircraft as it is the only one which incorporates a plastic (composite) fuselage.

And I'm pretty sure when apple releases a similar device in a few years time, people will think they invented it, too.

Why not, the MS fanbois did too:
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/microsoft_surface.html

The problem is that MS gives it's products very generic names (Office, Media Player) and therefore hijacks the terms. How many people know that _other_ office suits even exist? Surface, isn't that a Microsoft innovation?

These people do not know how to separate the Gaga album from the Amazon service. I see it all the time on the http://what-is-what.com/ website: people rate the product or service under discussion instead of rating the article, even though the rating form is very clear.

This looks like the same concept behind Microsoft's Surface AKA Big-Ass Table.

No, the surface needs each item to be individually marked on the bottom:
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/microsoft_surface.html

Not the same at all. However, there was another camera technology once mentioned on /. that is really similar, but I cannot find it now. Anyone?

...but it sucks rocks trying to run OpenOffice.

Try the Go-OO 3.2 builds. Go-oo is an improved OpenOffice.org, and 3.2 is about twice as fast as OOo 3.0 (5.2 seconds to startup, vs 11.3 for v3.0).

Try this site that I found on some /. sig:
http://what-is-what.com/

It displays all wrong in IE, and has some broken ad at the bottom for Firefox. A _broken_ add, even broken in Firefox.

Shoot it in the head, and move on :-)

That's how I've always dealt with XP machines in zombie networks.

You'd think that with that 'big ass table' they've been so proudly parading around they'd have this figured out.

I mean, letting everyone think it was a touch screen, when in reality it uses several cameras down below the glass to track motion - you'd hope they'd get it right when it came to something that actually utilized touch...why are we not surprised to learn they've stuffed this up.

The Microsoft Surface was never billed as a touchscreen. It was meant as a language-less user interface. In that regard it works rather well: even primate peoples who have been shown the device could operate it, moving files, opening photos, and such. It is not a general purpose computer in any sense.

How did the servers keep running without the power cords?

I got 3 words for you - redundant power supplies.

Although I don't think this is the case here. If you RTFA (or is it WTFV?) they do say that "the only failures were associated with power cords coming loose" - so they do consider this aspect to be a failure - but its a very easily fixable one - many servers have ways to fix power cords to the chassis of the server in a way that you cannot yank the power cord out easily.

-Em

Sun equipment... tested by a gigantic mechanical shaker... powered by... Windows??

Did anyone else notice that the control system for the Earth Quake simulator is apparently running Windows?

I did just notice, and came mention it. You would think Windows would be the last thing featured in such an obvious slashdvertisement.

Everything stays running, but some power cords came out, some screws worked loose

How did the servers keep running without the power cords? Or do they refer to power cords on the UPS's?

For that matter, since when does /. have video in TFS?!? Try the link... it points to itself!

By visiting Google's ad-preferences page, the user can opt out of having their surfing habits tracked, or input their own preferences for the subject matter of ads they would like to see.

At least you can opt-out.

Or use your browser's incognito mode. Oh, sorry, Internet Explorer doesn't have that? Sounds like a good time to move to Google Chrome!

The remaining question for users is: Has someone yet developed a plugin to block google ads entirely? And if not, how long will it take now?

Ad-Block Plus. Assuming, of course, that you are using Firefox.

What do you think should be on Linux.com?

Porn.

Just like the rest of the internet.

Although the web makes this sort of thing possible, the same web will help to mitigate the damage.

Riddick's thought of that. He's a domain squatter too:
http://www.islandview2.com/index3A.htm

Usually, when someone takes advantage of one facet of the World Wide Web, they take advantage of all of it.

Didn't Google Chrome get 3% market share in like a day or something? Here's the /. story on that:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/03/1343226

This sounds like the classic solar is not a renewable energy source tale because of the non-renewable materials in solar cells. You do realize that once the cells are built, that they continue to work until damaged or otherwise decommissioned, and that the nonrenewables are not consumed in the process? Also, there are alternative materials to use, and alternative places to mine what there is.

You apparently understimate the rising costs of energy of _all_ types. It is a feedback market, as one type of energy chages price, the others change along with it to keep within a natural price ratio. That ratio changes in the short term, but in the long term non-renewables become more expensive and renewables become cheaper. Are you arguing that solar energy is a non-renewable energy resource because of the tellurium supply? You do realize that there are tellurium supplies that are not currently being mined, because of cost? As volume and demand increase, those resources will be mined.

I can't believe eula's are even legal (at all).

Then you obviously don't understand the purpose of the EULA. The EULA is not legal protection in the sense that the company will sue the end user for breach. It is for legal protection in case one makes a claim against the company that they took no measures to protect A, B, and C. In other words, it is a defensive measure, not an offensive measure. It just reads as offensive because, well, we all know what the best defense is...

I would be willing to guess that within the next few years, the often maligned End User License Agreement ('EULA') may fall into the realm of being regulated as further 'consumer protection.

It won't because it was never meant to be 'consumer protection' and that is quite a perversion of the EULA's real purpose: 'corporate protection'.

Snideness aside, you know that things need a catchy term.

The plane in question is called the "vomit comet", catchy enough for NASA?

Failure in security.dll. Abort, retry or ignore?

Of course, being how the Surface doesn't have a text interface, they would implement that in pictures some how. See here:
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/microsoft_surface.html

Unfortunately, that's what they said about Vista, too.

No, what's unfortunate is not that Microsoft feels this way, but that KDE feels this way. Microsoft has a beta product that people are generally happy with (Windows 7). KDE has a released product that many people hate (KDE 4.x). I don't need to say that KDE is open source, and that things were reversed just one year ago, and all the other obvious trolls. I do however want to remind us that KDE doesn't really need users at all. I have been using KDE for years and I've stuck with the 3.x branch while the 4.x branch is developing, but more and more often I feel pushed away. If it is simple usability reports that they are not interested in or other little things that add up in the KDE community. I think that they are really forgetting what is KDE.

I repeat that I am a KDE user, but as KDE 3.x is being made obsolete I am looking for a new place to go. it's a shame because I love Kate, Konqueror, and Kontact especially. KDE 4.2 betas are beautiful and work like they should (Aaron Siego is a genius, what he has done with Plasma). But the developer community is scaring me away.

Microsoft gave some nice Ferrari laptops to some bloggers recently. It's easy to figure out to whom: just google favorable Vista reviews.
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/vista.html

Before we went to Google Analytics we tried using referrer in the logs to track paths through our site. Something like 40% of browser visits (i.e. excluding known robots) did not report referrer properly. It was random and therefore totally useless.

Interesting. I suppose it depends on how many pageviews your average visitor is making. I see anything from 1.8 pageviews on average for http://lyricslist.com/ to 5.4 pageviews on average at http://what-is-what.com/ and on the sites with higher page views, less than 10%-20% don't have referers. Both sites are currently running Google Analytics and a third stats tracker (Extremetracking) for confirmation.

We thought about that, but at that point we were doing the exact same thing Google Analytics does anyway. We figured why not just use them, which is way easier and more powerful.

I suppose that I suffer from NDH syndrome.

I think that Apple should get into the fruit market. They've got a catchy, relevant domain name.

http://what-is-what.com/what_is/apple.html

I hope that this set precedent for spammers.

http://what-is-what.com/what_is/spam.html

Depends. I can start keeping count if you want, but anywhere from 800-5000 backscatters would not surprise me in any given week. That, plus 1200-7000 spam messages a week.

I now have four filter mechanisms at work:
1) All my contacts get a unique email address. Something along the lines of your-name@my-server.com
2) Spamassasin on the server.
3) Thunderbird's standard junk mail filter on the client.
4) Whitelist addresses of known contacts to my "whitelist" folder.

I see maybe 10-20 spam messages a day in my inbox, and the only time I get spam in my whitelist box is when a contact of mine is irresponsible with my address. I then change the address, scold the contact, and give him a new address until next time. I could not do this without the terrific Virtual Identities Thunderbird extension, which remembers which addresses I use to email each contact:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/594

The Inbox gets about 10-20 spams a day, the Tbird junk mail gets around 200 I think, and about once a week or three I grep the spamassasin folder on the server for anything interesting.

Spam costs me money, bandwidth, and time away from my studies, work, and family. Spam is the modern Chinese water tourture: one drop does nothing, but drop after drop my life is being eroded. Not just online life, mind you, but real life as the internet is no less important to everyday life than the telephone is today.
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/spam.html

Exactly. Not every multi-touch device is a copy of the Surface. The Microsoft Surface (disclosure: that's my site) has the ability to connect wirelessly with devices on the table, and even identify their location on the table itself. There is no language in the UI, so anybody from anywhere in the world can operate it. It's actually a rather nifty idea, and the whole multi-touch thing is not it's only feature.

For those who don't know, the Zonbu is really a rebranded VIA Artigo: http://what-is-what.com/what_is/zonbu.html (disclosure: my site)

You are forgetting the Surface's biggest accomplishment: a true no-language interface. Anyone, who speaks any language, can sit down to a surface and use it. Read it here. (disclaimer: my site)

My security might not be compromised _right_now_ but Akamai is not an accredited bank, and they do not have to stand up to the rigorous security standards that banks do. Their server could get compromised and deliver malware in one of those JS (or, less likely, CSS) files. Every heard of Cross Site Scripting? http://what-is-what.com/what_is/xss.html (disclaimer: my site)

You are 100% right, the term is misoverused. While a hard drive can be "distracting, irritating, or damaging" (see What is Noise Pollution? full disclosure: that's my site) it does not "disturb any natural process or cause human harm".

You're welcome. When you come across these questions, you can ask them at the http://what-is-what.com/ website. Just look for the field marked "ask a question".

A site that I administer has a great introduction to DKIM for those interested:
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/domainkeys_identified_mail.html
(disclaimer: I am affiliated with that site)

A site that I administer has a great introduction to DKIM for those interested:
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/domainkeys_identified_mail.html
(disclaimer: I am affiliated with that site)

A site that I administer has a great introduction to DKIM for those interested:
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/domainkeys_identified_mail.html

(disclaimer: I am affiliated with that site)

You suppose that GoogleTalk had put a dent in AOL's business? I doubt that. I have many AIM contacts, and no Gtalk contacts. People are not about to switch protocols (and therefore interoperability with their contacts) so fast. In any case, Jabber already has AIM gateways so GTalk and AIM could communicate without AOL switching protocols.
Side note: I hope that this finally leads to video support in Jabbber.

So far as I understand, more than just a single proton has been moved by teleportation. Yes, two kilometers is impressive, but more relevant to human teleportation is when large masses are moved intact. This has been done: http://what-is-what.com/what_is/teleportation.html (Disclaimer: I wrote that).

I have stopped coding for IE about a year ago. I write only standard markup now, and the browser can display it however it chooses. I found that I was coding for four hours to get the layout that I want, then adding another eight hours of aggravation to make it work in IE6. In wine/browsercam. Because IE doesn't even run on my platform of choice.

I came to the conclusion that if developers stop coding specifically for IE's bugs, then end users will see it for the crap that it is and switch. Call me a dreamer (but I'm not the only one), but as I code for a hobby, I can afford to take the risk. Those who insist upon using a broken browser can see a broken webpage. At the bottom of each page I display a "this site does not support IE" message with an explanation and an [paid] link to Firefox. I make about $10 a month from that link, so I'm not in it for the money. But that means that I've educated an average of 10 people a month. That is more satisfying than the money.

For an example, take a look at http://what-is-what.com/ (disclaimer: my site). Note that IE7 displays it just fine, but in IE6 it is almost unusable. That's fine with me. The browser wars are back, but this time it's not BrowserX vs. BroswerY. It's Internet Explorer vs. W3C standard code.

And no, I'm not some linux/firefox fanboi gone extremist. Quite the opposite: I'm not coding for _any_ browser. Just standards-compliant code and let the browsers do with it as they please.

It's called a zero day exploit because zero is the amount of days that you have to patch a system vulnerable to exploit. Pretty much, that means that the attackers have been exploiting the weakness in the wild even before the exploit was known to security firms. http://what-is-what.com/what_is/zero_day_exploit.html (full disclosure: I'm affiliated with that site)