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Check Wired again. Not only do they do this already with a frame at the bottom, they appear to have a 4 second delay builtin to force you to look at it. Every time I hit reload, 4 seconds after the banner appears, the main frame get populated. I can't see any network activity behind the scenes. I wanted to see how they do this, but 'View Source' and 'Save As' are greyed out in IE.

Way back before Wired's online presence got bought out by Lycos, they experimented with this format. The interstitial ads were everywhere on the site, but were perhaps most annoying when trying to get to their "Threads" discussions (long since gone). There was an overwhelmingly negative response. One friend of mine went as far as to inject ads for his own nascent web design company into his posts on their discussion groups, then crow, "Let's see how you like it!"

The problem is that regardless of what streaming multimedia enthusiasts would have you believe, the web is most often used like a big phone book. Or a magazine. Sure, more often than not, the magazine is Hustler, but people are flipping through indexes (Yahoo, Google, Alta Vista, AskJeeves, MySimon) to find the content they really want (porn, home electronics, news, music). It's not like a TV where we expect a certain show to be on a certain channel at a certain time, which is exactly what makes television ads work. Banner ads are, in some sense, more appropriate than interstitial ones because they look more like magazine ads.

The only reason magazine-style ads don't work in the online world is because display technology has such a long way to go. Think about the number, density, and (comperable) quality of the quarter or half page ads in the average color glossy monthly publication. Think about putting something like on a single web page, so that you could get ad and content on the screen simultaneously, without compromising the readability or navigability of either. It's enough to give a web designer fits.

Ironically, it looks like Wired has gone back to interstitial ads on their Hotwired site. Pity. It's a long time since that site has been useful for anything (other than as a portal to Webmonkey, Wired, or what appears to be their biggest advertiser, but I remember when there was some pretty good political and social commentary on that site. Sigh.

Prodigy is not just Prodigy--it's Prodigy+SBC. In a recent set of mergers, SBC acquired PacBell, Nevada Bell, SNET, & Ameritech. In a side deal, completed 01-Jun-2000, SBC created a new limited partnership (43% SBC, 57% Prodigy) in which Prodigy takes over all of the ISP operations, while SBC concentrates on the core telecommunications business.

At the very least, I expect BT is after some cross-licensing of patents w/ SBC, especially since SBC is one of the largest US investors in European telecommunications.

Which makes me suspect that this case will not lead to a major reworking of IP law . . .

Do not meddle in the affairs of bards,
for they are not at all subtle . . .

May I humbly suggest that you read this--it speaks for itself. Yes, it's 45 web pages long, but well worth the read.

-- Shamus

This space for rent, reasonable rates

------
Rubbersoul
________________

No tag they seem like a waste of time to me --- Wait a minute this is tag I just wasted so much time ...

You can find an article on Stuart Parkin (also developer of the GMR head in your hard-drive) who is the lead scientist on this project at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/mram.html

But LightSurf camera snaps into your cellphone, quite a bit more convenient than this Ricoh.

Wired had a great article entitled "The Big Picture" on LightSurf a few months ago. I recommend reading it. (of course I recommend reading most of what runs in Wired)

But LightSurf camera snaps into your cellphone, quite a bit more convenient than this Ricoh.

Wired had a great article entitled "The Big Picture" on LightSurf a few months ago. I recommend reading it. (of course I recommend reading most of what runs in Wired)

Need to such CO2 out of the atmosphere: Here's just one low-tech solution that could sink billions of tonnes of CO2 into the ocean.

There's technical solutions for everything. The problem, of course, is how much it's gunna cost. Global warming is sooooo low on my list of worries for the future it isn't funny. We don't even have a decent computational model of the atmosphere to work from, and are decades from getting one - push for more money for that.

Something that pisses me off is that it's so easy to whine about global warming with a full stomach. There are lots of people in China, India, and Africa that haven't effectively gone through an industrial revolution and don't have that luxury. I'm not going to get high and mighty when they start burning billions of tonnes of coal to do what we did at the end of the 18th century.

Here's an Wired article that discusses the need for stringent security practices on the credit-card company's end of the line as well. It is pretty decently done, so I thought I'd put up a link here.

--
"Give him head?"

From the article:
The proposed registration fee, $75, is much higher than the fees proposed by the other winning sites, which average about $5.

The average is hella higher than $5. .BIZ alone is charging $2000 (see Wired), so even if the other six were all free, the average would still be almost $300.

Kind of ridiculous when so many registrars are reg'ing the big three TLDs (.com/.net/.org) for $10 and less per year. Joker.com's down to around $9, $8 in bulk, on what I think is a $6 fixed cost they pay. So much for competition of other TLDs driving down prices. I doubt anybody who shells $50,000 per TLD (non-refundable) application fee with a 3% chance of approval (7 out of 210+ TLDs were approved) for a niche market is going to charge $8.

Gads...I just realized ICANN took in $11 million on the initial appliciations...and they're trying to revoke country domains for impoverished and unrepresented nations like Haiti and Brazzaville if they don't pony up?

Here's a link to youcann.org, a site devoted to promoting alternative TLDs. Looks like they duplicate the 'standard' DNS information and augment it with their own stuff that ICANN doesn't accept.

It's a very interesting idea, but as this Wired article details, bad things happen when people disagree about who on the Internet is in charge of a certain TLD (.biz in this case).

If you're actually interested in doing something, rather that just complaining all the time, here's an opportunity, staring you in the face.

I think this is a great idea... But what happens when all the good TLDs are taken? Hrmmmm...

Wasn't this featured in Wired Magazine (dead tree version) a few months ago?

http://www.wired.com/ wir ed/archive/6.11/wired25.html?pg=12

Rampy

Firstly, it's a whole hell of a lot easier (though still a bit of a pain) to lay terrestrial cable. Example: Qwest just slapped a plow on a train car and furrowed trenches along rail lines all around the US. Stuff in cable, backfill, and you're done (more or less). You can't really do that with submarine cable. You can also do end-run tricks with microwave and laser for cheap further expansion.
Though the link was already posted, I'll post it again. It's a splendid article Neal Stephenson wrote for Wired, and if you want to hear more than you wanted about laying cable, read it.

So what you've got is relatively cheap terrestrial links, but when you start talking trans-oceanic, then things get hairy, both in effort and money terms. So you only have a few outbound connections from the continent, which means one anchor/earthquake/curious competitor (read the article) and there goes your connectivity.

Note that Arpanet was meant to protect the US military network in times of chaos (i.e. armageddon). It really isn't an issue that overseas connectivity is a somewhat fragile link, since in times of war, it's only the national network that matters.

As for routing issues, well, there are all sorts of wack payment issues at the backbone level. At the top level, the paths that packets take are determined by business agreements rather than efficiency. So you'd have to get on the horn to your competition and beg and plead for assistance (banks do it; they loan each other money all the time and at pretty decent rates, although telcos might enjoy raping each other when asked for help). Also you may get into weird latency issues if you route US traffic over a cable destined for, say India and then somehow on to the US (maybe).

Caveat: This could all be bullshit. Comments?

dammit! Link to first page is this& lt;/a>. Article's by Neal Stephenson, no less.

Anyone remember this old article in Wired? Talked about FLAG, one of the competitors of sea-me-we. Interesting because it's not owned by the telco monopolies. Talks at length about the difficulties of actually laying the cables (particularly overland, e.g. Suez), and the political issues involved. Sure, the commercial politics have changed since then, but many parts of the article strike me as oddly prescient.

big fat pipe going from western europe to east asia

You may want to check out SAT-3/WASC/SAFE, which is actually two cables: one goes from Europe, down the West Coast of Africa to South Africa; the second goes up from South Africa past Mauritius to Malaysia. [NB: Don't confuse this cable with Africa One, which was referenced in this Slashdot story a while back.]

Telkom and the international companies behind SAT-3/WASC/SAFE are pushing them as a fully wet (and therefore, presumably safe) backup route for FLAG (WIRED article). Now FLAG is pretty old (and only ~5 Gbps, last time I checked), but there are a few other cables traversing the same route (eg SEA-ME-WE 3 (or is it 5?),) which is right through the currently-unstable Middle East. Some people like to be assured of the stability of any links they may buy - backup [wet] links are one of the answers.

And hey, it's great for [South] African [Internet] bandwidth! :)

Just thought you'd like some background

-Al

I know it's not the main focus of the article, but the second page of the article mentioned that the new domains (at least .info and .coop) will be managed by new registry providers (.info: Register.com, Tucows.com, and .coop: CORE). Even thought the new domains aren't nearly as desirable as the old standbys, at least Network Solutions doesn't have a strangle-hold on the registry market anymore.

The expropriation of Rambus's patents is a perfectly viable option. Just as individuals had to give up their junk at a fair price during World War II so that war production could proceed, and just as farmers must often part with land today so that public works may proceed (dams, roads, whatever), Rambus could be forcibly divested of its patents so that the evolution of computer hardware can proceed with proper regard to technical merit, which is ultimately in everybody's interest. The only legitimate obstacle I foresee is that the relevant people in the US government lack the cojones to do it; they would have to move resolutely and unapologetically, but they will not. (Before dismissing that last statement, you should take a moment to read the Wired story on the Microsoft antitrust trial.)

Hardly, at least, I didn't see anything interesting mentioned by Kaplan in the article, but, his statements smack of someone emboweled with something rigid back in the backside.

What was kinda funny was the first link at the bottom of the article to Alt2600's registering of domains using obscene words combined with Corporate Monikers. I'd love to receive a formal letter from GM saying: "Your registration of Fuckgeneralmotors.com domain name constitutes a trademark infringement." I'd frame that. >:)

Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com

The Domain Name System has not seen the introduction of new generic top-level domains since the mid-1990s when dot-net, dot-com and dot-org were added.

Since then, a number of country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) have been added -- .ps for the Palestinian Authority was the latest of these -- but the number of general-purpose TLDs of the dot-com variety has remained static.

According to this Wired article, the .pro TLD will require some sort of proof of "professional status". From the .pro ;ap plication: "The initial rollout of doctors, lawyers and accountants will have a first and unfettered opportunity to register within the .pro domain. That opportunity will not be extended to the public at large, but will be limited to professionals who have been qualified to practice within their respective professions." I imagine it'll be strictly US-centric in there.
The .museum will be for "accredited" museums, and .name would have reserved second-level names (eg., doe.name) and register eg., john.doe.name.
Of course, for what it's worth, I think it's all a bunch of crap. .museum?!? .aero?!? .coop?!? What the hell are those? Like all the freaking museums and aero-space companies, not to mention the co-ops of the world, are taking all the domain names! And .pro? Use a freaking phone book people! Like I'm going to go to johndoe.med.pro to find a Doctor for chrissakes! Only to find out he's in Cambodia!?!
.biz is a helpful addition, as long as the equivalent .com[mie]'s don't snatch it up (which they no doubt will). And .info will definitely be mined before it even gets released. See this quote:
"[.info will deal with IP issues by...] Instituting a Sunrise Period to allow qualifying trademark owners to pre-register their trademarks as domain names.
.name is slightly useful, but I don't think anyone has my name on the .com, .org, .net, .etc TLD's. How about yours?
The real problem is the lame-ass IP policies and education, not the number of TLD's. How many people (not us geeks, mind you) know of, much less use .org or .net? You're almost guaranteeing a webstore a slow painful death if they don't have a .com name. And I don't think that .biz will solve that issue either. (And where the hell is .tech.pro or something similar?!?)

Noticably lacking are any TLD's reserved for criticism of large trademark holders -- i.e. the .sucks proposal that would have allowed legitimate criticism sites to avoid specious trademark infringement lawsuits (remember Verizonreallysucks.com?)

At least it has dawned upon the sage minds of ICANN that 3-4 TLD's constitutes an artificial scarcity. Perhaps today's decision opens the door for future domains that represent broader constituencies.

Sincerely,
Vergil

"It's the model that's out there," said John Kane, head of a marketing task force for Afilias, which is seeking a .web suffix. "It's a public resource. You don't own a domain name. You own the right to use it."

So if the individual only buys the right to use a name - who owns the name? The public? Hardly. One doesn't pay the public trust for use of the name. One pays the registrar. When looking at some of the registrar contracts, one gets the distinct impression that registrars are claiming ownership of these "public resources".

this is like the article that was in wired a while back about that old artificial island in the north seas.

Wired article on how a Republican website was hacked. Of course, the Republicans are blaming the Democrats and the Democats are denying everything.

At least both sides still have their integrity. Oh wait, they're acting like a bunch of kindergarteners, guess they don't.

The only real way to fight a meme is with another meme. Or, as Supreme Court Justice Brandeis put it in the landmark Whitney v. California case in 1927: "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."

The well-known "Godwin's Law" was actually an intentional (and at least partially successful) act of memetic engineering by Mike Godwin. Read his essay about it here.

"With all these forces behind it, perhaps it's not even a question, but will UDDI and/or Web services 'fly'?"

"Push&l t;/a>" anyone?

Check your history both NS and IE are based on the Spyglass/NSCA Mosaic code base. Andreesen worked on the base at NCSA with some other coders/students. After he left he continued to use the code in his new venture "Mosaic Communications Corporation" (which later changed to "Netscape Communications" due to trademark infringement over the name 'Mosaic'). Meanwhile NCSA stopped development on Mosaic and sold/liscensed the code to Spyglass from which MS liscensed (not baught, MS has to pay Spyglass royalties for several technologies)(which you might also note that IE displays all of this information openly in it's about box along with other liscensed technology). NS was sued by NCSA, changed it's name but was allowed to retain use of the Mosaic code (details of the settlement were of course not disclosed).

Now of course Netscape claims that none of the original code from Mosaic was used and that they just got half a dozen developers from NCSA and rewrote the whole code in a few months (a feat they have yet to duplicate). But really now... the truth, come on... NCSA was charging about $100,000+ for liscensing and how do you think Andreessen would have felt about spending that kinda cash on code he helped create.

A Funny read is this article on Wired. Some of the predictions made and assumptions are pretty funny. Like the talk about how Netscape wasn't going to get sold in a box but shipped with Internet enabled PC's... hmmmmm... where have I heard that before... oh yeah MS does that... oh but Netscape says that's bad now. And then there's the thing about Netscape creating proprietary standards... isn't MS getting in trouble for that now too... hmmm. Sad that MS just seems to copy Netscapes bad ideas huh?

Good reading at wired

I think it's a hoot that this piece of satire so elloquently nails every issue with Linux and the opensource movement. Of course they could have made it slightly more believeable but then all the zealots would have attempted to proclaim it as authentic.

There's another story about this particular Internet-parasite here.

According to the article, here's what the suit alledges Aharonian's transgressions are:

"He shamelessly, and oftentimes profanely, attacks [the] United States government, specifically the Patent and Trademark Office, its examiners and various public officials and private citizens," the suit says. "He also purports to be an expert in patent law, though he has no specialized training in the field, has not graduated from any law school, is not admitted to practice before the Patent and Trademark Office and is not authorized to practice law."

Say What? What the hell does attacking the bumblings of the USPTO and have anything to do with patent infringement?

I've met Mr. Aharonian before at a National Academy of Science conference on Intellectual Property, and had the opportunity to read his always entertaining email missives critiquing business method patents. He may be profane at times, but (in my opinion), he is one of the most articulate and analytical opponents of a fundamentally flawed patent system that continues to churn out limited, legally sanctioned monopolies on nebulous, specious and overly-broad business method "inventions" to the detriment of the public domain and true innovation.

I haven't seen the text of the lawsuit. But if the aforementioned article is accurate, it seems that Mr. Aharonian is being targeted by a slap suit (remember the McLibel trial in Britain?). Slap suits are typically frivolous attempts to silence critics of corporate interests by dragging them through an expensive, time-consuming and tortuous labyrinth.

FYI, Here is a recent Wired Magazine article about Aharonian and business method patents.
Aharonian's website is www.bustpatents.com. You can subscribe to his newsletter -- the Internet Patent News Service from this site.

Sincerely,
Vergil

It's not the fact they put these technologies on flying wings that's interesting. The conbination of solar panels + clean fuel cells is a perfect source of clean energy for everyone. Such equipment could be put on every roof, or even be used on large areas and be used as a local powerstation.

It's clean energy, with only water as a byproduct. Once the systems get into mass production, their prices will drop sharply. The cost of environmental damage isn't quantifiable and we can't keep on relying on fuel and nuclear power forever.

The applications for such concepts are huge ; from depolluting industrialized countries to the equipment of developing countries by diminishing the power grid infrastrucure.

If you combine this system to fast-spinning flywheels (read this excellent artice from Wired Magazine), you get permanent, clean energy with little or no maintenance as long as the components can last. Heavy industry could rely on fewer heavy-duty (polluting) powerplants, thus greatly reducing pollution (I don't think we can eradicate all of it, unfortunately).

To me, it looks like the ideal power source for durable development.

May I turn your attention to the fact some areas of our planet are becomming unfit to life because of complete ozone layer depletion? It's actually the case in Terra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America. By getting outside unprotected you get third-degree burn in less than seven minutes. Organic life isn't possible without the ozone layer.

If we don't want that to happen to the rest of the planet, it's urgent some serious investments are made in such technologies.

Think about it.

/max

__________________________________________________ ___

This just in from Wired- Typo-Loving Squatter Squashed . It looks as is Mr Zuccarini has been kicked in the 'nads, in a legal manner, under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection act by Electronics Boutique. It seems he mouse-traps on his typo-pages and gets a cut for each click. Which is quite handy, because he has to pay $500,000 in damages.

Here's a grab from the page - he's not one of the little guys.

Zuccarini could not be reached for comment. In proceedings before the court, however, the ruling said he admitted that he earned between $800,000 and $1 million annually from the thousands of domain names he has registered.

Don't jump to conclusions. Nader's answers to Slashdot were not custom created to appeal to this forum. The answers above are all taken from Nader's platform and from interviews he's given elsewhere, especially Here. This stuff is what the man beleives and stands for. He has nothing to gain by pandering to a fringe website, even one that gets the traffic that slashdot gets. Compare this to Gore, who advertised his "Open Source" web site, and Bush, who has no high-tech policy at all as far as I can tell.
Respectfuly,
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.

As Katz is quick to point out, too many techies labor in an insular world which they believe orbits safely above the murky venacular of partisan politics. Such assumptions are delusional, at best.

Gore and Bush may not know what ICANN does, what reverse-engineering means, or the impact upon fair-use of anti-circumvention clauses. However, such topics have not escaped the attention of Microsoft and AOL-Time Warner and their legion of lawyers and lobbyists.

For example, look at UCITA (in Maryland and Virginia) and the DMCA. While some geeks chose to roll their eyes in disgust at the failure of government institutions and representatives to grasp the fundamentals of IP, the corporations (who essentially authored these provisions) rammed the obtuse and and over-reaching documents into law.

I can only think of a fistful of instances where geeks have taken to the streets to protest legislation that threatens their freedom and livelihood.

To appropriate a favorite phrase of Mr. Nader:
If you don't turn on to politics, politics will turn on you.

Sincerely,
Vergil

My initial reaction was the same as yours... "Experienced Users... AOL?"

But there are alot of people who do use AOL for one reason or another. Perhaps their family uses it, so they are stuck. This was a terrible move on AOLs part. Especially given that their latest browser actually recieved favorable press over at wired, as a feature-full browser.

Its easy to raise our noses and say, "It serves them right for being stupid enough to use AOL." But hey, AOL users have feelings too. Instead of this, we should all let AOL know how we feel. They claim that feedback is important to them, so let them know.

Too many things in this world are a good idea from a commercial persective (now AOL gets advertesing revenue every time someone fires up that browser). However, when we do things to make money, we should always think about what it does to the consumer. What AOL has done here hurts the consumer, and I seriously hope that it bites them in the ass. Captain_Frisk

The translation process, which Transmeta calls "code morphing," is a performance bottleneck. But once translated, the code is stored in a special portion of RAM for quick access the next time it is needed, which tends to speed things up again.

Further on-the-fly optimizations for loops, etc. could be performed. This could also be handed off to a dedicated deep optimizer that runs the machine at full speed while plugged in to the wall, as the owner sleeps. Set up the benchmark software this way, and allow the optimizer to run, then see how it does.

A somewhat unrelated thought is that a machine running an emulator can do debugging without requiring any special support in the i86 "object code" itself. A compiler can build a separate map file for the emulator's use in setting breakpoints, and as an added bonus, use the same info to 'optimize the optimization'. Once again, the map file need not be visible to the OS running on the virtual machine, just so that the real chip can find it and make good use of it.

But what REALLY isn't being taken into account is that the benchmark suites run everything ONCE... but the Transmeta chip gets faster with subsequent runs...

Check this article on Wired for more info.

According to something else I read (sorry no link on this one) performance improves an average of 30% on subsequent runs... so take the benchmarks with a grain of salt.

.technomancer

But Republicrats have a self-perpetuating method of limiting choice. When ISP's can veto websites based on commercial favoritism... and when Cable companies can unfairly exclude local television channels at their monopolistic whim... we need more freedom of choice!

In the words of Jesse "the Gov'ner" Ventura, "What good is it to have just one more choice than Russia?"
Vote Third Party. Vote Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke.

http://www.wired.com/wired/a rch ive/8.07/chairs.html

Esperanto actually contains a great deal of ambiguity and obscurity. See Why Esperanto is not my favourite Artificial Language , Learn Not To Speak Esperanto! , a Wired article on the subject , Lango , and The Problem of an International Auxiliary Language and its Solution in Ido for more information.

Java is itself a language fork for christ's sake. Surely you've heard of it's predecessors C++, C with classes, K&R C, C, B and BCPL. Not to mention the many other langs it stole other idioms from!

Calling Java a "fork" of C++ because C++ preceeds it and has some things in common is patently ridiculous, and appropriation of features from other languages does not a fork make.

Don't forget that Java itself is basically just a specification for a language and a means of implementation. The stuff that Sun [ is | may be ] looking at open sourcing are their virtual machine and bytecode compilers (we assume).

The "forking danger" here is that a bunch of other organizations might simply decide they want to introduce new stuff to the language and say, "Okay. This is our version of Java. So there." Microsoft licensed the technology from Sun and proceeded to do just that, completely against the terms of the contract.

(Incidentally: John Heilemann writes a fantastic article about the Microsoft anti-trust suit in this month's Wired. He asked Steve Ballmer if Microsoft believed they were signing the contract in bad faith. His answer was a bit on the long and vitriolic side, but it seemed to boil down to, "Of course we were, and the sub-50 IQ people at Sun were morons if they didn't think so too." Yes, "sub-50 IQ" was his phrase.)

Would it be so bad if someone forked the code in that manner? Maybe not. But I suspect that plenty of people are twitchy about just that possibility, given the whole J++ fiasco.

Wired magazine had this report about the same air-powered car company back in May of 1999. They reported that Mexico was going to buy some 40,000 of these things to use as taxis in Mexico City. Anyone know if this sale actually happened?

Wired magazine had this report about the same air-powered car company back in May of 1999. They reported that Mexico was going to buy some 40,000 of these things to use as taxis in Mexico City. Anyone know if this sale actually happened?

Hmmm, just as I was reading this earlier today in Wired.

Comments are owned by the poster, so the posters then collectively share responsibility, through answers and moderation, for making sure that meaningful viewpoints are aired and responded to. This works exceedingly well at Slashdot, not so well in other online forums.

From the wired story (emphasis mine):

Even though the uWink machines use only a dialup connection, credit card transactions take between five and seven seconds to validate, according to Moore.

This seems incredibly short-sighted to me.

To go to all the trouble of creating and marketing these boxes, getting them into the venues, and connecting them without broadband is just silly. Especially since they accuse the industry of remaining in the dark ages....

The net can "turn a child's heart dark and murderous". The net is just another form of media, and it has the same disadvantages that other media has.

GINGRICH: In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is - and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got there, we were both part of a 'futures group' - the fact is, in the Clinton administration the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen. You can see it in your own life, between the Internet, the computer, the cell phone.

starting in 1994, Gore has added two years to his journalistic experience, upping the figures from the five years he once claimed to seven.