They've been inserting ads in Google and Yahoo search pages for years. Yes, I mean their own ads. At the My Opera forums we've had users telling us about it for 3-4 years now.
I do wish people wouldn't make such baseless claims as that. "... the first..."? We have found some fossil remains that predate that (as in, more than 12000 years ago) by quite a bit. One could claim that those others failed to survive where they'd have descendents alive today - raising the question of when they died out and for what reason - but claims that the first humans in the Americas arrived 12000 years ago are obviously false.
Gee, I thought it was called copyright. You mean, copyright prevents me from reading a book or watching a movie? Of course not, it prevents me from copying it.
As someone who's been on the other side of this issue, I can tell you that Vodaphone is not the one creating the chaos. (Also note, some PC proxies will strip out the user agent.)
I've previously received mobile versions of websites on my desktop, merely because I was using a test version of Opera. Opera 9.0 for desktop hadn't been released yet, really neither had the version for Windows Mobile though that had received more notice. Because my user agent indicated I was using Opera 9.0 on Windows their server decided it really meant Windows Mobile and sent me the mobile version of the site.
Sorry, but having different versions of a site based on user agent is wrong because it is too prone to errors. They should use proper CSS media descriptors, or maybe use javascript to check the size of the screen. At least, unless they actually define a standard for user agent that explicitly indicates the platform type and they are sure most browsers follow that standard.
Maybe I'm dreaming, but I think I see something different here...
When I see discussions involving ads, who do I really think of? No, not MS - Google. Sounds to me like MS is patenting stuff that they expect Google to want.
No, MS could never sell a version of Windows with OS-level adware in it (unless they plan to give it away and pay for it with the ads, but I doubt it) so instead I see ammuntion for their upcoming battle against the still-mythical GoogleOS. If Google has to pay MS licensing fees for components of GoogleOS, then MS wins no matter which product people use.
I happen to be a moral conservative Libertarian - while I would never use drugs or have an abortion performed on someone at my request, I don't believe it is government's job to tell you what to think. Or even my job, for that matter.
... like that other OS's "Safe Mode" - VGA resolution with network support disabled. Not a bad idea, though the other GUI-based "user friendly" distros should have thought of it a long time ago.
Of course these days, VGA resolution is mostly unnecessary. I think 1024x768 with 256 colors should work on almost everything out there.
are completely meaningless if you encounter a student like I was. No, I mean "completely".
When I was in school, I was the smartest kid my school had ever seen. As a result, I participated in every Math and Science competition that was available, and by my junior year (grade 11 for those who don't use the same terms we do) I was so good at them that it was just plain ridiculous.
My junior year, I participated in something called the Junior Engineering Technical Society contest. They had tests available in 4 subjects - math, physics, chemistry and biology. Of course I took math (that was my best subject), but the school also talked me into taking the Physics test even though Physics was only available to seniors there.
When I got the test (which was all multiple choice), I looked at it and really didn't understand anything there. So I started analyzing the answers given, and was able to decide which answer was most likely the one they wanted on most of the questions. When they graded the tests, I had placed second among people there.
All these places like Sylvan and so on say that they can teach you how to take tests. Maybe they can, though I doubt they really know as much about taking tests as I do. But the simple fact is, you can't consider multiple choice as an accurate gauge of knowledge. A test where all the wrong answers were completely random would have stopped me, but that wouldn't have fooled someone who did have a little knowledge of the subject... a test which is "properly designed" leads to attacks like I employed, ignoring the answers which are too different (and thus wrong) and then choosing among the similar answers for which is most similar to the others. That will catch people who know what they are doing and make a simple mistake (misplaced decimal point or leave out a factor of 2 or whatever), but it will tell people who know nothing other than how to take tests which answer is the correct one.
Judging by the complete lack of any in-core or external FPU...
Well, consider the individual cores as something like a 386. Any floating point will have to be done in software, unless there is an off-chip FPU (comparable to the 387). Not impossible, but probably not something you'd want for video rendering or comparable scientific tasks.
Don't blame this on "No Child Left Behind". As a gifted student myself and someone who used to work in education, I can tell you this goes back a lot further.
As an Opera user, I'm used to that. Prior to Opera 8.5, Opera was ad-supported. There were people who figured that Opera's ads were detracting from their own ad revenues. Especially people who were themselves using Google's content-related text ads, which were also in Opera.
What can I say... some site owners seem to iike "cutting off their nose to spite their face". There are ad-blockers for use with IE, or those that will work on any browser you have running. Can they tell if you have one of those installed? The only sensible action is to avoid such sites, maybe even have a site that lists sites to avoid... even though I don't use Firefox, sites like that don't need my visits.
In these days of identity theft, you do have something to hide. I mean, in my state we've had several government computers lost or stolen with personal information on thousands of people on them. Even if you somehow trust that the government (as an entity) will not abuse the information, that doesn't mean that individual government employees will behave responsibly.
Some Canadian ISPs at least have been doing this for years, in a more limited fashion. A friend of mine complained that he was getting banner ads inserted into Google and Yahoo search results pages (and while Google does put ads into their search results, they are not graphical banners) about 5 years ago. Looking at the code for the ad, it was easy to see that it referred to the name of his ISP...
Given the price wars between ISPs, the fact that other providers are also doing this would be no surprise at all.
I once took a test that I knew absolutely nothing about, and got the best score of anyone taking the test!
I was in high school, so this is almost 30 years ago. Also, I was the brightest kid my school had ever seen, literally. Okay, not all that hard when a typical graduating class only has 50 people in it (this was a rural school system), but still...
In my junior year (that is, grade 11), they decided to have me represent the school in all sorts of competitions. Math and science - math was really my specialty, I had taken every math class they had to offer by this time, but I also did well in science. So anyway, this contest comes up in which you're allowed to take 2 subjects. Of course I took math and did okay. Not spectacular, my school didn't offer Calculus or other advanced math classes, but respectable. And since no one else in the school was willing to take the test in Physics, I took that as well.
You have to understand, my school didn't even offer Physics until grade 12. I had taken general science 2 years earlier (and got such a good score that it made everyone else look silly), then Biology and was at the time taking Chemistry, but Physics wasn't until the next year. I figured "How hard could it be?" Well, I got the test, and maybe had an idea how to work out one question.
I wasn't going to leave the test blank. Like the college entrance tests, they actually assign a negative score to wrong answers so that there's not supposed to be any advantage to guessing, but I wasn't going to sit there for an hour and do nothing. So I started looking through the answers...
Now that I've been a teacher also, I know about (theoretical) test design. You're supposed to include a couple of reasonable-sounding but wrong answers (referred to as "distractors") to catch the people who have some idea what they're doing but are trying to be lazy, and a couple of completely wrong answers - and of course the correct answer. I was able to eliminate the completely wrong answers, then look just at the others and determine which one had to be the correct answer on over 90% of the questions.
In one sense it didn't work. I still got done with 20 minutes left and had to sit there with nothing to do for the rest of the time.:( But I got the best score out of the 100 or so people taking that test at that site.
This was actually a national contest, but I won't give the name. Fortunately, there were people who beat me at other locations, it would have been really embarrassing if I'd one the national competition just by guessing.
And needless to say, I never gave my students multiple choice tests (in Math, that was my subject after all). I know from experience that multiple choice tests are worthless.
Given the choices, I think we'd be better of with someone who doesn't pretend to care about our best interests. With any politician these days, you know that's all it is - pretend. At least with Cthulhu you know that it's telling the truth.
Not certain what "malicious intent" has to do with anything here, though perhaps the poster used the wrong word?
People who download pirated music, movies, or software are not doing so because they hold any malice against the creator of that content (generally - in the case of MS maybe they do) but what they are doing is still a vilation of the law. If students were doing that, or accessing porn sites (also illegal), the school district could be held liable for those illegal activities.
Without more information, we don't know if the students were engaged in illegal activitiy, violating some express policy, or just doing something the administrators considered unsafe (potential for encountering viruses and trojans) or merely didn't like. Impossible to say if they were being heavy-handed or if they were doing what they had to do.
Lost in all the hype, their statistics show that Linux climbed from 0.42% to 0.57%. Yeah, I know, not a huge deal compared to the big names, but a 35.7% increase in one month is pretty remarkable.
Unless they're going to say the numbers don't really mean anything...
I can't say what rights are like in other countries, but generally...
Can a chimp participate in human society? Can he learn to respect our laws? If he were allowed to wander freely, can he be trusted not to attack young children or pets?
Children have human rights, but they are not allowed free exercise of those rights until they reach an age at which we presume them to be mature enough to do so responsibly - and if they later prove that they can not do so then courts can take those rights away. Criminals, insane people, or those unable to act as adults may be restrained, confined, and otherwise have their rights restricted - in some cases, even their right to life.
How does a typical chimpanzee compare to a child? I don't know... other than the lack of the ability to communicate with us, I'd say a typical chimp might be similar to a child in the range of 2 to 5 years old. What human rights do we allow children in that age range?
"what some are calling the warmest US winter in years."
It has actually been one of the coldest in years in the US, and the linked article isn't even about that.
It has been the warmest worldwide with the global average 1.3 degrees (Fahrenheit) above normal, but here in the US it has been one of the coldest. Global warming may be a real issue - real scientists are still divided on that - but the frequent errors such as this are not helping the cause any.
Classical Physics - in Star Trek
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Ever read "The Galactic Whirlpool"? One of those Star Trek stories set just after the original series. The Enterprise stumbles across a "generation ship" which had left Earth only just before they discovered warp drive, but had escaped attempts to locate it. The inhabitants had forgotten they were on a ship, to them it was "the world". They had collapsed into a primitive society.
Since they were humans from Earth, the prime directive didn't apply (not that Kirk was very good about that anyway), so it was left to the Enterprise crew to drag them kicking and screaming into the 24th century...
That's a common theme in Sci-Fi though, generation ships where the inhabitants believe the ship is the world, and forget the mission. How does anyone keep at a task for 700 years?
Slashdot Mirror
Why does this remind me of Opera Sync?
They've been inserting ads in Google and Yahoo search pages for years. Yes, I mean their own ads. At the My Opera forums we've had users telling us about it for 3-4 years now.
I do wish people wouldn't make such baseless claims as that. "... the first ..."? We have found some fossil remains that predate that (as in, more than 12000 years ago) by quite a bit. One could claim that those others failed to survive where they'd have descendents alive today - raising the question of when they died out and for what reason - but claims that the first humans in the Americas arrived 12000 years ago are obviously false.
For those who may choose not to mess with PDF - or just not have a PDF reader handy - Google usually will convert stuff to HTML for you. Here's their version of this paper: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:4Kt5IJC2oWYJ:www.ams.org/notices/200710/tx071001279p.pdf+%22Open+source+mathematical+software%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us
Gee, I thought it was called copyright. You mean, copyright prevents me from reading a book or watching a movie? Of course not, it prevents me from copying it.
As someone who's been on the other side of this issue, I can tell you that Vodaphone is not the one creating the chaos. (Also note, some PC proxies will strip out the user agent.)
I've previously received mobile versions of websites on my desktop, merely because I was using a test version of Opera. Opera 9.0 for desktop hadn't been released yet, really neither had the version for Windows Mobile though that had received more notice. Because my user agent indicated I was using Opera 9.0 on Windows their server decided it really meant Windows Mobile and sent me the mobile version of the site.
Sorry, but having different versions of a site based on user agent is wrong because it is too prone to errors. They should use proper CSS media descriptors, or maybe use javascript to check the size of the screen. At least, unless they actually define a standard for user agent that explicitly indicates the platform type and they are sure most browsers follow that standard.
Maybe I'm dreaming, but I think I see something different here ...
When I see discussions involving ads, who do I really think of? No, not MS - Google. Sounds to me like MS is patenting stuff that they expect Google to want.
No, MS could never sell a version of Windows with OS-level adware in it (unless they plan to give it away and pay for it with the ads, but I doubt it) so instead I see ammuntion for their upcoming battle against the still-mythical GoogleOS. If Google has to pay MS licensing fees for components of GoogleOS, then MS wins no matter which product people use.
I happen to be a moral conservative Libertarian - while I would never use drugs or have an abortion performed on someone at my request, I don't believe it is government's job to tell you what to think. Or even my job, for that matter.
... like that other OS's "Safe Mode" - VGA resolution with network support disabled. Not a bad idea, though the other GUI-based "user friendly" distros should have thought of it a long time ago.
Of course these days, VGA resolution is mostly unnecessary. I think 1024x768 with 256 colors should work on almost everything out there.
are completely meaningless if you encounter a student like I was. No, I mean "completely".
... a test which is "properly designed" leads to attacks like I employed, ignoring the answers which are too different (and thus wrong) and then choosing among the similar answers for which is most similar to the others. That will catch people who know what they are doing and make a simple mistake (misplaced decimal point or leave out a factor of 2 or whatever), but it will tell people who know nothing other than how to take tests which answer is the correct one.
When I was in school, I was the smartest kid my school had ever seen. As a result, I participated in every Math and Science competition that was available, and by my junior year (grade 11 for those who don't use the same terms we do) I was so good at them that it was just plain ridiculous.
My junior year, I participated in something called the Junior Engineering Technical Society contest. They had tests available in 4 subjects - math, physics, chemistry and biology. Of course I took math (that was my best subject), but the school also talked me into taking the Physics test even though Physics was only available to seniors there.
When I got the test (which was all multiple choice), I looked at it and really didn't understand anything there. So I started analyzing the answers given, and was able to decide which answer was most likely the one they wanted on most of the questions. When they graded the tests, I had placed second among people there.
All these places like Sylvan and so on say that they can teach you how to take tests. Maybe they can, though I doubt they really know as much about taking tests as I do. But the simple fact is, you can't consider multiple choice as an accurate gauge of knowledge. A test where all the wrong answers were completely random would have stopped me, but that wouldn't have fooled someone who did have a little knowledge of the subject
Judging by the complete lack of any in-core or external FPU ...
Well, consider the individual cores as something like a 386. Any floating point will have to be done in software, unless there is an off-chip FPU (comparable to the 387). Not impossible, but probably not something you'd want for video rendering or comparable scientific tasks.
Don't blame this on "No Child Left Behind". As a gifted student myself and someone who used to work in education, I can tell you this goes back a lot further.
As an Opera user, I'm used to that. Prior to Opera 8.5, Opera was ad-supported. There were people who figured that Opera's ads were detracting from their own ad revenues. Especially people who were themselves using Google's content-related text ads, which were also in Opera.
... some site owners seem to iike "cutting off their nose to spite their face". There are ad-blockers for use with IE, or those that will work on any browser you have running. Can they tell if you have one of those installed? The only sensible action is to avoid such sites, maybe even have a site that lists sites to avoid ... even though I don't use Firefox, sites like that don't need my visits.
What can I say
I suppose it depends what one considers to be a trackball.
I know two people whom I regard highly who swear by the Logitech MarbleMouse. Personally, I'd just stick with my Wacom tablet.
Hard to guess what is actually usable in her area.
e r?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedP honeId=2506 ... though in their listing of models they also have this similar one:
e r?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedP honeId=2687 ... but that's for Verizon, if you're not even in their service area then that doesn't help.
I have a phone something like this one:
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controll
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controll
In these days of identity theft, you do have something to hide. I mean, in my state we've had several government computers lost or stolen with personal information on thousands of people on them. Even if you somehow trust that the government (as an entity) will not abuse the information, that doesn't mean that individual government employees will behave responsibly.
Some Canadian ISPs at least have been doing this for years, in a more limited fashion. A friend of mine complained that he was getting banner ads inserted into Google and Yahoo search results pages (and while Google does put ads into their search results, they are not graphical banners) about 5 years ago. Looking at the code for the ad, it was easy to see that it referred to the name of his ISP ...
Given the price wars between ISPs, the fact that other providers are also doing this would be no surprise at all.
I once took a test that I knew absolutely nothing about, and got the best score of anyone taking the test!
...
...
:( But I got the best score out of the 100 or so people taking that test at that site.
I was in high school, so this is almost 30 years ago. Also, I was the brightest kid my school had ever seen, literally. Okay, not all that hard when a typical graduating class only has 50 people in it (this was a rural school system), but still
In my junior year (that is, grade 11), they decided to have me represent the school in all sorts of competitions. Math and science - math was really my specialty, I had taken every math class they had to offer by this time, but I also did well in science. So anyway, this contest comes up in which you're allowed to take 2 subjects. Of course I took math and did okay. Not spectacular, my school didn't offer Calculus or other advanced math classes, but respectable. And since no one else in the school was willing to take the test in Physics, I took that as well.
You have to understand, my school didn't even offer Physics until grade 12. I had taken general science 2 years earlier (and got such a good score that it made everyone else look silly), then Biology and was at the time taking Chemistry, but Physics wasn't until the next year. I figured "How hard could it be?" Well, I got the test, and maybe had an idea how to work out one question.
I wasn't going to leave the test blank. Like the college entrance tests, they actually assign a negative score to wrong answers so that there's not supposed to be any advantage to guessing, but I wasn't going to sit there for an hour and do nothing. So I started looking through the answers
Now that I've been a teacher also, I know about (theoretical) test design. You're supposed to include a couple of reasonable-sounding but wrong answers (referred to as "distractors") to catch the people who have some idea what they're doing but are trying to be lazy, and a couple of completely wrong answers - and of course the correct answer. I was able to eliminate the completely wrong answers, then look just at the others and determine which one had to be the correct answer on over 90% of the questions.
In one sense it didn't work. I still got done with 20 minutes left and had to sit there with nothing to do for the rest of the time.
This was actually a national contest, but I won't give the name. Fortunately, there were people who beat me at other locations, it would have been really embarrassing if I'd one the national competition just by guessing.
And needless to say, I never gave my students multiple choice tests (in Math, that was my subject after all). I know from experience that multiple choice tests are worthless.
Given the choices, I think we'd be better of with someone who doesn't pretend to care about our best interests. With any politician these days, you know that's all it is - pretend. At least with Cthulhu you know that it's telling the truth.
Not certain what "malicious intent" has to do with anything here, though perhaps the poster used the wrong word?
People who download pirated music, movies, or software are not doing so because they hold any malice against the creator of that content (generally - in the case of MS maybe they do) but what they are doing is still a vilation of the law. If students were doing that, or accessing porn sites (also illegal), the school district could be held liable for those illegal activities.
Without more information, we don't know if the students were engaged in illegal activitiy, violating some express policy, or just doing something the administrators considered unsafe (potential for encountering viruses and trojans) or merely didn't like. Impossible to say if they were being heavy-handed or if they were doing what they had to do.
I suppose the author also blames Ryder for providing the truck used in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Don't get me wrong, I have never bought or sold anything on Ebay. But the poster is stretching so far he needs to call himself Mr. Fantastic.
Lost in all the hype, their statistics show that Linux climbed from 0.42% to 0.57%. Yeah, I know, not a huge deal compared to the big names, but a 35.7% increase in one month is pretty remarkable.
...
Unless they're going to say the numbers don't really mean anything
I can't say what rights are like in other countries, but generally ...
... other than the lack of the ability to communicate with us, I'd say a typical chimp might be similar to a child in the range of 2 to 5 years old. What human rights do we allow children in that age range?
Can a chimp participate in human society? Can he learn to respect our laws? If he were allowed to wander freely, can he be trusted not to attack young children or pets?
Children have human rights, but they are not allowed free exercise of those rights until they reach an age at which we presume them to be mature enough to do so responsibly - and if they later prove that they can not do so then courts can take those rights away. Criminals, insane people, or those unable to act as adults may be restrained, confined, and otherwise have their rights restricted - in some cases, even their right to life.
How does a typical chimpanzee compare to a child? I don't know
"what some are calling the warmest US winter in years."
It has actually been one of the coldest in years in the US, and the linked article isn't even about that.
It has been the warmest worldwide with the global average 1.3 degrees (Fahrenheit) above normal, but here in the US it has been one of the coldest. Global warming may be a real issue - real scientists are still divided on that - but the frequent errors such as this are not helping the cause any.
Ever read "The Galactic Whirlpool"? One of those Star Trek stories set just after the original series. The Enterprise stumbles across a "generation ship" which had left Earth only just before they discovered warp drive, but had escaped attempts to locate it. The inhabitants had forgotten they were on a ship, to them it was "the world". They had collapsed into a primitive society.
...
Since they were humans from Earth, the prime directive didn't apply (not that Kirk was very good about that anyway), so it was left to the Enterprise crew to drag them kicking and screaming into the 24th century
That's a common theme in Sci-Fi though, generation ships where the inhabitants believe the ship is the world, and forget the mission. How does anyone keep at a task for 700 years?