The founder of the Onion was on Jay Leno a while back and discussed the problem at length.
He said that the biggest problem was email forwards from people who consider it a news release, and in the email there is not the rest of the onion's site for context, so people don't know it is a parody.
He said the 2 that generated the most amount of letters from concerned citizens, up to that point in time, was "Chinese woman gives birth to septuplets, doesn't know which one to keep" and "New York to install infant-only dumpsters".
Stripped of bloat, Mozilla's rendering engine runs fast and light on a P133Mhz laptop with 16MB. A sample screenshot is here: Screenshot of UI and context menu
For comparison to Opera, I found:
Opera 5 to be faster than K-Meleon, but with Opera 6, they were batting close to even.
K-Meleon images don't dither very well if set to 256 colours (often the case with older computers) because of a palette shift. Opera dithers them nicely
K-Meleon renders HTML better than Opera 6 (though Opera 6 does do a better job of difficult CSS than Opera 5).
Opera is a full suite of apps, with alot more features vs. K-Meleon, whereas K-Meleon is a browser and browser alone.
K-Meleon does let all the toolbars (URL, menu, URL bar) be placed in a single row to maximize screen real estate on a laptop.
K-Meleon doesn't have Opera-style tabs yet, which is about the one feature missed the most.
K-Meleon is Free.
However, one thing that Sun must still address is how to increase their adoption in the corporate sector.
The reason why colleges are requested to stock Microsoft Office is that is what the businesses use to whom they are applying for jobs.
My last university, McMaster University used to stock nothing but Corel office (cheaper, helped to support a local business), but in about 1997, they bowed to student pressure to replace it with MS Office since the commerce/science/arts/etc students wanted to have the "strong proficiency with advanced Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Access" on their resumes to compete for their jobmarkets.
There is one flat rate ISP in Ireland. They charged a fairly expensive flat-rate for users, and signed up alot of users, becoming the largest in the country.
Then they just kicked off the people that were using it the most. They were allowed to get away with it, but the backlash from the disconnected customers (myself included) was high.
Will be interesting to see if eBay will eventually start to list a destroyed Palm device (one that was run over, went through the washing machine, etc), as a few dollar item that contains a valid legal licence to a PalmOS ROM that can then be used to as an emulation in a non Palm devices.
Before proceeding, I hope that the governments..
on
Zeppelins on Patrol?
·
· Score: 1
Info for readers to learn more of what was really their greatest sin: the retroactive selling of customer's emails and phone numbers from the whois database.
The details: -A complete copy of all the personal information in the whois database was sold. -Each copy was sold for $10,000--made payable to the company. -The list was retroactive, selling the info of all the existing customers, not just the new ones signing up after the sell announcement was made.
It doesn't seem to have been archived by many of the usual news outlets. Here is a coverage of it from the Washington Post at the time (about half way down is the mention of them selling the customer contact data to anyone wanting it):
But this link is the real kicker: the VeriSign tagline motto, considering these types of shady dealings with their customers: The service-marked VeriSign tagline
..when they sold the email addresses of all their domain holders to the spammers (and spammers since they are of questionable legality then sold cheap knockoffs of the CDs to other spammers). Since the internic database of actual email addresses that their customers were using to be informed of changes/renewal notices to their domain names with them, it was an especially sleaze thing to do. I am glad that justice was delivered this time.
...is actually usually the dishrags used in many people's kitchen sinks. This cloth is used to rub down food from dishes, picking up food into the fibres. The damp cloth, with miniscule bits of food in it is then set out for the next time--the readily available water and substrate make it a haven for log growth of aerobic bacteria. These high counts are then available for the next washing. Cell counts can end up being very high if the dishrags are not changed.
More biochemistry trivia: at a public bathroom at the mall, there is 2x the number of infectious bugs on the walls in the female bathroom, since small children more often go with their mother to the washroom, and small children touch their eyes/mouth and then the wall with a high frequency.
RealNames death warrant: from browsers and Google
on
RealNames Closing Shop
·
· Score: 1
The usefulness of RealNames was when a most familiar brand did not match up with the domain name. For example: "Nissan" isn't at nissan.com
However, once Google was able to pick out the famous brand's website, automatically by reverse-citation, and then Google Toolbar, Mozilla, Opera put this searching direct from the browser url box, a type-in of "Nissan" into the browser's address bar search box would jump to nissanmotors.com directly, without the company having to pay any toll to RealNames at all.
Thus, RealNames long-term revenue prospects dried up. Closing up shop was inevitable.
I won't miss them much, as they had a policy of no generic keyword names, but then broke that policy every time one of their partner sites needed a generic keyword.
Dude that is superb. Thanks for the laugh. Moderators, could this have a few more +1 Funny's? Best wishes, Robert
The finest spam reply personally seen was zug.com
on
He Writes Back
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Subj: Heal Date: 96-02-07 10:21:26 EST From: chirosft@ix.netcom.com (Dr. D. Funk)
As a business owner for the past 30 years, I have never experienced such a simple strategy to create additional fast cash flow, which will not detract from or conflict with the way I run
my present business. I have personally seen incomes ranging from $10,0000 to $22,000 per month within less than 120 days. I know that sounds ludicrous, as it did to me at first, but thank
goodness that at this stage of my life I was still open-minded enough to listen to the FREE audio cassette, "Dead Doctors Don't Lie" (Learn how 300,000 people are being killed in Hospitals each
year!)
If you are not experiencing a LOW STRESS , non-confrontational income producing method that has people calling you with orders for your products and asking to join your business, it's time to
call me and request a free copy of the amazing tape, Dead Doctors Don't Lie. E-mail your request to chirosft@ix.netcom.com or Fax (916)-482-4256 with your complete name and mailing address.
(Please include phone number in the event we don't understand your message)
What have you got to lose ?
Subj: Re: Heal Date: 96-02-07 11:27:36 EST From: Baked Ham To: chirosft@ix.netcom.com CC: Baked Ham
Boy, this offer sounds great! I'd love to get that free audio tape about dead doctors! Send it on! My e-mail address is bakedham@aol.com.
I need to ask you about your name, Dr. Funk. I once knew a DJ in New York City who went by the name of Doctor Funk. I realize "Dr. Funk" and "Doctor Funk" are two different names, but perhaps you shorten it for the sake of space? Or perhaps it's a pseudonym for your other business ventures?
Man, you were something. Playing that dance music the whole night long at your club, General Hospital. It took me a while to get THAT joke - you were the Doctor, and the club was your Hospital! Great one, Doctor Funk!
One time I remember this girl came in wearing a live snake, as girls will do in Grenwich Village. You yelled into your microphone (as you were wont to do), "Do we have any funky boys in this house?" And all the guys yelled, "YEAH!" Then you screamed, "Do we have any booty-shakin' girls in the house?" And all the ladies screamed, "YEAH!" Then you hollered, "Do we have any snakes in the house?!" And - as if on cue - the snake jumped out of the woman's arms and bit this guy on the ass. It was some sort of poisonous viper, and you had to stop the music and rush over to help the snake bite victim. Everyone wanted you to help the guy, but we found out you weren't a licensed doctor at all. It was just an act. I heard the guy eventually died, so maybe that's what your dead doctors tape is all about.
Doctor Funk, how has your career been since that guy died? Did you find another job? I heard the General Hospital eventually went out of business - is that true? How did you get the name Doctor Funk?
Send on that free tape, Doctor Funk! I'm eager to make more money!
Very sound points. This morning I thought of another possible reason, may have been to take a weekend day, when the US stock exchange was closed, so that there wouldn't be a sudden dramatic event right in the middle of the trading day that might start a sell, snowballing onwards.
I looked at my post, wondering how it could be a troll, and see that my rather ambigous language has made it into something unintended. A more clear rewrite would be:
"Considering that part of the propaganda campaign that bin Laden uses to try to recruit Muslims to terrorism is to try to make new recruits believe the falsehood that this is a holy war against Muslims by 'Crusaders and Zionists' (the words that he uses in his letters), and so try to try to fan the flames enough for them to become terrorists."
Bush made an unfortuate slip once of mentioning the campaign as a "crusade" which was used by the enemy to cast the war as a war among religions. Making the attack on Sunday, while certainly not intended by the Allied forces to fan the religious aspect, it unfortuately can be picked up by the enemy's propaganda to try to recuit more recruits to terrorism in the name of protecting their religion.
Considering part of the propaganda campaign of bin Laden terrorists is that this is a holy war by the 'Crusaders and Zionists', it is surprising that Bush would take then choose a Christian Sunday to go in and start to deliver justice.
Just as a mention: in log analysis, many site owners (and software--even top-of-line ones like MediaHouse) overlook the fact that since AOL uses a multi-proxy management system, there is usually 6-11 separate unique IP address entries in the log from the visitor using AOL. Therefore, each AOL browser entry (which gets grouped under MSIE-powered browsers) is marked as 6 to 11 times, instead of just once. If AOL does switch to Mozilla at a later date, it will make a hefty swing in the browser percentages, as reported by what browser unique visitors are using.
I strongly recommend "Entropy" from MCHawking's mad-phat "A Brief History of Rhyme" LP. Can download the free mp3 from mchawking.com or the MC Hawking section at mp3.com
The first is a french company that not many in the world have heard about:
e-acute [e-acute.fr], which uses one of the more unusual keyboards I have ever seen, which is a spoked wheel of penstrokes. I gave this a quick run through and it certainly is interesting, more so for very-small PDAs.
The second is the Palm keyboard replacement that I think is the best and a work of virtuosity, and certainly doesn't get the coverage it deserves. It is a free piece of software called VirtualKB [freewarepalm.net).
A guy named Gustavo Broos (I looked up his name on the 'About' screen so he gets some credit for this fine work) made a free Hack that lets a keyboard layout template be configured by the enduser instead of the Palm keyboard's default layout. Brilliantly thought out, with an improved cut/copy/paste/undo/redo/find micro-toolbar also across the top of the window. Works nice for international character sets too, so don't have to endlesslessly switch between the two keyboards. Also good for pre-OS 3.5 users (like myself) who want to use graffiti strokes while the keyboard is displayed.
I suppose one could map this IBM keyboard layout to a VirtualKB if they run out of stickers after being slashdotted:)
to pump up the number of people they can proclaim as the number of users that are already part of the exciting passport network: both to try to attrack other partners into the service, and marketing to the consumer of why they should sign up too, because so many others have.
Incidently, this is likely why Hotmail won't go too far out of its way to stop the spam coming into email addressboxes (by offering something like a brightmail-esque block), since it knows after a while the users will have an address so flooded with spam that they will just get a new passport registration ID, which will pump up the enrollment number they can quote in their marketing literature.
--- "And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."
Slashdot Mirror
The founder of the Onion was on Jay Leno a while back and discussed the problem at length.
He said that the biggest problem was email forwards from people who consider it a news release, and in the email there is not the rest of the onion's site for context, so people don't know it is a parody.
He said the 2 that generated the most amount of letters from concerned citizens, up to that point in time, was "Chinese woman gives birth to septuplets, doesn't know which one to keep" and "New York to install infant-only dumpsters".
I run an quite old laptop that came with Windows OS. I picked up the free K-Meleon (which despite the name, isn't for KDE):
K-Meleon on SourceForge
Stripped of bloat, Mozilla's rendering engine runs fast and light on a P133Mhz laptop with 16MB.
A sample screenshot is here:
Screenshot of UI and context menu
For comparison to Opera, I found: Opera 5 to be faster than K-Meleon, but with Opera 6, they were batting close to even.
K-Meleon images don't dither very well if set to 256 colours (often the case with older computers) because of a palette shift. Opera dithers them nicely
K-Meleon renders HTML better than Opera 6 (though Opera 6 does do a better job of difficult CSS than Opera 5).
Opera is a full suite of apps, with alot more features vs. K-Meleon, whereas K-Meleon is a browser and browser alone.
K-Meleon does let all the toolbars (URL, menu, URL bar) be placed in a single row to maximize screen real estate on a laptop.
K-Meleon doesn't have Opera-style tabs yet, which is about the one feature missed the most.
K-Meleon is Free.
Firstly, this is excellent news.
However, one thing that Sun must still address is how to increase their adoption in the corporate sector.
The reason why colleges are requested to stock Microsoft Office is that is what the businesses use to whom they are applying for jobs.
My last university, McMaster University used to stock nothing but Corel office (cheaper, helped to support a local business), but in about 1997, they bowed to student pressure to replace it with MS Office since the commerce/science/arts/etc students wanted to have the "strong proficiency with advanced Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Access" on their resumes to compete for their jobmarkets.
There is one flat rate ISP in Ireland. They charged a fairly expensive flat-rate for users, and signed up alot of users, becoming the largest in the country.
Then they just kicked off the people that were using it the most. They were allowed to get away with it, but the backlash from the disconnected customers (myself included) was high.
Here is the coverage on Wired from the incident:
Wired coverage of Ireland's flat-rate ISP kicking off its frequent users
Many are working to port PalmOS to PocketPC also.
Here is a in-depth review a while ago of one of the stronger offerings:
Review of alpha version of "PocketPalm"
Will be interesting to see if eBay will eventually start to list a destroyed Palm device (one that was run over, went through the washing machine, etc), as a few dollar item that contains a valid legal licence to a PalmOS ROM that can then be used to as an emulation in a non Palm devices.
Info for readers to learn more of what was really their greatest sin: the retroactive selling of customer's emails and phone numbers from the whois database.
The details:
-A complete copy of all the personal information in the whois database was sold.
-Each copy was sold for $10,000--made payable to the company.
-The list was retroactive, selling the info of all the existing customers, not just the new ones signing up after the sell announcement was made.
It doesn't seem to have been archived by many of the usual news outlets. Here is a coverage of it from the Washington Post at the time (about half way down is the mention of them selling the customer contact data to anyone wanting it):
Washington Post article
But this link is the real kicker: the VeriSign tagline motto, considering these types of shady dealings with their customers: The service-marked VeriSign tagline
..when they sold the email addresses of all their domain holders to the spammers (and spammers since they are of questionable legality then sold cheap knockoffs of the CDs to other spammers). Since the internic database of actual email addresses that their customers were using to be informed of changes/renewal notices to their domain names with them, it was an especially sleaze thing to do. I am glad that justice was delivered this time.
...is actually usually the dishrags used in many people's kitchen sinks. This cloth is used to rub down food from dishes, picking up food into the fibres. The damp cloth, with miniscule bits of food in it is then set out for the next time--the readily available water and substrate make it a haven for log growth of aerobic bacteria. These high counts are then available for the next washing. Cell counts can end up being very high if the dishrags are not changed.
More biochemistry trivia: at a public bathroom at the mall, there is 2x the number of infectious bugs on the walls in the female bathroom, since small children more often go with their mother to the washroom, and small children touch their eyes/mouth and then the wall with a high frequency.
One of these .
The usefulness of RealNames was when a most familiar brand did not match up with the domain name. For example: "Nissan" isn't at nissan.com
However, once Google was able to pick out the famous brand's website, automatically by reverse-citation, and then Google Toolbar, Mozilla, Opera put this searching direct from the browser url box, a type-in of "Nissan" into the browser's address bar search box would jump to nissanmotors.com directly, without the company having to pay any toll to RealNames at all.
Thus, RealNames long-term revenue prospects dried up. Closing up shop was inevitable.
I won't miss them much, as they had a policy of no generic keyword names, but then broke that policy every time one of their partner sites needed a generic keyword.
Dude that is superb. Thanks for the laugh. Moderators, could this have a few more +1 Funny's? Best wishes,
Robert
Date: 96-02-07 10:21:26 EST
From: chirosft@ix.netcom.com (Dr. D. Funk)
As a business owner for the past 30 years, I have never experienced such a simple strategy to create additional fast cash flow, which will not detract from or conflict with the way I run my present business. I have personally seen incomes ranging from $10,0000 to $22,000 per month within less than 120 days. I know that sounds ludicrous, as it did to me at first, but thank goodness that at this stage of my life I was still open-minded enough to listen to the FREE audio cassette, "Dead Doctors Don't Lie" (Learn how 300,000 people are being killed in Hospitals each year!)
If you are not experiencing a LOW STRESS , non-confrontational income producing method that has people calling you with orders for your products and asking to join your business, it's time to call me and request a free copy of the amazing tape, Dead Doctors Don't Lie. E-mail your request to chirosft@ix.netcom.com or Fax (916)-482-4256 with your complete name and mailing address. (Please include phone number in the event we don't understand your message)
What have you got to lose ?
Subj: Re: Heal
Date: 96-02-07 11:27:36 EST
From: Baked Ham
To: chirosft@ix.netcom.com
CC: Baked Ham
Boy, this offer sounds great! I'd love to get that free audio tape about dead doctors! Send it on! My e-mail address is bakedham@aol.com.
I need to ask you about your name, Dr. Funk. I once knew a DJ in New York City who went by the name of Doctor Funk. I realize "Dr. Funk" and "Doctor Funk" are two different names, but perhaps you shorten it for the sake of space? Or perhaps it's a pseudonym for your other business ventures?
Man, you were something. Playing that dance music the whole night long at your club, General Hospital. It took me a while to get THAT joke - you were the Doctor, and the club was your Hospital! Great one, Doctor Funk!
One time I remember this girl came in wearing a live snake, as girls will do in Grenwich Village. You yelled into your microphone (as you were wont to do), "Do we have any funky boys in this house?" And all the guys yelled, "YEAH!" Then you screamed, "Do we have any booty-shakin' girls in the house?" And all the ladies screamed, "YEAH!" Then you hollered, "Do we have any snakes in the house?!" And - as if on cue - the snake jumped out of the woman's arms and bit this guy on the ass. It was some sort of poisonous viper, and you had to stop the music and rush over to help the snake bite victim. Everyone wanted you to help the guy, but we found out you weren't a licensed doctor at all. It was just an act. I heard the guy eventually died, so maybe that's what your dead doctors tape is all about.
Doctor Funk, how has your career been since that guy died? Did you find another job? I heard the General Hospital eventually went out of business - is that true? How did you get the name Doctor Funk?
Send on that free tape, Doctor Funk! I'm eager to make more money!
John Myers Hargrave
From zug.com
Very sound points. This morning I thought of another possible reason, may have been to take a weekend day, when the US stock exchange was closed, so that there wouldn't be a sudden dramatic event right in the middle of the trading day that might start a sell, snowballing onwards.
"Considering that part of the propaganda campaign that bin Laden uses to try to recruit Muslims to terrorism is to try to make new recruits believe the falsehood that this is a holy war against Muslims by 'Crusaders and Zionists' (the words that he uses in his letters), and so try to try to fan the flames enough for them to become terrorists."
Bush made an unfortuate slip once of mentioning the campaign as a "crusade" which was used by the enemy to cast the war as a war among religions. Making the attack on Sunday, while certainly not intended by the Allied forces to fan the religious aspect, it unfortuately can be picked up by the enemy's propaganda to try to recuit more recruits to terrorism in the name of protecting their religion.
Considering part of the propaganda campaign of bin Laden terrorists is that this is a holy war by the 'Crusaders and Zionists', it is surprising that Bush would take then choose a Christian Sunday to go in and start to deliver justice.
Just as a mention: in log analysis, many site owners (and software--even top-of-line ones like MediaHouse) overlook the fact that since AOL uses a multi-proxy management system, there is usually 6-11 separate unique IP address entries in the log from the visitor using AOL. Therefore, each AOL browser entry (which gets grouped under MSIE-powered browsers) is marked as 6 to 11 times, instead of just once. If AOL does switch to Mozilla at a later date, it will make a hefty swing in the browser percentages, as reported by what browser unique visitors are using.
...MC Hawking's crib:
www.mchawking.com
I strongly recommend "Entropy" from MCHawking's mad-phat "A Brief History of Rhyme" LP. Can download the free mp3 from mchawking.com or the MC Hawking section at mp3.com
e-acute [e-acute.fr], which uses one of the more unusual keyboards I have ever seen, which is a spoked wheel of penstrokes. I gave this a quick run through and it certainly is interesting, more so for very-small PDAs.
The second is the Palm keyboard replacement that I think is the best and a work of virtuosity, and certainly doesn't get the coverage it deserves. It is a free piece of software called VirtualKB [freewarepalm.net).
A guy named Gustavo Broos (I looked up his name on the 'About' screen so he gets some credit for this fine work) made a free Hack that lets a keyboard layout template be configured by the enduser instead of the Palm keyboard's default layout. Brilliantly thought out, with an improved cut/copy/paste/undo/redo/find micro-toolbar also across the top of the window. Works nice for international character sets too, so don't have to endlesslessly switch between the two keyboards. Also good for pre-OS 3.5 users (like myself) who want to use graffiti strokes while the keyboard is displayed.
I suppose one could map this IBM keyboard layout to a VirtualKB if they run out of stickers after being slashdotted :)
Dude, that is superb. Thanks for the laugh. Moderators, could you please put this up to +5 (Sorry don't have any points today). Best wishes, Robert
Xena learned to act at the William Davis Centre (a picture/quote from her is currently on the front page).
The school was founded by William B. Davis, who is better known as X-file cult favorite, The Cigarette Smoking Man .
---
"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."
That has to be the best comment I've seen in months. Superb. Thanks for the laugh, man.
---
"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."
Incidently, this is likely why Hotmail won't go too far out of its way to stop the spam coming into email addressboxes (by offering something like a brightmail-esque block), since it knows after a while the users will have an address so flooded with spam that they will just get a new passport registration ID, which will pump up the enrollment number they can quote in their marketing literature.
---
"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."