In the beginning the Social Security Number was issued by the government and is unique to each living citizen. This much still holds true.
In the beginning, the SSN was used to locate the file drawer containing your file, which was then located by name in that drawer. There was no requirement for uniqueness, and it was not intended to be personal identifier at all.
Just tried reading about Reveal from Galeon 2.0.1. The mozilla site says
Incompatible Extension or Extension No Longer Available
. Apparently, the Mozilla addon site keys off the HTTP_USER_AGENT, and modifies the results accordingly. Except that if your goal is to persuade other people to switch your browser, or at least inform them about it, shouldn't you let users of other browsers at least read about its features?
FWIW, if I use the search function (searching in extensions) from Galeon, the results returned have &application=Galeon appended to the URL, which seems to me to confirm that it is user-agent dependent.
Or check out the open dialog used for importing bookmarks into the latest Mozilla.
Gnome2 is the epitome of this question, not necessarily in look/feel, but in abstracting things away, burying preferences in themes, oversimplifying, and removing options.
Bill Could Rule Out Open Source Voting Software
on
More E-Voting SNAFUs
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Risks Digest is reporting that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D - CA) will introduce a bill requiring stringent background checks on all electronic voting company employees who work with voting software.
Propenents of Open Source solutions for electronic voting systems should be concerned about this. I see no mention of this at Boxer's website, so it's hard to say exactly how this might be worded. But clearly, the process of performing and verifying such a vetting could be problematic for a distributed, volunteer development effort. Would it be just the "official" maintainers who would be subject to such constraints, or would such requirements require that patches submitted by non-vetted contributors be rejected purely on those grounds? My concern is that voting software should be evaluated and put into use on technical grounds, and in the pursuit of using the best available methods, we shouldn't be placing barriers into place which preclude the selection of well-written software.
Confusion between what is an "assault weapon" and flat out fully automatic machine guns which have been heavily regulated for years. The M-16 is not an "assault weapon", neither under the legal definition nor under your own. So did you call the M-16 an assault weapon because you're one of the ignorant masses whose fallen for all the propaganda they've heard?
Ignorance, eh?
OK, I don't know where the U of Mich. got their data, but the term "assault rifle" predates any of the recent anti-gun hysteria in the U.S. The various anti-gun groups, media, et. al. co-opted the term from the military, where it has a precise definition, presumably because the guns they wish to regulate most are either based upon military designs, or resemble them. Any "legal" (i.e. civilian law) re-definition of the term to include firearms incapable of full-auto operation is an adoption of the original hyperbole of the anti-gun crowd.
So, let's here from James Chambers, executive director of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute:
An assault weapon is a machine gun -- that [means] fully-automatic, and that is a military firearm," he said, explaining that assault rifles, by definition, fire multiple bullets with each pull of the trigger.
In fact, according to my friends from the military, it specifically refers to a "select-fire" weapon, i.e. one which can be switched from semi- to full-auto operation.
The M-16, and it's derivates, are exactly the sort of weapons the military is talking about with the term.
If you have read the Dan Simmons "Hyperion" books, think the Shrike. It's shiny, spiky, ultra-violent and can control time, making it possible to be omnipresent.
The Denver Post
is reporting on speculation the Microsft wants to invest $3 bilion to $5 billion in AT&T if the division goes it alone. (AT&T is considering selling off its broadband division. Bidders include AOL, Comcast, and Cox.)
You don't say why they refused your e-mail forms. I'm assuming you used one of their web-generated cut/paste forms, or something like that. When I couldn't modify my record due to e-mail authentication problems, I scanned my driver's license, and attached that to an e-mail. Did the trick, and then I promptly transferred to OpenSRS, via my ISP.
Not necessarily. I started working with computers in 1981. In 1992, I tried a trackball out at home, and quickly developed RSI, and I've had it ever since. Reason being that moving the ball, for me anyway, involves more finger actuation than the mouse, since positioning the mouse can use arm motions in addition to finger motion. Using arm motion to move a trackball means your hands are then in a different position relative to the trackball, which could make using the buttons awkward.
As a consultant, I get paid based on my hourly rate, with a minimum 15 minutes if the pager goes off, minimum 1 hour if I have to go in to the office, with the clock running door-to-door. If the company takes your time, they should compensate you - period. Whether that's in the form of compensatory time off, or payroll, you shouldn't stand for anyone taking your time this way, without fair compensation.
Hmmm, sounds like the sort of guy I might have met at a DECUS symposium.
Essentially, RT-11 served as an OS dedicated to running your program, and only your program. Your program became a part of the OS itself - equivalent to doing a linux kernel build, and including it as part of the kernel - not a module. Except there was no runtime program loader - your code got pulled in and executed when the machine booted the OS.
Actually, the term "single-user" is useful only metaphorically. RT-11 (like DOS) wouldn't know how to authenticate anything from a login point of view.
Easy. Go to the web; buy a case, mobo, AMD CPU, a hard drive or two, some RAM, a video card, floppy, CD, mouse, keyboard, and a monitor. Put them all together.
Ok, a little shameless self-promotion, and some of it is out-of-date, but still, I've been complaining about this stuff for years.
I want to be able to protect various browser components from manipulation. Simple. Don't let any web author change the function of the [BACK], [HOME], and [EXIT] buttons!
I once got trapped in a site which had used the JavaScript On_Close event to open a new browser window when I exited Netscape. Oh, and please keep my status line displaying real status messages (and latch them, please), instead of ridiculous messages from somebody's scrollit applet, or mouseover spam.
Oh, one more thing, a javascript.allow and javascript.deny type of management for which sites get it on and off.
Since I'm living time backwards, all the prior posts on this topic are in my future. Hey, a first post!
I actually think Orson Scott Card's "ansible" network is a better parallel for a truly vast distributed environment, and ASP network. Been a while since I've been through the Ender series, though. Add being "jacked in", along with automatic trusted status for ".cab" files, and you can run WindBloze3000 in your head.
"Your head has turned 3 degrees left. Please re-boot your brain for this change to take effect."
This is actually short hand for "Cttt", drawing on the fact that the octothorpe symbol (i.e. #) is a small tick-tack-toe game, and the lowercase "t" resembles a + sign. Ergo, C+++, or "C tick-tack-toe".
The impact of noise on cetaceans has been little studied. However, from the evidence that is available there are reasons to be concerned that their normal behaviour may be interrupted or otherwise adversely affected. They may also be displaced from areas that are of importance to them. Impacts may occur over tens and sometimes even hundreds of kilometres. The difficulty involved in detecting impacts does not mean that they are not occurring or that they are not of significance.
Amen. The prevailing direction of web design, and HTML standards, has been away from the original concept of HTML. IIRC (can't find a link at the moment), the manner of display was supposed to be determined by the browser. Fer example, according to Zeldman, you can now turn off link underlining. This is the reverse of the underline tag, but is just as bad. Isn't a document's utility as hypertext subverted if linked text isn't identifiable? This also subverts the user preferences (underlining is settable in Netscape). Style sheets and JavaScript also contribute to this problem. Why is this a good thing, Mr Zeldman?
What can you expect from a culture which is either incapable of distinguishing, or indifferent to, the difference between a modem and a router. Even precise technical terms like "modem" can lose their meanings - at least in common usage, when they get migrated from their original environment.
Mathematicians cringe when people use "precise" in place of "accurate", and vice-versa. How about "tidal wave" for "tsunami", "venue" in any non-legal context, and "assault weapon" for anything that even remotely looks like a modern military assault rifle.
You can't expect better treatment for what are, after all, slang terms.
Regarding dictionaries, I gave up on them when they started describing "anxious" and "eager" as synonymous.
Other than that, ditto on the consititency argument. Then make it easy to customize for the power users. One of my Linux gripes is that in my.Xresources file, if I want to make all scrollbars wider, there are about 5 different widget sets for which I have to specify settings - if I want them all consistent.
I heartily second the suggestion for better maintenance of bookmarks. Netscape's single-pane bookmark editor just doesn't cut it. A two-pane editor (folders in one, URLs in the other) would be a vast improvment (are you listening, Mozilla?). Then, add the ability to search your bookmarks without openning the edit window, with the results displayed in the browser as links.
As far as indexing the web goes, until the robots/spiders get much more sophisticated, I don't see much hope. Take a look at just about any web page showing up in the top 10 of an Altavista Search. You'll see that the author has spammed the index. The situation which will continue to cycle is that as search engines become more sophisticated, authors will figure out how to exploit the rules, and spam the index. As much as I like Google, I tend to stay with Altavista, because I can easily exclude sex/porno terms from any search, using the minus sign operator. I have to do this with almost all web searches I do.
I say index only on META tags, and ignore any over 80 characters. This will help elimate bogus hits from pages which include half the dictionary at the bottom of a page.
Another thing the search engines could do is figure out how to ignore "trolling" pages. i.e. those which are nothing but index spam, a catchy title, and a refresh tag to ship your browser off to fetch their actual main page (usually porn). Eliminating these "waste" pages from the index will make a search of it faster, and present the user with fewer irrelevant pages.
Slashdot Mirror
In the beginning the Social Security Number was issued by the government and is unique to each living citizen. This much still holds true.
In the beginning, the SSN was used to locate the file drawer containing your file, which was then located by name in that drawer. There was no requirement for uniqueness, and it was not intended to be personal identifier at all.
FWIW, if I use the search function (searching in extensions) from Galeon, the results returned have &application=Galeon appended to the URL, which seems to me to confirm that it is user-agent dependent.
Too late. For example, Where have all my preferences gone?.
Or check out the open dialog used for importing bookmarks into the latest Mozilla.
Gnome2 is the epitome of this question, not necessarily in look/feel, but in abstracting things away, burying preferences in themes, oversimplifying, and removing options.
Propenents of Open Source solutions for electronic voting systems should be concerned about this. I see no mention of this at Boxer's website, so it's hard to say exactly how this might be worded. But clearly, the process of performing and verifying such a vetting could be problematic for a distributed, volunteer development effort. Would it be just the "official" maintainers who would be subject to such constraints, or would such requirements require that patches submitted by non-vetted contributors be rejected purely on those grounds? My concern is that voting software should be evaluated and put into use on technical grounds, and in the pursuit of using the best available methods, we shouldn't be placing barriers into place which preclude the selection of well-written software.
Ignorance, eh?
OK, I don't know where the U of Mich. got their data, but the term "assault rifle" predates any of the recent anti-gun hysteria in the U.S. The various anti-gun groups, media, et. al. co-opted the term from the military, where it has a precise definition, presumably because the guns they wish to regulate most are either based upon military designs, or resemble them. Any "legal" (i.e. civilian law) re-definition of the term to include firearms incapable of full-auto operation is an adoption of the original hyperbole of the anti-gun crowd.
So, let's here from James Chambers, executive director of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute:
In fact, according to my friends from the military, it specifically refers to a "select-fire" weapon, i.e. one which can be switched from semi- to full-auto operation.
The M-16, and it's derivates, are exactly the sort of weapons the military is talking about with the term.
Hey, they must be decent if Nathan Torkington uses them.
The Denver Post is reporting on speculation the Microsft wants to invest $3 bilion to $5 billion in AT&T if the division goes it alone. (AT&T is considering selling off its broadband division. Bidders include AOL, Comcast, and Cox.)
You don't say why they refused your e-mail forms. I'm assuming you used one of their web-generated cut/paste forms, or something like that. When I couldn't modify my record due to e-mail authentication problems, I scanned my driver's license, and attached that to an e-mail. Did the trick, and then I promptly transferred to OpenSRS, via my ISP.
Not necessarily. I started working with computers in 1981. In 1992, I tried a trackball out at home, and quickly developed RSI, and I've had it ever since. Reason being that moving the ball, for me anyway, involves more finger actuation than the mouse, since positioning the mouse can use arm motions in addition to finger motion. Using arm motion to move a trackball means your hands are then in a different position relative to the trackball, which could make using the buttons awkward.
As a consultant, I get paid based on my hourly rate, with a minimum 15 minutes if the pager goes off, minimum 1 hour if I have to go in to the office, with the clock running door-to-door. If the company takes your time, they should compensate you - period. Whether that's in the form of compensatory time off, or payroll, you shouldn't stand for anyone taking your time this way, without fair compensation.
Hmmm, sounds like the sort of guy I might have met at a DECUS symposium.
Essentially, RT-11 served as an OS dedicated to running your program, and only your program. Your program became a part of the OS itself - equivalent to doing a linux kernel build, and including it as part of the kernel - not a module. Except there was no runtime program loader - your code got pulled in and executed when the machine booted the OS.
Actually, the term "single-user" is useful only metaphorically. RT-11 (like DOS) wouldn't know how to authenticate anything from a login point of view.
Easy. Go to the web; buy a case, mobo, AMD CPU, a hard drive or two, some RAM, a video card, floppy, CD, mouse, keyboard, and a monitor. Put them all together.
Install Linux.
Simple.
- Jed's Netscape Rant
- Jed's JavaScript Rant
Ok, a little shameless self-promotion, and some of it is out-of-date, but still, I've been complaining about this stuff for years.I want to be able to protect various browser components from manipulation. Simple. Don't let any web author change the function of the [BACK], [HOME], and [EXIT] buttons!
I once got trapped in a site which had used the JavaScript On_Close event to open a new browser window when I exited Netscape. Oh, and please keep my status line displaying real status messages (and latch them, please), instead of ridiculous messages from somebody's scrollit applet, or mouseover spam.
Oh, one more thing, a javascript.allow and javascript.deny type of management for which sites get it on and off.
TIA, Mozilla.
I mean, how am I supposed to do an alt-meta-shift-control-z? Oh wait, I don't have emacs on my PalmPilot, yet.
How can I not reply to this?
Since I'm living time backwards, all the prior posts on this topic are in my future. Hey, a first post!
I actually think Orson Scott Card's "ansible" network is a better parallel for a truly vast distributed environment, and ASP network. Been a while since I've been through the Ender series, though. Add being "jacked in", along with automatic trusted status for ".cab" files, and you can run WindBloze3000 in your head.
"Your head has turned 3 degrees left. Please re-boot your brain for this change to take effect."
This is actually short hand for "Cttt", drawing on the fact that the octothorpe symbol (i.e. #) is a small tick-tack-toe game, and the lowercase "t" resembles a + sign. Ergo, C+++, or "C tick-tack-toe".
Just something to think about.
Amen. The prevailing direction of web design, and HTML standards, has been away from the original concept of HTML. IIRC (can't find a link at the moment), the manner of display was supposed to be determined by the browser. Fer example, according to Zeldman, you can now turn off link underlining. This is the reverse of the underline tag, but is just as bad. Isn't a document's utility as hypertext subverted if linked text isn't identifiable? This also subverts the user preferences (underlining is settable in Netscape). Style sheets and JavaScript also contribute to this problem. Why is this a good thing, Mr Zeldman?
Let's see them revoke microsoft.com and msn.com!
Isn't that an improper practice?
Mathematicians cringe when people use "precise" in place of "accurate", and vice-versa. How about "tidal wave" for "tsunami", "venue" in any non-legal context, and "assault weapon" for anything that even remotely looks like a modern military assault rifle.
You can't expect better treatment for what are, after all, slang terms.
Regarding dictionaries, I gave up on them when they started describing "anxious" and "eager" as synonymous.
Visit the Interface hall of shame
Other than that, ditto on the consititency argument. Then make it easy to customize for the power users. One of my Linux gripes is that in my .Xresources file, if I want to make all scrollbars wider, there are about 5 different widget sets for which I have to specify settings - if I want them all consistent.
- But I might tup a lawyer soon?
- But I might take a legal stance?
- But I make the absolutely loveliest statues?
- belching in my turbid aliotropic lateral sypnapses?
- But I make trolling a listener sport?
Was bedeutet "BIMTALS"?As far as indexing the web goes, until the robots/spiders get much more sophisticated, I don't see much hope. Take a look at just about any web page showing up in the top 10 of an Altavista Search. You'll see that the author has spammed the index. The situation which will continue to cycle is that as search engines become more sophisticated, authors will figure out how to exploit the rules, and spam the index. As much as I like Google, I tend to stay with Altavista, because I can easily exclude sex/porno terms from any search, using the minus sign operator. I have to do this with almost all web searches I do.
I say index only on META tags, and ignore any over 80 characters. This will help elimate bogus hits from pages which include half the dictionary at the bottom of a page.
Another thing the search engines could do is figure out how to ignore "trolling" pages. i.e. those which are nothing but index spam, a catchy title, and a refresh tag to ship your browser off to fetch their actual main page (usually porn). Eliminating these "waste" pages from the index will make a search of it faster, and present the user with fewer irrelevant pages.