The Demoroniser was nice in its time, but it assumes the output should be 7-bit ASCII, or ISO Latin-1 at best.
The Unmoroniser is an updated version that handles Unicode properly and will do things like convert proprietary Windows-only curly quotes to the appropriate HTML4 entities instead of dropping them back to less accurate, typographically offensive straight quotes. Same with ligatures and other characters that the Demoronizer would munge instead of convert.
I stumbled across this site a few months ago: Spam. Don't Buy It. It's an educational campaign to convince people not to buy stuff from spammers. There's a nice diagram of the spam business cycle, illustrating how few customers the spammer really needs to make a profit.
Given that he was at an Internet cafe, I do have to wonder why they let him stay for 50 hours straight. I'm not crazy enough to blame the cafe (though you know someone will), but it seems to me it would be in their interests to apply some sort of time limit -- even if it's ridiculous, like 24 hours -- and kick him off so that another customer can get at the computer. (And yes, I'm sure he would have just gotten back in line and grabbed the next computer available.)
That, and there's nothing in the article about food or water. Did he go three days without eating? It's certainly possible, though hardly healthy. Three days without drinking? That would've killed him even without the heart condition.
Sure it counts. And because nobody the Vikings knew was aware of it when they stumbled on Vineland 12,500 years later, that counts too. And since the Europeans (and the Asians, and the Africans) didn't know about it 500 years after that, Columbus' discovery also counts.
Or are you seriously going to claim that America's existence and location were common knowledge -- not speculation -- among anyone east of the Atlantic in 1491?
Yep. There was a time I could buy a CD, listen to it once, realize I really didn't like it, and return it.
In the post-Napster world, if you buy a crappy CD, you're SOL. The best you can do is turn around and sell it to a used dealer or on eBay or something. If you're lucky, you'll recoup 1/4 of your loss.
This of course discourages people from taking risks on buying CDs that might turn out to be garbage, resulting in a drop in CD sales. Hmm, isn't the RIAA complaining about a drop in CD sales?
In the 1950s, comics were targeted about the same as video games are being targeted today. (Horror comics would turn kids into delinquents, and Batman and Robin would turn them gay. I'm serious, these arguments were put forth. Google for "Seduction of the Innocent.") In order to avoid government regulation, all the publishers put together the Comics Code Authority, which basically meant all comics had to be G or PG. In theory you could publish a comic without the code seal, but no one would be willing to sell it.
25 years later, a Spider-Man (?) comic had a storyline about drugs. Obviously the drugs were bad in the story, but just *having* them violated the code. They decided to print it without the seal, and times had changed enough that they were able to sell it.
The 1980s saw a resurgence of horror comics, aimed at a slightly older audience and not rated by the Comics Code. Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing opened the door, which was followed by Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Grant Morrison's Invisibles, etc. At this point there were basically three tiers of mainstream comics: Code-approved, non-approved, and "Mature Readers," which basically translated to PG, PG-13 and R.
Around 2000, Marvel decided that the code was outdated, and they started printing movie-like ratings on their covers instead (even putting a "parental advisory" notice on their mature readers titles.)
Meanwhile, other publishers have chosen various ways to rate -- or not rate -- their own books. Some only label their "mature readers" books, with the idea that people can figure out whether the regular books are appropriate for their kids or not.
And of course, "underground" comics never really went away.
Unfortunately, even today a lot of people subscribe to the long-outdated "Comics are for kids!" belief, and people have actually been prosecuted -- and convicted -- for selling mature or adult comics to adults because they're obviously trying to corrupt children! There's actually an organization, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, dedicated to protecting artists, writers, store owners, etc. from this kind of attack. They've also weighed in on defamation and publicity suits -- there was one case involving a couple of parody characters who were the basis of a lawsuit by the people being parodied.
Given that I'm not even 30 and I already hate most of the music that teenagers listen to, I don't hold out much hope for escaping that fate, at least where culture is concerned.
I have higher hopes for keeping up with technology itself, but who knows? I've already missed the boat on things like text messaging. My phone can do it, I just don't use the feature.
Ah, but *their* music is now acceptable! You don't see parental advisory stickers on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
No doubt in 30 years GTA and the like will be thought of as quaint, and the teenagers will be playing something that scares the crap out of today's gamers.
"Filthy" novels, pre-code movies, comic books, Rock 'n' Roll, TV, video games... It's just a long line of easy "moral" targets for politicians to act like they're solving something instead of dealing with the actual problems.
If I had mod points I'd mod this post up. People trying to switch from one environment to another often forget that it took time to learn the one they've been using, and that sometimes ease of use -- or lack thereof -- is largely a matter of familiarity.
Wait. One part of the US government (the military) is looking to promote science. But it's off-topic to point out that other parts are trying to suppress or dilute it?
Yes, there is certainly more documentation about presidential appointees doing things like fudging scientific reports to make them more ideologically correct, but you can't deny that Bush and others in his administration -- as well as members of the same party in other branches of the government -- have been promoting an anti-intellectual climate. I mean, that was a selling point in last year's election! Do you want to vote for the good ol' boy from Texas, or that whiny intelectual from Massachusetts?
Give it a rest. No one in Europe, Asia, or Africa knew America existed in 1492. (And yes, I know there are theories about a possible Chinese expedition -- but if there was one, it seems to have been largely forgotten.) Suspected, maybe. But they didn't know. Columbus discovered America in the same sense that I once discovered a great Indian restaurant in San Diego. Other people knew about it -- other people ran it -- but it's something that I, not living in San Diego, was not aware of.
You can argue over whether Europe or America was more "civilized" until the cows fly home over the singing fat lady, but it doesn't change the fact that Columbus' voyages added a significant chunk of knowledge to Europe's understanding of geography.
Actually, if you want to get technical, history books were stating that Columbus "discovered" America for nearly 500 years before people decided to re-write them.
And yet that discovery was forgotten for 500 years.
It's kind of like the (possibly apocryphal) story about the guy who invented the telephone before Alexander Graham Bell, but didn't think it was useful enough to tell anyone about. Then Bell comes along, publishes and patents the invention, and completely transforms the way we communicate.
As with many things, it's not who did it first, but who impacted society. The Vikings set up a colony that eventually failed and was forgotten. As much as European scholars in Columbus' day suspected there might be land, sea, or something out there, they didn't know, and Columbus' voyage opened two new continents for exploration -- and yes, conquest -- by most of Europe.
I suppose it depends on where you live. In my apartment, I can usually see 4-5 wireless networks including my own. If you're far enough away from your neighbors that someone would have to walk into your house anyway, maybe it's less of an issue.
On the other hand, people have been making long-range antennas out of Pringles cans for several years. So distance doesn't count for as much as you might think.
Slashdot Mirror
The Demoroniser was nice in its time, but it assumes the output should be 7-bit ASCII, or ISO Latin-1 at best.
The Unmoroniser is an updated version that handles Unicode properly and will do things like convert proprietary Windows-only curly quotes to the appropriate HTML4 entities instead of dropping them back to less accurate, typographically offensive straight quotes. Same with ligatures and other characters that the Demoronizer would munge instead of convert.
http://rheme.net/unmoroniser/
I stumbled across this site a few months ago: Spam. Don't Buy It. It's an educational campaign to convince people not to buy stuff from spammers. There's a nice diagram of the spam business cycle, illustrating how few customers the spammer really needs to make a profit.
Reminds me of an old (by today's standards) joke:
The best thing about the web is that it allows anyone to publish.
The worst thing about the web is that it allows anyone to publish.
Isn't contribute to campaign something that other countries call bride?
No, they call it a bribe...
I suppose it depends on just how you're "contributing" to the campaign...
Given that he was at an Internet cafe, I do have to wonder why they let him stay for 50 hours straight. I'm not crazy enough to blame the cafe (though you know someone will), but it seems to me it would be in their interests to apply some sort of time limit -- even if it's ridiculous, like 24 hours -- and kick him off so that another customer can get at the computer. (And yes, I'm sure he would have just gotten back in line and grabbed the next computer available.)
That, and there's nothing in the article about food or water. Did he go three days without eating? It's certainly possible, though hardly healthy. Three days without drinking? That would've killed him even without the heart condition.
Why am I reminded of an episode of Coupling?
Hey, it's Slashdot. You can't expect half the readers to RTFA, why expect it of the submitter?
Sure it counts. And because nobody the Vikings knew was aware of it when they stumbled on Vineland 12,500 years later, that counts too. And since the Europeans (and the Asians, and the Africans) didn't know about it 500 years after that, Columbus' discovery also counts.
Or are you seriously going to claim that America's existence and location were common knowledge -- not speculation -- among anyone east of the Atlantic in 1491?
Yep. There was a time I could buy a CD, listen to it once, realize I really didn't like it, and return it.
In the post-Napster world, if you buy a crappy CD, you're SOL. The best you can do is turn around and sell it to a used dealer or on eBay or something. If you're lucky, you'll recoup 1/4 of your loss.
This of course discourages people from taking risks on buying CDs that might turn out to be garbage, resulting in a drop in CD sales. Hmm, isn't the RIAA complaining about a drop in CD sales?
Ugh! +5 points for using a well-known constant, -50 for giving it the wrong label, -1000 for using a term that doesn't even use the same units!
In the 1950s, comics were targeted about the same as video games are being targeted today. (Horror comics would turn kids into delinquents, and Batman and Robin would turn them gay. I'm serious, these arguments were put forth. Google for "Seduction of the Innocent.") In order to avoid government regulation, all the publishers put together the Comics Code Authority, which basically meant all comics had to be G or PG. In theory you could publish a comic without the code seal, but no one would be willing to sell it.
25 years later, a Spider-Man (?) comic had a storyline about drugs. Obviously the drugs were bad in the story, but just *having* them violated the code. They decided to print it without the seal, and times had changed enough that they were able to sell it.
The 1980s saw a resurgence of horror comics, aimed at a slightly older audience and not rated by the Comics Code. Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing opened the door, which was followed by Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Grant Morrison's Invisibles, etc. At this point there were basically three tiers of mainstream comics: Code-approved, non-approved, and "Mature Readers," which basically translated to PG, PG-13 and R.
Around 2000, Marvel decided that the code was outdated, and they started printing movie-like ratings on their covers instead (even putting a "parental advisory" notice on their mature readers titles.)
Meanwhile, other publishers have chosen various ways to rate -- or not rate -- their own books. Some only label their "mature readers" books, with the idea that people can figure out whether the regular books are appropriate for their kids or not.
And of course, "underground" comics never really went away.
Unfortunately, even today a lot of people subscribe to the long-outdated "Comics are for kids!" belief, and people have actually been prosecuted -- and convicted -- for selling mature or adult comics to adults because they're obviously trying to corrupt children! There's actually an organization, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, dedicated to protecting artists, writers, store owners, etc. from this kind of attack. They've also weighed in on defamation and publicity suits -- there was one case involving a couple of parody characters who were the basis of a lawsuit by the people being parodied.
I've often thought that a European person can't understand American culture, and this is why.
Are you kidding? From what I can tell, most Americans can't understand American culture.
Given that I'm not even 30 and I already hate most of the music that teenagers listen to, I don't hold out much hope for escaping that fate, at least where culture is concerned.
I have higher hopes for keeping up with technology itself, but who knows? I've already missed the boat on things like text messaging. My phone can do it, I just don't use the feature.
Ah, but *their* music is now acceptable! You don't see parental advisory stickers on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
No doubt in 30 years GTA and the like will be thought of as quaint, and the teenagers will be playing something that scares the crap out of today's gamers.
"Filthy" novels, pre-code movies, comic books, Rock 'n' Roll, TV, video games... It's just a long line of easy "moral" targets for politicians to act like they're solving something instead of dealing with the actual problems.
And it works, generation after generation.
If I had mod points I'd mod this post up. People trying to switch from one environment to another often forget that it took time to learn the one they've been using, and that sometimes ease of use -- or lack thereof -- is largely a matter of familiarity.
And don't forget http://badastronomy.com/
Please. Everyone knows you can't perform magic without a wand made from a unicorn tail hair or phoenix feather.
Take a trip to London, pick up a wand, and then maybe you'll be able to cast Magic Missile.
Kids today!
Ah, yes, the CSI Effect, by which laymen have come to expect instant miracles from forensics instead of a long, slow process of detection.
Wait. One part of the US government (the military) is looking to promote science. But it's off-topic to point out that other parts are trying to suppress or dilute it?
Yes, there is certainly more documentation about presidential appointees doing things like fudging scientific reports to make them more ideologically correct, but you can't deny that Bush and others in his administration -- as well as members of the same party in other branches of the government -- have been promoting an anti-intellectual climate. I mean, that was a selling point in last year's election! Do you want to vote for the good ol' boy from Texas, or that whiny intelectual from Massachusetts?
POTUS
Give it a rest. No one in Europe, Asia, or Africa knew America existed in 1492. (And yes, I know there are theories about a possible Chinese expedition -- but if there was one, it seems to have been largely forgotten.) Suspected, maybe. But they didn't know. Columbus discovered America in the same sense that I once discovered a great Indian restaurant in San Diego. Other people knew about it -- other people ran it -- but it's something that I, not living in San Diego, was not aware of.
You can argue over whether Europe or America was more "civilized" until the cows fly home over the singing fat lady, but it doesn't change the fact that Columbus' voyages added a significant chunk of knowledge to Europe's understanding of geography.
Actually, if you want to get technical, history books were stating that Columbus "discovered" America for nearly 500 years before people decided to re-write them.
And yet that discovery was forgotten for 500 years.
It's kind of like the (possibly apocryphal) story about the guy who invented the telephone before Alexander Graham Bell, but didn't think it was useful enough to tell anyone about. Then Bell comes along, publishes and patents the invention, and completely transforms the way we communicate.
As with many things, it's not who did it first, but who impacted society. The Vikings set up a colony that eventually failed and was forgotten. As much as European scholars in Columbus' day suspected there might be land, sea, or something out there, they didn't know, and Columbus' voyage opened two new continents for exploration -- and yes, conquest -- by most of Europe.
I suppose it depends on where you live. In my apartment, I can usually see 4-5 wireless networks including my own. If you're far enough away from your neighbors that someone would have to walk into your house anyway, maybe it's less of an issue.
On the other hand, people have been making long-range antennas out of Pringles cans for several years. So distance doesn't count for as much as you might think.