Look at it: The Scientfic Establishment thinks he's nuts.
Well, the scientific establishment is occasionally totally wrong, but usually they tend to have more of a clue about it than somebody who:
Mills says that with this new understanding he's produced clean and limitless energy and an entirely new class of materials and plasma that will reshape every industry in the coming decade. Mills also claims breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, cosmology, medicine, and perhaps even a form of gravitational jujitsu.
It looks like the sort of thing that people trying to set up a religious cult claim, rather than serious scientists who actually try to show some evidence. If his theory is that great and simple, why doesn't he have any working examples?
Though the topics he broaches could be coming from a B-movie mad scientist, Mills's cadences are more often like those of a motivational speaker.
Ahh, now this is sounding more like it. I think it's time for a gratitous link to today's userfriendly. Clearly the buzzword complience of his claims make him out to be in the marketing rather than technology end of the business.
Despite howls from the scientific establishment that Mills is a relic of the "cold fusion" trend quashed a decade ago, BlackLight Power Inc. has raised more than $25 million from about 150 investors.
Wow, ladies and gentlement, I believe we have a winner for the competition of where foolish investors will part with their money after the internet stocks die down.
OT: User interface consistency between programs
on
Mozilla M12 Released
·
· Score: 1
Me: The taskbar in Windows or the Mac's Finder menu help, but don't make up for the waste of screen real-estate by non-essential backing store.
You:You can simply resize the main Opera window and then re adjust the smaller web page windows inside the main window, or even maximize the web page you're most interested in.
That's fine until you open another window without the windows taskbar (OK, I'm being operating specific and pedantic here) knowing about it. This means that to switch between pages, I have to use the internal page switching mechanism of the software rather than the familiar ALT-TAB or start-bar click.
Yes, CTRL-TAB works fine for switching between them, and after a while it would become a habit if Opera was all that I used. It's switching habits between different programs on the same operating systemthat's the problem. Opera is not following the "usual" behaviour of programs in this environment (Windows).
I have the same problem with Textpad (which I love using, it's a breeze to use). Textpad at least provides an visual tab system which allows quick switching of documents as well as CTRL-TAB, but I still have to think, after first scanning the ALT-TAB list or the task bar for that other document I know I have open.
Sub-windows and CTRL-TAB for switching are an established part of the user interface too, but one that is used for switching between things in the same context. I consider two different web sessions to be different enough contexts to require greater separation.
I also frequently have a layout something like this (ascii art alert):
Where x might be a telnet session or a text editor where I'm copying and pasting bits and pieces, or even working on HTML which I'm then viewing in the browsers. With Opera, this is impossible.
Enough rantage though. What it boils down to is that I find applications with thier own backing space to be vastly annoying. They don't need to own the screen real-estate outside their own windows. I actually prefer the Mac's model (apart from allowing an application to be open without needing a window to be operational or a big backing thingamy) over Windows.
You:It looks to me like you're really looking for something negative to say.. especially with [statement about how download manager has been done before]
I think that download manager is a nifty thing, I was just pointing out that it's not a big factor in the decision I make when it comes time to pick a browser for today's slashdot read. The big ugly buttons at the top of Opera, the whole "double document" look and the smaller viewable area on my already crowded laptop screen are the big factors.
Random back on topic. Mozilla won't have these problems. Yay.
Me: The biggest problem with Opera is that it doesn't to table background colours (not even with stylesheets).
You:Have you got a URL that shows this?
Oops, allow me to insert foot into mouth here. I meant background images, honestly I did.
They claim to support background-images (per your link above). My example link (though the college page has them too) is http://css.tuu.utas.edu.au/~brong/opera.
As a side note: when you select white text on a white background in Opera, it doesn't separate the colours, so you still can't tell what it says without looking at the source. In IE it became aqua on white.
Little annoying things, but they make it hard to use at times.
Memory usage has been greatly reduced. Useage of Windows resources has also been reduced.
I've just installed it now (while using IE to write this) and the installer is rather clueless about the start menu (wanted to create yet another program group) but apart from that went fine. It feels slightly faster, but this could just be a placebo effect, and I haven't done any real testing.
The installer is 1.3 Mb in size (seriously small for a browser) and a registered version costs $35US or $18US for educational users. The pricing information for bulk purchases are also available. They explain why it's commercial. Hey, it convinced me to buy a copy - at this stage any decent browser competition is good.
We really need a standards-compliant browser out there ASAP so that web designers will stop producing pages that are compatible only with IE.
You could pronounce this as "So web designers will be able to produce standards-complient pages that work with anything.
When we built our College's web page earlier this year, we decided to go all out with style sheets and reduce the style markup in the HTML as much as possible. While IE rendered it reasonably well (with some irritating margin bugs which forced us back to tables anyway), Netscape made a horrid mess of it.
What we have now is a massive compromise with tables everywhere just to make things hold still as the page gets resized.
Every web designer who actually writes their own code rather than using the output of some braindead bloatware (use view source more often to be horrified) has been waiting for Mozilla just so that they can have a reference base to see how their page is supposed to look, before back-compatability cludging it.
If only Netscape/Mozilla had picked up the standards clue earlier!
I have a registered version of Opera on a Win98 machine here, along with IE5. I like it, but it's not quite complete yet. (Yes, I'm one of those people who uses Windows on the desktop and Linux on the server, though I'm ready to change once I find drivers for the junk in this laptop).
It doesnt have the same windowing scheme like other browsers, it opens up one big window, and then has smaller windows inside its workspace.
This is something that I have to say that I just find annoying. Having one big window just makes it harder to click quickly to other programs. The taskbar in Windows or the Mac's Finder menu help, but don't make up for the waste of screen real-estate by non-essential backing store.
My IE config uses one small bar across the bottom for address information/status bar and two thin bars across the top, one for menus and buttons, the other a nice long address bar. Opera uses twice this space.
The biggest problem with Opera is that it doesn't to table background colours (not even with stylesheets).
The nice thing about Mozilla (to get back on topic) is not only that it's multi platform and open source, but it's very configurable. I'm on a laptop with a small screen, I want every pixel of real-estate I can get. The start menu and similar bars already use enough (I hate things that move when I'm trying to concentrate elsewhere, so I've turned all popupness off). Oh yeah, and it follows standards better than anything else available. I had great fun with M11 for a while, but fell back to IE/Opera.
The download manageris kind of neat. All of your file downloads open up into a smaller window that shows the status of each..
IE4 for the Macintosh had one of those, and I'm sure I've seen other browsers with them too. Kind of handy, but hardly a new idea.
You purchase the Personal TV Receiver and sign up to receive the TiVo Personal TV Service.
So you need to sign up for something other than just a data feed so this thing can be used. A bit further down:
The Service works by making a nightly phone call to get the up-to-date program information it needs to function.
No mention of other ways you can obtain this information. It would be nicer if it could be collected from the signal stream (character recognition on the "upcoming shows" advertisements + AI = nice). It does say that the number called is toll-free, and if you pick up then it drops the connection and tries again later. "[the] daily phone calls generally last less than 5 minutes and happen at random times - usually at night". It still works without the phone connection, but only as a manual recorder (same as a VCR).
Oh no, we're in Buzzword[TM] land here. Season Passes[TM], Now Showing[TM], TiVo Suggestions[TM], TiVolution Magazine[TM], Thumbs Up[TM] and Thumbs Down[TM]. The gist being that these are things that let the system "suggest new shows that you might want to watch" and "keep you up-to-date on the latest movies and best programs from television's biggest networks".
At least "you can watch a pre-recorded show while recording a live broadcast. You can also split the video signal input to your television so that one program can be recorded while you're watching a different channel". That's fairly standard VCR fair though.
The different recording options are answered quite well "the receiver uses the MPEG II compression system that allows a range of video quality settings" and "the drive in the 14 hour receiver is 13.6 GB and in the 30 receiver is 27.2 GB".
As for long term storage, you can attach a VCR to the output and backup to that, but there's no built in VCR or Recordable DVD (drool). They explain "TiVo uses a special file system that prevents you from being able to transfer the digital data from the Personal TV receiver to a PC". The reasoning is partially FUD "This feature is intended to prevent the fragmentation and file corruption that can occur in commercial file systems..." followed by honesty "...and to protect the copyrights of the network broadcasters and content providers".
They claim to protect your privacy too: "Unlike personalized Internet services, TiVo does not require any information to be sent back. All the intelligence is contained within the receiver, assuring complete privacy to you".
But enough pasting the interesting bits, go read the FAQ yourself.
I'll be buying one of these about when they provide an Australian toll free number and programming information!
If you use a device beyond it's design life it will almost certainly fail.
s/design life/warranty period/;
I suppose you could claim that anything that lasts beyond its design life is over engineered by extention of that logic, and of course it will reduce the profits of the manufacturer if it keeps working beyond warranty, and hence doesn't need to be replaced.
Personally I prefer slightly over-engineered equipment for most situations, reliability is still important.
Hard drives have fine tolerances, and failures have to be expected (that's why we do backups, right).
In the end, all hardware sucks - all software sucks, but (to get back on topic) this particular product has paper specs which don't seem to suck much!
I thought the problem with ActiveX was that it was a security hazard for the browser -- the person doing the surfing -- and the browsing system. Ditto JavaScript. Can someone please explain to me how these tools are a threat to the servers and their hosting systems?
In this case I'd say it is because of internal use. Consider Internet Explorer - most people these days use it - holy wars aside, it is the best browser for standards complience that's available now. You can set security for 4 different areas:
Internet
Local Intranet
Trusted Sites
Restricted Sites
Their servers are likely to be in either (2) or (3) for most internal users, i.e. "dangerous" stuff will be allowed to run.
This allows your average "script kiddy" hax0r to break in and change some Javascript or ActiveX code and cause more damage than if the browsers are set to not trust the servers.
It does sound a bit far fetched though, since it doesn't stop the original defacement.
There is always "server side Javascript" in the Netscape server and other server side CGI and ASP style code that can introduce security risks, but that's not what they say.
You wouldn't believe the trouble we had getting Java code into mission control at JSC, because some misinformed security expert decided that Java == security threat. *sigh*
I'm acually quite impressed with the idea of Java, designing a language which is safe enough to use in most environments. It's still open to denial of service risks for the client (and the issue of trusted providers, but that's another rant entirely).
I just wish that the authors of the security nightmares mentioned above had the same commitment to safety over creaping featuritus.
Bron "Windows is the sandbox, just store important data safely somewhere else" Gondwana.
let alone a "spod", which might be a word particular to Great Britain, having only negative connotations.
I've seen it used on chat sites (at least the EW-Too based sites I used to frequent.) Spod was someone who spent far too much time online, often used in a friendly way. "G'day Bron you spod you. Thought I might find you here", or "See you're spodding again" type of thing.
To get back to the topic, I think that it's all about the context. If a word is used with the intention of hurting, it hurts. If it's being used between members of the group it refers to (frequently in an empowering way) it can have a bonding effect. "Wow, glad to find another geek here - thought I'd never find anyone worth talking to amongst these airheads".
Some words are used with the intention of hurting more than others, like nigger, wog, etc. Using these is generally a bad idea unless you know the audience doesn't mind.
By the same token, if someone uses a word that's offensive to you, it doesn't mean they're trying to hurt you. People often lose their sense of homour on sensitive issues. We all need to laugh at ourselves and lighten up occasionally.
Bron "and the stereotypes are usually funny and partially true anyway" Gondwana.
I think the mouse is probably the best general purpose pointing tool.
While one could argue that we only believe this because it's what we're used to, I'm inclined to agree with you.
It's a simple device you can flop your hand on and shove around, and for general pointering (not a word, I made it up) its accurate enough.
Mind if I use that word some time it sounds "cool"? Not only is it "accurate enough", but it's very easy to reach across and tap.
I don't know about other people out there, but I spend most of my time with both hands on the keyboard (you know, touch typing) and when I need to point at something[0] I like to be able to do so as quickly as possible, not pick something up and then start moving the pointer. The mouse does this nicely - just frob and move.
Holding a pen isn't a relaxed enough motion for me to ever use it for general pointering.
I'm sure that I'd get used to it if that was the only choice. As someone said a while back:
mouse - n. A device used to indicate which xterm you wish to type in next.
... or something like that, can't remember the attribution.
I suggest that something which can be operated with a foot is the logical way to go - allowing both hands to remain at rest in the "home row".
Bron "the touchpad on my Acer laptop sucks worse though" Gondwana.
Unfortunately this isn't a problem which is restricted just to NT Workstation, or to Microsoft products. It's actually a normal state of affairs for just about any system. Even (shock horror) linux systems tend to degrade over time.
As an example, I had a Redhat 5.1 server which was working perfectly well. I kept up to date with all the security updates, installed programs both from source code and from RPMs. It all worked perfectly well, but I could tell that things were slowly getting messier - different versions of binaries sitting around, compiled for different versions of the libraries.
In the end it became a choice between updating all the packages by hand, or installing from a later distribution and porting across all the config changes. I chose the latter because it is a fact that entropy increases in any system over time.
The difference between Microsoft products and most other systems is how long it takes to break down, and how drastic that breakdown is.
Bron "All hardware sucks, all software sucks - some just sucks more than others" Gondwana.
Hobart, TAS, Australia 22 Nov 1999 Following research published in the respected international computing journal Slashdot, the cereal research group Genetic Engineering Examiners (Kelloggs) from Kelloggs (the capital of crunch) are cutting through the FUD and evaluating the effect of genetic engineering on their fine range of products (including such favourites as Special K, All Bran and the Aussie breakfast "Wheat Bix").
Aim:
To examine the effect of Y2K on cereal products.
Method:
The following standard Y2K tests were applied:
Date rollover - both GM and "organic" products were sent forward to Y2K and examined as the date rolled over. Detractors argue that since the grain can't be bought back in time again, we won't know until it's too late anyway.
Black Box testing - samples of grain were sealed in a box which was then painted black. None of them sprouted. Detractors claim that this is a pointless test.
Source Code examination - a group of underpaid West Coast Tasmanians (used because they have 2 heads) spent hours cutting open seeds and poking around inside looking for evidence of 2 digit dates. Detractors claim that the researchers were innumerate, and wouldn't recognise a date if they saw it growing on a palm tree in an oasis
Conclusion:
A cost benefit analysis of the likelyhood of lawsuits from poisoned consumers shows that the likelyhood of surviving the poisoning is low enough and the costs of using organic grains high enough that there is a higher profit expecation in doing nothing.
Executive Recommendations:
Produce a movie about people being poisoned by GM foods with a plot full of holes and a romantic sideplot.
Create "community groups" which make clearly false claims about how planting a GM crop will make butterflies in China flap their wings and throw around buzzwords like "Chaos".
If anybody raises valid concerns, lump them in with the above and laugh at them.
Buy Organic "Vita Brits" for breakfast instead of "Wheat Bix".
Bron "you'd be paranoid too if they were out to get you" Gondwana.
You are running on a platform other than a PC or a Macintosh. Unless you run on one of these platforms, you will be unable to access FOX.com.
I just loaded it under Opera 3.60 on Win98 with no problems. It did point out that I'm missing RealPlayer G2 and Macromedia Flash Player though.
Loading under IE5 on Win95 (I have to VNC for the Opera machine) it installed VB Scripting and still provided the same message. The only difference I could see between the two was the extra colours because I was VNCing in 8bit mode.
Now linux: VNC in 8 bit mode again (Netscape 4.51/Export). I certainly see what you mean, it tells me this.
I especially love the button on the bottom of that page ("Return to fox.com - just bounces you back again!)
Tried changing the User Agent string (using junkbuster) to Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98) without success. Looked at the code and noticed that it's all done with Javascript. Turned off javascript - now the document "contains no data".
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the scientific establishment is occasionally totally wrong, but usually they tend to have more of a clue about it than somebody who:
Mills says that with this new understanding he's produced clean and limitless energy and an entirely new class of materials and plasma that will reshape every industry in the coming decade. Mills also claims breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, cosmology, medicine, and perhaps even a form of gravitational jujitsu.
It looks like the sort of thing that people trying to set up a religious cult claim, rather than serious scientists who actually try to show some evidence. If his theory is that great and simple, why doesn't he have any working examples?
Though the topics he broaches could be coming from a B-movie mad scientist, Mills's cadences are more often like those of a motivational speaker.
Ahh, now this is sounding more like it. I think it's time for a gratitous link to today's userfriendly. Clearly the buzzword complience of his claims make him out to be in the marketing rather than technology end of the business.
Despite howls from the scientific establishment that Mills is a relic of the "cold fusion" trend quashed a decade ago, BlackLight Power Inc. has raised more than $25 million from about 150 investors.
Wow, ladies and gentlement, I believe we have a winner for the competition of where foolish investors will part with their money after the internet stocks die down.
You: You can simply resize the main Opera window and then re adjust the smaller web page windows inside the main window, or even maximize the web page you're most interested in.
That's fine until you open another window without the windows taskbar (OK, I'm being operating specific and pedantic here) knowing about it. This means that to switch between pages, I have to use the internal page switching mechanism of the software rather than the familiar ALT-TAB or start-bar click.
Yes, CTRL-TAB works fine for switching between them, and after a while it would become a habit if Opera was all that I used. It's switching habits between different programs on the same operating systemthat's the problem. Opera is not following the "usual" behaviour of programs in this environment (Windows).
I have the same problem with Textpad (which I love using, it's a breeze to use). Textpad at least provides an visual tab system which allows quick switching of documents as well as CTRL-TAB, but I still have to think, after first scanning the ALT-TAB list or the task bar for that other document I know I have open.
Sub-windows and CTRL-TAB for switching are an established part of the user interface too, but one that is used for switching between things in the same context. I consider two different web sessions to be different enough contexts to require greater separation.
I also frequently have a layout something like this (ascii art alert):
+-------------------------------+
|+----------------+ |
||browser1 ||
|| |--+ |
|| |||
|| |----+|
|| |||
|+----------------+ ||
||x| ||
| +---|browser2 ||
| +---------------+|
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Where x might be a telnet session or a text editor where I'm copying and pasting bits and pieces, or even working on HTML which I'm then viewing in the browsers. With Opera, this is impossible.
Enough rantage though. What it boils down to is that I find applications with thier own backing space to be vastly annoying. They don't need to own the screen real-estate outside their own windows. I actually prefer the Mac's model (apart from allowing an application to be open without needing a window to be operational or a big backing thingamy) over Windows.
You: It looks to me like you're really looking for something negative to say.. especially with [statement about how download manager has been done before]
I think that download manager is a nifty thing, I was just pointing out that it's not a big factor in the decision I make when it comes time to pick a browser for today's slashdot read. The big ugly buttons at the top of Opera, the whole "double document" look and the smaller viewable area on my already crowded laptop screen are the big factors.
Random back on topic. Mozilla won't have these problems. Yay.
You: Have you got a URL that shows this?
Oops, allow me to insert foot into mouth here. I meant background images, honestly I did.
They claim to support background-images (per your link above). My example link (though the college page has them too) is http://css.tuu.utas.edu.au/~brong/opera.
As a side note: when you select white text on a white background in Opera, it doesn't separate the colours, so you still can't tell what it says without looking at the source. In IE it became aqua on white.
Little annoying things, but they make it hard to use at times.
Opera 3.61 is a minor update that provides greater stability and a few improvements:
- Opera 3.61 now works very well with Sun's Java plug-in version 1.3.
- Two security certificates have been updated--see our VeriSign certificate rollover page for more information.
- Cache handling has been improved.
- Memory usage has been greatly reduced. Useage of Windows resources has also been reduced.
I've just installed it now (while using IE to write this) and the installer is rather clueless about the start menu (wanted to create yet another program group) but apart from that went fine. It feels slightly faster, but this could just be a placebo effect, and I haven't done any real testing.The installer is 1.3 Mb in size (seriously small for a browser) and a registered version costs $35US or $18US for educational users. The pricing information for bulk purchases are also available. They explain why it's commercial. Hey, it convinced me to buy a copy - at this stage any decent browser competition is good.
You could pronounce this as "So web designers will be able to produce standards-complient pages that work with anything.
When we built our College's web page earlier this year, we decided to go all out with style sheets and reduce the style markup in the HTML as much as possible. While IE rendered it reasonably well (with some irritating margin bugs which forced us back to tables anyway), Netscape made a horrid mess of it.
What we have now is a massive compromise with tables everywhere just to make things hold still as the page gets resized.
Every web designer who actually writes their own code rather than using the output of some braindead bloatware (use view source more often to be horrified) has been waiting for Mozilla just so that they can have a reference base to see how their page is supposed to look, before back-compatability cludging it.
If only Netscape/Mozilla had picked up the standards clue earlier!
It doesnt have the same windowing scheme like other browsers, it opens up one big window, and then has smaller windows inside its workspace.
This is something that I have to say that I just find annoying. Having one big window just makes it harder to click quickly to other programs. The taskbar in Windows or the Mac's Finder menu help, but don't make up for the waste of screen real-estate by non-essential backing store.
My IE config uses one small bar across the bottom for address information/status bar and two thin bars across the top, one for menus and buttons, the other a nice long address bar. Opera uses twice this space.
The biggest problem with Opera is that it doesn't to table background colours (not even with stylesheets).
The nice thing about Mozilla (to get back on topic) is not only that it's multi platform and open source, but it's very configurable. I'm on a laptop with a small screen, I want every pixel of real-estate I can get. The start menu and similar bars already use enough (I hate things that move when I'm trying to concentrate elsewhere, so I've turned all popupness off). Oh yeah, and it follows standards better than anything else available. I had great fun with M11 for a while, but fell back to IE/Opera.
The download manageris kind of neat. All of your file downloads open up into a smaller window that shows the status of each..
IE4 for the Macintosh had one of those, and I'm sure I've seen other browsers with them too. Kind of handy, but hardly a new idea.
From How TiVo Works:
You purchase the Personal TV Receiver and sign up to receive the TiVo Personal TV Service.
So you need to sign up for something other than just a data feed so this thing can be used. A bit further down:
The Service works by making a nightly phone call to get the up-to-date program information it needs to function.
No mention of other ways you can obtain this information. It would be nicer if it could be collected from the signal stream (character recognition on the "upcoming shows" advertisements + AI = nice). It does say that the number called is toll-free, and if you pick up then it drops the connection and tries again later. "[the] daily phone calls generally last less than 5 minutes and happen at random times - usually at night". It still works without the phone connection, but only as a manual recorder (same as a VCR).
Oh no, we're in Buzzword[TM] land here. Season Passes[TM], Now Showing[TM], TiVo Suggestions[TM], TiVolution Magazine[TM], Thumbs Up[TM] and Thumbs Down[TM]. The gist being that these are things that let the system "suggest new shows that you might want to watch" and "keep you up-to-date on the latest movies and best programs from television's biggest networks".
At least "you can watch a pre-recorded show while recording a live broadcast. You can also split the video signal input to your television so that one program can be recorded while you're watching a different channel". That's fairly standard VCR fair though.
The different recording options are answered quite well "the receiver uses the MPEG II compression system that allows a range of video quality settings" and "the drive in the 14 hour receiver is 13.6 GB and in the 30 receiver is 27.2 GB".
As for long term storage, you can attach a VCR to the output and backup to that, but there's no built in VCR or Recordable DVD (drool). They explain "TiVo uses a special file system that prevents you from being able to transfer the digital data from the Personal TV receiver to a PC". The reasoning is partially FUD "This feature is intended to prevent the fragmentation and file corruption that can occur in commercial file systems..." followed by honesty "...and to protect the copyrights of the network broadcasters and content providers".
They claim to protect your privacy too: "Unlike personalized Internet services, TiVo does not require any information to be sent back. All the intelligence is contained within the receiver, assuring complete privacy to you".
But enough pasting the interesting bits, go read the FAQ yourself.
I'll be buying one of these about when they provide an Australian toll free number and programming information!
s/design life/warranty period/;
I suppose you could claim that anything that lasts beyond its design life is over engineered by extention of that logic, and of course it will reduce the profits of the manufacturer if it keeps working beyond warranty, and hence doesn't need to be replaced.
Personally I prefer slightly over-engineered equipment for most situations, reliability is still important.
Hard drives have fine tolerances, and failures have to be expected (that's why we do backups, right).
In the end, all hardware sucks - all software sucks, but (to get back on topic) this particular product has paper specs which don't seem to suck much!
In this case I'd say it is because of internal use. Consider Internet Explorer - most people these days use it - holy wars aside, it is the best browser for standards complience that's available now. You can set security for 4 different areas:
- Internet
- Local Intranet
- Trusted Sites
- Restricted Sites
Their servers are likely to be in either (2) or (3) for most internal users, i.e. "dangerous" stuff will be allowed to run.This allows your average "script kiddy" hax0r to break in and change some Javascript or ActiveX code and cause more damage than if the browsers are set to not trust the servers.
It does sound a bit far fetched though, since it doesn't stop the original defacement.
There is always "server side Javascript" in the Netscape server and other server side CGI and ASP style code that can introduce security risks, but that's not what they say.
You wouldn't believe the trouble we had getting Java code into mission control at JSC, because some misinformed security expert decided that Java == security threat. *sigh*
I'm acually quite impressed with the idea of Java, designing a language which is safe enough to use in most environments. It's still open to denial of service risks for the client (and the issue of trusted providers, but that's another rant entirely).
I just wish that the authors of the security nightmares mentioned above had the same commitment to safety over creaping featuritus.
Bron "Windows is the sandbox, just store important data safely somewhere else" Gondwana.
I've seen it used on chat sites (at least the EW-Too based sites I used to frequent.) Spod was someone who spent far too much time online, often used in a friendly way. "G'day Bron you spod you. Thought I might find you here", or "See you're spodding again" type of thing.
To get back to the topic, I think that it's all about the context. If a word is used with the intention of hurting, it hurts. If it's being used between members of the group it refers to (frequently in an empowering way) it can have a bonding effect. "Wow, glad to find another geek here - thought I'd never find anyone worth talking to amongst these airheads".
Some words are used with the intention of hurting more than others, like nigger, wog, etc. Using these is generally a bad idea unless you know the audience doesn't mind.
By the same token, if someone uses a word that's offensive to you, it doesn't mean they're trying to hurt you. People often lose their sense of homour on sensitive issues. We all need to laugh at ourselves and lighten up occasionally.
Bron "and the stereotypes are usually funny and partially true anyway" Gondwana.
While one could argue that we only believe this because it's what we're used to, I'm inclined to agree with you.
It's a simple device you can flop your hand on and shove around, and for general pointering (not a word, I made it up) its accurate enough.
Mind if I use that word some time it sounds "cool"? Not only is it "accurate enough", but it's very easy to reach across and tap.
I don't know about other people out there, but I spend most of my time with both hands on the keyboard (you know, touch typing) and when I need to point at something[0] I like to be able to do so as quickly as possible, not pick something up and then start moving the pointer. The mouse does this nicely - just frob and move.
Holding a pen isn't a relaxed enough motion for me to ever use it for general pointering.
I'm sure that I'd get used to it if that was the only choice. As someone said a while back:
mouse - n. A device used to indicate which xterm you wish to type in next.
I suggest that something which can be operated with a foot is the logical way to go - allowing both hands to remain at rest in the "home row".
Bron "the touchpad on my Acer laptop sucks worse though" Gondwana.
Unfortunately this isn't a problem which is restricted just to NT Workstation, or to Microsoft products. It's actually a normal state of affairs for just about any system. Even (shock horror) linux systems tend to degrade over time.
As an example, I had a Redhat 5.1 server which was working perfectly well. I kept up to date with all the security updates, installed programs both from source code and from RPMs. It all worked perfectly well, but I could tell that things were slowly getting messier - different versions of binaries sitting around, compiled for different versions of the libraries.
In the end it became a choice between updating all the packages by hand, or installing from a later distribution and porting across all the config changes. I chose the latter because it is a fact that entropy increases in any system over time.
The difference between Microsoft products and most other systems is how long it takes to break down, and how drastic that breakdown is.
Bron "All hardware sucks, all software sucks - some just sucks more than others" Gondwana.
Aim:
To examine the effect of Y2K on cereal products.
Method:
The following standard Y2K tests were applied:
- Date rollover - both GM and "organic" products were sent forward to Y2K and examined as the date rolled over. Detractors argue that since the grain can't be bought back in time again, we won't know until it's too late anyway.
- Black Box testing - samples of grain were sealed in a box which was then painted black. None of them sprouted. Detractors claim that this is a pointless test.
- Source Code examination - a group of underpaid West Coast Tasmanians (used because they have 2 heads) spent hours cutting open seeds and poking around inside looking for evidence of 2 digit dates. Detractors claim that the researchers were innumerate, and wouldn't recognise a date if they saw it growing on a palm tree in an oasis
Conclusion:A cost benefit analysis of the likelyhood of lawsuits from poisoned consumers shows that the likelyhood of surviving the poisoning is low enough and the costs of using organic grains high enough that there is a higher profit expecation in doing nothing.
Executive Recommendations:
- Produce a movie about people being poisoned by GM foods with a plot full of holes and a romantic sideplot.
- Create "community groups" which make clearly false claims about how planting a GM crop will make butterflies in China flap their wings and throw around buzzwords like "Chaos".
- If anybody raises valid concerns, lump them in with the above and laugh at them.
- Buy Organic "Vita Brits" for breakfast instead of "Wheat Bix".
Bron "you'd be paranoid too if they were out to get you" Gondwana.I just loaded it under Opera 3.60 on Win98 with no problems. It did point out that I'm missing RealPlayer G2 and Macromedia Flash Player though.
Loading under IE5 on Win95 (I have to VNC for the Opera machine) it installed VB Scripting and still provided the same message. The only difference I could see between the two was the extra colours because I was VNCing in 8bit mode.
Now linux: VNC in 8 bit mode again (Netscape 4.51/Export). I certainly see what you mean, it tells me this.
I especially love the button on the bottom of that page ("Return to fox.com - just bounces you back again!)
Tried changing the User Agent string (using junkbuster) to Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98) without success. Looked at the code and noticed that it's all done with Javascript. Turned off javascript - now the document "contains no data".
Decided I don't really want to see fox.comanyway!
Oh - lynx version 2.8.1rel.2 just gives [EMBED] for / and blank for /frameset.html.