So in a nutshell, Windows7 is rebranded Vista SP2. That in itself is fine with me, since SP2 is about when Microsoft O/Ses get stable enough for production use. And the taskbar and other UI changes generally look to be an improvement.
However, the big concern many, including myself, have with Windows7, is DRM... is it overloaded with DRM that limits software usefulness / degrades performance?
Looks like a blotch of random colors. I had no idea there was a lowercase "g" in it until I read the article here.
IMHO, the old favicon was much better - knew right away what it was. A bunch of random colors brings to mind websites about photoshopping, psychology (think blotch tests), or even a pet supply site, since it looks kinda like a paw print.
In the near future, with digital cameras getting smaller and better, it's only a matter of time before many people have a tiny video camera in the frame of their eye glasses, or on a necklace, or even perhaps, woven into their clothing, which is recording all the time, with occasional auto-saves to the internet.
The airlines get sued all the time. Doesn't make any bit of difference. The law and court system are tilted in the airline's favor. Expect to spend decades in litigation, and likely collect little to nothing when it's all done.
Heck, many of the airlines have been sued numerous times for keeping people on grounded planes for many hours and yet nothing changes - still numerous instances of people being held against their will for many hours on planes with no effective recourse beyond maybe getting a discount voucher for another flight, etc.
Rambling on... bottom line is it will take people in large numbers demanding change before it happens. Until then the airlines will do pretty much whatever they want with impunity.
I recently downgraded from Comcast's Digital Premier to Limited Basic. My monthly cable bill for both TV and internet has gone from a whopping $227 to a more reasonable $60.
I'm amazed how little I miss - most of the channels I watched before, such as the networks, I still get. And the internet and other non-TV entertainment more than makes up for the rest.
Cable TV's pricing structure is increasingly becoming unsustainable with ever increasing carriage fees for channels that many people don't want or can live without.
It's only a matter of time, especially as TV and internet converge, some cable companies will choose to drop carriage of many channels and instead simply redirect to the channel's internet website.
They may, but in doing so could demand possession of the meteorite.
The meteorite, depending on what's left of it and its composition, could easily be worth far more than the property damage.
A quality meteorite is akin to money raining from the sky. If a nice big one ever hits my property, the first thing I'd do is secure it and shop the meteorite to perspective buyers.
Captchas are user unfriendly and relatively ineffective.
A more effective route is to require a new user to submit their postal address and a phone number. Then the service mails a post card containing a verification code to the postal address and/or calls the phone number. Google does this for AdSense publishers.
Nothing new about people stealing copper and other metals.
Heck, I recall back 20 years ago reading an article in my local small city newspaper about a guy being electrocuted trying to take down a seemingly abandoned looking powerline in a deeply wooded area that turned out to be live; the ultimate punishment for theft.
The drug war has continued to esculate, and is the main driving force, made worse by the economic downturn, for the increase in such metal thefts.
Decriminalizing / legalizing drugs, along with medical treatment would go a long way towards reducing the despiration tactics many drug addicts resort to for their next "high".
On a related topic, I live near Philadelphia - it's been widely in the news lately that city is going to cut 11 libraries and close most all of the swimming pools for a total combined savings of several million...
And yet, at the same time, it appears they continue to fight the drug war along with most all other cities at ever increasing expense; often little to no discussion of cutting jails and prisons - often the exact opposite, even in the bad economic times.
Rambling on, but again, in the view of many, the drug war is the driving force for much of the property crime, such as metal theft.
eBay today isn't the same type of place as 6 months ago. So much has changed; it's essentially a just facade of its former self.
eBay sellers have been leaving in droves, and there have been more glitches, some quite serious, on both eBay and PayPal lately.
It would have been more interesting to see such an article discussing parallel efficiency gain at say Amazon or some other large retailer whose business model / activity level had remained similar during the time period being measured.
Just registered deletionism.com, and then on second thought realize that deletionist.com was likely the far more valuable one...
"Deletionist" sounds like a new 21st century occupation, involving one or more of the following:
* Spam filtering and deletion * Extranous information removal (ie. the wikipedia sections being discussed) * Sanatizing information stores * On-line reputation management
Regardless, IMHO, "Deletionist" is highly brandable - intiutive name for a website offering deletion related services. Welcome thoughts.
The Earth's rotation varies somewhat unpredictably and thus there's no simple way of automatically adding/subtracting leap seconds without observation first.
Communications, such as cellular phone networks, often depend on very precise syncronized timing.
Many states spend huge sums, often in the millions of dollars, to seek out and eradicate wild, naturally growing cannabis. And they still can't beat cannabis - much of it keeps growing back no matter what they do.
What's so sad, is that many governments spend lots of money in their quest to eradicate cannabis, which directly kills no one... and yet they spend little to nothing to eradicate truly deadly weeds, such as Jimson Weed (Datura stramonium), which directly kills numerous people, often teens, every year. The drug war is all about money and control, not safety... but I digress.
When I first read this news several days ago, I thought it was referring to the root servers...
What most don't know is that the TLDs (ie. com,.net, etc) themselves are registered in much the same manner as 2nd level domains are... see the TLD Whois: http://whois.iana.org/
The major TLDs (.com,.net, etc) are relatively safe, since any changes would likely be difficult to get through - with any changes quickly noticed... as in within minutes, or even seconds; likely wouldn't even be that effective, since the most popular TLDs zone dns entries are heavily cached.
However, ccTLDs are a different story completely, since ccTLD zone name server changes are more common and thus such change requests would be far less scrutinized.
I've never heard of any TLD being hijacked, but could likely be easily done, since the social engineering involved would be very similar. A frightening prospect.
Set the values to 6 if unsure - going even higher may speed things up more, but may be poor netiquette...
Welcome thoughts on what the ideal value is? -and does an excessively high value say like 20 truly cause problems for servers?... or are most servers configured to limit concurrent connections per client already?
The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is considering vending machines for wine.
Users will have to register for the ability to use the machine, then put their ID / hand / arm into the machine each time, plus will be remotely monitored during the process.
Or do a hurricane dance, and let nature do its thing...
Having all their servers in Tampa, FL (of all places given hurricanes, frequent lightning, flooding, etc there) doesn't seem too smart - I would have thought, given Wikipedia's popularity, their servers would be geographically spread out in multiple locations.
Though to do that adds a level of complexity and costs that even many for-profit ventures, such as Slashdot, likely can't afford / justify; Slashdot's servers are in one place - Chicago... to digress a bit, I notice this site's accessibility (ie. more page not found / timeouts lately) has been spotty since the servers move.
Such punishment may have made sense 10 years ago when the internet was a novelty / toy to most people. But today, many people rely on the internet for basic everyday needs, such as communication, employment, paying bills, filing taxes, etc.
More and more our society is becoming little more than a glorified ant farm for the government's voyeurist enjoyment - manipulating and watching us little ants roam around in our daily routines, while every so often throwing some monkey wrench into the works for some excitement.
I've met numerous security folks over the years who have acknowledged often using security cameras for their personal pleasure, such as stalking and voyeurism.
The news report is correct in the aspect that the rovers crashed haphazardly to the surface unlike the Phoenix which soft-landed in a controlled manner - the previous being the twin Viking probes in 1976.
Ironic to read that Experian is complaining about LifeLock's practices when, in my view, Experian itself engages in deception far worse with their costly FreeCreditReport.com website that many people confuse with the truly free AnnualCreditReport.com.
They do plan for it - and is the reason "grids" came about in the early days of electricity... industrial loads tend to run somewhat opposite times of residential loads, and thus much of the time, base-plants, despite often not being that scaleable, can economically cover much of the load without problem.
So while people use more power at night, many industrial users tend to use less, so it evens out most of the time.
The tricky time is late afternoon / early evening where peak loads can occasionally spike significantly requiring the extended use of peaking power plants, such as gas fired units to cover the shortfall at much higher expense...
However, on many grids in the U.S., most days, such peaks are not a big issue... it's typically only extreme cold or hot weather that leads to excessively high peak loads, though many transmission operators mitigate such extreme situations by directing industrial users to shed load and/or slight voltage reduction.
Slashdot Mirror
8 more pages per issue (48 to 56) is what I've read.
The change to quarterly shifts their nearly inevitable demise a little further into the future; to next year, if they're lucky.
Ron
So in a nutshell, Windows7 is rebranded Vista SP2. That in itself is fine with me, since SP2 is about when Microsoft O/Ses get stable enough for production use. And the taskbar and other UI changes generally look to be an improvement.
However, the big concern many, including myself, have with Windows7, is DRM ... is it overloaded with DRM that limits software usefulness / degrades performance?
Ron
Looks like a blotch of random colors. I had no idea there was a lowercase "g" in it until I read the article here.
IMHO, the old favicon was much better - knew right away what it was. A bunch of random colors brings to mind websites about photoshopping, psychology (think blotch tests), or even a pet supply site, since it looks kinda like a paw print.
Ron
The truly "green" products are those that aren't made to begin with.
Reducing global human population growth would go far further at conserving the environment than all this "green" nonsense combined.
Ron
In the near future, with digital cameras getting smaller and better, it's only a matter of time before many people have a tiny video camera in the frame of their eye glasses, or on a necklace, or even perhaps, woven into their clothing, which is recording all the time, with occasional auto-saves to the internet.
Ron
The airlines get sued all the time. Doesn't make any bit of difference. The law and court system are tilted in the airline's favor. Expect to spend decades in litigation, and likely collect little to nothing when it's all done.
Heck, many of the airlines have been sued numerous times for keeping people on grounded planes for many hours and yet nothing changes - still numerous instances of people being held against their will for many hours on planes with no effective recourse beyond maybe getting a discount voucher for another flight, etc.
Rambling on ... bottom line is it will take people in large numbers demanding change before it happens. Until then the airlines will do pretty much whatever they want with impunity.
Ron
I recently downgraded from Comcast's Digital Premier to Limited Basic. My monthly cable bill for both TV and internet has gone from a whopping $227 to a more reasonable $60.
I'm amazed how little I miss - most of the channels I watched before, such as the networks, I still get. And the internet and other non-TV entertainment more than makes up for the rest.
Cable TV's pricing structure is increasingly becoming unsustainable with ever increasing carriage fees for channels that many people don't want or can live without.
It's only a matter of time, especially as TV and internet converge, some cable companies will choose to drop carriage of many channels and instead simply redirect to the channel's internet website.
Ron
From my understanding, many LED tail lamps are pulsed to vary their brightness, since it's easier / cheaper to do than a steady reduction in power.
Often dimmer the LED tail lamps, the worse the flicker; virtually unnoticeable at maximum brightness, such as when the brakes are applied.
Ron
They may, but in doing so could demand possession of the meteorite.
The meteorite, depending on what's left of it and its composition, could easily be worth far more than the property damage.
A quality meteorite is akin to money raining from the sky. If a nice big one ever hits my property, the first thing I'd do is secure it and shop the meteorite to perspective buyers.
Ron
Captchas are user unfriendly and relatively ineffective.
A more effective route is to require a new user to submit their postal address and a phone number. Then the service mails a post card containing a verification code to the postal address and/or calls the phone number. Google does this for AdSense publishers.
Ron
Nothing new about people stealing copper and other metals.
Heck, I recall back 20 years ago reading an article in my local small city newspaper about a guy being electrocuted trying to take down a seemingly abandoned looking powerline in a deeply wooded area that turned out to be live; the ultimate punishment for theft.
The drug war has continued to esculate, and is the main driving force, made worse by the economic downturn, for the increase in such metal thefts.
Decriminalizing / legalizing drugs, along with medical treatment would go a long way towards reducing the despiration tactics many drug addicts resort to for their next "high".
On a related topic, I live near Philadelphia - it's been widely in the news lately that city is going to cut 11 libraries and close most all of the swimming pools for a total combined savings of several million...
And yet, at the same time, it appears they continue to fight the drug war along with most all other cities at ever increasing expense; often little to no discussion of cutting jails and prisons - often the exact opposite, even in the bad economic times.
Rambling on, but again, in the view of many, the drug war is the driving force for much of the property crime, such as metal theft.
Ron
Representative, Representative, Representative ... Operator, Operator, Operator ... Help, Help, Help ... (hangup in disgust)
Hope google has better luck with this than others have.
Ron
eBay today isn't the same type of place as 6 months ago. So much has changed; it's essentially a just facade of its former self.
eBay sellers have been leaving in droves, and there have been more glitches, some quite serious, on both eBay and PayPal lately.
It would have been more interesting to see such an article discussing parallel efficiency gain at say Amazon or some other large retailer whose business model / activity level had remained similar during the time period being measured.
Ron
Just registered deletionism.com, and then on second thought realize that deletionist.com was likely the far more valuable one...
"Deletionist" sounds like a new 21st century occupation, involving one or more of the following:
* Spam filtering and deletion
* Extranous information removal (ie. the wikipedia sections being discussed)
* Sanatizing information stores
* On-line reputation management
Regardless, IMHO, "Deletionist" is highly brandable - intiutive name for a website offering deletion related services. Welcome thoughts.
Ron
The Earth's rotation varies somewhat unpredictably and thus there's no simple way of automatically adding/subtracting leap seconds without observation first.
Communications, such as cellular phone networks, often depend on very precise syncronized timing.
Ron
Yes! And does so quite well :)
Many states spend huge sums, often in the millions of dollars, to seek out and eradicate wild, naturally growing cannabis. And they still can't beat cannabis - much of it keeps growing back no matter what they do.
What's so sad, is that many governments spend lots of money in their quest to eradicate cannabis, which directly kills no one ... and yet they spend little to nothing to eradicate truly deadly weeds, such as Jimson Weed (Datura stramonium), which directly kills numerous people, often teens, every year. The drug war is all about money and control, not safety ... but I digress.
Ron
When I first read this news several days ago, I thought it was referring to the root servers ...
What most don't know is that the TLDs (ie. com, .net, etc) themselves are registered in much the same manner as 2nd level domains are ... see the TLD Whois: http://whois.iana.org/
The major TLDs (.com, .net, etc) are relatively safe, since any changes would likely be difficult to get through - with any changes quickly noticed ... as in within minutes, or even seconds; likely wouldn't even be that effective, since the most popular TLDs zone dns entries are heavily cached.
However, ccTLDs are a different story completely, since ccTLD zone name server changes are more common and thus such change requests would be far less scrutinized.
I've never heard of any TLD being hijacked, but could likely be easily done, since the social engineering involved would be very similar. A frightening prospect.
Ron
Just raised mine to 6 (supposedly the new preset value in IE8) ... restarted browser, and the difference is amazing!
It's not that my connection is any faster, but rather there's less latency when viewing sites / opening new windows/tabs.
Instructions for increasing it in IE...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282402
Set the values to 6 if unsure - going even higher may speed things up more, but may be poor netiquette...
Welcome thoughts on what the ideal value is? -and does an excessively high value say like 20 truly cause problems for servers? ... or are most servers configured to limit concurrent connections per client already?
Ron
The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is considering vending machines for wine.
Users will have to register for the ability to use the machine, then put their ID / hand / arm into the machine each time, plus will be remotely monitored during the process.
Check out the pic of it - comical!
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20080615_Convenience__LCB-style_.html
Ron
Or do a hurricane dance, and let nature do its thing...
Having all their servers in Tampa, FL (of all places given hurricanes, frequent lightning, flooding, etc there) doesn't seem too smart - I would have thought, given Wikipedia's popularity, their servers would be geographically spread out in multiple locations.
Though to do that adds a level of complexity and costs that even many for-profit ventures, such as Slashdot, likely can't afford / justify; Slashdot's servers are in one place - Chicago ... to digress a bit, I notice this site's accessibility (ie. more page not found / timeouts lately) has been spotty since the servers move.
Ron
Such punishment may have made sense 10 years ago when the internet was a novelty / toy to most people. But today, many people rely on the internet for basic everyday needs, such as communication, employment, paying bills, filing taxes, etc.
Ron
More and more our society is becoming little more than a glorified ant farm for the government's voyeurist enjoyment - manipulating and watching us little ants roam around in our daily routines, while every so often throwing some monkey wrench into the works for some excitement.
I've met numerous security folks over the years who have acknowledged often using security cameras for their personal pleasure, such as stalking and voyeurism.
Ron
The news report is correct in the aspect that the rovers crashed haphazardly to the surface unlike the Phoenix which soft-landed in a controlled manner - the previous being the twin Viking probes in 1976.
Ron
Ironic to read that Experian is complaining about LifeLock's practices when, in my view, Experian itself engages in deception far worse with their costly FreeCreditReport.com website that many people confuse with the truly free AnnualCreditReport.com.
Ron
They do plan for it - and is the reason "grids" came about in the early days of electricity ... industrial loads tend to run somewhat opposite times of residential loads, and thus much of the time, base-plants, despite often not being that scaleable, can economically cover much of the load without problem.
... it's typically only extreme cold or hot weather that leads to excessively high peak loads, though many transmission operators mitigate such extreme situations by directing industrial users to shed load and/or slight voltage reduction.
So while people use more power at night, many industrial users tend to use less, so it evens out most of the time.
The tricky time is late afternoon / early evening where peak loads can occasionally spike significantly requiring the extended use of peaking power plants, such as gas fired units to cover the shortfall at much higher expense...
However, on many grids in the U.S., most days, such peaks are not a big issue
Ron