If I run an application that strategically blocks advertisements, how is this any different from what this company is doing? In my case, someone else paid money for that particular ad to be presented, and I'm "overlaying" (more like overriding) it with another piece of information (a randomly generated quote). I think the court ruled correctly, as the user took action to install this program (whether he paid attention to the click-through license or not). I would think that, if the court ruled the other way, that would open up many popup blockers / advertisement blockers to various lawsuits.
Now, as to the issue of the click through license -- I wonder what other way we could do such a thing? Perhaps legal mandates stating that all applications / tools / utilities from 3rd parties must be plainly presented the user? The problem, of course, is that this would be a local (at best) solution, and, it would, I think, just create some wierd variant of that type of advertisements, probably doing more harm than good.
ATTN: Paul, got some contacts (check your e-mail)
on
RAID for Zero-G?
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· Score: 1, Informative
Paul, hello, I've just sent an e-mail from my work address. I've got some contacts for you in the Balitimore area. If you would like a sales rep to call, please reply with your contact information via e-mail and I'll pass the info right along, and pass you some names / numbers / e-mail addresses as well.
Q: The Famicom (NES) recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary, your thoughts?
Fortunately, many people have the chance to enjoy it. It became impossible to procure a fixed number of parts to continue manufacturing the console, so production will stop this year. Our intention however is to keep the Famicom alive. There were clearly masterpieces of software available for it, and we're examining how we can keep those titles alive with today's technology.
Are they still making the FamiCom (NES, whatever)? I really, really one want one of the top loading variety... If I can get it new, I'd be one happy geek. I've been a Nintendo convert since my first NES back in the day.
Anyone ever read Game Over, a book about the rise (and fall) of Nintendo? It's a great read, giving loads of history and insight into the game maker, and the business (and fun) of gaming. Check out the amazon.com entry for it here. By the way, I snipped off the extra bits of the URL, so there's no referral code, or session ID.
It's more like the "cool" mentality. People drive $60,000 luxury vehicles because they're ultra-well built, have all sorts of whiz-bang features, and not too many other folks have one. It's arguable that a $20,000 Honda may more dependable than a $40,000 Lincoln or whatever, but in general, people don't buy the Lincoln soley for transportation.
Ditto for $3000 computers. Someone came up with the parallel that Apple is the BMW of computers. This article takes that and runs with it. The 17" sells because of its wow factor. If you've got a client you're trying to impress, nothing works better than a 23" cinema display or a 17" TiBook.
It really doesn't matter if they shoehorned the display in or not, as long as it does its job, and the computer has the necessary cool factor.
The Toshiba corporation released the machine, which is singular, since Toshiba is a corporate entity. The should read "Toshiba has announced..."
At least that's what they taught me in the central US.
Re:Hitchikers Guide 2 Galaxy
on
Does Google = God?
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· Score: 4, Informative
You know, there really is a Guide. Check out http://www.h2g2.com for the content. They even put the "Don't Panic" text on the page. You can join as a researcher, and publish your own little snippets. Oddly enough, there's some useful information there. It's sort of a twisted blog for some, a slashdot for others, and a wacky Encyclopedia Galactica for others.
First, I have a cell phone. I've had various cell phones since 1995. It's not some new whiz-bang toy to me. My current PCS phone service is simply that. Phone service, voicemail, 3-way calling, and a few other things. No SMS, no Wireless Web. The only feature I want right now is a modem attachment for my laptop.
Now, about the article. Did anyone else get the feeling that turning off a cell phone would be the end of the world? This SMS spam thing might be good thing. I won't have to listen to so many damn annoying ringers when I'm sitting in a public place. What happened to the good old pleasant chirps / rings?
Dammit, I'm SO very close to building a PCS phone jammer. So very close. In fact, the only reason I haven't is that they're HIGHLY illegal. I'm fed up with people that constantly take calls, chatting about idle nonsense. I don't mind those people that actually take / make calls to get / send information. It's the ones that talk on the phone just to talk that get to me. Just yesterday, I was standing in line at a local fastfood place, and some woman just in front of me in line spent the entire time she was standing there gossiping with a friend about a 3rd friend. I don't need to know that! Sometimes, a cluebat would come in handy... It's as if some people think you can't hear their side of the conversation, when they're standing 3 feet away from you! She was even rude enough to keep the phone to her ear while she placed her order. She even asked the guy at the register to hold on a sec, while she finished listening to whatever juicy bit of gossip. I SWEAR.
Dammit, that felt good. People need to rant and rave every now and again, even if they're screaming into a vacuum.
A sister topic would also be to take into account the acoustical properties of the box. It's great if the box is ultra-cool, but if they sound like a Cessna at takeoff, then you've got problems, especially if you've got offices near your data center, or if you're scattering a bunch of these machines throughout an open office environment.
I'd like to know how the various OEMs, VARs, and ISPs handle this. I know of several companies that offer various types of maintenence contracts that also happen to cover NT4, since their product is based on that OS. Most companies that might be concerned about this probably bought a "Solution" from one of the big name companies, which included both hardware and software, so they may or many not be affected. The little guys, however, might have some trouble, especially if their servers are just white boxes that they built up themselves...
It's semi-distributed, in that users install a small plugin for Outlook, adding "block" and "unblock" buttons to the tool bar. The entire community of users works against spammers.
It works well. When I check my mail, I can watch the 50 or so spams I get daily pop into my inbox, and then promptly fly right back out again.
(Blatantly stolen from Spamnet's Learn More page) When the message comes in, SpamNet generates a unique fingerprint of that message. The fingerprint is a one-way hash, or unique string of numbers that represents the email and can absolutely NOT be decoded.
This unique fingerprint of the message is sent to the server where it asks the database if this message is spam. The server comes back to the client with a confidence level of how sure it is that the message is spam by checking it with the other fingerprints in the database.
If the same signature has been reported to the SpamNet database, this indicates that the message is spam and it is consequently moved from the member's Inbox to the Spam folder.
If a spam slips through, the SpamFighter can use the "Block" button (vs. delete) to remove it from their inbox and report it to SpamNet to help themselves and the community. Again a unique fingerprint of the body of the message is generated and sent back to the server. Here is where TeS, or the trust system comes into play to ensure that only valid spam messages are blocked. SpamNet looks at the reputation of the person that blocked the message and depending on their individual trust rating; a confidence level is applied to that message to decide whether it should be blocked for the entire community. Each person starts with a zero trust rating and generates trust based on several factors including how accurate their reports are and the number of reports overtime. This process happens instantly taking less than 3 minutes to stop a spam message that's new to the system for the entire community.
Okay, If you want to store data on the drive, it's a REALLY bad idea. Incredibly bad, in fact. On current HDDs the fly height of the head is incredibly small. Check out an excellent primer on the subject from Storage Review at http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/op/ heads/opHeight.html. The graphic's at the bottom's the important bit. I work with the guys that used to design these things. Unless you have access to a clean room (and even then it's iffy) this is a Bad Idea.
You should do what I do, and set up a "tar pit" on your website, with a bunch of bogus randomly generated e-mail addresses, and links back to itself. On last count, I've handed out over 100,000 false e-mail addresses.
Re:How's about and update for 1st gen Windows IPod
on
New iPod Firmware Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
Well, it's a spin on what usually happens to Apple owners. I can remember waiting months and months for certain apps and games to come out on Apple. And of course, there's quark, which just now released a new version.
The 4 Mhz & 48kB comment made me think of embedded systems programming. If you want that sort of challege again, try programming a Motrola 68HC11. If you're feeling up to it, do it in assembly.
The internet took off. I think what happened was that most of the people on the net in the ICQ era were gearheads of some sort, and were able to use the features. In the mid-to-late 90's, the net reached into John Q. Public's home, who doesn't give a damn about all sorts of features, and AIM began to grow. Now, AIM, next to cell phones and SMS, is the basically a way for teens today to flirt with each other, mostly because of AOL. If a fair percentage of your friends were on AIM, wouldn't you use it too?
They have a great selection, including, among other things, "speciality" items, such as documentaries and concerts. For example, if I'm interested in "The Rights of Autumn," the College Football Documentary, I doubt Blockbuster would have that in stock. With netflix, I can grab discs 1 through 3 (with my account -- you get more with more expensive accounts). Watch those as I have time, and send them back in time to get the rest of the discs.
* 22.2-inch viewable image area * 3840 x 2400 addressability (QUXGA-W) * 9.2 million total pixels, 204 pixel density per inch (80 per cm) * 16.7 million colors, 8-bit drivers * Two models, one with a modified graphics adapter, and one with DVI cables for attachment to DVI graphics adapters * Tilt stand * Detachable Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) standard mount size (100 mm) stand * Available in stealth black
This sucker requires four DVI connectors. Check out the various reviews.
One problem we've run in to here is CD's floating around with people's notes on them, past exams, homework solutions, and other goodies on them.
I'm not sure if it's against the student code, but that's against my own morals. That sort of returns to my other post's point that it depends on the quality of the students, whether this is an issue or not.
I'm pursuing an accelerated masters in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, and will be starting my 4th of 5 total years in August.
Well, I was thinking of a couple of specific examples. In all of these courses, the professors have posted their own notes online in various formats, usually PDF or PPT. What usually happens is people will either bring in a laptop and just make extra notes every now and again ON the soft copy notes themselves. Generally, my experience has been that those are much more interactive classes, where the students tend to ask more questions and challenge the instructor to more than read his or her notes off of a screen, since they have all of the reference material a few keystrokes away.
Addressing your points: 1. Noise: You used to get random IM's popping up, but most people are decent enough now to not launch IM. Those that do interrupt class are usually in lower level courses, where you get random goofballs with no consideration for others.
Heck, one time I remember a guy getting thrown out of a class for surfing porn during a lecture. The large lecture-style courses have people fiddling with text messages on cell phones anyway. It just depends on the calibre student you get. After the end of the 2nd year, we usually have weeded the future MIS and Business Majors out of the Engineering College.
2. Stability: Use a relatively solid OS, such as Win2k or XP.
3. Diagrams are a bit of trick. I have a tablet, so I'm sort of a special case. I can just pivot the screen and start scribbling. What a lot of people do is draw the diagram on paper, and make some sort of reference number / filing system up to keep track of it.
The situation you described is a cinch on tablet PC, by the way. For that matter, the tools we learn include layout applications, so if the prof starts sketching out a design, I usually have a much nicer version fresh out of Cadence or Xilinx much faster than those that have to sit there and sketch out wires and whatnot.
The faculty, in some cases, aren't evolving with it. I've had some faculty members that welcomed laptops in the classroom, for example. We have a wireless network, whihch makes it incredibly to take notes, and actually pay attention in class, rather than scribble furiously and pray that you can understand it later.
Some, on the other hand (primarily faculty in the Liberal Arts fields, from my experience), don't want anything to do with the net. We have a couple of online course management solutions that let students track grades, turn in assignents, etc. online. I've had classes where the professor use it to distribute 1 thing: the syllabus.
At OU, we've got a fairly progressive faculty (at least in the College of Engineering), I just feel sorry for those stuck in a place where everything's done by the book. literally.
Slashdot Mirror
If I run an application that strategically blocks advertisements, how is this any different from what this company is doing? In my case, someone else paid money for that particular ad to be presented, and I'm "overlaying" (more like overriding) it with another piece of information (a randomly generated quote). I think the court ruled correctly, as the user took action to install this program (whether he paid attention to the click-through license or not). I would think that, if the court ruled the other way, that would open up many popup blockers / advertisement blockers to various lawsuits.
Now, as to the issue of the click through license -- I wonder what other way we could do such a thing? Perhaps legal mandates stating that all applications / tools / utilities from 3rd parties must be plainly presented the user? The problem, of course, is that this would be a local (at best) solution, and, it would, I think, just create some wierd variant of that type of advertisements, probably doing more harm than good.
Paul, hello, I've just sent an e-mail from my work address. I've got some contacts for you in the Balitimore area. If you would like a sales rep to call, please reply with your contact information via e-mail and I'll pass the info right along, and pass you some names / numbers / e-mail addresses as well.
Q: The Famicom (NES) recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary, your thoughts?
Fortunately, many people have the chance to enjoy it. It became impossible to procure a fixed number of parts to continue manufacturing the console, so production will stop this year. Our intention however is to keep the Famicom alive. There were clearly masterpieces of software available for it, and we're examining how we can keep those titles alive with today's technology.
Are they still making the FamiCom (NES, whatever)? I really, really one want one of the top loading variety... If I can get it new, I'd be one happy geek. I've been a Nintendo convert since my first NES back in the day.
Anyone ever read Game Over, a book about the rise (and fall) of Nintendo? It's a great read, giving loads of history and insight into the game maker, and the business (and fun) of gaming. Check out the amazon.com entry for it here. By the way, I snipped off the extra bits of the URL, so there's no referral code, or session ID.
It's more like the "cool" mentality. People drive $60,000 luxury vehicles because they're ultra-well built, have all sorts of whiz-bang features, and not too many other folks have one. It's arguable that a $20,000 Honda may more dependable than a $40,000 Lincoln or whatever, but in general, people don't buy the Lincoln soley for transportation.
Ditto for $3000 computers. Someone came up with the parallel that Apple is the BMW of computers. This article takes that and runs with it. The 17" sells because of its wow factor. If you've got a client you're trying to impress, nothing works better than a 23" cinema display or a 17" TiBook.
It really doesn't matter if they shoehorned the display in or not, as long as it does its job, and the computer has the necessary cool factor.
The Toshiba corporation released the machine, which is singular, since Toshiba is a corporate entity. The should read "Toshiba has announced..."
At least that's what they taught me in the central US.
You know, there really is a Guide. Check out http://www.h2g2.com for the content. They even put the "Don't Panic" text on the page. You can join as a researcher, and publish your own little snippets. Oddly enough, there's some useful information there. It's sort of a twisted blog for some, a slashdot for others, and a wacky Encyclopedia Galactica for others.
Be sure to check out an Entry for Earth.
Many thanks to the BBC for keeping this running.
First, I have a cell phone. I've had various cell phones since 1995. It's not some new whiz-bang toy to me. My current PCS phone service is simply that. Phone service, voicemail, 3-way calling, and a few other things. No SMS, no Wireless Web. The only feature I want right now is a modem attachment for my laptop.
Now, about the article. Did anyone else get the feeling that turning off a cell phone would be the end of the world? This SMS spam thing might be good thing. I won't have to listen to so many damn annoying ringers when I'm sitting in a public place. What happened to the good old pleasant chirps / rings?
Dammit, I'm SO very close to building a PCS phone jammer. So very close. In fact, the only reason I haven't is that they're HIGHLY illegal. I'm fed up with people that constantly take calls, chatting about idle nonsense. I don't mind those people that actually take / make calls to get / send information. It's the ones that talk on the phone just to talk that get to me. Just yesterday, I was standing in line at a local fastfood place, and some woman just in front of me in line spent the entire time she was standing there gossiping with a friend about a 3rd friend. I don't need to know that! Sometimes, a cluebat would come in handy... It's as if some people think you can't hear their side of the conversation, when they're standing 3 feet away from you! She was even rude enough to keep the phone to her ear while she placed her order. She even asked the guy at the register to hold on a sec, while she finished listening to whatever juicy bit of gossip. I SWEAR.
Dammit, that felt good. People need to rant and rave every now and again, even if they're screaming into a vacuum.
A sister topic would also be to take into account the acoustical properties of the box. It's great if the box is ultra-cool, but if they sound like a Cessna at takeoff, then you've got problems, especially if you've got offices near your data center, or if you're scattering a bunch of these machines throughout an open office environment.
I'd like to know how the various OEMs, VARs, and ISPs handle this. I know of several companies that offer various types of maintenence contracts that also happen to cover NT4, since their product is based on that OS. Most companies that might be concerned about this probably bought a "Solution" from one of the big name companies, which included both hardware and software, so they may or many not be affected. The little guys, however, might have some trouble, especially if their servers are just white boxes that they built up themselves...
It's semi-distributed, in that users install a small plugin for Outlook, adding "block" and "unblock" buttons to the tool bar. The entire community of users works against spammers.
It works well. When I check my mail, I can watch the 50 or so spams I get daily pop into my inbox, and then promptly fly right back out again.
(Blatantly stolen from Spamnet's Learn More page)
When the message comes in, SpamNet generates a unique fingerprint of that message. The fingerprint is a one-way hash, or unique string of numbers that represents the email and can absolutely NOT be decoded.
This unique fingerprint of the message is sent to the server where it asks the database if this message is spam. The server comes back to the client with a confidence level of how sure it is that the message is spam by checking it with the other fingerprints in the database.
If the same signature has been reported to the SpamNet database, this indicates that the message is spam and it is consequently moved from the member's Inbox to the Spam folder.
If a spam slips through, the SpamFighter can use the "Block" button (vs. delete) to remove it from their inbox and report it to SpamNet to help themselves and the community. Again a unique fingerprint of the body of the message is generated and sent back to the server. Here is where TeS, or the trust system comes into play to ensure that only valid spam messages are blocked. SpamNet looks at the reputation of the person that blocked the message and depending on their individual trust rating; a confidence level is applied to that message to decide whether it should be blocked for the entire community. Each person starts with a zero trust rating and generates trust based on several factors including how accurate their reports are and the number of reports overtime. This process happens instantly taking less than 3 minutes to stop a spam message that's new to the system for the entire community.
Okay, If you want to store data on the drive, it's a REALLY bad idea. Incredibly bad, in fact. On current HDDs the fly height of the head is incredibly small. Check out an excellent primer on the subject from Storage Review at http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/op/ heads/opHeight.html. The graphic's at the bottom's the important bit. I work with the guys that used to design these things. Unless you have access to a clean room (and even then it's iffy) this is a Bad Idea.
You should do what I do, and set up a "tar pit" on your website, with a bunch of bogus randomly generated e-mail addresses, and links back to itself. On last count, I've handed out over 100,000 false e-mail addresses.
Well, it's a spin on what usually happens to Apple owners. I can remember waiting months and months for certain apps and games to come out on Apple. And of course, there's quark, which just now released a new version.
Dammit. I have charter for my cablemodem service. Would the poster mind answering the question of just what timeframe exactly all this happened in?
Now I have to go back and change ALL the passwords I've used in the past week. Shit.
Go to http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/index.asp and file a complaint. They'll follow up.
The subject says it all, but I think I'm a fairly good chef (and I don't mean reheating that frozen crap from grocery stores).
As far as music goes, I play the clarinet, bass clarinet & steel drums (see recent pole).
The 4 Mhz & 48kB comment made me think of embedded systems programming. If you want that sort of challege again, try programming a Motrola 68HC11. If you're feeling up to it, do it in assembly.
The internet took off. I think what happened was that most of the people on the net in the ICQ era were gearheads of some sort, and were able to use the features. In the mid-to-late 90's, the net reached into John Q. Public's home, who doesn't give a damn about all sorts of features, and AIM began to grow. Now, AIM, next to cell phones and SMS, is the basically a way for teens today to flirt with each other, mostly because of AOL. If a fair percentage of your friends were on AIM, wouldn't you use it too?
Anyone notice the "sponsored links" bar to the right of the article? They're all for online rental services.
They have a great selection, including, among other things, "speciality" items, such as documentaries and concerts. For example, if I'm interested in "The Rights of Autumn," the College Football Documentary, I doubt Blockbuster would have that in stock. With netflix, I can grab discs 1 through 3 (with my account -- you get more with more expensive accounts). Watch those as I have time, and send them back in time to get the rest of the discs.
If you want a REAL LCD, check out the IBM T221 Flat Panel.
Let's see... specs...
* 22.2-inch viewable image area
* 3840 x 2400 addressability (QUXGA-W)
* 9.2 million total pixels, 204 pixel density per inch (80 per cm)
* 16.7 million colors, 8-bit drivers
* Two models, one with a modified graphics adapter, and one with DVI cables for attachment to DVI graphics adapters
* Tilt stand
* Detachable Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) standard mount size (100 mm) stand
* Available in stealth black
This sucker requires four DVI connectors. Check out the various reviews.
One problem we've run in to here is CD's floating around with people's notes on them, past exams, homework solutions, and other goodies on them.
I'm not sure if it's against the student code, but that's against my own morals. That sort of returns to my other post's point that it depends on the quality of the students, whether this is an issue or not.
I'm pursuing an accelerated masters in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, and will be starting my 4th of 5 total years in August.
Well, I was thinking of a couple of specific examples. In all of these courses, the professors have posted their own notes online in various formats, usually PDF or PPT. What usually happens is people will either bring in a laptop and just make extra notes every now and again ON the soft copy notes themselves. Generally, my experience has been that those are much more interactive classes, where the students tend to ask more questions and challenge the instructor to more than read his or her notes off of a screen, since they have all of the reference material a few keystrokes away.
Addressing your points:
1. Noise: You used to get random IM's popping up, but most people are decent enough now to not launch IM. Those that do interrupt class are usually in lower level courses, where you get random goofballs with no consideration for others.
Heck, one time I remember a guy getting thrown out of a class for surfing porn during a lecture. The large lecture-style courses have people fiddling with text messages on cell phones anyway. It just depends on the calibre student you get. After the end of the 2nd year, we usually have weeded the future MIS and Business Majors out of the Engineering College.
2. Stability: Use a relatively solid OS, such as Win2k or XP.
3. Diagrams are a bit of trick. I have a tablet, so I'm sort of a special case. I can just pivot the screen and start scribbling. What a lot of people do is draw the diagram on paper, and make some sort of reference number / filing system up to keep track of it.
The situation you described is a cinch on tablet PC, by the way. For that matter, the tools we learn include layout applications, so if the prof starts sketching out a design, I usually have a much nicer version fresh out of Cadence or Xilinx much faster than those that have to sit there and sketch out wires and whatnot.
4. My typing's better than yours.
Mike.
The faculty, in some cases, aren't evolving with it. I've had some faculty members that welcomed laptops in the classroom, for example. We have a wireless network, whihch makes it incredibly to take notes, and actually pay attention in class, rather than scribble furiously and pray that you can understand it later.
Some, on the other hand (primarily faculty in the Liberal Arts fields, from my experience), don't want anything to do with the net. We have a couple of online course management solutions that let students track grades, turn in assignents, etc. online. I've had classes where the professor use it to distribute 1 thing: the syllabus.
At OU, we've got a fairly progressive faculty (at least in the College of Engineering), I just feel sorry for those stuck in a place where everything's done by the book. literally.
I still think the thing should be called the iRaq, err... iRac.