Sorry, but believe it or not, I've been pissed off enough to feel the same way. No, it's not worth killing someone, but it sure is fun to imagine getting my hands on the f****r that spam attacked my catch-all domain with over 5000 messages a day.
And in real life, if I *did* get a hold of him.... well, I might not kill him... maybe....
Hell no! Don't do it! I recently wrote to my ISP when the spam email I got jumped from 900 per day to 5000 per day! It was WAY out of control.
What happened was some a**h*** spammer decided to apply a list of the most common user names to my domain. It took over an hour, over broadband, to munch through all those damn spams. And then the jack*ss sold that list to some other spammers.
Oh, man was I steamed.
So now I have a set up where I can specify the valid email boxes myself by putting a zero-length file in my top directory. Anything else gets zapped before it hits my email account by the ISP email server. And that's great, because having full control and flexibility over your email is what you're really trying for when you get a catch-all, but in today's world the spammers just make it impossible to enjoy that flexibility.
For my company, we can have 20 Indian guys trained and if 10 of them leave we still have 10 more.
That's 10 programmers that:
a. Have a tough time understanding what you're saying and making themselves understood.
b. Don't completely understand our social and business culture.
c. Will typically do only what is outlined in any spec you give them, or more importantly their interpretation of your spec, and will typically work to a level and standard they are comfortable with but that doesn't meet the generally accepted standards of a major US company.
And I'm not just spouting here. I've worked for US companies that have been burned by Indian firms that did what they thought they were supposed to do simply because the US firms made assumptions that they thought the Indian firms would also make.
There's a lot to be said about hiring people that share the same mindset and experience as you, or at least what you're used to dealing with. The one major problem I keep hearing is that Indian firms either produce shoddy or under-featured software, or they refuse to produce anything until the product is spec'ed to the nth degree, resulting in no real savings in either time or money.
This, by the way, is not a slam against Indian programmers. They are, in my experience, very polite, very nice to work with, and have scads of tech skills. The difficulty is, primarily, the cultural difference. The language difference doesn't help, but the business and social cultures are the gating issues.
So search engines have gone from searching a dedicated database to searching the text on the internet. Then it was searching images on the 'net. Now they can extend that to searching your email and local drives, all with one interface.
Cool.
But if you really want to impress me, make one that can search my house, my pockets, and my kids' rooms for my keys and wallet....
As you can clearly see, Mono brings almost limitless possibilities in breaking down the barrier between desktops: a commercial software provider would target Mono and it would "just work" on all platforms that Mono supported. How is this different from Java? In my opinion Java makes things harder than it needs to be. For starters, enforced exception handling can't auto-box/unbox primitive types and doesn't support arbitrary length parameter lists String.Format() style.
I find this kind of claptrap irritating. Java is one of the easiest platforms to jump into. If you found it harder than it needed to be, you needed more coffee.
Well then you probably don't need to Google it. And you should probably stay away from my laptop, at least until you wash your hands...
And are articles in Hustler really considered journalistically ground breaking? Perhaps the criteria for "news channel" would necessarily exclude pr0n sites. Taking this from the abstract to the applied, there would likely be process whereby a site could apply for "news channel" designation, which would be awarded upon successful completion of an approval process.
And I wouldn't limit "priority status" to news sites. There could be other designations. Seems that this sort of classification of sites could lead to an additional search criteria, "type of site." This could be a radio button group that would default to "all", but would allow selecting classifications of sites to search, further narrowing the search to sites that would most likely contain the content you're seeking.
Now hang on. That's actually a good question. How do we know that ammonia, in a given environment, doesn't have a "half-life" of sorts. Or, for example, any given ammonia molecule surrounded by a given amount of a given collection of gases at a given pressure subject to a given gravity and thus at a calculable density and thickness providing a determinable protection from UV rays will survive radiative damage for X amount of time.
Do we have any idea, assuming for a moment that there was once a tremendous amount of ammonia in the atmosphere of Mars, what the expected life expectancy would be for the traces we now find? And the byproducts would be easy to find? What does ammonia break down to? Anyone?
That's not so bad, really. The solar powered ones are still doing ok. The robots that eat the solar powered ones are flourishing as well. And there are even robots that eat those robots and so on. It's actually worked out alright, although the latest release of robots seems destined to eat every other robot and even themselves. But even those aren't the worst.
It's the robots that attempt to charge people a licensing fee for using Linux that really burn me up.
Perhaps you want "someone" not "something", but what if you don't agree with them? Frankly that's the part of problem with conventional media - biased, corporate-bought, dumbed-down pundits acting as gatekeepers.
Which is why individual news sites should not be singled out for higher ranking. Rather, sites that fit within a classification should be given higher ranking for general reliability. Ignoring the not-so-recent scandals in which journalistic integrity was violated, these are the sites with the most relevant information about our times.
And to be clear, I don't imagine the "news channel" classification as being limited to the NYT, SFChron, SJMerc, etc. I also see it applied to Al-Jazeera, CND.org, Lima Post, and even LCI.
I don't mean they should decide on a case-by-case basis, but rather on a classification basis. News channels, IMHO, should necessarily rank a little higher in trusted information than, say, hustler.com. If your articles are pulled off Reuters or the AP wire, you'd qualify for "news channel" ranking on all articles.
The article assumes that the fault lies with the NYT and whether their archives are open. Perhaps the real fault lies with Google. Shouldn't there be something in Google that identifies certain sites and more reliable than others rather than basing rank solely on links? How many people link to online news articles? You're more likely to link to your friends beer-and-computer-mods page than a NYT article about Ashcroft's boot fetish.
You have got to be kidding. Man chowder? Bologna? This is not an article I'd expect on MSN. Wow. This guy was digging deep into a mind that had way too many idle cycles to waste on topics most of us never bother to entertain.
On the other hand, I've been researching domains for some time and you'd be surprised what *hasn't* been scooped up yet. For instance, I just registered manchowder.com. The bidding starts now at $10,000...
Weren't the Phiilosophers in this story eventually placated by the fact that they would be neeeded to explain various possible reasons for the machine's answer? Wait a minute: they were told they'd go from being R&D to being tech support? And they were ok with this? Yeah, that's fiction alright.
I went from 3.5 yrs of pure tech support to R&D and never looked back. Sorry, scuds, but if there isn't at least a *little* creativity in the job, I go nuts....
Here's the necessary equipment, with a bid at this time of $33. There are others as low as $9. I can taste success, and it tastes like a sweet, carbonated drink...
So let me get this straight: they've loaded certain coke cans with cell phone electronics and GPS devices, right? Oh man, this is too easy. I'm getting on eBay to see if they have any bug-sweepers. Just walk into every store that carries canned soft drinks and do a quick sweep down the cola isle. Booya! Instant winner, baby!
If I recall, some bug sweepers work by transmitting a radio frequency. Transistors will resonate with a radio harmonic which can then be picked up. I don't know how accurate they are at pinpointing the device, though. It might be counter productive to have to buy the entire stock of Coke just to get to a single winning can.
Because some people are looking at their ability to feed their families and saying, "Wait a minute! My future and the future of my family are bleak, and you want to throw BILLIONS at flinging an armored computer at a rock to see what it's made of? Are you SERIOUS?!"
Others are looking at the money we spend on education and saying, "Wait a minute. Our government passed a law called 'No Child Left Behind', taking all the credit for it then failing to fund it, leaving thousands of school children in poorly staffed and supplied classrooms, and you want to spend BILLIONS on putting a handful of guys back on the moon to do EXACTLY what we did 40 years ago with no hope of economic return in my lifetime or the lifetime of my children or grandchildren? Are you SERIOUS?!"
And still others are saying, "Wait a minute. I'm living every day of my life as though it may be my last hoping for an eleventh hour reprieve in the form of a treatment for my AIDS/cancer/Alzheimer's/Parkinson's/etc., and you want to spend BILLIONS sending a handful of guys to Mars when we can more efficiently and more safely send some vacuum hardened RC cars with experiments tied to them? Are you SERIOUS?!"
I'm not about to say that NASA isn't the greatest organization in the history of humanity, the technological culmination of millions of years of evolution on this planet. But if you are going to ask the question, "Why don't we give them more money," you need to be prepared to look at the bigger picture. The answers to all the mysteries of life will not be laid at your feet in this lifetime, nor the lifetimes of the next 20 generations. There is always another horizon, another mystery, another adventure. In the meantime, people must live, and we would do well to balance our ambitions with our responsibilities to one another.
The answer is not to give NASA more funding but to choose our priorities more carefully with an eye to minimal risk and greatest ROI, whether that return be scientific or economic, and economic return should not be scoffed at. Making space self-financing is the Golden Fleece, the Brass Ring, the Ultimate Prize.
Privatization is a great way to achieve that end. I'm watching SpaceShipOne with great interest. It may very well be the answer we're all waiting for. If you want space opened and explored more thoroughly, show your support for such private efforts.
And one last thing, while I'm long-winded and on a tear: Why didn't Bush direct NASA to build a space elevator instead of wasting money on a moon shot or a Mars shot? Build a foundation that will make such efforts so much more possible. In the 60's, a rocket was the only way to get off the planet. Now we have the technology within our reach to do the same job more effectively. Talk about creating a legacy!
AMEN!!! I used to work for a shipping company that is recently realizing a minor comeback domestically, and the version numbers during my tenure went from 1.6.5 through 1.7.x, 1.8.x, then 1.9. And stalled. There was never a 2.0 or anything higher although we did introduce some fairly major functional changes. In the end the last version I put out was something like 1.9.4aj. We ran out of letters for a single character minor recompile revision and went to 2 letters. It was getting embarrassing. And the whole time the analyst on the project was asking me to just make it 1.9.2 or something we'd already used. He felt that changing the version number every time I put out a new revision was going to be confusing, but he was adamant that he didn't want to go to the next logical version number. It actually got to a point where I made a "marketing version number" and a "source version number", both displayed in the about box, so they could mark the marketing version as anything they wanted, but the software could still identify the source version for tech support reasons.
(Tony, are you out there? Are you reading this? Do you *finally* get it?)
In addition, an Israeli security source told WND that Israel recently developed proprietary technology that can discreetly put an electronic field around a building or area that gives users the ability to monitor and control every electronic emission within that field, from electronic can openers to fax machines, computers and cell phones.
I, too, thought this was rather freaky. Something along the lines of, "We control the vertical... we control the horizontal..."
Exactly how would one control the electronic emission of my cell phone? Or -- good God! -- my can opener?! I can see monitoring it. Seems to me that that doesn't require an "electronic field" so much as an antenna. Perhaps the field is used to disrupt these signals? On the other hand, if what they've developed is used to actually control an electronic device on any level, what's it doing to the people using the devices? Youch...
"Say, Carl, that's a helluva sunburn you're getting in this dimly lit room..."
Too bad the article doesn't mention anything more about it...
Peering through neighbours walls (with this technology or drilling peepholes) is the offence. Would you argue that drills should be regulated because they could be used this way ?
Not quite the same. If you drill a hole through my wall, I can see the wall. How many people have radar detectors sitting in their living room?
(cue jokes about overclocked computers, motorized couches, and motorhomes)
8) We might be watching the beginning of the end for Microsoft. Not just in this, but the whole pile of events over the last couple of years. If Microsoft loses relevance, and market share, and withers away...
Who Is Going To Be The New Evil Empire????
I want to know who to unconditionally hate next!!
OOOOO!! ME! ME! Pick me!!
Hey, if means being a billionaire, I'm willing to take one for the team...
Which of the two browsers is simpler / less bulky, Mozilla, or Firebox?
I haven't compared them, but they're both easier to use that IE.
2. Can either of them merge with Windows the way IE does? Running URLs from the Run box, for instance. I don't want to accidentally launch IE by the old methods.
Setting Mozilla to be your default browser will take care of the Run box thing. As for other applications directly bringing up IE to run a URL, that's something you'd have to address on a case-by-case basis.
3. Does Mozilla still have that stupid "download manager"? How do I turn it off? Every time I wanted to save a file that thing would pop up when I just wanted the simple windows of an IE download that go away when done.
Yes, it's still there, and you can turn it off in the preferences.
Having ridden a Goldwing for years and a CB750 for a couple before that, I'm with you on this one. Poptones needs to close the browser page on "squirrel bondage" and (re?)crack the physics books.
MS kicked Netscape's ass because Netscape fell into a spiral of devolution while IE became a much better product. In the fight between Netscape 3 and IE4, it was no contest because IE was, at the time, simply the better product.
In the fight between NS 4 and IE 4, Netscape was the better product. All IE had going for it was that it was installed with the OS, and Billy Boy Gates was leveraging his company's monopoly position against companies that fraternized with the enemy.
Ok, so I'm looking over my previous posts and realizing that I sound pointedly harsh. Obviously I am directly opposed to your position, but it's nothing personal.
I think defending theft is always a bad thing.
To comment on one of your other comments, you compared stealing a movie to stealing Linux. You were ok with the former and opposed to the latter. Enormous geek factor aside... Companies with investors who expect a return on their investments pour money into the production of movies, hiring thousands of people blah blah blah, and then some punk puts a copy of the movie on a website or P2P net and there go thousands of potential viewers. Once you've seen it at all, why spend the $9 for the movie, $15 on food to end up with a lousy end seat on the front row and a serious crick in your neck? I mean, the theaters should be ashamed of charging what they do, but stealing the movie is not the answer. If you want to see it, wait until it comes out on video and rent the frikkin thing.
And you compare this to stealing Linux, the source for which I can download at any point in time, recompile, and have a functioning copy. Or if my caffiene/blood levels are off, just download the install from any number of sites and install it. Whoop-t-doo. Not really the same.
As for "combatting a law", I'd rather combat the Patriot Act via petitions than get arrested over a camcorder in a theater. If you're aiming for social change, be politically active. If you're aiming for kicks, try a roller coaster. More adrenaline. Besides, if you throw your hands up in a cop car and scream at the top of your lungs, they pull you out and beat you with a flashlight.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but believe it or not, I've been pissed off enough to feel the same way. No, it's not worth killing someone, but it sure is fun to imagine getting my hands on the f****r that spam attacked my catch-all domain with over 5000 messages a day.
And in real life, if I *did* get a hold of him.... well, I might not kill him... maybe....
Hell no! Don't do it! I recently wrote to my ISP when the spam email I got jumped from 900 per day to 5000 per day! It was WAY out of control.
What happened was some a**h*** spammer decided to apply a list of the most common user names to my domain. It took over an hour, over broadband, to munch through all those damn spams. And then the jack*ss sold that list to some other spammers.
Oh, man was I steamed.
So now I have a set up where I can specify the valid email boxes myself by putting a zero-length file in my top directory. Anything else gets zapped before it hits my email account by the ISP email server. And that's great, because having full control and flexibility over your email is what you're really trying for when you get a catch-all, but in today's world the spammers just make it impossible to enjoy that flexibility.
For my company, we can have 20 Indian guys trained and if 10 of them leave we still have 10 more.
That's 10 programmers that:
a. Have a tough time understanding what you're saying and making themselves understood.
b. Don't completely understand our social and business culture.
c. Will typically do only what is outlined in any spec you give them, or more importantly their interpretation of your spec, and will typically work to a level and standard they are comfortable with but that doesn't meet the generally accepted standards of a major US company.
And I'm not just spouting here. I've worked for US companies that have been burned by Indian firms that did what they thought they were supposed to do simply because the US firms made assumptions that they thought the Indian firms would also make.
There's a lot to be said about hiring people that share the same mindset and experience as you, or at least what you're used to dealing with. The one major problem I keep hearing is that Indian firms either produce shoddy or under-featured software, or they refuse to produce anything until the product is spec'ed to the nth degree, resulting in no real savings in either time or money.
This, by the way, is not a slam against Indian programmers. They are, in my experience, very polite, very nice to work with, and have scads of tech skills. The difficulty is, primarily, the cultural difference. The language difference doesn't help, but the business and social cultures are the gating issues.
So for you to say that more is better is naive.
So search engines have gone from searching a dedicated database to searching the text on the internet. Then it was searching images on the 'net. Now they can extend that to searching your email and local drives, all with one interface.
Cool.
But if you really want to impress me, make one that can search my house, my pockets, and my kids' rooms for my keys and wallet....
As you can clearly see, Mono brings almost limitless possibilities in breaking down the barrier between desktops: a commercial software provider would target Mono and it would "just work" on all platforms that Mono supported. How is this different from Java? In my opinion Java makes things harder than it needs to be. For starters, enforced exception handling can't auto-box/unbox primitive types and doesn't support arbitrary length parameter lists String.Format() style.
I find this kind of claptrap irritating. Java is one of the easiest platforms to jump into. If you found it harder than it needed to be, you needed more coffee.
Well then you probably don't need to Google it. And you should probably stay away from my laptop, at least until you wash your hands...
And are articles in Hustler really considered journalistically ground breaking? Perhaps the criteria for "news channel" would necessarily exclude pr0n sites. Taking this from the abstract to the applied, there would likely be process whereby a site could apply for "news channel" designation, which would be awarded upon successful completion of an approval process.
And I wouldn't limit "priority status" to news sites. There could be other designations. Seems that this sort of classification of sites could lead to an additional search criteria, "type of site." This could be a radio button group that would default to "all", but would allow selecting classifications of sites to search, further narrowing the search to sites that would most likely contain the content you're seeking.
Now hang on. That's actually a good question. How do we know that ammonia, in a given environment, doesn't have a "half-life" of sorts. Or, for example, any given ammonia molecule surrounded by a given amount of a given collection of gases at a given pressure subject to a given gravity and thus at a calculable density and thickness providing a determinable protection from UV rays will survive radiative damage for X amount of time.
Do we have any idea, assuming for a moment that there was once a tremendous amount of ammonia in the atmosphere of Mars, what the expected life expectancy would be for the traces we now find? And the byproducts would be easy to find? What does ammonia break down to? Anyone?
That's not so bad, really. The solar powered ones are still doing ok. The robots that eat the solar powered ones are flourishing as well. And there are even robots that eat those robots and so on. It's actually worked out alright, although the latest release of robots seems destined to eat every other robot and even themselves. But even those aren't the worst.
It's the robots that attempt to charge people a licensing fee for using Linux that really burn me up.
Perhaps you want "someone" not "something", but what if you don't agree with them? Frankly that's the part of problem with conventional media - biased, corporate-bought, dumbed-down pundits acting as gatekeepers.
Which is why individual news sites should not be singled out for higher ranking. Rather, sites that fit within a classification should be given higher ranking for general reliability. Ignoring the not-so-recent scandals in which journalistic integrity was violated, these are the sites with the most relevant information about our times.
And to be clear, I don't imagine the "news channel" classification as being limited to the NYT, SFChron, SJMerc, etc. I also see it applied to Al-Jazeera, CND.org, Lima Post, and even LCI.
Ok, maybe not that last one...
I don't mean they should decide on a case-by-case basis, but rather on a classification basis. News channels, IMHO, should necessarily rank a little higher in trusted information than, say, hustler.com. If your articles are pulled off Reuters or the AP wire, you'd qualify for "news channel" ranking on all articles.
The article assumes that the fault lies with the NYT and whether their archives are open. Perhaps the real fault lies with Google. Shouldn't there be something in Google that identifies certain sites and more reliable than others rather than basing rank solely on links? How many people link to online news articles? You're more likely to link to your friends beer-and-computer-mods page than a NYT article about Ashcroft's boot fetish.
You have got to be kidding. Man chowder? Bologna? This is not an article I'd expect on MSN. Wow. This guy was digging deep into a mind that had way too many idle cycles to waste on topics most of us never bother to entertain.
On the other hand, I've been researching domains for some time and you'd be surprised what *hasn't* been scooped up yet. For instance, I just registered manchowder.com. The bidding starts now at $10,000...
10,000! Do I hear 15,000?
Have there been any attempts by corporations to purchase and/or secure rights to the WikiWiki technology?
Weren't the Phiilosophers in this story eventually placated by the fact that they would be neeeded to explain various possible reasons for the machine's answer?
Wait a minute: they were told they'd go from being R&D to being tech support? And they were ok with this? Yeah, that's fiction alright.
I went from 3.5 yrs of pure tech support to R&D and never looked back. Sorry, scuds, but if there isn't at least a *little* creativity in the job, I go nuts....
I mean, look at me now......
Replying to my own reply...
Here's the necessary equipment, with a bid at this time of $33. There are others as low as $9. I can taste success, and it tastes like a sweet, carbonated drink...
So let me get this straight: they've loaded certain coke cans with cell phone electronics and GPS devices, right? Oh man, this is too easy. I'm getting on eBay to see if they have any bug-sweepers. Just walk into every store that carries canned soft drinks and do a quick sweep down the cola isle. Booya! Instant winner, baby!
If I recall, some bug sweepers work by transmitting a radio frequency. Transistors will resonate with a radio harmonic which can then be picked up. I don't know how accurate they are at pinpointing the device, though. It might be counter productive to have to buy the entire stock of Coke just to get to a single winning can.
Because some people are looking at their ability to feed their families and saying, "Wait a minute! My future and the future of my family are bleak, and you want to throw BILLIONS at flinging an armored computer at a rock to see what it's made of? Are you SERIOUS?!"
Others are looking at the money we spend on education and saying, "Wait a minute. Our government passed a law called 'No Child Left Behind', taking all the credit for it then failing to fund it, leaving thousands of school children in poorly staffed and supplied classrooms, and you want to spend BILLIONS on putting a handful of guys back on the moon to do EXACTLY what we did 40 years ago with no hope of economic return in my lifetime or the lifetime of my children or grandchildren? Are you SERIOUS?!"
And still others are saying, "Wait a minute. I'm living every day of my life as though it may be my last hoping for an eleventh hour reprieve in the form of a treatment for my AIDS/cancer/Alzheimer's/Parkinson's/etc., and you want to spend BILLIONS sending a handful of guys to Mars when we can more efficiently and more safely send some vacuum hardened RC cars with experiments tied to them? Are you SERIOUS?!"
I'm not about to say that NASA isn't the greatest organization in the history of humanity, the technological culmination of millions of years of evolution on this planet. But if you are going to ask the question, "Why don't we give them more money," you need to be prepared to look at the bigger picture. The answers to all the mysteries of life will not be laid at your feet in this lifetime, nor the lifetimes of the next 20 generations. There is always another horizon, another mystery, another adventure. In the meantime, people must live, and we would do well to balance our ambitions with our responsibilities to one another.
The answer is not to give NASA more funding but to choose our priorities more carefully with an eye to minimal risk and greatest ROI, whether that return be scientific or economic, and economic return should not be scoffed at. Making space self-financing is the Golden Fleece, the Brass Ring, the Ultimate Prize.
Privatization is a great way to achieve that end. I'm watching SpaceShipOne with great interest. It may very well be the answer we're all waiting for. If you want space opened and explored more thoroughly, show your support for such private efforts.
And one last thing, while I'm long-winded and on a tear: Why didn't Bush direct NASA to build a space elevator instead of wasting money on a moon shot or a Mars shot? Build a foundation that will make such efforts so much more possible. In the 60's, a rocket was the only way to get off the planet. Now we have the technology within our reach to do the same job more effectively. Talk about creating a legacy!
AMEN!!! I used to work for a shipping company that is recently realizing a minor comeback domestically, and the version numbers during my tenure went from 1.6.5 through 1.7.x, 1.8.x, then 1.9. And stalled. There was never a 2.0 or anything higher although we did introduce some fairly major functional changes. In the end the last version I put out was something like 1.9.4aj. We ran out of letters for a single character minor recompile revision and went to 2 letters. It was getting embarrassing. And the whole time the analyst on the project was asking me to just make it 1.9.2 or something we'd already used. He felt that changing the version number every time I put out a new revision was going to be confusing, but he was adamant that he didn't want to go to the next logical version number. It actually got to a point where I made a "marketing version number" and a "source version number", both displayed in the about box, so they could mark the marketing version as anything they wanted, but the software could still identify the source version for tech support reasons.
(Tony, are you out there? Are you reading this? Do you *finally* get it?)
In addition, an Israeli security source told WND that Israel recently developed proprietary technology that can discreetly put an electronic field around a building or area that gives users the ability to monitor and control every electronic emission within that field, from electronic can openers to fax machines, computers and cell phones.
I, too, thought this was rather freaky. Something along the lines of, "We control the vertical... we control the horizontal..."
Exactly how would one control the electronic emission of my cell phone? Or -- good God! -- my can opener?! I can see monitoring it. Seems to me that that doesn't require an "electronic field" so much as an antenna. Perhaps the field is used to disrupt these signals? On the other hand, if what they've developed is used to actually control an electronic device on any level, what's it doing to the people using the devices? Youch...
"Say, Carl, that's a helluva sunburn you're getting in this dimly lit room..."
Too bad the article doesn't mention anything more about it...
Peering through neighbours walls (with this technology or drilling peepholes) is the offence. Would you argue that drills should be regulated because they could be used this way ?
Not quite the same. If you drill a hole through my wall, I can see the wall. How many people have radar detectors sitting in their living room?
(cue jokes about overclocked computers, motorized couches, and motorhomes)
8) We might be watching the beginning of the end for Microsoft. Not just in this, but the whole pile of events over the last couple of years. If Microsoft loses relevance, and market share, and withers away...
Who Is Going To Be The New Evil Empire????
I want to know who to unconditionally hate next!!
OOOOO!! ME! ME! Pick me!!
Hey, if means being a billionaire, I'm willing to take one for the team...
Which of the two browsers is simpler / less bulky, Mozilla, or Firebox?
I haven't compared them, but they're both easier to use that IE.
2. Can either of them merge with Windows the way IE does? Running URLs from the Run box, for instance. I don't want to accidentally launch IE by the old methods.
Setting Mozilla to be your default browser will take care of the Run box thing. As for other applications directly bringing up IE to run a URL, that's something you'd have to address on a case-by-case basis.
3. Does Mozilla still have that stupid "download manager"? How do I turn it off? Every time I wanted to save a file that thing would pop up when I just wanted the simple windows of an IE download that go away when done.
Yes, it's still there, and you can turn it off in the preferences.
Having ridden a Goldwing for years and a CB750 for a couple before that, I'm with you on this one. Poptones needs to close the browser page on "squirrel bondage" and (re?)crack the physics books.
MS kicked Netscape's ass because Netscape fell into a spiral of devolution while IE became a much better product. In the fight between Netscape 3 and IE4, it was no contest because IE was, at the time, simply the better product.
In the fight between NS 4 and IE 4, Netscape was the better product. All IE had going for it was that it was installed with the OS, and Billy Boy Gates was leveraging his company's monopoly position against companies that fraternized with the enemy.
'Nuff said.
Ok, so I'm looking over my previous posts and realizing that I sound pointedly harsh. Obviously I am directly opposed to your position, but it's nothing personal.
I think defending theft is always a bad thing.
To comment on one of your other comments, you compared stealing a movie to stealing Linux. You were ok with the former and opposed to the latter. Enormous geek factor aside... Companies with investors who expect a return on their investments pour money into the production of movies, hiring thousands of people blah blah blah, and then some punk puts a copy of the movie on a website or P2P net and there go thousands of potential viewers. Once you've seen it at all, why spend the $9 for the movie, $15 on food to end up with a lousy end seat on the front row and a serious crick in your neck? I mean, the theaters should be ashamed of charging what they do, but stealing the movie is not the answer. If you want to see it, wait until it comes out on video and rent the frikkin thing.
And you compare this to stealing Linux, the source for which I can download at any point in time, recompile, and have a functioning copy. Or if my caffiene/blood levels are off, just download the install from any number of sites and install it. Whoop-t-doo. Not really the same.
As for "combatting a law", I'd rather combat the Patriot Act via petitions than get arrested over a camcorder in a theater. If you're aiming for social change, be politically active. If you're aiming for kicks, try a roller coaster. More adrenaline. Besides, if you throw your hands up in a cop car and scream at the top of your lungs, they pull you out and beat you with a flashlight.