Anyone writing a javascript application should know to add a <noscript> tag to the page embedding the scripts.
<noscript><p>This page is built using Javascript, but it seems that you have Javascript disabled on your browser. Please enable Javascript and refresh this page to continue.</p></noscript>
I think that's a much more robust approach. The user understands what's going on, and you don't have to rely on every browser preventing Javascript from being disabled.
That's the thing. We'd all like not to be tracked. Well, most of us, at least. However DNT does not control whether or not you are tracked - it merely conveys whether the user has specifically asked not to be tracked (or to be tracked, in the case of DNT: 0). This is useful because it is a necessary component in other means to stop tracking. For example, some countries might manage to get a law passed forbidding tracking unless the user has opted in, in which case a DNT:0 request header could be a convenient legal requirement for tracking. Another place might pass a law forbidding tracking users who have opted out. This would be difficult because how would you know if someone has opted out without some degree of tracking? Well, looking for a DNT:1 header would do the trick. Another situation would be if some privacy-motivated coalition negotiated a deal with major advertisers where the advertisers wouldn't track users that send a DNT:1 header provided that browsers don't send DNT:1 by default.
Now, what are the effects of IE's approach? First off, that deal actually managed to happened, but it broke down because IE send DNT:1 by default. The other two cases are hypothetical.
If it were law that tracking someone who has opted out of tracking is illegal, and an advertiser is caught tracking IE users who send DNT:1 the advertiser could argue that they have no reason to believe that the user has opted out at all, and point to the fact that IE sends DNT:1 regardless of whether the user has asked not to be tracked - and that the only users who don't send DNT:1 are those who edited the setting from the default and explicitly asked requested their browser NOT to request no tracking. Someone who asked not to be tracked would have DNT:1, but someone who didn't would ordinarily be sending DNT:1 too, and there's no way tell the difference - but some statistics could be provided showing that the majority of users don't try to opt out of tracking and therefore DNT:1 headers correlate mainly with users who did not opt out (and if the browser says otherwise then it is simply lying). They might go to court and they might lose that argument, but there's also a rather good chance that they would win it and become exempt from having to respect DNT headers, assuming they even get caught in the first place.
If it were law that tracking requires opt in, they could easily argue that lack of opt-out qualifies as opt-in for the same reason as above - that the user went out of his way to specifically not ask not to be tracked. Thus consent is implied even if there is no DNT header at all.
The DNT header is meant to be a way to indicate whether the user has opted in or out. IE opting out on the users behalf unless they specifically asked for tracking to be allowed gives slimy advertisers the opportunity to claim that apparent opting out implies not opting out, and that not opting in or out implies opting in - leaving nothing at all to imply actually opting out.
Microsoft's decision does absolutely nothing to block tracking (actual blocking - as opposed to DNT requests - is the topic of TFA in fact); all it does is remove any way for a user to unambiguously opt out.
If you really don't want to be tracked then we need 2 things: a law that compels advertisers to respect opt-ins and opt-outs, and for browsers not to send fake opt-outs on behalf of the users. If Microsoft actually wants to protect users from tracking then it should look into blocking trackers like Mozilla is doing here, and informing users that they can opt out of tracking instead of doing so automatically and leaving users with only the option of stopping the opt-in requests.
I recommend configuring your browser to keep cookies only until you close your browser. This is quite easy to do in Firefox - go to the options, in the Privacy tab, and under the checkbox for whether to accept cookies there's a dropdown labelled "Keep until:". Set that to "Keep until: I close Firefox". Then you can grab something like Cookie Monster to make it easy to whitelist those site where you do want persistent cookies. Which browser are you using, by the way?
To keep the price down, Raspberry Pi disables the MPEG-2 hardware decoder that happened to be present on their SOAC. You can buy a licence and enable it for £2.40. If they'd kept it enabled throughout, the base price for the Pi would have been that much more expensive.
That's interesting, and certainly a fair decision on their part. Out of curiosity, is there a way for those of us in countries without software patents to reenable the MPEG-2 hardware decoder?
Let's not fight about it - if the argument itself develops into a cold war we'd have the first Second Second Cold War Cold War, which would be terrible. And you know there'd inevitably be another one after that.
Re:multiple social providers on the desktop
on
Firefox 21 Arrives
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· Score: 2
I just cleared my download history from Firefox 21. My browser history is still there.
They're not patenting the entire concept of "cartoon face generation", just a particular approach to the problem that they worked on. Read the patent - they even refer to almost three dozen existing papers on the subject, so they're certainly not pretending to have invented the entire field. MS Research's algorithm tends to produce results that are recognisable and flattering at the same time, which I imagine they could find very useful for XBox Live.
I think the real problem here is the misleading "X patents Y" headings used on Slashdot to alarm people.
C'mon, Lamar, I realize that not much gets past your shit-eating grin and incredible density; but surely you don't imagine that scientists who could be out raking in the nobels and lucrative startup stock by cranking out world-altering research of staggering utility are just holding out on us, and sequencing random beetle genomes because grantwriting is just so much fun? If there were plenty of 'groundbreaking' research that 'answers questions or solves problems of utmost importance to society at large' scientists would be shiving one another with broken Erlenmeyer flasks to be the first to do it.
Not me. I miss out on all the groundbreaking research because of my demanding studies of which flasks make the best shivs. But once my experiments are complete I'll show them. Yes, then I'll show them all...
So... $500 for the console, plus an optional $40 for financing plus two years LIVE Gold membership (normally priced at $120). I can see that the latter would be the obvious choice for anyone interested in the gold membership.
The Onion needs to find and publish on the 1st of April a notable and mildly implausible story which is completely true but all the other news sources are waiting for the 2nd to report (for obvious reasons). That would be one of the best April Fools pranks.
It's free for non-commercial purposes. If you make money from converting web pages to PDF then it might just be worth that price - particularly if you need to automate PDF rendering.
Are Internet-users in the UK actually limited to one ISP per area?
How do ISPs profit from scarcity of addresses? I assume that you're referring to the practice of reserving static IP addresses for a premium, but they already did that pre-scarcity. Now that addresses are exhausted wouldn't it simply mean that they have fewer IPs available to sell to new customers, while existing customers who already lease static IPs will cling to the ones they already have?
Africans. Blackberry is the single best-selling brand of smartphone in South Africa, and the second-best-selling (after Nokia) brand of cellphones cellphones in general.
That's wrong. You're taking a half a sentence and quoting it out of context. Clause 3(b) doesn't require you to do anything - it gives you the option of doing that. Clause 3(a) permits you instead to provide the source code only to those to whom you sell (or give) the compiled binaries. 3(c) is yet another option, but it's availably strictly for non-commercial distribution so it doesn't apply here.
He is well within his rights to ask you to buy his product before he gives you the source code.
I'd like it to be Koeksister. Unfortunately, I'm told that they are planning to use Key Lime Pie. (It's not a biggie, but I'm not keen on that as a name).
I don't think anyone's calling out THQ - they made an amazing offer. The complaints are specifically toward Humble specifically for going back on the very things for which fans were most impressed with them. I'm not too happy about that myself, but I'm sure that they didn't take the decision to do this lightly. THQ - an excellent developer and publisher - is having problems right now, and Humble chose to burn a bit of their ample supply of good karma to help them. It means we can get some THQ games cheaply now and hopefully boost THQ enough that they can continue making games in the future.
So does that mean that the FSF is going to release a binary without source code? How ironic.
No, the Linux Foundation. And no, it doesn't mean they'll release a binary without source code - it just means that the binary presented for signing must not be licensed as GLPv3 (or similar, whatever that means).
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone writing a javascript application should know to add a <noscript> tag to the page embedding the scripts.
<noscript><p>This page is built using Javascript, but it seems that you have Javascript disabled on your browser. Please enable Javascript and refresh this page to continue.</p></noscript>
I think that's a much more robust approach. The user understands what's going on, and you don't have to rely on every browser preventing Javascript from being disabled.
Now that's interesting - I didn't know about IE9's tracking protection, or that it let you subscribe to blocklists. Thanks for sharing.
That's the thing. We'd all like not to be tracked. Well, most of us, at least. However DNT does not control whether or not you are tracked - it merely conveys whether the user has specifically asked not to be tracked (or to be tracked, in the case of DNT: 0). This is useful because it is a necessary component in other means to stop tracking. For example, some countries might manage to get a law passed forbidding tracking unless the user has opted in, in which case a DNT:0 request header could be a convenient legal requirement for tracking. Another place might pass a law forbidding tracking users who have opted out. This would be difficult because how would you know if someone has opted out without some degree of tracking? Well, looking for a DNT:1 header would do the trick. Another situation would be if some privacy-motivated coalition negotiated a deal with major advertisers where the advertisers wouldn't track users that send a DNT:1 header provided that browsers don't send DNT:1 by default.
Now, what are the effects of IE's approach? First off, that deal actually managed to happened, but it broke down because IE send DNT:1 by default. The other two cases are hypothetical.
If it were law that tracking someone who has opted out of tracking is illegal, and an advertiser is caught tracking IE users who send DNT:1 the advertiser could argue that they have no reason to believe that the user has opted out at all, and point to the fact that IE sends DNT:1 regardless of whether the user has asked not to be tracked - and that the only users who don't send DNT:1 are those who edited the setting from the default and explicitly asked requested their browser NOT to request no tracking. Someone who asked not to be tracked would have DNT:1, but someone who didn't would ordinarily be sending DNT:1 too, and there's no way tell the difference - but some statistics could be provided showing that the majority of users don't try to opt out of tracking and therefore DNT:1 headers correlate mainly with users who did not opt out (and if the browser says otherwise then it is simply lying). They might go to court and they might lose that argument, but there's also a rather good chance that they would win it and become exempt from having to respect DNT headers, assuming they even get caught in the first place.
If it were law that tracking requires opt in, they could easily argue that lack of opt-out qualifies as opt-in for the same reason as above - that the user went out of his way to specifically not ask not to be tracked. Thus consent is implied even if there is no DNT header at all.
The DNT header is meant to be a way to indicate whether the user has opted in or out. IE opting out on the users behalf unless they specifically asked for tracking to be allowed gives slimy advertisers the opportunity to claim that apparent opting out implies not opting out, and that not opting in or out implies opting in - leaving nothing at all to imply actually opting out.
Microsoft's decision does absolutely nothing to block tracking (actual blocking - as opposed to DNT requests - is the topic of TFA in fact); all it does is remove any way for a user to unambiguously opt out.
If you really don't want to be tracked then we need 2 things: a law that compels advertisers to respect opt-ins and opt-outs, and for browsers not to send fake opt-outs on behalf of the users. If Microsoft actually wants to protect users from tracking then it should look into blocking trackers like Mozilla is doing here, and informing users that they can opt out of tracking instead of doing so automatically and leaving users with only the option of stopping the opt-in requests.
I recommend configuring your browser to keep cookies only until you close your browser. This is quite easy to do in Firefox - go to the options, in the Privacy tab, and under the checkbox for whether to accept cookies there's a dropdown labelled "Keep until:". Set that to "Keep until: I close Firefox". Then you can grab something like Cookie Monster to make it easy to whitelist those site where you do want persistent cookies. Which browser are you using, by the way?
To keep the price down, Raspberry Pi disables the MPEG-2 hardware decoder that happened to be present on their SOAC. You can buy a licence and enable it for £2.40. If they'd kept it enabled throughout, the base price for the Pi would have been that much more expensive.
That's interesting, and certainly a fair decision on their part. Out of curiosity, is there a way for those of us in countries without software patents to reenable the MPEG-2 hardware decoder?
Now we have a second Second Cold War.
Let's not fight about it - if the argument itself develops into a cold war we'd have the first Second Second Cold War Cold War, which would be terrible. And you know there'd inevitably be another one after that.
I just cleared my download history from Firefox 21. My browser history is still there.
That's easy. The next number in the sequence is (not responding).
They're not patenting the entire concept of "cartoon face generation", just a particular approach to the problem that they worked on. Read the patent - they even refer to almost three dozen existing papers on the subject, so they're certainly not pretending to have invented the entire field. MS Research's algorithm tends to produce results that are recognisable and flattering at the same time, which I imagine they could find very useful for XBox Live.
I think the real problem here is the misleading "X patents Y" headings used on Slashdot to alarm people.
That's interesting. I've never encountered "New Coke" in my lifetime, but I find Coke Zero much better than Diet Coke.
Your thesis? Well, there goes my grant. Damn you, Lamar Smith!
C'mon, Lamar, I realize that not much gets past your shit-eating grin and incredible density; but surely you don't imagine that scientists who could be out raking in the nobels and lucrative startup stock by cranking out world-altering research of staggering utility are just holding out on us, and sequencing random beetle genomes because grantwriting is just so much fun? If there were plenty of 'groundbreaking' research that 'answers questions or solves problems of utmost importance to society at large' scientists would be shiving one another with broken Erlenmeyer flasks to be the first to do it.
Not me. I miss out on all the groundbreaking research because of my demanding studies of which flasks make the best shivs. But once my experiments are complete I'll show them. Yes, then I'll show them all...
So... $500 for the console, plus an optional $40 for financing plus two years LIVE Gold membership (normally priced at $120). I can see that the latter would be the obvious choice for anyone interested in the gold membership.
"You fool! I asked for general anesthetic bullets, not local. Now they're unstoppable!
The Onion needs to find and publish on the 1st of April a notable and mildly implausible story which is completely true but all the other news sources are waiting for the 2nd to report (for obvious reasons). That would be one of the best April Fools pranks.
It's free for non-commercial purposes. If you make money from converting web pages to PDF then it might just be worth that price - particularly if you need to automate PDF rendering.
echo alias rtfm=man>>~/.bashrc :)
Now it is
I have a couple of questions:
Are Internet-users in the UK actually limited to one ISP per area?
How do ISPs profit from scarcity of addresses? I assume that you're referring to the practice of reserving static IP addresses for a premium, but they already did that pre-scarcity. Now that addresses are exhausted wouldn't it simply mean that they have fewer IPs available to sell to new customers, while existing customers who already lease static IPs will cling to the ones they already have?
"Literally" doesn't mean what you think it does, dipshit.
From the site:
"Check out the 3,029,110 projects from around the world!"
Yes, unless they're willing to license Sony's new patent.
Africans. Blackberry is the single best-selling brand of smartphone in South Africa, and the second-best-selling (after Nokia) brand of cellphones cellphones in general.
That's wrong. You're taking a half a sentence and quoting it out of context. Clause 3(b) doesn't require you to do anything - it gives you the option of doing that. Clause 3(a) permits you instead to provide the source code only to those to whom you sell (or give) the compiled binaries. 3(c) is yet another option, but it's availably strictly for non-commercial distribution so it doesn't apply here.
He is well within his rights to ask you to buy his product before he gives you the source code.
I'd like it to be Koeksister. Unfortunately, I'm told that they are planning to use Key Lime Pie. (It's not a biggie, but I'm not keen on that as a name).
I don't think anyone's calling out THQ - they made an amazing offer. The complaints are specifically toward Humble specifically for going back on the very things for which fans were most impressed with them. I'm not too happy about that myself, but I'm sure that they didn't take the decision to do this lightly. THQ - an excellent developer and publisher - is having problems right now, and Humble chose to burn a bit of their ample supply of good karma to help them. It means we can get some THQ games cheaply now and hopefully boost THQ enough that they can continue making games in the future.
So does that mean that the FSF is going to release a binary without source code? How ironic.
No, the Linux Foundation. And no, it doesn't mean they'll release a binary without source code - it just means that the binary presented for signing must not be licensed as GLPv3 (or similar, whatever that means).