One of the things that I have noticed speeds up page viewing times dramatically is to reject cookies from specific sites, and to outright block all content from certain ad providers completely. This is easily done via any number of proxies.
Of course, for those impaired by windows, there are a number of software "cookie munchers" that work just this way (as a software proxie)
Sadly(?) there are a few site that will not load at all if you block the ad sites completely, because of the way the main sites are brought up via momentary redirection to the ad company servers.
It is amazing how fast a page loads when you are not wasting bandwidth on cookies and other net junk
The New Microsoft Trademark(TM) is of course going to be.NET
So sometime in the near future everyone using a.net TLD is going to get a letter from the Microsoft Lawyers(TM) to cease and desist the infringement of Microsoft Trademarks(TM)
Can this be another plan by Microsoft to take over the Internet?
God, it sounds like something out of Pinky and the Brain.
Sky and Telecope Magazine has a neat asteroid and comet information page here. And to make things more interesting, there is an excellent online impact calulator here, complete with comments by "Marvin the Martian" if the interplanetary object you dial in is sufficiently large.
Norfolk, Va. -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has won its case hands-down against Michael Doughney for his use of the Internet domain name "PETA.ORG." In 1995, Doughney registered "PETA.ORG" with Network Solutions, Inc., for "People Eating Tasty Animals," which he fraudulently represented as a nonprofit organization.
"PETA will always fight to show the public that animals on factory farms go through the grist mill before they end up on the grill," says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. PETA won the precedent-setting case on three grounds. First, trademark infringement-the PETA trademark belongs to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Doughney had no right to use it. Second, Doughney diluted the value of the trademark by his use of it. Third, Doughney was found in violation of the "Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act," because he appropriated the distinctive and famous "PETA" mark for his own commercial benefit.
In granting summary judgement in favor of PETA, the judge made the following findings: "...Doughney had the requisite bad faith intent" to profit from PETA's mark. He "clearly intended to confuse, mislead, and divert Internet users into accessing his Web site, which contained information antithetical and therefore harmful to the goodwill represented by the PETA mark."
The Judge noted: "Doughney knew he was causing confusion by use of the mark and admitted that it was 'possible' that some Internet users would be confused when they activated 'PETA.ORG' and found the 'People Eating Tasty Animals' Web site. The judge pointed out that Doughney "...has registered other Internet domain names, which are identical or similar to either marks or names of famous people or organizations he opposes," and "Doughney made reference to seeing what PETA would offer him if PETA did not like his Web site."
The judge ordered Doughney to relinquish registration of the domain name "PETA.ORG" and to transfer his registration of the domain name to PETA. Until then, PETA's Web site can be found at www.peta-online.org.
---------------------
Reading between the lines, it sounds like the guy was as much a jerk as the PETA people can be at times.
well, the cost of manufacturing would be maybe one dollar.
But I betcha that the cost of the paper documentation is more than that. And I betcha that the store did not pay only one dollar for the product. They had to pay maybe 75 to 90% of the full cost.
Bil gates makes sure that he doesn't get hit by any loses.
One of the major reasons for the buky packaging is theft in the retail stores. You simply do not want someone pocketing the cd in their jacket, and leave the box behind.
This has been a very common problem in retail stores, where the hardware profit margin is in the single digits, and you have to sell alot of software and peripherals to make it up.
Long ago and far away, I used to work in a now defunct retail chain. I can recall going through a store and finding empty boxes, merchandise gone. The complex fold over of the cardboard etc is thought out to prevent just this. Considering the cost of cardboard, vs 50 - 500 dollar product, the trade off is a pain, but understandable.
heck I can even remember people buying a computer, and then returning it, saying it was broken. We would take it apart, and it would be missing the ram, the harddrive, etc. We could not "prove" that they stolen it, but it was obvious that they had. [We didn't have the resources.] We even went to setting up the machine and and running it first, in the store, just to cut down on the theft. it was insane.
no wonder the chain went under. Some people have no morals whatsoever.
alot of things that microsoft does seems to be the easier way out, and just "happens" to benefit them from a marketing viewpoint.
we enter into a new world here, the marketing perspective of software design specifications. but then again wasn't there the slogan that "it doesn't ship until Lotus chokes?" or some such thing?
Ultimately, the problem is one of closed systems vs open systems.
It is alot harder to maintain a safe space to operate from when the entire system is under strick control (see recent developments in red china). It is far easier when you can operate from position that is outside the control of tyrants. It is very easy to paint reformers as criminal when they need to use such tactics. This tactic has been used sucessfully by many revolutionaries, pirates, etc. - Anyone operating outside the reach of the law, even when the law is unjust.
The problem now is that the world is moving towards a unified system.
This has many benefits when everyone can trust everyone
(example - the early net before the web - sortof)
(which is what happens when you a small community of professionals who know each other and have common goals)
This has many draw backs when you have people who cannot be trusted, especially in positions of authority. The spread of criminal culture and criminal values is something you do not want in government, for example. This sort of thing results in spam, and other system abuses.
So the senior problem is "who do you Trust?", and the related problems of ethical systems. We then have haggling and flame wars about what system of ethics to use between different groups with their different agendas and political views, while the crooks and the vandles run rampant. We even have social science types promoting the teaching of a "value free" curriculum, god knows to what effect.
but of course, people do not want to hear that freedom means taking personal responsibility for yourself and the world around you. It means participation, and getting involved.
well, if you are using winblows, you can get any number of cookie munchers and software firewalls.
CookieCop(free PC Magazine utility) and Zonealarm are two free products I use on my winblows systems. CookieCop even allows you to filter cookies set by java script. It runs as a software proxie server (duh!)
One nice thing to do is to entirely block sites that are advertisers. There are maybe a dozen of them. You would be amazed at the speed increase you get. However, a few pages will then choke because of the use of Java script. (accuweather is one where it happens at times)
so the intelligent use of proxie servers and firewalls will let you use your netscrape aggravator or your internet destroyer with java turned on, etc.
Just as a Note, this is a Holy Grail for many companies. I have a number of potential clients who would love this as they have a whole wall of file cabinets filled with paper docs that they want to convert to electronic docs, but cannot because of time, cost, etc. never mind legal issues (original records for legal disputes, etc)
One in particular that comes to mind is an auto insurance place. all of those customers who have to process stuff yearly, etc. nevermind the usual database issues...
if you figure it out, you have the makings of a great business plan.
It has to save the document into a file format that has complex formatting features. Usually this is something like Word Perfect, etc.
Omni Page has excellent capabilities for OCR that will scan and retain most, if not all formatting. It also supports this with WordPerfect, not just the Redmond brand X software that that you see around.
Unfortunately, it still requires a win9+ machine, but otherwise it falls into the category of Really Good Stuff(tm)
They were separate from TextBridge a while back, but the companies merged during the past couple of years.
The other option is to see if the compnies have copies of the books available on CDs, etc. this depends on the company, of course.
This would probably be best with one of the mail routers on the backbone, or something, although so far net searches have not found anyone doing that kind of tracking. Unfortunately, tracking at any one ISP or comapny would only reflect what that company had handed out, and it would not be representive.
one method out be do some sort of usenet search, but this might not representative either, since not all email users are on usenet, and the usenet population seem to be more experienced in that sort of thing. That may bias results.
Remember when sending out spam, the lowest common denominator of plain text is readable by the most people.
Aside from the technology issues, there are the age old problems of the haves vs the have-nots. That can of worms has been driving human conflicts since the dawn of time. There are so many angles on it that need to be considered:
1)"Gimmee" 2)"Gimmee Now" 3)"You do all the work, and I'll......" 4)The Classic 'Problem of the Commons" 5)Pointy Haired Managers, and other similar mutants.
heck, you complete the list.
although there is the example of some of the big industrialists (Henry Ford) who deliberated over paid their employees in order to develop their own market.
Wattage (AC or DC) basically is voltage time current (amps)
(AC has some extra nicities like pahase relationships thrown in, but the basic idea still applies)
This means Twice the voltage times half the current give you the same total power, never mind that once the electricity enters your box, it is converted back into DC, and still has the same power requirements it always had.
so the suggestion is based on a incomplete understanding of the basics of electricity and power transmision. admittedly, not an intuitive topic, but still the idea is flawed. [sigh]
One of the more interesting articles is entitled The Only Book You Ever Need, although the title may be a little misleading. This is best illustrated by the following quote for the article giving the essential bits.
The key is electronic ink -- which Jacobson has already invented. His "e-ink" is composed of millions of microscopic capsules, each of which contains a soup of blue dye and tiny flecks of white pigment. When the capsules are exposed to an electrical charge, the white particles inside move around. A negative charge draws the particles to the top, turning the capsule white; a positive charge pushes them to the bottom, under the dye, so the capsule appears dark. Under a microscope, a sheet of e-ink looks like a bed of sea anemones winking open and shut. Viewed en masse, the capsules -- some black, some white -- give rise to letters and images, like placard-bearing fans in a football stadium.
Coated with e-ink, an ordinary sheet of paper becomes reusable. Picture a special "printer" (Jacobson's team has already built it) that contains electrodes. A page of e-ink text goes in, the electrodes zap the e-ink -- switching some microcapsules from black to white or white to black, leaving others as they were -- and a page of new text comes out. Lately, Jacobson has dispensed with the printer altogether and has moved the electrodes onto the paper itself. He has created signs that consist of a sheet of e-ink sandwiched between two plastic sheets, one of which is essentially a transparent electrode. The sign's display can be updated by pager: from a remote computer, to a satellite, to an antenna, which sends radio signals to the sign's circuit board, which sends electrical signals to the e-ink. The power required to update the text is minuscule, a 10th of a watt.
In 1997, this ink became the foundation for a start-up company, E Ink. Last June, E Ink's first commercial product -- updatable signs, based on the electrode-sandwich design -- began appearing in Eckerd drugstores. So far, however, the signs' circuitry is capable of producing changeable letters no smaller than two inches tall -- not exactly a portable "Moby-Dick." So Jacobson is working on making everything smaller, designing circuits so tiny and cheap that a printer could spray them onto paper, alongside the e-ink. The electronics, in effect, would be disposable. Jacobson's ultimate goal is what he calls "radio paper": electronic paper, coated with e-ink, with tiny transistors embedded in it to act as electrodes, solar cells and radio receivers. So equipped, the average sheet of paper would be able to upload pretty much anything, even video, using no more energy than it draws from ambient light.
"I fundamentally think five years is the right time scale for static paper to be phased out and replaced by radio paper," Jacobson says. His investors evidently agree. So far, E Ink has attracted more than $50 million in venture capital, much of it from book and newspaper publishers like the Hearst Corporation. Jacobson's primary competitor is Nick Sheridon at Xerox PARC, who has been thinking about electronic ink for the past nine years. Sheridon has developed an ink similar to Jacobson's: called Gyricon, it is composed of tiny spheres -- white on one side, colored on the other -- that rotate in response to an electric charge. With backing from 3M, Sheridon aims to enter the sign business soon ("We should have a product next year"), then proceed on, like Jacobson, to reusable paper, books and newsprint.
Needless to say, your newspaper, when printed in electronic ink, would be utterly transformed. Which is to say, it would stay much the same, at least outwardly. The same oversize sheets of paper, the same soothing rustle. Go ahead, leave it splayed across the breakfast table: tomorrow -- or in an hour, or however often you like -- the contents will be updated by radio signal. Subway riders, desist in your origami antics: you can download your newspaper into a more manageable format -say, a book. Even your book could be smaller. The book's contents could be stored in microelectronics in the binding and called onto the page as you need them, even as you read. So unless you really need all 3,312 pages at once, your "Remembrance of Things Past" could simply fit in a pamphlet.
I can see several downsides right now. Revolutionaries, revisionists, thought police, hackers, all editing and correcting books and newspapers on the fly. No more cutting out cartoons or coupons. Constantly changing shifting content. Spam. No archives that get stored in libraries.
Hey, this sort of sounds like the web right now, but with less of the desirable parts.
1)the book did not have Harrier jets 2)The ending could have followed the book better, so that no one knew if the nuclear weapons sent to the other planet had any effect or not. 3)The book did not mention fort hood 4)the book took several years to unfold the story 5)The actual conquest of earth took several weeks in the book, and was by more sadistic means.
6)the quantity and quality of nuclear weapons sent to the other planet (in the book) was far higher, and the planetary crust had be long ago weakened by so much mining that a crust collapse was much more believable
etc. so the writers screwed the pooch, as they say.
Now that being said, it must be said the the cult of anti-scientologists really had a go at it, because I found the uniformity of hate reviews to be a bit to well orchestrated.
on online polls I found that they had a strong spike rating the movies at the worst possible ratings. I would have assumed a spike of rating trying to spike it at ten on a 1 to 10 scale, but this was not nearly the case. It was there a little, but I really did not see any obvious strong attempt to doctor the ratings in a positive direction. so the scientologists at least had that much more integrity than their critics.
taking the obvious fanatic votes out ot the mix (the tens and the ones on a 1 to 10 scale) it rated about a 6, but with very wide spread.
I took it as a hollywood re-write. it was a decent popcorn type flick, and I would imagine it as being decent for kids. An average middle of the road sci-fi shoot'em up, based on ideas by hubbard.
but then again, I didn't have any religious belief that it had to be bad. or good.
it is a pity that some people just like to piss on things. it reminds me of rush limbaughs opinion of hillary clinton.
One thing that I do recal is that many forms of microwaves have horrific problems during bad weather, such as rain, etc. The rain drops can physically block the signal.
If your best reception on a sunny day is 2 miles, then it can decrease quite a bit during small events like rainstorms, etc. Of course, you need to be extra carful about lightning, and I'm not sure how that problem is handled in microwave towers.
my own practical experience with this comes from being a radar tech in the military, but your milage may vary. after all, the freqs may be different, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
the humanity, oh my lord the humanity .....
Hard drives are something else, of course
Of course, for those impaired by windows, there are a number of software "cookie munchers" that work just this way (as a software proxie)
Sadly(?) there are a few site that will not load at all if you block the ad sites completely, because of the way the main sites are brought up via momentary redirection to the ad company servers.
It is amazing how fast a page loads when you are not wasting bandwidth on cookies and other net junk
So sometime in the near future everyone using a .net TLD is going to get a letter from the Microsoft Lawyers(TM) to cease and desist the infringement of Microsoft Trademarks(TM)
Can this be another plan by Microsoft to take over the Internet?
God, it sounds like something out of Pinky and the Brain.
Sky and Telecope Magazine has a neat asteroid and comet information page here. And to make things more interesting, there is an excellent online impact calulator here, complete with comments by "Marvin the Martian" if the interplanetary object you dial in is sufficiently large.
"PETA will always fight to show the public that animals on factory farms go through the grist mill before they end up on the grill," says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. PETA won the precedent-setting case on three grounds. First, trademark infringement-the PETA trademark belongs to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Doughney had no right to use it. Second, Doughney diluted the value of the trademark by his use of it. Third, Doughney was found in violation of the "Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act," because he appropriated the distinctive and famous "PETA" mark for his own commercial benefit.
In granting summary judgement in favor of PETA, the judge made the following findings: "...Doughney had the requisite bad faith intent" to profit from PETA's mark. He "clearly intended to confuse, mislead, and divert Internet users into accessing his Web site, which contained information antithetical and therefore harmful to the goodwill represented by the PETA mark."
The Judge noted: "Doughney knew he was causing confusion by use of the mark and admitted that it was 'possible' that some Internet users would be confused when they activated 'PETA.ORG' and found the 'People Eating Tasty Animals' Web site. The judge pointed out that Doughney "...has registered other Internet domain names, which are identical or similar to either marks or names of famous people or organizations he opposes," and "Doughney made reference to seeing what PETA would offer him if PETA did not like his Web site."
The judge ordered Doughney to relinquish registration of the domain name "PETA.ORG" and to transfer his registration of the domain name to PETA. Until then, PETA's Web site can be found at www.peta-online.org.
---------------------
Reading between the lines, it sounds like the guy was as much a jerk as the PETA people can be at times.
But I betcha that the cost of the paper documentation is more than that. And I betcha that the store did not pay only one dollar for the product. They had to pay maybe 75 to 90% of the full cost.
Bil gates makes sure that he doesn't get hit by any loses.
This has been a very common problem in retail stores, where the hardware profit margin is in the single digits, and you have to sell alot of software and peripherals to make it up.
Long ago and far away, I used to work in a now defunct retail chain. I can recall going through a store and finding empty boxes, merchandise gone. The complex fold over of the cardboard etc is thought out to prevent just this. Considering the cost of cardboard, vs 50 - 500 dollar product, the trade off is a pain, but understandable.
heck I can even remember people buying a computer, and then returning it, saying it was broken. We would take it apart, and it would be missing the ram, the harddrive, etc. We could not "prove" that they stolen it, but it was obvious that they had. [We didn't have the resources.] We even went to setting up the machine and and running it first, in the store, just to cut down on the theft. it was insane.
no wonder the chain went under. Some people have no morals whatsoever.
alot of things that microsoft does seems to be the easier way out, and just "happens" to benefit them from a marketing viewpoint.
we enter into a new world here, the marketing perspective of software design specifications. but then again wasn't there the slogan that "it doesn't ship until Lotus chokes?" or some such thing?
It is alot harder to maintain a safe space to operate from when the entire system is under strick control (see recent developments in red china). It is far easier when you can operate from position that is outside the control of tyrants. It is very easy to paint reformers as criminal when they need to use such tactics. This tactic has been used sucessfully by many revolutionaries, pirates, etc. - Anyone operating outside the reach of the law, even when the law is unjust.
The problem now is that the world is moving towards a unified system.
This has many benefits when everyone can trust everyone
(example - the early net before the web - sortof)
(which is what happens when you a small community of professionals who know each other and have common goals)
This has many draw backs when you have people who cannot be trusted, especially in positions of authority. The spread of criminal culture and criminal values is something you do not want in government, for example. This sort of thing results in spam, and other system abuses.
So the senior problem is "who do you Trust?", and the related problems of ethical systems. We then have haggling and flame wars about what system of ethics to use between different groups with their different agendas and political views, while the crooks and the vandles run rampant. We even have social science types promoting the teaching of a "value free" curriculum, god knows to what effect.
but of course, people do not want to hear that freedom means taking personal responsibility for yourself and the world around you. It means participation, and getting involved.
you might even get shut down by the enviromental protection agency.
of course, service calls would be a pain. but I do recall that Radio shack is going to send a lander to the moon.
hmmmmmmm
It is possible that Microsoft still has enough money to move their operations to the moon ... that has possibilities.
CookieCop (free PC Magazine utility) and Zonealarm are two free products I use on my winblows systems. CookieCop even allows you to filter cookies set by java script. It runs as a software proxie server (duh!)
One nice thing to do is to entirely block sites that are advertisers. There are maybe a dozen of them. You would be amazed at the speed increase you get. However, a few pages will then choke because of the use of Java script. (accuweather is one where it happens at times)
so the intelligent use of proxie servers and firewalls will let you use your netscrape aggravator or your internet destroyer with java turned on, etc.
I can see the sales geeks in the office now...
One in particular that comes to mind is an auto insurance place. all of those customers who have to process stuff yearly, etc. nevermind the usual database issues...
if you figure it out, you have the makings of a great business plan.
I forgot: Omnipage is available for the Mac as well. so there may be a back door for running this on a *nix box.
Omni Page has excellent capabilities for OCR that will scan and retain most, if not all formatting. It also supports this with WordPerfect, not just the Redmond brand X software that that you see around.
Unfortunately, it still requires a win9+ machine, but otherwise it falls into the category of Really Good Stuff(tm)
They were separate from TextBridge a while back, but the companies merged during the past couple of years.
The other option is to see if the compnies have copies of the books available on CDs, etc. this depends on the company, of course.
one method out be do some sort of usenet search, but this might not representative either, since not all email users are on usenet, and the usenet population seem to be more experienced in that sort of thing. That may bias results.
Remember when sending out spam, the lowest common denominator of plain text is readable by the most people.
:)
on the other hand, I can only imagine the prices!
1)"Gimmee" ......"
2)"Gimmee Now"
3)"You do all the work, and I'll
4)The Classic 'Problem of the Commons"
5)Pointy Haired Managers, and other similar mutants.
heck, you complete the list.
although there is the example of some of the big industrialists (Henry Ford) who deliberated over paid their employees in order to develop their own market.
So there is alot to consider here.
Wattage (AC or DC) basically is voltage time current (amps)
(AC has some extra nicities like pahase relationships thrown in, but the basic idea still applies)
This means Twice the voltage times half the current give you the same total power, never mind that once the electricity enters your box, it is converted back into DC, and still has the same power requirements it always had.
so the suggestion is based on a incomplete understanding of the basics of electricity and power transmision. admittedly, not an intuitive topic, but still the idea is flawed. [sigh]
Hey, this sort of sounds like the web right now, but with less of the desirable parts.
hmmmmmmmm .....
usually, I can read almost any book in an afternoon. I am a high speed reader.
it would take longer if you had to read it outloud or speaking it to yourself.
and the book
as scary as that may seem!
for example:
1)the book did not have Harrier jets
2)The ending could have followed the book better, so that no one knew if the nuclear weapons sent to the other planet had any effect or not.
3)The book did not mention fort hood
4)the book took several years to unfold the story
5)The actual conquest of earth took several weeks in the book, and was by more sadistic means.
6)the quantity and quality of nuclear weapons sent to the other planet (in the book) was far higher, and the planetary crust had be long ago weakened by so much mining that a crust collapse was much more believable
etc. so the writers screwed the pooch, as they say.
Now that being said, it must be said the the cult of anti-scientologists really had a go at it, because I found the uniformity of hate reviews to be a bit to well orchestrated.
on online polls I found that they had a strong spike rating the movies at the worst possible ratings. I would have assumed a spike of rating trying to spike it at ten on a 1 to 10 scale, but this was not nearly the case. It was there a little, but I really did not see any obvious strong attempt to doctor the ratings in a positive direction. so the scientologists at least had that much more integrity than their critics.
taking the obvious fanatic votes out ot the mix (the tens and the ones on a 1 to 10 scale) it rated about a 6, but with very wide spread.
I took it as a hollywood re-write. it was a decent popcorn type flick, and I would imagine it as being decent for kids. An average middle of the road sci-fi shoot'em up, based on ideas by hubbard.
but then again, I didn't have any religious belief that it had to be bad. or good.
it is a pity that some people just like to piss on things. it reminds me of rush limbaughs opinion of hillary clinton.
feh . . . .
almost as bad as the editor flame wars....
If your best reception on a sunny day is 2 miles, then it can decrease quite a bit during small events like rainstorms, etc. Of course, you need to be extra carful about lightning, and I'm not sure how that problem is handled in microwave towers.
my own practical experience with this comes from being a radar tech in the military, but your milage may vary. after all, the freqs may be different, etc.