"I want all crimes except genocide or crimes against humanity to expire in 20 years tops."
I agree with most of what you said. And I have conflicting feelings about this particular story that I won't bother to get into since, well, they're conflicting and I'm not really sure what I have to say on the subject.
However...
Are you saying that you do not feel that murder is a "crime against humanity" ?
I'm a libertarian who is complete agreement with everything the above two posters have said. I would gladly pick up arms and fight for the right cause. I also happen to be well educated and own my own business with moderate success (I'm not wealthy but I'm proving for my family). I am very interested in politics and freedom.
Anyway I happen to watch and enjoy Survivor, you insensitive clod. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of mindless entertainment and blaming it for people being stupid is akin to blaming video games for Columbine.
I would have found your post funny and had a google chuckle but the fact that it's been modded +5 Insightful bothers me. If people actually think that reality television, MTV and other mass media MAKES people stupid then I don't know what they're doing bitching every time Jack Thompson sues yet another video game developer for turning children into murderers.
You should know better.
So I'm going to say the same thing to you that people on/. love to say to Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton.
Where's the parents and the teachers ?
My kids watch a bit of entertainment that I find retarded and useless but I also make sure they do their homework every night and I talk them about absolutely everything that I think is important for them to learn. I also try to get them interested in forms of entertainment that are educational and stimulating for the brain as well. Doesn't mean I'm going to prohibit them from watching everything I find to be mindless.
And perhaps the most ironic part of your post is that you're proposing restricting freedom in order to encourage people to stand up for it. I'll decide what I can or can't watch on television, thank you very much.
Yet phone was still your last resort AND while WHOIS was certainly convenient in this particular case, it most likely would have still been possible to get their phone number from somewhere else.
Oh AND AND AND... you're talking about a business.
What about guys who set up a small web site out of their homes and are leaving themselves open to spammers and such by having their home address and phone # in their WHOIS info ? They can either get a PO (although in that case they're still fscked for the phone #) or get a private domain or enter fake info. Either way the reliability of WHOIS goes down the tubes.
The only show that I've ever really watched on NBC was The Tonight Show and only on lonely Friday nights with nothing better to do. None of their other shows ever really interested me.
Then last night I watched Chuck because I heard good things about it (one mention on/. that I recall)... and after Chuck Heroes came on and I had nothing better to do so I watched it. It's kind of an x-men rip-off but it was actually pretty good. If they keep those shows around and they don't start to suck after a few episodes I'll probably keep watching them.
I thought they were just trying to provide a service where you can get their videos through a medium that they control ?
Also, (while I didn't RTFA), if they provide full length episodes in a single stream then they do offer something over Youtube. While I can often find complete episodes on youtube they need to be broken up in to 10 minute clips and sometimes you find the first 10 minutes and then can't find the rest of the episode and that's really annoying.
From the summary it sounds like their major "gripe" (for lack of a better word) is the lack of user generated content and only fresh episodes... but if all NBC is trying to do is offer their recent tv shows online then it sounds like NBC is doing exactly what they set out to. Did NBC ever mention trying to compete with Youtube ? I thought they just didn't want random people uploading random content that NBC owns the copyright to on Youtube. Not trying to steal the "market" or something.
Perhaps what he means is that what we currently do with supercomputers today will be able to be done with low cost computing. I can certainly see that being true.
I don't just see that as being "true".. I see that as "um... no fucking shit sherlock".
As you already put it, today's PCs ARE super computers relative to the computing power of 10 - 15 years ago. So of course tomorrow's hand-helds will be super computers relative to todays computing power. It's just the way things have gone up until now with no foreseeable change in the trend. It would take a huge roadblock in computing technology development to make it not so.
But then, I didn't RTFA so it is conceivable that I am completely missing the point.
I feel the exact opposite about the multiple windows, especially when it comes to multi-tasking. I don't have multiple monitors, however.
When I've got a dozen apps open I need my image editor to work as ONE APPLICATION. Not 5. With photoshop and it's MDI it's dialogs are always visible and if they get in the way I can disable them until I want them. With the Gimp when I need something I have to go searching for it. That means going to my task bar and reading a list of windows that I need rather than just clicking on the Gimp's task and up comes everything where I left it and ready to resume my image editing. That is a HUGE pet peeve of mine and one that can really only be solved with a dedicated work space for The Gimp. I find Photoshop to be so much more productive in that regards.
Now imagine that every single computer user uses web-based applications to do absolutely everything.
Online word processing Online image editing Online gaming Online video and music (at first I thought to myself 'this is a stretch' and then and realized it's already common place a-la youtube and internet radio stations etc.) Online e-mail (not really worth mentioning since it has already been so common for so long and is arguably one of the catalysts for the desire to move everything to the web) Hell even a web-based OS with online file storage.
Now imagine the demand this will put on bandwidth.
Bandwidth is relatively cheap right now but there are already signs that it's not getting any cheaper. My ISP has raised it's cost by a couple of bucks / month TWICE in the last 6 months. We hear article and article about ISPs capping users and degrading service all the time on/. Simple economics dictates that as demand goes up and supply goes down prices automatically increase.
As we move forward in this direction the demand for bandwidth is going to be astronomical. Prices will soar and performance will go downhill. The more I think about it the more I wonder if the entire concept is really sustainable with our current infrastructure. Of course the problem could be solvable. With competent software architects who can design these systems with great care to keep bandwidth consumption to an absolute minimum and with advancements in network technology we could offset the problem. It's just that there seems to be such a huge push towards moving everything web-based, and at the same time that we have a soar in online media such as youtube and all it's clones, internet radio, DVD piracy etc.
The question needs to be asked. Is this all blind business strategy or are people actually carefully considering how all of this increased demand is going to affect the infrastructure and how the infrastructure will be improved to handle it. Web applications in the now are sustainable but if every single Internet user starts to do everything online then the question needs to be answered.
The advantage of search engine rankings over word of mouth is:
1) Relatively instant results if you know what you're doing. 2) (and perhaps most important) the results are MEASURABLE. You can see exactly how many users are hitting your site each day from search engines, you can see what they're searching for when they find your site, how your site ranks and you can use that information to further fine-tune.
However, the drawbacks with search engine traffic is that once you hit the #1 listing for a targeted keyword your traffic becomes fixed. So obviously it is also important to focus on other traffic sources such as word-of-mouth, returning visitors, paid advertising etc. What any commercial site wants to do is snowball and that only occurs with the type of traffic that you can only get for free (returning visitors and word of mouth advertising etc.). The issue is that those types of "free compounding" traffic accumulates a LOT slower if you don't get the instant stuff. Of course you can also replace search engine traffic with paid advertising. But search engine optimization is often times free (assuming you know what you're doing) or a one-time cost (pay to learn it and then be on your way... "give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish...").
The other drawback is that if you're relying on search engine traffic then you are staking your business entirely in the hands of another business who has it's own interests. I've had excellent first page rankings getting thousands of unique hits from google every single day only to have it all snatched away one night without warning. Then a few months later it all comes back. For reasons that only google knows. I would not invest in any business that depends on search engine traffic alone.
In short, any webmaster who knows what he's doing understands that search engine traffic is not the be-all/end-all but also does not dismiss it entirely. Search Engine traffic is gold when you have it but if you rely on it you can get burned very easily. Not to mention, it has a peak and once you reach it how do you continue to grow ? The answer is in the other forms of traffic. But you'll find that without some kind of quality traffic to start with, it's rather difficult to spread via word-of-mouth.
>> "I was just trying to say that anyone that mails you to tell you your code is shit without offering any helpful advice is at best a juvenile arsehole and should just be ignored."
"> No, they should not be ignored. Instead try telling them how completely unhelpful they are being are ask them to be more constructive in future. If everyone tells them this they might eventually listen and grow up.
It seems to be working on me:)"
You are a juvenile arsehole, who is copmletely unhelpful. In the future, should you wish to actually contribute something useful to society instead of just trolling away your adolescent urge to put others down, I strongly suggest you begin by making an effort to offer some sort of constructive criticism. It is completely fine to disagree with someone or feel that they can do something better. However, flaming them and telling them that their code is shit without offering any helpful advice is, as has already been stated, juvenile.
I hope that as a result of my response you may finally listen and grow the fuck up.
"As for your mysterious file format and your "forgetaboutit" OOo install, we'll need more info to refute/help you on those ones. I find that anyone who has used Office XP or earlier tends to enjoy using the latest OOo, unless they have a bunch of VB macros that don't work quite right, or some badly-created templates that don't display correctly."
About 6 - 8 months ago my wife was applying for a job. My mother typed up her resume for her in Office and sent it to us. My wife didn't have office installed so I decided to install Open Office on her XP machine to edit it. It was a nightmare.
Open Office rendered the resume just fine but we couldn't figure out how to do *extremely* simple and trivial tasks like changing a font. I know what you're thinking... PEBKAC... and believe me, that thought had crossed my mind. All we were trying to do was add text, and it would add it in a completely different font/size. When placing the cursor in a block of text that was created in Word, it would show us what font/size that text was (just like Word does). And when we place the cursor somewhere else the font/size would change to the default, which is expected behaviour, so we would manually change it to be consistent with the existing text. Well, it looked completely different. So then we resorted to copying/pasting text and editing it. The paste would paste it exact, but as soon as we started to modify the text it would modify it in a completely different font/size. Talk about frustrating. We never could get the font/size to be consistent with the original text and we eventually gave up and installed Office.
That experience completely turned me off from OO. If it can't do something so ridiculously and insanely simple and common then how the hell is anyone supposed to use it to do anything?
Shouldn't matter. Totem will still play it. It checks the mime-type not the file extension. I even tested it just now to make absolutely certain that I'm correct. Renamed foo.wmv to foo.bar, double clicked and Totem loaded it and played it just fine.
While talking about Yahoo... I've been using yahoo mail since the late 90's. I don't use it for everything but since I've had that e-mail address for almost 10 years now I still use it for certain purposes.
Now, I'm on a "modern" PC (1GB RAM, 1.8Ghz CPU... starting to show it's age but still plenty capable of surfing Youtube and MySpace if I'm so inclined) and I have a business-grade cable line that I pay extra for to get more bandwidth since I'm running a home business and I have to transfer a lot of data to/from my web servers etc. (mostly I'm paying it for a faster uplink but the downlink is increased as well).
When Yahoo introduced their new AJAX e-mail service I tried it out for a few days and ended up switching back to the classic one. It was too slow and "quirky" to be usable.
Moral = Just because a user has broadband and a fast computer doesn't mean jack. Yes you have to take "extra special care" for dial-up users... but we shouldn't be slacking off just because users have broadband. Every microsecond of downloading and processing time counts for all users.
People screw over other people, whether knowingly or unknowingly, all the time. You can cost someone far more money than you would ever pay out of your tax dollars to support a coma patient simply by getting into a car accident and causing a traffic jam while he's on his way to a job interview.
The minute you start to use "I don't want to support your stupidity" as an argument you are supporting restricting the freedoms of others solely for your convenience. And then all kinds of ethical and philosophical questions come in to play, mainly "where do we draw the line?"
Not to mention the fact that you probably spend WAY more out of your tax dollars to support government ad campaigns to educate people on wearing their seat-belts and police programs designed to arrest and ticket motorists than you ever would supporting the health care of people injuring themselves due to not wearing their belts. Plus, seat-belts save lives, they don't prevent injuries. Think about all the people who would have died vs. those that are now in critical condition because they chose to wear their seat-belt. The "my money is too important to me to support your idiocy" argument is a complete fallacy.
In my opinion the government does not own me and simply has absolutely no right to tell me what I can or can not do with my body. If I feel like risking my ass driving without a seatbelt that is my risk to take.
BTW - I ALWAYS wear my seatbelt. I just don't like being told that I have to. I'm an adult and can make my own choices.
I do agree that security has been improved soooooo much and Microsoft deserves a lot of credit even if they did act rather late (late is still better than never).
However, adware and viruses are still an issue. I had to re-install the OS twice on my wife's computer. She was running XP with SP2, always installing updates (automatic updates configured to notify but not auto-install) + firewall.
The first time I had to re-install it was because she got infected with something. I can't remember what it was but it disguised itself as firefox.exe. She was having problems with her computer and when I investigated I found that firefox.exe was always running and when I'd open up the browser there would be two firefox.exe processes. I did a bit of googling and discovered it was a virus. This is despite all of the common sense lectures I've given her about not opening e-mail attachments or accepting files over MSN etc. even if she trusts the source. She only ran Firefox etc.
The second time I had to re-install was not due to a virus. Automatic Update told her there were updates available and being a good girl she downloaded and installed them. After a reboot Windows wouldn't boot. It was blue-screening, complaining about corrupt DLLs. After 3 weeks of her not having a computer because I was too busy to get around to fixing it I installed Ubuntu for her and we haven't had any issues since.
I completely agree that the security issues with Windows pale in comparison to years ago but they still exist and when an auto-update can render your machine useless that's just BS as far as I'm concerned. I would like to hope that auto-updates would be doing sanity checks such as comparing checksums to validate the integrity of the downloads before and after installing them (and doing an auto-rollback if something goes wrong during the install) but apparently that is not so. If the download is corrupt it seems it will install anyway and potentially fuck your computer.
I don't think anything of the sort. My only post was to try and give one possible explanation for how the US government currently feels towards Japan.
None of what I said reflects my personal views and opinions and I tried to make that clear. Of course there are alternate views and I will be the first to accuse the US government of being racist. In fact, I am not American, nor do I harbour any resentment or ill feelings toward the Japanese. I think you completely misinterpreted my post. I was offering speculation as to why the US government will not sell military weapons to Japan. Nothing else.
I agree, I don't think I chose the best words. What I meant was that the US wanted to impose certain terms on the Japanese post-surrender, and I chose the word "conditions". The Japanese could not fathom the concept of unconditional surrender and wanted conditions (as you pointed out) but the US rejected their terms and wanted unconditional surrender. I chose the term "conditions" to refer to the allies' "terms". I can see where that choice of wording would lead to confusion and I even anticipated it but at the time I couldn't think of any better words. I suppose the word "terms" is the most appropriate and what I should have used.
Why doesn't it make sense ? The US government has time and time again referred to itself as "THE super power". I'm not trying to knock the US, I'm just trying to offer a (possible) explanation for choosing not to sell F-22's (and possibly other military technology) to Japan. Not only that but US was a key player in developing Japan's government post-WWII. It makes complete sense (to me) that the US would look at the country as something to be controlled.
While I can not speak with entire certainty about the last 60 years, I can say that there are a lot of people who feel that Japan is only an "ally" because they were forced to surrender in WWII due to a) the US dropping nukes on them (one on Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki... which were the only two the US had with months required to build another one, but the Japanese did not know that) and b) Russia had finally declared war on them.
Japan entered World War II with the intent of conquering Asia. They invaded China (without ever formally declaring War since both China and Japan feared it would cause their trading partners to stop supplying them) for it's resources and eventually The Philippines which was an act of war against the US. The Japanese were notorious for committing atrocities. Germany gets most of the attention for the Holocaust but the Japanese were also quite brutal. Usually we hear about the suicide pilots who would crash their planes into enemy ships but they also raped and tortured enemies and their "creed" (for lack of a better term) was "fight to the death". They would then mutilate bodies of killed enemies stuffing their genitals in their mouths etc. This was done to demoralize the Allied troops.
Now personally I do not believe the Japanese are still like this. Their surrender in WWII was with many conditions imposed by the Allies. They initially rejected the offer but after Russia declared war on them and the 2nd nuke was dropped on Nagasaki they felt they had no choice. My history isn't 100% up to snuff but I believe that the Allies worked with the Japanese government much the same way the current US government is trying to work with Iraq to instate a new government and new, democratic, systems etc. However, those who are young can not understand the positions of the veterans and their immediate descendants who passed on their strong hatred and mistrust of the Japanese for their utter brutality in WWII. It takes time for things to change. I don't think Japan really is an "ally" of the US. I think the US government still strongly mistrusts the Japanese and wants to keep them on a very short leash to make sure that the events of WWII do not repeat themselves.
Your post has just 'caused me to make a revelation about myself that is most disturbing.
Celebrity gossup / papparazzi is one of my biggest pet-peeves. It drives me INSANE when people care about Paris Hilton being in jail or Britney shaving her head or whatever. The fact that I even know those events occurred makes me want to kill myself. I mean, really WHO THE HELL CARES AND WHY ?!?! Are people's own lives so bloody shallow that they need to constantly invade the privacy of other people that they do not even know just to see something more interesting ? Why is that considered to be more interesting anyway ? Leave the celebrities the fuck alone, they're just people. They are no more interesting or important or "special" than you. Aside from the media that they have a small part in producing they have absolutely no "real" effect your lives what-so-ever. The fact that anyone cares about their private lives is the most absolutely ridiculous aspect of human / pop culture and it depresses me.
Yet, thanks to your post I have realized that I am also guilty of this. Only not with pop-culture. I am interest in things like what Linus is currently working on, the direction that Jobs is taking his business, whether Steve Ballmer will be finally taken to an asylum to get the anger management that he needs. I know more names of "popular" geeks and business people than I do of actors or musicians etc.
You're being extremely pedantic. You're crying and complaining about issues that are very specific to your personal requirements. The developers can not read minds.
Postfix *will* work out of the box. Just because *YOU* personally require an RDBMS or a pop3/imap server or SSL authentication for your setup does not mean postfix doesn't work. It means it doesn't work to your personal configuration requirements.
To draw a parallel, when I install apache (something I do quite frequently) I can see that it opens up port 80 and that I can connect with a web browser and see apache's welcome page. However, I could say that it doesn't "work" (like you have claimed about postfix). No, I need to also install mod_php, mod_perl, mod_ssl and openSSL set up all my virtual hosts, comb through the configuration file and remove all default modules and other clutter that I don't need etc. Then I could go on complaining that it does not do this by default for me, never mind that every single other user out there has completely different requirements than me.
Complaining about an RDBMS, appropriate modules / extensions to the MTA to interact with it + a pop3/imap server + openSSL + an anti-virus system when SSL authentication is not a requirement for every user is absurd. Why not also complain about SpamAssassin not being installed and configured by default ?
The fact is that postfix DOES work out of the box. Install it and see that it's opened up port 25 and is up and running. You just have to edit main.cf to tell it what domain(s) to handle mail for and make sure that your MX records are set up prior you're rolling. Of course for most users it doesn't end there, they've gotta configure things for THEIR SPECIFIC needs. What you are doing is complaining that the system can not read your mind.
a) Web developers who wish to run Linux but *must* test their sites in IE since the bulk of their users are IE users.
b) Those few web applications provided by online banking and government services etc. that will not work in Firefox or Opera (and I mean actually not work, not just complaining about User-Agent because they don't want to have to support non-users when it in fact it actually works fine if you spoof the User-Agent).
Slashdot Mirror
"I want all crimes except genocide or crimes against humanity to expire in 20 years tops."
...
I agree with most of what you said. And I have conflicting feelings about this particular story that I won't bother to get into since, well, they're conflicting and I'm not really sure what I have to say on the subject.
However
Are you saying that you do not feel that murder is a "crime against humanity" ?
I'm a libertarian who is complete agreement with everything the above two posters have said. I would gladly pick up arms and fight for the right cause. I also happen to be well educated and own my own business with moderate success (I'm not wealthy but I'm proving for my family). I am very interested in politics and freedom.
/. love to say to Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton.
Anyway I happen to watch and enjoy Survivor, you insensitive clod. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of mindless entertainment and blaming it for people being stupid is akin to blaming video games for Columbine.
I would have found your post funny and had a google chuckle but the fact that it's been modded +5 Insightful bothers me. If people actually think that reality television, MTV and other mass media MAKES people stupid then I don't know what they're doing bitching every time Jack Thompson sues yet another video game developer for turning children into murderers.
You should know better.
So I'm going to say the same thing to you that people on
Where's the parents and the teachers ?
My kids watch a bit of entertainment that I find retarded and useless but I also make sure they do their homework every night and I talk them about absolutely everything that I think is important for them to learn. I also try to get them interested in forms of entertainment that are educational and stimulating for the brain as well. Doesn't mean I'm going to prohibit them from watching everything I find to be mindless.
And perhaps the most ironic part of your post is that you're proposing restricting freedom in order to encourage people to stand up for it. I'll decide what I can or can't watch on television, thank you very much.
Do you have kids ?
Would it make a difference if you had kids ?
What if you owned 100 domains ?
What if you and your wife were running an amateur porn site from your home ?
What if you and your wife also had kids ?
What if your web site was politically charged and you had a lot of enemies that only hate you because of your political or religious beliefs ?
See where I'm coming from ? There are legitimate reasons to not want to broadcast your personal contact information to the entire world.
Yet phone was still your last resort AND while WHOIS was certainly convenient in this particular case, it most likely would have still been possible to get their phone number from somewhere else.
... you're talking about a business.
Oh AND AND AND
What about guys who set up a small web site out of their homes and are leaving themselves open to spammers and such by having their home address and phone # in their WHOIS info ? They can either get a PO (although in that case they're still fscked for the phone #) or get a private domain or enter fake info. Either way the reliability of WHOIS goes down the tubes.
The only show that I've ever really watched on NBC was The Tonight Show and only on lonely Friday nights with nothing better to do. None of their other shows ever really interested me.
/. that I recall) ... and after Chuck Heroes came on and I had nothing better to do so I watched it. It's kind of an x-men rip-off but it was actually pretty good. If they keep those shows around and they don't start to suck after a few episodes I'll probably keep watching them.
Then last night I watched Chuck because I heard good things about it (one mention on
... is NBC trying to create a "Youtube Killer" ?
... but if all NBC is trying to do is offer their recent tv shows online then it sounds like NBC is doing exactly what they set out to. Did NBC ever mention trying to compete with Youtube ? I thought they just didn't want random people uploading random content that NBC owns the copyright to on Youtube. Not trying to steal the "market" or something.
I thought they were just trying to provide a service where you can get their videos through a medium that they control ?
Also, (while I didn't RTFA), if they provide full length episodes in a single stream then they do offer something over Youtube. While I can often find complete episodes on youtube they need to be broken up in to 10 minute clips and sometimes you find the first 10 minutes and then can't find the rest of the episode and that's really annoying.
From the summary it sounds like their major "gripe" (for lack of a better word) is the lack of user generated content and only fresh episodes
Perhaps what he means is that what we currently do with supercomputers today will be able to be done with low cost computing. I can certainly see that being true.
.. I see that as "um ... no fucking shit sherlock".
I don't just see that as being "true"
As you already put it, today's PCs ARE super computers relative to the computing power of 10 - 15 years ago. So of course tomorrow's hand-helds will be super computers relative to todays computing power. It's just the way things have gone up until now with no foreseeable change in the trend. It would take a huge roadblock in computing technology development to make it not so.
But then, I didn't RTFA so it is conceivable that I am completely missing the point.
I feel the exact opposite about the multiple windows, especially when it comes to multi-tasking. I don't have multiple monitors, however.
When I've got a dozen apps open I need my image editor to work as ONE APPLICATION. Not 5. With photoshop and it's MDI it's dialogs are always visible and if they get in the way I can disable them until I want them. With the Gimp when I need something I have to go searching for it. That means going to my task bar and reading a list of windows that I need rather than just clicking on the Gimp's task and up comes everything where I left it and ready to resume my image editing. That is a HUGE pet peeve of mine and one that can really only be solved with a dedicated work space for The Gimp. I find Photoshop to be so much more productive in that regards.
Now imagine that every single computer user uses web-based applications to do absolutely everything.
/. Simple economics dictates that as demand goes up and supply goes down prices automatically increase.
Online word processing
Online image editing
Online gaming
Online video and music (at first I thought to myself 'this is a stretch' and then and realized it's already common place a-la youtube and internet radio stations etc.)
Online e-mail (not really worth mentioning since it has already been so common for so long and is arguably one of the catalysts for the desire to move everything to the web)
Hell even a web-based OS with online file storage.
Now imagine the demand this will put on bandwidth.
Bandwidth is relatively cheap right now but there are already signs that it's not getting any cheaper. My ISP has raised it's cost by a couple of bucks / month TWICE in the last 6 months. We hear article and article about ISPs capping users and degrading service all the time on
As we move forward in this direction the demand for bandwidth is going to be astronomical. Prices will soar and performance will go downhill. The more I think about it the more I wonder if the entire concept is really sustainable with our current infrastructure. Of course the problem could be solvable. With competent software architects who can design these systems with great care to keep bandwidth consumption to an absolute minimum and with advancements in network technology we could offset the problem. It's just that there seems to be such a huge push towards moving everything web-based, and at the same time that we have a soar in online media such as youtube and all it's clones, internet radio, DVD piracy etc.
The question needs to be asked. Is this all blind business strategy or are people actually carefully considering how all of this increased demand is going to affect the infrastructure and how the infrastructure will be improved to handle it. Web applications in the now are sustainable but if every single Internet user starts to do everything online then the question needs to be answered.
The advantage of search engine rankings over word of mouth is:
1) Relatively instant results if you know what you're doing.
2) (and perhaps most important) the results are MEASURABLE. You can see exactly how many users are hitting your site each day from search engines, you can see what they're searching for when they find your site, how your site ranks and you can use that information to further fine-tune.
However, the drawbacks with search engine traffic is that once you hit the #1 listing for a targeted keyword your traffic becomes fixed. So obviously it is also important to focus on other traffic sources such as word-of-mouth, returning visitors, paid advertising etc. What any commercial site wants to do is snowball and that only occurs with the type of traffic that you can only get for free (returning visitors and word of mouth advertising etc.). The issue is that those types of "free compounding" traffic accumulates a LOT slower if you don't get the instant stuff. Of course you can also replace search engine traffic with paid advertising. But search engine optimization is often times free (assuming you know what you're doing) or a one-time cost (pay to learn it and then be on your way... "give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish...").
The other drawback is that if you're relying on search engine traffic then you are staking your business entirely in the hands of another business who has it's own interests. I've had excellent first page rankings getting thousands of unique hits from google every single day only to have it all snatched away one night without warning. Then a few months later it all comes back. For reasons that only google knows. I would not invest in any business that depends on search engine traffic alone.
In short, any webmaster who knows what he's doing understands that search engine traffic is not the be-all/end-all but also does not dismiss it entirely. Search Engine traffic is gold when you have it but if you rely on it you can get burned very easily. Not to mention, it has a peak and once you reach it how do you continue to grow ? The answer is in the other forms of traffic. But you'll find that without some kind of quality traffic to start with, it's rather difficult to spread via word-of-mouth.
>> "I was just trying to say that anyone that mails you to tell you your code is shit without offering any helpful advice is at best a juvenile arsehole and should just be ignored."
:)"
:)
"> No, they should not be ignored. Instead try telling them how completely unhelpful they are being are ask them to be more constructive in future. If everyone tells them this they might eventually listen and grow up.
It seems to be working on me
You are a juvenile arsehole, who is copmletely unhelpful. In the future, should you wish to actually contribute something useful to society instead of just trolling away your adolescent urge to put others down, I strongly suggest you begin by making an effort to offer some sort of constructive criticism. It is completely fine to disagree with someone or feel that they can do something better. However, flaming them and telling them that their code is shit without offering any helpful advice is, as has already been stated, juvenile.
I hope that as a result of my response you may finally listen and grow the fuck up.
Always glad to help
"As for your mysterious file format and your "forgetaboutit" OOo install, we'll need more info to refute/help you on those ones. I find that anyone who has used Office XP or earlier tends to enjoy using the latest OOo, unless they have a bunch of VB macros that don't work quite right, or some badly-created templates that don't display correctly."
... PEBKAC ... and believe me, that thought had crossed my mind. All we were trying to do was add text, and it would add it in a completely different font/size. When placing the cursor in a block of text that was created in Word, it would show us what font/size that text was (just like Word does). And when we place the cursor somewhere else the font/size would change to the default, which is expected behaviour, so we would manually change it to be consistent with the existing text. Well, it looked completely different. So then we resorted to copying/pasting text and editing it. The paste would paste it exact, but as soon as we started to modify the text it would modify it in a completely different font/size. Talk about frustrating. We never could get the font/size to be consistent with the original text and we eventually gave up and installed Office.
About 6 - 8 months ago my wife was applying for a job. My mother typed up her resume for her in Office and sent it to us. My wife didn't have office installed so I decided to install Open Office on her XP machine to edit it. It was a nightmare.
Open Office rendered the resume just fine but we couldn't figure out how to do *extremely* simple and trivial tasks like changing a font. I know what you're thinking
That experience completely turned me off from OO. If it can't do something so ridiculously and insanely simple and common then how the hell is anyone supposed to use it to do anything?
Shouldn't matter. Totem will still play it. It checks the mime-type not the file extension. I even tested it just now to make absolutely certain that I'm correct. Renamed foo.wmv to foo.bar, double clicked and Totem loaded it and played it just fine.
I agree that Sinise would make an excellent McCoy ... but they're casting for the roles the crew in their mid 20's. Sinise is 52.
While talking about Yahoo ... I've been using yahoo mail since the late 90's. I don't use it for everything but since I've had that e-mail address for almost 10 years now I still use it for certain purposes.
... starting to show it's age but still plenty capable of surfing Youtube and MySpace if I'm so inclined) and I have a business-grade cable line that I pay extra for to get more bandwidth since I'm running a home business and I have to transfer a lot of data to/from my web servers etc. (mostly I'm paying it for a faster uplink but the downlink is increased as well).
... but we shouldn't be slacking off just because users have broadband. Every microsecond of downloading and processing time counts for all users.
Now, I'm on a "modern" PC (1GB RAM, 1.8Ghz CPU
When Yahoo introduced their new AJAX e-mail service I tried it out for a few days and ended up switching back to the classic one. It was too slow and "quirky" to be usable.
Moral = Just because a user has broadband and a fast computer doesn't mean jack. Yes you have to take "extra special care" for dial-up users
People screw over other people, whether knowingly or unknowingly, all the time. You can cost someone far more money than you would ever pay out of your tax dollars to support a coma patient simply by getting into a car accident and causing a traffic jam while he's on his way to a job interview.
The minute you start to use "I don't want to support your stupidity" as an argument you are supporting restricting the freedoms of others solely for your convenience. And then all kinds of ethical and philosophical questions come in to play, mainly "where do we draw the line?"
Not to mention the fact that you probably spend WAY more out of your tax dollars to support government ad campaigns to educate people on wearing their seat-belts and police programs designed to arrest and ticket motorists than you ever would supporting the health care of people injuring themselves due to not wearing their belts. Plus, seat-belts save lives, they don't prevent injuries. Think about all the people who would have died vs. those that are now in critical condition because they chose to wear their seat-belt. The "my money is too important to me to support your idiocy" argument is a complete fallacy.
In my opinion the government does not own me and simply has absolutely no right to tell me what I can or can not do with my body. If I feel like risking my ass driving without a seatbelt that is my risk to take.
BTW - I ALWAYS wear my seatbelt. I just don't like being told that I have to. I'm an adult and can make my own choices.
I do agree that security has been improved soooooo much and Microsoft deserves a lot of credit even if they did act rather late (late is still better than never).
However, adware and viruses are still an issue. I had to re-install the OS twice on my wife's computer. She was running XP with SP2, always installing updates (automatic updates configured to notify but not auto-install) + firewall.
The first time I had to re-install it was because she got infected with something. I can't remember what it was but it disguised itself as firefox.exe. She was having problems with her computer and when I investigated I found that firefox.exe was always running and when I'd open up the browser there would be two firefox.exe processes. I did a bit of googling and discovered it was a virus. This is despite all of the common sense lectures I've given her about not opening e-mail attachments or accepting files over MSN etc. even if she trusts the source. She only ran Firefox etc.
The second time I had to re-install was not due to a virus. Automatic Update told her there were updates available and being a good girl she downloaded and installed them. After a reboot Windows wouldn't boot. It was blue-screening, complaining about corrupt DLLs. After 3 weeks of her not having a computer because I was too busy to get around to fixing it I installed Ubuntu for her and we haven't had any issues since.
I completely agree that the security issues with Windows pale in comparison to years ago but they still exist and when an auto-update can render your machine useless that's just BS as far as I'm concerned. I would like to hope that auto-updates would be doing sanity checks such as comparing checksums to validate the integrity of the downloads before and after installing them (and doing an auto-rollback if something goes wrong during the install) but apparently that is not so. If the download is corrupt it seems it will install anyway and potentially fuck your computer.
Linux's stick has a poo on the end, and is brandished by a 300lb atheist liberal.
That would be a 300lb atheist libertarian. Get your facts straight. Sheesh.
I don't think anything of the sort. My only post was to try and give one possible explanation for how the US government currently feels towards Japan.
None of what I said reflects my personal views and opinions and I tried to make that clear. Of course there are alternate views and I will be the first to accuse the US government of being racist. In fact, I am not American, nor do I harbour any resentment or ill feelings toward the Japanese. I think you completely misinterpreted my post. I was offering speculation as to why the US government will not sell military weapons to Japan. Nothing else.
I agree, I don't think I chose the best words. What I meant was that the US wanted to impose certain terms on the Japanese post-surrender, and I chose the word "conditions". The Japanese could not fathom the concept of unconditional surrender and wanted conditions (as you pointed out) but the US rejected their terms and wanted unconditional surrender. I chose the term "conditions" to refer to the allies' "terms". I can see where that choice of wording would lead to confusion and I even anticipated it but at the time I couldn't think of any better words. I suppose the word "terms" is the most appropriate and what I should have used.
Why doesn't it make sense ? The US government has time and time again referred to itself as "THE super power". I'm not trying to knock the US, I'm just trying to offer a (possible) explanation for choosing not to sell F-22's (and possibly other military technology) to Japan. Not only that but US was a key player in developing Japan's government post-WWII. It makes complete sense (to me) that the US would look at the country as something to be controlled.
While I can not speak with entire certainty about the last 60 years, I can say that there are a lot of people who feel that Japan is only an "ally" because they were forced to surrender in WWII due to a) the US dropping nukes on them (one on Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki ... which were the only two the US had with months required to build another one, but the Japanese did not know that) and b) Russia had finally declared war on them.
Japan entered World War II with the intent of conquering Asia. They invaded China (without ever formally declaring War since both China and Japan feared it would cause their trading partners to stop supplying them) for it's resources and eventually The Philippines which was an act of war against the US. The Japanese were notorious for committing atrocities. Germany gets most of the attention for the Holocaust but the Japanese were also quite brutal. Usually we hear about the suicide pilots who would crash their planes into enemy ships but they also raped and tortured enemies and their "creed" (for lack of a better term) was "fight to the death". They would then mutilate bodies of killed enemies stuffing their genitals in their mouths etc. This was done to demoralize the Allied troops.
Now personally I do not believe the Japanese are still like this. Their surrender in WWII was with many conditions imposed by the Allies. They initially rejected the offer but after Russia declared war on them and the 2nd nuke was dropped on Nagasaki they felt they had no choice. My history isn't 100% up to snuff but I believe that the Allies worked with the Japanese government much the same way the current US government is trying to work with Iraq to instate a new government and new, democratic, systems etc. However, those who are young can not understand the positions of the veterans and their immediate descendants who passed on their strong hatred and mistrust of the Japanese for their utter brutality in WWII. It takes time for things to change. I don't think Japan really is an "ally" of the US. I think the US government still strongly mistrusts the Japanese and wants to keep them on a very short leash to make sure that the events of WWII do not repeat themselves.
Your post has just 'caused me to make a revelation about myself that is most disturbing.
:(
...
Celebrity gossup / papparazzi is one of my biggest pet-peeves. It drives me INSANE when people care about Paris Hilton being in jail or Britney shaving her head or whatever. The fact that I even know those events occurred makes me want to kill myself. I mean, really WHO THE HELL CARES AND WHY ?!?! Are people's own lives so bloody shallow that they need to constantly invade the privacy of other people that they do not even know just to see something more interesting ? Why is that considered to be more interesting anyway ? Leave the celebrities the fuck alone, they're just people. They are no more interesting or important or "special" than you. Aside from the media that they have a small part in producing they have absolutely no "real" effect your lives what-so-ever. The fact that anyone cares about their private lives is the most absolutely ridiculous aspect of human / pop culture and it depresses me.
Yet, thanks to your post I have realized that I am also guilty of this. Only not with pop-culture. I am interest in things like what Linus is currently working on, the direction that Jobs is taking his business, whether Steve Ballmer will be finally taken to an asylum to get the anger management that he needs. I know more names of "popular" geeks and business people than I do of actors or musicians etc.
I need some Prozak now
Oh and expect a call from my lawyer
You're being extremely pedantic. You're crying and complaining about issues that are very specific to your personal requirements. The developers can not read minds.
Postfix *will* work out of the box. Just because *YOU* personally require an RDBMS or a pop3/imap server or SSL authentication for your setup does not mean postfix doesn't work. It means it doesn't work to your personal configuration requirements.
To draw a parallel, when I install apache (something I do quite frequently) I can see that it opens up port 80 and that I can connect with a web browser and see apache's welcome page. However, I could say that it doesn't "work" (like you have claimed about postfix). No, I need to also install mod_php, mod_perl, mod_ssl and openSSL set up all my virtual hosts, comb through the configuration file and remove all default modules and other clutter that I don't need etc. Then I could go on complaining that it does not do this by default for me, never mind that every single other user out there has completely different requirements than me.
Complaining about an RDBMS, appropriate modules / extensions to the MTA to interact with it + a pop3/imap server + openSSL + an anti-virus system when SSL authentication is not a requirement for every user is absurd. Why not also complain about SpamAssassin not being installed and configured by default ?
The fact is that postfix DOES work out of the box. Install it and see that it's opened up port 25 and is up and running. You just have to edit main.cf to tell it what domain(s) to handle mail for and make sure that your MX records are set up prior you're rolling. Of course for most users it doesn't end there, they've gotta configure things for THEIR SPECIFIC needs. What you are doing is complaining that the system can not read your mind.
It's actually very convenient for
a) Web developers who wish to run Linux but *must* test their sites in IE since the bulk of their users are IE users.
b) Those few web applications provided by online banking and government services etc. that will not work in Firefox or Opera (and I mean actually not work, not just complaining about User-Agent because they don't want to have to support non-users when it in fact it actually works fine if you spoof the User-Agent).