I recently went to buy a pair of sneakers, and the person ahead of me at the register had a stack of the extra-expensive Nike shoes. As she went to pay, I heard her ask the cashier "do you take food stamps?" Not everyone getting help from the govt is that way, but it kind of makes you wonder...
It looks like the IT Olympics parody site is up and running again this year, complete with some new "error messages". Let's see how accurate that server farm temperature reading of theirs is, shall we?
Actually, if the automobile industry followed the lead of software eulas, safety would be irrelevant as the manual would contain a clause stating that the car was not designed for high-stress life/death activities, and the maker could not be held responsible if misuse of the product (ie, taking it into traffic) caused injury or death to the user.
While the 23rd spam was good, my personal favorite- perhaps simply because it shows up in the "real world"- is www.myrealbox.com's no spam policy:
Spam is no good.
Don't do it.
It causes bad karma and cancer (and perhaps some other diseases).
Yes, this is true.
No, it's not a joke.
Oh, and spammers rot in hell.
Neither Novell® nor MyRealBox.com will tolerate the dispersal of unsolicited E-mail transmissions (spam).
Sending spam E-mail from a MyRealBox address or using a MyRealBox address as a return address or an opt-out address for spam is in violation of the terms and conditions by which we operate, and users found in violation of the policy will have their account terminated. Additionally we will pursue legal actions against any person violating our terms and conditions.
Does the first half qualify as poetry to anyone besides me?
The problem is that this GoogleBar only plugs in Internet Explorer, so *nix geeks won't be able to rate sites..
Well, yes and no. There is currently a project on Mozdev that aims to duplicate some if not all of the functionality of the toolbar for Mozilla, and while the current version 0.4 is still somewhat lacking, a new version that duplicates the look as well as the major search functionality (though not pagerank etc) is on the way soon, apparently. However, since this is an independent project and not affiliated with Google, I'm not sure if it would be able to access the rating system. Still, Mozilla users DO have the toolbar, and, since mozilla is cross-platform...
I'm not sure if/when they plan to introduce a toolbar for mozilla (the faqs state that it is being "investigated"), but I would imagine they're holding off until xul either stops changing so fast or until netscape 6 gains enough users to make it economically justifiable to develop, support, and maintain such a thing. Since I would like to see such a thing for mozilla as well (the ability to highlight search terms on a page a la cache is very useful), I sent a message about a week ago asking if there would be a problem with an independent effort to duplicate the toolbar, but still no reply. Does anyone know what the appropriate address at google (other than toolbar-feedback) to send such a question is, or if there would be any interest in such a development project?
It is the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of legislative authority."
Except that right now, the legislature, with rare exception, is throwing in with the executive.
Or, put another way, the legislature is suspending its own programs in favor of what the executive branch wants, including increased authority in certain cases. Which is why the quote is so fitting in the first place.
"Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates.The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort to institutions which have the tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they are at length willing to run the risk of being less free.... It is the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of legislative authority."
-Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #8, 1787.
(For those who don't know, the federalist papers were written in support of ratification of the constitution by some of the very people who wrote the constitution itself.)
There is one difference between the elderly and younger people (with regards to learning to use the internet): coordination. One problem I've had teaching older people to use a computer involves use of a mouse. Since it's harder for the elderly to control their hand-movements - a simple right click ends up dragging the icon because the mouse doesn't stay still and a double click, well... you might want to cut back on the sensitivity of the mouse as much as possible. They're very capable of learning once they get past their fear of computers (didn't anyone ever hear the story of how warren buffett decided to get a computer because he could play bridge online?), but tiny hyperlinks make using the internet more target practice than anything.
Actually, it wouldn't be AOL 6.1, but rather, 7.0, as they've already announced. AOL has a tendency to use version numbers as a marketing tool- come to think of it, when I looked at the build number on "4.0" once, it stated "Version 4.2.something", meaning version numbers are utterly useless where aol is concerned. It's no coincidence that NS and IE are hovering at the same version number, with both 6.0 versions (arguably, sorry) beta right now. What'll happen if AOL, which just jumped two version numbers in less than a year (Winamp, meanwhile, has been around for many years and is barely past version 2.7 but with more releases), does go ahead and name their client 7.0? Will the other browsers follow in the rush, since there's a push to name an upcoming NS version 7 already? Either way, their version numbering policy is ridiculous. (And on topic: Yahoo lists the story as "No deal reached yet")
Here's something intriguing: Last time I did this (about a month ago), the top bid per link was $4.21 or so- maybe higher. Now it's $3.61, by the same company, and the rest of the bids are also much lower. Actually if you look through, you'll find that the same company with the same cheesy pitches is running no less than half a dozen different sites selling the same software, so you'll be hitting them even harder than you thought, not that they don't deserve it.
Gesture based navigation can be very handy in certain cases, while keyboard shortcuts work better in others. For example, in a word processor it's easier to cut and paste using the keyboard shortcut than using, say, Sensiva's symbols (By "evaluation version", I assume you mean the Linux preview release? It's free, and I haven't found any spyware yet- unless you use it to go to websites, at which point it routes them through its own server. That's good to note and justifies using bookmarks instead, at least to me) On the other hand, if I want to launch a program, Sensiva's symbols are much quicker and easier than some cumbersome shortcut that requires I reach across the keyboard. I use a basic handheld mouse with scroll wheel, to answer the question, and it's a fine setup for what I do. In fact, my grandfather has wanted to buy a computer but believes they're too hard to use- at a certain age it becomes hard to hold the mouse steady to click a button or remember all the commands etc- but gesture based navigation might convince him, and it also could play a role in large open offices where voice-activation is impractical. So, it does have its uses.
Wasn't the gameboy advance designed to be used as a controller of some sort for the game cube? If the game cube dies, will they include this capability (= added cost) or not? They still have 80% of the handheld game market, which is pretty good, but charging more for a capability you'd never be able to use seems ridiculous...
Google has something similar... their adwords program is a lot less intrusive than banners, and less likely to make me scroll past it. By targeting their ads to the specific search, it's often something relevant- I click through (and notice the ad, building brand awareness) there a lot more than I do on regular banners. Come to think of it, most banners are exactly the height of a turn of the scroll wheel, and I never even see them. Text ads have the added benefit of working in any browser- let's say, market share aside, that someone goes to nytimes.com using lynx. No intro-mercials?
I checked, and found something very interesting. Besides that every site is selling different software that's "#1 in the business", some sites are selling the SAME software. Here are the most expensive links listed on goto- these links mostly should tell the site you're coming from goto and hopefully charge them while you're at it...
"Getyoursoftware"- They paid the most, at $4.64, so why not give them some value?
http://www.windows100.com/?source=goto is advertising the same product as http://www.freesecret.com/ and http://www.bulkemailsoftwaremarketing.com/ . They all have the same corny pitches about people who made "millions" working at home spamming 63 million users. Apparently you can get either a 3 day vacation free with your order (WHAT?! It cost more than that to visit Alcatraz!) or a large address list. Yeah, sure.
Then check out the prices they pay per link- insane. The only down side to this plan is that GoTo is making money off this. Oh well. To me, this just underscores the kind of business spamming is, although I almost wish they'd make this software illegal too.
Even though the page is apparently being slashdotted,I find it somewhat ironic that I spent 5 mintues staring at the "fastest browser on earth" banner while waiting for the page to load...
There was an article a while ago about some students that actually began marketing and selling in in their town- I forget where the article, much less the town, was. Anyway though, the biodiesel they marketed apparently was a mix of something like 30% fossil fuel and the rest vegetable oils. As far as converting vehicles to run like this (apparently the mix the students used worked in certain kinds of engines without converting...), would that void the warranty? Here in AZ we had a huge fiasco when the legislature gave rebates for converting vehicles to use alternative fuels (in addition to gas), only to later realize that everyone who got it converted just continued to use gas because using anything else voided the warranty on the vehicle. Oops.
Micrsoft made the Public Preview of IE6 available a few days ago. Does anyone know if it's affected by this bug? How is security shaping up for it so far? And speaking of new browser releases, Mozilla 0.8.1 has been out since Monday. New history, gopher support, theme uninstall (if only there were more themes to uninstall...)- works for me.
It's always struck me as difficult that even interoperable im programs require an account on each service. For me, the ideal im would be just like email- you could im someone's email address regardless of whether they had the same isp as you, and from there it would work like im. Is there any kind of a project to do this in the works? If so it might make the issue of dominance a moot point- there would be a simple standard that didn't require accounts on 100 or so different services and yet people could easily communicate across services, aol notwithstanding.
AOL for Linux?? Somehow, when I consider the computer skills of the average aol user, and the skills of the average linux user, I find that aol meets very different needs- "content" that you can find elsewhere vs the bandwidth that so many linux users crave. In other words: AOL/usr is the oxymoron of the day.
Here's a great rainy day project that I've used a few times to keep the kids entertained, as well as to get rid of some of those pesky aol cd's: melt them all down into a disco ball! It's fun, it's functional, and best of all, you're recycling what's otherwise a collossal waste!
Yes, Virginia. You see, there is a Santa claus. But you see, he's kind of in jail at the moment, as the paper pointed out today:
NORTH POLE- Today, FBI senior officials are celebrating the breakup of what is now being billed as "the largest crime ring in history". After years of observation, officials finally moved in Saturday and arrested more than 1,000 elves, postal workers, and reindeer. For years, officials say, the "Christmas Ring", as it is known, shamelessly reverse engineered thousands of popular toys, then produced convincing replicas that were smuggled across international borders by air at night. Said director Louis Freeh:
"We're proud of our work, and it's good to know that these shameless criminals are securely behind bars. I'm amazed they got away with it for this long, but our hard work has paid off. Now, where did I put that laptop...?"
However, the leader of the ring, an ex german spy code named "Klaus", escaped. Officials are asking for any and all tips that might lead to his arrest, and indicate that his bright red outfits and love of cookies should make him easy to spot. He is wanted for an astonishing 378 million counts of breaking and entering, and at press time, the ASPCA indicated that they were investigating his use of reindeer with the intent to file charges. UN Human rights officals would not respond to our questions about the treatment of so called "elves"; neverthless, insiders indicated that they too were upset over circumstances at the North Pole. The press conference was later cut short by what one aide termed "the need to start Christmas shopping a little early this year".
Slashdot Mirror
I recently went to buy a pair of sneakers, and the person ahead of me at the register had a stack of the extra-expensive Nike shoes. As she went to pay, I heard her ask the cashier "do you take food stamps?" Not everyone getting help from the govt is that way, but it kind of makes you wonder...
It looks like the IT Olympics parody site is up and running again this year, complete with some new "error messages". Let's see how accurate that server farm temperature reading of theirs is, shall we?
The Amazing EULAgen
Spam is no good.
Don't do it.
It causes bad karma and cancer (and perhaps some other diseases).
Yes, this is true.
No, it's not a joke.
Oh, and spammers rot in hell.
Neither Novell® nor MyRealBox.com will tolerate the dispersal of unsolicited E-mail transmissions (spam). Sending spam E-mail from a MyRealBox address or using a MyRealBox address as a return address or an opt-out address for spam is in violation of the terms and conditions by which we operate, and users found in violation of the policy will have their account terminated. Additionally we will pursue legal actions against any person violating our terms and conditions.
Does the first half qualify as poetry to anyone besides me?
The problem is that this GoogleBar only plugs in Internet Explorer, so *nix geeks won't be able to rate sites..
Well, yes and no. There is currently a project on Mozdev that aims to duplicate some if not all of the functionality of the toolbar for Mozilla, and while the current version 0.4 is still somewhat lacking, a new version that duplicates the look as well as the major search functionality (though not pagerank etc) is on the way soon, apparently. However, since this is an independent project and not affiliated with Google, I'm not sure if it would be able to access the rating system. Still, Mozilla users DO have the toolbar, and, since mozilla is cross-platform...
I'm not sure if/when they plan to introduce a toolbar for mozilla (the faqs state that it is being "investigated"), but I would imagine they're holding off until xul either stops changing so fast or until netscape 6 gains enough users to make it economically justifiable to develop, support, and maintain such a thing. Since I would like to see such a thing for mozilla as well (the ability to highlight search terms on a page a la cache is very useful), I sent a message about a week ago asking if there would be a problem with an independent effort to duplicate the toolbar, but still no reply. Does anyone know what the appropriate address at google (other than toolbar-feedback) to send such a question is, or if there would be any interest in such a development project?
Except that right now, the legislature, with rare exception, is throwing in with the executive.
Or, put another way, the legislature is suspending its own programs in favor of what the executive branch wants, including increased authority in certain cases. Which is why the quote is so fitting in the first place.
"Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates.The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort to institutions which have the tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they are at length willing to run the risk of being less free.... It is the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of legislative authority."
-Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #8, 1787.
(For those who don't know, the federalist papers were written in support of ratification of the constitution by some of the very people who wrote the constitution itself.)
There is one difference between the elderly and younger people (with regards to learning to use the internet): coordination. One problem I've had teaching older people to use a computer involves use of a mouse. Since it's harder for the elderly to control their hand-movements - a simple right click ends up dragging the icon because the mouse doesn't stay still and a double click, well... you might want to cut back on the sensitivity of the mouse as much as possible. They're very capable of learning once they get past their fear of computers (didn't anyone ever hear the story of how warren buffett decided to get a computer because he could play bridge online?), but tiny hyperlinks make using the internet more target practice than anything.
Actually, it wouldn't be AOL 6.1, but rather, 7.0, as they've already announced. AOL has a tendency to use version numbers as a marketing tool- come to think of it, when I looked at the build number on "4.0" once, it stated "Version 4.2.something", meaning version numbers are utterly useless where aol is concerned. It's no coincidence that NS and IE are hovering at the same version number, with both 6.0 versions (arguably, sorry) beta right now. What'll happen if AOL, which just jumped two version numbers in less than a year (Winamp, meanwhile, has been around for many years and is barely past version 2.7 but with more releases), does go ahead and name their client 7.0? Will the other browsers follow in the rush, since there's a push to name an upcoming NS version 7 already? Either way, their version numbering policy is ridiculous. (And on topic: Yahoo lists the story as "No deal reached yet")
Or we could just lock him in a room with this guy. That should do it too... (*not trying to be a troll.)
Here's something intriguing: Last time I did this (about a month ago), the top bid per link was $4.21 or so- maybe higher. Now it's $3.61, by the same company, and the rest of the bids are also much lower. Actually if you look through, you'll find that the same company with the same cheesy pitches is running no less than half a dozen different sites selling the same software, so you'll be hitting them even harder than you thought, not that they don't deserve it.
Gesture based navigation can be very handy in certain cases, while keyboard shortcuts work better in others. For example, in a word processor it's easier to cut and paste using the keyboard shortcut than using, say, Sensiva's symbols (By "evaluation version", I assume you mean the Linux preview release? It's free, and I haven't found any spyware yet- unless you use it to go to websites, at which point it routes them through its own server. That's good to note and justifies using bookmarks instead, at least to me) On the other hand, if I want to launch a program, Sensiva's symbols are much quicker and easier than some cumbersome shortcut that requires I reach across the keyboard. I use a basic handheld mouse with scroll wheel, to answer the question, and it's a fine setup for what I do. In fact, my grandfather has wanted to buy a computer but believes they're too hard to use- at a certain age it becomes hard to hold the mouse steady to click a button or remember all the commands etc- but gesture based navigation might convince him, and it also could play a role in large open offices where voice-activation is impractical. So, it does have its uses.
Wasn't the gameboy advance designed to be used as a controller of some sort for the game cube? If the game cube dies, will they include this capability (= added cost) or not? They still have 80% of the handheld game market, which is pretty good, but charging more for a capability you'd never be able to use seems ridiculous...
Google has something similar... their adwords program is a lot less intrusive than banners, and less likely to make me scroll past it. By targeting their ads to the specific search, it's often something relevant- I click through (and notice the ad, building brand awareness) there a lot more than I do on regular banners. Come to think of it, most banners are exactly the height of a turn of the scroll wheel, and I never even see them. Text ads have the added benefit of working in any browser- let's say, market share aside, that someone goes to nytimes.com using lynx. No intro-mercials?
"Getyoursoftware"- They paid the most, at $4.64, so why not give them some value?
http://www.windows100.com/?source=goto is advertising the same product as http://www.freesecret.com/ and http://www.bulkemailsoftwaremarketing.com/ . They all have the same corny pitches about people who made "millions" working at home spamming 63 million users. Apparently you can get either a 3 day vacation free with your order (WHAT?! It cost more than that to visit Alcatraz!) or a large address list. Yeah, sure.
Then check out the prices they pay per link- insane. The only down side to this plan is that GoTo is making money off this. Oh well. To me, this just underscores the kind of business spamming is, although I almost wish they'd make this software illegal too.
Even though the page is apparently being slashdotted,I find it somewhat ironic that I spent 5 mintues staring at the "fastest browser on earth" banner while waiting for the page to load...
There was an article a while ago about some students that actually began marketing and selling in in their town- I forget where the article, much less the town, was. Anyway though, the biodiesel they marketed apparently was a mix of something like 30% fossil fuel and the rest vegetable oils. As far as converting vehicles to run like this (apparently the mix the students used worked in certain kinds of engines without converting...), would that void the warranty? Here in AZ we had a huge fiasco when the legislature gave rebates for converting vehicles to use alternative fuels (in addition to gas), only to later realize that everyone who got it converted just continued to use gas because using anything else voided the warranty on the vehicle. Oops.
Micrsoft made the Public Preview of IE6 available a few days ago. Does anyone know if it's affected by this bug? How is security shaping up for it so far? And speaking of new browser releases, Mozilla 0.8.1 has been out since Monday. New history, gopher support, theme uninstall (if only there were more themes to uninstall...)- works for me.
The real shocker is that we're slashdotting a Microsoft site. You know, something about that just feels... wrong.
It's always struck me as difficult that even interoperable im programs require an account on each service. For me, the ideal im would be just like email- you could im someone's email address regardless of whether they had the same isp as you, and from there it would work like im. Is there any kind of a project to do this in the works? If so it might make the issue of dominance a moot point- there would be a simple standard that didn't require accounts on 100 or so different services and yet people could easily communicate across services, aol notwithstanding.
AOL for Linux?? Somehow, when I consider the computer skills of the average aol user, and the skills of the average linux user, I find that aol meets very different needs- "content" that you can find elsewhere vs the bandwidth that so many linux users crave. In other words: AOL /usr is the oxymoron of the day.
Here's a great rainy day project that I've used a few times to keep the kids entertained, as well as to get rid of some of those pesky aol cd's: melt them all down into a disco ball! It's fun, it's functional, and best of all, you're recycling what's otherwise a collossal waste!
NORTH POLE- Today, FBI senior officials are celebrating the breakup of what is now being billed as "the largest crime ring in history". After years of observation, officials finally moved in Saturday and arrested more than 1,000 elves, postal workers, and reindeer. For years, officials say, the "Christmas Ring", as it is known, shamelessly reverse engineered thousands of popular toys, then produced convincing replicas that were smuggled across international borders by air at night. Said director Louis Freeh:
"We're proud of our work, and it's good to know that these shameless criminals are securely behind bars. I'm amazed they got away with it for this long, but our hard work has paid off. Now, where did I put that laptop...?"
However, the leader of the ring, an ex german spy code named "Klaus", escaped. Officials are asking for any and all tips that might lead to his arrest, and indicate that his bright red outfits and love of cookies should make him easy to spot. He is wanted for an astonishing 378 million counts of breaking and entering, and at press time, the ASPCA indicated that they were investigating his use of reindeer with the intent to file charges. UN Human rights officals would not respond to our questions about the treatment of so called "elves"; neverthless, insiders indicated that they too were upset over circumstances at the North Pole. The press conference was later cut short by what one aide termed "the need to start Christmas shopping a little early this year".
This begs the question: How many people would pay for Slashdot, and how much? Last time I checked, Slashdot had ads too.