Quite. I was a BlockBuster customer, but when I got a DVD player, I quickly gave up on them. They couldn't see the juggernaut approaching, and took forever to start stocking DVDs. When they did finally stock them, they only had an anemic selection of cropped "pan and scan" versions of a few of the most popular movies. So it wasn't just a matter of thinking the Internet wouldn't catch on; they also thought DVD wouldn't catch on.
The problem is really no different from the spam problem ISPs have faced for years.
The crooks set up a company with a domain and address. They sign up for Google Adwords. Then they use their Adwords account to send out illegal ads, in breach of the contract they agreed to. Chances are they don't pay for the ads either. When Google yanks the ads, the crooks fold the company and start the whole exercise again.
Google have few options here. If they do nothing, crooks continue to abuse their service in this way, costing them money and leaving them open to possible legal liability.
By suing for damages, they hope to make it cost the crooks more to breach their Adwords contract than they can make by doing so. That's the only thing that will actually stop the crooks, other than jail time.
The only other option would be for Google to have to inspect and approve every single ad on their network. That would be the Apple approach, and it has its own problems, not least of which is high cost.
Google's ads have been pointless for a long time. I don't understand how they make as much revenue as they do with ads that no one, or at least not anyone I know clicking on them.
Hi, I'm a Slashdot reader, a computer hacker, and I click on Google ads.
Real example from this week: I search for Lightscribe DVD-Rs. Google shows me some ads from companies that sell them. I click the ads to check out their prices and selection.
Sure, I don't click on ads that appear randomly when I'm not looking to buy something, but why wouldn't I click on ads when I'm actually looking to make a purchase?
Actually, no, as a means of just sharing links to information it sucks, because you generally can't fit URLs and useful description into 140 characters--so you either have to skip describing the thing you're linking to, or you have to obfuscate the URL through a redirection service.
Facebook, delicious.com, Tumblr etc are much better ways of sharing links to information.
...then you are pretty much fucked from a programming standpoint of 'handling' it in any sane manner using common time encodings, which use a count of intervals (usually seconds, or milliseconds) since some specific date and time.
Specifically, I call a number in Thailand at least once a day. The country code is 66. In my contacts the number is listed as +66###... which is how it must be to get routed through Google Voice. If you want to dial directly through your carrier, you'd put 011 instead of +, so 01166### (or something like that).
No, pretty much any GSM mobile phone will accept numbers in international standard format. You should never need to dial 01166... except on a landline.
Now here's the problem - as I said, in my contacts I entered the numbers as +66, not 01166. Yet if I dial the number, depending on how I enter it (or perhaps randomly, it's hard to tell), by going through the recent calls list, going to the contact, etc., it will start dialing 01166... and not +66.
Something is up with either your phone, or AT&T. I call the UK regularly, I have every single phone number in my phone listed in ITU-T format (even the US ones), and I've never had a problem.
International format numbers also worked consistently on my BlackBerry, my Sony Ericsson, and my old 90s Nokia.
Do you have Google Voice set up to automatically route your international calls without bringing up the dialog to choose? That feature could be buggy, I don't use it.
A Java VM is an emulator. It's a 'virtual machine', after all. It's just an emulator of a machine that doesn't exist, and one that was designed to be easy to emulate.
I think the real problem was that at some point, Yahoo decided to de-emphasize their search directory and turn themselves into a portal site, because that was the latest hyped-up trend.
First they started filling search directory results pages with unrelated crap to push their portal concept. Then they got rid of the search directory entirely, and I stopped visiting their site.
Could they have kept the directory working? Maybe. dmoz.org was an attempt to do so, but by that point everyone had come to rely on Google.
Perhaps kids should be taught to use RPN calculators.
On an RPN calculator, the keys which perform operations are labeled with symbols that represent mathematical operations. There's no misuse of '=' to mean 'perform calculation'.
Is it possible for an app to request access to the filesystem, then modify another existing app with a payload that makes it do all the dirty work?
No. Each Android app runs as a separate Linux userid. Even if you give the app filesystem access, it can't write to files that belong to other apps, let alone rewrite the apps themselves.
Geocaching outside the NSA? Oh, yeah, that sounds like a fabulous idea. I'll jump right on that next time I want the inside of my ass examined with a flashlight.
Well, IBM prohibits BitTorrent use by employees on IBM computers, so I'm doubtful that the IBM download is sanctioned. The person responsible will probably be hearing from the IT department, now that so much attention has been drawn to it.
Only Python comes close to having anything resembling Perl's level of testing. (Ruby's improved a lot thanks to Rubinius, but to my knowledge the latest stable releases don't include test suites.)
All stable Ruby releases include a test suite.
None of those languages have anything like the CPAN, despite saying for years "We should build something like the CPAN."
Ruby has RubyGems, which is very like CPAN. (Speaking as an ex-Perl programmer.)
None of those languages are as malleable as Perl 5
I don't want malleable. When every package I download has a different syntax for using its objects and a completely different code style, that's not a benefit to me. I have a job to do, and frankly, Ruby is still too malleable and too prone to people being clever.
I gave up on Perl when I saw that Perl 6 was going to be even more syntaxy and complicated than Perl 5. Larry steered it the wrong way, in my view, so I switched to Ruby.
The new Magic Trackpad is the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer.
That's a pretty blatant lie. Given that Apple bought FingerWorks, they can hardly be unaware that FingerWorks sold a multi-touch trackpad designed to work with the Mac in 1995.
Another awesome web site that was sadly lost was the National Texture Administration. You can still find references to it on Google, but the site itself is gone.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd have thought nobody... but then again, I thought a $500 web browser would be a tough sell, even with an Apple logo on it.
I imagine before long client OSs will support 4over6, and they'll be able to do that.
Quite. I was a BlockBuster customer, but when I got a DVD player, I quickly gave up on them. They couldn't see the juggernaut approaching, and took forever to start stocking DVDs. When they did finally stock them, they only had an anemic selection of cropped "pan and scan" versions of a few of the most popular movies. So it wasn't just a matter of thinking the Internet wouldn't catch on; they also thought DVD wouldn't catch on.
The problem is really no different from the spam problem ISPs have faced for years.
The crooks set up a company with a domain and address. They sign up for Google Adwords. Then they use their Adwords account to send out illegal ads, in breach of the contract they agreed to. Chances are they don't pay for the ads either. When Google yanks the ads, the crooks fold the company and start the whole exercise again.
Google have few options here. If they do nothing, crooks continue to abuse their service in this way, costing them money and leaving them open to possible legal liability.
By suing for damages, they hope to make it cost the crooks more to breach their Adwords contract than they can make by doing so. That's the only thing that will actually stop the crooks, other than jail time.
The only other option would be for Google to have to inspect and approve every single ad on their network. That would be the Apple approach, and it has its own problems, not least of which is high cost.
Hi, I'm a Slashdot reader, a computer hacker, and I click on Google ads.
Real example from this week: I search for Lightscribe DVD-Rs. Google shows me some ads from companies that sell them. I click the ads to check out their prices and selection.
Sure, I don't click on ads that appear randomly when I'm not looking to buy something, but why wouldn't I click on ads when I'm actually looking to make a purchase?
Actually, no, as a means of just sharing links to information it sucks, because you generally can't fit URLs and useful description into 140 characters--so you either have to skip describing the thing you're linking to, or you have to obfuscate the URL through a redirection service.
Facebook, delicious.com, Tumblr etc are much better ways of sharing links to information.
Yes. Dovecot, IMAP server.
And use Maildir+ for storage.
End of problem.
"Doctor, it hurts when I do this..."
It already is on Android phones. Download Google Voice from Android Market.
It's the thing that has persuaded me that I can drop my land line...
No, pretty much any GSM mobile phone will accept numbers in international standard format. You should never need to dial 01166... except on a landline.
Something is up with either your phone, or AT&T. I call the UK regularly, I have every single phone number in my phone listed in ITU-T format (even the US ones), and I've never had a problem.
International format numbers also worked consistently on my BlackBerry, my Sony Ericsson, and my old 90s Nokia.
Do you have Google Voice set up to automatically route your international calls without bringing up the dialog to choose? That feature could be buggy, I don't use it.
Actually, there are hardware implementations of the JVM instruction set.
This is exactly why I never even bothered downloading OpenSolaris. If they had put it under GPL I'd have been all over it.
They must be pretty old and obsolete then. My 5 year old cheap laser printer uses zeroconf.
I think the real problem was that at some point, Yahoo decided to de-emphasize their search directory and turn themselves into a portal site, because that was the latest hyped-up trend.
First they started filling search directory results pages with unrelated crap to push their portal concept. Then they got rid of the search directory entirely, and I stopped visiting their site.
Could they have kept the directory working? Maybe. dmoz.org was an attempt to do so, but by that point everyone had come to rely on Google.
Perhaps kids should be taught to use RPN calculators.
On an RPN calculator, the keys which perform operations are labeled with symbols that represent mathematical operations. There's no misuse of '=' to mean 'perform calculation'.
That's the great thing about this invention. It gives ageing Republicans a way to screw the planet after they're dead too.
No. Each Android app runs as a separate Linux userid. Even if you give the app filesystem access, it can't write to files that belong to other apps, let alone rewrite the apps themselves.
Two suggestions:
1. Try Kubuntu (no Pulseaudio crapulence or notify-osd service, lower memory usage).
2. Install OSS 4.
Geocaching outside the NSA? Oh, yeah, that sounds like a fabulous idea. I'll jump right on that next time I want the inside of my ass examined with a flashlight.
Well, IBM prohibits BitTorrent use by employees on IBM computers, so I'm doubtful that the IBM download is sanctioned. The person responsible will probably be hearing from the IT department, now that so much attention has been drawn to it.
[Opinions mine, not IBM's.]
I see what you did there.
The High Speed HDMI with Ethernet super-deluxe cable will be $8 at Monoprice, so I'll just buy one of those whatever I'm connecting.
All stable Ruby releases include a test suite.
Ruby has RubyGems, which is very like CPAN. (Speaking as an ex-Perl programmer.)
I don't want malleable. When every package I download has a different syntax for using its objects and a completely different code style, that's not a benefit to me. I have a job to do, and frankly, Ruby is still too malleable and too prone to people being clever.
I gave up on Perl when I saw that Perl 6 was going to be even more syntaxy and complicated than Perl 5. Larry steered it the wrong way, in my view, so I switched to Ruby.
Question 3) Is there any legal issue involved with their blatantly lying on the product page?
Apple writes:
That's a pretty blatant lie. Given that Apple bought FingerWorks, they can hardly be unaware that FingerWorks sold a multi-touch trackpad designed to work with the Mac in 1995.
Another awesome web site that was sadly lost was the National Texture Administration. You can still find references to it on Google, but the site itself is gone.