Over at Webmaster World there's some great discussions ongoing about how search engines like Google work. There's even a tiny bit of inside information, thanks to the regular posts in their Google forum from forum member Google Guy.
People have been waiting on this for ages: it will bear a strong resemblance to Everquest thanks to having the same development team from Sony/Verant. Here's the Star Wars Galaxies Official FAQ and, the answer to the all-important question from page three of the FAQ:
3.03 Will I be able to kill Darth Vader?
At this point, you will probably not be able to kill Darth Vader, but some players may have the opportunity to interact with him. We would like to adhere to the continuity as much as possible; Vader is key to the trilogy, so you probably won't be able to kill him (like you would really stand a chance against the Lord of the Sith anyway...)
Columbus has already bowed out. Alfonso Cuaron has signed on to direct the third adaptation: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Filming will begin sometime in the spring so you won't see this on the screen until sometime in 2004 (Relief or disappointment? You decide.)
It's been rumoured that Christopher Lee will step into the late Richard Harris's shoes as Dumbledore in the third film, although he has emphatically denied this. I'd prefer Ian McKellan myself.
I just donated my Linux box to a local school, actually, since I was only using it to geek around. Since most of the games that I and my family play are only available on Windows (MMORPGs, etc.) Microsoft is profiting nicely by me.
These kind of secret backdoor deals taint the supposedly open review process. How secure can we feel with the standard of DTV given this kind of collusion between MIT and Dolby?
From the Tech article:
"It was very closely held information that there was an agreement between MIT and Dolby," Rast said. "It wasn't something that everybody knew about at the time," he added. "It wasn't common knowledge."
"I think the other members [of the Alliance] would have been quite upset" if they had known about such an agreement, said Joel Brinkley, the author of Defining Vision, a comprehensive account of the HDTV standardization process, and a reporter for The New York Times.
"I was not aware of it, and I was speaking to all of them," he said. "Many millions of dollars were at stake. The contract for Dolby was one of the best things ever to happen to that company. They are now the audio system for every television that will ever be sold," he said.
that companies are promoting integrated video. Unwitting computer novices won't be able to upgrade easily. This will only confirm their misguided belief that computers are too complex, technical and expensive to make it worth their while.
I know because ten years ago I felt that way myself, even though I was reasonably techno-savvy (writing my own autoexec.bat files, etc.). I swore never to open a computer! Nowadays I blithely swap parts in and out, thanks to good advice and a good, generic machine that was easily upgraded.
Sure, spam's awful, but I find Sorkin's Don't Link cause (promoting the right to link on the net) fascinating. It was discussed here at slashdot last month.
All of this has a lot of common ground with Lawrence Lessig, who was the subject of a Wired article also discussed here. Good to see some law professors pursuing freedom on the internet.
If you're interested in following intellectual property arguments in more detail I recommend Negativland's IP page as a great starting point.
So instead they're sending you physical junk-mail or having pop-unders. That's a big improvement.
Fifty percent correct. As a former iVillage consultant, I can tell you that the newsletters and member mailings to which they refer are online-only. It isn't perfect, but it's a nice step forward.
CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) has several informative reports debunking crop circles including Joe Nickell's Investigative Brief into Levengood's Crop Circle Plant Research.
If you're interested in more informed discussion, check out the CSICOP Mailing List, where this topic (Disney's Crop Circle promotion) is also current.
"JK Rowling is happily writing the fifth Harry Potter book and we will announce a publication date once we have received the finished manuscript. As soon as we have any more news about the publication date we will update this area."
It's also well known that the fifth book will be titled "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Book 4, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was published in July of 2000. 2 years and counting. . . no wonder the fakes are emerging!
Note in the NY Times' story's opening paragraph (my emphasis added): "two Connecticut newspapers had written stories about his prison's treatment of inmates from that state."
Because Mr. Young and the VA prison system deals with people from across the states, his (and the system's) reputation has national interest.
I think the Salon article didn't go far enough in crediting the role of DirectX in boosting NVidia's fortunes. NVidia's early adoption of DirectX gave it the insurmountable advantage in the market.
DirectX is so much more than simply a 3d rendering protocol, but you don't get that sense from the article. Because DirectX is so ubiquitous, when push comes to shove I want my 3d card to jive with DirectX. Result? Another sale for NVidia!
I highly suggest you consult an archivist or a librarian trained in archival management. Nineteenth century paper products are notorious fragile (a result of the switch from rag pulp to acidic, unstable wood pulp). If you don't have the facilities to store these properly, donating them to a local museum or archive is a wonderful idea.
Paper preservation requires proper storage and safe handling practices. Your family documents will last longer if they are stored in a stable environment, similar to that which we find comfortable for ourselves: 60-70 degrees F; 40-50% relative humidity (RH); with clean air and good circulation. High heat and moisture accelerate the chemical processes that result in embrittlement and discoloration to the paper. Damp environments may also result in mold growth and/or be conducive to pests that might use the documents for food or nesting material. Therefore, the central part of your home provides a safer storage environment than a hot attic or damp basement.
Light is also damaging to paper, especially that which contains high proportions of ultra violet, i.e., fluorescent and natural day light. The effects of light exposure are cumulative and irreversible; they promote chemical degradation in the paper and fade inks. It is not recommended to permanently display valuable documents for this reason. Color photocopies or photographs work well as surrogates.
Seems like at least one musician thinks his A paper is being peddled all over town.
Ptui! Read the article at Salon and you'll see that Byrd isn't claiming lots of people are swapping and burning his songs. He's irked at Sony because he hasn't seen a penny of artist royalties on either of his two albums which are still in the catalogue (though he started getting composer royalties after he was contacted to let another artist record one of his songs). He'd rather have the music available freely if the artist is never going to see any payment.
Stompin' Tom Connors even wrote a song to prove it!
There are occasional tours of the SNO site (usually for academics and visiting dignitaries) but you have to set aside a large block of time just to allow for transit time down and back up.
*Yawn* We knew about it last week. Here's a snippet from the copy released by PR people at Laurentian University in Sudbury:
New scientific results from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory to be announced
April 18, 2002
(Sudbury, Ontario) - Scientists from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, working at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), a unique underground laboratory built to provide insights into the properties of neutrinos and their emission from the core of the Sun, will submit a scientific paper with important new results later this week. They will announce these research findings in a scientific presentation by Dr. Andre Hamer on Saturday, April 20, at the Joint Meeting of the American Physical Society and the American Astronomical Society in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A copy of the first scientific paper and news release summarizing SNO's findings and their importance will be posted on the SNO website (www.sno.phy.queensu.ca) at 1:20 p.m EDT (10:20 a.m. PDT) on Saturday, April 20. A summary talk on the implications of these neutrino measurements will be presented by Dr. John Wilkerson on Monday, April 22, at the same conference.
"We look forward to this opportunity to share these new findings with the scientific community and the general public," says Dr. Art McDonald, SNO Project Director and member of the Department of Physics at Queen's University. "For the first time, we are reporting on an important neutrino reaction in the SNO detector - a reaction in which all known neutrinos participate, regardless of their type. The successful observation of these neutrino signals has been a chief goal of the years of intense work by a collaboration of close to 100 scientists at 11 universities and national laboratories in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, and we are very pleased with the quality of the data obtained."
In June 2001, the SNO scientific collaboration announced definitive results based on two other reactions seen in the SNO detector, and on measurements at the SuperKamiokande neutrino detector in Japan, establishing that neutrinos from the Sun change from their original electron neutrino type, to a mixture of electron and other (mu or tau) neutrino types. The new data from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory to be announced on April 20, enables this question to be addressed accurately from data obtained entirely from SNO, and is expected to enhance significantly our understanding of these important properties of neutrinos from the Sun and of the Sun itself.
Additional information about the conference presentations, the SNO laboratory, the neutrino measurements being made and the participating institutions can be found at www.sno.phy.queensu.ca.
From the Infoworld article: "Even if the pages no longer exist on XS4ALL sites, we want the search engines to remove the link because it still advertises a handbook for destruction. People will start looking for it elsewhere and we don't want that."
If you do a search for Deutsche Bahn on Google, the first two links are now to this news story. Precisely the opposite effect?
It is interesting to see the attention paid to policing these virtual worlds. Currently, they are trying to do most of that with volunteers. A few paid staffers or contractors (GMs) oversee a larger force of volunteer guides.
The upside to volunteer guides is enthusiasm and game knowledge. Downsides include poor training, spotty supervision and questionable legality. Game users regularly complain about the lack of guides online. These "Disneylands" certainly aren't patrolled 24/7.
Everquest is attempting to address this problem with the launch of their premium Legends server: where they promote a dedicated CS staff. Even they aren't promising 24/7 coverage, though!
In it you can read Barlow's firsthand account of his interview with that FBI agent which helped spark the creation of the EFF: He had been sent to find out if I might be a member of the NuPromtheus League, a dread band of info-terrorists (or maybe just a disaffected former Apple employee) who had stolen and wantonly distributed source code normally used in the Macintosh ROMs. Agent Baxter's errand was complicated by a fairly complete unfamiliarity with computer technology. I realized right away that before I could demonstrate my innocence, I would first have to explain to him what guilt might be.
The last two sentences still ring true for technologists today!
Slashdot Mirror
Over at Webmaster World there's some great discussions ongoing about how search engines like Google work. There's even a tiny bit of inside information, thanks to the regular posts in their Google forum from forum member Google Guy.
People have been waiting on this for ages: it will bear a strong resemblance to Everquest thanks to having the same development team from Sony/Verant. Here's the Star Wars Galaxies Official FAQ and, the answer to the all-important question from page three of the FAQ:
3.03 Will I be able to kill Darth Vader?
At this point, you will probably not be able to kill Darth Vader, but some players may have the opportunity to interact with him. We would like to adhere to the continuity as much as possible; Vader is key to the trilogy, so you probably won't be able to kill him (like you would really stand a chance against the Lord of the Sith anyway...)
Columbus has already bowed out. Alfonso Cuaron has signed on to direct the third adaptation: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Filming will begin sometime in the spring so you won't see this on the screen until sometime in 2004 (Relief or disappointment? You decide.)
It's been rumoured that Christopher Lee will step into the late Richard Harris's shoes as Dumbledore in the third film, although he has emphatically denied this. I'd prefer Ian McKellan myself.
I just donated my Linux box to a local school, actually, since I was only using it to geek around. Since most of the games that I and my family play are only available on Windows (MMORPGs, etc.) Microsoft is profiting nicely by me.
You can easily see the likeness to the Vatican library as depicted here, not to mention many others including the Escorial and Laurentian libraries.
These kind of secret backdoor deals taint the supposedly open review process. How secure can we feel with the standard of DTV given this kind of collusion between MIT and Dolby?
From the Tech article:
"It was very closely held information that there was an agreement between MIT and Dolby," Rast said. "It wasn't something that everybody knew about at the time," he added. "It wasn't common knowledge."
"I think the other members [of the Alliance] would have been quite upset" if they had known about such an agreement, said Joel Brinkley, the author of Defining Vision, a comprehensive account of the HDTV standardization process, and a reporter for The New York Times.
"I was not aware of it, and I was speaking to all of them," he said. "Many millions of dollars were at stake. The contract for Dolby was one of the best things ever to happen to that company. They are now the audio system for every television that will ever be sold," he said.
that companies are promoting integrated video. Unwitting computer novices won't be able to upgrade easily. This will only confirm their misguided belief that computers are too complex, technical and expensive to make it worth their while.
I know because ten years ago I felt that way myself, even though I was reasonably techno-savvy (writing my own autoexec.bat files, etc.). I swore never to open a computer! Nowadays I blithely swap parts in and out, thanks to good advice and a good, generic machine that was easily upgraded.
Sure, spam's awful, but I find Sorkin's Don't Link cause (promoting the right to link on the net) fascinating. It was discussed here at slashdot last month.
All of this has a lot of common ground with Lawrence Lessig, who was the subject of a Wired article also discussed here. Good to see some law professors pursuing freedom on the internet.
If you're interested in following intellectual property arguments in more detail I recommend Negativland's IP page as a great starting point.
This ended up in my email box last week. The important last phrase was:
And you want me to do all of this and you expect me NOT TO PRAY?
So instead they're sending you physical junk-mail or having pop-unders. That's a big improvement.
Fifty percent correct. As a former iVillage consultant, I can tell you that the newsletters and member mailings to which they refer are online-only. It isn't perfect, but it's a nice step forward.
CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) has several informative reports debunking crop circles including Joe Nickell's Investigative Brief into Levengood's Crop Circle Plant Research.
If you're interested in more informed discussion, check out the CSICOP Mailing List, where this topic (Disney's Crop Circle promotion) is also current.
You're RIGHT. Migosh, how could I have forgotten that. I'll toddle right off and add that, straightaway. :)
From the Bloomsbury website:
"JK Rowling is happily writing the fifth Harry Potter book and we will announce a publication date once we have received the finished manuscript. As soon as we have any more news about the publication date we will update this area."
It's also well known that the fifth book will be titled "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Book 4, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was published in July of 2000. 2 years and counting. . . no wonder the fakes are emerging!
Note in the NY Times' story's opening paragraph (my emphasis added): "two Connecticut newspapers had written stories about his prison's treatment of inmates from that state."
Because Mr. Young and the VA prison system deals with people from across the states, his (and the system's) reputation has national interest.
I think the Salon article didn't go far enough in crediting the role of DirectX in boosting NVidia's fortunes. NVidia's early adoption of DirectX gave it the insurmountable advantage in the market.
DirectX is so much more than simply a 3d rendering protocol, but you don't get that sense from the article. Because DirectX is so ubiquitous, when push comes to shove I want my 3d card to jive with DirectX. Result? Another sale for NVidia!
I'd be careful about trying this. Film is not an especially stable medium. Photographs require careful conservation as well.
I highly suggest you consult an archivist or a librarian trained in archival management. Nineteenth century paper products are notorious fragile (a result of the switch from rag pulp to acidic, unstable wood pulp). If you don't have the facilities to store these properly, donating them to a local museum or archive is a wonderful idea.
The National Archives and Records Administration has a FAQ. Their advice on preserving family papers? --
Paper preservation requires proper storage and safe handling practices. Your family documents will last longer if they are stored in a stable environment, similar to that which we find comfortable for ourselves: 60-70 degrees F; 40-50% relative humidity (RH); with clean air and good circulation. High heat and moisture accelerate the chemical processes that result in embrittlement and discoloration to the paper. Damp environments may also result in mold growth and/or be conducive to pests that might use the documents for food or nesting material. Therefore, the central part of your home provides a safer storage environment than a hot attic or damp basement.
Light is also damaging to paper, especially that which contains high proportions of ultra violet, i.e., fluorescent and natural day light. The effects of light exposure are cumulative and irreversible; they promote chemical degradation in the paper and fade inks. It is not recommended to permanently display valuable documents for this reason. Color photocopies or photographs work well as surrogates.
Anders Borg wrote this FAQ from Project Gutenberg. Lots of field-tested advice there, such as a suggestion to scan at 300dpi or better.
Seems like at least one musician thinks his A paper is being peddled all over town.
Ptui! Read the article at Salon and you'll see that Byrd isn't claiming lots of people are swapping and burning his songs. He's irked at Sony because he hasn't seen a penny of artist royalties on either of his two albums which are still in the catalogue (though he started getting composer royalties after he was contacted to let another artist record one of his songs). He'd rather have the music available freely if the artist is never going to see any payment.
Hey, life's real exciting here in Sudbury. Take a look.
Stompin' Tom Connors even wrote a song to prove it!
There are occasional tours of the SNO site (usually for academics and visiting dignitaries) but you have to set aside a large block of time just to allow for transit time down and back up.
*Yawn* We knew about it last week. Here's a snippet from the copy released by PR people at Laurentian University in Sudbury:
New scientific results from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory to be announced
April 18, 2002
(Sudbury, Ontario) - Scientists from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, working at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), a unique underground laboratory built to provide insights into the properties of neutrinos and their emission from the core of the Sun, will submit a scientific paper with important new results later this week. They will announce these research findings in a scientific presentation by Dr. Andre Hamer on Saturday, April 20, at the Joint Meeting of the American Physical Society and the American Astronomical Society in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A copy of the first scientific paper and news release summarizing SNO's findings and their importance will be posted on the SNO website (www.sno.phy.queensu.ca) at 1:20 p.m EDT (10:20 a.m. PDT) on Saturday, April 20. A summary talk on the implications of these neutrino measurements will be presented by Dr. John Wilkerson on Monday, April 22, at the same conference.
"We look forward to this opportunity to share these new findings with the scientific community and the general public," says Dr. Art McDonald, SNO Project Director and member of the Department of Physics at Queen's University. "For the first time, we are reporting on an important neutrino reaction in the SNO detector - a reaction in which all known neutrinos participate, regardless of their type. The successful observation of these neutrino signals has been a chief goal of the years of intense work by a collaboration of close to 100 scientists at 11 universities and national laboratories in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, and we are very pleased with the quality of the data obtained."
In June 2001, the SNO scientific collaboration announced definitive results based on two other reactions seen in the SNO detector, and on measurements at the SuperKamiokande neutrino detector in Japan, establishing that neutrinos from the Sun change from their original electron neutrino type, to a mixture of electron and other (mu or tau) neutrino types. The new data from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory to be announced on April 20, enables this question to be addressed accurately from data obtained entirely from SNO, and is expected to enhance significantly our understanding of these important properties of neutrinos from the Sun and of the Sun itself.
Additional information about the conference presentations, the SNO laboratory, the neutrino measurements being made and the participating institutions can be found at www.sno.phy.queensu.ca.
Yet another attempt to whitewash online reality by eliminating not only websites but also their very mention (especialloy in search engines). Somewhat reminiscent of Scientology's heavy-handed attempts at search engine censorship employing the DMCA?
From the Infoworld article: "Even if the pages no longer exist on XS4ALL sites, we want the search engines to remove the link because it still advertises a handbook for destruction. People will start looking for it elsewhere and we don't want that."
If you do a search for Deutsche Bahn on Google, the first two links are now to this news story. Precisely the opposite effect?
It is interesting to see the attention paid to policing these virtual worlds. Currently, they are trying to do most of that with volunteers. A few paid staffers or contractors (GMs) oversee a larger force of volunteer guides.
The upside to volunteer guides is enthusiasm and game knowledge. Downsides include poor training, spotty supervision and questionable legality. Game users regularly complain about the lack of guides online. These "Disneylands" certainly aren't patrolled 24/7.
Everquest is attempting to address this problem with the launch of their premium Legends server: where they promote a dedicated CS staff. Even they aren't promising 24/7 coverage, though!
Players are now able to sell back the horses (albeit at a slight loss) to certain NPCs with the patch of 23 January, 2002.
That weakens their role as a platinum sink in the economy.
More details from one of the EFF co-founders: A Not Terribly Brief History of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In it you can read Barlow's firsthand account of his interview with that FBI agent which helped spark the creation of the EFF: He had been sent to find out if I might be a member of the NuPromtheus League, a dread band of info-terrorists (or maybe just a disaffected former Apple employee) who had stolen and wantonly distributed source code normally used in the Macintosh ROMs. Agent Baxter's errand was complicated by a fairly complete unfamiliarity with computer technology. I realized right away that before I could demonstrate my innocence, I would first have to explain to him what guilt might be.
The last two sentences still ring true for technologists today!