Aug. 5, 2003 | It's late afternoon, you're thinking about dinner, and you realize it's been a long while since you had a good perm. Do you (a) head to the hair salon in your local strip mall and ask your beautician if she thinks you could use another or (b) sign on to Salon.com?
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you chose Curtain No.1. Fact is, you'd have to; the Web site Salon.com doesn't exist -- never did, so far as I can tell -- and the domain name expired on April 12. But the very fact that Salon.com has expired means that someone, maybe a year ago, maybe two, registered it. Someone out there, someone living among us, chose to bet that the road to online success would be paved with women who wanted their hair colored online.
In fact it turns out that the gravitational pull of the earth is changing such that when California is finally shaken loose by the San Andreas fault it will simply float off into the sky. The exact opposite of the sky falling. Also, it turns out that Columbus was wrong (the Earth is getting flatter, which implies it must have been significantly flat already) but happened to be in the right century at the right time.
In other news, the End of the World (TM) has been rescheduled for 2880 (no indication yet of whether it will still occur in February of that year).
I'm getting a little tired of these scientist pranks, but I'm waiting for Greenpeace to sue McDonald's over the Earth's newfound obesity.
The survey used military satellites to locate two 19th-century boundary markers, six miles apart. Then, on a computer, the survey team plotted the markers on a detailed map and connected them with a straight line -- correcting the slightly distorted border established by an 1840 survey.
If the survey team was hired by the town in Connecticut, the team has an incentive to skew the findings. It's not difficult to do by "correcting" the time your receiver thinks it is, and if ever contested in court it could be excused as a simple mistake. "My watch must have been a few minutes fast, your honor." A survey team hired by the Rhode Island town could set their watch back a few minutes to get favorable results.
Of course, articles about GPS always highlight the fact that they are "military satellites" up front to suggest to the reader that some official military operation was involved. The WSJ article even calls GPS "new technology" -- which is really stretching the idea that "new" is a relative term. I used the same network of military satellites, "new technology" and a $100 device that runs on two AA batteries to drive from San Francisco to the Grand Canyon last year. Doesn't sound quite so official now, does it?
Neither team's findings would change the fact that the border established between the states 160 years ago was based on observations on the ground, not GPS. It would take an agreement between the two states or a drawn-out legal battle before the U.S. Supreme Court similar to the case that resulted in New York and New Jersey splitting Ellis Island right through the middle of an existing, historic building. Ellis Island was arguably more important financially to the states than a handful of houses, and I suspect the Supreme Court would rule that the indigenous residents of those houses have a greater right to choose their state than a bunch of abandoned buildings.
On the other hand, Connecticut and Rhode Island could always go to war over this. Yeah, let's do that. There's nothing good on TV tonight anyway.
So by the time we invade Iraq, these will be about 100 feet tall, manned by Desert Storm Troopers and equipped with laser guns? This gives Saddam time to equip his air force with grappling hooks. Only I thought this scene was supposed to take place on the tundra...
"The Master said, 'Hard is it to deal with him who will stuff himself with food the whole day without applying his mind to anything good. Are there not gamesters and go players? To be one of these would still be better than doing nothing at all.'" Confucius (who had better things to do)
Which of the following seems most probable:
Confucius actually spoke/wrote the English words "Hard is it to deal with him who will stuff himself with food the whole day without applying his mind to anything good."
Confucius's quote cannot be translated into proper English (i.e. "It is hard to deal with he who will...").
The error was manufactured to give the quote more authenticity/credibility. People will be more likely to revere a statement they doesn't sound right to them if it is attributed to someone like Confucius ("It doesn't sound right to me, but it must be right because Confucius said it! Golly, he's smart, that Confucius.").
The person quoting Confucius is a big Star Wars fan and imagines that Yoda really was Confucius in another lifetime.
Unless you just happened to be carrying one on the street, they could have tracked you (via one of the other dozen phones they're probably carrying -- if they're handing expensive new consumer devices to complete strangers, they've got to expect that some are going to break/get stolen) back to your house while you are en route. In that case, hiding the phone in a Faraday cage once you get home won't do much good because they already know where you live.
At MacWorld 2 weeks ago, these things were all over the place so people could demo Apple's new iSync [apple.com] software. There was no subterfuge, it was, "Here's the phone, try it out for yourself." And it worked. I want one.
Why do they deem it necessary to stoop to all this sneaky shit? If the product is good, people will want it without some fucking Jedi Mind Trick-style advertising campaign.
That wasn't a Sony Ericsson rep; that was me.
I've been posing as a Sony Ericsson rep for weeks to prove my salesmanship, but they won't give me a chance. They say I don't have enough sales experience. If you're serious about wanting to buy one, please call them at 555-1212 and let them know what a great salesman I am.
The article talks about an electronic service where you could transmit electronic messages between roughly 25 post offices. The messages would be printed out and then hand delivered like normal mail.
They're doing this now with "NetPost"(only you don't have to go to the Post Office to send your letter):
Prepare and send hardcopy mail from the convenience of your computer. Create, print, and send resumes, newsletters, and everything in between. No more printing, stuffing, or trips to the post office. Upload a document. Pay online. We do the rest!
On June 8, 1959, in a move a postal official heralded as "of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world," the Navy submarine U.S.S. Barbero fired a guided missile carrying 3,000 letters at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Mayport, Florida. "Before man reaches the moon," the official was quoted as saying, "mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles."
History proved differently, but this experiment with missile mail exemplifies the pioneering spirit of the Post Office Department when it came to developing faster, better ways of moving the mail.
The Postal Service hasn't really been part of the government since Nixon was president. What was then known as the Post Office Department became an independent corporation called the United States Postal Service. Technically, it's owned by the government (like AMTRAK, the government bails it out when it can't pay its bills each year in the interest of keeping the country's infrastructure running smoothly) and because it has been granted a monopoly it has to meet certain requirements set forth by Congress>
However, unlike a government agency, if the Post Office makes a profit, that money doesn't go to the federal government. The USPS keeps it to help it fulfill its charter in the future.
RING RING... RING RING You: Uh, hello? Caller: We forgot to tell you about... BEEP (you hit END to hang up)
Later, as you're sitting at home telling Slashdot about the two idiots you stole a camera from Ding Dong! Barefoot Tourists: Hi there! We forgot to tell you about the great built-in GPS module that allows the phone to determine its location and send that data back to a central server in case it's ever stolen. We'd still like you to take our picture so you can see how easy to use it is.
We would still get spam The USPS delivers junk mail to my house every day because corporations pay the USPS to deliver it. My mail carrier hides my real mail in the newspaper-like junk mail so I have to flip through it to avoid throwing out real mail. He does this because the postal service makes a large chunk of its revenue this way, yet it still loses money regularly.
Spam would be easier to filter out The fact that it would no longer be free would cut down on the volume of spam and the variation, making it much easier to detect and filter out.
Email would be more closely monitored for subversive/threatening content, copyrighted content, etc. And unlike traditional mail, anonymity would be impossible because the mail would be sent from an account connected directly to your name, home address and social security number.
It would cost us money per email Right now we can send all the emails we want (more or less) without fear of a huge bill. But if the USPS controlled email, you'd probably have the option of buying "stamps" on a per-email basis or having your account billed monthly. You would pay perhaps 3 cents for up to 100k, 5 cents for 200k and so on.
No..plan is a tool for hiding ASCII porn or witty sayings on the campus network where most people will never think to look. At least that's all I've ever seen it used for...
"Preparation" and "hours of editing" are the difference between good writing and bad.
Not necessarily. There's something to be said for extemporaneous writing -- sometimes it's good to publish something before you've had the opportunity to second-guess it. Personally, I like to edit copy to death, but that's my preference. Whether extemporaneous or meticulously edited, I think the work should be judged on its own merits. You can't assume something is bad based on time frame in which it was written.
In most stories, there are various tales to follow. For instance, one might detail your relationship with your wife at home, another may deal with your extended family, another focuses on the daily odyssey you call a commute, while another paints a sinister picture of the evil man in the next cubicle over who plays the same two Creed songs through his computer speakers all day long.
You could organize your blog according to topic, and then add entries under each heading:
The Angel of My Life
The best sex ever
My life changed forever when I met her
Satin? You Want the Next Cubicle Over
I used to like Creed
My Daily Odyssey
Turn signals are not a sign of weakness
Where's the fire?
The philosophy of "Stop and Go"
People I Can't Seem to Get Rid of...
My mom makes the best chocolate chip cookies
Aunt Helen, the nitpicker
My cousin the wench
My cousin the wench, Part II
The Person No One Knows
Covert excursions to the park
My day as a troll
Would it be "interesting?" I guess that's up to you.
FCC wants to split the finite spectrum as efficiently as possible (so it can sell the spectrum it's already sold to a greater number of parties), so it wants these boxes built into every new TV.
Broadcasters say "Screw you FCC! We're not doing this unless this new technology mandates protection that prevents people from taping our broadcasts.
FCC agrees and turns to the TV manufacturers -- "how about you guys? Are you in or out?"
TV manufacturers waffle -- "I don't know, this is going to make a $100 TV cost $300. Consumers might stop buying them."
Broadcasters -- "shut up you f'ing pussies! If you're so concerned about the consumers, why don't you just give them your share of the price increase, that way your little $100 TV will only cost $200. Besides, they'll buy what we tell them to buy."
I think the broadcasters could really do without the language. Twenty years ago, the FCC would have revoked their licenses for that, but these days it's all about the money. Perhaps we could all chip in and buy the TV manufacturers a set of brass knuckles.
if you want to see it, it's another buck in Jack Valenti's pocket
Nah, by the time this is approved and accepted and manufactured and bought, Valenti will probably have died of old age. Heck, by the time I buy one of these contraptions, I will probably have died of old age.
high poverty levels are limiting Web access to the few that can afford it
"Shopping is still considered a family duty in India, so online shopping may not be as popular as it is in the West"
U.S. tech firms are flocking to India for developers because they will work for about what a Silicon Valley developer pays in rent (this I've heard in-person from developers who were flown to the U.S. for several weeks of training before being sent back -- a lot of them are brilliant, but they have to take what the market in India offers because they can't stay in the U.S.). If that's any indication of the economic state of India, I doubt eBay is that desperate to reach the Indian market.
Yahoo isn't going to pay some smart-ass ISP for the priviledge of allowing Yahoo to distribute its already free content.
And MSN will laugh at them: "You want us to pay how much? OK, but we're invoking the terms of our EULA that allows us to remotely control your systems."
HP has evidently threatened to use the DMCA and computer crime laws against SnoSoft who have found a security flaw in Tru64. The quote from the HP VP is that the accused "could be fined up to $500,000 and imprisoned for up to five years."
I would like to point out the flaws in HP's legal interpretation here, but I just don't have $500,000 right now. Maybe tomorrow. It's really a shame... five rent-free years with free meals would give me enough time to write my book about the American-- oh, I can't talk about that either. Never mind.
Most other media don't interchange well BECAUSE not everyone else has one. Not every machine has a working Internet connection - they don't have a connector, it's broken, you can't plug in right now, or they're forbidden (!).
Not "everyone" has a floppy drive in their computer. The last time I bought a computer with a floppy drive was 1996. Among people who actually transfer documents, email addresses are more common than floppy drives.
if someone says they'll email or post the file, I'm at their mercy... but if they hand me the data on a floppy, I now really have it.
Not necessarily. I once had a client who needed to give me a collection of photographs she had on her computer. I asked her to email them, but she said she'd prefer to put them on a CDR because her connection was slow. I get home, pop the CDR into my machine and it's blank... turns out she had her burning software set so only her computer could decipher the disk. Just because someone says something's on a disk doesn't mean it is.
Floppies are cheap, and one of the very few ubiquitous standard ways of exchanging data. They're quite cheap, too.
Email is cheaper, and ubiquitous. Email is quite cheaper, too.
This is one of those perennial news items slashdot runs when there's nothing better to argue about. But it loses news value each time we declare the floppy dead. At present, I'd say it's only slightly more newsworthy than the moth I killed in my backyard four years ago.
Have the folks at The NYTimes found some undefeatable method of forcing popup ads onto our screens? No -- OmniWeb is blissfully immune. Mozilla should be too, but it's not.
It would be interesting to grab a nice sample of EULAs across the last 2 decades to see what has changed, if anything.
It's really very simple.
All your base are belong to us
became
You must read and agree to the following End User License Agreement or you will be shut out of society forever: __ ____ __ . ___ __ __ . ____ __ __ __ . ___ __ ___ _ ______ <I AGREE> <i'm a loser>
The corporations exchanged their Japanese-speaking lawyers for Braille-speaking lawyers. Studies have shown that this leads to fewer "incidents" among uncooperative consumers.
(Note: I attempted to recreate the actual legibility of the modern EULA with colons, periods and spaces, but the lameness filter quickly identified it as "junk..." hmm...)
beep beep BEEP bebeep BEbebeBEEP No, he didn't mean to insult you. BZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzt R2! You don't have to vaporize him just to make a point. BEbebeBEEP bebeep BEEP Fine! Fine, you two work it out on your own. I'm outta here. *whistle*
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you chose Curtain No.1. Fact is, you'd have to; the Web site Salon.com doesn't exist -- never did, so far as I can tell -- and the domain name expired on April 12. But the very fact that Salon.com has expired means that someone, maybe a year ago, maybe two, registered it. Someone out there, someone living among us, chose to bet that the road to online success would be paved with women who wanted their hair colored online.
The arrogant fools.
- Last week, the sky was falling
- Then we found out the scientists were just yanking our chain
- In fact it turns out that the gravitational pull of the earth is changing such that when California is finally shaken loose by the San Andreas fault it will simply float off into the sky. The exact opposite of the sky falling. Also, it turns out that Columbus was wrong (the Earth is getting flatter, which implies it must have been significantly flat already) but happened to be in the right century at the right time.
- In other news, the End of the World (TM) has been rescheduled for 2880 (no indication yet of whether it will still occur in February of that year).
I'm getting a little tired of these scientist pranks, but I'm waiting for Greenpeace to sue McDonald's over the Earth's newfound obesity.Of course, articles about GPS always highlight the fact that they are "military satellites" up front to suggest to the reader that some official military operation was involved. The WSJ article even calls GPS "new technology" -- which is really stretching the idea that "new" is a relative term. I used the same network of military satellites, "new technology" and a $100 device that runs on two AA batteries to drive from San Francisco to the Grand Canyon last year. Doesn't sound quite so official now, does it?
Neither team's findings would change the fact that the border established between the states 160 years ago was based on observations on the ground, not GPS. It would take an agreement between the two states or a drawn-out legal battle before the U.S. Supreme Court similar to the case that resulted in New York and New Jersey splitting Ellis Island right through the middle of an existing, historic building. Ellis Island was arguably more important financially to the states than a handful of houses, and I suspect the Supreme Court would rule that the indigenous residents of those houses have a greater right to choose their state than a bunch of abandoned buildings.
On the other hand, Connecticut and Rhode Island could always go to war over this. Yeah, let's do that. There's nothing good on TV tonight anyway.
So by the time we invade Iraq, these will be about 100 feet tall, manned by Desert Storm Troopers and equipped with laser guns? This gives Saddam time to equip his air force with grappling hooks. Only I thought this scene was supposed to take place on the tundra...
Unless you just happened to be carrying one on the street, they could have tracked you (via one of the other dozen phones they're probably carrying -- if they're handing expensive new consumer devices to complete strangers, they've got to expect that some are going to break/get stolen) back to your house while you are en route. In that case, hiding the phone in a Faraday cage once you get home won't do much good because they already know where you live.
I've been posing as a Sony Ericsson rep for weeks to prove my salesmanship, but they won't give me a chance. They say I don't have enough sales experience. If you're serious about wanting to buy one, please call them at 555-1212 and let them know what a great salesman I am.
However, unlike a government agency, if the Post Office makes a profit, that money doesn't go to the federal government. The USPS keeps it to help it fulfill its charter in the future.
You: Uh, hello?
Caller: We forgot to tell you about...
BEEP (you hit END to hang up)
Later, as you're sitting at home telling Slashdot about the two idiots you stole a camera from
Ding Dong!
Barefoot Tourists: Hi there! We forgot to tell you about the great built-in GPS module that allows the phone to determine its location and send that data back to a central server in case it's ever stolen. We'd still like you to take our picture so you can see how easy to use it is.
The USPS delivers junk mail to my house every day because corporations pay the USPS to deliver it. My mail carrier hides my real mail in the newspaper-like junk mail so I have to flip through it to avoid throwing out real mail. He does this because the postal service makes a large chunk of its revenue this way, yet it still loses money regularly.
Spam would be easier to filter out
The fact that it would no longer be free would cut down on the volume of spam and the variation, making it much easier to detect and filter out.
Email would be more closely monitored
for subversive/threatening content, copyrighted content, etc. And unlike traditional mail, anonymity would be impossible because the mail would be sent from an account connected directly to your name, home address and social security number.
It would cost us money per email
Right now we can send all the emails we want (more or less) without fear of a huge bill. But if the USPS controlled email, you'd probably have the option of buying "stamps" on a per-email basis or having your account billed monthly. You would pay perhaps 3 cents for up to 100k, 5 cents for 200k and so on.
By contrast, blogs contain narratives.
(Yes, I misspelled Satan, because most bloggers can't spell anyway. It lends an air of authenticity.)
You could organize your blog according to topic, and then add entries under each heading:
Would it be "interesting?" I guess that's up to you.- FCC wants to split the finite spectrum as efficiently as possible (so it can sell the spectrum it's already sold to a greater number of parties), so it wants these boxes built into every new TV.
- Broadcasters say "Screw you FCC! We're not doing this unless this new technology mandates protection that prevents people from taping our broadcasts.
- FCC agrees and turns to the TV manufacturers -- "how about you guys? Are you in or out?"
- TV manufacturers waffle -- "I don't know, this is going to make a $100 TV cost $300. Consumers might stop buying them."
- Broadcasters -- "shut up you f'ing pussies! If you're so concerned about the consumers, why don't you just give them your share of the price increase, that way your little $100 TV will only cost $200. Besides, they'll buy what we tell them to buy."
I think the broadcasters could really do without the language. Twenty years ago, the FCC would have revoked their licenses for that, but these days it's all about the money. Perhaps we could all chip in and buy the TV manufacturers a set of brass knuckles.- India has 2.2 telephone lines per 100 citizens
- 0.4% of the population uses the Internet, not 10%
- high poverty levels are limiting Web access to the few that can afford it
- "Shopping is still considered a family duty in India, so online shopping may not be as popular as it is in the West"
U.S. tech firms are flocking to India for developers because they will work for about what a Silicon Valley developer pays in rent (this I've heard in-person from developers who were flown to the U.S. for several weeks of training before being sent back -- a lot of them are brilliant, but they have to take what the market in India offers because they can't stay in the U.S.). If that's any indication of the economic state of India, I doubt eBay is that desperate to reach the Indian market.Yahoo isn't going to pay some smart-ass ISP for the priviledge of allowing Yahoo to distribute its already free content.
And MSN will laugh at them: "You want us to pay how much? OK, but we're invoking the terms of our EULA that allows us to remotely control your systems."
Some light reading: Alternatives To The Floppy Disk?
- I have "Open Unrequested Windows" unchecked
- I visit http://www.nytimes.com/
- I am greeted with this
- A quick check reveals that Mozilla's highly-touted anti-popup feature was easily defeated by this line of HTML:
Have the folks at The NYTimes found some undefeatable method of forcing popup ads onto our screens? No -- OmniWeb is blissfully immune. Mozilla should be too, but it's not.(Note: I attempted to recreate the actual legibility of the modern EULA with colons, periods and spaces, but the lameness filter quickly identified it as "junk..." hmm...)
beep beep BEEP bebeep BEbebeBEEP
No, he didn't mean to insult you.
BZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzt
R2! You don't have to vaporize him just to make a point.
BEbebeBEEP bebeep BEEP
Fine! Fine, you two work it out on your own. I'm outta here.
*whistle*