Al Gore's campaign web site for the 2000 election contained some special remarks in comments in the HTML. Basically, Al falls all over himself congratulating you on how smart you are for viewing the source:
Thanks for checking out our source code! I plan to use this space to post
special messages to those who are helping to improve our web site -- by making
our site the best it can be. The fact that you are peeking behind the
scenes at our site means you can make an important difference to this Internet
effort. I'm grateful for your help and support in this campaign. Now let's
keep working to build the 21st Century of our dreams!
I'm all for the OSI, but I can't say I care for the keyhole symbol. The keyhole has long been a symbol of invaded privacy... y'know, people peeping through the keyhole. This association is all the more strengthened because of the term "open source", meaning "look inside the program". I don't think the general punlic is going to get a particularly positive message from this logo.
I'll attempt (not quite successfully) to ignore the childish part ofyour response and address the relevent parts:
It doesn't make sense to redefine things just because they're too difficult. Probably nobody will ever be able to clear a mile high jump. Does that mean we should redefine "mile" to six feet so that somebody can jump it?
Your point about the points is well taken. It's not necessary to pass exactly over two opposing points to go completely around. Try this: given two points on the opposite side of the globe, circumnavigation consists of passing over or directly northwards of the northernmost point, over or directly southwards of the southermost point, then over or directly northwards of the northernmost point again. It could alternately consist of south-north-south.
To me the test of going "around the world" is to go through two points that are on the opposite sides of the planet, point A to point B, then back to A. With all due kudos to Fosset, he didn't do that.
There are at least two examples of prior art in this case. In the 1960's someone released a single titled "Three Minutes of Silence" that enjoyed a brief popularity. The record actually provided a valued service: patrons at diners could purchase three minutes of relief from the jukebox. In the 1970's a copycat (who shoulda been SUED!!!) released a single titled "Silent Knight" that enjoyed no popularity at all.
My source on this is a bit of trivia mentioned by Mr. Top 40 himself, Casey Casem on one of his shows.
That was one aspect of Minority Report that I found unrealistic. Companies already refrain from publicly flaunting their knowledge of you. For example, for a short while a lot of Pizza Huts answered the phone with "Hello Mr. Smith, would you like another large thin-n-crispy with mushrooms?" They quickly found out that customers didn't like that and stopped doing it.
That's not to say they don't have or use their knowledge of you, they've just found that people like to maintain their illusions of privacy.
Thanks for that pointer! That should save me some trouble. I have a native Brazilian coaching me (the person I lost to, in fact). I'm typing out each word phonetically.
4) Spend double-digit percentages of their company's money on advertising
You got a source on that claim? I've never heard of any company doing such a thing. Advertising is much smaller percent expenditure than people seem to think. One of my marketing professors said that for most consumer products the percent of annual spending for the whole company is around half a percent.
Where did you get the idea that advertising is usually supposed to be rational? I've never heard anyone in the industry claim that. Advertising is generally about awareness: make the consumer aware of the product so that when the time for a possible purchase comes along the product is in the consumer's mindset. That's why there are so many car commercials. Nobody expects the commercials to actually make someone want to buy a car. Only a tiny fraction of the audience is expected to even be interested. The intent of the ads is that for that small fraction of the audience that actually is thinking about getting a car, indeed for the even tinier fraction that is thinking of getting a car in that product class, the ad puts the car into the consumers' mindsets.
There are also other intents of advertising, including the occasional rational decision type... check on trade journal and you'll see a lot of ads with a lot of real informational content. Image is, of course, another popular objective (Pepsi comes to mind).
Darn, now on the next Karoake night...
on
World Cup Final
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· Score: 2
Yeah, the lawsuit makes sense, but naming the Lucite ball as the defendent is... weird. I'm looking forward to the lawsuit names this precedent will bring us.
No problem. You are welcome to spend $50 billion to fly to the moon, grab all the rocks you can carry, and bring them back. I presume it will then be ok for me to steal them from you and when you don't like it I'll complain about silly lawsuits.
...yeah, that's "out of control". What would you have them do, duel for it? People bitch about our legal system, but they forget that history has plenty of example of more violent as less satisfactory solutions.
Blah blah blah those so called "open source" people promised THE WORLD blah blah blah but Wall Street decides what is successful in this town blah blah blah this ought to make my bosses as MSNBC happy.
If they don't distribute the source code, the following clause pretty much means that the software isn't open source:
clarify that if Macromedia includes its own open source in its products, Macromedia
does not have to state in its documentation where the source code version of the open
source material is made available,
The availability of source code is pretty much what makes it, y'know, open source. That means making the source code available with the compiled code, which in practice usually means giving a URL for download rather than distributing a mega-ton of course code with the compiled code.
Basically what you're saying is "people already have computers that are good enough". This was exactly the situation ten years ago when the first wave of personal computer purchases was dying down and everybody had the DOS machines they needed. Nobody needed to run WordPerfect faster. Then Windows came along and shortly thereafter the net entered the public conscioussness and there was a real reason to upgrade.
We'll see if something like that happens again.
Bad Idea: We'll lose brand recognition
on
Greenbacks No More
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm against adding color to the bills. The US dollar is the most accepted, stable currency in the world. It may be "boring", but it's trusted. From a marketing standpoint, the greenish color scheme has fantastic brand awareness. People know it's US currency just by glancing at it. We will do our monetary system a disservice by trashing this brand
Yes, the admin is the most important piece of the puzzle in the security game, but by no means is the admin the *only* piece. For example, Microsoft had nearly three times as many security recess days in 1999 as Red Hat. The best admin in the world can't do anything about that. Security is always done in layers, and it makes no sense to say that you can or should ignore one layer because you should implement another layer.
A good analogy is automobiles (somehow it always is). To be safe, be a good driver. No question about that. However, being a good driver isn't enough if you buy tires that suddenly blow out. You also need a safe machine.
Furthermore, it's not realistic to assume that all admins can be pros. I wish they were, they should be, but the small-business person who sets up a few machines on a shoestring budget can't be expected to be an expert LAN admin *and* also good at whatever his/her business is. Like it or not, people set up computers and LAN's under those conditions. Thay'll gravitate towards the systems that support that environment the best.
Finally, I believe that in the long run, Linux will encourage professional administrating *more* than Windows. With Linux it is easier to buy a shoestring-budget support contract. A small business can set up a few Linux boxes and hire a pro to administrate and update them remotely. The support people will need to make very few on-site calls, and have fewer bugs to fix overall. It's just easier (ergo cheaper) to admin Linux.
Furthermore, who says it's faster because you're in Canada? IIRC, you're in Vancouver. I'm in Virginia. Going geographically, you're probably closer to their California servers than I am.
The one thing I still use AltaVista for occasionally are boolen searches. If I just can't find it on Google (which is dan rare, of course) I can often find it with an long boolean expression:
Right now on Google you can either search a single host or the whole web. It would be great if you could search a set of hosts, and also if you could restrict the search to specific directories within those hosts. The specific reason I ask is that I've written an open source
bookmarking system and it would be great if users could search the pages and sites they've bookmarked.
Speaking of bookmarks, do you have any plans to offer a bookmarking service?
It brings a smile to my face too. MS is in a frustrating (for them) spot because they do in fact get it: they know that open source is a threat, they know why people like it, they are ready and willing to do whatever it takes to fight... they just can't figure out what to do. It's like the master buggy-maker watching Henry Ford set up shop.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm all for the OSI, but I can't say I care for the keyhole symbol. The keyhole has long been a symbol of invaded privacy... y'know, people peeping through the keyhole. This association is all the more strengthened because of the term "open source", meaning "look inside the program". I don't think the general punlic is going to get a particularly positive message from this logo.
... that if I expose my computer to six holograms of Michael York's head the computer will explode?
To me the test of going "around the world" is to go through two points that are on the opposite sides of the planet, point A to point B, then back to A. With all due kudos to Fosset, he didn't do that.
My source on this is a bit of trivia mentioned by Mr. Top 40 himself, Casey Casem on one of his shows.
That's not to say they don't have or use their knowledge of you, they've just found that people like to maintain their illusions of privacy.
Thanks for that pointer! That should save me some trouble. I have a native Brazilian coaching me (the person I lost to, in fact). I'm typing out each word phonetically.
You got a source on that claim? I've never heard of any company doing such a thing. Advertising is much smaller percent expenditure than people seem to think. One of my marketing professors said that for most consumer products the percent of annual spending for the whole company is around half a percent.
There are also other intents of advertising, including the occasional rational decision type... check on trade journal and you'll see a lot of ads with a lot of real informational content. Image is, of course, another popular objective (Pepsi comes to mind).
... I have to sing the Brazilian National Anthem, in Portuguese no less. I lost the bet.
Yeah, the lawsuit makes sense, but naming the Lucite ball as the defendent is... weird. I'm looking forward to the lawsuit names this precedent will bring us.
No problem. You are welcome to spend $50 billion to fly to the moon, grab all the rocks you can carry, and bring them back. I presume it will then be ok for me to steal them from you and when you don't like it I'll complain about silly lawsuits.
...yeah, that's "out of control". What would you have them do, duel for it? People bitch about our legal system, but they forget that history has plenty of example of more violent as less satisfactory solutions.
Blah blah blah those so called "open source" people promised THE WORLD blah blah blah but Wall Street decides what is successful in this town blah blah blah this ought to make my bosses as MSNBC happy.
Basically what you're saying is "people already have computers that are good enough". This was exactly the situation ten years ago when the first wave of personal computer purchases was dying down and everybody had the DOS machines they needed. Nobody needed to run WordPerfect faster. Then Windows came along and shortly thereafter the net entered the public conscioussness and there was a real reason to upgrade. We'll see if something like that happens again.
I'm against adding color to the bills. The US dollar is the most accepted, stable currency in the world. It may be "boring", but it's trusted. From a marketing standpoint, the greenish color scheme has fantastic brand awareness. People know it's US currency just by glancing at it. We will do our monetary system a disservice by trashing this brand
A good analogy is automobiles (somehow it always is). To be safe, be a good driver. No question about that. However, being a good driver isn't enough if you buy tires that suddenly blow out. You also need a safe machine.
Furthermore, it's not realistic to assume that all admins can be pros. I wish they were, they should be, but the small-business person who sets up a few machines on a shoestring budget can't be expected to be an expert LAN admin *and* also good at whatever his/her business is. Like it or not, people set up computers and LAN's under those conditions. Thay'll gravitate towards the systems that support that environment the best.
Finally, I believe that in the long run, Linux will encourage professional administrating *more* than Windows. With Linux it is easier to buy a shoestring-budget support contract. A small business can set up a few Linux boxes and hire a pro to administrate and update them remotely. The support people will need to make very few on-site calls, and have fewer bugs to fix overall. It's just easier (ergo cheaper) to admin Linux.
Furthermore, who says it's faster because you're in Canada? IIRC, you're in Vancouver. I'm in Virginia. Going geographically, you're probably closer to their California servers than I am.
The first rule of success: if you want something to happen, make it happen. :-)
("html" | "attribute") ~
("frame size" | "frame sizes" | "big frames")
Speaking of bookmarks, do you have any plans to offer a bookmarking service?
Does this chain of thought keep you up at night?
It brings a smile to my face too. MS is in a frustrating (for them) spot because they do in fact get it: they know that open source is a threat, they know why people like it, they are ready and willing to do whatever it takes to fight... they just can't figure out what to do. It's like the master buggy-maker watching Henry Ford set up shop.