Man, I hate it that on Slashdot you have to add a disclaimer for every thinkable and unthinkable situation:)
Sorry. You can't drive your car at 200MPh on public roads in many countries given their current laws with regards to motorvehicles and public road usage within default operating parameters - i.e. excluding special events where public roads are commissioned for racing events a la the Monaco grand prix. That is to say, you can - but it would be against the law. (Add disclaimers as appropriate)
And I didn't reach a conclusion - it's a statement of fact. You're only allowed to do that which is not against the law. If this case shows that the DMCA laws apply to whatever they were doing, then they were breaking the law. Whether it's a good law or not is not even at discussion here - that's something for USians to write to their representatives about to get the thing nullified.
There was no analogy over modding a car vs modding an game console either. The analogy was that you -can't- do whatever you da*n well please with what you own - no more with a car (like you said, special events, recertification, etc. That's hardly doing what you want regardless of laws) than with your x-box; depending on the law.
You just said you can do whatever the etc. you want with your car. Next you say that you can't endanger other people with it.
What if I -want- to endanger other people with it ? Oh shit. I can't. Rather, it's against the law. That's the whole point - you CAN'T do whatever you want with your car, as there are set limits within the law within which you have to operate - or risk the consequences.
And no - naked skins on your own x-box won't endanger anyone*. That's why the DMCA is being invoked here, and not e.g. reckless driving. Any more than that state troopers would call upon the DMCA when you're speeding.
* Tecmo obviously argues that it hurts their public image, for one, so that's open to intepretation.
You already can't "use and modify" your property as you see fit.
I.e. you can't drive your car at 200MPh - that is to say, you can. But it's against the law.
You can't mod your car with a spoiler that's twice the width of your car - that is to say, you can. But it's against the law. At least driving on public roads with one is.
What's being argued here, now, is that you can't hack the game and distribute the hack. That is to say, you can. But it may be against the law (the DMCA one).
Btw.. the article referred to is rather short, and people seem to think this is about sharing cheat codes. Not quite.
Filed in the US District Court, Northern District of Illinois, on January 25, the lawsuit names Mike Greiling and Will Glynn as "creating, hosting and contributing content to a forum created to foster and facilitate the knowing infringement of Tecmo's proprietary software for its video game titles." The lawsuit claims the pair trafficked in technology designed for the purpose of circumventing copyright protection systems built into the games, which violates the US Copyright Act, among other laws.
The complaint also addresses violations that include "various modifications to the source code for Tecmo games" including the creation of "several skins...designed to make Tecmo Characters appear naked." Games the alleged hackers are accused of applying their energy toward include Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive 3, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, and Dead or Alive Ultimate.
I second this... I'll be sticking to map24, thanks.
yes, google's new maps is impressive-ish. I take it that it's an extension of what they've done with Google Suggest - in-time downloading of elements.
Cute, but I still can't do realtime zooming in/out I can't plot routes, or easily hop from Pizza place to Pizza place. -And- map24 doesn't revolve around the U.S.
I'll defend my comparison. You raise a few interesting points, which I will address. Note that where I say 'you' I mean a hypothetical 'you', being either TV-flipping victim or wardriver where applicable.
Point: There isn't a mechanism build into the TV to allow only your remote control to change its channels. Reply: In a way, they do. Your TV responds only to signals from remotes from the same manufacturer - and even they produce ones with different signal codes. Otherwise it would be difficult to have two TVs, for example. The fact that one can buy a generic remote doesn't change this part. Similarly, with WEP etc. the protection is equally minimal. Given a proper tool, you can still use the wifi connection.
Point: It's more like typing in a different URL every time. Answer: And in a way, you do. For however minor a fraction of time, whatever page was loading doesn't load because the access point/router/etc. has to deal with sending -you- signals instead. Put differently, what would be the difference between the TV flipping channels and you missing bits and pieces of the show, and me watching a streaming video and missing bits and pieces of the video ? You may postulate that the odds are that I'm just downloading a webpage, and it'll come in whole (albeit a bit slower). However, you don't know this for a fact.
Point: Television doesn't broadcast out Answer: It very well does. If you have the TV on in your living room, and I'm walking by on the sidewalk, I can look at your TV (provided there's a window, no curtains are closed, etc.). Often this is a wardriving excuse for picking up signals to get the ssid/break WEP.
Point: They shouldn't be arrested Answer: This depends. Window peeping - which is what watching your TV would be, not even talking about changing the channel - can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor; under Disorderly Conduct. The reason for this is that people feel threatened or harassed if some 'jerk', as you say, peers into their window - even though they can very well just close the curtains. Similarly, who is to say that I don't feel threatened if my bandwidth suddenly drops, and I know it to be because somebody is accessing through my wireless access point ? After all, it could be a hacker(!). And yes, I could put up a firewall - but again, you could close the curtains.
Point: Simply secure their network Answer: People have been doing this. For one, by disabling SSID broadcast. What happened ? Somebody wrote a tool to pick up the signals and get at the SSID anyway. Then WEP... somebody wrote a tool to crack that. WPA... already in the process of being cracked. WPA2, 802.11h, etc. Just how much is an end-user supposed to protect their wifi before their precautions are deemed 'proper' ? For insurers, a relatively simple lock will do - you don't need a giant vault door as your front/back doors. Similarly, at what point do *you* feel a wardriver has crossed the line of acceptable actions?
Personally I'm of the opinion that a 'wardriver' (why that term anyway? weird.) is free to access an open access point (broadcasts SSID, has no WEP/WPA/etc.) if and ONLY if they have ascertained beyond a reasonable doubt that it is indeed free to use. I.e. if they find a Starbucks one, go into the Starbucks, and if it says "Free for all!", go for it. If it says "Free for patrons" - tough, unless you buy a coffee and sit down there.
Okay, I see your statement saying that it should be perfectly okay to use an access point - the defense being that "they should have taken appropriate measures to prevent this" - has already garnered the usual "If I leave my house/car unlocked" etc. stuff. Obviously those aren't really good comparisons.
So I'll postulate this... If I stand outside your house and switch your TV to a different channel for me to watch - would you mind that ? I'm not denying you of any service, you can easily flip it back to whatever you were watching. Just as an access point will send the data to whoever requested it and everybody else, so does a TV. If you didn't want me doing this, you should have closed your curtains.
And if you say "yeah, but I can't watch my program without having to switch it back to it whenever you switch it to whatever the f* you're flipping to" - well, guess what ? If you use up half the bandwidth of my wireless router, I only get to use half as well.
Oh man.. there's got to be some sick f*ck out there who: Wishes they were a murderer. Wishes they had a gun. Wishes they had a printer so they could print your post out. Wishes they could afford to take a trip to wherever you're at right now.
Know why ? So they could shoot 'your silly ass from' the street through the window and through your head whilst you watch some show on T.V. And then They'd stick the print-out of your comment to your chest, just for a hint of irony.
Yeah, you go and have a gun and know how to defend yourself - it's still not going to stop a bullet.
Now let's see them try that with: - a knife ( throw it, doesn't go through glass well. Stab ? They'll have to get close enough ) - a baseball bat ( ditto ) - my fists ( glass would probably cut them and they'd bleed to death *smirk*, ditto on the other )
You see - your entire point of view rests on the idea that you can shoot the other person before they can shoot you. I don't know the odds; I certainly don't know how much of a marksman you are, or how good your reflexes are. But I do know you first need to know you -are- going to be shot at, and detecting that, in and of itself, is the toughie. Sure, you could just pull your gun and blast somebody's brains out (though if you're a good marksman, you'll aim for their leg, right? no need to outright kill if you can just immobilize) as soon as you feel remotely threatened. And in the U.S. you can probably get away with it. In most other countries you'll probably have used excessive force. And that still leaves the gunman that you can't even see.
Put differently... given the choice of somebody having a gun, a knife, a bat, or only their fists - which would you rather have them wielding in a situation where they intend to kill you ?
Also, I'd like to see you corroborate the statement that guns more often prevent death than cause it, in the U.S. That is to say.. some statistic where it shows that if a gun wasn't used to deter a particular crime, somebody WOULD have been killed. Not 'may have been' or 'remotely, possibly, I dunno, I suppose it's possible'. Otherwise we'd only have to go by the word of many people who, if for no other reason than legal and court reasons, claim "I believe he was going to kill me/him/her/them.", even if this can't be proven in any way.
I'm against guns outside of specialist forces. Sure, I know criminals will be able to get their guns illegally. I just take my chances with that. I'm also not naive to think that there's any way the U.S. situation can be reversed within a reasonable amount of time. Certainly not with ever-heavier gun classifications having their prohibitions lifted (such as assault rifles. ever wonder why they're not called defense rifles? hmm) So I'm pretty neutral as far as the U.S. situation goes, as long as the U.S. situation doesn't spread to other countries at the hand of the likes of the NRA.
Maybe they're using plain ol' HTML and CSS And maybe it should thus work just fine regardless of which OS you use. Actually, no maybe involved there.
Or which font you use. Unless your font file is f'ed up. Monitor size doesn't matter either, nor does resolution, the location of the Next link should be fine and the size of the text should be almost the same as Google's.
Sure, like I said, I'm not claiming he's not seeing problems and is just making things up. But, again, considering nobody else is pointing the problems he's seeing out so far, and the html and css appear to be fine, and IE, FF (Windows and Linux, just tested) and Opera alike appear to have no problem whatsoever on my end at least, well.
It just seems a little premature to mod somebody 'Interesting' or 'Insightful' when blasting a webpage, when the problem could very well be at the commenter's end. The least the users with mod points could do is actually check it out for themselves. And if they do find problems, perhaps posting rather than modding would be more constructive.
Do people check this out when modding things Interesting ?
Firefox 1.0, Windows XP. The pulldown menu doesn't overflow the border. Sorry.
The next button is indeed in the rightmost corner of the webpage. Well, sorta. It's not like it's all the way over to the right, just on the right. The browser window at 800 pixels wide still shows the Next link. So unless you set your browser to be really, really tiny, you should be fine.
And the results are in an incredibly huge font, you say ? I measure the height of the lowercase letter 'o' (baseline, basically) of the results' excerpt as 8px wide by 8px high. For Google, I measure the same as 7px wide by 7px high. Oh yes, incredibly huge.
Now, I'm not saying that you're not having problems with MSN Searh. But maybe, just maybe, it's something on your end ?
Okay... so supposedly nobody fears MSN Search. Everybody says Google still kicks full-on ass. Etc. etc. etc.
So why is it that in the past 2 days alone there have been -3- articles on MSN Search on Slashdot ?
MSN Search has arrived - actually, it was there a long time ago. It was simply finally put into place on the msn.com portal. I'm sure that was big news to all the Slashdot users who have msn.com as their homepage *smirk*
Inspecting MSN Search - comparing image search, specifically. Using 'Britney Spears'. Gar, what inspection. Do something really interesting and post a website with text and images on a rather specific thing at various locations. Don't announce this. Now check which engine adds which website and its images, and when. Then compare them, and publish THOSE results. That just might be interesting.
MSN Search - From A UI Perspective - So from a UI perspective they've found it uses XHTML (to some extent) ? Wow. Next time I'll evaluate a user interface, I'll be sure to note that it uses COMCTL32 and COMDLG32 instructions. ffs. This says nothing about the actual UI. Which, by the way, is quite sleek - imho. Bit more form over function than Google's, but still pretty light-weight. (Again, this is search.msn.com , not the msn.com portal.) I suspect the title here is chosen wrongly - it's more of a "internet standards compliance and device support inspection".
Could Slashdot editors *please* just hold off the MSN Search articles until something actually interesting about it comes up ?
Sceptic mode: Or perhaps do they post this simply to allow some more Microsoft- / MSN Search-bashing posts in the comments ?
Wow... hey, I know, I must be stupid. I must think that because something in Turkish lire (until recently) costs several millions, people there must be f*cking RICH!
I have a lot more to post here, but I'll try and not seem like an ignorant fool. Mr. pclminion, why don't you explain to me how you calculate true cost of goods, and show me just how much of a mark-up Europeans *really* pay for a Mac Mini ?
If you're not willing... I simply ask readers this. Have are from the U.S. and have you been to Europe recently ? If so.. did you find that things, on average, here are more expensive, about as expensive, or less expensive than in the United States ?
I'll post the rest of my rant later, depending on your reply - or lack thereof.
Options will cost ya, Apple-style
on
Mac mini to PC Hack
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Okay, first of all let me bitch about the default USD = EUR conversion that everybody makes. Yes, I know, internationalization/localization costs money, and that should be recuperated, blabla. Great, that's funny, because it matters practically jack shit when you're in the U.K. Therefore, 499 euros = 649.444 US dollars = ~ $150 markup or 30%. Nice!
Next stop, thats the basic model. 1.25GHz, 256MB, 40GB drive, etc. Let's check out the extras. Apple from 256MB to 1GB = 330 euro Dell from 256MB to 1GB = 119 euro
Apple from 40GB to 80GB = 50 euro Dell from 40GB to 80GB = 23.80 euro
Apple from cd/dvd to RW = 100.01 euro Dell from cd/dvd to RW = 71.41 euro
Apple from no wifi to wifi = 79 euro Dell from no wifi to wifi = 59.50 euro
I'll skip the mouse/keyboard.
Apple service from 1y to 3y = 199 euro Dell service from 1y to 3y = 99.96 euro
So going the full length of what Apple allows, minus the mouse/keyboard, you get a total of : 758.01 euro. With Dell, this is 373.67 euro. That's 384.34 euro less, or about half price.
Now, I'm not saying the upgrades are their exact equals - certainly the service upgrades, for example, will have different terms.
But let's face it, you STILL pay a premium for Apple hardware, and 1.3times as much so if you're not in the US.
That said, it's still a nice box for most tasks where you really don't need any of the above options. A laptop/notebook is still a serious alternative, imho, though. The Mac mini may be small, but it doesn't come with a screen. A laptop, obviously, does. Plus a keyboard, and a touchpad (often a USB mouse as well). And more often than not, wifi built-in, or supercheaply available as a PC Card option.
Anybody is free to buy whatever adwords you want. If somebody wants to buy the adwords "African Slaves", and Google doesn't object, then what's the issue ?
Of course there's false advertising if the advertiser doesn't actually offer African Slaves, but that's another issue altogether.
I find the recent judgement where CompanyX can buy an adword which is CompanyY's (their competitor) trademark far more an abuse - but as Pepsi can slap Coca-Cola silly in their commercials, I take it this is not an issue in, at least, the USA.
How is this wireless charging, if you need to place the object on a specific pad ?
Sure, there's no actual wire connection to your phone - but it's not like you can just walk around within N feet of some 'emitter' and the phone will charge. That specific pad still has to plug in somewhere. And that pad is larger than any travel adapter for a mobile phone - so you won't be taking one with you anytime, which means you'd have to rely on one being present wherever you decide to go ? I don't think so.
And these plates have been around for years. It's called induction charging.
The only place where I might just see it happening is in airports - but given that most devices will not work with this pad, but will still work with a regular charger, I don't see any airport opting to do away with their regular sockets and getting these plates instead.
Wait... if they have the ability to 'ban (lite) users from the network', then they have the ability to 'ban individuals engaging in the act of distributing copyrighted works without prior permission to do so'.
Which means that they would become a prime target for whichever media copyright maintenance agency applies to them.
I second this... I just finished the game a day ago, and it was most excellent.
Story-wise, I'd have to say, it beats Half-Life 2. Want some nice live story sequences ? It beats those of Half-Life 2 (though the timing sometimes was a bit off). Facial expressions/motion ? They're in TRON 2.0.
Want to race the lightcycles or even better the NEW lightcycle ? TRON 2.0 has it, and though difficult to play sometimes it looks awesome.
The graphics were also pretty good - though it's hard to mess up a world of mostly glowing lines.
As another posted pointed out.. ending was a bit disappointing, and I had actually expected it to continue in the real world outside the computer - just for a little bit.
Oh, and the intro - simple as it is - is pretty cool, especially with the music. I guess it pays off to have some actual movie producers and actors in on the game (no pun intended).
Oh.. and pick it up at the bargain bin. That's what it has been doomed to already. Picked mine up for ~$3 (3.50EU)
I did say "no links". I didn't say "no hyperlinks". A referrer is a link. Posting it in your IM profile is a link. Writing it in your high school sweetheart's yearbook is a link.
As for search engines - I can't list a few, but here's a good example of an engine that tries to do it right.. and then fails: Inktomi.
"Q. Why are you ignoring my robots.txt file and accessing my root / document even though I have listed it in robots.txt ?
A: Slurp must retrieve the root document from a site for internal use. If you have disallowed "/" in robots.txt then the root document will not be indexed, nor will it be added to our search database, nor links from it followed. In addition, for performance reasons and to reduce the load on your web server, Slurp caches robots.txt files internally. So if you have modified your exclusion rules in robots.txt Slurp might not recognize the change immediately."
Obviously your robots.txt is not going to do any good if the crawler uses a cached version that doesn't reflect the current state of your site.
If you don't want your webserver to be 'found' then either: A. don't put it online. (Right) B. security through obscurity: don't link to it, don't save a record of it. No links = no crawling/spidering. C. Put it behind a server-wise password
Because in the end, Google may respect robots.txt but I, for one, don't when creating a local cache of a site using HTTrack. And I'd imagine there's search engines which ignore it just as well.
How ? Now that's the not-so-easy part. I fear the Bush administration might speed that along, but.. *eyes Iraq*..the change should come within primarily.
Slashdot Mirror
nokarma:p
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.as
Man, I hate it that on Slashdot you have to add a disclaimer for every thinkable and unthinkable situation :)
Sorry. You can't drive your car at 200MPh on public roads in many countries given their current laws with regards to motorvehicles and public road usage within default operating parameters - i.e. excluding special events where public roads are commissioned for racing events a la the Monaco grand prix. That is to say, you can - but it would be against the law.
(Add disclaimers as appropriate)
And I didn't reach a conclusion - it's a statement of fact. You're only allowed to do that which is not against the law. If this case shows that the DMCA laws apply to whatever they were doing, then they were breaking the law. Whether it's a good law or not is not even at discussion here - that's something for USians to write to their representatives about to get the thing nullified.
There was no analogy over modding a car vs modding an game console either. The analogy was that you -can't- do whatever you da*n well please with what you own - no more with a car (like you said, special events, recertification, etc. That's hardly doing what you want regardless of laws) than with your x-box; depending on the law.
Aren't you contradicting yourself ?
You just said you can do whatever the etc. you want with your car. Next you say that you can't endanger other people with it.
What if I -want- to endanger other people with it ?
Oh shit. I can't. Rather, it's against the law.
That's the whole point - you CAN'T do whatever you want with your car, as there are set limits within the law within which you have to operate - or risk the consequences.
And no - naked skins on your own x-box won't endanger anyone*. That's why the DMCA is being invoked here, and not e.g. reckless driving. Any more than that state troopers would call upon the DMCA when you're speeding.
* Tecmo obviously argues that it hurts their public image, for one, so that's open to intepretation.
I.e. you can't drive your car at 200MPh - that is to say, you can. But it's against the law.
You can't mod your car with a spoiler that's twice the width of your car - that is to say, you can. But it's against the law. At least driving on public roads with one is.
What's being argued here, now, is that you can't hack the game and distribute the hack. That is to say, you can. But it may be against the law (the DMCA one).
Btw.. the article referred to is rather short, and people seem to think this is about sharing cheat codes. Not quite.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/02/09/news_6118
I second this... I'll be sticking to map24, thanks.
yes, google's new maps is impressive-ish. I take it that it's an extension of what they've done with Google Suggest - in-time downloading of elements.
Cute, but I still can't do realtime zooming in/out I can't plot routes, or easily hop from Pizza place to Pizza place.
-And- map24 doesn't revolve around the U.S.
I'll defend my comparison.
You raise a few interesting points, which I will address. Note that where I say 'you' I mean a hypothetical 'you', being either TV-flipping victim or wardriver where applicable.
Point: There isn't a mechanism build into the TV to allow only your remote control to change its channels.
Reply: In a way, they do. Your TV responds only to signals from remotes from the same manufacturer - and even they produce ones with different signal codes. Otherwise it would be difficult to have two TVs, for example. The fact that one can buy a generic remote doesn't change this part. Similarly, with WEP etc. the protection is equally minimal. Given a proper tool, you can still use the wifi connection.
Point: It's more like typing in a different URL every time.
Answer: And in a way, you do. For however minor a fraction of time, whatever page was loading doesn't load because the access point/router/etc. has to deal with sending -you- signals instead. Put differently, what would be the difference between the TV flipping channels and you missing bits and pieces of the show, and me watching a streaming video and missing bits and pieces of the video ? You may postulate that the odds are that I'm just downloading a webpage, and it'll come in whole (albeit a bit slower). However, you don't know this for a fact.
Point: Television doesn't broadcast out
Answer: It very well does. If you have the TV on in your living room, and I'm walking by on the sidewalk, I can look at your TV (provided there's a window, no curtains are closed, etc.). Often this is a wardriving excuse for picking up signals to get the ssid/break WEP.
Point: They shouldn't be arrested
Answer: This depends. Window peeping - which is what watching your TV would be, not even talking about changing the channel - can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor; under Disorderly Conduct. The reason for this is that people feel threatened or harassed if some 'jerk', as you say, peers into their window - even though they can very well just close the curtains. Similarly, who is to say that I don't feel threatened if my bandwidth suddenly drops, and I know it to be because somebody is accessing through my wireless access point ? After all, it could be a hacker(!). And yes, I could put up a firewall - but again, you could close the curtains.
Point: Simply secure their network
Answer: People have been doing this. For one, by disabling SSID broadcast. What happened ? Somebody wrote a tool to pick up the signals and get at the SSID anyway. Then WEP... somebody wrote a tool to crack that. WPA... already in the process of being cracked. WPA2, 802.11h, etc. Just how much is an end-user supposed to protect their wifi before their precautions are deemed 'proper' ? For insurers, a relatively simple lock will do - you don't need a giant vault door as your front/back doors. Similarly, at what point do *you* feel a wardriver has crossed the line of acceptable actions?
Personally I'm of the opinion that a 'wardriver' (why that term anyway? weird.) is free to access an open access point (broadcasts SSID, has no WEP/WPA/etc.) if and ONLY if they have ascertained beyond a reasonable doubt that it is indeed free to use.
I.e. if they find a Starbucks one, go into the Starbucks, and if it says "Free for all!", go for it. If it says "Free for patrons" - tough, unless you buy a coffee and sit down there.
Okay, I see your statement saying that it should be perfectly okay to use an access point - the defense being that "they should have taken appropriate measures to prevent this" - has already garnered the usual "If I leave my house/car unlocked" etc. stuff. Obviously those aren't really good comparisons.
So I'll postulate this... If I stand outside your house and switch your TV to a different channel for me to watch - would you mind that ?
I'm not denying you of any service, you can easily flip it back to whatever you were watching. Just as an access point will send the data to whoever requested it and everybody else, so does a TV.
If you didn't want me doing this, you should have closed your curtains.
And if you say "yeah, but I can't watch my program without having to switch it back to it whenever you switch it to whatever the f* you're flipping to" - well, guess what ? If you use up half the bandwidth of my wireless router, I only get to use half as well.
Oh man.. there's got to be some sick f*ck out there who :
:
Wishes they were a murderer.
Wishes they had a gun.
Wishes they had a printer so they could print your post out.
Wishes they could afford to take a trip to wherever you're at right now.
Know why ?
So they could shoot 'your silly ass from' the street through the window and through your head whilst you watch some show on T.V. And then They'd stick the print-out of your comment to your chest, just for a hint of irony.
Yeah, you go and have a gun and know how to defend yourself - it's still not going to stop a bullet.
Now let's see them try that with
- a knife ( throw it, doesn't go through glass well. Stab ? They'll have to get close enough )
- a baseball bat ( ditto )
- my fists ( glass would probably cut them and they'd bleed to death *smirk*, ditto on the other )
You see - your entire point of view rests on the idea that you can shoot the other person before they can shoot you. I don't know the odds; I certainly don't know how much of a marksman you are, or how good your reflexes are. But I do know you first need to know you -are- going to be shot at, and detecting that, in and of itself, is the toughie.
Sure, you could just pull your gun and blast somebody's brains out (though if you're a good marksman, you'll aim for their leg, right? no need to outright kill if you can just immobilize) as soon as you feel remotely threatened. And in the U.S. you can probably get away with it. In most other countries you'll probably have used excessive force.
And that still leaves the gunman that you can't even see.
Put differently... given the choice of somebody having a gun, a knife, a bat, or only their fists - which would you rather have them wielding in a situation where they intend to kill you ?
Also, I'd like to see you corroborate the statement that guns more often prevent death than cause it, in the U.S.
That is to say.. some statistic where it shows that if a gun wasn't used to deter a particular crime, somebody WOULD have been killed.
Not 'may have been' or 'remotely, possibly, I dunno, I suppose it's possible'.
Otherwise we'd only have to go by the word of many people who, if for no other reason than legal and court reasons, claim "I believe he was going to kill me/him/her/them.", even if this can't be proven in any way.
I'm against guns outside of specialist forces. Sure, I know criminals will be able to get their guns illegally. I just take my chances with that.
I'm also not naive to think that there's any way the U.S. situation can be reversed within a reasonable amount of time. Certainly not with ever-heavier gun classifications having their prohibitions lifted (such as assault rifles. ever wonder why they're not called defense rifles? hmm)
So I'm pretty neutral as far as the U.S. situation goes, as long as the U.S. situation doesn't spread to other countries at the hand of the likes of the NRA.
Ahh.. that image is just about what I was looking for in my other post - also on the timelapse.
:/
Unfortunate that they didn't appear to take any further images inbetween. It's quite a jump from december 2002 to Feb 2004
I think it's most impressive when seen in a time-lapse. Not sure if there's any site that has all the images or a month-by-month or something, but I had this image :2 003/20030326-HST-Light-echo-from-star-V838-Mon.jpg
http://www.gothard.hu/astronomy/astronews/images/
: bookmarked for a long time now - just killed it this morning(!)
You have to see it to really appreciate both the beauty and the sheer vastness and speed.
If anybody has better images, or more images of different points in time, please do reply!
Maybe they're using plain ol' HTML and CSS
:)
And maybe it should thus work just fine regardless of which OS you use. Actually, no maybe involved there.
Or which font you use. Unless your font file is f'ed up.
Monitor size doesn't matter either, nor does resolution, the location of the Next link should be fine and the size of the text should be almost the same as Google's.
Sure, like I said, I'm not claiming he's not seeing problems and is just making things up.
But, again, considering nobody else is pointing the problems he's seeing out so far, and the html and css appear to be fine, and IE, FF (Windows and Linux, just tested) and Opera alike appear to have no problem whatsoever on my end at least, well.
It just seems a little premature to mod somebody 'Interesting' or 'Insightful' when blasting a webpage, when the problem could very well be at the commenter's end. The least the users with mod points could do is actually check it out for themselves. And if they do find problems, perhaps posting rather than modding would be more constructive.
Just my 2cts
Wholly agreed!
Though Google news bits are typically about them expanding into areas. E.g. the domain registration thing.
Not a new Google news item anytime they make a special Google logo graphic to celebrate some day. Which would be roughly equivalent to all this crap.
Do people check this out when modding things Interesting ?
Firefox 1.0, Windows XP.
The pulldown menu doesn't overflow the border. Sorry.
The next button is indeed in the rightmost corner of the webpage. Well, sorta. It's not like it's all the way over to the right, just on the right. The browser window at 800 pixels wide still shows the Next link. So unless you set your browser to be really, really tiny, you should be fine.
And the results are in an incredibly huge font, you say ?
I measure the height of the lowercase letter 'o' (baseline, basically) of the results' excerpt as 8px wide by 8px high. For Google, I measure the same as 7px wide by 7px high. Oh yes, incredibly huge.
Now, I'm not saying that you're not having problems with MSN Searh. But maybe, just maybe, it's something on your end ?
Okay... so supposedly nobody fears MSN Search.
Everybody says Google still kicks full-on ass.
Etc. etc. etc.
So why is it that in the past 2 days alone there have been -3- articles on MSN Search on Slashdot ?
MSN Search has arrived - actually, it was there a long time ago. It was simply finally put into place on the msn.com portal. I'm sure that was big news to all the Slashdot users who have msn.com as their homepage *smirk*
Inspecting MSN Search - comparing image search, specifically. Using 'Britney Spears'. Gar, what inspection. Do something really interesting and post a website with text and images on a rather specific thing at various locations. Don't announce this. Now check which engine adds which website and its images, and when. Then compare them, and publish THOSE results. That just might be interesting.
MSN Search - From A UI Perspective - So from a UI perspective they've found it uses XHTML (to some extent) ? Wow. Next time I'll evaluate a user interface, I'll be sure to note that it uses COMCTL32 and COMDLG32 instructions. ffs. This says nothing about the actual UI. Which, by the way, is quite sleek - imho. Bit more form over function than Google's, but still pretty light-weight. (Again, this is search.msn.com , not the msn.com portal.) I suspect the title here is chosen wrongly - it's more of a "internet standards compliance and device support inspection".
Could Slashdot editors *please* just hold off the MSN Search articles until something actually interesting about it comes up ?
Sceptic mode: Or perhaps do they post this simply to allow some more Microsoft- / MSN Search-bashing posts in the comments ?
Wow... hey, I know, I must be stupid.
I must think that because something in Turkish lire (until recently) costs several millions, people there must be f*cking RICH!
I have a lot more to post here, but I'll try and not seem like an ignorant fool.
Mr. pclminion, why don't you explain to me how you calculate true cost of goods, and show me just how much of a mark-up Europeans *really* pay for a Mac Mini ?
If you're not willing... I simply ask readers this. Have are from the U.S. and have you been to Europe recently ? If so.. did you find that things, on average, here are more expensive, about as expensive, or less expensive than in the United States ?
I'll post the rest of my rant later, depending on your reply - or lack thereof.
Okay, first of all let me bitch about the default USD = EUR conversion that everybody makes.
Yes, I know, internationalization/localization costs money, and that should be recuperated, blabla. Great, that's funny, because it matters practically jack shit when you're in the U.K. Therefore, 499 euros = 649.444 US dollars = ~ $150 markup or 30%. Nice!
Next stop, thats the basic model. 1.25GHz, 256MB, 40GB drive, etc.
Let's check out the extras.
Apple from 256MB to 1GB = 330 euro
Dell from 256MB to 1GB = 119 euro
Apple from 40GB to 80GB = 50 euro
Dell from 40GB to 80GB = 23.80 euro
Apple from cd/dvd to RW = 100.01 euro
Dell from cd/dvd to RW = 71.41 euro
Apple from no wifi to wifi = 79 euro
Dell from no wifi to wifi = 59.50 euro
I'll skip the mouse/keyboard.
Apple service from 1y to 3y = 199 euro
Dell service from 1y to 3y = 99.96 euro
So going the full length of what Apple allows, minus the mouse/keyboard, you get a total of : 758.01 euro.
With Dell, this is 373.67 euro. That's 384.34 euro less, or about half price.
Now, I'm not saying the upgrades are their exact equals - certainly the service upgrades, for example, will have different terms.
But let's face it, you STILL pay a premium for Apple hardware, and 1.3times as much so if you're not in the US.
That said, it's still a nice box for most tasks where you really don't need any of the above options. A laptop/notebook is still a serious alternative, imho, though. The Mac mini may be small, but it doesn't come with a screen. A laptop, obviously, does. Plus a keyboard, and a touchpad (often a USB mouse as well). And more often than not, wifi built-in, or supercheaply available as a PC Card option.
"I particularly want some level of keyword override when AdSense gets the context wrong"
This is akin to
"I particularly want some level of keyword override when AdSense grabs the ad for a competitor"
I think you can see why advertisers wouldn't want this to happen.
Anybody is free to buy whatever adwords you want. If somebody wants to buy the adwords "African Slaves", and Google doesn't object, then what's the issue ?
Of course there's false advertising if the advertiser doesn't actually offer African Slaves, but that's another issue altogether.
I find the recent judgement where CompanyX can buy an adword which is CompanyY's (their competitor) trademark far more an abuse - but as Pepsi can slap Coca-Cola silly in their commercials, I take it this is not an issue in, at least, the USA.
How is this wireless charging, if you need to place the object on a specific pad ?
Sure, there's no actual wire connection to your phone - but it's not like you can just walk around within N feet of some 'emitter' and the phone will charge.
That specific pad still has to plug in somewhere.
And that pad is larger than any travel adapter for a mobile phone - so you won't be taking one with you anytime, which means you'd have to rely on one being present wherever you decide to go ? I don't think so.
And these plates have been around for years. It's called induction charging.
The only place where I might just see it happening is in airports - but given that most devices will not work with this pad, but will still work with a regular charger, I don't see any airport opting to do away with their regular sockets and getting these plates instead.
Wait... if they have the ability to 'ban (lite) users from the network', then they have the ability to 'ban individuals engaging in the act of distributing copyrighted works without prior permission to do so'.
Which means that they would become a prime target for whichever media copyright maintenance agency applies to them.
Unless I'm missing something.
Sure.. SONY loves their MemoryStick format.
And to be honest, it's not a bad format.
However, even they realize that a lot of customers are looking at non-memorystick solutions such as CompactFlash.
And lo-and-behold, they have various digital cameras that take a CompactFlash (type-1) card.
My CyberShot DSC-V3 being one of them.
I second this... I just finished the game a day ago, and it was most excellent.
.
Story-wise, I'd have to say, it beats Half-Life 2.
Want some nice live story sequences ? It beats those of Half-Life 2 (though the timing sometimes was a bit off).
Facial expressions/motion ? They're in TRON 2.0
Want to race the lightcycles or even better the NEW lightcycle ? TRON 2.0 has it, and though difficult to play sometimes it looks awesome.
The graphics were also pretty good - though it's hard to mess up a world of mostly glowing lines.
As another posted pointed out.. ending was a bit disappointing, and I had actually expected it to continue in the real world outside the computer - just for a little bit.
Oh, and the intro - simple as it is - is pretty cool, especially with the music. I guess it pays off to have some actual movie producers and actors in on the game (no pun intended).
Oh.. and pick it up at the bargain bin. That's what it has been doomed to already. Picked mine up for ~$3 (3.50EU)
I did say "no links". I didn't say "no hyperlinks". A referrer is a link. Posting it in your IM profile is a link. Writing it in your high school sweetheart's yearbook is a link.
As for search engines - I can't list a few, but here's a good example of an engine that tries to do it right.. and then fails: Inktomi.
"Q. Why are you ignoring my robots.txt file and accessing my root / document even though I have listed it in robots.txt ?
A: Slurp must retrieve the root document from a site for internal use. If you have disallowed "/" in robots.txt then the root document will not be indexed, nor will it be added to our search database, nor links from it followed. In addition, for performance reasons and to reduce the load on your web server, Slurp caches robots.txt files internally. So if you have modified your exclusion rules in robots.txt Slurp might not recognize the change immediately."
Obviously your robots.txt is not going to do any good if the crawler uses a cached version that doesn't reflect the current state of your site.
It's not really obvious.
:
.
If you don't want your webserver to be 'found' then either
A. don't put it online. (Right)
B. security through obscurity: don't link to it, don't save a record of it. No links = no crawling/spidering.
C. Put it behind a server-wise password
Because in the end, Google may respect robots.txt but I, for one, don't when creating a local cache of a site using HTTrack
And I'd imagine there's search engines which ignore it just as well.
Easy... (help) depose the current regime.
..the change should come within primarily.
How ? Now that's the not-so-easy part. I fear the Bush administration might speed that along, but.. *eyes Iraq*