I doubt most people could tell you how they learned to read; that seems to be info that the brain discards once it has the concept, and thereafter behaves as if it never lacked the skill.
There are several types of dyslexia, but I have noticed that the more problem a dyslexic has with letters wandering around under their own power, the more wild guessing they do (usually after deciphering no more than 3 or 4 letters).
Myself, I can't remember a time when I couldn't read; I learned from my mom reading to me when I was a toddler, before my first conscious memories. I'd figured out phonics for myself by the time I reached kindergarten, which meant I could at least muddle through ANY words, if sometimes with odd results. Frex, "Bartholemew" doesn't follow the ordinary rules for accenting syllables; even at age 5 I knew "barth'-o-LEM-ew" sounded wrong, but couldn't figure out why, and it never occurred to me to ask anyone about it:)
Tho inflated numbers are only fair payback, given how the RIAA lawsuits have assumed damages vastly in excess of reality.
And since even if Sony loses, the eventual settlement will almost certainly be negotiated down somewhat, the Texas AG might as well ask for the max since they won't get all of it anyway.
Sorry, I don't have a link offhand, but I've seen screenshots of the Evil Corner X problem on some security-info site. And IE does provide the functionality to change its interface so it can be the host for other apps. (Look at the current version of M$ Works -- the intro wizard is apparently just IE in another skin.)
If IE is set to allow ALL ActiveX controls, there wouldn't be any warning. The old default was to allow everything in the world to have its way with the browser; recent defaults are less insane, but even so, I've yet to see a system where they were *all* set safely out of the box.
Of course, but since as I recall it's turned on by default.. how many ordinary users even know enough to look for it?
Myself, I always turn off anything like that I can locate, on any machine I have my hands on. I suppose the idea was to allow web pages to install plugins whenever they feel the urge, but even without ill intent, that is a terrible idea (some people have had their entire setup screwed by an incompatible version of flash being forced upon them).
Absolutely. Never, ever should something external be able to turn off the menu/title bar; aside from the annoyance factor, it's just too dangerous for the user.
Not only that, but for the past couple weeks, nearly every set of search results is predominantly linkfarms and junk sites, and nearly always spits up a generic "find anything here" ad like your example.
Used to be when I typed in my business name, I'd get my primary site, followed by a bunch of my secondary pages, then a whole bunch of sites that legitimately link to my site, and NO garbage results. Yesterday, google gave me three legit resuts, a handful of old link references from static content, and over 400 bogus results.
It looks to me like someone has figured out how to tap into what's being searched for on google, and thereby insert their garbage into the results stream.
I'm accustomed to an *old* Netscape (still my fave and everyday browser) where Alt-F4 sensibly only closes the top window, rather than killing the whole applications. Spoiled me, it has:) (I have javascript disabled in NS, so there I *never* see popups, and one benefit of being old and braindead is that it's hard to fool since it ignores what it doesn't grok.)
Your concept for popup management is very interesting, and could be extended into the functions for selective blocking. Tho from what I've heard of some sites, such a sidebar would rapidly be overwhelmed by dozens of ad popups. So there'd need to be some sort of pre-filtering.
Your concept could be further extended to generate user-specified behaviour for different types of popups, as best they can be automagically filtered.
But the ONLY sites I've heard of where unrequested popups are *required* for functionality are those run by banks and tax preparers, and in my experience even there they are totally unnecessary (in fact, are a symptom of poor usability overall... so maybe global death-to-popups is the best solution in the end).
As to the sneak-by-filter ads, yeah, I'm not sure what's going on there either. The one I saw lately didn't seem to have anything unusual about it, except that Moz failed to block it. Could be that someone's buggy script tickled a matching bug in Moz: Shortly thereafter I got the first hard crash I've seen with Moz v1.5, so my notion that it might have hit a bug may well be correct. (It did send off a crash report.)
As to flash killing, I use prefbar, tho an older version, and it only seems to block about half the flash ads. When I install Seamonkey I'll have to update prefbar too. Must be something different in how embedded objects are handled that lets flash sneak by.
Come to think of it, a selective blocker for embedded objects would be a Good Browser Feature. That way we could control flash, forced noises, forced video downloads (yes, I've seen that -- real fun on dialup), and whatever other annoying nonsense some webmaster with more ego than brains wants to inflict on us.
Recently I've been seeing some of those "Adsense alternatives" -- and they're uniformly annoying. They're much larger than the old text-only ads, often garishly decorated, invariably placed for maximum visual inconvenience, and typically are advertising utter junk (scams, linkfarms, etc.)
If they continue, I will regretfully block Adsense connections.
This is the more annoying because originally, Google's textads were useful enough that I kept an eye out for them, and for a while even relied on them to locate products.
The other day I got one through Mozilla's unrequested-popup blocking, which normally works 100%.
BTW *never* click on the corner X, that's not safe since a popup's corner X is sometimes a disguised "OK" button for installing something Nasty. Instead, use ALT-F4 (or whatever keystroke your OS uses) to close the popup window. So far, that cannot be spoofed (far as I know, anyway).
The foolproof method sounds like way too much work for everyday, unless you're either handling burn-before-reading data, or trying to work from a known-compromised system, in which case progressive paranoia is definitely in order, no matter how inconvenient!
True enough, and so sayeth TFA, tho by the time I entered the discussion, it had degenerated to generic arguments:)
Many critters eat strange things sometimes, tho. Frex, horses love dry dog food, and will sometimes nibble carrion. And my dogs think watermelon rinds are candy. Makes you wonder.:)
To me, music downloads are exactly like independent radio, with the bonus that the request line works any time I want it to. The quality runs from iffy to just barely tolerable, but I get to try lots of different stuff I'd never have heard otherwise, from bands I'd never have heard of at all without downloaded MP3s. I get to decide what I really like vs what is just filler or noise, and I'm not pressured into making that decision on the spot, as with in-store sampling (sometimes a song that at first I disliked, over time becomes one of my favourites!) I have a chance to become addicted to any given band in a way that otherwise would never happen.
This is the sole factor in whether I buy CDs or not -- did the "radio" (traditional or downloaded) generate an interest in a given band? if so, sooner or later they get my money, because I want that prime-quality backup (physical CD), not to mention the ability to thereby make my own MP3s at whatever quality I care to spend my disk space on.
In fact this week I went so far as to track down a band whose stuff is out of press, and finagle a purchase of two CDs from a band member's private stash. How'd I get so interested in their work? Free, unencumbered MP3 downloads, sponsored by the band itself.
I suspect it's safer to assume that "enhanced" is a redflag for undesirable behaviour, until proven otherwise. Same with any sort of auto-installer. IOW, if it's not under your full control, it's probably up to no good.
When I first saw The Prisoner lo those many decades ago, I too was confused and disappointed by the ending, and thought the producers had lost their collective minds.
Couple years ago I got the DVDs and watched them head to tail... and yep, it's now clear that #6 is #1. Over the last few episodes, he's gradually going round the bend, and at the very end goes totally over the edge. We're seeing the world from inside a madman's head -- naturally it looks insane!
"Everyone's crazy here except for me and thee -- and sometimes I'm not so sure about thee."
IIRC, McGoohan owns the rights to The Prisoner outright, and was himself working on some sort of sequel, but wouldn't say anything more about it. Whatever happened to that project? Or is this perhaps its descendant?
A direct sequel, perhaps to bring the series full circle (lots of ways that could go), might be interesting, just as the progression from Danger Man to Secret Agent to The Prisoner was inherently a fascinating concept. And I'd bet something on that order was what McGoohan had in mind for the above project.
But as you say, a pure remake is unlikely to be anything valid with respect to the original trio, nor particularly good on its own merits.
Now, if the exec producer can follow through on his promise "Although it will be a radical reinvention, it will still be a heightened show with themes such as paranoia, conspiracy and identity crisis" *without* trying to rehash the past, then that could become a good show.
It sure can't be worse than Yet Another Reality Show!
Horses have only "simple stomachs" and they eat grass. However, they're very inefficient compared to ruminants (cows, sheep) with their compound stomachs, where cud chewing (barf it up and rechew it later) and heftier bacteria do the actual work.
If you compare horseshit and bullshit.. er, I mean horse manure and cow manure, the difference is obvious. Horse manure comes out not much different than the grass went in, other than being coarsely ground by the horse chewing on it -- but you can still tell it was grass (and even what kind of grass or other feed it was). Cow manure comes out semi-liquified, with the fibres much more thoroughly broken up and anonymized.
Elephants are also grazers (grass-eaters; vs. browsers ie. shrub-eaters like sheep and goats), tho offhand I don't recall which stomach system they have.
And how do they know that the grass doesn't come from the intestines of some critter that the dinosaur in question ate?
But there are modern herbivorous reptiles (iguanas, tortises, others that don't come to mind at 5am). And there's no rule that says reptiles can't come in herbivore, omnivore, and carnivore versions, just like birds, fish, and mammals do.
Oh, and beaver (rodent family) don't eat trees. They eat tree BARK, not the woody part. They cut down trees to get at the tender bark on the younger branches (and sometimes just girdle young trees, thus killing them). When beaver get overpopulated, they often effectively clearcut their home territory.
Tho it takes a startled deer a lot longer to realise "Hey! it's a mouse" than it would an equally-startled coyote. That's really what this is about -- how long does it take the brain to recover from panic mode and start thinking rationally again, if it does so at all??
And yes, there is a matter of perspective -- if it's not a significant predator to your species, why run from it?
And sometimes there is an aggression factor even in what are nominally prey animals. I used to live next to a herd of llamas and frankly they were worthless against varmints (ran away just like the sheep did; conversely the pygmy goats would charge 'em, horns at the ready). However I've seen a horse that took malignant glee in laying for coyotes... she'd wait for 'em to get far enough from the fence that she could catch 'em before they'd reach it, and would stomp 'em good. Never killed one but not for lack of trying. And I think by now we've all seen the photos of that mule that killed a cougar!!
I remember when "tinfoil" was in fact tin, not aluminum. Real tinfoil was more brittle, and inclined to go dull with age, but it had a solid feel that is lacking in this newfangled aluminum stuff.
It's no wonder that nowadays folks' heads are filled with so much nonsense -- aluminum foil hats just don't keep the toxic rays out like the tinfoil hats of old.
Diff is that when you startle a predator, sure, it usually jumps and runs -- but not very far, and it typically soon decides to come back to check out whatever startled it. Whereas a startled prey animal just bolts or hides and doesn't want to know what it was at all, nosirree, it just wants to avoid notice and evade becoming lunch.
So you may get the occasional mouse chasing a cat, if the cat gets startled (as you say, by prey behaving in some nonstandard way), but the moment the cat realizes -- "hey! that's just a damned mouse!" -- the mouse is in deep shit.
Yep, I thought about that... tho I suppose whether several years in jail or a massive fine sounds worse depends on your point of view. Okay, so penalizing incompetent patent examiners to the degree of monetary harm they cause is probably going overboard [g] but certainly they could be reasonably penalized by charging them at the level of the original patent fee. In terms of time incarcertated vs lost earnings, direct fines would probably be less than the equivalent in jail time, but certainly more immediate (statutory fines need not involve court trials, etc.)
Even if the patent examiner themselves weren't penalized directly, the USPTO could be, and in that case the fine for incompetence could be much higher than if an individual got dinged (and would avoid "but the office boy did it" buck-passing). As to the personnel involved, "You are reduced two steps in rank. Return to your post."
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, exactly so, despite the pedantic arguments about the speaker's lack of inflection (ie. lack of an audible comma).
Like most crazies, #6 largely hears what he wants to hear, and we're seeing the Village through HIS eyes.
I doubt most people could tell you how they learned to read; that seems to be info that the brain discards once it has the concept, and thereafter behaves as if it never lacked the skill.
:)
There are several types of dyslexia, but I have noticed that the more problem a dyslexic has with letters wandering around under their own power, the more wild guessing they do (usually after deciphering no more than 3 or 4 letters).
Myself, I can't remember a time when I couldn't read; I learned from my mom reading to me when I was a toddler, before my first conscious memories. I'd figured out phonics for myself by the time I reached kindergarten, which meant I could at least muddle through ANY words, if sometimes with odd results. Frex, "Bartholemew" doesn't follow the ordinary rules for accenting syllables; even at age 5 I knew "barth'-o-LEM-ew" sounded wrong, but couldn't figure out why, and it never occurred to me to ask anyone about it
Tho inflated numbers are only fair payback, given how the RIAA lawsuits have assumed damages vastly in excess of reality.
And since even if Sony loses, the eventual settlement will almost certainly be negotiated down somewhat, the Texas AG might as well ask for the max since they won't get all of it anyway.
Sorry, I don't have a link offhand, but I've seen screenshots of the Evil Corner X problem on some security-info site. And IE does provide the functionality to change its interface so it can be the host for other apps. (Look at the current version of M$ Works -- the intro wizard is apparently just IE in another skin.)
If IE is set to allow ALL ActiveX controls, there wouldn't be any warning. The old default was to allow everything in the world to have its way with the browser; recent defaults are less insane, but even so, I've yet to see a system where they were *all* set safely out of the box.
Of course, but since as I recall it's turned on by default.. how many ordinary users even know enough to look for it?
Myself, I always turn off anything like that I can locate, on any machine I have my hands on. I suppose the idea was to allow web pages to install plugins whenever they feel the urge, but even without ill intent, that is a terrible idea (some people have had their entire setup screwed by an incompatible version of flash being forced upon them).
Absolutely. Never, ever should something external be able to turn off the menu/title bar; aside from the annoyance factor, it's just too dangerous for the user.
Not only that, but for the past couple weeks, nearly every set of search results is predominantly linkfarms and junk sites, and nearly always spits up a generic "find anything here" ad like your example.
Used to be when I typed in my business name, I'd get my primary site, followed by a bunch of my secondary pages, then a whole bunch of sites that legitimately link to my site, and NO garbage results. Yesterday, google gave me three legit resuts, a handful of old link references from static content, and over 400 bogus results.
It looks to me like someone has figured out how to tap into what's being searched for on google, and thereby insert their garbage into the results stream.
I'm accustomed to an *old* Netscape (still my fave and everyday browser) where Alt-F4 sensibly only closes the top window, rather than killing the whole applications. Spoiled me, it has :) (I have javascript disabled in NS, so there I *never* see popups, and one benefit of being old and braindead is that it's hard to fool since it ignores what it doesn't grok.)
Your concept for popup management is very interesting, and could be extended into the functions for selective blocking. Tho from what I've heard of some sites, such a sidebar would rapidly be overwhelmed by dozens of ad popups. So there'd need to be some sort of pre-filtering.
Your concept could be further extended to generate user-specified behaviour for different types of popups, as best they can be automagically filtered.
But the ONLY sites I've heard of where unrequested popups are *required* for functionality are those run by banks and tax preparers, and in my experience even there they are totally unnecessary (in fact, are a symptom of poor usability overall... so maybe global death-to-popups is the best solution in the end).
As to the sneak-by-filter ads, yeah, I'm not sure what's going on there either. The one I saw lately didn't seem to have anything unusual about it, except that Moz failed to block it. Could be that someone's buggy script tickled a matching bug in Moz: Shortly thereafter I got the first hard crash I've seen with Moz v1.5, so my notion that it might have hit a bug may well be correct. (It did send off a crash report.)
As to flash killing, I use prefbar, tho an older version, and it only seems to block about half the flash ads. When I install Seamonkey I'll have to update prefbar too. Must be something different in how embedded objects are handled that lets flash sneak by.
Come to think of it, a selective blocker for embedded objects would be a Good Browser Feature. That way we could control flash, forced noises, forced video downloads (yes, I've seen that -- real fun on dialup), and whatever other annoying nonsense some webmaster with more ego than brains wants to inflict on us.
Recently I've been seeing some of those "Adsense alternatives" -- and they're uniformly annoying. They're much larger than the old text-only ads, often garishly decorated, invariably placed for maximum visual inconvenience, and typically are advertising utter junk (scams, linkfarms, etc.)
If they continue, I will regretfully block Adsense connections.
This is the more annoying because originally, Google's textads were useful enough that I kept an eye out for them, and for a while even relied on them to locate products.
The other day I got one through Mozilla's unrequested-popup blocking, which normally works 100%.
BTW *never* click on the corner X, that's not safe since a popup's corner X is sometimes a disguised "OK" button for installing something Nasty. Instead, use ALT-F4 (or whatever keystroke your OS uses) to close the popup window. So far, that cannot be spoofed (far as I know, anyway).
Thanks, saved for reference.
The foolproof method sounds like way too much work for everyday, unless you're either handling burn-before-reading data, or trying to work from a known-compromised system, in which case progressive paranoia is definitely in order, no matter how inconvenient!
True enough, and so sayeth TFA, tho by the time I entered the discussion, it had degenerated to generic arguments :)
:)
Many critters eat strange things sometimes, tho. Frex, horses love dry dog food, and will sometimes nibble carrion. And my dogs think watermelon rinds are candy. Makes you wonder.
To me, music downloads are exactly like independent radio, with the bonus that the request line works any time I want it to. The quality runs from iffy to just barely tolerable, but I get to try lots of different stuff I'd never have heard otherwise, from bands I'd never have heard of at all without downloaded MP3s. I get to decide what I really like vs what is just filler or noise, and I'm not pressured into making that decision on the spot, as with in-store sampling (sometimes a song that at first I disliked, over time becomes one of my favourites!) I have a chance to become addicted to any given band in a way that otherwise would never happen.
This is the sole factor in whether I buy CDs or not -- did the "radio" (traditional or downloaded) generate an interest in a given band? if so, sooner or later they get my money, because I want that prime-quality backup (physical CD), not to mention the ability to thereby make my own MP3s at whatever quality I care to spend my disk space on.
In fact this week I went so far as to track down a band whose stuff is out of press, and finagle a purchase of two CDs from a band member's private stash. How'd I get so interested in their work? Free, unencumbered MP3 downloads, sponsored by the band itself.
I suspect it's safer to assume that "enhanced" is a redflag for undesirable behaviour, until proven otherwise. Same with any sort of auto-installer. IOW, if it's not under your full control, it's probably up to no good.
Wow, now there's a manager who deserves to get more bands under his wing, and a band that one wishes all success.
When I first saw The Prisoner lo those many decades ago, I too was confused and disappointed by the ending, and thought the producers had lost their collective minds.
Couple years ago I got the DVDs and watched them head to tail... and yep, it's now clear that #6 is #1. Over the last few episodes, he's gradually going round the bend, and at the very end goes totally over the edge. We're seeing the world from inside a madman's head -- naturally it looks insane!
"Everyone's crazy here except for me and thee -- and sometimes I'm not so sure about thee."
IIRC, McGoohan owns the rights to The Prisoner outright, and was himself working on some sort of sequel, but wouldn't say anything more about it. Whatever happened to that project? Or is this perhaps its descendant?
A direct sequel, perhaps to bring the series full circle (lots of ways that could go), might be interesting, just as the progression from Danger Man to Secret Agent to The Prisoner was inherently a fascinating concept. And I'd bet something on that order was what McGoohan had in mind for the above project.
But as you say, a pure remake is unlikely to be anything valid with respect to the original trio, nor particularly good on its own merits.
Now, if the exec producer can follow through on his promise "Although it will be a radical reinvention, it will still be a heightened show with themes such as paranoia, conspiracy and identity crisis" *without* trying to rehash the past, then that could become a good show.
It sure can't be worse than Yet Another Reality Show!
Horses have only "simple stomachs" and they eat grass. However, they're very inefficient compared to ruminants (cows, sheep) with their compound stomachs, where cud chewing (barf it up and rechew it later) and heftier bacteria do the actual work.
If you compare horseshit and bullshit.. er, I mean horse manure and cow manure, the difference is obvious. Horse manure comes out not much different than the grass went in, other than being coarsely ground by the horse chewing on it -- but you can still tell it was grass (and even what kind of grass or other feed it was). Cow manure comes out semi-liquified, with the fibres much more thoroughly broken up and anonymized.
Elephants are also grazers (grass-eaters; vs. browsers ie. shrub-eaters like sheep and goats), tho offhand I don't recall which stomach system they have.
Just be glad you don't have sacred dinosaurs roaming the streets :)
And how do they know that the grass doesn't come from the intestines of some critter that the dinosaur in question ate?
But there are modern herbivorous reptiles (iguanas, tortises, others that don't come to mind at 5am). And there's no rule that says reptiles can't come in herbivore, omnivore, and carnivore versions, just like birds, fish, and mammals do.
Oh, and beaver (rodent family) don't eat trees. They eat tree BARK, not the woody part. They cut down trees to get at the tender bark on the younger branches (and sometimes just girdle young trees, thus killing them). When beaver get overpopulated, they often effectively clearcut their home territory.
Tho it takes a startled deer a lot longer to realise "Hey! it's a mouse" than it would an equally-startled coyote. That's really what this is about -- how long does it take the brain to recover from panic mode and start thinking rationally again, if it does so at all??
And yes, there is a matter of perspective -- if it's not a significant predator to your species, why run from it?
And sometimes there is an aggression factor even in what are nominally prey animals. I used to live next to a herd of llamas and frankly they were worthless against varmints (ran away just like the sheep did; conversely the pygmy goats would charge 'em, horns at the ready). However I've seen a horse that took malignant glee in laying for coyotes... she'd wait for 'em to get far enough from the fence that she could catch 'em before they'd reach it, and would stomp 'em good. Never killed one but not for lack of trying. And I think by now we've all seen the photos of that mule that killed a cougar!!
I remember when "tinfoil" was in fact tin, not aluminum. Real tinfoil was more brittle, and inclined to go dull with age, but it had a solid feel that is lacking in this newfangled aluminum stuff.
It's no wonder that nowadays folks' heads are filled with so much nonsense -- aluminum foil hats just don't keep the toxic rays out like the tinfoil hats of old.
Diff is that when you startle a predator, sure, it usually jumps and runs -- but not very far, and it typically soon decides to come back to check out whatever startled it. Whereas a startled prey animal just bolts or hides and doesn't want to know what it was at all, nosirree, it just wants to avoid notice and evade becoming lunch.
So you may get the occasional mouse chasing a cat, if the cat gets startled (as you say, by prey behaving in some nonstandard way), but the moment the cat realizes -- "hey! that's just a damned mouse!" -- the mouse is in deep shit.
Nasty thoughts, indeed.
Side thought: does *NIX have a way to manually step through everything that loads? (as can be done in DOS/Win)
Yep, I thought about that... tho I suppose whether several years in jail or a massive fine sounds worse depends on your point of view. Okay, so penalizing incompetent patent examiners to the degree of monetary harm they cause is probably going overboard [g] but certainly they could be reasonably penalized by charging them at the level of the original patent fee. In terms of time incarcertated vs lost earnings, direct fines would probably be less than the equivalent in jail time, but certainly more immediate (statutory fines need not involve court trials, etc.)
Even if the patent examiner themselves weren't penalized directly, the USPTO could be, and in that case the fine for incompetence could be much higher than if an individual got dinged (and would avoid "but the office boy did it" buck-passing). As to the personnel involved, "You are reduced two steps in rank. Return to your post."