This announcement baffles me. 9.95 for an electronic version of an album. Something I can't put in my Hifi. Something that can't playback in a car. Something that is compressed and hence will be lower quality than a CD of the same album.
On the flipside, I can walk into a supermarket and buy many CDs for less than 8, and many others for less than 5. All of these will play in the hifi. They'll plaback in a car. I can lend them to my friends. I can back them up in case my kid grabs the CD and scratches it to destruction. The quality will be pristine quality, rather than having compressed audio artifacts, and should I wish to carry an electronic copy for my own use, I can do that trivially.
If I want a CD I don't already have and don't want to leave the house, I can go to somewhere like play.com, and have the CD delivered, again generally speaking for significantly less, and significantly greater (LEGAL - like listening to it somewhere I choose on a device I choose - like the hifi) use and less restrictions on how I want to listen to music.
Quite why anyone would want to pay more for less is beyond me.
The Starchaser Thunderbird rocket has always been called that - Steve's a fan of the original Gerry Anderson series, and many of us were there when Steve met Gerry at FAB Cafe in Manchester a few years back.
That said, the only SF spaceship other than the original Thunderbirds I've heard Steve ever rave about was the Whitestar from Babylon-5.
Steve has always said (if memory serves) that they'd launch in 2004 (or earlier finances permitting), and I'm really pleased to see that he's continue to follow his dreams.
Contrary to a number of slashdotters thoughts and comments, he *has* thought things through, and done the math. He knows full well which sort of rocket engines scale up and which don't. Earlier tests gaining experience were with simpler style rocket engines. Nova and it's ilk are using IIRC engines specifically designed for the task in hand. (Based on the presentation he gave at a fundraiser in Manchester which also had as a guest one of the ex-mir cosmonauts.
One of my clients is running using a transparent proxy and we have suggested to all our clients to block access to the following hosts:
'Accept' (The malformed request looks
like a request for http://accept/ to some
proxies)
Since this will not resolve people are suggested to redirect requests for this host to a known real address that resolves to something like 10.254.254.254, and block access to that particular IP address.
The other thing that people should do is place an url_regex looking for the following in the URL:
.*NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.*
OR:
.*XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.*
And deny access to those URLs.
With Squid the redirection can be done using a redirector plugin and the blocking using access control lists and the http_access directive. With Inktomi's Traffic Server people should use remap.config to do the remapping and filter.config to do the blocking. Other caching vendors do have similar facilities and people should employ them as and where they can. (IMHO)
Please note: One of our clients using this technique is logging everyone who has caused a scan and is getting in touch with people to let them know they've been compromised. (For obvious reasons - the alternative is to pull the plug on people:-/ )
They have so far blocked in the region of 3.5 million attempted scans of Code Red II in the past 12 hours alone.
Whilst Microsoft may be to blame here, there is affirmative action people in the right places can take, and although our clients have already been informed of how to block it I'm posting here just in case a few people slipped through the net...
Since I was responsible in the past for creating a publicly owned site in the UK, with great success (looked good, improved traffic through, better presented info, worked in more browsers etc) I mailled the admins of their site and told them what I thought rather than complain on slashdot.
As I've said in my email to the postmaster & webmaster of the site in question:
Yes, the browsers listed do get to 95-96% of
users. That is good.
What is bad is that with 10 million people
online in the UK, this means the equivalent of
a few small cities cannot get access to the
information presented.
The people who have Internet access are generally higher tax payers - bear in mind that many professionals are essentially paying over 50% in tax in the UK. (40% income tax, 11% national insurace, 17.5% VAT on many (but not all) things) and whilst everyone wants access, you certainly shouldn't exclude those paying the most.
For the exceptions - the people who access via Libraries and what not, they have _no_ control over the browser, and if they're locked out they have no access.
(Incidentally I don't mind falling into this "effectively 50%" category, I think they're justified and and acceptable levels of tax TBH)
So essentially by blocking that info (deliberately if you think about it - they _have_ to do some work to block it!) they're blocking people who have a right to access, both those who can afford it at home (and can choose any brower they like) and those who use it somewhere cheaper (ie free) but don't have any control.
Bear in mind that many of the other sites which are.gov.uk do not have this problem, and the policies used by many UK publicly owned sites generally try to follow these sorts of principles mainly because they have to be publically accessible by many:
Test the site out using Lynx - this allows you to tune the website such
that >99.999% of people can see the site. (You're down to the size of
a small village then who can't access it)
Make sure that anything fancy you do on the website will work with
Netscape Navigator 4.0X. This means simple javascript, some layers,
Java 1, CSS1. That way your _fancy_ parts of the site can probably
be accessed by >90-95% of people accessing your site.
Consider using Shockwave flash instead of Javascript & Java - Macromedia
have put alot of effort into making their content widely accessible by
all - heck there are tools for less that 50 quid for creating this stuff
since they opened up the protocol :
Consider using Real Media rather than Quicktime, or Windows Media
Technoloy for the same reason as shockwave.
As someone who's had to design a publicly owned site, I generally choose Linux Netscape & Lynx for testing since Linux Netscapes Java support is pretty flakey, it's CSS support is OK, but limited, and there's more twiddles in MSIE. Essentially if it looks good and works in both of those, then it generally works well in MSIE and other things well. (eg little things - like have a menu bar on the right had side of a page formatted with tables rather than the left can make a huge difference for example)
It's sad that some people don't aim for simple visibility...
My sympathies go out to all his close friends, his family and his nearest and dearest. My sympathies also go out to all those who, like me, have been touched deeply by his work, and shall never forget the impact he's had on my life and those I respect.
The man was a genius, storytelling giant and passionate man. We are sorely at a loss today.
He was so right about 42. We may say he died today at 49, but truly it was 42. Albeit base 11.75...
As he said, the answer is 42 - it always is, and those who get on a 42 bus in Manchester in the UK can/should never forget it! I sincerely hope that in Cambridge where he set some of his most fun stories that someone is sitting there remembering him right now.
I salute him, and I hope that when I go I've touched as many people in such a personal way as he has. A sad day indeed.
Slashdot Mirror
Copy of torrent file
http://thwackety.com/warty-i386.iso.torrent
PLEASE MIRROR THIS FILE AND POST LOCATION!
This announcement baffles me. 9.95 for an electronic version of an album. Something I can't put in my Hifi. Something that can't playback in a car. Something that is compressed and hence will be lower quality than a CD of the same album.
On the flipside, I can walk into a supermarket and buy many CDs for less than 8, and many others for less than 5. All of these will play in the hifi. They'll plaback in a car. I can lend them to my friends. I can back them up in case my kid grabs the CD and scratches it to destruction. The quality will be pristine quality, rather than having compressed audio artifacts, and should I wish to carry an electronic copy for my own use, I can do that trivially.
If I want a CD I don't already have and don't want to leave the house, I can go to somewhere like play.com, and have the CD delivered, again generally speaking for significantly less, and significantly greater (LEGAL - like listening to it somewhere I choose on a device I choose - like the hifi) use and less restrictions on how I want to listen to music.
Quite why anyone would want to pay more for less is beyond me.
The Starchaser Thunderbird rocket has always been called that - Steve's a fan of the original Gerry Anderson series, and many of us were there when Steve met Gerry at FAB Cafe in Manchester a few years back.
That said, the only SF spaceship other than the original Thunderbirds I've heard Steve ever rave about was the Whitestar from Babylon-5.
Steve has always said (if memory serves) that they'd launch in 2004 (or earlier finances permitting), and I'm really pleased to see that he's continue to follow his dreams.
Contrary to a number of slashdotters thoughts and comments, he *has* thought things through, and done the math. He knows full well which sort of rocket engines scale up and which don't. Earlier tests gaining experience were with simpler style rocket engines. Nova and it's ilk are using IIRC engines specifically designed for the task in hand. (Based on the presentation he gave at a fundraiser in Manchester which also had as a guest one of the ex-mir cosmonauts.
Michael
One of my clients is running using a transparent proxy and we have suggested to all our clients to block access to the following hosts:
Since this will not resolve people are suggested to redirect requests for this host to a known real address that resolves to something like 10.254.254.254, and block access to that particular IP address.
The other thing that people should do is place an url_regex looking for the following in the URL:
.*NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.*
OR:And deny access to those URLs.
With Squid the redirection can be done using a redirector plugin and the blocking using access control lists and the http_access directive. With Inktomi's Traffic Server people should use remap.config to do the remapping and filter.config to do the blocking. Other caching vendors do have similar facilities and people should employ them as and where they can. (IMHO)
Please note: One of our clients using this technique is logging everyone who has caused a scan and is getting in touch with people to let them know they've been compromised. (For obvious reasons - the alternative is to pull the plug on people :-/ )
They have so far blocked in the region of 3.5 million attempted scans of Code Red II in the past 12 hours alone.
Whilst Microsoft may be to blame here, there is affirmative action people in the right places can take, and although our clients have already been informed of how to block it I'm posting here just in case a few people slipped through the net...
(Incidentally I don't mind falling into this "effectively 50%" category, I think they're justified and and acceptable levels of tax TBH)
So essentially by blocking that info (deliberately if you think about it - they _have_ to do some work to block it!) they're blocking people who have a right to access, both those who can afford it at home (and can choose any brower they like) and those who use it somewhere cheaper (ie free) but don't have any control.
Bear in mind that many of the other sites which are .gov.uk do not have this problem, and the policies used by many UK publicly owned sites generally try to follow these sorts of principles mainly because they have to be publically accessible by many:
- Test the site out using Lynx - this allows you to tune the website such
that >99.999% of people can see the site. (You're down to the size of
a small village then who can't access it)
- Make sure that anything fancy you do on the website will work with
Netscape Navigator 4.0X. This means simple javascript, some layers,
Java 1, CSS1. That way your _fancy_ parts of the site can probably
be accessed by >90-95% of people accessing your site.
- Consider using Shockwave flash instead of Javascript & Java - Macromedia
have put alot of effort into making their content widely accessible by
all - heck there are tools for less that 50 quid for creating this stuff
since they opened up the protocol :
- Consider using Real Media rather than Quicktime, or Windows Media
Technoloy for the same reason as shockwave.
As someone who's had to design a publicly owned site, I generally choose Linux Netscape & Lynx for testing since Linux Netscapes Java support is pretty flakey, it's CSS support is OK, but limited, and there's more twiddles in MSIE. Essentially if it looks good and works in both of those, then it generally works well in MSIE and other things well. (eg little things - like have a menu bar on the right had side of a page formatted with tables rather than the left can make a huge difference for example)It's sad that some people don't aim for simple visibility...
My sympathies go out to all his close friends, his family and his nearest and dearest. My sympathies also go out to all those who, like me, have been touched deeply by his work, and shall never forget the impact he's had on my life and those I respect. The man was a genius, storytelling giant and passionate man. We are sorely at a loss today. He was so right about 42. We may say he died today at 49, but truly it was 42. Albeit base 11.75... As he said, the answer is 42 - it always is, and those who get on a 42 bus in Manchester in the UK can/should never forget it! I sincerely hope that in Cambridge where he set some of his most fun stories that someone is sitting there remembering him right now. I salute him, and I hope that when I go I've touched as many people in such a personal way as he has. A sad day indeed.