If everyone goes around calling all bricks "legos", other companies could start using it saying that it's just a common word. It's like Kleenex or other commonly used brand names. Every time you say "pass me a kleenex" it hurts the trademark, unless the company tries to prevent you from doing so, whether they actually care or are just following the laws on the matter.
All you need to do is google for 'trademark dilution' on Yahoo to find out how brand names can loose their trademark status through common usage.
Ask Jeeves can now point to InterActive's own properties when it feels like. Let's plan my date, Jeeves:
Where can I find easy fat chicks (match)
I need tickets to New Orleans (expedia)
Where can I get tickets for Hootie? (ticketmaster)
where are BBQ restarants in New Orleans (citysearch)
I need a cheap hotel in New orleans(expedia)
How can I have other people see my searches? (searchspy)
How can I give all my web browsing information to you for you to resell? (speedbar)
Their version of the intarweb need not point to pesky competitors.
Also notable is that all the search return links given by Ask Jeeves are not to the destination site but are referred back to Ask, which then forwards you; AJ know the search returns that you are clicking on also. Couple that with the mandatory cookies on expedia etc and you are being watched, tracked, sold to, and sold.
But it's a lot easier to catch someone who sells you a 2.2GHz chip that actually only runs at 1.8
Unless you do as PCChips did with some cheap motherboard processor combos we ordered, the BIOS boots up and says AMD 1200+ CPU as well as the big sticker on the chipset, but removing the 'warranty void if removed' sticker on the CPU heatsink and inspecting shows 850MHz Duron just like CPU-Z does. From the same people that brought us the 'fake cache' chips. I guess fraud is OK in China.
The best is Doug Stanhope. The line from his standup goes something like:
"You ever have one of those dreams that was so dirty even you were ashamed when you woke up? Like if you told people you would start to lose friends? Like 'Oh my god! Why didn't you tell me you were only five?!?'"
He used to make appearances on a morning show here that the DJ's got fired for goofing on tape of Nick Berg's beheading.
Actually, none of them are "orbiting" the earth. Wouldn't do much good to have them beaming things down in South America, would it? I know... I know, it's all semantics.
Actually all satellites orbit the earth, the only other option is falling out of the sky.
You might be thinking about satellites in geosynchronous orbit - they orbit around the earth every 24 hours, thus staying directly above the same spot on the equator all the time and never appearing to move in the sky to us on Earth. Both the Northern and Southern hemispheres can be equally served by geosynchronous satellites however, the satellite's antennas are just pointed towards the countr[y,ies] that they are broadcasting to.
XM's two satellites are geosynchronous. That's why XM had to build a massive network of terrestrial satellite repeaters; XM satellites are always low on the horizon and are often blocked out by the urban jungle.
Sirius' satellite constellation also has a 24 hour orbit, however it's satellites are in an inclined elliptical orbit - they spend a large part of their orbit high above the United States and then quickly whip around the earth at perigee to return to the broadcasting area of their orbit over the US. Sirius always has a satellite pretty high in the sky due to this scheme.
This decision is awesome for Sirius. Formerly two competing services that were undifferentiated; now when deciding on a radio: 'do you want the service with or without Howard Stern?'
Comcast cable internet - changing the ports from default to above 50000 made bittorrent go from useless to massive fast!
I would recommend and have been thinking about DSL with faster upload for just bittorrent - cable makes p2p almost useless because of the paltry upload. 768/768 vs 3000/256 for cable.
I wonder why the bittorrent clients don't add this as a feature now - random port range by default. If more programs did that it would cut down on the shenanigans by the ISPs.
One interesting post by the developer indicates that he has purged purchaser's personal information from his database:
As there has been some concern about contact information held by me, I have changed my database so that the only information stored is the issued key number. Email addresses and any other identifying information about purchasers is discarded immediately after the credit card validation process has completed.
The key number is derived from a one-way hash using your radio ID and some other internal information. It will work only with your radio, however no information (including the radio ID) can be derived from it.
Since XM made the SDK for the USB XM radio in question, this is ridiculous. I don't see how this software could do anything but get them more subscribers & sell more radios. Go ahead and shoot yourself in the foot XM.
For the c64? How about Impossible Mission "Another visitor....."
"Stay awhile...stay FOREVER!". Creepy to hear a C64 talk...
My Nomination is Lemmings. Lemmings for Win95 still works on XP and is as fun as always. Just avoid the terribly misguided 'Lemmings 3d' and 'Lemmings Paintball'.
"Comcast considers subscribers' personally identifiable information to be confidential. We will only disclose personally identifiable information to third parties under an obligation of confidentiality and for a limited purpose consistent with this Policy."
It looks like I'm covered - at least if they gave the RIAA my info they couldn't sue me "confidentially." Also I noticed they won't disclose what their users do, but I guess the RIAA snoops that on their own anyway.
BZZZ. Comcast has been handing over customer information without a complaint. I am glad to have one company (Verizon) stand up for it's users when it has little financial motivation to do so, and would encourage business decisions that let Verizon know we appreciate their actions.
>> That's funny... I'm using mozilla on win2k here and it copies and pastes just perfectly. To what are you referring, exactly?
I haven't used Mozilla proper for quite a while, but have used Firebird for cut and paste. Whereas cut & paste a web page from IE into Word will get you something that still looks like a web page, cut and paste from Firebird will get you left justified courier text. Tables get especially messed up. There are probably enough Microsoft undocumented features in the cutting and pasting of web pages where making it work would prove difficult.
Subpixel rendering is really only useful for LCD monitors.
It knows that LCD pixels are made of RGB,RGB,RGB elements, and can address them like rGB,RgB,RGb to move the pixel horizontally to the most accurate location (here the capital GBR and BRG represent two white pixels that only have an unlit g element between them). If you try to do this on a CRT monitor where the RGB elements don't have a 1:1 ratio with pixels, you get strange colored crap around your fonts.
Well, spammers have the opposite situation, a small cost for them (sending 10000 copies of the same mail) costs much more to others (bandwidth, time reading and deleting junk).
The correct application of this work (although not to the letter) would be to 'punish' those who spam us with lawsuits such as is allowed in Washington State. Although it is a personal cost to call ISPs, file suits and such, if everyone were to make such small pains, we would all benefit greatly.
Then of course next there would be the freeloaders who do nothing to help but profit from our spam-eradicating work that need to be punished....
A similar set of ideals has been previously applied in psychological and darwinian non-zero sum games where there is a reduced personal gain but higher
group gain from cooperation. These games challenge participants in finding an optimal outcome for both in cases where there are multiple
iterations of choices to cooperate or 'defect' from cooperation - the website details only a new variant of these.
One model is that of the cold war. If both countries cooperate in an arms reduction treaty, they both win some, but for the individual
country, a win can be made if their competitor cooperates and they 'defect' and build more arsenal.
This game has a matrix of possible points scored by each side depending on their individual choices.
In the above situation, the two scores delimited by commas indicate the score for each country. If the countries both cooperate, each
receives three points. However, if they disagree, one country will win, but the sum score is less. The interesting situation is if both defect
- the value placed on these scores may also determine how the game is played through multiple iterations by two players.
Another variant is the prisoner's dilemma game. Two criminals are captured, and the DA
will cut one of them a deal if they squeal on the other. Of course, if both squeal on each other, both loose big. If both are quiet, they will
get a lesser charge. The dilemma is that the best group outcome is that they will both fare better if they are both quiet, but they don't know
what the other will do.
The article listed is similar to this, but different that there is a cost involved in punishing the 'bad' player that doesn't pay into the
investment pot. Here the game asks you to punish the uncooperative player with costs now, but the punishment might make them more
likely to contribute in future rounds of the game. Interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Why only just look at the cache, when you can let Google be your proxy?u =www.grokster.com
http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&
(no link because slashcode can't deal with the pipe in the URL....)
If everyone goes around calling all bricks "legos", other companies could start using it saying that it's just a common word. It's like Kleenex or other commonly used brand names. Every time you say "pass me a kleenex" it hurts the trademark, unless the company tries to prevent you from doing so, whether they actually care or are just following the laws on the matter.
All you need to do is google for 'trademark dilution' on Yahoo to find out how brand names can loose their trademark status through common usage.
Ask Jeeves can now point to InterActive's own properties when it feels like. Let's plan my date, Jeeves:
Where can I find easy fat chicks (match)
I need tickets to New Orleans (expedia)
Where can I get tickets for Hootie? (ticketmaster)
where are BBQ restarants in New Orleans (citysearch)
I need a cheap hotel in New orleans(expedia)
How can I have other people see my searches? (searchspy)
How can I give all my web browsing information to you for you to resell? (speedbar)
Their version of the intarweb need not point to pesky competitors.
Also notable is that all the search return links given by Ask Jeeves are not to the destination site but are referred back to Ask, which then forwards you; AJ know the search returns that you are clicking on also. Couple that with the mandatory cookies on expedia etc and you are being watched, tracked, sold to, and sold.
But it's a lot easier to catch someone who sells you a 2.2GHz chip that actually only runs at 1.8
Unless you do as PCChips did with some cheap motherboard processor combos we ordered, the BIOS boots up and says AMD 1200+ CPU as well as the big sticker on the chipset, but removing the 'warranty void if removed' sticker on the CPU heatsink and inspecting shows 850MHz Duron just like CPU-Z does. From the same people that brought us the 'fake cache' chips. I guess fraud is OK in China.
Mod that up, that's frickin funny if you know the reference! -- http://www.ntk.net/ballmer/mirrors.html
Lord Of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy [12 Discs] - 12/14/2004. Do you think they would wait until next christmas??
Keep it under your tinfoil hat. That'd do it.
The best is Doug Stanhope. The line from his standup goes something like:
"You ever have one of those dreams that was so dirty even
you were ashamed when you woke up? Like if you told people you would start to lose friends? Like 'Oh my god! Why didn't you tell me you were only five?!?'"
He used to make appearances on a morning show here that the DJ's got fired for goofing on tape of Nick Berg's beheading.
Actually, none of them are "orbiting" the earth. Wouldn't do much good to have them beaming things down in South America, would it? I know... I know, it's all semantics.
Actually all satellites orbit the earth, the only other option is falling out of the sky.
You might be thinking about satellites in geosynchronous orbit - they orbit around the earth every 24 hours, thus staying directly above the same spot on the equator all the time and never appearing to move in the sky to us on Earth. Both the Northern and Southern hemispheres can be equally served by geosynchronous satellites however, the satellite's antennas are just pointed towards the countr[y,ies] that they are broadcasting to.
XM's two satellites are geosynchronous. That's why XM had to build a massive network of terrestrial satellite repeaters; XM satellites are always low on the horizon and are often blocked out by the urban jungle.
Sirius' satellite constellation also has a 24 hour orbit, however it's satellites are in an inclined elliptical orbit - they spend a large part of their orbit high above the United States and then quickly whip around the earth at perigee to return to the broadcasting area of their orbit over the US. Sirius always has a satellite pretty high in the sky due to this scheme.
This decision is awesome for Sirius. Formerly two competing services that were undifferentiated; now when deciding on a radio: 'do you want the service with or without Howard Stern?'
Should I be able to write here?
Genius!
Comcast cable internet - changing the ports from default to above 50000 made bittorrent go from useless to massive fast!
I would recommend and have been thinking about DSL with faster upload for just bittorrent - cable makes p2p almost useless because of the paltry upload. 768/768 vs 3000/256 for cable.
I wonder why the bittorrent clients don't add this as a feature now - random port range by default. If more programs did that it would cut down on the shenanigans by the ISPs.
Or our rock station here: Ozzy, Metallica, Ozzy, Metallica, commercial, commercial, commercial, commercial, commercial, commercial, commercial, commercial, commercial, commercial, Ozzy, ....
It also looks like Slashdot is a little behind on this news, it's been discussed since Tuesday on the XM developer's forum http://www.xmfan.com/viewtopic.php?t=27670.
One interesting post by the developer indicates that he has purged purchaser's personal information from his database:
As there has been some concern about contact information held by me, I have changed my database so that the only information stored is the issued key number. Email addresses and any other identifying information about purchasers is discarded immediately after the credit card validation process has completed.
The key number is derived from a one-way hash using your radio ID and some other internal information. It will work only with your radio, however no information (including the radio ID) can be derived from it.
http://nerosoft.com/TimeTrax/index.asp
Since XM made the SDK for the USB XM radio in question, this is ridiculous. I don't see how this software could do anything but get them more subscribers & sell more radios. Go ahead and shoot yourself in the foot XM.
For the c64? How about Impossible Mission "Another visitor....."
"Stay awhile...stay FOREVER!". Creepy to hear a C64 talk...
My Nomination is Lemmings. Lemmings for Win95 still works on XP and is as fun as always. Just avoid the terribly misguided 'Lemmings 3d' and 'Lemmings Paintball'.
"Comcast considers subscribers' personally identifiable information to be confidential. We will only disclose personally identifiable information to third parties under an obligation of confidentiality and for a limited purpose consistent with this Policy."
It looks like I'm covered - at least if they gave the RIAA my info they couldn't sue me "confidentially." Also I noticed they won't disclose what their users do, but I guess the RIAA snoops that on their own anyway.
BZZZ. Comcast has been handing over customer information without a complaint. I am glad to have one company (Verizon) stand up for it's users when it has little financial motivation to do so, and would encourage business decisions that let Verizon know we appreciate their actions.
>> That's funny... I'm using mozilla on win2k here and it copies and pastes just perfectly. To what are you referring, exactly?
I haven't used Mozilla proper for quite a while, but have used Firebird for cut and paste. Whereas cut & paste a web page from IE into Word will get you something that still looks like a web page, cut and paste from Firebird will get you left justified courier text. Tables get especially messed up. There are probably enough Microsoft undocumented features in the cutting and pasting of web pages where making it work would prove difficult.
Subpixel rendering is really only useful for LCD monitors. It knows that LCD pixels are made of RGB,RGB,RGB elements, and can address them like rGB,RgB,RGb to move the pixel horizontally to the most accurate location (here the capital GBR and BRG represent two white pixels that only have an unlit g element between them). If you try to do this on a CRT monitor where the RGB elements don't have a 1:1 ratio with pixels, you get strange colored crap around your fonts.
Bet that mySQL server is hitting the redline right now!
One problem is that OGG has an ambiguous spelling based on it's pronunciation...wait, that's 'aug' right?
I don't seem to be having any problem with .vorbis, how about you?
No. Some yahoo already did that in Tasmania a while back...
And I thought that Twinkies predated even this...I guess it all depends on who the control subject is in the Turing test in determining what passes.
Well, spammers have the opposite situation, a small cost for them (sending 10000 copies of the same mail) costs much more to others (bandwidth, time reading and deleting junk).
The correct application of this work (although not to the letter) would be to 'punish' those who spam us with lawsuits such as is allowed in Washington State. Although it is a personal cost to call ISPs, file suits and such, if everyone were to make such small pains, we would all benefit greatly.
Then of course next there would be the freeloaders who do nothing to help but profit from our spam-eradicating work that need to be punished ....
A similar set of ideals has been previously applied in psychological and darwinian non-zero sum games where there is a reduced personal gain but higher group gain from cooperation. These games challenge participants in finding an optimal outcome for both in cases where there are multiple iterations of choices to cooperate or 'defect' from cooperation - the website details only a new variant of these.
One model is that of the cold war. If both countries cooperate in an arms reduction treaty, they both win some, but for the individual country, a win can be made if their competitor cooperates and they 'defect' and build more arsenal.
This game has a matrix of possible points scored by each side depending on their individual choices.
. . . . . coop . . defectcoop . . . 3,3 . . 5,0
defect . . 0,5 . . 1,1
In the above situation, the two scores delimited by commas indicate the score for each country. If the countries both cooperate, each receives three points. However, if they disagree, one country will win, but the sum score is less. The interesting situation is if both defect - the value placed on these scores may also determine how the game is played through multiple iterations by two players.
Another variant is the prisoner's dilemma game. Two criminals are captured, and the DA will cut one of them a deal if they squeal on the other. Of course, if both squeal on each other, both loose big. If both are quiet, they will get a lesser charge. The dilemma is that the best group outcome is that they will both fare better if they are both quiet, but they don't know what the other will do.
The article listed is similar to this, but different that there is a cost involved in punishing the 'bad' player that doesn't pay into the investment pot. Here the game asks you to punish the uncooperative player with costs now, but the punishment might make them more likely to contribute in future rounds of the game. Interesting.
You'll be the first person in history to be blacklisted from the internet all together!!!
After Kevin Mitnick?