That's a nice feature. It keeps Thunderbird as accessible as Mozilla Mail without keeping it in memory, but personally I don't use Thunderbird regularily anymore. I just keep GMail open in a browser tab and I have a little system tray app that forwards all of my mail accounts there. Used in this way, GMail is a web app that's as functional and fast as a local mail program, possibly more so, but it's just a tiny Java app.
About the only thing I go back to Thunderbird for now is to open a newsgroup on my school server, but that functionality can easily be replicated. GMail has convinced me that email is something a web app can do better than a full program installed on your local machine and I see the web browser replacing many other functional applications with access-anywhere web apps.
I also started using Mozilla Sunbird recently (I desperately needed a day-planner), and this is also something from the Mozilla suite that could be done better as a web app. Sunbird has methods of posting your calendar online, but this would only become something anyone could do if it operated as an online service like GMail.
The only current downfall I see with web apps replacing local apps is those rare occasions when you are offline. However, a forward looking browser like Firefox could implement some kind of local caching of web apps and personal data and update all of your changes the next time you are connected. I would rather see the Mozilla foundation jump on this and implement it before Microsoft makes some kind of closed-standard.NET version and splits the user-base, thus defeating the purpoase of a cross-platform web app.
This is why I really like Firefox and hope to see it take over: it supports open standards. Ask any web developer about writing Cascaded Style Sheets. You spend a bit of time developing your page layout, and a lot of time finding workarounds and compromises to make it look reasonable in IE.
If IE holds onto it's market share long enough, it could come into another stage of development and force it's own closed web standards upon us again. Remember the browser wars? JavaScript is still scarred from them. If Firefox gets a head start on web-app development standards (IE seems to be in a dead stage right now), the first big web app development environment could be truly open and cross-platform, not proprietary, flawed and complicated like Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM).
Could we perhaps make farm equipment powered by locusts?
With the number I see in that first picture there should be enough to power a full-sized tractor.
Then again, they seem to be most attracted to crops and unlike shit, crops are already all over the ground in locust swarmed areas. Maybe we could figure out what part of the crop most attracts them and exagerate that feature to lure them away from the real thing into our deathtraps. It would be like the locust version of a Macdonald's restaurant; nothing can top the taste and the smell but then the cardiac arrest sets in.
True, this posted torrent is illegal, but what it demonstrates is that P2P networks can be used to save bandwidth. Microsoft is not taking advantage of this right now, but it is plain to see that they quite easily could be.
The lesson here is not that P2P users should distribute popular releases on their own. The lesson is that companies should use P2P networks to distribute their releases. There are issues to overcome in verification, but those are not impossible, especially on a network like Bittorrent.
As somebody mentioned, Blizzard Entertainment uses torrent links to distribute their popular demo releases.
Every first aid or CPR course I've taken taught me to lean down next to a possible victim, put my ear next to their mouth and nose so I can listen and watch their chest for signs of breathing while I'm checking their pulse.
Finding no pulse would be alarming, but people don't breathe unless the blood flow is working somehow, so I would just assume they have a weak pulse that I couldn't feel.
The other thing you do before that is shake them to see if they're just sleeping. If I couldn't wake them up, they would need an ambulance either way.
Even if they weren't breathing and I couldn't find a pulse because of a constant flow heart like this, I would imagine an artificial heart would be able to continue working through the disruption of CPR. Still, if these come into use I can see them being mentioned in first aid courses. People with artificial hearts are some of the most likely victims of unconsciousness.
Someone already wrote an app to do that. It's called Pop Goes the Gmail. You can use use it regularily to view your Gmail in a mail app (although the web interface is better), or use it for one-time batch downloads.
"PS: Not machine learning, but the sole requirement by me for a browser (dunno if its done in firefox now as hvent used it for a long time): Open new tab as a default rather than a new window, or at least provide the option."
There actually is an extension for Mozilla/Firefox that does this. It's called Single Window 1.0.
That's interesting, but in practical terms one of the only web app I've used that actually runs as fast and conveniently as a local piece of software is GMail's web interface. I have actually stopped loading up Thunderbird in favour of keeping GMail open in one of my tabs.
I'm sure there are others, but things like a mail app are the most important because they get the most use. For example, I use my bank's online site all the time, but the interface is the usual click-and-wait for everything. There's no other way to access that functionality (like a local banking app), but it still makes me wish for something better. I would even consider switching banks if one of them actually made a faster web app for me.
My point is: how important is the web interface when it still comes off as a clunky version of a local app? Will we start to use web apps for everything from spreadsheets, to instant messaging?
If so, I'm extatic that an open browser like Firefox could be leading the way and pushing sensible standards, but otherwise Linux is still our real hope for an open undictated world of software.
Basically, you mix water and cornstarch and the result is a substance that feels hard when you poke it, but drowns your GI-JOE's like quicksand. It's nice to see the military has caught up to afterschool science.
That's a good question, but I'm going to guess that they will indeed have some hot babe play the girl in the suit, and that girl will indeed show up in the first preview. Sex sells. The hot babe factor will probebly end up being one of the major money making factors for this movie.
The big "OMG! It's a chick!" revelation we went through just won't be possible here.
You are the first reader I've decided to add to my "friend list". I don't know what this list does exactly, but judging by the name, I feel you should be on it.
I was reading an article in Canada's The National Post yesterday that interviewed an English speaking Iraqi. He said that a lot of Iraqi's are detained or apprehended needlessly at US guard checkpoints simply because they cannot speak English to the guards.
The interviewee used to do translation for the US army, but after an incident he is now being sought as a member of the former Iraqi army. Despite this, he still has less trouble going through checkpoints simply because he can explain his business in English.
At the time, I thought this meant that Wordperfect would basically become an alternative sister product to Word with full compatability. Why am I getting the impression from these comments that they are competing with Word?
Yeah, maybe I'm not seeing the logic of this setup either: "The robot is running Windows XP Home as an operating system and robot control software from Evolution Robotics."
So basically, they gave it a reason to kill itself, and the ability to do so. I hope that's covered in the warranty.
That sounds very clever. I'm not surprised that it works so well for you, but I'm pretty sure a Bayesian SPAM filter will filter out emails with links to domains spammers use. I appreciate that doing this filtering on your mail server will save you some bandwidth, but it's probably easier for most people to use a mail program with an intelligent "junk" button.
Just in case anyone here isn't aware, Mozilla Thunderbird is an excellent free mail program that does smart filtering. I haven't seen much SPAM since I started using it.
Okay, so to summarize the first page of that, if I don't want to be humiliated by a machine, I should challenge it to a game of go.
Honestly, a friend of mine heard about Deep Blue and wondered why there haven't been attempts to make the perfect machine player at other games and sports. Like wrestling. I bet you could make a machine that would destroy any wrestler stupid enough to tackle it.
My favorite was the ultimate bowling machine. We actually designed this while sitting in the car talking. You take a ramp, put the ball at the top and line it up so that it points just left of the center pin, and you've got a world champion! Go machines!
It seems as though Microsoft was just following Unix as they did with a lot of features. I've only used Unix in University computer labs, but we used the msg command a lot when we discovered it (we didn't know how to run ICQ on our terminals at that time).
The only difference between msg and net send is that msg pops text into your terminal window and msg uses a popup. This is probably because windows machines don't necessarily have a terminal window open. Believe me, if you are using a command line you will be just as annoyed with somebody throwing a half page text add into it. As far as I know, msg can be exploited just as easily, it's just more obscure.
Imagine yourself without an IM. Then you'll appreciate why this was useful. Instant Messengers are just a prettier version of msg and net send.
Although you really can't auto-filter incoming calls, and they ARE far more annoying than email SPAM, a lot of people waste valuable time and concentration by actually responding to the phone spammer rather than just putting the phone down. Don't give a phone spammer any more attention than you give an email before you hit "delete".
If you aren't expecting any calls, you can also say "Hang on a sec I'll be right back" and then put the phone down leaving it off the hook. This will at least waste some of their time.
Along with what jovlinger said, you can create tagged addresses to give out to anyone you choose. You don't post these ones publicly because they require no "challenge-response".
A full working scheme for whitelisting and tagged addressing can be found here.
The only thing that can get through this kind of filtering is an extremely smart spammer who (as srw described above) can find the address of somebody on your whitelist to put in it's "from" field, or email worms which will most likely come from people on your whitelist.
Email worms are another problem altogether, but spammers smart enough to spoof your friends are something no filter can properly deal with right now. In the meantime, Dacin Santa is right. Whitelisting is more work (if you use the full scheme), but it's the best way.
"...until the Windows-Only people are so numerous that there are no more Unix jobs, everyone's switched to windows shops to take advantage of the dime-a-dozen nature of the programmers."
Much like the universe destroying itself and reforming into a more complex and unmanageable state, it is theorized that this has already happened.
"Well, a well engineered supercomputer has much less overhead than a cluster. One superfast processor doesn't have to deal with interprocessor communications like a cluster does."
I like the way Cray put it:
"If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"
- Seymour Cray (1925-1996), father of supercomputing
And how about a few more Cray quotes?
"#3 pencils and quadrille pads."
- Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer; he also recommended using the back side of the pages so that the lines were not so dominant.
"I just bought a Mac to help me design the next Cray."
- Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when was informed that Apple Inc. had recently bought a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac.
I wonder what he's using now? a Palmpilot?
"SARS Contained"
on
SARS Contained
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I like that. "SARS Contained". It has a nice ring to it.
Now, could we have this plastered all over your fear mongering channel? I believe you call it CNN.
"With all due respect: Taste differs. I don't there is something that everyone thinks is funny - there's nothing wierd or insightful in that, IMHO."
As for the last sentence, here is what it sounds like to me:
Well, while it is silly to say "I don't find this funny, therefore it is not", there are things that the vast majority of people find funny, and others that they do not. Some British researchers have actually looked into this. Their findings have been discussed here before.
As somebody else said, bleeping out cuss words at least works for comic effect. It makes it seem naughty. I noticed they didn't censor out his hand when he flipped off the audience. It was pretty fast though.
Gollum: "Frankly, nothing can compensate for the long hours and low pay, and miserable experience we've had making this f----ng movie. And if you think a sh---y little tub of gold popcorn is going to remotely make up for everything we've suffered, you're SADLY F----NG MISTAKEN!
Slashdot Mirror
That's a nice feature. It keeps Thunderbird as accessible as Mozilla Mail without keeping it in memory, but personally I don't use Thunderbird regularily anymore. I just keep GMail open in a browser tab and I have a little system tray app that forwards all of my mail accounts there. Used in this way, GMail is a web app that's as functional and fast as a local mail program, possibly more so, but it's just a tiny Java app.
.NET version and splits the user-base, thus defeating the purpoase of a cross-platform web app.
About the only thing I go back to Thunderbird for now is to open a newsgroup on my school server, but that functionality can easily be replicated. GMail has convinced me that email is something a web app can do better than a full program installed on your local machine and I see the web browser replacing many other functional applications with access-anywhere web apps.
I also started using Mozilla Sunbird recently (I desperately needed a day-planner), and this is also something from the Mozilla suite that could be done better as a web app. Sunbird has methods of posting your calendar online, but this would only become something anyone could do if it operated as an online service like GMail.
The only current downfall I see with web apps replacing local apps is those rare occasions when you are offline. However, a forward looking browser like Firefox could implement some kind of local caching of web apps and personal data and update all of your changes the next time you are connected. I would rather see the Mozilla foundation jump on this and implement it before Microsoft makes some kind of closed-standard
This is why I really like Firefox and hope to see it take over: it supports open standards. Ask any web developer about writing Cascaded Style Sheets. You spend a bit of time developing your page layout, and a lot of time finding workarounds and compromises to make it look reasonable in IE.
If IE holds onto it's market share long enough, it could come into another stage of development and force it's own closed web standards upon us again. Remember the browser wars? JavaScript is still scarred from them. If Firefox gets a head start on web-app development standards (IE seems to be in a dead stage right now), the first big web app development environment could be truly open and cross-platform, not proprietary, flawed and complicated like Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM).
Could we perhaps make farm equipment powered by locusts?
With the number I see in that first picture there should be enough to power a full-sized tractor.
Then again, they seem to be most attracted to crops and unlike shit, crops are already all over the ground in locust swarmed areas. Maybe we could figure out what part of the crop most attracts them and exagerate that feature to lure them away from the real thing into our deathtraps. It would be like the locust version of a Macdonald's restaurant; nothing can top the taste and the smell but then the cardiac arrest sets in.
Either that or some suits thought a movie with Bradbury's name attached to it would sell better. They clearly state his name in the trailer.
True, this posted torrent is illegal, but what it demonstrates is that P2P networks can be used to save bandwidth. Microsoft is not taking advantage of this right now, but it is plain to see that they quite easily could be.
The lesson here is not that P2P users should distribute popular releases on their own. The lesson is that companies should use P2P networks to distribute their releases. There are issues to overcome in verification, but those are not impossible, especially on a network like Bittorrent.
As somebody mentioned, Blizzard Entertainment uses torrent links to distribute their popular demo releases.
Every first aid or CPR course I've taken taught me to lean down next to a possible victim, put my ear next to their mouth and nose so I can listen and watch their chest for signs of breathing while I'm checking their pulse.
Finding no pulse would be alarming, but people don't breathe unless the blood flow is working somehow, so I would just assume they have a weak pulse that I couldn't feel.
The other thing you do before that is shake them to see if they're just sleeping. If I couldn't wake them up, they would need an ambulance either way.
Even if they weren't breathing and I couldn't find a pulse because of a constant flow heart like this, I would imagine an artificial heart would be able to continue working through the disruption of CPR. Still, if these come into use I can see them being mentioned in first aid courses. People with artificial hearts are some of the most likely victims of unconsciousness.
Someone already wrote an app to do that. It's called Pop Goes the Gmail. You can use use it regularily to view your Gmail in a mail app (although the web interface is better), or use it for one-time batch downloads.
You can get it here.
"PS: Not machine learning, but the sole requirement by me for a browser (dunno if its done in firefox now as hvent used it for a long time): Open new tab as a default rather than a new window, or at least provide the option."
There actually is an extension for Mozilla/Firefox that does this. It's called Single Window 1.0.
You can get it here.
That's interesting, but in practical terms one of the only web app I've used that actually runs as fast and conveniently as a local piece of software is GMail's web interface. I have actually stopped loading up Thunderbird in favour of keeping GMail open in one of my tabs. I'm sure there are others, but things like a mail app are the most important because they get the most use. For example, I use my bank's online site all the time, but the interface is the usual click-and-wait for everything. There's no other way to access that functionality (like a local banking app), but it still makes me wish for something better. I would even consider switching banks if one of them actually made a faster web app for me. My point is: how important is the web interface when it still comes off as a clunky version of a local app? Will we start to use web apps for everything from spreadsheets, to instant messaging? If so, I'm extatic that an open browser like Firefox could be leading the way and pushing sensible standards, but otherwise Linux is still our real hope for an open undictated world of software.
Wow.
I mean, WOW.
Dude that was beautiful.
If you were running for president of the internet, I would TOTALY vote for you.
When I was a kid we called this Magic Mud.
Basically, you mix water and cornstarch and the result is a substance that feels hard when you poke it, but drowns your GI-JOE's like quicksand. It's nice to see the military has caught up to afterschool science.
That's a good question, but I'm going to guess that they will indeed have some hot babe play the girl in the suit, and that girl will indeed show up in the first preview. Sex sells. The hot babe factor will probebly end up being one of the major money making factors for this movie.
The big "OMG! It's a chick!" revelation we went through just won't be possible here.
You are the first reader I've decided to add to my "friend list". I don't know what this list does exactly, but judging by the name, I feel you should be on it.
I was reading an article in Canada's The National Post yesterday that interviewed an English speaking Iraqi. He said that a lot of Iraqi's are detained or apprehended needlessly at US guard checkpoints simply because they cannot speak English to the guards.
The interviewee used to do translation for the US army, but after an incident he is now being sought as a member of the former Iraqi army. Despite this, he still has less trouble going through checkpoints simply because he can explain his business in English.
As reported here.
At the time, I thought this meant that Wordperfect would basically become an alternative sister product to Word with full compatability. Why am I getting the impression from these comments that they are competing with Word?
Yeah, maybe I'm not seeing the logic of this setup either: "The robot is running Windows XP Home as an operating system and robot control software from Evolution Robotics."
So basically, they gave it a reason to kill itself, and the ability to do so. I hope that's covered in the warranty.
That sounds very clever. I'm not surprised that it works so well for you, but I'm pretty sure a Bayesian SPAM filter will filter out emails with links to domains spammers use. I appreciate that doing this filtering on your mail server will save you some bandwidth, but it's probably easier for most people to use a mail program with an intelligent "junk" button.
Just in case anyone here isn't aware, Mozilla Thunderbird is an excellent free mail program that does smart filtering. I haven't seen much SPAM since I started using it.
Okay, so to summarize the first page of that, if I don't want to be humiliated by a machine, I should challenge it to a game of go.
Honestly, a friend of mine heard about Deep Blue and wondered why there haven't been attempts to make the perfect machine player at other games and sports. Like wrestling. I bet you could make a machine that would destroy any wrestler stupid enough to tackle it.
My favorite was the ultimate bowling machine. We actually designed this while sitting in the car talking. You take a ramp, put the ball at the top and line it up so that it points just left of the center pin, and you've got a world champion! Go machines!
It seems as though Microsoft was just following Unix as they did with a lot of features. I've only used Unix in University computer labs, but we used the msg command a lot when we discovered it (we didn't know how to run ICQ on our terminals at that time).
The only difference between msg and net send is that msg pops text into your terminal window and msg uses a popup. This is probably because windows machines don't necessarily have a terminal window open. Believe me, if you are using a command line you will be just as annoyed with somebody throwing a half page text add into it. As far as I know, msg can be exploited just as easily, it's just more obscure.
Imagine yourself without an IM. Then you'll appreciate why this was useful. Instant Messengers are just a prettier version of msg and net send.
Although you really can't auto-filter incoming calls, and they ARE far more annoying than email SPAM, a lot of people waste valuable time and concentration by actually responding to the phone spammer rather than just putting the phone down. Don't give a phone spammer any more attention than you give an email before you hit "delete".
If you aren't expecting any calls, you can also say "Hang on a sec I'll be right back" and then put the phone down leaving it off the hook. This will at least waste some of their time.
Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Along with what jovlinger said, you can create tagged addresses to give out to anyone you choose. You don't post these ones publicly because they require no "challenge-response".
A full working scheme for whitelisting and tagged addressing can be found here.
The only thing that can get through this kind of filtering is an extremely smart spammer who (as srw described above) can find the address of somebody on your whitelist to put in it's "from" field, or email worms which will most likely come from people on your whitelist.
Email worms are another problem altogether, but spammers smart enough to spoof your friends are something no filter can properly deal with right now. In the meantime, Dacin Santa is right. Whitelisting is more work (if you use the full scheme), but it's the best way.
"...until the Windows-Only people are so numerous that there are no more Unix jobs, everyone's switched to windows shops to take advantage of the dime-a-dozen nature of the programmers."
Much like the universe destroying itself and reforming into a more complex and unmanageable state, it is theorized that this has already happened.
"Well, a well engineered supercomputer has much less overhead than a cluster. One superfast processor doesn't have to deal with interprocessor communications like a cluster does."
I like the way Cray put it:
"If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"
- Seymour Cray (1925-1996), father of supercomputing
And how about a few more Cray quotes?
"#3 pencils and quadrille pads."
- Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer; he also recommended using the back side of the pages so that the lines were not so dominant.
"I just bought a Mac to help me design the next Cray."
- Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when was informed that Apple Inc. had recently bought a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac.
I wonder what he's using now? a Palmpilot?
I like that. "SARS Contained". It has a nice ring to it.
Now, could we have this plastered all over your fear mongering channel? I believe you call it CNN.
"With all due respect: Taste differs. I don't there is something that everyone thinks is funny - there's nothing wierd or insightful in that, IMHO."
As for the last sentence, here is what it sounds like to me:
Well, while it is silly to say "I don't find this funny, therefore it is not", there are things that the vast majority of people find funny, and others that they do not. Some British researchers have actually looked into this. Their findings have been discussed here before.
As somebody else said, bleeping out cuss words at least works for comic effect. It makes it seem naughty. I noticed they didn't censor out his hand when he flipped off the audience. It was pretty fast though.
Gollum: "Frankly, nothing can compensate for the long hours and low pay, and miserable experience we've had making this f----ng movie. And if you think a sh---y little tub of gold popcorn is going to remotely make up for everything we've suffered, you're SADLY F----NG MISTAKEN!
YOU'RE ALL BASTARDS! MTV SUCKS! WE HATE YOU ALL!"
Smeagal: "Goodnight".