Remember when yahoo! had a useful catalog of sites? Remember when their search/catalog started sucking? remember when they added featres like email, new, stock quotes, chat, etc?
I do remember, and I don't miss their search feature... but I DO love (!) a lot of their other features. Their start page (My Yahoo!) brings everything together and lets me customize it to have use and value to me rather than just force content down my throat (MSN).
I pay for Yahoo! Mail and love it. I use Yahoo! Finance all the time for stock quotes and for their financial planning and budgeting tools as well as their credit monitoring. I use their address book and calendar across all modules. Their greeting cards are still free. Their travel site is my first destination to compare prices (though I rarely ever purchase from them). Their Yahoo! Shopping actually contains a decent mix of stores with some decent stuff. Their Yahoo! Visa card gives you excellent benefit points that have actually allowed me to buy a digital video camera. Yahoo! Messenger is still [one of?] the only instant messaging applications with video and voice (for calling Grandma in England or getting a little naughty). Their games are really fun to play, and completely free! They even used to have decent Fantasy Sports and Survivor pick'em games.
So yes, I remember.... but I don't miss their search engine and catalog.
I'm glad Google excels at that... I'll add their tool to my arsenal. For the rest I'll eat the Yahoo! dog food without looking back thanks.
If you're using spamassassin, check out a really neat set of rules called "Popcorn, Backhair & Weeds" written by one Jennifer Wheeler. Various versions are available on Chris' SA Rules Emporium. She's got a new one out called ChickenPox that seems to do a similar thing with punctuation.
You RegEx fans should check it out... it's a masterpiece!
--D
p.s. Define for me (in terms a computer can follow), what it means to write like a 5 year old.
I'd never heard the song and don't like the band, but obviously had heard the Wayne's World references. I wasn't about to buy a whole album, either of them or a rock compilation, and none of my friends had it...
Incidently, the first copy I got wasn't very good quality especially right in the middle. I've downloaded it twice since then and I either get the same crappy copy that's been swapped around like a cheap whore or that's how the original was recorded.
--D
p.s. Second song I downloaded was "Video Killed the Radio Star"... I felt it was somehow ironic. Somebody should remake it as "Digital Audio Killed the Music Biz"
There's plenty of open IM clients available for all number of platforms. Hell, there's gotta be like three in the top 25 list over at sourceforge.
Nobody has taken their own time to port one over to the Palm platform. Development on the Palm is pretty easy compared to a lot of platforms, I'm really surprised nobody has done it just for the sake of having it done. Why expect a commercial company to provide us something when we can build it ourselves? Aren't we Open Source, power-to-the-people, scree evil corporations that force feed us their closed clients?
I'm happily using Agile Messenger on my SymbianOS cellphone. Beats the hell out of 10 cent per SMS messages. I would even pay for the software if they weren't giving it out for free! As soon as they come out with a WiFi and GPRS Palm for under a million dollars, and somebody matches that with a reasonable cell data plan, then I'll switch back.
They actually maintain 6 different figures, with the one hovering around 5% being the one that gets reported in the media. The actual number of people really unemployment (as I take it to mean not having a job) is up around 9%-10%.
Where I currently work (IT shop for a network of hospitals), we have dozens (most of the new hires in the last 2 years I've been here) of people who basically took their job just to have a job. VPs who are now Business Analysts, Technical Service Managers now Level 2 Project Managers (basically project plans and meeting minutes), DBAs now data-entry technicians, trained technical L2 Help Desk people working normal call center jobs, Level 3 support geeks working the repair counter at Best Buy, etc. etc.
Some will say that it's because the dot-com boom put those people into high positions they didn't deserve, but these are very smart very qualified people with years of experience that is being completely unused in their current jobs.
As soon as the economy picks up, most of us will be leaving. That means that even if you think there's jobs available, the pool applying for them is those unemployed plus a large portion of people who want an appropriate-level job back. That may leave openings at their current positions, but a lot might not be backfilled.
So even if unemployment is only 10%, I think a better measure is how likely is it for those 10% to be able to find a decent job that fits their skill or experience level? I would say not very good at all unfortunately... and that's my measure of this so-called economic recovery.
It ain't working... mainly because it has absolutely nothing to base the words on. I'm getting a reasonable amount of false negatives where the bayes score is 40-60% sure it's spam. I'm thinking of upping the SpamAssassin score for that, but it's kind of not a good solution.
I know people are working on various rules to check number of consonants and average length of garbage words... interesting chase.
I really wonder how effective the actual spams are though. When you see garbage in your inbox do you even bother to open it? My wife honestly thought something was corrupt and just deleted the messages. I guess I don't see the point in this type of spamming (not like I entirely get the point of any other kind)...
I have tried to purchase a prepaid SIM since I got back from vacation in England the 3rd of December.
T-Mobile is the only carrier that offer prepaid GSM. And they only offer "just the SIM" at their corporate stores, not at authorized resellers.
I found it's cheaper to go to Target and but their starter kit then sell the phone on ebay for $10 and keep a spare charger and headset for your office.
I would say I can't wait for US carriers to get with the times like England and most of Europe have, but sadly we've been waiting for years with little to no progress... and this whole 850 GSM crap is a step in the wrong direction!
Best option for you (assuming Australia is GSM) is to come here and buy a T-Mobile EasySpeak "Starter Kit" which includes a basic Nokia phone (3370 or something like that w/ GSM) and a prepaid SIM card loaded with about $30 of minutes. That whole bundle will cost you about $65 from Target including a charger and wireless headset (required in some states).
Other options are Virgin Mobile which uses the Sprint PCS network. They're reasonably priced if you're going to use a lot of minutes per day. Avoid TracFone if you're not going to be here for less than 6 months. Avoid AT&T Prepaid just on general principle!!!
Check out this site for a complete list of the various prepaid options.
Interestingly, you can get refill cards for almost every tried of prepaid wireless at any grocery or convenience store and most electronics stores. Actually finding a prepaid SIM chip itself (just the chip, no phone bundle) has proven next to impossible.
Hope that helps! Please reply to this if you have any questions or need me to unlock your Nokia GSM phone (for free).
Right! One of the coolest things about the Segway is that it can spin around in a circle requiring no more space than its wheelbase.
Another nice thing about the Segway is that you move it (at least forward/backward) merely by adjusting your balance naturally. And you stop by doing a "whoa doggy" maneuver that is pretty instinctive.
I assume (article didn't say) this is more like a standard go-kart with a stop/go (or motorcycle flick of the wrist) and handlebars. I bet it won't be nearly as agile.
You're absolutely right. Even with the two tuners it's difficult to record any NBC shows on a Thursday night. If a conflict comes up I remove the NBC show (that often messes up two other recordings).
The good side effect of this is that we are no longer taping Friends! My wife realized at about 8:45 last night that the new Friends hadn't been taped, but when I told her she'd have to miss CSI in order to tape Friends she let it go.
NBCs loss, my gain! When Survivor comes back on, we might be forced to lose ER as well since it's starting at 9:59.
True enough, but as I've said in response to other stories, when I want "the experience" of film I'm going to watch it at home on DVD into my projector and surround sound. I don't use the projector every day, a normal TV works fine for watching broadcast (satellite)... same for the portable video, I only use it when I have hours to kill....
Example: Continental flight 608 returning from Houston at 8:40pm 2 weeks ago. In-Flight movie is so bad I can't even remember the name. Whip out my trusty 20gb Archos Multimedia and instead I get to watch American Beauty, a movie that I have longed to see since my brother thinks it's the best movie ever made (it wasn't) and my wife had already seen it and didn't want to watch it again. After the movie ended, I got a chance to listen to some little-known classical violin music in mp3 that was not offered on the inflight music channels. Arrive 4.5 hours later at SMF relaxed, entertained, and oblivious to what Disney (Michael Eisner is the devil) was force feeding to us on the plane.
Same reason I brought a Gameboy Advance on my trip to England over Thanksgiving. A different interesting way to keep myself entertained (after watching Minority Report of course, a movie my wife had no desire to see at home).
You've got the LCD screen there already, you've got a hard-drive, you've got decoder chips and buffers.... why NOT play video as well? Could I have listened to MP3s for 5 hours? Probably not actually...
I couldn't agree more... and a lot of sites weren't even legitimate sites selling the product, they were just pointers to various affiliate programs. I wish Google could come up with a way to reliably check for referer codes in "buy it now" type links.... of course, that would then discredit a lot of legitimate small niche sites (like mine) that happen to have amazon referals just for the extra revenue or providing a service of useful books or products to their own visitors.
Sticky situation, I was looking for info on my new racquetball racquet (since discontinued, so no longer on the manufacturers page) and couldn't find a single useful page. Even the spammy pages didn't have working links to actually buy one anymore!
You can get a similar effect in Google by adding a word or two of context to your search. Searching for "paris hilton" gets millions of links to sites claiming to sell the tapes, but searching for "paris hilton hotel" gets hotels in France.
The most under-utilized feature of Google I think has to be excluding keywords. For this query, I would use: +"paris hilton" +hotel -tape -porn and probably get much better results. If the word "naked" is never ever going to appear in a legitimate result page, you might as well exclude it.
Same goes for other things. I was looking for information on Microwaves and WiFi the other day... not the ovens, so -oven -food and I got infinitely better results.
As has been stated, they don't have the right to force you to watch their commercials, not do they have a "right" to preserve their existing revenue stream, but they do have a right to charge for their programming (that does cost them money to make and distribute).
Now, we as consumers have a choice to either watch commercials (and provide value to the advertisers), or otherwise pay (subscription usually) to NOT have them interfere with the programming.
I personally would be willing to pay for television content, but it would need to be delivered (and charged) in a way that I can use it. Video on Demand preferably, PVR a secondary option. That way I have a choice NOT to watch overpaid Ray Romano (who would require much subscription revenue to subsidise, think $9/episode) or Friends... but I could watch amateur road racing (who would kill for the exposure, and costs only $150k to produce each race).
Actually, check the website... looks like they're accepting bids/offers for companies to actually build the thing.
While cool looking, I'm not expecting to see a consumer version in stores anytime soon!
--D
p.s. Vaporware (even if it has a demonstration model) shouldn't be eligible for these types of awards. Maybe a design and engineering award, but not CONSUMER electronics.
Great! Now I can record 15 minutes of high definition glory on that whopping drive!
--D
Anyone remember the BBC Micro?
on
First Computers
·
· Score: 1
I could look it up, but I guess I'm just more curious if I was the only person who grew up with one. We had one at home in England (my dad has been in the computer biz since the beginning). Our school got one and I had to teach all the teachers how to use it. It was then I realized that there was money to be made doing this stuff!:)
Slashdot Mirror
Remember when yahoo! had a useful catalog of sites? Remember when their search/catalog started sucking? remember when they added featres like email, new, stock quotes, chat, etc?
I do remember, and I don't miss their search feature... but I DO love (!) a lot of their other features. Their start page (My Yahoo!) brings everything together and lets me customize it to have use and value to me rather than just force content down my throat (MSN).
I pay for Yahoo! Mail and love it. I use Yahoo! Finance all the time for stock quotes and for their financial planning and budgeting tools as well as their credit monitoring. I use their address book and calendar across all modules. Their greeting cards are still free. Their travel site is my first destination to compare prices (though I rarely ever purchase from them). Their Yahoo! Shopping actually contains a decent mix of stores with some decent stuff. Their Yahoo! Visa card gives you excellent benefit points that have actually allowed me to buy a digital video camera. Yahoo! Messenger is still [one of?] the only instant messaging applications with video and voice (for calling Grandma in England or getting a little naughty). Their games are really fun to play, and completely free! They even used to have decent Fantasy Sports and Survivor pick'em games.
So yes, I remember.... but I don't miss their search engine and catalog.
I'm glad Google excels at that... I'll add their tool to my arsenal. For the rest I'll eat the Yahoo! dog food without looking back thanks.
If you're using spamassassin, check out a really neat set of rules called "Popcorn, Backhair & Weeds" written by one Jennifer Wheeler. Various versions are available on Chris' SA Rules Emporium. She's got a new one out called ChickenPox that seems to do a similar thing with punctuation.
You RegEx fans should check it out... it's a masterpiece!
--D
p.s. Define for me (in terms a computer can follow), what it means to write like a 5 year old.
I'd never heard the song and don't like the band, but obviously had heard the Wayne's World references. I wasn't about to buy a whole album, either of them or a rock compilation, and none of my friends had it...
Incidently, the first copy I got wasn't very good quality especially right in the middle. I've downloaded it twice since then and I either get the same crappy copy that's been swapped around like a cheap whore or that's how the original was recorded.
--D
p.s. Second song I downloaded was "Video Killed the Radio Star"... I felt it was somehow ironic. Somebody should remake it as "Digital Audio Killed the Music Biz"
There's plenty of open IM clients available for all number of platforms. Hell, there's gotta be like three in the top 25 list over at sourceforge.
Nobody has taken their own time to port one over to the Palm platform. Development on the Palm is pretty easy compared to a lot of platforms, I'm really surprised nobody has done it just for the sake of having it done. Why expect a commercial company to provide us something when we can build it ourselves? Aren't we Open Source, power-to-the-people, scree evil corporations that force feed us their closed clients?
I'm happily using Agile Messenger on my SymbianOS cellphone. Beats the hell out of 10 cent per SMS messages. I would even pay for the software if they weren't giving it out for free! As soon as they come out with a WiFi and GPRS Palm for under a million dollars, and somebody matches that with a reasonable cell data plan, then I'll switch back.
--D
Score: +1 Troll, but absolutely correct
You are absolutely correct! I heard about it from this article at underreported.com which points to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
They actually maintain 6 different figures, with the one hovering around 5% being the one that gets reported in the media. The actual number of people really unemployment (as I take it to mean not having a job) is up around 9%-10%.
Here's their PDF explaining the various levels.
--Darren
Where I currently work (IT shop for a network of hospitals), we have dozens (most of the new hires in the last 2 years I've been here) of people who basically took their job just to have a job. VPs who are now Business Analysts, Technical Service Managers now Level 2 Project Managers (basically project plans and meeting minutes), DBAs now data-entry technicians, trained technical L2 Help Desk people working normal call center jobs, Level 3 support geeks working the repair counter at Best Buy, etc. etc.
Some will say that it's because the dot-com boom put those people into high positions they didn't deserve, but these are very smart very qualified people with years of experience that is being completely unused in their current jobs.
As soon as the economy picks up, most of us will be leaving. That means that even if you think there's jobs available, the pool applying for them is those unemployed plus a large portion of people who want an appropriate-level job back. That may leave openings at their current positions, but a lot might not be backfilled.
So even if unemployment is only 10%, I think a better measure is how likely is it for those 10% to be able to find a decent job that fits their skill or experience level? I would say not very good at all unfortunately... and that's my measure of this so-called economic recovery.
--D
It ain't working... mainly because it has absolutely nothing to base the words on. I'm getting a reasonable amount of false negatives where the bayes score is 40-60% sure it's spam. I'm thinking of upping the SpamAssassin score for that, but it's kind of not a good solution.
I know people are working on various rules to check number of consonants and average length of garbage words... interesting chase.
I really wonder how effective the actual spams are though. When you see garbage in your inbox do you even bother to open it? My wife honestly thought something was corrupt and just deleted the messages. I guess I don't see the point in this type of spamming (not like I entirely get the point of any other kind)...
--D
I have tried to purchase a prepaid SIM since I got back from vacation in England the 3rd of December.
T-Mobile is the only carrier that offer prepaid GSM. And they only offer "just the SIM" at their corporate stores, not at authorized resellers.
I found it's cheaper to go to Target and but their starter kit then sell the phone on ebay for $10 and keep a spare charger and headset for your office.
I would say I can't wait for US carriers to get with the times like England and most of Europe have, but sadly we've been waiting for years with little to no progress... and this whole 850 GSM crap is a step in the wrong direction!
--Darren
Trust me I've researched this.
Best option for you (assuming Australia is GSM) is to come here and buy a T-Mobile EasySpeak "Starter Kit" which includes a basic Nokia phone (3370 or something like that w/ GSM) and a prepaid SIM card loaded with about $30 of minutes. That whole bundle will cost you about $65 from Target including a charger and wireless headset (required in some states).
Other options are Virgin Mobile which uses the Sprint PCS network. They're reasonably priced if you're going to use a lot of minutes per day. Avoid TracFone if you're not going to be here for less than 6 months. Avoid AT&T Prepaid just on general principle!!!
Check out this site for a complete list of the various prepaid options.
Interestingly, you can get refill cards for almost every tried of prepaid wireless at any grocery or convenience store and most electronics stores. Actually finding a prepaid SIM chip itself (just the chip, no phone bundle) has proven next to impossible.
Hope that helps! Please reply to this if you have any questions or need me to unlock your Nokia GSM phone (for free).
--Darren
Right! One of the coolest things about the Segway is that it can spin around in a circle requiring no more space than its wheelbase.
Another nice thing about the Segway is that you move it (at least forward/backward) merely by adjusting your balance naturally. And you stop by doing a "whoa doggy" maneuver that is pretty instinctive.
I assume (article didn't say) this is more like a standard go-kart with a stop/go (or motorcycle flick of the wrist) and handlebars. I bet it won't be nearly as agile.
--D
Haven't seen a first bill yet, but no mention of anything additional on their website. I'm expecting some.
--D
FrontierNet offering $24.95 for 12 months (although no contract). Free install, etc.
They're a bunch of idiots, took them 2 days to install and get running... that after ordering it in October and just getting installed this last week.
At least it's 3meg down 780k up even though they're not advertising any specific speeds.
--D
Where's the $99 or free w/ contract hardware and zero maintenance or tinkering in that equation?
Get that and you've got yourself a deal!
Or better yet, put your software stuff on their cheap/reliable box and you've got a deal!
--Darren
You're absolutely right. Even with the two tuners it's difficult to record any NBC shows on a Thursday night. If a conflict comes up I remove the NBC show (that often messes up two other recordings).
The good side effect of this is that we are no longer taping Friends! My wife realized at about 8:45 last night that the new Friends hadn't been taped, but when I told her she'd have to miss CSI in order to tape Friends she let it go.
NBCs loss, my gain! When Survivor comes back on, we might be forced to lose ER as well since it's starting at 9:59.
--D
True enough, but as I've said in response to other stories, when I want "the experience" of film I'm going to watch it at home on DVD into my projector and surround sound. I don't use the projector every day, a normal TV works fine for watching broadcast (satellite)... same for the portable video, I only use it when I have hours to kill....
--D
Example: Continental flight 608 returning from Houston at 8:40pm 2 weeks ago. In-Flight movie is so bad I can't even remember the name. Whip out my trusty 20gb Archos Multimedia and instead I get to watch American Beauty, a movie that I have longed to see since my brother thinks it's the best movie ever made (it wasn't) and my wife had already seen it and didn't want to watch it again. After the movie ended, I got a chance to listen to some little-known classical violin music in mp3 that was not offered on the inflight music channels. Arrive 4.5 hours later at SMF relaxed, entertained, and oblivious to what Disney (Michael Eisner is the devil) was force feeding to us on the plane.
Same reason I brought a Gameboy Advance on my trip to England over Thanksgiving. A different interesting way to keep myself entertained (after watching Minority Report of course, a movie my wife had no desire to see at home).
You've got the LCD screen there already, you've got a hard-drive, you've got decoder chips and buffers.... why NOT play video as well? Could I have listened to MP3s for 5 hours? Probably not actually...
--D
I couldn't agree more... and a lot of sites weren't even legitimate sites selling the product, they were just pointers to various affiliate programs. I wish Google could come up with a way to reliably check for referer codes in "buy it now" type links.... of course, that would then discredit a lot of legitimate small niche sites (like mine) that happen to have amazon referals just for the extra revenue or providing a service of useful books or products to their own visitors.
Sticky situation, I was looking for info on my new racquetball racquet (since discontinued, so no longer on the manufacturers page) and couldn't find a single useful page. Even the spammy pages didn't have working links to actually buy one anymore!
--D
You can get a similar effect in Google by adding a word or two of context to your search. Searching for "paris hilton" gets millions of links to sites claiming to sell the tapes, but searching for "paris hilton hotel" gets hotels in France.
The most under-utilized feature of Google I think has to be excluding keywords. For this query, I would use:
+"paris hilton" +hotel -tape -porn
and probably get much better results. If the word "naked" is never ever going to appear in a legitimate result page, you might as well exclude it.
Same goes for other things. I was looking for information on Microwaves and WiFi the other day... not the ovens, so -oven -food and I got infinitely better results.
--Darren
Check out BarMeet.com apparently a website devoted to the sport this lady has been arrested for.
Also, Oasis seems to have done a lot more serious stuff in public and only have minimal run-ins with the law.
--D
p.s.'s No affiliation with either site (and not even a member), and both are probably NOT safe at work. (thank god for half-days!)
As has been stated, they don't have the right to force you to watch their commercials, not do they have a "right" to preserve their existing revenue stream, but they do have a right to charge for their programming (that does cost them money to make and distribute).
Now, we as consumers have a choice to either watch commercials (and provide value to the advertisers), or otherwise pay (subscription usually) to NOT have them interfere with the programming.
I personally would be willing to pay for television content, but it would need to be delivered (and charged) in a way that I can use it. Video on Demand preferably, PVR a secondary option. That way I have a choice NOT to watch overpaid Ray Romano (who would require much subscription revenue to subsidise, think $9/episode) or Friends... but I could watch amateur road racing (who would kill for the exposure, and costs only $150k to produce each race).
--D
So I go out and buy the Radeon 9200 128... and a day later this review comes out. Anyone know Best Buy's restocking policy?
--D
p.s. Anyone offer a guess as to why the 128 performs no better than the 64?
I don't think I've ever heard the terms "X-Box" and "tiny game console" used in the same sentence!
Besides, what do you need a hard drive and a relatively high-powered graphics card for anyway?
Keep it simple, power, heat and space efficient.
--Darren
Actually, check the website... looks like they're accepting bids/offers for companies to actually build the thing.
While cool looking, I'm not expecting to see a consumer version in stores anytime soon!
--D
p.s. Vaporware (even if it has a demonstration model) shouldn't be eligible for these types of awards. Maybe a design and engineering award, but not CONSUMER electronics.
Great! Now I can record 15 minutes of high definition glory on that whopping drive!
--D
I could look it up, but I guess I'm just more curious if I was the only person who grew up with one. We had one at home in England (my dad has been in the computer biz since the beginning). Our school got one and I had to teach all the teachers how to use it. It was then I realized that there was money to be made doing this stuff! :)
--D