When I go to google then I want them to list all of their competitors so I can clearly make my choice. If that's what MS is supposed to do, then Google should also.
Try googling for 'search engine'. Google is the ninth result. The others are either search engine webpages or agglomerations (pages that search using mutiple engines).
Now try the same search on msn. The first actual search engine result is fifth. Most of the others are SEO companies.
Who's giving you more choice (and a better search)?
Perhaps every car should also have a sensor to detect speeding and automatically cut the gas?
Most do. At a certain speed, all engine power is cut
Nearly.
The only common speed-related engine cut-out (at least in UK/Europe) happens at 155 mph (250 kph) and is implemented to save manufacturers fitting ZR-rated tyres to new cars. And it's not a simple cut-out, as this would be disorientating and dangerous. Instead, the ignition is gently retarded from 150 mph upward, followed by a reduction in throttle (for cars capable of this) or a more severe 'hard limit' where fuel injection is cut off. The idea is to make the limit feel 'natural', more like running out of power than hitting a brick wall.
You can argue me all you want, but just try nmaping fbi.gov and then you can explain it to the FBI and the courts when they knock on your door.
I'm in the UK, they'll need long arms to knock on my door:)
[root@ArMaDillo]#nmap -P0 -A www.fbi.gov
Starting nmap 3.50 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2006-03-02 02:37 GMT
Interesting ports on 194.217.240.73:
(The 1655 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
22/tcp open ssh Akamai-I SSH (protocol 1.99)
80/tcp open http AkamaiGHost (Akamai's HTTP Acceleration/Mirror service)
443/tcp open ssl/http AkamaiGHost (Akamai's HTTP Acceleration/Mirror service)
500/tcp open isakmp?
Device type: general purpose
Running: Linux 2.4.X|2.5.X|2.6.X
OS details: Linux Kernel 2.4.18 - 2.5.70 (X86), Linux 2.4.20 (Itanium), Linux Kernel 2.4.3 SMP (RedHat), Linux 2.6.0-test5 - 2.6.0 (X86)
Uptime 24.941 days (since Sun Feb 5 04:04:03 2006)
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 78.020 seconds
Buggers must get DDoS'ed quite a bit, they're using Akamai's caching network. Nice the see the feds supporting Linux:)
The point remains though, that I've still done nothing illegal, either here or there. If I so choose, I can do an nmap run on mod.gov.uk (the Ministry of Defence), mi5.gov.uk (the Security Service) or sis.gov.uk (the Secret Intelligence Service). There can be no crime in requesting standards-compliant information from a public-facing machine. Sensitive information will not be on those machines and should not even be accessible from them. The really important stuff shouldn't even be on a networked computer.
PS - www.sis.gov.uk is running Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer on Linux and doesn't seem to care who knows it:)
The BBC shows no ads since it is publicly founded with a stealth tax on households with TV sets in the UK.
An entry on my bank statement for 'TV licence direct debit' isn't particularly stealthy. It's right out in the open and has been since 1922 when it was introduced. A tax on new television receiving equipment would be stealthy, and there is one - it's called VAT and pays for, among other things, government self-promotion.
Minor quibble - Channel 4 is not publically funded, but is is a non-profit.
It supports itself by advertising on the main Channel 4, E4 and FilmFour (which is going free-to-view shortly - yay!) and by royalties/takings from the TV programmes and movies it produces.
And yes, the BBC is probably the only broadcaster that 'gets' the Internet - because it's one of the very few whose customers are viewers rather than advertisers.
A sobering thought, then, that this Bill has been pushed through by the elected House of Commons, when the unelected, archaic, undemocratic, etc. House of Lords, constitutionally unable to kill it outright, attempted to amend it into toothlessness and mire it in feasibility studies?
I'm waiting for a particularly odious Bill not to receive Royal Assent. Elizabeth II is probably too apolitical to refuse, but Charles looks as if he knows what happened at Runneymede
802.11 wireless networks run at 2.4GHz (to 2 s.f.).
Does this mean I can pull the PSU and magnetron out of an old microwave oven and build a wireless network jammer? Or add a dipole antenna and dish and make a long-range WAP killer?
I sense a beer drinker. If they ever come up with a way to turn fine British beer into Budwiser I'll let you know.
Easy! Just drink a few pints of Fuller's ESB, wait about an hour, and dispense the pale yellow fluid directly from your urethra into an appropriate receptacle.
the goal is to revive a law that was alredy struck down as unconstitutional.
This one bugs me. If a law is declared unconstitutional, shouldn't it be erased from the statute books, not be "prevented from being enforced"?
Also, since when could a Supreme Court decision be appealed? Isn't the SC supposed to be the final arbiter, the end of the road, the place where the buck does, finally, stop?
And, even given that the Government (rightly or wrongly) can appeal SC decisions, what are the grounds for an appeal? Has the law changed? No, it's on the books and cannot be altered without an Act of Congress. Has the Constitution changed? Not since 1992 (1971 for anything meaningful).
So, nothing pertinent has changed since the last time the matter was put before the Court. Most Appeal Courts would refuse to hear this. The SC should either do so now, or, if possible, deny it 'with prejudice' to prevent this or any successive Government trying it on again.
For the GP : calculus is the classic example of independent discovery; it basically validated the concept : that two or more people could have the same idea at (about) the same time.
When I was a kid I told my dad about an idea I had for a motor with a square in the middle instead of a piston. My pop informed me that the wankel engine was around a long time before I was.
At college I thought I'd invented the Class-D amplifier. I only found out about a month ago that I was over 50 years behind:)
Can't remember where I saw it, but somebody was painting flies near the drain holes of urinals, to reduce spillage. Seems men tend to get more in the receptacle when they(we) have something to aim at. I know I'd be encouraged by something like this
Where I live and work (Wales, UK and a warehouse in same) I'm in daily contact with people who don't seem to be able to get to the end of a sentence without saying 'fuck' at least once.
"So I went to the fuckin' shop for some fuckin' fags[1], an' I saw they 'ad the latest fuckin' [car|bike|console gaming] magazine, so I fuckin' 'ad that..." is a fairly typical example. These people seem to become completely lost, however, when something worthy of a decent curse happens. They've used up their vocabulary and are reduced to standing open-mouthed and helpless (or screaming, in the case of accidental self-injury).
Far better to save the (formerly) impressive curses for suitably momentous events, thus preserving your linguistic headroom.
[1]Cigarettes. With apologies to bash.org, it is illegal to traffic in homosexuals in the UK.
No, it changed because you swapped an engine designed for efficient highway cruising (the e in 325e stands for eta, the greek letter used to represent efficiency) for one built to make lots of power and be fun to drive. Your final drive ratio is probably making it worse, though, as it should be around 3.6.
See this site for all you could ever want to know about E30 BMWs and their engines.
I used to use google to search for song titles by lyric fragment. When I was at work, listening to the radio, if I liked the sound of a song, but didn't know or couldn't guess its title, I'd jot down a line or two on a sticky label (I work in a warehouse, plain paper is uncommon outside the offices, but labels are ubiquitous) and stick it to my sweater. On getting home, a few minutes with Google would usually get me a title and Audiogalaxy (remember that one?) would do the rest.
Of course, instrumentals and classical pieces were a bit harder:)
Flatly false. First off, we're talking about a homebrew cyclotron built by an amateur (civil engineering is not the right specialty). It might spew beta and x-rays around the full circle if it's improperly designed, built, or operated.
RTFA. It's not a homebrew. Click on the pictures for more info - it's a 'Scandiatronix MC16'. It came out of Johns Hopkins where it was used to manufacture medical radioisotopes. That's what Swank wants to use it for, too
Second, even a perfectly designed cyclotron will emit cyclotron radiation by definition. It's a required side effect of turning the beam.
From the next wiki article along: Cyclotrons produce spectrally-pure, very-bright far-ultraviolet(=less than 400nm), and soft, low-frequency x-rays, that are difficult to produce by other methods.
Neither of these are the 'hard' ionising radiation beloved of sensationalist news reports; they have many medical uses.
Given that Yahoo's front page is (html only, no images) over ten times bigger than Google's (2846 bytes vs. 31522 bytes) I think that only a deliberate downgrading of network speed from Google would make a noticeable difference. Perhaps a big enough one to be actionable? I don't know.
I am surprised that no-one has yet commented on Smith's claim that "Google allows clients to pay to influence the ranking of search results". That is libel, and actionable. Whilst I'm generally not in favour of litigation as a response to every slight, BellSouth needs to be taught a lesson here. Perhaps IBM could lend them a few Nazgul
I suspect the signs carry no legal weight whatsoever, but I don't know if anybody with a busted windshield, dented fender, or whatever has taken one of the trucking companies to court, or won in court.
Getting seriously OT here, but who cares..)
Here in the UK, companies running quarry trucks or the like will frequently pay up without question if you make a convincing (right vehicle, place and time) claim that your windscreen/bodywork was damaged by matter falling from one of their vehicles. An offence exists of 'Carrying an Insecure Load' for which a driver can be prosecuted, fined and have his licence endorsed with at least three penalty points (collect twelve in a three-year period and you are likely to be banned for a year). Companies don't want to lose drivers to this, so they (for the most part) don't overload, use tarpaulins whenever possible, and pay up fast when damage occurs.
It's called a paddywagon not because paddys get put into it, but because paddys drive it. Traditionally a large number of Irish-descended Americans work in city police forces.
In parts of London, the equivalent, usually a Ford Transit or Sherpa van is known as a 'meatwagon', reflecting the tender care applied to those lucky enough to experience a ride in one.
1) Why advance past cellular fission? It works, why change?
As somebody posted above, mutations do not need to be improvements. Change happens, mutations are random and do not require reasons.
2) Gestation periods are rediculous, it is totally the opposite of what SHOULD have evolved.
The more developed an organism is when born, the greater its chances of survival. Humans seem to buck this trend by being virtually helpless when born, even after a long gestation. An explanation for this is that the full development of the brain takes a long time, but the end result is worth it.
3)Animals in "heat", again, another pointless "advancement", what advantage does this have to anything?
Conceive the next generation at the same time and they will be born at roughly the same time. It's curious how often this coincides with the greatest availability of food.
Also.. how did trees evolve? what do plants actually gain? I mean... plants don't have any sort of survival instincts.
Prick yourself with a splinter of Greenheart, pick some nettles or go eat some deadly nightshade, then tell me plants have no survivalist tendencies. The surviving mutations in plants are those that increase the chances of the plants' survival. In the game of natural selection, survival is the only prize, and the competition is never over.
And just a side question, what stopped our evolution? Why don't wee see anymore advances? Even slight? Also... no known mutation is good, Sure people like to point out sickle cell anemia, but that seems to be considered a disability.
Where did you get the idea that evolution has stopped? It's running as fast as ever, maybe faster if you believe everything written about climate change. The reason you can't usually see it is that it is slow[1]. A thousand generations may not be enough to produce noticeable changes.Advances do happen, see here for an example. This also handily disproves your assertion than there are no good mutations. Sickle cell anaemia is a double edged sword, but still interesting. It is possible that further mutation could retain malaria (?) resistance without the debilitating effects normally present.
I would just like to point alot of people towards Cardinal Ratzingers "In the Beginning"[....]
ITYM Pope Benedict XVI:).
[1]A noteworthy exception is bacteria, where a thousand generations can pass in a fortnight.
Amen to all that. It runs on everything, optimises itself for everything and has the simplest software installation method I've ever seen (no.DLL or.rpm hell here, all dependencies satisfied).
I would advise providing a local distfiles mirror though - several thousand govt machines running 'emerge -uD world' would totally clobber NZ's little pipe.
It's quite easy for a company which has little cash to hold a gun to its creditors' heads and force them to settle for pennies on the dollar, if they are going to get worse terms later in bankruptcy court. I've seen this happen myself.
You're not going to see it happen here. If IBM were worried about financial costs, they would have bought SCO two years ago and saved millions in legal fees. IBM is not after monetary compensation, they are protecting their reputation. They have released the Nazgûl with instructions to sue until there is nothing left to sue, to purge the stain of an alleged breach of contract. They're even trying to find a way to drag Canopy Group and Darl McBride (personally) into this, to 'pierce the corporate veil' by proving both to have squandered investors money on a groundless lawsuit.
After the dust has settled, everything from SCO's name, trademark and website to Darl's office chair will be owed to IBM, who don't really want or need any of it. OK, it would be cool for them to release SystemV under the GPL (if it's not otherwise encumbered), but only as a curiosity or museum piece. This one's for the customers, the investors and the tech journals. The beancounters are being told to sit down and shut up.
Slashdot Mirror
Try googling for 'search engine'. Google is the ninth result. The others are either search engine webpages or agglomerations (pages that search using mutiple engines).
Now try the same search on msn. The first actual search engine result is fifth. Most of the others are SEO companies.
Who's giving you more choice (and a better search)?
Most do. At a certain speed, all engine power is cut
Nearly.
The only common speed-related engine cut-out (at least in UK/Europe) happens at 155 mph (250 kph) and is implemented to save manufacturers fitting ZR-rated tyres to new cars. And it's not a simple cut-out, as this would be disorientating and dangerous. Instead, the ignition is gently retarded from 150 mph upward, followed by a reduction in throttle (for cars capable of this) or a more severe 'hard limit' where fuel injection is cut off. The idea is to make the limit feel 'natural', more like running out of power than hitting a brick wall.
I'm in the UK, they'll need long arms to knock on my door :)
[root@ArMaDillo]#nmap -P0 -A www.fbi.gov
Starting nmap 3.50 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2006-03-02 02:37 GMT
Interesting ports on 194.217.240.73:
(The 1655 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
22/tcp open ssh Akamai-I SSH (protocol 1.99)
80/tcp open http AkamaiGHost (Akamai's HTTP Acceleration/Mirror service)
443/tcp open ssl/http AkamaiGHost (Akamai's HTTP Acceleration/Mirror service)
500/tcp open isakmp?
Device type: general purpose
Running: Linux 2.4.X|2.5.X|2.6.X
OS details: Linux Kernel 2.4.18 - 2.5.70 (X86), Linux 2.4.20 (Itanium), Linux Kernel 2.4.3 SMP (RedHat), Linux 2.6.0-test5 - 2.6.0 (X86)
Uptime 24.941 days (since Sun Feb 5 04:04:03 2006)
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 78.020 seconds
Buggers must get DDoS'ed quite a bit, they're using Akamai's caching network. Nice the see the feds supporting Linux :)
The point remains though, that I've still done nothing illegal, either here or there. If I so choose, I can do an nmap run on mod.gov.uk (the Ministry of Defence), mi5.gov.uk (the Security Service) or sis.gov.uk (the Secret Intelligence Service). There can be no crime in requesting standards-compliant information from a public-facing machine. Sensitive information will not be on those machines and should not even be accessible from them.
The really important stuff shouldn't even be on a networked computer.
PS - www.sis.gov.uk is running Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer on Linux and doesn't seem to care who knows it :)
An entry on my bank statement for 'TV licence direct debit' isn't particularly stealthy. It's right out in the open and has been since 1922 when it was introduced. A tax on new television receiving equipment would be stealthy, and there is one - it's called VAT and pays for, among other things, government self-promotion.
Besides, IMHO, the BBC is worth it.
It supports itself by advertising on the main Channel 4, E4 and FilmFour (which is going free-to-view shortly - yay!) and by royalties/takings from the TV programmes and movies it produces.
And yes, the BBC is probably the only broadcaster that 'gets' the Internet - because it's one of the very few whose customers are viewers rather than advertisers.
I'm waiting for a particularly odious Bill not to receive Royal Assent. Elizabeth II is probably too apolitical to refuse, but Charles looks as if he knows what happened at Runneymede
802.11 wireless networks run at 2.4GHz (to 2 s.f.).
Does this mean I can pull the PSU and magnetron out of an old microwave oven and build a wireless network jammer? Or add a dipole antenna and dish and make a long-range WAP killer?
Easy! Just drink a few pints of Fuller's ESB, wait about an hour, and dispense the pale yellow fluid directly from your urethra into an appropriate receptacle.
I'd say the part about appeals is still valid, though.
This one bugs me. If a law is declared unconstitutional, shouldn't it be erased from the statute books, not be "prevented from being enforced"?
Also, since when could a Supreme Court decision be appealed? Isn't the SC supposed to be the final arbiter, the end of the road, the place where the buck does, finally, stop?
And, even given that the Government (rightly or wrongly) can appeal SC decisions, what are the grounds for an appeal? Has the law changed? No, it's on the books and cannot be altered without an Act of Congress. Has the Constitution changed? Not since 1992 (1971 for anything meaningful).
So, nothing pertinent has changed since the last time the matter was put before the Court. Most Appeal Courts would refuse to hear this. The SC should either do so now, or, if possible, deny it 'with prejudice' to prevent this or any successive Government trying it on again.
Already happened. Well, nearly. But I don't think it will be long...
When I was a kid I told my dad about an idea I had for a motor with a square in the middle instead of a piston. My pop informed me that the wankel engine was around a long time before I was. :)
At college I thought I'd invented the Class-D amplifier. I only found out about a month ago that I was over 50 years behind
Can't remember where I saw it, but somebody was painting flies near the drain holes of urinals, to reduce spillage. Seems men tend to get more in the receptacle when they(we) have something to aim at. I know I'd be encouraged by something like this
"So I went to the fuckin' shop for some fuckin' fags[1], an' I saw they 'ad the latest fuckin' [car|bike|console gaming] magazine, so I fuckin' 'ad that..." is a fairly typical example. These people seem to become completely lost, however, when something worthy of a decent curse happens. They've used up their vocabulary and are reduced to standing open-mouthed and helpless (or screaming, in the case of accidental self-injury).
Far better to save the (formerly) impressive curses for suitably momentous events, thus preserving your linguistic headroom.
[1]Cigarettes. With apologies to bash.org, it is illegal to traffic in homosexuals in the UK.
See this site for all you could ever want to know about E30 BMWs and their engines.
Of course, instrumentals and classical pieces were a bit harder
RTFA. It's not a homebrew. Click on the pictures for more info - it's a 'Scandiatronix MC16'. It came out of Johns Hopkins where it was used to manufacture medical radioisotopes. That's what Swank wants to use it for, too
Second, even a perfectly designed cyclotron will emit cyclotron radiation by definition. It's a required side effect of turning the beam.
From the next wiki article along:
Cyclotrons produce spectrally-pure, very-bright far-ultraviolet(=less than 400nm), and soft, low-frequency x-rays, that are difficult to produce by other methods.
Neither of these are the 'hard' ionising radiation beloved of sensationalist news reports; they have many medical uses.
Given that Yahoo's front page is (html only, no images) over ten times bigger than Google's (2846 bytes vs. 31522 bytes) I think that only a deliberate downgrading of network speed from Google would make a noticeable difference. Perhaps a big enough one to be actionable? I don't know.
I am surprised that no-one has yet commented on Smith's claim that "Google allows clients to pay to influence the ranking of search results". That is libel, and actionable. Whilst I'm generally not in favour of litigation as a response to every slight, BellSouth needs to be taught a lesson here. Perhaps IBM could lend them a few Nazgul
George's Marvellous Medicine?
Shall we call this the 'Dahl Technique' for experimental chemical synthesis?
Getting seriously OT here, but who cares..)
Here in the UK, companies running quarry trucks or the like will frequently pay up without question if you make a convincing (right vehicle, place and time) claim that your windscreen/bodywork was damaged by matter falling from one of their vehicles. An offence exists of 'Carrying an Insecure Load' for which a driver can be prosecuted, fined and have his licence endorsed with at least three penalty points (collect twelve in a three-year period and you are likely to be banned for a year). Companies don't want to lose drivers to this, so they (for the most part) don't overload, use tarpaulins whenever possible, and pay up fast when damage occurs.
In parts of London, the equivalent, usually a Ford Transit or Sherpa van is known as a 'meatwagon', reflecting the tender care applied to those lucky enough to experience a ride in one.
As somebody posted above, mutations do not need to be improvements. Change happens, mutations are random and do not require reasons.
2) Gestation periods are rediculous, it is totally the opposite of what SHOULD have evolved.
The more developed an organism is when born, the greater its chances of survival. Humans seem to buck this trend by being virtually helpless when born, even after a long gestation. An explanation for this is that the full development of the brain takes a long time, but the end result is worth it.
3)Animals in "heat", again, another pointless "advancement", what advantage does this have to anything?
Conceive the next generation at the same time and they will be born at roughly the same time. It's curious how often this coincides with the greatest availability of food.
Also.. how did trees evolve? what do plants actually gain? I mean... plants don't have any sort of survival instincts.
Prick yourself with a splinter of Greenheart, pick some nettles or go eat some deadly nightshade, then tell me plants have no survivalist tendencies. The surviving mutations in plants are those that increase the chances of the plants' survival. In the game of natural selection, survival is the only prize, and the competition is never over.
And just a side question, what stopped our evolution? Why don't wee see anymore advances? Even slight? Also... no known mutation is good, Sure people like to point out sickle cell anemia, but that seems to be considered a disability.
Where did you get the idea that evolution has stopped? It's running as fast as ever, maybe faster if you believe everything written about climate change. The reason you can't usually see it is that it is slow[1]. A thousand generations may not be enough to produce noticeable changes.Advances do happen, see here for an example. This also handily disproves your assertion than there are no good mutations. Sickle cell anaemia is a double edged sword, but still interesting. It is possible that further mutation could retain malaria (?) resistance without the debilitating effects normally present.
I would just like to point alot of people towards Cardinal Ratzingers "In the Beginning"[....]
ITYM Pope Benedict XVI:).
[1]A noteworthy exception is bacteria, where a thousand generations can pass in a fortnight.
I would advise providing a local distfiles mirror though - several thousand govt machines running 'emerge -uD world' would totally clobber NZ's little pipe.
You're not going to see it happen here. If IBM were worried about financial costs, they would have bought SCO two years ago and saved millions in legal fees. IBM is not after monetary compensation, they are protecting their reputation. They have released the Nazgûl with instructions to sue until there is nothing left to sue, to purge the stain of an alleged breach of contract. They're even trying to find a way to drag Canopy Group and Darl McBride (personally) into this, to 'pierce the corporate veil' by proving both to have squandered investors money on a groundless lawsuit.
After the dust has settled, everything from SCO's name, trademark and website to Darl's office chair will be owed to IBM, who don't really want or need any of it. OK, it would be cool for them to release SystemV under the GPL (if it's not otherwise encumbered), but only as a curiosity or museum piece. This one's for the customers, the investors and the tech journals. The beancounters are being told to sit down and shut up.