> I am aghast at the some of the remarks to this news.
"Aghast" are we? At which remarks in partcular? My aunt died two years ago of pancreatic cancer at the age of 45, and it hit our family hard. I'm not aghast at the/. comments - I find some rather funny actually.
> a site who's HTML is so bad they've blocked > validator? I'm amused.
I'm trying to to toll, but I'm probably going to lose a heck of a lot of karma now...
In my experience, the sites that have the worst HTML are those written in perl.
I'm not a coder, so I may be jumping to the wrong conclusions, but is there something about perl that invites awful HTML?
Re:Are Single Function Devices King?
on
Birth of the iPod
·
· Score: 1
Well there we go - I never knew it had a calendar.
My perception of it (I don't have one, you can tell) is that it just plays music, 'cos that is how it's marketed. I wonder if it would sell any worse if it didn't have the extras - I doubt it.
> Three years later, he realizes he has spent as > much on repairs as he did on his initial > investment and says "screw this, I'm getting a > Dell."
Look, you're posting to SLASHDOT, remember, not to your grandma's visitors book...
Your portrayal of the unreliablity of no-name PCs is hopelessly exaggerated. I've run no-name PCs for various purposes for years and the failure rate of components is hardly that significant.
Maybe if SomeGuy was also kicking his machines as he walked by, moving them about the room while they were running, or pulling the power on them to shut them down - in which case I'll wager the Mac would keel over pretty soon too.
Does anyone think it's significant that the iPod is a single-function device?
It doesn't have wireless. It doesn't have a phone in it. It doesn't have a calendar. It doesn't have a [insert random function].
It just plays music.
Maybe I'm biased, because it just so happens that I've spent all day today facilitating user testing sessions for a mobile phone company. I just sat through about five hours listening to users of all ages and backgrounds saying things like "There are too many functions," "All this stuff is so confusing," "Why the hell would I want to do that?" "I just want it to do one or two things well, and that's it", etc.
Is it true that some of the sounds used in the original theme music for Dr Who were made by slowing down a recording of a nail being hammered into a piece of wood?
My music teacher once mentioned that, but I've never been interested enough until now to know if it was true.
Re:Use multiple sources of trusted authorities
on
An Online ID Registry
·
· Score: 1
I like this idea. With a points system you can also adjust it to suit the terrain: to be able to post to the bulletin boards you need 2 points, but sell goods up to the value of $1,000, 10 points, etc. You could even adjust the threshold per user if you were really evil.
But all this assumes you have something valuable in the first place that will make users want to jump through all these hoops to get it...
Although if you ask many early Detroit house and techno artists, they will cite European influences such as Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode. The Wire Magazine had some interviews with some of the people on the early Detroit scene.
Greylisting is cool, but it *does* increase bandwidth use. Since we're recommending alternative systems, I think you should also look at tarpitting, and the excellent Spamcannibal in particular.
Spamcannibal uses black lists (any RBLs you want). Once it identifies a spammer it attempts to choke them to death by preventing packets from leaving their machine on port 25.
Running Spamcannibal means that you are contributing to a network that prevents spam from getting to you AND others.
Of course, it relies upon the RBLs to be correct, but I'm sure there's no such thing as a perfect solution for the problem of spam.
Using "uncommon words" is something that you can only judge in context. Uncommon to whom? The man in the street, or the particle physicist? Similarly, long sentences: legal documents or patent applications deal with things that are complex, and need to be set out as accurately as possible, so often have lots of sub-clauses and lists, etc. In fact, short sentences in those situations actually makes it HARDER to understand the subject matter, since you tend to lose the "linking" ability of the syntax to help position the ideas.
If you mark your students down for long sentences and "difficult" words, then you would have probably flunked just about any technical writer of the 18th and 19th centuries - and I don't see anyone here slagging off Charles Darwin for being unclear or pretentious. Here's an example of his writing style:
Seedlings from the same fruit, and the young of the same litter, sometimes differ considerably from each other, though both the young and the parents, as Muller has remarked, have apparently been exposed to exactly the same conditions of life; and this shows how unimportant the direct effects of the conditions of life are in comparison with the laws of reproduction, and of growth, and of inheritance; for had the action of the conditions been direct, if any of the young had varied, all would probably have varied in the same manner.
That's one sentence! Lose a mark Darwin!
Or if you're American, how about the Bill of Rights:
The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.
A huge run-on sentence! And he said "beneficent" - deduct two marks for being a poser.
> More importantly, you don't want to create a > situation where someone will immediately benefit > from your death.
Hmm. Well, I have a will, which benefits my son from the age of 18. Come to think of it, my aunts and uncles stand to inherit shares of my grandfather's estate on *his* death. And he got that from *his* father on *his* death. Hey - maybe he killed him for the money?
Pfft.
I call your argument a red herring sir, and you, a pickled turnip.
I got the following batch files off the net somewhere, and it seems to work for Win2K and probably XP. To disable IE, run:
@echo off C: cd "\Program Files\Internet Explorer" if not exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto End if exist IEXPLORE.EX_ del IEXPLORE.EX_ if not exist IEXPLORE.DIR md IEXPLORE.DIR if not exist IEXPLORE.DIR goto End attrib -r -h -s IEXPLORE.EXE ren IEXPLORE.EXE IEXPLORE.EX_ if exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto End ren IEXPLORE.DIR IEXPLORE.EXE echo IE disabled. echo If prompted, click "Cancel" then "Yes" on File Protection restore. echo Run enable-ie.bat to allow IE to run again.:End
It still runs if you put a URL into a window bar though, but if your alternative browser is the default browser then it'll launch for everything else.
To re-enable Bill's little helper:
@echo off C: cd "\Program Files\Internet Explorer" if not exist IEXPLORE.EX_ goto End if not exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto Activate attrib -r -h -s IEXPLORE.EXE rd IEXPLORE.EXE if exist IEXPLORE.EXE del IEXPLORE.EXE:Activate ren IEXPLORE.EX_ IEXPLORE.EXE echo IE enabled.:End
BTW: On Win2K I (mostly) disabled IE by running this little batch file:
@echo off C: cd "\Program Files\Internet Explorer" if not exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto End if exist IEXPLORE.EX_ del IEXPLORE.EX_ if not exist IEXPLORE.DIR md IEXPLORE.DIR if not exist IEXPLORE.DIR goto End attrib -r -h -s IEXPLORE.EXE ren IEXPLORE.EXE IEXPLORE.EX_ if exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto End ren IEXPLORE.DIR IEXPLORE.EXE echo IE disabled. echo If prompted, click "Cancel" then "Yes" on File Protection restore. echo Run enable-ie.bat to allow IE to run again.:End
MSIE still runs if you put a URL into a window bar though, but if Firefox is the default browser then it'll launch for everything else.
To re-enable the stinking pile of crap that calls itself a web browser (OK that's a little harsh), run:
@echo off C: cd "\Program Files\Internet Explorer" if not exist IEXPLORE.EX_ goto End if not exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto Activate attrib -r -h -s IEXPLORE.EXE rd IEXPLORE.EXE if exist IEXPLORE.EXE del IEXPLORE.EXE:Activate ren IEXPLORE.EX_ IEXPLORE.EXE echo IE enabled.:End
> I can tell you cafe rates never approached $3.00
The prices in the article are converted at PPP (purchasing power parity) not "raw" exchange rates, so your calculation of "4 reis ~= $1.25" is bogus in this context.
> "The future will see video on demand delivered > over the Internet, and movies will be just one of > the offerings,'' he says.
OT (I seem to be posting a lot of these OT remarks lately), but this reminded me of the fact that the other day I was flicking through my copy of "Being Digital" by Nicolas Negroponte (whatever happened to him?) and saw a paragraph in which he predicts that Blockbuster video will be out of business by 2000 (or thereabouts) through the miracle of video-on-demand.
It's an interesting concept that if correctly deployed (big "if") by even a relatively few admins around the world, could really make a difference to the amount of spam on the net. It can also protect hosts against DoS attacks of various kinds.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not astroturfing this (much...). It has flaws - there are those who think blacklisting is a bad idea, and I can see their point of view on that - but I just think Spam Cannibal needs more visibility as an approach.
>Which is of course, why not use an official client >since you are in fact using their network and >resources to send messages.
If you have to ask that question, you've obviously not tried running the sorry pile of sh**t that Yahoo have for an IM client.
I'm pretty tolerant of free-as-in-beer software, for obvious reasons, but when Yahoo were dicking about with Trillian last year, I thought to myself sod it, I'll download theirs, since most (not all) of my friends are on Y!.
I persevered about three weeks and gave up. It's FAT and UGLY and the video stuff (which Trillian doesn't do) is slow and unreliable as all hell.
Trillian may be limited, but it's clean and unobtrusive, once you get used to the really confusing interface it has under the skin.
This is an old problem, and it's been solved by auditing.
If site owners and advertisers care about whether the traffic on sites is "real" in any way, then they're probably best off paying for an independent audit of the site's logs. Organisations like ABC//e for example here in the UK will do it, as will various other arounds the world. All use very similar methods and definitions (in fact they collaborate to define standard ways to audit metrics).
Sure, it's not perfect, any more than ABC's magazine circulation and readership audits are perfect, but that's not the point. It's the fact that the *same* measurement standards are applied to all that counts. So it's a level playing field (almost) and makes all these nit-picky arguments about cookies and stuff pretty much pointless.
Yes, but the devil's in the detail. In the court case, the police said they'd deleted Ian Huntely's files (containing records of him being accused of assaulting minors I think) because of the DPA's stipulation that personal data should only be kept only "for a long as necessary."
On a course, a teacher will say that data should only be kept for "as long as necessary." The student will ask "How long is that?" and the teacher will say "It depends on the data, the reason it's being kept, and the intended use of that data."
This is obviously nuts. The Inland Revenue says that records should be kept for seven years. Other records should be kept for longer (e.g. government records under the 60, 100 year rule etc.) So why the vague "you decide" thing with the DPA?
And that's just length of life. There are hundreds of vague provisions that ultimately depend on lots of local factors. Like the provision to "take reasonable measures" to protect the data. The only bit of guidance I could see on this was that if the data contained credit card details then it should be encrypted. No idea how, to what standard, or to whom. Just "encrypted". Whoopy doo.
A course might do something, but would probably give the students just enough rope to hang themselves with. Just like the Sussex Police.
> Does anyone here actually use a PDA for anything remotely interesting or useful
Not that interesting, but for me it's passwords. I have a cheapo Palm Zire 21 and use GraphViz's password manager to store all my account login details for various things. I find it easy to manage, and feel that I'm not worth an attempt to crack 128-bit blowfish so if I lose it or it gets stolen I'm fine as long as my backups work that is...
If anyone knows of a mobile phone that'll do this I might buy it though.
> This is a lie. It's not even maintained at the > national level, but at the district council > level.
Agreed - the OP was talking through his bottom, although it's a very widely held belief in the UK - I know lots of people who refused to sign the electoral roll duing the Poll Tax years because of this.
However, the government's proposed identity card system and the accompanying *centralisation* of just about all citizens' data (electoral and otherwise) could bring about the theft/abuse of such data for commercial purposes in my opinion.
> From personal experience, the OIC aren't good at > answering email on queries regarding the law
My personal experience was going to their site to look for guidelines on the use of cookies and the collection of anonymous data. Finding lots of "guidelines" about stuff (which are basically extracts of legal documents it seems), but nothing that seemed relevant, I mailed them my question. Three weeks later I got a reply, which was at least relevant, if amazingly long and almost as confusing as the other stuff on their site that I couldn't undertand either.
They've got a hell of a long way to go in my opinion. During the trial of Ian Huntely, the police even admitted they were confused about the DPA! What hope is there for the rest of us?
Much as I respect Mr Berners-Lee's achievements, I don't think that *every* idea he has about the web is in some way automatically wonderful. Like most great inventors, he had a few very good ideas. Also like most inventors, he probably has his fair share of ideas that suck.
I would say his vision of the "writable web" is one of those. If the web had become one huge wiki at an early stage, the ensuing chaos would have ensured the medium would never have been adopted by the general public in the way that it was. Like it or not, information architecture, eye candy and, yes, even editorial activity needed to happen for it to gain acceptance.
Slashdot Mirror
> I am aghast at the some of the remarks to this news.
/. comments - I find some rather funny actually.
"Aghast" are we? At which remarks in partcular? My aunt died two years ago of pancreatic cancer at the age of 45, and it hit our family hard. I'm not aghast at the
> a site who's HTML is so bad they've blocked
> validator? I'm amused.
I'm trying to to toll, but I'm probably going to lose a heck of a lot of karma now...
In my experience, the sites that have the worst HTML are those written in perl.
I'm not a coder, so I may be jumping to the wrong conclusions, but is there something about perl that invites awful HTML?
Well there we go - I never knew it had a calendar.
My perception of it (I don't have one, you can tell) is that it just plays music, 'cos that is how it's marketed. I wonder if it would sell any worse if it didn't have the extras - I doubt it.
> Three years later, he realizes he has spent as
> much on repairs as he did on his initial
> investment and says "screw this, I'm getting a
> Dell."
Look, you're posting to SLASHDOT, remember, not to your grandma's visitors book...
Your portrayal of the unreliablity of no-name PCs is hopelessly exaggerated. I've run no-name PCs for various purposes for years and the failure rate of components is hardly that significant.
Maybe if SomeGuy was also kicking his machines as he walked by, moving them about the room while they were running, or pulling the power on them to shut them down - in which case I'll wager the Mac would keel over pretty soon too.
Does anyone think it's significant that the iPod is a single-function device?
It doesn't have wireless.
It doesn't have a phone in it.
It doesn't have a calendar.
It doesn't have a [insert random function].
It just plays music.
Maybe I'm biased, because it just so happens that I've spent all day today facilitating user testing sessions for a mobile phone company. I just sat through about five hours listening to users of all ages and backgrounds saying things like "There are too many functions," "All this stuff is so confusing," "Why the hell would I want to do that?" "I just want it to do one or two things well, and that's it", etc.
Is it true that some of the sounds used in the original theme music for Dr Who were made by slowing down a recording of a nail being hammered into a piece of wood?
My music teacher once mentioned that, but I've never been interested enough until now to know if it was true.
I like this idea. With a points system you can also adjust it to suit the terrain: to be able to post to the bulletin boards you need 2 points, but sell goods up to the value of $1,000, 10 points, etc. You could even adjust the threshold per user if you were really evil.
But all this assumes you have something valuable in the first place that will make users want to jump through all these hoops to get it...
Although if you ask many early Detroit house and techno artists, they will cite European influences such as Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode. The Wire Magazine had some interviews with some of the people on the early Detroit scene.
Greylisting is cool, but it *does* increase bandwidth use. Since we're recommending alternative systems, I think you should also look at tarpitting, and the excellent Spamcannibal in particular.
Spamcannibal uses black lists (any RBLs you want). Once it identifies a spammer it attempts to choke them to death by preventing packets from leaving their machine on port 25.
Running Spamcannibal means that you are contributing to a network that prevents spam from getting to you AND others.
Of course, it relies upon the RBLs to be correct, but I'm sure there's no such thing as a perfect solution for the problem of spam.
If you mark your students down for long sentences and "difficult" words, then you would have probably flunked just about any technical writer of the 18th and 19th centuries - and I don't see anyone here slagging off Charles Darwin for being unclear or pretentious. Here's an example of his writing style:
That's one sentence! Lose a mark Darwin!
Or if you're American, how about the Bill of Rights:
A huge run-on sentence! And he said "beneficent" - deduct two marks for being a poser.> More importantly, you don't want to create a
> situation where someone will immediately benefit
> from your death.
Hmm. Well, I have a will, which benefits my son from the age of 18. Come to think of it, my aunts and uncles stand to inherit shares of my grandfather's estate on *his* death. And he got that from *his* father on *his* death. Hey - maybe he killed him for the money?
Pfft.
I call your argument a red herring sir, and you, a pickled turnip.
I got the following batch files off the net somewhere, and it seems to work for Win2K and probably XP. To disable IE, run:
:End
:Activate :End
@echo off
C:
cd "\Program Files\Internet Explorer"
if not exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto End
if exist IEXPLORE.EX_ del IEXPLORE.EX_
if not exist IEXPLORE.DIR md IEXPLORE.DIR
if not exist IEXPLORE.DIR goto End
attrib -r -h -s IEXPLORE.EXE
ren IEXPLORE.EXE IEXPLORE.EX_
if exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto End
ren IEXPLORE.DIR IEXPLORE.EXE
echo IE disabled.
echo If prompted, click "Cancel" then "Yes" on File Protection restore.
echo Run enable-ie.bat to allow IE to run again.
It still runs if you put a URL into a window bar though, but if your alternative browser is the default browser then it'll launch for everything else.
To re-enable Bill's little helper:
@echo off
C:
cd "\Program Files\Internet Explorer"
if not exist IEXPLORE.EX_ goto End
if not exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto Activate
attrib -r -h -s IEXPLORE.EXE
rd IEXPLORE.EXE
if exist IEXPLORE.EXE del IEXPLORE.EXE
ren IEXPLORE.EX_ IEXPLORE.EXE
echo IE enabled.
I've switched to Firefox fer good now.
:End
:Activate :End
BTW: On Win2K I (mostly) disabled IE by running this little batch file:
@echo off
C:
cd "\Program Files\Internet Explorer"
if not exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto End
if exist IEXPLORE.EX_ del IEXPLORE.EX_
if not exist IEXPLORE.DIR md IEXPLORE.DIR
if not exist IEXPLORE.DIR goto End
attrib -r -h -s IEXPLORE.EXE
ren IEXPLORE.EXE IEXPLORE.EX_
if exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto End
ren IEXPLORE.DIR IEXPLORE.EXE
echo IE disabled.
echo If prompted, click "Cancel" then "Yes" on File Protection restore.
echo Run enable-ie.bat to allow IE to run again.
MSIE still runs if you put a URL into a window bar though, but if Firefox is the default browser then it'll launch for everything else.
To re-enable the stinking pile of crap that calls itself a web browser (OK that's a little harsh), run:
@echo off
C:
cd "\Program Files\Internet Explorer"
if not exist IEXPLORE.EX_ goto End
if not exist IEXPLORE.EXE goto Activate
attrib -r -h -s IEXPLORE.EXE
rd IEXPLORE.EXE
if exist IEXPLORE.EXE del IEXPLORE.EXE
ren IEXPLORE.EX_ IEXPLORE.EXE
echo IE enabled.
> I can tell you cafe rates never approached $3.00
The prices in the article are converted at PPP (purchasing power parity) not "raw" exchange rates, so your calculation of "4 reis ~= $1.25" is bogus in this context.
BTW, the Economist has an interesting version of a PPP calculation based on big macs
> "The future will see video on demand delivered
> over the Internet, and movies will be just one of
> the offerings,'' he says.
OT (I seem to be posting a lot of these OT remarks lately), but this reminded me of the fact that the other day I was flicking through my copy of "Being Digital" by Nicolas Negroponte (whatever happened to him?) and saw a paragraph in which he predicts that Blockbuster video will be out of business by 2000 (or thereabouts) through the miracle of video-on-demand.
Hmm.
As it seems now obligatory to mention anti-spam systems whenever a /. story mentions spam, I thought I'd add the following:
Please have a look at Spam Cannibal
It's an interesting concept that if correctly deployed (big "if") by even a relatively few admins around the world, could really make a difference to the amount of spam on the net. It can also protect hosts against DoS attacks of various kinds.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not astroturfing this (much...). It has flaws - there are those who think blacklisting is a bad idea, and I can see their point of view on that - but I just think Spam Cannibal needs more visibility as an approach.
>Which is of course, why not use an official client
>since you are in fact using their network and
>resources to send messages.
If you have to ask that question, you've obviously not tried running the sorry pile of sh**t that Yahoo have for an IM client.
I'm pretty tolerant of free-as-in-beer software, for obvious reasons, but when Yahoo were dicking about with Trillian last year, I thought to myself sod it, I'll download theirs, since most (not all) of my friends are on Y!.
I persevered about three weeks and gave up. It's FAT and UGLY and the video stuff (which Trillian doesn't do) is slow and unreliable as all hell.
Trillian may be limited, but it's clean and unobtrusive, once you get used to the really confusing interface it has under the skin.
This is an old problem, and it's been solved by auditing.
If site owners and advertisers care about whether the traffic on sites is "real" in any way, then they're probably best off paying for an independent audit of the site's logs. Organisations like ABC//e for example here in the UK will do it, as will various other arounds the world. All use very similar methods and definitions (in fact they collaborate to define standard ways to audit metrics).
Sure, it's not perfect, any more than ABC's magazine circulation and readership audits are perfect, but that's not the point. It's the fact that the *same* measurement standards are applied to all that counts. So it's a level playing field (almost) and makes all these nit-picky arguments about cookies and stuff pretty much pointless.
Yes, but the devil's in the detail. In the court case, the police said they'd deleted Ian Huntely's files (containing records of him being accused of assaulting minors I think) because of the DPA's stipulation that personal data should only be kept only "for a long as necessary."
On a course, a teacher will say that data should only be kept for "as long as necessary." The student will ask "How long is that?" and the teacher will say "It depends on the data, the reason it's being kept, and the intended use of that data."
This is obviously nuts. The Inland Revenue says that records should be kept for seven years. Other records should be kept for longer (e.g. government records under the 60, 100 year rule etc.) So why the vague "you decide" thing with the DPA?
And that's just length of life. There are hundreds of vague provisions that ultimately depend on lots of local factors. Like the provision to "take reasonable measures" to protect the data. The only bit of guidance I could see on this was that if the data contained credit card details then it should be encrypted. No idea how, to what standard, or to whom. Just "encrypted". Whoopy doo.
A course might do something, but would probably give the students just enough rope to hang themselves with. Just like the Sussex Police.
Sorry, that should be "DataViz" not "GraphViz" (called Passwords Plus) See? It's so transparent I can't even remember the name of the thing.
> Does anyone here actually use a PDA for anything remotely interesting or useful
Not that interesting, but for me it's passwords. I have a cheapo Palm Zire 21 and use GraphViz's password manager to store all my account login details for various things. I find it easy to manage, and feel that I'm not worth an attempt to crack 128-bit blowfish so if I lose it or it gets stolen I'm fine as long as my backups work that is...
If anyone knows of a mobile phone that'll do this I might buy it though.
> This is a lie. It's not even maintained at the
> national level, but at the district council
> level.
Agreed - the OP was talking through his bottom, although it's a very widely held belief in the UK - I know lots of people who refused to sign the electoral roll duing the Poll Tax years because of this.
However, the government's proposed identity card system and the accompanying *centralisation* of just about all citizens' data (electoral and otherwise) could bring about the theft/abuse of such data for commercial purposes in my opinion.
> From personal experience, the OIC aren't good at
> answering email on queries regarding the law
My personal experience was going to their site to look for guidelines on the use of cookies and the collection of anonymous data. Finding lots of "guidelines" about stuff (which are basically extracts of legal documents it seems), but nothing that seemed relevant, I mailed them my question. Three weeks later I got a reply, which was at least relevant, if amazingly long and almost as confusing as the other stuff on their site that I couldn't undertand either.
They've got a hell of a long way to go in my opinion. During the trial of Ian Huntely, the police even admitted they were confused about the DPA! What hope is there for the rest of us?
You might also have a look at Spam Cannibal.
It's in the same sort of area - and interesting proactive approach to spam, and potentially worms as well.
Much as I respect Mr Berners-Lee's achievements, I don't think that *every* idea he has about the web is in some way automatically wonderful. Like most great inventors, he had a few very good ideas. Also like most inventors, he probably has his fair share of ideas that suck.
I would say his vision of the "writable web" is one of those. If the web had become one huge wiki at an early stage, the ensuing chaos would have ensured the medium would never have been adopted by the general public in the way that it was. Like it or not, information architecture, eye candy and, yes, even editorial activity needed to happen for it to gain acceptance.