but you're here to tell us that it has no meaning in this modern age
That isn't what I said, at all. I said that what it was written about was contemporary to the writer, that is what apocalyptic texts writers were doing. Of course, something written hundreds or thousands of years can have meaning now. There is plenty of modern relavance in meaning in, say, the writings of the Greek Philosphers. It wasn't written for us, or about out time, but it can still be relevant.
However, in the same way an ancient Greek text discussing democracy isn't talking about the US Electoral College, Revelation isn't talking about RFID tags, and for the same reason.
To understand what is being spoken about you have to understand context. One reason much of the imagery is weird is most readers (me included) don't share the cultural references of the writer. Revelation isn't just something at the back of the bible, it is one of a whole set of apocalyptic texts, deliberately cryptic works addressing contemporary issues.
The cryptic nature means, yes, you can re-interpret it in many was if you wish, and the interpretation may well have meaning or relevance for you, now. You may even choose to use something never written as a prophecy or predicition as one, your choice.
Of course, I'm looking it as a historical document. If as a matter of faith you think it is prophetic, despite the historical evidence of how apocalytic writing was used at the time, then you are going to have a very different view.
I wonder if this is coming closer to the Mark of the Beast that the bible talks about?
How can it be? Revaltions it was an apocalyptic writing (one of many) about the state of the Christian church at that time, under threat from both overt source (persecution) and more subtle ones (people lured to other faiths, such as worship of the Roman emporer).
Whatever the Mark of the Beast was supposed to be, it was something that existed then, not now. So it can't be RFID tags. Revelations was never a prophecey or prediction.
A quick Google turned up this which looks like a good starting point for finding out about apocalyptic writings.
If it is just a bit of fun, then isn't that all you would lose in the unlikely event of Valve vanishing, with no patch to remove the one time authentication?
Even then, it would only apply to people reinstalling, not existing installations of the game.
Anyway, you make it sound like people are giving up some fundemetal human right or invasion of privacy. They aren't, just $50 and having to authenticate.
I think the explanation for world wide flood myths is that floods happen all over the world. There isn't any reason to assume there was some global flood.
Hancock's stuff sounds plausable to a layman, I was fascinated by it when I first read it.
However, when you read some of the stuff debunking it (the BBC had a good programme on it) and talk to some archeologist you come to realise it is utter (but profitable) bunk.
I've logged into hotmail with firefox in the past, but I'm a Gmail user these days, so I don't know what the current state is.
I know FireFox won't run client side VB, which some of our intranet sites use, but then no Browser/OS combo but IE/Windows will.
In fact most IE specific stuff, like ActiveX controls, are really IE/Windows specific. People using them are locking out anyone using a different OS, or different browser on Windows.
Zones are nice for intranet stuff where you know you are completely in a secured development environment.
The problem with Zones is you only need to have a trusted one that lets stuff run for security issues. Many IE vulnerabilities work by fooling the browser into putting a website into it, than running malicous code. Even if you only put safe sites into it, the simple existance to the trusted zones is a great big security hole.
Da Vinci was probably one of the smartest human beings in history. He did both things he needed to do for money (like we all do) and what interestead him.
Intreset is the key, learning about things takes time. I know about computers, becuase they interest me. I know all sorts of histroy and science triva, because it interests me. I know little about cars and DIY becuase they don't. You see, time spent learning these things is time lost to me doing I something I don't enjoy. I value my time so I choose to spend my money having someone else do it.
I choose to remain ignorant about these things, becuase I can. You know what? I don't care about it being "unforgivable" in your eyes. There is too much in life for any human being to do, so choosing to prioritse your time, placing a value on it, is the only sensible course.
If you enjoyed the various activies you have done, great, good for you. Saving money though isn't always everyone's priority, sometimes circumstances may force people there.
Robots.txt isn't some thing that only applies to Google, it is (supposed) to be honoured by all search engines, and uses the Robots Exclusion Standard. So, when you claim these are Google's arbitary rules, you are in fact wrong. They are neither Google's nor arbitary (at least no more than any web standard).
So your clue, not so much of clue, as robots.txt doesn't fit your description.
As for why you should know about it, you are putting up a web site, it is part of running a web site. You might as well complain why you need to know about HTML, CSS or registering a domain name. Quite what coming from the UK has to do with it (something I also do), I have no idea.
"I simply do not want the average surfer to be able to visit my site, I am not interested in serving my pages to them, they simply would not appreciate or understand what it is I am showing."
Then a publicly accessable webiste is the wrong place. It is not your personal space, and it isn't private. You made it available to the world, nobody made you. To turn around and complain when (some of) the world visits it is hypocracy.
It's like putting up posters around a town, then running around complaining all these people are looking at them, won't appreciate them, and you don't want them too. It's also comes across as condescending and arrogant, which probably explains the nastiness of some of the responses.
You opted in when you put up the publicly accessable website. If all search engines had to be opt in, nobody could find anything on the web, and it would use a lot of its utility. Your assumed to want them crawling becuase the vast majority of people do, they want their site to be found. If you don't though, no problem, just use the standards for stopping searches, or password protect the site. No scandal at all, just hysterics.
Showing the low res thumbnail of your image isn't violating your copyright either. The only legitimate claim you have is the amount of time it took to remove something from the cache.
The "thieves" accusation is even more ridiculous. If you put something up on the web people can see for free, you can't complain. There are options if you want to protect it. Google doesn't claim you work as theirs (which would be 'stealing' or at least copyright violation), they help people find you public web site.
If you don't want a public website but made one, whose fault is that? If you are going to run a website and can't be bothered to find out how to do it properly, you can't blame Google.
If you RTFA you would see it was the forging his address that was illegal. Not relevant to other ads.
In the case of TV or papers the ads come from the person provinf the TV or paper. Spam doesn't come from the ISP, and isn't going to paying for your email.
Spam often comes from hijacked machines, has fake origins and frequently is fraud.
And the only reason for that crime is the harsh sentences? Obviously not. So what was your point? Maybe it does deter crime, that doesn't mean other factors don't push it up. You can't look at the percentage of the populaction incarerated, then just say one way of detering crime doesn't work. Context people.
I'm from the UK, and one area where I admire the US is tougher sentances and things like the three strikes rule. Even if it doesn't deter crime, sentences are also about punishment (that thing you do to the guilty) and show society these people have been punished.
The slashcode is messed up, but to be succesful Firefox is going to have to be able to cope with badly written web pages. The web is full of them, and they aren't going away.
When a user sees a badly rendered page that IE shows OK, they are going to blame the browser, not the code, whatever the truth.
I don't want even one checkbox in the preferences. Mozilla and Firefox do very well with mom & pops, which is very important for gaining market share.
While feature creep can be a problem, this is just silly. Until someone makes a computer that can read minds, it is going to need some options. It shouldn't be intimidating, but people need some choice or you turn off a lot of people who know a little about computers.
Fortunately, while you may not want one checkbox in the preferences, I can't see it happening.
Companies take that approach becuase it works. Loose a bit of stability and security (and maybe speed), but get the shiney feature in there. If one app does this, while another freezes ti make everything cleaned up and efficient, the 2nd will get slaughtered commercially (assuming they are roughly equal in other things).
FireFox is open source, so the developers don't have to do this. However, developers often prefer adding new stuff, so on an open source product that is what will get done. Plus a lot of people involved seem keen for it to grab some market share, so it has to compete with other browsers. Back to new features.
As a programmer for a company, I'd like to add it's often not about pride, there is a deadline to meet. The company has to make money, or I won't have a job. I like when I can take the time to do it properly, and be proud of it, but sometimes you just have to hack it to get it to work. You can be proud of the hacks though:) they are often quite ingenious little fixes, even if they aren't elegent or the most efficient.
I've found people care if they find one browser easier to use. Although it takes some people a while to connect spyware with IE, things like tabs and good pop-up blocking are imediate.
They are scared that something could come along and supplant the PC desktop and it's desktop based apps that their success comes from.
Despite the fact browsers, network computers, mobile phones and the like haven't done it yet. They want to be in every market that just might threaten their current dominance, and push things back to a PC destop hub to keep it relevant.
How often do most people search for files on their hard drive - my guess is not that often.
At home, no. At work, all the time. I have folders with code, folders with documents, archive Outlook folders, and current Outlook folders. All of which Google Desktop indexes, and searches very quickly.
Google Desktop search is far faster than Outlook's search, and will search all the archives at the same time. If I want to find a mail conversation about something, I use the desktop search. If I know I had a peice of SQL that updated a certain table, but can't remember exactly what it is called, I can use the desktop search. Find a presentation, announcement or memo that isn't very recent, search.
Just like on the internet, where these days I don't keep huge numbers of bookmarks, I just search. Now while I try to keep files on my machine reasonably orgnaised, if it is something more than a month or to old it is much quicker to search than to browse.
I know I keep my stuff way more organised than most people at work. I think it is the work environment where the deskptop search is most valuable. People have loads of important information scattered across their hard drives, and search lets them get there easily.
I need Outlook at work, but use Firefox. As for home, I switched the Thunderbird (and had no problems), but there are loads of mail reader programs out there. Sure people want a decent mail reader, but why does it need to be integrated into the browser?
I find tabbed browsing keeps things together much more neatly than seperate browsers. It's much quicker to flick between tabs than go to the task bar, change to another borwser instance, than may well come up in a different screen location and size.
Most apps allow multiple documents and a way to switch between them in the one instance of the app (although XPs taskbar does allow you to switch there too with some). For a long time the browser was really the odd app out.
Being able to open a link in a new tab is really handy, it loads up in the background, I can continue reading the page, then switch to the tab when I want. The ability to bookmark and open collections of tabs is also very useful.
Slashdot Mirror
While useful, I only found MusicBrainz any good when the file had a tag that had two out of three for the artist, album or track name.
To be honest, that is all I thought it used, I didn't know the TRM actually came from the music not the metadata. It doesn't seem very good then.
but you're here to tell us that it has no meaning in this modern age
That isn't what I said, at all. I said that what it was written about was contemporary to the writer, that is what apocalyptic texts writers were doing. Of course, something written hundreds or thousands of years can have meaning now. There is plenty of modern relavance in meaning in, say, the writings of the Greek Philosphers. It wasn't written for us, or about out time, but it can still be relevant.
However, in the same way an ancient Greek text discussing democracy isn't talking about the US Electoral College, Revelation isn't talking about RFID tags, and for the same reason.
To understand what is being spoken about you have to understand context. One reason much of the imagery is weird is most readers (me included) don't share the cultural references of the writer. Revelation isn't just something at the back of the bible, it is one of a whole set of apocalyptic texts, deliberately cryptic works addressing contemporary issues.
The cryptic nature means, yes, you can re-interpret it in many was if you wish, and the interpretation may well have meaning or relevance for you, now. You may even choose to use something never written as a prophecy or predicition as one, your choice.
Of course, I'm looking it as a historical document. If as a matter of faith you think it is prophetic, despite the historical evidence of how apocalytic writing was used at the time, then you are going to have a very different view.
I wonder if this is coming closer to the Mark of the Beast that the bible talks about?
How can it be? Revaltions it was an apocalyptic writing (one of many) about the state of the Christian church at that time, under threat from both overt source (persecution) and more subtle ones (people lured to other faiths, such as worship of the Roman emporer).
Whatever the Mark of the Beast was supposed to be, it was something that existed then, not now. So it can't be RFID tags. Revelations was never a prophecey or prediction.
A quick Google turned up this which looks like a good starting point for finding out about apocalyptic writings.
If it is just a bit of fun, then isn't that all you would lose in the unlikely event of Valve vanishing, with no patch to remove the one time authentication?
Even then, it would only apply to people reinstalling, not existing installations of the game.
Anyway, you make it sound like people are giving up some fundemetal human right or invasion of privacy. They aren't, just $50 and having to authenticate.
I think the explanation for world wide flood myths is that floods happen all over the world. There isn't any reason to assume there was some global flood.
Hancock's stuff sounds plausable to a layman, I was fascinated by it when I first read it.
However, when you read some of the stuff debunking it (the BBC had a good programme on it) and talk to some archeologist you come to realise it is utter (but profitable) bunk.
I've logged into hotmail with firefox in the past, but I'm a Gmail user these days, so I don't know what the current state is.
I know FireFox won't run client side VB, which some of our intranet sites use, but then no Browser/OS combo but IE/Windows will.
In fact most IE specific stuff, like ActiveX controls, are really IE/Windows specific. People using them are locking out anyone using a different OS, or different browser on Windows.
Zones are nice for intranet stuff where you know you are completely in a secured development environment.
The problem with Zones is you only need to have a trusted one that lets stuff run for security issues. Many IE vulnerabilities work by fooling the browser into putting a website into it, than running malicous code. Even if you only put safe sites into it, the simple existance to the trusted zones is a great big security hole.
Da Vinci was probably one of the smartest human beings in history. He did both things he needed to do for money (like we all do) and what interestead him.
Intreset is the key, learning about things takes time. I know about computers, becuase they interest me. I know all sorts of histroy and science triva, because it interests me. I know little about cars and DIY becuase they don't. You see, time spent learning these things is time lost to me doing I something I don't enjoy. I value my time so I choose to spend my money having someone else do it.
I choose to remain ignorant about these things, becuase I can. You know what? I don't care about it being "unforgivable" in your eyes. There is too much in life for any human being to do, so choosing to prioritse your time, placing a value on it, is the only sensible course.
If you enjoyed the various activies you have done, great, good for you. Saving money though isn't always everyone's priority, sometimes circumstances may force people there.
Robots.txt isn't some thing that only applies to Google, it is (supposed) to be honoured by all search engines, and uses the Robots Exclusion Standard. So, when you claim these are Google's arbitary rules, you are in fact wrong. They are neither Google's nor arbitary (at least no more than any web standard).
So your clue, not so much of clue, as robots.txt doesn't fit your description.
As for why you should know about it, you are putting up a web site, it is part of running a web site. You might as well complain why you need to know about HTML, CSS or registering a domain name. Quite what coming from the UK has to do with it (something I also do), I have no idea.
"I simply do not want the average surfer to be able to visit my site, I am not interested in serving my pages to them, they simply would not appreciate or understand what it is I am showing."
Then a publicly accessable webiste is the wrong place. It is not your personal space, and it isn't private. You made it available to the world, nobody made you. To turn around and complain when (some of) the world visits it is hypocracy.
It's like putting up posters around a town, then running around complaining all these people are looking at them, won't appreciate them, and you don't want them too. It's also comes across as condescending and arrogant, which probably explains the nastiness of some of the responses.
You opted in when you put up the publicly accessable website. If all search engines had to be opt in, nobody could find anything on the web, and it would use a lot of its utility. Your assumed to want them crawling becuase the vast majority of people do, they want their site to be found. If you don't though, no problem, just use the standards for stopping searches, or password protect the site. No scandal at all, just hysterics.
Showing the low res thumbnail of your image isn't violating your copyright either. The only legitimate claim you have is the amount of time it took to remove something from the cache.
The "thieves" accusation is even more ridiculous. If you put something up on the web people can see for free, you can't complain. There are options if you want to protect it. Google doesn't claim you work as theirs (which would be 'stealing' or at least copyright violation), they help people find you public web site.
If you don't want a public website but made one, whose fault is that? If you are going to run a website and can't be bothered to find out how to do it properly, you can't blame Google.
How many sites link to yours, and how do they rank in Google? That is going to determine your page rank more than the content of the page.
I'm sure I've seen some way of doing a sort of backwards search on a page, that will show all the pages in Google that link to it.
If you RTFA you would see it was the forging his address that was illegal. Not relevant to other ads.
In the case of TV or papers the ads come from the person provinf the TV or paper. Spam doesn't come from the ISP, and isn't going to paying for your email.
Spam often comes from hijacked machines, has fake origins and frequently is fraud.
And the only reason for that crime is the harsh sentences? Obviously not. So what was your point? Maybe it does deter crime, that doesn't mean other factors don't push it up. You can't look at the percentage of the populaction incarerated, then just say one way of detering crime doesn't work. Context people.
I'm from the UK, and one area where I admire the US is tougher sentances and things like the three strikes rule. Even if it doesn't deter crime, sentences are also about punishment (that thing you do to the guilty) and show society these people have been punished.
The slashcode is messed up, but to be succesful Firefox is going to have to be able to cope with badly written web pages. The web is full of them, and they aren't going away.
When a user sees a badly rendered page that IE shows OK, they are going to blame the browser, not the code, whatever the truth.
The Mozilla Foundation isn't trying to make profit. It isn't a company.
This whole open source and free software thing kinda passed you by, huh? ;)
Google Desktop searches your IE history, but not any other browser.
I don't want even one checkbox in the preferences. Mozilla and Firefox do very well with mom & pops, which is very important for gaining market share.
While feature creep can be a problem, this is just silly. Until someone makes a computer that can read minds, it is going to need some options. It shouldn't be intimidating, but people need some choice or you turn off a lot of people who know a little about computers.
Fortunately, while you may not want one checkbox in the preferences, I can't see it happening.
Companies take that approach becuase it works. Loose a bit of stability and security (and maybe speed), but get the shiney feature in there. If one app does this, while another freezes ti make everything cleaned up and efficient, the 2nd will get slaughtered commercially (assuming they are roughly equal in other things).
FireFox is open source, so the developers don't have to do this. However, developers often prefer adding new stuff, so on an open source product that is what will get done. Plus a lot of people involved seem keen for it to grab some market share, so it has to compete with other browsers. Back to new features.
As a programmer for a company, I'd like to add it's often not about pride, there is a deadline to meet. The company has to make money, or I won't have a job. I like when I can take the time to do it properly, and be proud of it, but sometimes you just have to hack it to get it to work. You can be proud of the hacks though :) they are often quite ingenious little fixes, even if they aren't elegent or the most efficient.
I've found people care if they find one browser easier to use. Although it takes some people a while to connect spyware with IE, things like tabs and good pop-up blocking are imediate.
They are scared that something could come along and supplant the PC desktop and it's desktop based apps that their success comes from.
Despite the fact browsers, network computers, mobile phones and the like haven't done it yet. They want to be in every market that just might threaten their current dominance, and push things back to a PC destop hub to keep it relevant.
How often do most people search for files on their hard drive - my guess is not that often.
At home, no. At work, all the time. I have folders with code, folders with documents, archive Outlook folders, and current Outlook folders. All of which Google Desktop indexes, and searches very quickly.
Google Desktop search is far faster than Outlook's search, and will search all the archives at the same time. If I want to find a mail conversation about something, I use the desktop search. If I know I had a peice of SQL that updated a certain table, but can't remember exactly what it is called, I can use the desktop search. Find a presentation, announcement or memo that isn't very recent, search.
Just like on the internet, where these days I don't keep huge numbers of bookmarks, I just search. Now while I try to keep files on my machine reasonably orgnaised, if it is something more than a month or to old it is much quicker to search than to browse.
I know I keep my stuff way more organised than most people at work. I think it is the work environment where the deskptop search is most valuable. People have loads of important information scattered across their hard drives, and search lets them get there easily.
I need Outlook at work, but use Firefox. As for home, I switched the Thunderbird (and had no problems), but there are loads of mail reader programs out there. Sure people want a decent mail reader, but why does it need to be integrated into the browser?
I don't run SP2 at work, becuase the company decides when it gets rolled out.
I don't run SP2 at home, I had to uninstall it. One of my favorite games, Freedom Force, won't run under it.
If you can run SP2, it is the smart thing to do. Assuming it doesn't break any programs you need.
I find tabbed browsing keeps things together much more neatly than seperate browsers. It's much quicker to flick between tabs than go to the task bar, change to another borwser instance, than may well come up in a different screen location and size.
Most apps allow multiple documents and a way to switch between them in the one instance of the app (although XPs taskbar does allow you to switch there too with some). For a long time the browser was really the odd app out.
Being able to open a link in a new tab is really handy, it loads up in the background, I can continue reading the page, then switch to the tab when I want. The ability to bookmark and open collections of tabs is also very useful.
I thought the plan was to eventually get rid of the suit and replace it with Firefox and Thunderbird? That would explain the lack of work on it.