Help, Polly - your receipe for turkey goulash has a gummy taste to it. Can I double the ingrediants so it will fill us all up? Oops, I've got to go, Bill is complaining that the computer's printer port's address is 3bc and I have to show him how to change it. Oh and you were right, Robert Ulrich played Jim Street in the original "SWAT" TV Show.... Oh! I just realised I accidentally dialled 911 instead of Polly. Sorry officer, you can go back to sleep now.
If they don't want a print screen key, then give them a keyboard with that key removed.
Computers, like many electronic devices, take some time to learn how to use. Printing to a non-hardcopy is just one caveat of the advanced nature of computers. If people can't be bothered to learn that, they really shouldn't be using anything more advanced than a typewriter.
That's my harsh attitude, anyway. Do we want computers for advanced purposes, or for (frankly) morons who can't be bothered to learn/understand how to use semi-advanced devices? I, personally, want the former.
Of course pressing 'print screen' in graphical environments will often print the screen; to the computer's memory! You assume that 'printing' always has to mean 'send data to printer'?
Ehm, in all fairness, it's not all *that* inconceivable that the camera's batteries could keep a negligible amount of current flowing to allow USB access to the camera's memory card, even when the camera's turned off. I suspect some USB-based devices do. Having to turn the camera on is annoying.
To quote from on of my registrar(buydomains.com)'s prefs pages:
Whois Spam Protection To reduce the amount of unsolicited email that you receive, BuyDomains.com can hide your email address in the whois database. A "proxy address" (@emailaddressprotection.com) is displayed in the whois database, and BuyDomains.com automatically forwards email from the proxy address to your email address, which remains hidden. Each proxy address will automatically expire and change on a schedule that you specify.
I specify 28 days.
Transferred my domains away from Network Solutions to these guys years ago. I've never regretted it for one second, this lot are infinitely better. If you registrar doesn't offer WHOIS spam protection, bug them about it today!:-)
You guys have to pay to *withhold* your personal information from the phone book? Wow, that sucks! About time that was forcibly changed.
Here (UK), we're simply asked, when we get a phone line, whether we'd like to be ex-directory. I always reply 'yes'. Simple. It should always be so simple.
That's a limitation of the way the input box works in browsers
Wha?? An input box submission can submit pretty much any character you like; if it's a reserved character, it's merely escaped first.
http://www.google.com/search?q=dc%2B%2B...using URL encoding. Works perfectly.
So it does. I had no idea that was possible. So, why don't Google offer a way to do that natively, from their search box? Something like prefixing '!' to a search string to make it literal, so !"#funland" would escape any normally-ignored characters. This would be a 5 minute hack on Google's part, I don't know why they don't implement it.
I actually e-mailed them about it, and received a response that suggested it was a limitation in Google itself that prevented this, which your example seems to have blown out of the water. Quoting peacemeal from the response:
"As you've noticed, Google currently does not recognize search terms containing exclamation points, question marks, the @ sign, and other such characters. These characters are so common that including them in Google's index would greatly increase its size and hurt search performance. Furthermore, the use of punctuation on the Web is so inconsistent (for example, there's no obvious way to decide between Mr. and Mr) that including it in the query often does more harm than good.
That said, we know that many useful search terms do contain such characters. We've generated exceptions for terms like C++ and are studying ways to enable search terms like F# and C/net. We'll keep your feedback in mind as we work to improve the quality of our search."
Unfortunately, Google will *always* remove certain characters from your search (such as -, +, #, etc). In order words, you can't search for a truly literal string with Google. I e-mailed them about this and they admitted it was a genuine limitation of Google. Anyone know a search engine that lets you do a truly literal search?
Well, as Henry Spencer put it: "those who fail to understand Unix are destined to reimplement it -- poorly."... "and then make many billions and gain great power from that implementation"...?
Hmm. You almost sound like a troll, but I'll respond anyway.
their mandate is to reach the maximum of their achievable UK target market... This dictates which encoder is used and hence the player
Uh... this is utterly wrong. How does needing to reach a large audience 'dictate which encoder is used'? It doesn't. A far better encoder than Real's would be... well, just about anything, really.
I'm sure that the The BBC reserve all rights etc... How do the BBC know that your a UK license fee payer and not some random foreign freeloader?
An utterly invalid point. 1) They don't seem to have any reservations about offering numerous other free services to 'foreign freeloaders' such as BBC News, etc. 2) They also don't seem to have any reservations about offering the *streaming* video to 'foreign freeloaders'. What do you think their mentality is; that they will only offer the non-streaming video to UK citizens, but as I can't prove that I am one, they won't offer it at all? Clearly, I think their mentality is that they'll just offer everything for free, as otherwise they couldn't offer anything as proof of geographic origin is near-impossible on the internet. Therefore, what they're offering to everyone (including UK citizens) amounts to no more than a streaming version of the video(s).
the TV license is not mandatory and never has been - you don't have to own a TV (I have never owned one).
Nope. But for those of us who like to watch TV, it's some more damn good ammunition against the licence fee, isn't it?
They *are* busy - believe me, it's not personal.
It's pathetic.
I often send typo corrections to BBC news online, I seldom get a response, but the error is always corrected.
My problem has neither been responded to nor corrected.
Re:direct democracy not necessarily better
on
Public Net-work
·
· Score: 1
Oh, come on. We all know that if laws were decided by Slashdot polls, the relevant country would be a logical, sensible, fair, equitious fun place to be right now. With plenty of rights!:-)
When they bought the rights to use Real, it was practically the only cross platform media player available - some might argue that it still is
The player used is totally irrelevant. The BBC aren't in the business of issuing players; they're in the business of issuing media. All they need is a cross-platform (or open) *FORMAT* to release their videos in, not one that can be played in a player that's available for all platforms (and how cross-platform IS Real? Does it run on BeOS? OS2? The Amiga? A commadore 64? Open *FORMATS* make those all theoretically possible options). Sorry, but I don't call that 'technology savvy'.
The reason that it's streaming only is primarily because the BBC outsource a lot of programming to third party production companies who often grant the BBC broadcast rights, but nothing else.
I'm pretty sure that's just owned by the BBC, but they still insist it be streamed; this applies to the whole of Video Nation, as well. Why can't it be available in a non-streaming format? It's virtually unwatchable on 56k. Why can't it be available in an *OPEN* format? As a British citizen, the BBC is supposed to have a mandate to represent my views directly; we pay a mandatory licence fee to them. They should be providing all of their archives to the public in as many formats as possible! Greg Dyke, director general, recently announced his intention to do just that. No sign of it so far, though.
And how rude is just *not responding* to an e-mail I sent? How unprofessional? Not even an excuse for their lack of variety in video formats (although they have '56k' and 'broadband' quality, both are streamed, and somebody obviously doesn't know the speed of an average 56k connection; '56k quality' is unwatchable, without constant pauses, on the vast majority of 56k connections).
I think this reeks far more of sheer BBC laziness, as usual, than genuine technical savvy.
What is the registry all about, anyway? What's wrong with.ini files? They're much better. They're textfiles, that are local to an application, and application settings should be stored in.ini files and they should NOT be deprecated, as MS seems to be recommending.
One of the few applications in Windows to still use.ini files for its local settings is mIRC. I love it. I can move its directory anywhere I want, and even run it flawlessly from another OS (WINE in Linux or a Win98 installation) with NO need to set it up again.
In conclusion, the registry may be suitable for global, system-wide settings, but its only purpose for local application settings seems to be to make things more complicated and less compatible.
I totally agree with you, however, there's one little point: complaining to the website often results in nothing happening:-(
I recently fired off an e-mail complaining to the BBC's website that they only offered certain videos in.rm *STREAMING* format (useless for us 56k ers). I got no response. The idiots probably don't even understand the issues involved, and paid their money for the use of the encoding software, and don't see a good reason to change as they'd "lose their investment".
*sigh*. How do you win a battle that is unwinnable?
Ugh. That's in.asf, a streaming format. What is it about streaming video these days, what happened to letting me, on a 56k, download the fucking thing? My connection's so slow, I can't even see the video on it:-(
And this is entirely the customers' fault, and not the companies', for failing to a) pay the staff a decent wage and b) tacking that cost onto the actual paper bill?
Maybe tipping in the UK and Europe isn't so frequent because we have a mandatory minimum wage which is acceptably high, as opposed to those US states that don't.
A little while back, I was browsing through news groups and came across an article similar to this that said you could make thousands of dollars within weeks with only an initial investment of $6.00! So I thought, "Yeah right, this must be a scam", but like most of us, I was curious, so I kept reading.
Obviously, spammers don't know what 'most of us' are like.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks, Spoonman.
:-)
www.workorspoon.com has just qualified as the most hilarious website I've visited in half a year - welcome to my favorites list! Keep it up!
And CPU's are so blazingly fast (and have been for the past couple years) that it's rare to find an application where that's the case.
Try emulating something using protected mode memory with DOSbox.
I think it needs to be added to, though...
... Oh! I just realised I accidentally dialled 911 instead of Polly. Sorry officer, you can go back to sleep now.
Help, Polly - your receipe for turkey goulash has a gummy taste to it. Can I double the ingrediants so it will fill us all up? Oops, I've got to go, Bill is complaining that the computer's printer port's address is 3bc and I have to show him how to change it. Oh and you were right, Robert Ulrich played Jim Street in the original "SWAT" TV Show.
Bleh.
If they don't want a print screen key, then give them a keyboard with that key removed.
Computers, like many electronic devices, take some time to learn how to use. Printing to a non-hardcopy is just one caveat of the advanced nature of computers. If people can't be bothered to learn that, they really shouldn't be using anything more advanced than a typewriter.
That's my harsh attitude, anyway. Do we want computers for advanced purposes, or for (frankly) morons who can't be bothered to learn/understand how to use semi-advanced devices? I, personally, want the former.
Of course pressing 'print screen' in graphical environments will often print the screen; to the computer's memory! You assume that 'printing' always has to mean 'send data to printer'?
Ehm, in all fairness, it's not all *that* inconceivable that the camera's batteries could keep a negligible amount of current flowing to allow USB access to the camera's memory card, even when the camera's turned off. I suspect some USB-based devices do. Having to turn the camera on is annoying.
To quote from on of my registrar(buydomains.com)'s prefs pages:
:-)
Whois Spam Protection
To reduce the amount of unsolicited email that you receive, BuyDomains.com can hide your email address in the whois database. A "proxy address" (@emailaddressprotection.com) is displayed in the whois database, and BuyDomains.com automatically forwards email from the proxy address to your email address, which remains hidden. Each proxy address will automatically expire and change on a schedule that you specify.
I specify 28 days.
Transferred my domains away from Network Solutions to these guys years ago. I've never regretted it for one second, this lot are infinitely better. If you registrar doesn't offer WHOIS spam protection, bug them about it today!
You guys have to pay to *withhold* your personal information from the phone book? Wow, that sucks! About time that was forcibly changed.
Here (UK), we're simply asked, when we get a phone line, whether we'd like to be ex-directory. I always reply 'yes'. Simple. It should always be so simple.
With that card, he then collected fines for everyting we felt like doing..
Nice try, but you've let slip that YOU were in fact the person who stole the card. POLICE!!! ARREST THAT MAN!!!
That's a limitation of the way the input box works in browsers
...using URL encoding. Works perfectly.
Wha?? An input box submission can submit pretty much any character you like; if it's a reserved character, it's merely escaped first.
http://www.google.com/search?q=dc%2B%2B
So it does. I had no idea that was possible. So, why don't Google offer a way to do that natively, from their search box? Something like prefixing '!' to a search string to make it literal, so !"#funland" would escape any normally-ignored characters. This would be a 5 minute hack on Google's part, I don't know why they don't implement it.
I actually e-mailed them about it, and received a response that suggested it was a limitation in Google itself that prevented this, which your example seems to have blown out of the water. Quoting peacemeal from the response:
"As you've noticed, Google currently does not recognize search terms
containing exclamation points, question marks, the @ sign, and other such
characters. These characters are so common that including them in Google's
index would greatly increase its size and hurt search performance.
Furthermore, the use of punctuation on the Web is so inconsistent (for
example, there's no obvious way to decide between Mr. and Mr) that
including it in the query often does more harm than good.
That said, we know that many useful search terms do contain such
characters. We've generated exceptions for terms like C++ and are studying
ways to enable search terms like F# and C/net. We'll keep your feedback in
mind as we work to improve the quality of our search."
Hmm.
All governments do that and much more, and we are not 'in uproar'.
La engine du cherchez Frannnncais!!
:-(
Desole, mais les clients autres que le '.fr' ne permet pas.
Unfortunately, Google will *always* remove certain characters from your search (such as -, +, #, etc). In order words, you can't search for a truly literal string with Google. I e-mailed them about this and they admitted it was a genuine limitation of Google. Anyone know a search engine that lets you do a truly literal search?
Come on, we know Google is guilty of unfairly robbing other search engines of traffic. I'm using the superior SearchKing!
Well, as Henry Spencer put it: "those who fail to understand Unix are destined to reimplement it -- poorly." ... "and then make many billions and gain great power from that implementation" ...?
OMG!! Rewrite the Linux kernel, look what my reverse-rsync turned up!!!
...
Match windows.o linux.o
Line 528673492: MOV EAX, ECX
Hmm. You almost sound like a troll, but I'll respond anyway.
... This dictates which encoder is used and hence the player
their mandate is to reach the maximum of their achievable UK target market
Uh... this is utterly wrong. How does needing to reach a large audience 'dictate which encoder is used'? It doesn't. A far better encoder than Real's would be... well, just about anything, really.
I'm sure that the The BBC reserve all rights etc... How do the BBC know that your a UK license fee payer and not some random foreign freeloader?
An utterly invalid point.
1) They don't seem to have any reservations about offering numerous other free services to 'foreign freeloaders' such as BBC News, etc.
2) They also don't seem to have any reservations about offering the *streaming* video to 'foreign freeloaders'. What do you think their mentality is; that they will only offer the non-streaming video to UK citizens, but as I can't prove that I am one, they won't offer it at all? Clearly, I think their mentality is that they'll just offer everything for free, as otherwise they couldn't offer anything as proof of geographic origin is near-impossible on the internet. Therefore, what they're offering to everyone (including UK citizens) amounts to no more than a streaming version of the video(s).
the TV license is not mandatory and never has been - you don't have to own a TV (I have never owned one).
Nope. But for those of us who like to watch TV, it's some more damn good ammunition against the licence fee, isn't it?
They *are* busy - believe me, it's not personal.
It's pathetic.
I often send typo corrections to BBC news online, I seldom get a response, but the error is always corrected.
My problem has neither been responded to nor corrected.
Oh, come on. We all know that if laws were decided by Slashdot polls, the relevant country would be a logical, sensible, fair, equitious fun place to be right now. With plenty of rights! :-)
When they bought the rights to use Real, it was practically the only cross platform media player available - some might argue that it still is
m otorneuronedisease.shtml
The player used is totally irrelevant. The BBC aren't in the business of issuing players; they're in the business of issuing media. All they need is a cross-platform (or open) *FORMAT* to release their videos in, not one that can be played in a player that's available for all platforms (and how cross-platform IS Real? Does it run on BeOS? OS2? The Amiga? A commadore 64? Open *FORMATS* make those all theoretically possible options). Sorry, but I don't call that 'technology savvy'.
The reason that it's streaming only is primarily because the BBC outsource a lot of programming to third party production companies who often grant the BBC broadcast rights, but nothing else.
I'm pretty sure this isn't one of those cases. The video in question that I'd like to view is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/articles/b/beds_
I'm pretty sure that's just owned by the BBC, but they still insist it be streamed; this applies to the whole of Video Nation, as well. Why can't it be available in a non-streaming format? It's virtually unwatchable on 56k. Why can't it be available in an *OPEN* format? As a British citizen, the BBC is supposed to have a mandate to represent my views directly; we pay a mandatory licence fee to them. They should be providing all of their archives to the public in as many formats as possible! Greg Dyke, director general, recently announced his intention to do just that. No sign of it so far, though.
And how rude is just *not responding* to an e-mail I sent? How unprofessional? Not even an excuse for their lack of variety in video formats (although they have '56k' and 'broadband' quality, both are streamed, and somebody obviously doesn't know the speed of an average 56k connection; '56k quality' is unwatchable, without constant pauses, on the vast majority of 56k connections).
I think this reeks far more of sheer BBC laziness, as usual, than genuine technical savvy.
I remember the days when Adcritic used to be free. Then, some assholes took it over and made it sub-only. :-(
Yep.
.ini files? They're much better. They're textfiles, that are local to an application, and application settings should be stored in .ini files and they should NOT be deprecated, as MS seems to be recommending.
.ini files for its local settings is mIRC. I love it. I can move its directory anywhere I want, and even run it flawlessly from another OS (WINE in Linux or a Win98 installation) with NO need to set it up again.
What is the registry all about, anyway? What's wrong with
One of the few applications in Windows to still use
In conclusion, the registry may be suitable for global, system-wide settings, but its only purpose for local application settings seems to be to make things more complicated and less compatible.
I totally agree with you, however, there's one little point: complaining to the website often results in nothing happening :-(
.rm *STREAMING* format (useless for us 56k ers). I got no response. The idiots probably don't even understand the issues involved, and paid their money for the use of the encoding software, and don't see a good reason to change as they'd "lose their investment".
I recently fired off an e-mail complaining to the BBC's website that they only offered certain videos in
*sigh*. How do you win a battle that is unwinnable?
Ugh. That's in .asf, a streaming format. What is it about streaming video these days, what happened to letting me, on a 56k, download the fucking thing? My connection's so slow, I can't even see the video on it :-(
And this is entirely the customers' fault, and not the companies', for failing to a) pay the staff a decent wage and b) tacking that cost onto the actual paper bill?
Maybe tipping in the UK and Europe isn't so frequent because we have a mandatory minimum wage which is acceptably high, as opposed to those US states that don't.
A little while back, I was browsing through news groups and came across an article similar to this that said you could make thousands of dollars within weeks with only an initial investment of $6.00! So I thought, "Yeah right, this must be a scam", but like most of us, I was curious, so I kept reading.
Obviously, spammers don't know what 'most of us' are like.