I've been using Proxomitron (Windows) and Privoxy (Linux) to fix this sort of thing in Hotmail for years now-- it's a no brainer to add Google to the filters...
Check this message.-- it shows up in fixed-width (note it's in rec.arts.ascii), so there appears to be SOME logic trying to figure out what messages require fixed-width. Here's another that doesn't include Ascii art, perhaps they are using some logic that looks at the use of multiple spaces and concludes that it may be formatting...
I'll bet there's some stuff that breaks it though...
who is interested in answers to tech-questions asked around 1990?
People restoring antique tech-gear for one. But then they're probably ONLY interesting in finding answers around that time and would like to filter out later ones. Looks like they've put the date range search back though, so looks like Google got that message.
This may be a sign that an MS employee gets a bonus every time they patent something. No question that MS has patent fever-- what better way to get everything under the sun patented than to connect an employee perk to them?
Look for MS to next patent the GOTO HELL command-- while me, I'm trying to get the GOSUB HELL command patented and hope there's a RETURN down there somewhere...:-)
This is also what you get when you have a medical establishment that is:
--Socialized by training and expectations to "know it all" even when they don't-- and to consider their judgment as unquestionable by patients. Patients eventually findout M.D.s really don't "know it all" and subsequently will often discount any recommendations they don't like from M.D.'s as BS. M.D. credibility is significantly undermined by its socialized-in arrogance.
--In a serious conflict of interest with Pharmeceutical companies.
What you also get is:
--Increased interest in "alternative" medicines.
Patrick's reaction should be no surprise, despite the fact that seeking professional help would no doubt be in his best interest. But he's not the only one needing a wake-up call, by any means.
No one in this world, so far as I know_and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me_has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. -- H. L. Mencken
Apparently this is often quoted as "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
Mencken also said:
People can easily be persuaded to accept the most inferior ideas or useless products.
and:
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
The real reason to buy this may be simply because it's an open-source solution. Virtually any protection mechanisms can only be enforced by inhibiting the users ability to customize the gear as they see fit. Consumers of all electronic gear should patently refuse to buy hardware by companies that withold sufficient specifications in an attempt to thwart a user's ability to repurpose the equipment.
Unfortunately, most people don't understand the value of such customization, and will no doubt be taken in by the marketing engines of companies who sell closed equipment. User cluelessness is thereby costing all of us money and taking away our freedoms. But like the greedy sheep such users are, they will gleefully parade right into the slaughterhouse, chasing after a sparkly trinket and blissfully unaware of the ultimate consequences of their ignorance.
Let us all pause to curse the accuracy of P. T. Barnum's insight.
I wrote-in Nader today in California, though it was a bit confusing. I had printed out the instructions from Nader's web site which described how to do it on at least four different types of machines, and the machines at my venue turned out to be none-of-the above and were completely different-- all the others there was a space on the ballot card to write-in, but with mine the gray sleeve had a bunch of places to write in office and candidate. No pen though, and I got flustered enough digging one up that I forgot and left my Nader write-in instructions in the cube. I didn't intend to, and after leaving and then realizing it, I thought-- uh, oh, hope it doesn't cause some kind of stink. Then I thought, on the other hand, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it did! Some voters may have thought it was provided as part of the general instructions...
Chances Nader will even beat the margin are probably slim in California, but the old squeeze-play the gruesome twosome do on third parties is really abhorrent to me, and I see no reason to stop letting them know it in whatever little ways I can. I mean, at the very least the stress these guys have been subjecting themselves to must be horrendous-- maybe we can burn them out so much they won't have the energy to mess with stuff any further. Even the little bit Nader gets is enough to keep the pressure cranked on John and George when things are so close.
In 2000, it was clear to me that George W. Bush was an accident looking for a place to happen. And he did not disappoint in the least in that regard, in fact, exceeded my wildest imaginings. But the Dems were actually worse-- just rational enough to keep things from going too far all-at-once which spelled a long, slow, painful decline instead. Far better to get the worst over with quickly and hope some lessons get learned, IMHO, otherwise it'll just keep on happening. Without traumatic failure, "business as usual" remains far too acceptable. New lessons need to be learned, and the best lessons are often learned from the biggest mistakes-- George sure did deliver on those...
No matter who wins, they are now inheriting a collossal lose-lose mess. Huge deficits, worst international relations of all time, long-term QUAGmire in the middle east-- and we've divided our friends and united our enemies. If Kerry wins, the Republicans'll say "I told you so" every time something goes awry, and if Bush wins, the Dems will do that. And Kerry made way too many promises than we can afford. In either case, more taxes are no doubt on the horizon, and we're gonna need some way to shore up our overextended military which noone wants to think about. And the Republicans have been keeping their financial gut sucked in so hard to try to keep the economy looking good for the election, that when they finally get around to breathing again after the election all hell could break loose. Neither candidate is going to be able to "solve" the problem in the next term-- but at least if the Republicans win, there'll be far fewer folks thinking we were on the "right track" and that Bush did the "right thing" by the time 2008 rolls around, maybe there'll be a better chance then to "trow da bums out!".
The real shame is those true-blue heroes who valiantly rose up to defend us are paying the biggest price for these mistakes. I vote we stick George back in his uniform along with Rumsfeld and Cheney and order them to Iraq to deal with their mess firsthand.
If Nader can garner enough votes to exceed the margin between Bush and Kerry, then they are certainly NOT throwing their vote away. If a Nader vote "won't make a difference," why do you think the Dems are squirming so hard about it? It makes a HUGE difference-- it can mean the difference between who wins or loses, and sends a very important message-- that if the Nader voters WANTED to vote for either of the candidates, they'd get their way, being a large enough force to make the difference, but they don't because they know both of the choices are losers.
A voter for Nader is a vote to keep the third party foot in the door. The rest of you seem content with a simple choice between corporate loser-shill A and big buisness crack-whore B. The more pissed of you get at Nader, the more power it gives his message, so please, flame away!
Years ago, Richard Dawkins pointed out that 1) simple light sensitivity is an advantage over none at all, as (for example) if a predator is swimming over you it may mess with the light source at which point you might decide to "freeze" or hide, 2) that some simple light sensitive cells in a small depression can confer some directionality sensitivity which is better than not having any, 3) larger depressions with more cells are even better at it, 4) a depression that becomes a "pore" can confer some level of pinhole-camera vision, and a 5) pore that fills with mucus can provide further improvements over that. Each of these steps have more useful light sensitive mechanisms over the previous step, and with EACH of them, there are examples of actual animals in nature who have such features.
There's no "poof" here at all, that suddenly we've "magically" figured it all out--, multiple progressive incremental scenarios exist and it's not new news. All that is new here is a specific detail has been filled in.
If Linux costs more, that means it has singificantly more margin than Windows, which is an important appeal to anyone the term "sales," "marketing," "distributor" or "dealer" applies...
Keep up the good work Balmer-- such notes make it much easier for those who make a living off Linux distribution... I see $$$$$....
Whats new-- Microsoft's entire success is due solely to protectionist schemes-- any time they are forced to compete on a level playing field by design merit they fail miserably. Expect them to buy TiVo out, try to make some special deal with some big content company or instill one of their patents, in order to make their product "better" by locking the competition out-- it's just their way...
At least 2 inch high, pink flying elephants are fairly well defined. No point in disbelieving the existence of something the definition of which is left up to your imagination...
What's with all the open-sourcing of Microsoft stuff lately?
Open source software in general, are solutions to specific problems that a lot of people have in common.
Microsoft has several problems that open source is potentially a solution to. However, most of these problems are specific to Microsoft and are not problems that others have in common. For example:
- A need to counter the erosion of their developer community.
- A need (or perhaps, desire) to undermine the GPL.
- A need to counteract some of the bad press and loss of respect they've been getting in increasing amounts.
So, apparently Microsoft has figured that an involvement with Open Source is a solution to these problems. It aids the developer community and may make them feel better about Microsoft, it may help to foster a larger pool of Open Source but GPL-incompatible code that developers may choose over GPL'ed code, and undermines some of the "Microsoft is anti-open source" press they've been getting.
Problem is, they are choosing a solution to a problems that are unique to them, but solutions that are for the rest of us, supposed to solve common problems.
Consequently, the problem Microsoft hasn't solved with their foray into Open Source, is conflict of interest. This is pretty clear evidence that they still just don't get it, they really don't understand the general class of problems open source and in particular GPL'ed source is designed to solve-- and perhaps they just can't understand it as it is simply too alien to their "we must protect our market with lock-in, because we know we're not capable of doing it with quality" mode of thinking.
What Microsoft should be concerned about, IMHO, is why, even if they released all the source code to Windows as GPL'ed "free" software, millions would still be choosing Linux over it. THAT is the problem they need to solve, but in order to solve such a problem, one first has to recognize it, and meddling in open source for no apparent reason is inconsistent with that. Just like the way they seem to figure that if you mantra the term innovation long enough you might eventually either figure out what it is or convince people you have it anyway-- they now seem to want to mantra Open Source enough in the hopes some of its positive effects will rub off. But such mantras are just rituals-- embracing the means and abandoning the ends.
I suppose it's just as well, as by now even if they do recognize what their real problem is what's needed to solve it is a long, complex and very difficult problem at this point. They need a new OS that's clean, secure, reliable, efficient and modern that people will really want to use-- but such a project really does take a good decade-- Linux certainly has, it's about 15 years old now. So, they go the old route that all dinosaur companies do and try to salvage efforts they've already invested-- and consequently throw all the criteria they really need in a new OS right out the window in the process. It'd be a pity, if it was happening to a company that ever gave us any reason to care about them, instead it's just comic relief. They've always seen us as "consumers," looks like they never stopped to think what that makes them.
Do you think that these DRM schemes are going to let you record to a non-protected file and distribute it?
So are you saying that all the parents who want to put up a recording on their web page of their kid's first words for their relatives to hear won't be able to? Give me a break-- it'll never happen.
Sure, you can run all the free software in the world on your OpenBIOS computer. You will not be able to watch media, listen to media, surf the net, etc, because everything will require a "trusted" computer.
WRONG-- the only thing you can't watch will be the media that is controlled by the big corporations-- and I'm not interested in watching that anyway. By making it DRM unaccessible, they're doing me a big favor by isolating it away from the stuff I REALLY want to watch and listen to.
All this will do is foster an enormous "shadow" market of independent content producers who still treat their customers like customers, and not like consumers. Sounds like a good thing to me...
I've been using it, but it's got several annoying or dangerous misfeatures, not the least of which is its uninstaller will remove files the installer didn't create (make sure you don't download or otherwise put anything remotely important anywhere in it's program tree OR accidentally install it in a directory that already has stuff in it (such as "Program Files") as it just blows it away if you find the need to uninstall/reinstall) (version 0.9, at least).
And I hate how the "File->New Window" selection creates a new window with the HOME page, when EITHER a BLANK page or the CURRENT page (as in IE) is more often useful. I'm fond of "forking" pages so I don't have to "back" to get to something, all I have to do is "close." I've also found several cases where "open in new window" doesn't appear in the right-click menu, but "copy link location" does and I end up having to paste a copied link in a new window as a workaround. And so I end up setting the home page to blank just so I don't have to waste so much time loading it when what I'm trying to get is a link opened or the current page opened in a new window.
But considering the number of misfeatures or bugs IE has, Firefox is worth using...
Get real-- hat about all the useless random connections that will be generated by legions of morons while their computers are idle (or while YOUR computers are idle, via trojans, virii, worms, etc.), simply to fill the logs with useless gibberish? And all the connection "anonymizers" that will spring up? How much useless use of bandwidth is going to be encouraged with such a logging scheme?
The REAL question seems to be, when are we going to get some COMPETENT people in charge of national security, rather than the lameoids that keep come up with useless bureaucratic busiwork such as this?
Slashdot Mirror
You spent way too much time on that pic-- even the reflection in the water-- GET A LIFE! Or a job...
Google Groups Beta rewrites URLs in UseNet posts.
I've been using Proxomitron (Windows) and Privoxy (Linux) to fix this sort of thing in Hotmail for years now-- it's a no brainer to add Google to the filters...
Check this message.-- it shows up in fixed-width (note it's in rec.arts.ascii), so there appears to be SOME logic trying to figure out what messages require fixed-width. Here's another that doesn't include Ascii art, perhaps they are using some logic that looks at the use of multiple spaces and concludes that it may be formatting...
I'll bet there's some stuff that breaks it though...
who is interested in answers to tech-questions asked around 1990?
People restoring antique tech-gear for one. But then they're probably ONLY interesting in finding answers around that time and would like to filter out later ones. Looks like they've put the date range search back though, so looks like Google got that message.
Their desktop search engine is a machine wrecker as it hogs so many CPU cycles and can't be throttled in any way.
Huh? I've been running it since it first came out and haven't noticed ANY impact on performance. Have you done a virus check lately?
someone who hasn't been using Usenet for 20 years design the "new" interface.
Google-- get a clue-- if it ain't broke, don't fix it...
This may be a sign that an MS employee gets a bonus every time they patent something. No question that MS has patent fever-- what better way to get everything under the sun patented than to connect an employee perk to them?
Look for MS to next patent the GOTO HELL command-- while me, I'm trying to get the GOSUB HELL command patented and hope there's a RETURN down there somewhere... :-)
This is also what you get when you have a medical establishment that is:
--Socialized by training and expectations to "know it all" even when they don't-- and to consider their judgment as unquestionable by patients. Patients eventually findout M.D.s really don't "know it all" and subsequently will often discount any recommendations they don't like from M.D.'s as BS. M.D. credibility is significantly undermined by its socialized-in arrogance.
--In a serious conflict of interest with Pharmeceutical companies.
What you also get is:
--Increased interest in "alternative" medicines.
Patrick's reaction should be no surprise, despite the fact that seeking professional help would no doubt be in his best interest. But he's not the only one needing a wake-up call, by any means.
Then with the right sendmail filter, you can mail a query that will return you the data of interest.
Oops, guess it was one of Mencken's insights:
No one in this world, so far as I know_and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me_has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
-- H. L. Mencken
Apparently this is often quoted as "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
Mencken also said:
People can easily be persuaded to accept the most inferior ideas or useless products.
and:
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
The real reason to buy this may be simply because it's an open-source solution. Virtually any protection mechanisms can only be enforced by inhibiting the users ability to customize the gear as they see fit. Consumers of all electronic gear should patently refuse to buy hardware by companies that withold sufficient specifications in an attempt to thwart a user's ability to repurpose the equipment.
Unfortunately, most people don't understand the value of such customization, and will no doubt be taken in by the marketing engines of companies who sell closed equipment. User cluelessness is thereby costing all of us money and taking away our freedoms. But like the greedy sheep such users are, they will gleefully parade right into the slaughterhouse, chasing after a sparkly trinket and blissfully unaware of the ultimate consequences of their ignorance.
Let us all pause to curse the accuracy of P. T. Barnum's insight.
Time to make a stink in Illinois over that one.
I wrote-in Nader today in California, though it was a bit confusing. I had printed out the instructions from Nader's web site which described how to do it on at least four different types of machines, and the machines at my venue turned out to be none-of-the above and were completely different-- all the others there was a space on the ballot card to write-in, but with mine the gray sleeve had a bunch of places to write in office and candidate. No pen though, and I got flustered enough digging one up that I forgot and left my Nader write-in instructions in the cube. I didn't intend to, and after leaving and then realizing it, I thought-- uh, oh, hope it doesn't cause some kind of stink. Then I thought, on the other hand, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it did! Some voters may have thought it was provided as part of the general instructions...
Chances Nader will even beat the margin are probably slim in California, but the old squeeze-play the gruesome twosome do on third parties is really abhorrent to me, and I see no reason to stop letting them know it in whatever little ways I can. I mean, at the very least the stress these guys have been subjecting themselves to must be horrendous-- maybe we can burn them out so much they won't have the energy to mess with stuff any further. Even the little bit Nader gets is enough to keep the pressure cranked on John and George when things are so close.
In 2000, it was clear to me that George W. Bush was an accident looking for a place to happen. And he did not disappoint in the least in that regard, in fact, exceeded my wildest imaginings. But the Dems were actually worse-- just rational enough to keep things from going too far all-at-once which spelled a long, slow, painful decline instead. Far better to get the worst over with quickly and hope some lessons get learned, IMHO, otherwise it'll just keep on happening. Without traumatic failure, "business as usual" remains far too acceptable. New lessons need to be learned, and the best lessons are often learned from the biggest mistakes-- George sure did deliver on those...
No matter who wins, they are now inheriting a collossal lose-lose mess. Huge deficits, worst international relations of all time, long-term QUAGmire in the middle east-- and we've divided our friends and united our enemies. If Kerry wins, the Republicans'll say "I told you so" every time something goes awry, and if Bush wins, the Dems will do that. And Kerry made way too many promises than we can afford. In either case, more taxes are no doubt on the horizon, and we're gonna need some way to shore up our overextended military which noone wants to think about. And the Republicans have been keeping their financial gut sucked in so hard to try to keep the economy looking good for the election, that when they finally get around to breathing again after the election all hell could break loose. Neither candidate is going to be able to "solve" the problem in the next term-- but at least if the Republicans win, there'll be far fewer folks thinking we were on the "right track" and that Bush did the "right thing" by the time 2008 rolls around, maybe there'll be a better chance then to "trow da bums out!".
The real shame is those true-blue heroes who valiantly rose up to defend us are paying the biggest price for these mistakes. I vote we stick George back in his uniform along with Rumsfeld and Cheney and order them to Iraq to deal with their mess firsthand.
If Nader can garner enough votes to exceed the margin between Bush and Kerry, then they are certainly NOT throwing their vote away. If a Nader vote "won't make a difference," why do you think the Dems are squirming so hard about it? It makes a HUGE difference-- it can mean the difference between who wins or loses, and sends a very important message-- that if the Nader voters WANTED to vote for either of the candidates, they'd get their way, being a large enough force to make the difference, but they don't because they know both of the choices are losers.
A voter for Nader is a vote to keep the third party foot in the door. The rest of you seem content with a simple choice between corporate loser-shill A and big buisness crack-whore B. The more pissed of you get at Nader, the more power it gives his message, so please, flame away!
Years ago, Richard Dawkins pointed out that 1) simple light sensitivity is an advantage over none at all, as (for example) if a predator is swimming over you it may mess with the light source at which point you might decide to "freeze" or hide, 2) that some simple light sensitive cells in a small depression can confer some directionality sensitivity which is better than not having any, 3) larger depressions with more cells are even better at it, 4) a depression that becomes a "pore" can confer some level of pinhole-camera vision, and a 5) pore that fills with mucus can provide further improvements over that. Each of these steps have more useful light sensitive mechanisms over the previous step, and with EACH of them, there are examples of actual animals in nature who have such features.
There's no "poof" here at all, that suddenly we've "magically" figured it all out--, multiple progressive incremental scenarios exist and it's not new news. All that is new here is a specific detail has been filled in.
If Linux costs more, that means it has singificantly more margin than Windows, which is an important appeal to anyone the term "sales," "marketing," "distributor" or "dealer" applies...
Keep up the good work Balmer-- such notes make it much easier for those who make a living off Linux distribution... I see $$$$$....
Another bump in the Leukemia statictics, I'll wager...
Whats new-- Microsoft's entire success is due solely to protectionist schemes-- any time they are forced to compete on a level playing field by design merit they fail miserably. Expect them to buy TiVo out, try to make some special deal with some big content company or instill one of their patents, in order to make their product "better" by locking the competition out-- it's just their way...
At least 2 inch high, pink flying elephants are fairly well defined. No point in disbelieving the existence of something the definition of which is left up to your imagination...
That on the other hand that most music files on Windows PC's are actually paid for?
What a card...
What's with all the open-sourcing of Microsoft stuff lately?
Open source software in general, are solutions to specific problems that a lot of people have in common.
Microsoft has several problems that open source is potentially a solution to. However, most of these problems are specific to Microsoft and are not problems that others have in common. For example:
- A need to counter the erosion of their developer community.
- A need (or perhaps, desire) to undermine the GPL.
- A need to counteract some of the bad press and loss of respect they've been getting in increasing amounts.
So, apparently Microsoft has figured that an involvement with Open Source is a solution to these problems. It aids the developer community and may make them feel better about Microsoft, it may help to foster a larger pool of Open Source but GPL-incompatible code that developers may choose over GPL'ed code, and undermines some of the "Microsoft is anti-open source" press they've been getting.
Problem is, they are choosing a solution to a problems that are unique to them, but solutions that are for the rest of us, supposed to solve common problems.
Consequently, the problem Microsoft hasn't solved with their foray into Open Source, is conflict of interest. This is pretty clear evidence that they still just don't get it, they really don't understand the general class of problems open source and in particular GPL'ed source is designed to solve-- and perhaps they just can't understand it as it is simply too alien to their "we must protect our market with lock-in, because we know we're not capable of doing it with quality" mode of thinking.
What Microsoft should be concerned about, IMHO, is why, even if they released all the source code to Windows as GPL'ed "free" software, millions would still be choosing Linux over it. THAT is the problem they need to solve, but in order to solve such a problem, one first has to recognize it, and meddling in open source for no apparent reason is inconsistent with that. Just like the way they seem to figure that if you mantra the term innovation long enough you might eventually either figure out what it is or convince people you have it anyway-- they now seem to want to mantra Open Source enough in the hopes some of its positive effects will rub off. But such mantras are just rituals-- embracing the means and abandoning the ends.
I suppose it's just as well, as by now even if they do recognize what their real problem is what's needed to solve it is a long, complex and very difficult problem at this point. They need a new OS that's clean, secure, reliable, efficient and modern that people will really want to use-- but such a project really does take a good decade-- Linux certainly has, it's about 15 years old now. So, they go the old route that all dinosaur companies do and try to salvage efforts they've already invested-- and consequently throw all the criteria they really need in a new OS right out the window in the process. It'd be a pity, if it was happening to a company that ever gave us any reason to care about them, instead it's just comic relief. They've always seen us as "consumers," looks like they never stopped to think what that makes them.
Or equivalent? http://rockbox.haxx.se/
If not, I'll pass. If open-source firmware isn't available for it, I'll buy another model that does...
Do you think that these DRM schemes are going to let you record to a non-protected file and distribute it?
So are you saying that all the parents who want to put up a recording on their web page of their kid's first words for their relatives to hear won't be able to? Give me a break-- it'll never happen.
Sure, you can run all the free software in the world on your OpenBIOS computer. You will not be able to watch media, listen to media, surf the net, etc, because everything will require a "trusted" computer.
WRONG-- the only thing you can't watch will be the media that is controlled by the big corporations-- and I'm not interested in watching that anyway. By making it DRM unaccessible, they're doing me a big favor by isolating it away from the stuff I REALLY want to watch and listen to.
All this will do is foster an enormous "shadow" market of independent content producers who still treat their customers like customers, and not like consumers. Sounds like a good thing to me...
I've been using it, but it's got several annoying or dangerous misfeatures, not the least of which is its uninstaller will remove files the installer didn't create (make sure you don't download or otherwise put anything remotely important anywhere in it's program tree OR accidentally install it in a directory that already has stuff in it (such as "Program Files") as it just blows it away if you find the need to uninstall/reinstall) (version 0.9, at least).
And I hate how the "File->New Window" selection creates a new window with the HOME page, when EITHER a BLANK page or the CURRENT page (as in IE) is more often useful. I'm fond of "forking" pages so I don't have to "back" to get to something, all I have to do is "close." I've also found several cases where "open in new window" doesn't appear in the right-click menu, but "copy link location" does and I end up having to paste a copied link in a new window as a workaround. And so I end up setting the home page to blank just so I don't have to waste so much time loading it when what I'm trying to get is a link opened or the current page opened in a new window.
But considering the number of misfeatures or bugs IE has, Firefox is worth using...
Get real-- hat about all the useless random connections that will be generated by legions of morons while their computers are idle (or while YOUR computers are idle, via trojans, virii, worms, etc.), simply to fill the logs with useless gibberish? And all the connection "anonymizers" that will spring up? How much useless use of bandwidth is going to be encouraged with such a logging scheme?
The REAL question seems to be, when are we going to get some COMPETENT people in charge of national security, rather than the lameoids that keep come up with useless bureaucratic busiwork such as this?