Does anyone actually use RealAudio for anything other than radio and sampling small audio clips? The quality is usually crap, but the format itself should never be used anyway. mp3, ogg-vorbis, and flac all seem like better options. Heck, with 4 GB, many people could encode all or many of their CDs with FLAC.
I really hope not! SVG is a great thing, but if it is abused in the way that Flash is, it'll spoil it all. SVG: "good", Flash: "bad". SVG has the potential to create many good opportunities for web graphics and other non-photograph images, but Flash can only be used for evil. If the two were to meet (or if 'MVG' appeared;), the world would be in trouble.
I'd like to see SVG used more frequently for all sorts of things. I'm not a big fan of XML, but it seems like it'd be quite appropriate in many situations where bitmap formats are ordinarily used. Not only would such images be scalable, but it seems like they would be much easier to manipulate (how about typing or tweaking your images with a text editor?). Drawing languages are more interesting than bitmap formats, since you can actually do things with objects instead of pixels. I would be more interested in using SVG if a more 'flattened' wrapper format could be used to contain equivalent data ("rect 0 0 50 50 blue 5") making it easier to type by hand, and avoiding bloated XML data.
Does it support jpg, gif, ping... No, but if you're looking for a lynx-like browser that supports graphics, you might be interested in Links 2 (not links 1). Links is quite similar to lynx, but it has support for images, tables, frames, and colors. I use it as my main browser, and would highly recommend it. It is incredibly speedy, especially when compared to the 'huger' browsers.
I am a person who does block advertisement banners. I had previously completely filtered out requests for them with Apache and/or Squid proxy servers. Now, I am taking a different approach... instead of preventing the images from being retrieved, my browser (links 2, with minor source code modifications) still retrieves the images, but resizes them to be invisible. This allows the ad server to still count an "impression", and has the side-benefit of not leaving an empty space where a banner would usually appear.
I don't consider this to be unethical for two reasons: 1) I always make a point of never clicking ad banners, even those which interest me, to avoid promoting further advertising. They aren't losing out on anything. 2) The page displaying the ad will get credit for my visit, even though I didn't see the banner.
The Referer header is what I consider to be one of the worst parts of HTTP. Alhough there are a few sites that require it for operation, I have rarely encountered any troubles simply not sending one. I believe it is considered somewhat "unclean" to send a bogus HTTP Referer header (such as the / of the dest server), so it might be better to simply disable it altogether.
The Links web browser has the builtin ability to set the Referer to a static value, the page being requested, or not send it at all. I have been referer-free for quite some time, previously with a proxy server, and now with links.
I would advise people to consider whether or not they want the administrators of every web server they visit to find out how they got there (including web searches and privately-hosted HTTP servers).
AC2: Please explain the difference We're definitely offtopic, but I'll respond to the request. By the way, endersdouble and Vancorps both make good points. gnuzip says: Some people want to get more from less, and push the limits of their [whatever]. I'm sure many people find this quite enjoyable, and I can probably see why. I personally don't have the desire to do so, and I can't really see the reason why it would be necessary, other than to provide performance increases for "fun" purposes. If you call that a lack of understanding, I admit to it (hooray for you). I'm sure there are exceptions, as with anything, but doesn't it seem that the majority of overclockers, for example, are doing it for gaming and showing off to friends? Polluting the discussion further is probably a bad idea, but examples of common real-world applications would be appreciated. I apologize for any misinformed opinions I may have presented.
To Anonymous Coward 1: No, the item itself is not useless, but I can't imagine the risk of damage or long-term cost would outweight the performance increase. A matter of opinion, I guess. To Anonymous Coward 2: I don't think it's a matter of not understanding it, but not being able to appreciate it in the same way that others do. Don't call me fucktard, fucktard.
They both appeal to people who like to have unnecessary power, simply for the sake of having the additional power, and being able to say "My XYZ can outperform your XYZ", even though efficiency or safety drop dramatically. They're both pretty useless, but they can both be enjoyed as hobbies.
I used a Linksys BEFSR41 for a while, and I have to say, it wasn't that great. Maybe it's only that particular model, or just my own opinion, but I noticed a couple annoyances: * It seemed to frequently become completely unresponsive to network activity (even ping/config), making it unusable for up to 30 minutes at a time (usually around 10 minutes). Unplugging it and plugging it back in after a few minutes sometimes seemed to speed up its recovery. This was very irritating, and I think it may not be a unique case. * Its configuration interface requires a web browser (no telnet, no ssh), and also depends on Javascript for full functionality.
I am now using a spare FreeBSD box instead, and it works great. Of course, the Linksys is nice and small, and consumes less electricity, so it might be more appropriate in many cases.
(replying to myself)
However, I should point out that I certainly do value personal freedom and privacy, and realize that this could end up causing a lot of problems. The mention of "Passengers who raised questions" does seem to be a cause for concern. As usual, opinions on matters like this frequently have multiple levels, which are not always completely distinct from oneanother. "people should be free to do anything they want as long as they are not harming others" vs. "reasonably unintrusive preventative measures may be a fair compromise".
I'm sure many many people are ready to start explaining why this is a terrible thing, but I (especially after reading the Myth/Fact list) have decided that, if they were to follow the procedures listed, this could be a very effective, and reasonably fair way of increasing air-travel safety. Plenty of issues may be raised about whether information privacy is threatened, or if certain people may become unfairly "flagged", but I believe that (aside from the perhaps unfair requirements placed on the airlines themselves), the ideas behind this program seem fairly valid. We'll have to just wait and see how it is carried out, I suppose.
I think the reason this is interesting is because Google supposedly bases the results on a combination of (yes) Yellow Pages and their own huge page index. It seems like they would be able to provide a somewhat unique service, since they apparently aren't just returning the same thing you can find in a phone book.
I think it'd be pretty difficult or impossible (depending on what you do) to encrypt all internet transactions. Email should be pretty straightforward, but what do you do about HTTP, FTP, IRC, and all the other protocols which are completely built around unencrypted transmission? The best rule to go by, it seems, is: "If you don't want someone to read it, don't send/receive it".
There may be a need for more specific TLDs than com,net,org, since they have pretty much lost their meaning, but I think it's quite silly to come up with a new one for every possible use. Seriously, museums can use ".org" or ".com", and ".mobile" would just be a more-specific ".net". ".info" might be worthwhile, because it is very general, and could be applied meaninfully to nearly anything "informational".
Maybe you don't have to. You could use perl -e in the middle of some pipe, like: curl http://something/ | grep -v something | perl -e 'bunch_of_processing' | something_else
I guess one of the most important things, then, is to try to educate people about spam, and get people to stop giving money to the spammers. If they stop making enough money to be profitable, they'll probably stop sending people emails. It certainly wouldn't solve the entire problem, but it might help.
They're just communicating with you, like telemarketers, door-to-door salesmen, and that weird guy yelling on the street. Maybe you never want to hear from them again, but why should it ever be illegal to communicate?
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Does anyone actually use RealAudio for anything other than radio and sampling small audio clips? The quality is usually crap, but the format itself should never be used anyway. mp3, ogg-vorbis, and flac all seem like better options. Heck, with 4 GB, many people could encode all or many of their CDs with FLAC.
I really hope not! SVG is a great thing, but if it is abused in the way that Flash is, it'll spoil it all. SVG: "good", Flash: "bad". SVG has the potential to create many good opportunities for web graphics and other non-photograph images, but Flash can only be used for evil. If the two were to meet (or if 'MVG' appeared ;), the world would be in trouble.
I'd like to see SVG used more frequently for all sorts of things. I'm not a big fan of XML, but it seems like it'd be quite appropriate in many situations where bitmap formats are ordinarily used. Not only would such images be scalable, but it seems like they would be much easier to manipulate (how about typing or tweaking your images with a text editor?). Drawing languages are more interesting than bitmap formats, since you can actually do things with objects instead of pixels. I would be more interested in using SVG if a more 'flattened' wrapper format could be used to contain equivalent data ("rect 0 0 50 50 blue 5") making it easier to type by hand, and avoiding bloated XML data.
Does it support jpg, gif, ping...
No, but if you're looking for a lynx-like browser that supports graphics, you might be interested in Links 2 (not links 1). Links is quite similar to lynx, but it has support for images, tables, frames, and colors.
I use it as my main browser, and would highly recommend it. It is incredibly speedy, especially when compared to the 'huger' browsers.
I am a person who does block advertisement banners. I had previously completely filtered out requests for them with Apache and/or Squid proxy servers. Now, I am taking a different approach... instead of preventing the images from being retrieved, my browser (links 2, with minor source code modifications) still retrieves the images, but resizes them to be invisible. This allows the ad server to still count an "impression", and has the side-benefit of not leaving an empty space where a banner would usually appear.
I don't consider this to be unethical for two reasons:
1) I always make a point of never clicking ad banners, even those which interest me, to avoid promoting further advertising. They aren't losing out on anything.
2) The page displaying the ad will get credit for my visit, even though I didn't see the banner.
The Referer header is what I consider to be one of the worst parts of HTTP. Alhough there are a few sites that require it for operation, I have rarely encountered any troubles simply not sending one. I believe it is considered somewhat "unclean" to send a bogus HTTP Referer header (such as the / of the dest server), so it might be better to simply disable it altogether.
The Links web browser has the builtin ability to set the Referer to a static value, the page being requested, or not send it at all. I have been referer-free for quite some time, previously with a proxy server, and now with links.
I would advise people to consider whether or not they want the administrators of every web server they visit to find out how they got there (including web searches and privately-hosted HTTP servers).
AC2: Please explain the difference
We're definitely offtopic, but I'll respond to the request. By the way, endersdouble and Vancorps both make good points.
gnuzip says:
Some people want to get more from less, and push the limits of their [whatever]. I'm sure many people find this quite enjoyable, and I can probably see why. I personally don't have the desire to do so, and I can't really see the reason why it would be necessary, other than to provide performance increases for "fun" purposes. If you call that a lack of understanding, I admit to it (hooray for you). I'm sure there are exceptions, as with anything, but doesn't it seem that the majority of overclockers, for example, are doing it for gaming and showing off to friends?
Polluting the discussion further is probably a bad idea, but examples of common real-world applications would be appreciated. I apologize for any misinformed opinions I may have presented.
To Anonymous Coward 1:
No, the item itself is not useless, but I can't imagine the risk of damage or long-term cost would outweight the performance increase. A matter of opinion, I guess.
To Anonymous Coward 2:
I don't think it's a matter of not understanding it, but not being able to appreciate it in the same way that others do.
Don't call me fucktard, fucktard.
They both appeal to people who like to have unnecessary power, simply for the sake of having the additional power, and being able to say "My XYZ can outperform your XYZ", even though efficiency or safety drop dramatically. They're both pretty useless, but they can both be enjoyed as hobbies.
I used a Linksys BEFSR41 for a while, and I have to say, it wasn't that great. Maybe it's only that particular model, or just my own opinion, but I noticed a couple annoyances:
* It seemed to frequently become completely unresponsive to network activity (even ping/config), making it unusable for up to 30 minutes at a time (usually around 10 minutes). Unplugging it and plugging it back in after a few minutes sometimes seemed to speed up its recovery. This was very irritating, and I think it may not be a unique case.
* Its configuration interface requires a web browser (no telnet, no ssh), and also depends on Javascript for full functionality.
I am now using a spare FreeBSD box instead, and it works great. Of course, the Linksys is nice and small, and consumes less electricity, so it might be more appropriate in many cases.
(replying to myself)
However, I should point out that I certainly do value personal freedom and privacy, and realize that this could end up causing a lot of problems. The mention of "Passengers who raised questions" does seem to be a cause for concern. As usual, opinions on matters like this frequently have multiple levels, which are not always completely distinct from oneanother.
"people should be free to do anything they want as long as they are not harming others" vs. "reasonably unintrusive preventative measures may be a fair compromise".
I'm sure many many people are ready to start explaining why this is a terrible thing, but I (especially after reading the Myth/Fact list) have decided that, if they were to follow the procedures listed, this could be a very effective, and reasonably fair way of increasing air-travel safety. Plenty of issues may be raised about whether information privacy is threatened, or if certain people may become unfairly "flagged", but I believe that (aside from the perhaps unfair requirements placed on the airlines themselves), the ideas behind this program seem fairly valid. We'll have to just wait and see how it is carried out, I suppose.
I think the reason this is interesting is because Google supposedly bases the results on a combination of (yes) Yellow Pages and their own huge page index. It seems like they would be able to provide a somewhat unique service, since they apparently aren't just returning the same thing you can find in a phone book.
I think it'd be pretty difficult or impossible (depending on what you do) to encrypt all internet transactions. Email should be pretty straightforward, but what do you do about HTTP, FTP, IRC, and all the other protocols which are completely built around unencrypted transmission? The best rule to go by, it seems, is: "If you don't want someone to read it, don't send/receive it".
There may be a need for more specific TLDs than com,net,org, since they have pretty much lost their meaning, but I think it's quite silly to come up with a new one for every possible use. Seriously, museums can use ".org" or ".com", and ".mobile" would just be a more-specific ".net". ".info" might be worthwhile, because it is very general, and could be applied meaninfully to nearly anything "informational".
Maybe you don't have to. You could use perl -e in the middle of some pipe, like: curl http://something/ | grep -v something | perl -e 'bunch_of_processing' | something_else
I guess one of the most important things, then, is to try to educate people about spam, and get people to stop giving money to the spammers. If they stop making enough money to be profitable, they'll probably stop sending people emails. It certainly wouldn't solve the entire problem, but it might help.
They're just communicating with you, like telemarketers, door-to-door salesmen, and that weird guy yelling on the street. Maybe you never want to hear from them again, but why should it ever be illegal to communicate?