Agreed. May as well just do it in one big hit instead of piece by piece. That way you will have one big mob that will target everything instead of a few dedicated people watching the programs that concern them?
I'm a geek who loves GPS but in a survival situation I would much rather rely on the low tech solution.
I have had extensive training with GPS (civilian and military) and three different types of compasses (normal, prismatic, digital) plus how to read all of them in relation to a map. Based on this I think your implication that it has anything to do with the equipment or the user is wrong or at least side stepping the issue.
The biggest problem with a GPS is that it is prone to failure from all of the elements; to hot, to cold, to much pressure (weight applied) and it dies. As well as the well known issues I know with my nature of being a geek I would priorities the importance of its power cells towards communication devices in the event that I really need rescuing rendering it completely useless anyway.
I started off being a huge fan of GPS over other means when I started doing a lot of camping and bush walking though I quickly (around six months) switched to having a standard $70 silver attached to me at all times when out bush. Don't get me wrong I think people should have both - I just don't think they should always expect that GPS to work. Having some thing you know will always be there and have an acceptable margin of error that you know is far more important, in my opinion, than know where you are down to the centimeter and having no guarantees.
When I did Cadets (think military version of Scouts with rifles...No, not the drunken Scouts) in high school we did a lot of survival training and fielded based exercises. The simple lesson in nearly every scenario that involved a group of less than ten with limited supplies in a remote location (with the assumption that in less than three weeks people would start to look for you) was that you never, ever, ever leave the location you ended up at. If you look at history you'll see this is a strong reality that is repeated over and over...Give in to that urge to try and 'make it on your own' you will simply die.
Gorram it! I'm going to take the bait since the editors did such a bad job on this one.
Seriously, if you are going to cut some one else down on their sentence structure make sure your own is correct to start with. From a purely syntax based look at a sentence it is illegal (I've been coding C all day so give me a break) to put a comma after a question mark. You may how ever encapsulate a question mark inside quotations ('?') and then follow with a comma, exclamation mark, full stop, or even another question mark. In the context you were using the statements they were rhetorical questions which means unless they were inside inverted commas they would be a full sentence in their own right. Next, if you want to hit some one over English maybe you should replace your 'z' in recognise (I don't care if you are American) with an 's' to make the rest of the world happy first. And lastly there should be a space between 'over' and the opening bracket at the end of your last sentence.
Also as I rarely put with the grammar/spelling Nazi hat on I do not defend any errors in my own post. I'm simply defending the editors which is probably a better reason to mod me down than for being a Nazi.;)
I personal think EVE is very good, it has its flaws like everything though on the whole its very good and has that 'complete' feel to the world. They are adding a FPS element to the game in the near future that includes very realistic sprites that allow you to walk around in stations and interact with the other hundreds of people there. Also atmosphere flying (yay!) and in the distant future full cities on planets that you can walk around and do things on etc. What I like best about that is that each new feature they add is very tightly integrated so it should be good. I'd like to note that walk around inside your spaceship outside of the protection of a station would be a very dangerous idea; EVE is not a safe place and if your not ready to jump away to safety at any moment you will die - so the time it takes to run to the bridge would be way to long!
I can currently play EVE under Cedega - low fps compared to Windows native - and can also play it under WINE (just) - graphical corruption and low fps. Though WINE is making great strides to fixing the few remaining issues.:D
It is a bit of an odd dance though it is possible to work out how the mods think. In your case your post may resurface at a good point rating later in the day; A good analogy is the first post is a very pretty woman walking down a very dangerous and dark alley late at night. You really have no idea what is going to happen even if it is a good post. Though unfortunately if your post does get saved the post you just made, and this one, will be driven into the ground as off topic (I have the karma to burn). I tend to consider the people that put the effort in to fix inconstancies like the ones you mentioned to be the best people here on/. as they give people the information they want though they don't always have the mod points when it's needed so don't rely on them.
There are a number of other oddities like for example you post a very informative post but in the proccess you call the person you are responding to a moron you will start to get informative points but then be killed off as a troll. If you want to stop this you simply post a strong reinforcement of your original post and its content and suddenly your original post and the one you just made will go up points wise as people who aren't looking for trolls but informative posts will mark it up. No one ever marks a >+4 post as troll. So there are ways that you can deal with mods who are unfair without resorting to abuse, spamming up threads, or tracking them down; Just watch how everything works and in general be a good poster.
I would like to use this post to also call to the attention of every one the seeming increase in people marking a post troll in political or religious debates and then going to ones history and using the rest of their points to mark down ones other posts.
To be honest there isn't a market left...Any one who is really after a good space game is already playing EVE Online and I know from people I come across there is already a huge Firefly fanbase in the game. Hell every member of my squad is an out right addict of Firefly.
So the question is how do these people think they can get the depth and sophistication of EVE to draw people away from characters they've already put at least a year into developing. My answer is that I doubt they can for a very long time; EVE is very complex and very well thought out plus by the time this mob have a game out EVE will probably have the FPS areas added. I really can't see myself moving away from it for a simple name branding of Firefly on another game.
I read TFA and I was thinking this really isn't an issue as it is nothing new. I've heard of the lady you talk of and her research from a shrink friend of mine at uni. I have serious memory issues so this friend and I have spend a lot of time talking over the topic and she often quotes studies where unknowing parties see an event (first hand in front of them) and then when asked about it later (as little as a minute) they are asked to reconstruct the event as accurately as possible. The results in almost all of the instances she has referenced is that very few (and I believe we are talking about a percentage i.e. non existent) people remember what really happened; The rest simply see what they want to see. (Note seeing what they want to see appears, in my opinion, to be based on personal, cultural, and spur of the moment bias.)
Now as I don't have a reliable memory I have to have a system of storing information in the real world and I often see issues of parity between the real world information that I know to be correct (why would I lie to myself?) and memories which can't possibly exist. Maybe VR will make more people aware of these memory short falls that they've never noticed before (or blamed on alcohol!) though I can't see it causing any more problems than that.
Both of your examples are the same thing; Preschool children by definition have the mental capacity of preschool children. In any case I stand by my claim which is based on several years of observation of this very problem as I wanted to see how they could fail so badly at basic authentication and fall for scams/spams/etc.
Also it is nice that you have time and the interest to educate your clients and I commend you (please assume no sarcasm in that line). Unfortunately as per a generalisation I do not believe your case is common and then of no important to the claim. Also many sys admins are in the added disadvantage that those who break the system are equal to them in standing and prefer to run their own affairs as they are 'grown ups who can tell the difference between right and wrong'...And seriously what can you say against that? While I will say they are pre-school children when it comes to computer based personal authentication I would never say it to their faces as they simply wouldn't understand the context and scope it was meant in. You may reply that I'm not giving my users enough credit...Though that is another argument which I'm not going to go into.
Note that our users also contact us when they are in doubt...Though it is rare that a doubtful response comes back from their 'friend' or 'shiny' assessment of a seemingly (to them) authentic email.
I like to call it the Script Kiddies (Windows Techies) vs System Admins (UNIX Users) paradox (a lose meaning of the word). The Script Kiddies have greater numbers (brute force) to get their message out while the System Admins have louder voices due to their higher karma which was earnt by being informative and insightful. Thus you have your imbalance.
Oh, btw I fit squarely into your latter listing, and I'm modest too!:D
(Serious non-flaming post ahead so don't mark me troll before at least reading!)
Putting aside your Microsoft fanboy attitude of 'oh just buy the next version and all will be well!' lets look at this objectively. And for the sake of being kind I wont go into details of how painful this will be for business in general; Sticking to the simple points will do just find to point out how horrible this is.
> Do not open or save Word files that you receive from un-trusted sources or that you receive unexpectedly from trusted sources.
Now you sound new to the world of tech as you haven't been embittered against Microsoft so I'll give you a break on this one. End users have two types of authentication; 'This looks shiny' *click* and 'Oh I know this person' *click*. So in reality the summary is an effective warning and really if some one in a business gets a document saying AccountsNov06.doc who is to say it is expected or unexpected - some one sent you the accounts and a nice little social engineering spiel to lure you to the click. Yes boss, three bags full boss.
> The vulnerability cannot be exploited automatically through e-mail. For an attack to be successful a user must open an attachment that is sent in an e-mail message.
> It can't be triggered automatically, and limited accounts (like every Vista system) will be largely unaffected. (Because exploits will usually try to root the box or install something, both of which will be prevented.)
See previous post about *clicky*. If you boss tells you to deal with AccountsNov06.doc then you deal with AccountsNov06.doc and that usually, if I'm not mistaken, involves opening it for a start. Also largely unaffected; what does that really mean? There will be a box come up saying 'Click me like you usually do as I get in the way of every simple task' because let me tell you as a system administrator even I started clicking them without thinking after two hours of testing Vista. Finally on this topic users who have limited accounts is a joke - even with your AD locking down almost all of the system most places still allow execution of applications and scripts which may have decent root kitting abilities that bypass user rights - only high schools and net cafes go the whole nine yards.
And lastly you have the gem of saying Microsoft is great because their next product line isn't affected. I think the parent to this post addressed this point perfectly with the following:
> You mean like not releasing them yet?
Which points out the flaw in your argument very nicely. Still it is worth expanding for those unfamiliar with Office 2k7 in that a) it implements a new XML document format which has nothing to do with.doc so isn't affected and b) they have time to fix their.doc filter layer so this doesn't happen in the wild under 2k7 - in fact I'd almost wager a decent price that the current release of Office 2k7 floating around the MS offices has the flaw and if it doesn't I'd be raising questions that this was a stunt to force upgrades and kill off.doc faster.
Either way before you mouth off at Slashdot consider the topic and its implications to users and business first; there are many real Slashdot exaggerations that are stabs at Microsoft and this isn't one of them. Some times it is apt to say that Microsoft really did drop the ball.
Indeed; It's only in the last year that at work we have standardised to WinXP and even now we still have a big chunk of 2k boxes, two or three 98se, and an NT box in some dusty room some where.
I don't expect Vista to start coming in until our vendors start forcing it on new replacement pc's and considering we only just finished our roll over that may be a good long while. Oh and half of our apps work better under Linux (using WINE) than with Vista so that will have to change.:P
To be honest I tune out nearly all the ads I see. I some times click on the ones from/. because they are very well targeted and some times they coincide with a purchase we need to make at work. On the whole though when I'm looking to buy some thing I really only rely on Google ads as I have no interest in rewarding flash+bight colour ads. If I think about it I think the last ten things I've bought online on a whim have been from Google ads. Then again I miss the olden days on the web when there were no ads. Guess if you can't have everything you can at least have some thing thats not intrusive.
Anyway Google has my loyalty over Microsoft for the foreseeable future; that includes keeping the default search engine as Google when work phases in Vista some time in the next five years.
I don't want it both ways. I play my MMO for a few hours a week as a relaxing game and have no interest of selling any items, isk, or my account - if I stop playing my account will die away. To me it is a game and as far as I'm concerned I don't have to pay tax to play monopoly then I shouldn't have to pay taxes to play my favorite MMO. If they intend to push this sort of thing then I'm sorry to say that I will be evading tax for the first time in my life on this one item.
Which is painful because the only people who will challenge this will be legitimate users...
As any SysAdmin knows firewalls are a waste of time against those inside the system that are desperate to move data. Even those not smart enough to break through will just use sneakernet and unless you want to lock down every pc in the country this isn't going to be stopped.
Some one should do some thing about outright wastes of money like this even above the out cries that 1984 is here.
You will never get rid of bias though...Even my own personal bias over rode your second question there easily; I've been on the land and I know flooding - while it does get those who are to stupid to build proper flood protection and damming - destroys much more than just one farmer as the cascading effect gets every one in the area one way or the other. So in my opinion the best you can hope for is fair questions where you know the bias.
Personally I'd rather some one was horribly bias but made that bias known than a seemingly plain question when you don't know the bias.
I'll take a break from my usual privacy based point of view on topics like this and say I'm all for this idea. My city voted on a very important deal (in relation to water) recently and went for the popularity contest option instead of the informed opinion and now we are screwed - no water plans when we run out in 08 and plenty of towns queuing up to steal what water we do have left. So I'm all for letting people have a place where they can go and put in their views and be given a party to support...In a day and age where people don't remember what parties stand for and then don't hold them accountable when they move to the left or right of that I think we should be getting people back into the swing of voting for what they believe instead of who they believe in (single person popularity contests etc). Note this would only be for advise and I don't believe it should replace going down to a polling booth to cast.
I was thinking that... Seriously today at work I sat in front of ethereal for two hours sniffing packets for regular network reports and just for general knowledge of what's going on and god knows what I saw go past. It isn't at all skillful to sniff out of a agent string and use a Firefox plugin to put in what ever you want - heck if you want to be 'uber leet' you can code your own agent string into Firefox! How awesome!
So in summery this isn't even remotely interesting. Go home script kiddies...and by home I mean digg! (Yes I do have the karma to burn.)
...Still four weeks till we get Wii's in Australia.:(
Careful now you wouldn't want a feed back loop that caused a cascading energy pulse that would cause the main power source to explode in just over five minutes!
Awesome so we can all just ignore this then? Cause like God would never let some thing as bad as Global Warming happen in the first place!?...Oh wait...
Sarcasm aside I do worry what would happen if some one put it into the minds of the fundy Christians that Global Warming was the precursor to revelations and the like. With their collective political power in the first world I think we'd have a huge problem on our hands just like we do with their infection of the common understanding of science among the dumb masses. Before any one flames I'm saying this as a worried (liberal) Roman Catholic - I trust the fundies in my religion as much as the next atheist...
The question I ask is are these slight borrowings defining or not. For example I look at our Vista test boxen next to our XP sp2 boxes and I simply see a poor expose` clone on top of XP with a poor attempt to change the UI 'just enough'(tm) to get the general user to believe it is any different. So they've only taken a few features like the dashboard, alt tabbing that doesn't suck (but seriously who still uses alt tab when you have f10 under Mac and Lin now?), and some glitter from around the place yet they get an OS that will impress far to many and make them a lot of money. I'm not saying this is right or wrong or that mac has never taken Windows features - I'm just saying that even taking the odd feature still makes a big difference like it did back in 95.
Haha if my attempt at fishing in Zelda at the shopping centre on the coast was anything to go on I doubt it. Nintendo has no reason or interest in watching people fail pathetically!:P Grr now to get my hands on a Wii when they get to Australia!
I doubt it. The Australian population was dumb enough to vote one party into our lower and upper house so assuming this one goes down party lines, just like every other bill excluding the latest cloning one, we are out right screwed. I guess my fellow Australians really need to be burnt in this fashion before they learn not to give in to a government who uses fear and cloaks its true policy behind a popularity contest. And if they do they should at least vote for the other guy in the upper house to keep a balance in place.
So Australia enjoy and I'll sit here noting that while I'm a right wing supporter (our current government is right wing) I voted for the other guy. Chew on it.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. May as well just do it in one big hit instead of piece by piece. That way you will have one big mob that will target everything instead of a few dedicated people watching the programs that concern them?
I'm a geek who loves GPS but in a survival situation I would much rather rely on the low tech solution.
I have had extensive training with GPS (civilian and military) and three different types of compasses (normal, prismatic, digital) plus how to read all of them in relation to a map. Based on this I think your implication that it has anything to do with the equipment or the user is wrong or at least side stepping the issue.
The biggest problem with a GPS is that it is prone to failure from all of the elements; to hot, to cold, to much pressure (weight applied) and it dies. As well as the well known issues I know with my nature of being a geek I would priorities the importance of its power cells towards communication devices in the event that I really need rescuing rendering it completely useless anyway.
I started off being a huge fan of GPS over other means when I started doing a lot of camping and bush walking though I quickly (around six months) switched to having a standard $70 silver attached to me at all times when out bush. Don't get me wrong I think people should have both - I just don't think they should always expect that GPS to work. Having some thing you know will always be there and have an acceptable margin of error that you know is far more important, in my opinion, than know where you are down to the centimeter and having no guarantees.
When I did Cadets (think military version of Scouts with rifles...No, not the drunken Scouts) in high school we did a lot of survival training and fielded based exercises. The simple lesson in nearly every scenario that involved a group of less than ten with limited supplies in a remote location (with the assumption that in less than three weeks people would start to look for you) was that you never, ever, ever leave the location you ended up at. If you look at history you'll see this is a strong reality that is repeated over and over...Give in to that urge to try and 'make it on your own' you will simply die.
Gorram it! I'm going to take the bait since the editors did such a bad job on this one.
;)
Seriously, if you are going to cut some one else down on their sentence structure make sure your own is correct to start with. From a purely syntax based look at a sentence it is illegal (I've been coding C all day so give me a break) to put a comma after a question mark. You may how ever encapsulate a question mark inside quotations ('?') and then follow with a comma, exclamation mark, full stop, or even another question mark. In the context you were using the statements they were rhetorical questions which means unless they were inside inverted commas they would be a full sentence in their own right. Next, if you want to hit some one over English maybe you should replace your 'z' in recognise (I don't care if you are American) with an 's' to make the rest of the world happy first. And lastly there should be a space between 'over' and the opening bracket at the end of your last sentence.
Also as I rarely put with the grammar/spelling Nazi hat on I do not defend any errors in my own post. I'm simply defending the editors which is probably a better reason to mod me down than for being a Nazi.
I personal think EVE is very good, it has its flaws like everything though on the whole its very good and has that 'complete' feel to the world. They are adding a FPS element to the game in the near future that includes very realistic sprites that allow you to walk around in stations and interact with the other hundreds of people there. Also atmosphere flying (yay!) and in the distant future full cities on planets that you can walk around and do things on etc. What I like best about that is that each new feature they add is very tightly integrated so it should be good. I'd like to note that walk around inside your spaceship outside of the protection of a station would be a very dangerous idea; EVE is not a safe place and if your not ready to jump away to safety at any moment you will die - so the time it takes to run to the bridge would be way to long!
:D
I can currently play EVE under Cedega - low fps compared to Windows native - and can also play it under WINE (just) - graphical corruption and low fps. Though WINE is making great strides to fixing the few remaining issues.
It is a bit of an odd dance though it is possible to work out how the mods think. In your case your post may resurface at a good point rating later in the day; A good analogy is the first post is a very pretty woman walking down a very dangerous and dark alley late at night. You really have no idea what is going to happen even if it is a good post. Though unfortunately if your post does get saved the post you just made, and this one, will be driven into the ground as off topic (I have the karma to burn). I tend to consider the people that put the effort in to fix inconstancies like the ones you mentioned to be the best people here on /. as they give people the information they want though they don't always have the mod points when it's needed so don't rely on them.
There are a number of other oddities like for example you post a very informative post but in the proccess you call the person you are responding to a moron you will start to get informative points but then be killed off as a troll. If you want to stop this you simply post a strong reinforcement of your original post and its content and suddenly your original post and the one you just made will go up points wise as people who aren't looking for trolls but informative posts will mark it up. No one ever marks a >+4 post as troll. So there are ways that you can deal with mods who are unfair without resorting to abuse, spamming up threads, or tracking them down; Just watch how everything works and in general be a good poster.
I would like to use this post to also call to the attention of every one the seeming increase in people marking a post troll in political or religious debates and then going to ones history and using the rest of their points to mark down ones other posts.
To be honest there isn't a market left...Any one who is really after a good space game is already playing EVE Online and I know from people I come across there is already a huge Firefly fanbase in the game. Hell every member of my squad is an out right addict of Firefly.
So the question is how do these people think they can get the depth and sophistication of EVE to draw people away from characters they've already put at least a year into developing. My answer is that I doubt they can for a very long time; EVE is very complex and very well thought out plus by the time this mob have a game out EVE will probably have the FPS areas added. I really can't see myself moving away from it for a simple name branding of Firefly on another game.
I read TFA and I was thinking this really isn't an issue as it is nothing new. I've heard of the lady you talk of and her research from a shrink friend of mine at uni. I have serious memory issues so this friend and I have spend a lot of time talking over the topic and she often quotes studies where unknowing parties see an event (first hand in front of them) and then when asked about it later (as little as a minute) they are asked to reconstruct the event as accurately as possible. The results in almost all of the instances she has referenced is that very few (and I believe we are talking about a percentage i.e. non existent) people remember what really happened; The rest simply see what they want to see. (Note seeing what they want to see appears, in my opinion, to be based on personal, cultural, and spur of the moment bias.)
Now as I don't have a reliable memory I have to have a system of storing information in the real world and I often see issues of parity between the real world information that I know to be correct (why would I lie to myself?) and memories which can't possibly exist. Maybe VR will make more people aware of these memory short falls that they've never noticed before (or blamed on alcohol!) though I can't see it causing any more problems than that.
Both of your examples are the same thing; Preschool children by definition have the mental capacity of preschool children. In any case I stand by my claim which is based on several years of observation of this very problem as I wanted to see how they could fail so badly at basic authentication and fall for scams/spams/etc.
Also it is nice that you have time and the interest to educate your clients and I commend you (please assume no sarcasm in that line). Unfortunately as per a generalisation I do not believe your case is common and then of no important to the claim. Also many sys admins are in the added disadvantage that those who break the system are equal to them in standing and prefer to run their own affairs as they are 'grown ups who can tell the difference between right and wrong'...And seriously what can you say against that? While I will say they are pre-school children when it comes to computer based personal authentication I would never say it to their faces as they simply wouldn't understand the context and scope it was meant in. You may reply that I'm not giving my users enough credit...Though that is another argument which I'm not going to go into.
Note that our users also contact us when they are in doubt...Though it is rare that a doubtful response comes back from their 'friend' or 'shiny' assessment of a seemingly (to them) authentic email.
I like to call it the Script Kiddies (Windows Techies) vs System Admins (UNIX Users) paradox (a lose meaning of the word). The Script Kiddies have greater numbers (brute force) to get their message out while the System Admins have louder voices due to their higher karma which was earnt by being informative and insightful. Thus you have your imbalance.
:D
Oh, btw I fit squarely into your latter listing, and I'm modest too!
Is the GP just an out right moron?
.doc so isn't affected and b) they have time to fix their .doc filter layer so this doesn't happen in the wild under 2k7 - in fact I'd almost wager a decent price that the current release of Office 2k7 floating around the MS offices has the flaw and if it doesn't I'd be raising questions that this was a stunt to force upgrades and kill off .doc faster.
(Serious non-flaming post ahead so don't mark me troll before at least reading!)
Putting aside your Microsoft fanboy attitude of 'oh just buy the next version and all will be well!' lets look at this objectively. And for the sake of being kind I wont go into details of how painful this will be for business in general; Sticking to the simple points will do just find to point out how horrible this is.
> Do not open or save Word files that you receive from un-trusted sources or that you receive unexpectedly from trusted sources.
Now you sound new to the world of tech as you haven't been embittered against Microsoft so I'll give you a break on this one. End users have two types of authentication; 'This looks shiny' *click* and 'Oh I know this person' *click*. So in reality the summary is an effective warning and really if some one in a business gets a document saying AccountsNov06.doc who is to say it is expected or unexpected - some one sent you the accounts and a nice little social engineering spiel to lure you to the click. Yes boss, three bags full boss.
> The vulnerability cannot be exploited automatically through e-mail. For an attack to be successful a user must open an attachment that is sent in an e-mail message.
> It can't be triggered automatically, and limited accounts (like every Vista system) will be largely unaffected. (Because exploits will usually try to root the box or install something, both of which will be prevented.)
See previous post about *clicky*. If you boss tells you to deal with AccountsNov06.doc then you deal with AccountsNov06.doc and that usually, if I'm not mistaken, involves opening it for a start. Also largely unaffected; what does that really mean? There will be a box come up saying 'Click me like you usually do as I get in the way of every simple task' because let me tell you as a system administrator even I started clicking them without thinking after two hours of testing Vista. Finally on this topic users who have limited accounts is a joke - even with your AD locking down almost all of the system most places still allow execution of applications and scripts which may have decent root kitting abilities that bypass user rights - only high schools and net cafes go the whole nine yards.
And lastly you have the gem of saying Microsoft is great because their next product line isn't affected. I think the parent to this post addressed this point perfectly with the following:
> You mean like not releasing them yet?
Which points out the flaw in your argument very nicely. Still it is worth expanding for those unfamiliar with Office 2k7 in that a) it implements a new XML document format which has nothing to do with
Either way before you mouth off at Slashdot consider the topic and its implications to users and business first; there are many real Slashdot exaggerations that are stabs at Microsoft and this isn't one of them. Some times it is apt to say that Microsoft really did drop the ball.
Indeed; It's only in the last year that at work we have standardised to WinXP and even now we still have a big chunk of 2k boxes, two or three 98se, and an NT box in some dusty room some where. I don't expect Vista to start coming in until our vendors start forcing it on new replacement pc's and considering we only just finished our roll over that may be a good long while. Oh and half of our apps work better under Linux (using WINE) than with Vista so that will have to change. :P
To be honest I tune out nearly all the ads I see. I some times click on the ones from /. because they are very well targeted and some times they coincide with a purchase we need to make at work. On the whole though when I'm looking to buy some thing I really only rely on Google ads as I have no interest in rewarding flash+bight colour ads. If I think about it I think the last ten things I've bought online on a whim have been from Google ads. Then again I miss the olden days on the web when there were no ads. Guess if you can't have everything you can at least have some thing thats not intrusive.
Anyway Google has my loyalty over Microsoft for the foreseeable future; that includes keeping the default search engine as Google when work phases in Vista some time in the next five years.
I don't want it both ways. I play my MMO for a few hours a week as a relaxing game and have no interest of selling any items, isk, or my account - if I stop playing my account will die away. To me it is a game and as far as I'm concerned I don't have to pay tax to play monopoly then I shouldn't have to pay taxes to play my favorite MMO. If they intend to push this sort of thing then I'm sorry to say that I will be evading tax for the first time in my life on this one item.
Which is painful because the only people who will challenge this will be legitimate users...
As any SysAdmin knows firewalls are a waste of time against those inside the system that are desperate to move data. Even those not smart enough to break through will just use sneakernet and unless you want to lock down every pc in the country this isn't going to be stopped.
Some one should do some thing about outright wastes of money like this even above the out cries that 1984 is here.
You will never get rid of bias though...Even my own personal bias over rode your second question there easily; I've been on the land and I know flooding - while it does get those who are to stupid to build proper flood protection and damming - destroys much more than just one farmer as the cascading effect gets every one in the area one way or the other. So in my opinion the best you can hope for is fair questions where you know the bias.
Personally I'd rather some one was horribly bias but made that bias known than a seemingly plain question when you don't know the bias.
I'll take a break from my usual privacy based point of view on topics like this and say I'm all for this idea. My city voted on a very important deal (in relation to water) recently and went for the popularity contest option instead of the informed opinion and now we are screwed - no water plans when we run out in 08 and plenty of towns queuing up to steal what water we do have left. So I'm all for letting people have a place where they can go and put in their views and be given a party to support...In a day and age where people don't remember what parties stand for and then don't hold them accountable when they move to the left or right of that I think we should be getting people back into the swing of voting for what they believe instead of who they believe in (single person popularity contests etc). Note this would only be for advise and I don't believe it should replace going down to a polling booth to cast.
I was thinking that... Seriously today at work I sat in front of ethereal for two hours sniffing packets for regular network reports and just for general knowledge of what's going on and god knows what I saw go past. It isn't at all skillful to sniff out of a agent string and use a Firefox plugin to put in what ever you want - heck if you want to be 'uber leet' you can code your own agent string into Firefox! How awesome!
:(
So in summery this isn't even remotely interesting. Go home script kiddies...and by home I mean digg! (Yes I do have the karma to burn.)
...Still four weeks till we get Wii's in Australia.
Careful now you wouldn't want a feed back loop that caused a cascading energy pulse that would cause the main power source to explode in just over five minutes!
It's really just a cover for the coming invasion... They want Jack O'neil and Sam Carter up there to save us all!
/tinfoilhat
Awesome so we can all just ignore this then? Cause like God would never let some thing as bad as Global Warming happen in the first place!? ...Oh wait...
Sarcasm aside I do worry what would happen if some one put it into the minds of the fundy Christians that Global Warming was the precursor to revelations and the like. With their collective political power in the first world I think we'd have a huge problem on our hands just like we do with their infection of the common understanding of science among the dumb masses. Before any one flames I'm saying this as a worried (liberal) Roman Catholic - I trust the fundies in my religion as much as the next atheist...
The question I ask is are these slight borrowings defining or not. For example I look at our Vista test boxen next to our XP sp2 boxes and I simply see a poor expose` clone on top of XP with a poor attempt to change the UI 'just enough'(tm) to get the general user to believe it is any different. So they've only taken a few features like the dashboard, alt tabbing that doesn't suck (but seriously who still uses alt tab when you have f10 under Mac and Lin now?), and some glitter from around the place yet they get an OS that will impress far to many and make them a lot of money. I'm not saying this is right or wrong or that mac has never taken Windows features - I'm just saying that even taking the odd feature still makes a big difference like it did back in 95.
Movig along to the quip... 'from the not-everyone-has-a-1st-amendment dept'
I always find it odd that Americans needed an amendment to get these rights instead of them being included from the start.
Haha if my attempt at fishing in Zelda at the shopping centre on the coast was anything to go on I doubt it. Nintendo has no reason or interest in watching people fail pathetically! :P Grr now to get my hands on a Wii when they get to Australia!
I doubt it. The Australian population was dumb enough to vote one party into our lower and upper house so assuming this one goes down party lines, just like every other bill excluding the latest cloning one, we are out right screwed. I guess my fellow Australians really need to be burnt in this fashion before they learn not to give in to a government who uses fear and cloaks its true policy behind a popularity contest. And if they do they should at least vote for the other guy in the upper house to keep a balance in place.
So Australia enjoy and I'll sit here noting that while I'm a right wing supporter (our current government is right wing) I voted for the other guy. Chew on it.