For that matter, exactly how do they expect to access password or IP protected sites?
IP protected sites?
"This website is copyright (C) 2006 by Al Quaeda. All rights reserved. By using this website, you agree that you are not a law enforcement official. No terrorist attacks are stored on this server. Al Quaeda is not responsible in any way for the information posted here."
Either you take money from me, or you take it from content providers. When you start doing both I'm terminating my subscription so you ain't getting a dime from me ever again.
I've got some bad news for you...
Content providers, including Google, pay for access to the internet through ISPs, who pay money to the telcos in order to hook up to the internet.
They are already getting paid for the same data twice. Now they want more?
What the telcos don't understand is that the consumers (you and me) don't care whose lines they use to access the content. All they care about is the content. All Google has to do is refuse to serve content to Verizon customers, and Verizon will be flooded with calls from irate customers demanding that they fix the internet. The content providers have the power here, especially if they are as ubiquitous as Google.
I think the fence analogy is rather confusing, however. (No offense to Jefferson, of course.) I prefer to draw the line between ideas and implimentations. Without this distinction, there would be no such thing as a competing product.
For example, let's say you think of a novel new way to wake people up in the morning; something that's never been marketed before, like pouring water on your head. So you take this idea and distill it down into an implimentation called the AlarmWaker3000, which you patent. Now your good friend down the street has this same idea, and creates himself the WakeUp Machine, which he patents. But because the AlarmWaker3000 used a bucket and a piece of string tied to the hands of a clock, and the WakeUp Machine uses a hose crimped by a weight that gets lighter over time, neither one of you are infringing on each other's patents. You didn't patent "A method for waking someone up by splashing their face with cold water," you patented the "AlarmWaker3000" and the "WakeUp Machine".
The question of infringement on a patent usually boils down to the similarity between the two devices. Two companies can build, and patent, two different motherboard designs with exactly the same functionality: onboard video, sound, ethernet, whatever. But as long as the circuits are dissimilar enough (which is up to a judge to decide) then the implimentations are different and they don't infringe.
The problem with software patents is that the the line between ideas and implimentations has been blurred. Amazon patents their code for purchasing things with a single mouse click, once all your information is on file and you are logged in. Suddenly, anyone creating a shopping system that allows registered customers who are logged in to purchase things with a single mouse click is infringing on the patent, even if their implimentation is different. These companies are trying to use the patent system to enforce artifical monopolies on ideas instead of implimentations, and effectively cut out the competition. The truly troubling part is that the Patent Office, and lots of patent courts settling disputes around the country, seem to be going along with it.
Maybe the fault lies with an overworked Patent Office staff; maybe it lies with a culture that irrationally rewards new technologies. I just don't know.
And, for the first time since yesterday, I am offering for sale a revolutionary new product that will protect your precious head from the same egg-cooking x-rays that make you breakfast.
For three small payments of $19.95, you can block the radiation emitting from your cell phone by adding this small device to the back of your phone. The unique lattice-like orientation of the pantented gold-copper-lead electrical conduits create an electrical "net" around your phone, forcing the dangerous radiation to be emitted directly up into the sky instead of into your brain! Simply peel the backing off the product and affix it to the back of your phone, between the phone and the battery. Be sure to read the manual for proper placement, because if you are even a fraction of an inch off, you won't get the proper protection you deserve. If you are feeling nervous about doing it yourself, I also offer a service to install this device on your phone for you, for only two additional payments of $19.95 each, plus postage. Just send me your phone and rest easy!
But wait! Call now, and I will throw in, completely free of charge, a cell phone privacy guard. This handy device fits over the mouthpiece of the phone and prevents malicious hackers from listening in on your calls by scrambling your signal. Don't miss out on this opportunity!
First one hundred callers receive a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge as a FREE GIFT!
Most spam comes in from out of the U.S., but the value of spam has decreased majorly in the last year -- not due to laws or government regulations but through the end user finding ways to avoid even seeing spam. I think by next year spam will decrease greatly and in the next 5 years we'll have forgotten it entirely.
Yeah, we may have forgotten about it in 5 years, but that doesn't mean it's gone away... it just means we can no longer see it.
I'm not worried about how many spam messages end up in my mailbox; I have all kinds of filters and things set up to prevent that. What I'm worried about is the sheer amount of traffic being sent over the internet backbone fibers related to spam. All that data is clogging the system, even if filters at the message's destination make it so the data never arrives in a mailbox. Lots of this spam is being sent by zombie machines, and will continue to be sent long after spam is no longer profitable, which is highly unlikely to ever happen. Even a single purchase of a product justifies the cost of sending millions of messages.
If all the spam in the network is completely eliminated all at once, would the internet speed up? Would my downloads be faster, and my bandwidth wider, and my gaming lag smaller, and my surfing more productive?
How much bandwidth are we truly wasting on spam? I'd love to see some up-to-date statistics on this.
My removal method is so methodical that I'm bored to tears sometimes.
If it's worth doing twice, it's worth scripting.
Seriously, why wouldn't you write a Windows script that would intall all the programs, run all the commands, clean out the registry keys, and reboot every once in a while? Then when people bring in their computers, you just toss in the CD or USB key with the script, fire it up, and head back to Slashdot.
Just because the implimentation is easy, doesn't mean the idea is not revolutionary. It took someone (Dr. Robert Cade, actually) to realize that athletes lose all kinds of nutrients during aerobic activites, not just water, to spark the idea of Gatorade. No one had thought about that before. Almost all successful inventions seem simple in retrospect, which is probably why they were so successful.
Take the idea of the airbag for instance: a very simple implimentation. Inflatable bag, explosive canister of compressed air, sensor in the car. But the idea was revolutionary when it first debuted. "Holy cow! People can survive accidents if we give them an inflatible pillow that only opens during an accident!"
It seems simple now, but was quite revolutionary at the time.
Then, those crashes and deaths will be the responsibility of the car manufacturer who will get sued into oblivion.
No, the manufacturers will just place a sticker over the car's doors at the dealership that say:
"By breaking this seal, you agree to absolve Big Car Maker, Inc. of any and all liability for damages due to defective materials, bad programming, and improper maintenence of this vehicle. Please see the owner's manual for complete liability waiver."
Much is made in the movies about the Jedi's ability to block blaster fire with their light sabers, (and in Vader's case his hand).
Much is also made in the movies about the Jedi's ability to detect such subtle nuances of mood and body language that they can tell when someone is lying. So why is it that they can't see when a supposedly non-Jedi senator is very obviously and transparently plotting to take over the Republic and wipe out an entire culture using his Sith powers? It seems to me that if the Jedi really had any Force powers at all, they would get cramps every time Palpatine entered the room, seeing as he's positively dripping with the Dark Side.
What's wrong with <canvas> tags? I think they are a revolutionary idea.
Once they become part of the HTML5 spec (and WHATWG is working on it now), then suddenly web developers will have a way to show those corny Flash movies without needing a plugin. The browser will support dynamic bitmap refresh natively. Eventually, it will support 3D rendering natively too, probably through OpenGL. Imagine playing Doom in a web browser, with no plugins. Or a contractor showing clients around a virtual model of their home before construction begins.
Does it have the potential to be horribly abused? Of course. So does the <script> element, and even the element. And who can forget the abuses of the <embed> and <object> elements?
Does it offer limitless opportunities for a more dynamic website? Yes.
Does it mean the fragmented world of browser+plugins is converging to browser+JavaScript/AJAX? Yes.
Plugin functionality with no plugins--just JavaScript and a <canvas> tag. I like it.
2. It's best to do one thing really, really well. Google does search. With one of the world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems, we've been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements to a service already considered the best on the web at making finding information a fast and seamless experience for millions of users. Our dedication to improving search has also allowed us to apply what we've learned to new products, including Gmail, Google Desktop, and Google Maps. As we continue to build new products* while making search better, our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help users access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives.
<snip>
* Full-disclosure update: When we first wrote these "10 things" four years ago, we included the phrase "Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat." Over time we've expanded our view of the range of services we can offer -- web search, for instance, isn't the only way for people to access or use information -- and products that then seemed unlikely are now key aspects of our portfolio. This doesn't mean we've changed our core mission; just that the farther we travel toward achieving it, the more those blurry objects on the horizon come into sharper focus (to be replaced, of course, by more blurry objects).
A full Googlized version of Ubuntu only makes sense if it was geared explicitly toward search: much like Apple's Spotlight on steroids. But that can be accomplished with an application, not a full-blown operating system. Google is not interested in building a product if it does not align with their core mission, which is search. They have no interest in destroying Microsoft completely, they do not want to get into an OS war, and they certainly don't want to start diversifying to the point where their "One Thing" becomes "One Thing In Each Market." They want to do search, and do it well.
Google also does not want to replace the infrastructure in any given market; that's too much hassle. They just want to work within it. Notice, they have no interest at all in entering the cell phone or PDA market, but they certainly make their products work very well with existing technology in those markets. I think the same will hold true of OSs: they don't want to REPLACE your OS, they just want you to search with Google FROM your OS, and hopefully click on some AdWords along the way. If that means integrating their search directly into the OS so you don't have to open a browser (a la Google Desktop) then that is a step toward their goal. Replacing the entire OS is unnecessary complexity.
My guess is that the OS is being developed exclusively for inhouse use, since Google has only confirmed its existence, not it's purpose. Everything about releasing this Goobuntu to the public is pure speculation on the Register's part. Companies roll out custom OSs for inhouse use all the time; even companies using Windows have IT departments that build their own images to propegate out to the client machines, customizing which services and programs will be available. That's a "custom OS", too.
I don't see whats the problems. An anti virus is like rust-proofing your car. Its needed and its your own damn fault if you never had it made. And you can't accuse the manufacturer of not doing it for you either [sic]
A flawed analogy. With the prevelence of networking in computing today, not having anti-virus is more like the manufacturer not including brakes on the car. Sure, you don't need them to drive in a wide-open dry lake bed, but if you plan on doing any driving on other roads with other cars they may come in handy.
However, Microsoft in this situation is not really the manufacturer of the car. Someone like Dell or Gateway would be, and to have them not include anti-virus would be more parallel to the above analogy. Truthfully, Microsoft Windows is just a component that the computer manufacturer purchases to use in the product. Those of you buying it on your own can be compared with people installing aftermarket auto parts, and if you bought a suspension and forgot to put the brakes back on, you'd be in big trouble -- but the suspension is not required to come with new brakes included.
...big corps start to realize that the old bussiness model is dead, and begin to use the new model at their advantage, instead of fighting the tide.
Nope. They're not beginning to use a new model at all. At most, they are trying to apply their current (old) business model to a new medium. At the very least, they are going to try this "intarweb distribution" thingie and do it so poorly that they can then say, "but we TRIED selling this stuff online, and no one bought it! They're all filthy pirates!"
The old business model is: "We create content. You pay for this content, but you only get to watch it when, where, and how we say so, because of our precious IP. Oh, and we're greedy bastards and have no concept of supply and demand, so our prices are unfairly high and we blame the internet on low sales, not taking the quality of our product into account."
Their new model is: "We create content. You pay for this content online at the same inflated prices as physical media, except that we don't have to pay for printing any physical media, and this is a peer-to-peer system which means the customers are paying for bandwidth costs as well! We don't allow them to alter or burn this content in any way because of the restrictive DRM we place on it. Basically, you only get to watch it when, where, and how we say so, because of our precious IP. Oh, and we're greedy bastards and will blame the failure of this system on the filthy pirates and not on the inherent flaws."
When you put my life in your hands, I somewhat expect you to provide a bit of security.
Ahh, but that's the thing. Who's life are you putting your hands into? The government's? Do they own the planes? Did you pay them for the ticket? Nope. Your travel is being conducted by *private businesses* and how they conduct their business is not necessarily for the government to decide.
So what would happen if an airline started a cash-only, anonymous service, where no IDs would be checked and no baggage searched? No one would fly with them. It's not in the best interests of airlines to let terrorists on their planes, just as it is not in their best interest to allow the engines to fall off mid flight. It's a self-correcting system--I don't understand where the government fits in here.
This paranoia drives me nuts. People would rather stand in line at a security checkpoint for an hour and have all their personal belongings scanned, probed, and rifled through than admit to themselves that none of that is really helping. The 9/11 hijackers took over the plane with blades that were under 2" long. Why? Because no one expected them to kill themselves. The modus operandi of all airplane hijackings up until that point had involved the hijackers wanting to live beyond the event. "Sit quietly," we're told, "and everything will work out." Well, the 9/11 hijackers changed that paradigm forever, and now that we know radicals would be willing to die, and take out entire jetliners and buildings in the process, that will never happen again. You can be sure that the moment another hijacker stands up with a 2" blade to take over the plane, three guys from the rows behind him will tackle him, as the stewardess beats him over the head with full cans of soda and three more passengers run to warn the captain. It only worked before because it was unexpected.
Now the terrorists will move on to a different attack vector. They know that the moment they use a particular vector (airplanes) we will throw a bunch of money at securing that vector. So they move on, and use something else (like bombs in a subway and on buses). We're not going to prevent anything by becoming paranoid about the vectors the terrorists have already used, because they have already moved on. We're perpetually behind the curve.
You airport security freaks need to get over yourselves: perhaps making air travel needlessly complicated makes you feel warm and comfortable, but I, for one, am tired of being scrutinized as if I'm a criminal every time I walk into an airport.
The Chinese government has killed thousands of its own citizens in massacres and throws its people into jail without a trial for speaking out against the establishment. They've a record of human rights violations, which is definitely evil by any stretch. I mean, shooting dead protesters and imprisoning and torturing people for speaking out - this is what Google is abetting a government to hide and keep away from its own citizens.
Right, they should rouse the GoogleArmy(tm) right away, and get to work invading China to put a stop to all this madness!
For cryin' out loud, Google is just a search engine company. They are not the second coming of Christ, they are not in a position of influence in China, and they *are* required to obey the laws of any country they do business in.
So here they are, faced with two choices: a) comply with China's laws, which, although we don't agree with them, do belong to a sovereign nation with a bigger army than us b) decide that they will not aid and abet censorship and thus totally ignore China altogether. China is probably happier with their state-sponsored search engines, anyway.
Given that no censorship is perfect, even in an oppressive regime like China's, I would take choice a) any day. Setting aside for a moment the fact that 1.2 billion people are now reading AdWords (cha-ching!), some information about truth, justice, and the American^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Humanitarian Way will likely slip through China's censorship filters. And once that information starts, it's very difficult to stop.
"Some Google" is better than "no Google", especially when "all Google" is not an option.
Just like a woman to make her velociraptors fluffy and orange.
*ducks*
In all seriousness, though, I agree with you. There is no need to push women (or men, for that matter) into various fields just because the percentages don't match the general population. However, I do think we need to focus our efforts in this country away from *discouraging* specific genders from entering certain fields. Girls should never be told that "girls can't do math," and boys should never be told "being a nurse is for sissies."
That being said, the general population really does tend to sort itself into gender roles. Give a G.I. Joe action figure to a little girl, and she will likely dress it up and have a tea party. Give a Barbie to a little boy, and soon Major General Barbie will be unleashing the dinosaurs on Cobra's headquarters. In the absense of all discouragement, the percentage of women in technical fields would definitely be higher, but it would still not approach 50%, as most people who "encourage women to enter $FIELD" think it should be.
Now I had babelfish translate the word democracy into traditional chinese...
Yes, I did the same thing. I translated the word "Democracy" into simplified Chinese and sent it through http://www.google.cn/. There was a disclaimer at the bottom of the page just as you described. I also sent the Google snippets of the first 5 results back through Babelfish. Here are the results:
2006.01.01 decorated corridors stroll the expired archive welcome reprint, asks respectfully to give the source Yang Yinbo... Zhu , one is located the heavy straight city small small pill , a Sichuan changes the border and nearly depends on the state west slightly , one in is very strange in the multi- people has upstream more than 80,000 person of Qi Jiang first , I in therefore saw is: "The person , the open land spreads, the whole families wildly with sobs" -- -- originally is ancient described a sad world illuminates....
Democracy progressive party Provides information and so on party constitution, party principle and important matter discipline.
Welcome the presence China Democratic National Construction Association! Welcome to enter the China Democratic National Construction Association website! The China Democratic National Construction Association is mainly the political party which is composed by the economy public figure and other experts, is multi- parties cooperation always... we which the Communist Party of China leads hoped links up well through this window and everywhere persons from all walks of life, helps you to understand Chinese the political party system, understood Chinese the democratic parties, understand the China Democratic National Construction Association....
Democracy and legal system On August 20, 2002 Specially pays attention to the social on-the-spot report rights and interests vertically and horizontally to talk of this and that the law service information picture news people's represententative overseas to read extensively citizen viewpoint present age attorney to awake world wonderful document news in focus sad "the Dongpo elbow" to hit turns "the speeding car party" the Wuhan police uncovers 84 series under the hard wall to ride the motorcycle to rob the document...
According to the local law laws and regulations and the policy, the part searches the result not to demonstrate.
--------------
A couple of the results seem like they might be propoganda, but it's hard for me to tell without being fluent in Chinese. Anyone here know enough Chinese to help me out?
It's obvious to me that you simply read the 7 points outlined in the beginning of the article and did not dig any deeper, which is making you sound like an idiot.
But one might guess if the president is scheduled to talk to the astronauts during the state of the union address, there's some pressure there to launch.
Wrong. From TFA:
The persistent rumor that the White House had ordered the flight to proceed in order to spice up President Reagan's scheduled State of the Union address seems based on political motivations, not any direct testimony or other first-hand evidence. Feynman personally checked out the rumor and never found any substantiation. If Challenger's flight had gone according to plan, the crew would have been asleep at the time of Reagan's speech, and no communications links had been set up.
No, it *did* explode in the common definition, as in boom, major disassembly. It did not explode in one specific, technical way.
Wrong again. An explosion, by definition, is a rapid heating and expansion of gas, usually associated with combustion. A detonation is an explosion that propogates so fast that the contraction-expansion cycle of the shock wave stimulates and continues the combustion. The various pieces of the shuttle disassembled in different ways, but they did not explode. The fuel tank lost structural integrity because of the excessive stresses caused by the solid booster leak; it basically cracked open like an egg. Once that happened, the combustion occuring in the shuttle's engines was allowed to propegate through the now-depressurized fuel lines, and all the fuel burned simultaneously, causing a fireball. This is the only event that could be even close to being an "explosion," even though the expansion was caused by depressurization, not heating or combustion. After the breakup of the fuel tank, the other three sections of the shuttle--the orbiter and the two boosters--fell away. The two boosters were still burning fuel at that point, and streaked away on their own. The orbiter twisted along the pitch axis and hit the Mach 2 air broadside, which tore it apart. There were no explosions, although from the image of the fuel fireball, it would be easy to make that assumption.
There were several previous documented cases of the O-rings burning part way through. Feynman's report clarifies the severe nature of this problem.
Yes, and every documented case was of the o-rings being used in conditions outside the operational parameters set by the engineers. It was not due to bad design. If your car dealership tells you that your Honda Civic cannot operate in 2 feet of water, and you do it anyway, is the design of the car faulty? No.
There's no way any engineer could get the shuttle grounded and a major subsystem completely redesigned just on a hunch. In the real world flaws often go unresolved until somebody dies.
That may be true, but it does not make the event "inevitable." It just means the project is poorly managed. If the engineers are trying to tell management that the system is being run outside operational parameters and management ignores them (which is what happened), then an accident is not an "unavoidable price to be paid." It's just a major management f*ck up. And that is exactly what the Challenger accident was.
Industry analysts announced today that they believe Google may start entering into the business of deities.
"This is a logical move for Google," said the analyst in a note never intended for publication. "With the success of their Google Maps and Google Earth planet-creating technology, expanding to entire universes and mythologies is the next logical step. This fits neatly into Google's ultimate goal of organizing the world and it's information."
Continuing his wild speculation, the analyst said, "We believe that Google may roll out a beta Deity, on par with one of the lesser Egyptian gods, by summer. We would like to note, however, that Google has not confirmed our theories, and that all this is based on a conversation we had last week while stoned."
The analysts maintained a $666 price target on this stock.
"The selection of this target price was right in line with the possibility that Google would roll out a direct competitor with God. But we have faith that because of Google's 'Do No Evil' policy, this competitor will quickly supplant God and take His rightful place in the Heavens."
Should Google decide to enter the Deity market, it would find it crowded. The current market leaders include the Judeo-Christian God (nasdaq - GOD), with 2.2 billion customers, the Islamic Allah (nasdaq - ALLH), with 1.3 billion customers, and Vishnu (nasdaq - SHVA), with 900 million customers, among many others. Google is expected to report its fourth-quarter earnings next Tuesday.
...trying to improve on this whole bunch of stuff while remaining compatible is HELLA hard.
Ah, there's the crux of it. Microsoft is trying way to hard to remain compatible with other programs.
Here's a novel idea: break compatibility. Apple did it when they introduced OS X, why couldn't Microsoft? (Sure, Apple included some "OS 9" compatibility layer or some crap, but from the anecdotal evidence I've collected, it didn't work very well and was abandonded once all the applications supported OS X.) MS just have to make sure they announce this change well in advance, and work with third-party application developers to assure that things work when the new, non-backwards-compatible version of Windows rolls out. This would give them a chance to start fresh, with a clean codebase that is free of the past poor decisions and built from the ground up with a "network environment" security model.
Let's face it: the network is here to stay, and those decisions that Microsoft made back in the Windows 3.1 days when computers weren't really on the internet will only make things more difficult for us from here on out.
Of course, if they truly pulled an Apple, then their code would be based on some BSD flavor. I have no problem with that.
I've since been told that if I were to start with the first episode instead, I'd like it more - something about a train robbery? - because it shows more of the "real" show.
Yes, that is likely the case. The pilot, while intended to introduce the characters and the setting, also set out to convey the laid-back Western attitude of the Southwest United States -- very much the attitude of most frontiersmen, which these characters are. I can see how that would seem glacially slow to someone not used that.
The later episodes didn't deal with that much, mostly because they had to tell a story in a shorter amount of time, and so the slower pace was sacrificed to move the story along. I watched the pilot last, and found it to be very enjoyable, because I was already familiar with the characters, and it was nice to see their origins on screen.
I've also found that the vast majority of shows, regardless of genre, don't really "work" until about the 4th or 5th episode. By then, the writers are familiar enough with the mythology to work within it, and the actors are comfortable enough with each other to make things seem more natural. This is why I am so disappointed when shows are cancelled after only 3 or 4 episodes; they never even had a chance to succeed.
As to the question of Joss Whedon's dialog: my guess is that his dialog style is strictly a "love it or hate it" proposition. Personally, I have never really enjoyed the dialog in his other shows (Buffy and Angel), but for some reason the dialog in Firefly struck a chord with me. This is not Star Trek, where everyone is highly educated at the Starfleet Academy before they are let anywhere near a starship. The crew of Serenity are more like truckers: their speech is crude, colorful, and full of colloquialisms, which, this being 500 years in the future, will be nothing like ours. I like it, but others will not. A similar phenomenon is the dialog in Aaron Sorkin's Sports Night. I find it very difficult to listen to, since the rapid-fire delivery seems very contrived, silly, and way too rehearsed. However, lots of people swear by it, and enjoy it very much.
My suspicion is that if the dialog style bothered you, you will not enjoy the rest of the series. However, I would encourage you to watch it anyway (or a few episodes, at least), and give it a proper chance. Joss Whedon's strengths lie in his ability to develop a character over many episodes, and create a wholly convincing mythology for his characters to exist in, continuity included. Both of those require the viewer to see more than one episode to appreciate.
Seriously, this is not a flame. Every single person I have ever introduced this series to loved it, and I am curious about the reasons why you disliked it. I always love hearing differing opinions on "cult" pop-culture phenomena.
There are several statistics they quoted which I have suspected for a long time, but only now can confirm with numbers.
more than half of pages use the target attribute on the a element somewhere.
I can't begin to describe the frustration I feel when I'm forced to use Internet Explorer and clicking links causes pages to fire up in a million new windows. Whether or not a link opens in a new window, a new tab, or the current window/tab really should be a client-side choice. Webmasters think they're being helpful by letting you separate your workspace into many windows, but they're really just slowing people down. Thank God for Firefox.
It seems most pages use presentational attributes: the fourth most used attribute across all elements is the table element's border attribute, followed by the height and width attributes on img, followed by <table width="">, <table cellspacing="">, <img border="">, and <table cellpadding="">. Interestingly, though, the most frequently used attribute on the body element (namely bgcolor) is only used on around half of pages, with all the other presentational attributes on body being used even less. One possible explanation is that on average, colors are mostly done using CSS, while layout is mostly done using HTML tables.
This makes perfect sense. While colors, fonts and styles are pretty much standard in a cross-browser environment, due to many various interpretations of the CSS Box Model, coding layout purely in CSS can be a terrible chore. It's usually much quicker to do a few simply layouts in tables (header, sidebar, content) and use CSS for pretty much everything else.
Slashdot Mirror
For that matter, exactly how do they expect to access password or IP protected sites?
IP protected sites?
"This website is copyright (C) 2006 by Al Quaeda. All rights reserved. By using this website, you agree that you are not a law enforcement official. No terrorist attacks are stored on this server. Al Quaeda is not responsible in any way for the information posted here."
Either you take money from me, or you take it from content providers. When you start doing both I'm terminating my subscription so you ain't getting a dime from me ever again.
I've got some bad news for you...
Content providers, including Google, pay for access to the internet through ISPs, who pay money to the telcos in order to hook up to the internet.
They are already getting paid for the same data twice. Now they want more?
What the telcos don't understand is that the consumers (you and me) don't care whose lines they use to access the content. All they care about is the content. All Google has to do is refuse to serve content to Verizon customers, and Verizon will be flooded with calls from irate customers demanding that they fix the internet. The content providers have the power here, especially if they are as ubiquitous as Google.
Patents are not [for] ideas, they are for things.
Well said, sir.
I think the fence analogy is rather confusing, however. (No offense to Jefferson, of course.) I prefer to draw the line between ideas and implimentations. Without this distinction, there would be no such thing as a competing product.
For example, let's say you think of a novel new way to wake people up in the morning; something that's never been marketed before, like pouring water on your head. So you take this idea and distill it down into an implimentation called the AlarmWaker3000, which you patent. Now your good friend down the street has this same idea, and creates himself the WakeUp Machine, which he patents. But because the AlarmWaker3000 used a bucket and a piece of string tied to the hands of a clock, and the WakeUp Machine uses a hose crimped by a weight that gets lighter over time, neither one of you are infringing on each other's patents. You didn't patent "A method for waking someone up by splashing their face with cold water," you patented the "AlarmWaker3000" and the "WakeUp Machine".
The question of infringement on a patent usually boils down to the similarity between the two devices. Two companies can build, and patent, two different motherboard designs with exactly the same functionality: onboard video, sound, ethernet, whatever. But as long as the circuits are dissimilar enough (which is up to a judge to decide) then the implimentations are different and they don't infringe.
The problem with software patents is that the the line between ideas and implimentations has been blurred. Amazon patents their code for purchasing things with a single mouse click, once all your information is on file and you are logged in. Suddenly, anyone creating a shopping system that allows registered customers who are logged in to purchase things with a single mouse click is infringing on the patent, even if their implimentation is different. These companies are trying to use the patent system to enforce artifical monopolies on ideas instead of implimentations, and effectively cut out the competition. The truly troubling part is that the Patent Office, and lots of patent courts settling disputes around the country, seem to be going along with it.
Maybe the fault lies with an overworked Patent Office staff; maybe it lies with a culture that irrationally rewards new technologies. I just don't know.
This really works! I've done it!
And, for the first time since yesterday, I am offering for sale a revolutionary new product that will protect your precious head from the same egg-cooking x-rays that make you breakfast.
For three small payments of $19.95, you can block the radiation emitting from your cell phone by adding this small device to the back of your phone. The unique lattice-like orientation of the pantented gold-copper-lead electrical conduits create an electrical "net" around your phone, forcing the dangerous radiation to be emitted directly up into the sky instead of into your brain! Simply peel the backing off the product and affix it to the back of your phone, between the phone and the battery. Be sure to read the manual for proper placement, because if you are even a fraction of an inch off, you won't get the proper protection you deserve. If you are feeling nervous about doing it yourself, I also offer a service to install this device on your phone for you, for only two additional payments of $19.95 each, plus postage. Just send me your phone and rest easy!
But wait! Call now, and I will throw in, completely free of charge, a cell phone privacy guard. This handy device fits over the mouthpiece of the phone and prevents malicious hackers from listening in on your calls by scrambling your signal. Don't miss out on this opportunity!
First one hundred callers receive a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge as a FREE GIFT!
Most spam comes in from out of the U.S., but the value of spam has decreased majorly in the last year -- not due to laws or government regulations but through the end user finding ways to avoid even seeing spam. I think by next year spam will decrease greatly and in the next 5 years we'll have forgotten it entirely.
... it just means we can no longer see it.
Yeah, we may have forgotten about it in 5 years, but that doesn't mean it's gone away
I'm not worried about how many spam messages end up in my mailbox; I have all kinds of filters and things set up to prevent that. What I'm worried about is the sheer amount of traffic being sent over the internet backbone fibers related to spam. All that data is clogging the system, even if filters at the message's destination make it so the data never arrives in a mailbox. Lots of this spam is being sent by zombie machines, and will continue to be sent long after spam is no longer profitable, which is highly unlikely to ever happen. Even a single purchase of a product justifies the cost of sending millions of messages.
If all the spam in the network is completely eliminated all at once, would the internet speed up? Would my downloads be faster, and my bandwidth wider, and my gaming lag smaller, and my surfing more productive?
How much bandwidth are we truly wasting on spam? I'd love to see some up-to-date statistics on this.
My removal method is so methodical that I'm bored to tears sometimes.
If it's worth doing twice, it's worth scripting.
Seriously, why wouldn't you write a Windows script that would intall all the programs, run all the commands, clean out the registry keys, and reboot every once in a while? Then when people bring in their computers, you just toss in the CD or USB key with the script, fire it up, and head back to Slashdot.
Otherwise known as "Florescent Sugar Water."
With a pinch of salt.
Took nearly minutes of research to whip that up.
Just because the implimentation is easy, doesn't mean the idea is not revolutionary. It took someone (Dr. Robert Cade, actually) to realize that athletes lose all kinds of nutrients during aerobic activites, not just water, to spark the idea of Gatorade. No one had thought about that before. Almost all successful inventions seem simple in retrospect, which is probably why they were so successful.
Take the idea of the airbag for instance: a very simple implimentation. Inflatable bag, explosive canister of compressed air, sensor in the car. But the idea was revolutionary when it first debuted. "Holy cow! People can survive accidents if we give them an inflatible pillow that only opens during an accident!"
It seems simple now, but was quite revolutionary at the time.
Then, those crashes and deaths will be the responsibility of the car manufacturer who will get sued into oblivion.
No, the manufacturers will just place a sticker over the car's doors at the dealership that say:
"By breaking this seal, you agree to absolve Big Car Maker, Inc. of any and all liability for damages due to defective materials, bad programming, and improper maintenence of this vehicle. Please see the owner's manual for complete liability waiver."
That ought to take care of it.
So how long until Toyota releases a Camry that can play a trumpet?
Much is made in the movies about the Jedi's ability to block blaster fire with their light sabers, (and in Vader's case his hand).
Much is also made in the movies about the Jedi's ability to detect such subtle nuances of mood and body language that they can tell when someone is lying. So why is it that they can't see when a supposedly non-Jedi senator is very obviously and transparently plotting to take over the Republic and wipe out an entire culture using his Sith powers? It seems to me that if the Jedi really had any Force powers at all, they would get cramps every time Palpatine entered the room, seeing as he's positively dripping with the Dark Side.
canvas tags! Boooo!
What's wrong with <canvas> tags? I think they are a revolutionary idea.
Once they become part of the HTML5 spec (and WHATWG is working on it now), then suddenly web developers will have a way to show those corny Flash movies without needing a plugin. The browser will support dynamic bitmap refresh natively. Eventually, it will support 3D rendering natively too, probably through OpenGL. Imagine playing Doom in a web browser, with no plugins. Or a contractor showing clients around a virtual model of their home before construction begins.
Does it have the potential to be horribly abused? Of course. So does the <script> element, and even the element. And who can forget the abuses of the <embed> and <object> elements?
Does it offer limitless opportunities for a more dynamic website? Yes.
Does it mean the fragmented world of browser+plugins is converging to browser+JavaScript/AJAX? Yes.
Plugin functionality with no plugins--just JavaScript and a <canvas> tag. I like it.
A full Googlized version of Ubuntu only makes sense if it was geared explicitly toward search: much like Apple's Spotlight on steroids. But that can be accomplished with an application, not a full-blown operating system. Google is not interested in building a product if it does not align with their core mission, which is search. They have no interest in destroying Microsoft completely, they do not want to get into an OS war, and they certainly don't want to start diversifying to the point where their "One Thing" becomes "One Thing In Each Market." They want to do search, and do it well.
Google also does not want to replace the infrastructure in any given market; that's too much hassle. They just want to work within it. Notice, they have no interest at all in entering the cell phone or PDA market, but they certainly make their products work very well with existing technology in those markets. I think the same will hold true of OSs: they don't want to REPLACE your OS, they just want you to search with Google FROM your OS, and hopefully click on some AdWords along the way. If that means integrating their search directly into the OS so you don't have to open a browser (a la Google Desktop) then that is a step toward their goal. Replacing the entire OS is unnecessary complexity.
My guess is that the OS is being developed exclusively for inhouse use, since Google has only confirmed its existence, not it's purpose. Everything about releasing this Goobuntu to the public is pure speculation on the Register's part. Companies roll out custom OSs for inhouse use all the time; even companies using Windows have IT departments that build their own images to propegate out to the client machines, customizing which services and programs will be available. That's a "custom OS", too.
I don't see whats the problems. An anti virus is like rust-proofing your car. Its needed and its your own damn fault if you never had it made. And you can't accuse the manufacturer of not doing it for you either [sic]
A flawed analogy. With the prevelence of networking in computing today, not having anti-virus is more like the manufacturer not including brakes on the car. Sure, you don't need them to drive in a wide-open dry lake bed, but if you plan on doing any driving on other roads with other cars they may come in handy.
However, Microsoft in this situation is not really the manufacturer of the car. Someone like Dell or Gateway would be, and to have them not include anti-virus would be more parallel to the above analogy. Truthfully, Microsoft Windows is just a component that the computer manufacturer purchases to use in the product. Those of you buying it on your own can be compared with people installing aftermarket auto parts, and if you bought a suspension and forgot to put the brakes back on, you'd be in big trouble -- but the suspension is not required to come with new brakes included.
...big corps start to realize that the old bussiness model is dead, and begin to use the new model at their advantage, instead of fighting the tide.
Nope. They're not beginning to use a new model at all. At most, they are trying to apply their current (old) business model to a new medium. At the very least, they are going to try this "intarweb distribution" thingie and do it so poorly that they can then say, "but we TRIED selling this stuff online, and no one bought it! They're all filthy pirates!"
The old business model is: "We create content. You pay for this content, but you only get to watch it when, where, and how we say so, because of our precious IP. Oh, and we're greedy bastards and have no concept of supply and demand, so our prices are unfairly high and we blame the internet on low sales, not taking the quality of our product into account."
Their new model is: "We create content. You pay for this content online at the same inflated prices as physical media, except that we don't have to pay for printing any physical media, and this is a peer-to-peer system which means the customers are paying for bandwidth costs as well! We don't allow them to alter or burn this content in any way because of the restrictive DRM we place on it. Basically, you only get to watch it when, where, and how we say so, because of our precious IP. Oh, and we're greedy bastards and will blame the failure of this system on the filthy pirates and not on the inherent flaws."
How is this new or innovative, again?
When you put my life in your hands, I somewhat expect you to provide a bit of security.
Ahh, but that's the thing. Who's life are you putting your hands into? The government's? Do they own the planes? Did you pay them for the ticket? Nope. Your travel is being conducted by *private businesses* and how they conduct their business is not necessarily for the government to decide.
So what would happen if an airline started a cash-only, anonymous service, where no IDs would be checked and no baggage searched? No one would fly with them. It's not in the best interests of airlines to let terrorists on their planes, just as it is not in their best interest to allow the engines to fall off mid flight. It's a self-correcting system--I don't understand where the government fits in here.
This paranoia drives me nuts. People would rather stand in line at a security checkpoint for an hour and have all their personal belongings scanned, probed, and rifled through than admit to themselves that none of that is really helping. The 9/11 hijackers took over the plane with blades that were under 2" long. Why? Because no one expected them to kill themselves. The modus operandi of all airplane hijackings up until that point had involved the hijackers wanting to live beyond the event. "Sit quietly," we're told, "and everything will work out." Well, the 9/11 hijackers changed that paradigm forever, and now that we know radicals would be willing to die, and take out entire jetliners and buildings in the process, that will never happen again. You can be sure that the moment another hijacker stands up with a 2" blade to take over the plane, three guys from the rows behind him will tackle him, as the stewardess beats him over the head with full cans of soda and three more passengers run to warn the captain. It only worked before because it was unexpected.
Now the terrorists will move on to a different attack vector. They know that the moment they use a particular vector (airplanes) we will throw a bunch of money at securing that vector. So they move on, and use something else (like bombs in a subway and on buses). We're not going to prevent anything by becoming paranoid about the vectors the terrorists have already used, because they have already moved on. We're perpetually behind the curve.
You airport security freaks need to get over yourselves: perhaps making air travel needlessly complicated makes you feel warm and comfortable, but I, for one, am tired of being scrutinized as if I'm a criminal every time I walk into an airport.
The Chinese government has killed thousands of its own citizens in massacres and throws its people into jail without a trial for speaking out against the establishment. They've a record of human rights violations, which is definitely evil by any stretch. I mean, shooting dead protesters and imprisoning and torturing people for speaking out - this is what Google is abetting a government to hide and keep away from its own citizens.
Right, they should rouse the GoogleArmy(tm) right away, and get to work invading China to put a stop to all this madness!
For cryin' out loud, Google is just a search engine company. They are not the second coming of Christ, they are not in a position of influence in China, and they *are* required to obey the laws of any country they do business in.
So here they are, faced with two choices:
a) comply with China's laws, which, although we don't agree with them, do belong to a sovereign nation with a bigger army than us
b) decide that they will not aid and abet censorship and thus totally ignore China altogether. China is probably happier with their state-sponsored search engines, anyway.
Given that no censorship is perfect, even in an oppressive regime like China's, I would take choice a) any day. Setting aside for a moment the fact that 1.2 billion people are now reading AdWords (cha-ching!), some information about truth, justice, and the American^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Humanitarian Way will likely slip through China's censorship filters. And once that information starts, it's very difficult to stop.
"Some Google" is better than "no Google", especially when "all Google" is not an option.
...fluffy orange velociraptors...
Just like a woman to make her velociraptors fluffy and orange.
*ducks*
In all seriousness, though, I agree with you. There is no need to push women (or men, for that matter) into various fields just because the percentages don't match the general population. However, I do think we need to focus our efforts in this country away from *discouraging* specific genders from entering certain fields. Girls should never be told that "girls can't do math," and boys should never be told "being a nurse is for sissies."
That being said, the general population really does tend to sort itself into gender roles. Give a G.I. Joe action figure to a little girl, and she will likely dress it up and have a tea party. Give a Barbie to a little boy, and soon Major General Barbie will be unleashing the dinosaurs on Cobra's headquarters. In the absense of all discouragement, the percentage of women in technical fields would definitely be higher, but it would still not approach 50%, as most people who "encourage women to enter $FIELD" think it should be.
Now I had babelfish translate the word democracy into traditional chinese...
...
...
Yes, I did the same thing. I translated the word "Democracy" into simplified Chinese and sent it through http://www.google.cn/. There was a disclaimer at the bottom of the page just as you described. I also sent the Google snippets of the first 5 results back through Babelfish. Here are the results:
2006.01.01 decorated corridors stroll the expired archive welcome reprint, asks respectfully to give the source Yang Yinbo...
Zhu , one is located the heavy straight city small small pill , a Sichuan changes the border and nearly depends on the state west slightly , one in is very strange in the multi- people has upstream more than 80,000 person of Qi Jiang first , I in therefore saw is: "The person , the open land spreads, the whole families wildly with sobs" -- -- originally is ancient described a sad world illuminates.
Democracy progressive party
Provides information and so on party constitution, party principle and important matter discipline.
Welcome the presence China Democratic National Construction Association!
Welcome to enter the China Democratic National Construction Association website! The China Democratic National Construction Association is mainly the political party which is composed by the economy public figure and other experts, is multi- parties cooperation always... we which the Communist Party of China leads hoped links up well through this window and everywhere persons from all walks of life, helps you to understand Chinese the political party system, understood Chinese the democratic parties, understand the China Democratic National Construction Association.
Democracy and legal system
On August 20, 2002 Specially pays attention to the social on-the-spot report rights and interests vertically and horizontally to talk of this and that the law service information picture news people's represententative overseas to read extensively citizen viewpoint present age attorney to awake world wonderful document news in focus sad "the Dongpo elbow" to hit turns "the speeding car party" the Wuhan police uncovers 84 series under the hard wall to ride the motorcycle to rob the document...
* China Association for the Promotion of Democracy *
The people enter the central website.
According to the local law laws and regulations and the policy, the part searches the result not to demonstrate.
--------------
A couple of the results seem like they might be propoganda, but it's hard for me to tell without being fluent in Chinese. Anyone here know enough Chinese to help me out?
But one might guess if the president is scheduled to talk to the astronauts during the state of the union address, there's some pressure there to launch.
Wrong. From TFA:
No, it *did* explode in the common definition, as in boom, major disassembly. It did not explode in one specific, technical way.
Wrong again. An explosion, by definition, is a rapid heating and expansion of gas, usually associated with combustion. A detonation is an explosion that propogates so fast that the contraction-expansion cycle of the shock wave stimulates and continues the combustion. The various pieces of the shuttle disassembled in different ways, but they did not explode. The fuel tank lost structural integrity because of the excessive stresses caused by the solid booster leak; it basically cracked open like an egg. Once that happened, the combustion occuring in the shuttle's engines was allowed to propegate through the now-depressurized fuel lines, and all the fuel burned simultaneously, causing a fireball. This is the only event that could be even close to being an "explosion," even though the expansion was caused by depressurization, not heating or combustion. After the breakup of the fuel tank, the other three sections of the shuttle--the orbiter and the two boosters--fell away. The two boosters were still burning fuel at that point, and streaked away on their own. The orbiter twisted along the pitch axis and hit the Mach 2 air broadside, which tore it apart. There were no explosions, although from the image of the fuel fireball, it would be easy to make that assumption.
There were several previous documented cases of the O-rings burning part way through. Feynman's report clarifies the severe nature of this problem.
Yes, and every documented case was of the o-rings being used in conditions outside the operational parameters set by the engineers. It was not due to bad design. If your car dealership tells you that your Honda Civic cannot operate in 2 feet of water, and you do it anyway, is the design of the car faulty? No.
There's no way any engineer could get the shuttle grounded and a major subsystem completely redesigned just on a hunch. In the real world flaws often go unresolved until somebody dies.
That may be true, but it does not make the event "inevitable." It just means the project is poorly managed. If the engineers are trying to tell management that the system is being run outside operational parameters and management ignores them (which is what happened), then an accident is not an "unavoidable price to be paid." It's just a major management f*ck up. And that is exactly what the Challenger accident was.
Google May Be Close To Creating God Competitor
1.26.2006
by AeroIllini
Industry analysts announced today that they believe Google may start entering into the business of deities.
"This is a logical move for Google," said the analyst in a note never intended for publication. "With the success of their Google Maps and Google Earth planet-creating technology, expanding to entire universes and mythologies is the next logical step. This fits neatly into Google's ultimate goal of organizing the world and it's information."
Continuing his wild speculation, the analyst said, "We believe that Google may roll out a beta Deity, on par with one of the lesser Egyptian gods, by summer. We would like to note, however, that Google has not confirmed our theories, and that all this is based on a conversation we had last week while stoned."
The analysts maintained a $666 price target on this stock.
"The selection of this target price was right in line with the possibility that Google would roll out a direct competitor with God. But we have faith that because of Google's 'Do No Evil' policy, this competitor will quickly supplant God and take His rightful place in the Heavens."
Should Google decide to enter the Deity market, it would find it crowded. The current market leaders include the Judeo-Christian God (nasdaq - GOD), with 2.2 billion customers, the Islamic Allah (nasdaq - ALLH), with 1.3 billion customers, and Vishnu (nasdaq - SHVA), with 900 million customers, among many others. Google is expected to report its fourth-quarter earnings next Tuesday.
...trying to improve on this whole bunch of stuff while remaining compatible is HELLA hard.
Ah, there's the crux of it. Microsoft is trying way to hard to remain compatible with other programs.
Here's a novel idea: break compatibility. Apple did it when they introduced OS X, why couldn't Microsoft? (Sure, Apple included some "OS 9" compatibility layer or some crap, but from the anecdotal evidence I've collected, it didn't work very well and was abandonded once all the applications supported OS X.) MS just have to make sure they announce this change well in advance, and work with third-party application developers to assure that things work when the new, non-backwards-compatible version of Windows rolls out. This would give them a chance to start fresh, with a clean codebase that is free of the past poor decisions and built from the ground up with a "network environment" security model.
Let's face it: the network is here to stay, and those decisions that Microsoft made back in the Windows 3.1 days when computers weren't really on the internet will only make things more difficult for us from here on out.
Of course, if they truly pulled an Apple, then their code would be based on some BSD flavor. I have no problem with that.
When can we blame Bush's war in Iraq on Call of Duty or SOCOM?
When we find a copy of one of those games on the presidential desk, apparently.
Thanks for humoring me.
I've since been told that if I were to start with the first episode instead, I'd like it more - something about a train robbery? - because it shows more of the "real" show.
Yes, that is likely the case. The pilot, while intended to introduce the characters and the setting, also set out to convey the laid-back Western attitude of the Southwest United States -- very much the attitude of most frontiersmen, which these characters are. I can see how that would seem glacially slow to someone not used that.
The later episodes didn't deal with that much, mostly because they had to tell a story in a shorter amount of time, and so the slower pace was sacrificed to move the story along. I watched the pilot last, and found it to be very enjoyable, because I was already familiar with the characters, and it was nice to see their origins on screen.
I've also found that the vast majority of shows, regardless of genre, don't really "work" until about the 4th or 5th episode. By then, the writers are familiar enough with the mythology to work within it, and the actors are comfortable enough with each other to make things seem more natural. This is why I am so disappointed when shows are cancelled after only 3 or 4 episodes; they never even had a chance to succeed.
As to the question of Joss Whedon's dialog: my guess is that his dialog style is strictly a "love it or hate it" proposition. Personally, I have never really enjoyed the dialog in his other shows (Buffy and Angel), but for some reason the dialog in Firefly struck a chord with me. This is not Star Trek, where everyone is highly educated at the Starfleet Academy before they are let anywhere near a starship. The crew of Serenity are more like truckers: their speech is crude, colorful, and full of colloquialisms, which, this being 500 years in the future, will be nothing like ours. I like it, but others will not. A similar phenomenon is the dialog in Aaron Sorkin's Sports Night. I find it very difficult to listen to, since the rapid-fire delivery seems very contrived, silly, and way too rehearsed. However, lots of people swear by it, and enjoy it very much.
My suspicion is that if the dialog style bothered you, you will not enjoy the rest of the series. However, I would encourage you to watch it anyway (or a few episodes, at least), and give it a proper chance. Joss Whedon's strengths lie in his ability to develop a character over many episodes, and create a wholly convincing mythology for his characters to exist in, continuity included. Both of those require the viewer to see more than one episode to appreciate.
I have seen some of it, and I found it awful...
Would you care to elaborate on that?
Seriously, this is not a flame. Every single person I have ever introduced this series to loved it, and I am curious about the reasons why you disliked it. I always love hearing differing opinions on "cult" pop-culture phenomena.
There are several statistics they quoted which I have suspected for a long time, but only now can confirm with numbers.
I can't begin to describe the frustration I feel when I'm forced to use Internet Explorer and clicking links causes pages to fire up in a million new windows. Whether or not a link opens in a new window, a new tab, or the current window/tab really should be a client-side choice. Webmasters think they're being helpful by letting you separate your workspace into many windows, but they're really just slowing people down. Thank God for Firefox.
This makes perfect sense. While colors, fonts and styles are pretty much standard in a cross-browser environment, due to many various interpretations of the CSS Box Model, coding layout purely in CSS can be a terrible chore. It's usually much quicker to do a few simply layouts in tables (header, sidebar, content) and use CSS for pretty much everything else.