My wife and daughters play these stupid games. Superpokepets and Farm[town|ville] consume hours of their day.
My daughters, not so much, but my wife thinks that all computer oriented activities are game-play. She doesn't regard what I do as "work" because the only activities she participates in on a computer are games, therefore all computer activities are games. I'll admit that a few times a year I'll indulge in a game of Civilization, but I'm a bit more focused on my work because I actually enjoy it.
Occasionally I'll remind her that only a few hours of my work on a computer pays our cell phone bill while a few hours of her playing games costs in electricity usage. The concept of computers being tools for business still escapes her, so I'm in the doghouse most of the time for "playing" on the computer.
Thankfully, she's obeyed my mandate that no actual money be spent on these games.
IE8 forever.... You might as well say IE* forever. We can't even get rid of IE6!
On one of my sites: IE6 15% IE7 33% IE8 51%
MS operating systems: XP 57% Vista 30% Windows 7 10% Windows 2000 0.76% Server 2003 0.44% Windows 98 0.11%
I still have to support IE6 because 15% is a big chunk. XP still has more share than Vista + Windows 7 combined
It looks to me like MS is just polluting. Seriously, now I have to support 4 different versions of IE.
I'm a Linux user myself, but it bugs me to have to keep extra machines just for testing old browsers. I use VMWare Server and XP to test IE6, IE7 and IE8. The other browsers I test can all co-exist in Linux (even Safari using Crossover)
Just because the device comes with a flavor geared by the manufacturer, doesn't mean that the device cannot be set up with your favorite distro.
I've had great luck with modern Linux distributions (perhaps it's skill)- deploying on HP G3 and G4 blades, old Compaq Proliant servers (1650R and 1850R), new HP Proliant servers (DL380 and DL560), every Thinkpad I've ever owned (that's quite a few), and the Ideapad netbooks I bought for my daughters (Lenovo S10-2)
IMHO, the Linux world did learn its lesson - slow and steady wins the race.
Think about how many devices have Linux installed on them, and how many ways Linux touches our daily lives. Your ISP probably runs Linux in some form, possibly without knowing it. The website you're looking at runs on Linux (at least the RSS feeds). Your digital camera might be running linux. Your cell phone might run Linux. Chances are, most people are touched by Linux in their daily lives.
A single radio button enables SEF URL functionality. Another simple plugin will remove the meta generator tag that proclaims that the site is running Joomla. Yet another simple plugin disables direct access to the/administrator area.
Now, that being said, I don't see any reason Joomla cannot be used for a social networking base. I use it for that very purpose. With components like Community Builder and the new user functionality that will be present in J1.6, there isn't any reason not to.
HOW is a matter of collaboration and diligence. I often watch the logs roll by, looking for anything that doesn't seem right. It's fairly easy to distinguish a bot from a real user by the way their logs appear. A real user loads the page, then the CSS and JS files, then images. Bots load page after page without picking up the other linked files. Even if it doesn't identify itself as a bot, there are telltale signs.
Once I've identified an anomalous visitor, I can make a quick visit to ARIN or APNIC or whatever numbering authority is responsible for the IP address in question and look up the owner, their assigned netblock and other associated netblocks.
Again, collaboration is also a factor. Webmasterworld will certainly have a forum topic about this once there are real-world cases. All it takes is one good administrator to come up with a method for identification and the rest will expand and extend it.
Perhaps pompus would be more fitting
Not bad, but I like the idea of a name that is opposite, the antithesis of who I am. Haven't you ever met a fat guy called "Tiny" or a bald guy called "Curly?"
Maybe you could find a new name for me that has a two word definition that's cooler than "Crudely_Indecent"?
Didn't I write the word "IF" as a qualifier in the 5th sentence.
Why, yes....yes I did.
Perhaps you should re-read the entire post you're commenting against before you press Submit.
I operate under the assumption that things CAN be done until I'm convinced that they cannot be done. I remain optimistic that the copyright police scans can be identified in some way.
All of this is theoretical. I don't host copyrighted material on any of my sites, so I don't really care about that. I am concerned about additional usage on my sites by yet another bot where I will never see any benefit.
And my chosen name on/. was taken from a dictionary definition of the word vulgar. My response to you was not vulgar.....although, it was impudent. I attempt at all times to remain dissimilar to the name.
Anyone interested in finding out what's really going on with a website would look at robots.txt first and ask themselves 'now why do they want the robots to avoid these pages?'
Of course, some of those entries will be dead-ends (dynamic pages that make no sense to crawl, password protected pages that would detract from a sites rankings, etc...).
What's going to be interesting is what happens when their method is identified and/or the IP addresses they're using to make those identifications. There is no way to bypass.htaccess type restrictions. If their bot identifies itself (or can be identified), or their IP (range(s)) can be identified, the site owners can become invisible to the copyright bot and/or the agency tasked with detecting violations.
A clever administrator might even build a script to deliver alternate content to the bot/agency so as to not appear suspiciously invisible.
The exact method to thwart their efforts hinges on exactly how they detect the violations. It can definitely be done.
The problem with doing something that hasn't been done before is that you have to figure out how to do it.
The first step is research. Slashdot seems a likely place to find that research starting point or a glimmer of wisdom that might point in the right direction.
Or the submitter is a consultant who knows enough about his non-disclosure agreement to reveal only the bare minimum about his goals without revealing the purpose of the project and violating his NDA.
I'm right there with you (lucky according the the posters view of the world). In my job, firmware updates come quarterly (more frequently sometimes).
Rather than spend days updating the systems manually at around 10 minutes each, I've automated the entire process which takes about 4 minutes each (and many occur simultaneously). Over 1000 systems are receiving firmware and software updates (at most) quarterly and in just over an hour.
You should check out some of the Lenovo netbooks. I gave my daughters the S10-2 and they're nice. After removing Windows 7 and installing Linux, they're really nice.
I left my power supply at work one day and needed to do some work so I borrowed one of their laptops and it had enough power to run Eclipse at acceptable speeds (with most of the panes collapsed, of course)
Those kicking and screaming will be the employees at the corporations who're surfing YouTube instead of doing their work.
When the uproar finally reaches a volume that upper management can hear it, the first question will be "Why are you watching YouTube videos on our time?" That might be enough for the decision to be made that IE6 stays in order to make the employees more productive.
Seriously, if you're a corporate exec making the technology decisions and you're faced with the choice: Upgrade the browsers and pay for development updates on an app that was designed for IE6. or Keep IE6, increase productivity and leave the technology in its current state.
I don't see this as being a good thing unless Microsoft does it. When the vendor says "we won't support it anymore, and you cannot buy a contract to extend support" more companies will upgrade.
Here's the chain of events that any self-respecting geek would go through:
1. Sift through the data, looking for anything worth keeping 2. Format, re-install OS 3. Put a piece of a post-it note over the camera
OK, maybe that's last one is just me.....
I put the piece of post-it note over the camera within an hour of taking my Macbook out of the box......it just bugged me to see the camera pointing at me all the time.
The kids would get into trouble for disabling the cameras or trying to jailbreak their systems.....a post-it note is a very effective low tech solution. Here Mr. Pervert Administrator, you can look at baby blue today.....and tomorrows menu is classic yellow.
Does this guy really think he's smarter than the engineers at Apple and Adobe?
Sounds to me like a defeatist attitude... The authors microwave probably flashes 12:00.
I can think of a very simple fix - don't let the cursor hover over flash when a finger isn't on the screen.....move it off the animation. Dragging across the flash can activate the hover actions, releasing from a drag can act as click if hovering over a button immediately followed by moving the cursor off the animation. Wham, bam, he's wrong.
At one point I thought a CNA would benefit me in my job and future endeavours. Not that I needed it, at that point I had been managing a large Cisco network for several years, but I thought I might learn something new and have the credential on top of that.
I dropped the course in the second half because I realised how useless the instructor was. His method of teaching included reading from the book and asking me to teach everyone how to perform binary number conversions (because he didn't know how). On testing day, he would begin the class by handing out a question and answer key and reviewing the answers. When it came time to start the test he would ask the class to put the answer key sheet away (no, he didn't collect them), and then he'd announce that he was going for coffee and that he'd be back in 20 minutes.
There was only one other student (besides myself) who refused to use the key on the test. We would hang with each other during class and during the tests because everyone else was only interested in using the key and getting a 'perfect' score. It was a competition between us to see who could get the best 'real' score.
The second half of the course just got ridiculous. The teacher divulged that he got his certificate from a bootcamp and that he didn't really know anything that wasn't in the book. At that point I considered the entire course and the certificate a waste of money. I didn't want to be associated with a bunch of cheaters and know-nothings.
I've seen several of my former classmates working at Office Depot as salesmen.
Kubuntu Karmic here, the girls are running the netbook remix version on Lenovo S10-2 netbooks (which are quite bad ass little dual-core machines)
They're both using open office regularly for school, and my 15 year old groks the GIMP!
I realize they aren't using the WM to its potential, but they understand it and they aren't afraid of it.
Most importantly, they're running Linux. You should all thank me for raising the mythical geek girls. Yes they do exist....and it's past their bedtime.
Slashdot Mirror
You hit the nail on the head. That is the only problem I have with my wife....not so big.
Well, that and she thinks that 4x4 means she can drive over anything at any speed.....but that's entirely different.
I had a much bigger problem with my ex-wife. She really liked having sex.....with other guys.
She does until there's a purchase of an imaginary object.
She controls it, but I make it.
My wife and daughters play these stupid games. Superpokepets and Farm[town|ville] consume hours of their day.
My daughters, not so much, but my wife thinks that all computer oriented activities are game-play. She doesn't regard what I do as "work" because the only activities she participates in on a computer are games, therefore all computer activities are games. I'll admit that a few times a year I'll indulge in a game of Civilization, but I'm a bit more focused on my work because I actually enjoy it.
Occasionally I'll remind her that only a few hours of my work on a computer pays our cell phone bill while a few hours of her playing games costs in electricity usage. The concept of computers being tools for business still escapes her, so I'm in the doghouse most of the time for "playing" on the computer.
Thankfully, she's obeyed my mandate that no actual money be spent on these games.
IE8 forever.... You might as well say IE* forever. We can't even get rid of IE6!
On one of my sites:
IE6 15%
IE7 33%
IE8 51%
MS operating systems:
XP 57%
Vista 30%
Windows 7 10%
Windows 2000 0.76%
Server 2003 0.44%
Windows 98 0.11%
I still have to support IE6 because 15% is a big chunk.
XP still has more share than Vista + Windows 7 combined
It looks to me like MS is just polluting. Seriously, now I have to support 4 different versions of IE.
I'm a Linux user myself, but it bugs me to have to keep extra machines just for testing old browsers. I use VMWare Server and XP to test IE6, IE7 and IE8. The other browsers I test can all co-exist in Linux (even Safari using Crossover)
Just because the device comes with a flavor geared by the manufacturer, doesn't mean that the device cannot be set up with your favorite distro.
I've had great luck with modern Linux distributions (perhaps it's skill)- deploying on HP G3 and G4 blades, old Compaq Proliant servers (1650R and 1850R), new HP Proliant servers (DL380 and DL560), every Thinkpad I've ever owned (that's quite a few), and the Ideapad netbooks I bought for my daughters (Lenovo S10-2)
IMHO, the Linux world did learn its lesson - slow and steady wins the race.
Think about how many devices have Linux installed on them, and how many ways Linux touches our daily lives. Your ISP probably runs Linux in some form, possibly without knowing it. The website you're looking at runs on Linux (at least the RSS feeds). Your digital camera might be running linux. Your cell phone might run Linux. Chances are, most people are touched by Linux in their daily lives.
Somebody needs to slap his developer.
A single radio button enables SEF URL functionality. Another simple plugin will remove the meta generator tag that proclaims that the site is running Joomla. Yet another simple plugin disables direct access to the /administrator area.
Now, that being said, I don't see any reason Joomla cannot be used for a social networking base. I use it for that very purpose. With components like Community Builder and the new user functionality that will be present in J1.6, there isn't any reason not to.
You beat me to it.....only I was going to say:
WTF is "Niney"
You turned it into a triple-combo!
HOW is a matter of collaboration and diligence. I often watch the logs roll by, looking for anything that doesn't seem right. It's fairly easy to distinguish a bot from a real user by the way their logs appear. A real user loads the page, then the CSS and JS files, then images. Bots load page after page without picking up the other linked files. Even if it doesn't identify itself as a bot, there are telltale signs.
Once I've identified an anomalous visitor, I can make a quick visit to ARIN or APNIC or whatever numbering authority is responsible for the IP address in question and look up the owner, their assigned netblock and other associated netblocks.
Again, collaboration is also a factor. Webmasterworld will certainly have a forum topic about this once there are real-world cases. All it takes is one good administrator to come up with a method for identification and the rest will expand and extend it.
Perhaps pompus would be more fitting
Not bad, but I like the idea of a name that is opposite, the antithesis of who I am. Haven't you ever met a fat guy called "Tiny" or a bald guy called "Curly?"
Maybe you could find a new name for me that has a two word definition that's cooler than "Crudely_Indecent"?
Didn't I write the word "IF" as a qualifier in the 5th sentence.
Why, yes....yes I did.
Perhaps you should re-read the entire post you're commenting against before you press Submit.
I operate under the assumption that things CAN be done until I'm convinced that they cannot be done. I remain optimistic that the copyright police scans can be identified in some way.
All of this is theoretical. I don't host copyrighted material on any of my sites, so I don't really care about that. I am concerned about additional usage on my sites by yet another bot where I will never see any benefit.
And my chosen name on /. was taken from a dictionary definition of the word vulgar. My response to you was not vulgar.....although, it was impudent. I attempt at all times to remain dissimilar to the name.
Clever but what happens when...
Didn't I mention IP address range(s)?
Why, yes....yes I did.
Anyone interested in finding out what's really going on with a website would look at robots.txt first and ask themselves 'now why do they want the robots to avoid these pages?'
Of course, some of those entries will be dead-ends (dynamic pages that make no sense to crawl, password protected pages that would detract from a sites rankings, etc...).
What's going to be interesting is what happens when their method is identified and/or the IP addresses they're using to make those identifications. There is no way to bypass .htaccess type restrictions. If their bot identifies itself (or can be identified), or their IP (range(s)) can be identified, the site owners can become invisible to the copyright bot and/or the agency tasked with detecting violations.
A clever administrator might even build a script to deliver alternate content to the bot/agency so as to not appear suspiciously invisible.
The exact method to thwart their efforts hinges on exactly how they detect the violations. It can definitely be done.
Hope you get there before I do.
I'm taking in a lot of liquids.
REST IN HELL CRAPVILLE!
He was smart enough to consult with his peers.
The problem with doing something that hasn't been done before is that you have to figure out how to do it.
The first step is research. Slashdot seems a likely place to find that research starting point or a glimmer of wisdom that might point in the right direction.
The submitter doesn't appear to know enough....
Or the submitter is a consultant who knows enough about his non-disclosure agreement to reveal only the bare minimum about his goals without revealing the purpose of the project and violating his NDA.
My son inherited my 'resist authority' gene.
I'll continue to pay for that one.
I'm right there with you (lucky according the the posters view of the world). In my job, firmware updates come quarterly (more frequently sometimes).
Rather than spend days updating the systems manually at around 10 minutes each, I've automated the entire process which takes about 4 minutes each (and many occur simultaneously). Over 1000 systems are receiving firmware and software updates (at most) quarterly and in just over an hour.
I haven't bricked one yet.
You're talking about a company that builds supercomputers to play chess. They're hardly greenards.
They are, however, moving to greener pastures in response to the demands of the marketplace.
That sounds smart to me.
You should check out some of the Lenovo netbooks. I gave my daughters the S10-2 and they're nice. After removing Windows 7 and installing Linux, they're really nice.
I left my power supply at work one day and needed to do some work so I borrowed one of their laptops and it had enough power to run Eclipse at acceptable speeds (with most of the panes collapsed, of course)
windows sucks on small screens
Windows sucks on large screens too....
Those kicking and screaming will be the employees at the corporations who're surfing YouTube instead of doing their work.
When the uproar finally reaches a volume that upper management can hear it, the first question will be "Why are you watching YouTube videos on our time?" That might be enough for the decision to be made that IE6 stays in order to make the employees more productive.
Seriously, if you're a corporate exec making the technology decisions and you're faced with the choice:
Upgrade the browsers and pay for development updates on an app that was designed for IE6.
or
Keep IE6, increase productivity and leave the technology in its current state.
I don't see this as being a good thing unless Microsoft does it. When the vendor says "we won't support it anymore, and you cannot buy a contract to extend support" more companies will upgrade.
Here's the chain of events that any self-respecting geek would go through:
1. Sift through the data, looking for anything worth keeping
2. Format, re-install OS
3. Put a piece of a post-it note over the camera
OK, maybe that's last one is just me.....
I put the piece of post-it note over the camera within an hour of taking my Macbook out of the box......it just bugged me to see the camera pointing at me all the time.
The kids would get into trouble for disabling the cameras or trying to jailbreak their systems.....a post-it note is a very effective low tech solution. Here Mr. Pervert Administrator, you can look at baby blue today.....and tomorrows menu is classic yellow.
All that Apple and Adobe could ever do
Does this guy really think he's smarter than the engineers at Apple and Adobe?
Sounds to me like a defeatist attitude... The authors microwave probably flashes 12:00.
I can think of a very simple fix - don't let the cursor hover over flash when a finger isn't on the screen.....move it off the animation. Dragging across the flash can activate the hover actions, releasing from a drag can act as click if hovering over a button immediately followed by moving the cursor off the animation. Wham, bam, he's wrong.
At one point I thought a CNA would benefit me in my job and future endeavours. Not that I needed it, at that point I had been managing a large Cisco network for several years, but I thought I might learn something new and have the credential on top of that.
I dropped the course in the second half because I realised how useless the instructor was. His method of teaching included reading from the book and asking me to teach everyone how to perform binary number conversions (because he didn't know how). On testing day, he would begin the class by handing out a question and answer key and reviewing the answers. When it came time to start the test he would ask the class to put the answer key sheet away (no, he didn't collect them), and then he'd announce that he was going for coffee and that he'd be back in 20 minutes.
There was only one other student (besides myself) who refused to use the key on the test. We would hang with each other during class and during the tests because everyone else was only interested in using the key and getting a 'perfect' score. It was a competition between us to see who could get the best 'real' score.
The second half of the course just got ridiculous. The teacher divulged that he got his certificate from a bootcamp and that he didn't really know anything that wasn't in the book. At that point I considered the entire course and the certificate a waste of money. I didn't want to be associated with a bunch of cheaters and know-nothings.
I've seen several of my former classmates working at Office Depot as salesmen.
Kubuntu Karmic here, the girls are running the netbook remix version on Lenovo S10-2 netbooks (which are quite bad ass little dual-core machines)
They're both using open office regularly for school, and my 15 year old groks the GIMP!
I realize they aren't using the WM to its potential, but they understand it and they aren't afraid of it.
Most importantly, they're running Linux. You should all thank me for raising the mythical geek girls. Yes they do exist....and it's past their bedtime.
Are you looking at the same KDE that the rest of us are looking at?
My 11 and 15 year old daughters use it successfully, without crashes.
Dude, you're being out-linuxed by little girls!