one method I use to avoid use of captchas is to require javascript (yes, this sucks somewhat) to use my forms. when the form is 'submitted', i dynamically add a new form element into the form and then submit the form. server side, i check for the additional form element. it works pretty well - it seems that bots don't run javascript. i've received very few complaints (2 or so in as many years) from non JS enabled people.
From The Register:
Ask Jeeves is the seventh most popular search site in the UK with 1.9 per cent of total searches, Google is a long way in front with 63 per cent. Figures from Hitwise.
Update: 01/2004 The first 2038 problems are already here. Many 32-bit programs calculate time averages using (t1 + t2)/2. It should be quite obvious that this calculation fails when the time values pass 30 bits. The exact day can be calculated by making a small Unix C program, as follows:
In other words, on the 10th of January 2004 the occasional system will perform an incorrect time calculation until its code is corrected. Thanks to Ray Boucher for this observation.
The temporary solution is to replace all (t1 + t2)/2 with (((long long) t1 + t2) / 2) (POSIX/SuS) or (((double) t1 + t2) / 2) (ANSI). (Note that using t1/2 + t2/2 gives a roundoff error.)
The year-2038 bug is similar to the Y2K bug in that it involves a time wrap not coped for by programmers. In the case of Y2K, many older machines did not store the century digits of the date year, hence the year 2000 and the year 1900 would appear the same.
Of course we now know that the prevalence of computers that would fail because of this error was greatly exaggerated by the media. Computer scientists were generally aware that most machines would continue operating as usual through the century turnover, with the worst result being an incorrect date. This prediction withstood through to the new millennium.
There are however several other problems with date handling on machines in the world today. Some are less prevalent than others, but it is true that almost all computers suffer from one critical limitation. Most programs use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to work out their dates. Simply, UTC is the number of seconds elapsed since Jan 1 1970. A recent milestone was Sep 9 2001, where this value wrapped from 999'999'999 seconds to 1'000'000'000 seconds. Very few programs anywhere store time as a 9 digit number, and therefore this was not a problem.
Modern computers use a standard 4 byte integer for this second count. This is 31 bits, storing a value of 231. The remaining bit is the sign. This means that when the second count reaches 2147483647, it will wrap to -2147483648.
The precise date of this occurrence is Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038. At this time, a machine prone to this bug will show the time Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901, hence it is possible that the media will call this The Friday 13th Bug.
I think it is the next logical step. I use Google's Desktop Search exclusively to index my conversations so I can search through them.
If I could store my conversations on Google's servers then I'd be sorted (excuse the pun;-)) - no chance of losing my conversations to hardware failiures or other such disasters that I may somehow encounter.
I know what you're saying, there are indeed a lot of mods out there that make me think "why did you bother?", usually by some 16 year old kid.
Though I think there's a world of difference between the likes of Orac^3 and other case mods like Blackmesa HL2 and the bog standard window-mod and a few case lights by the 16 year old kid with his paper delivery job. It's not so much the case but the new ideas being thought up and the sheer attention to detail, the overall look can sometimes be 1/4 of the fun!
0.02
I completely agree - and this censorship will only push more of this material onto those more difficult to track distribution methods (such as IRC, newsgroups, etc etc).
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one method I use to avoid use of captchas is to require javascript (yes, this sucks somewhat) to use my forms. when the form is 'submitted', i dynamically add a new form element into the form and then submit the form. server side, i check for the additional form element. it works pretty well - it seems that bots don't run javascript. i've received very few complaints (2 or so in as many years) from non JS enabled people.
i gave up reading this article. well, i couldn't even find the article in amongst the ads in the first place
"Prisons are thought to be responsible for mad cow disease"
Don't tell me i'm the only one...
Hahahah, i was thinking the exact same thing. Gotta love James May (a BBC presenter)
I tried using iCal but it didn't quite offer me what I wanted.
I ended up using php-calendar (demo) set up on some webspace. It's very simple, but it does the job for me.
I can't help but feel that Google must be working on a calendar system akin to Gmail.
From The Register:
Ask Jeeves is the seventh most popular search site in the UK with 1.9 per cent of total searches, Google is a long way in front with 63 per cent. Figures from Hitwise.
Nope... no one uses Ask Jeeves.
Update: 01/2004 The first 2038 problems are already here. Many 32-bit programs calculate time averages using (t1 + t2)/2. It should be quite obvious that this calculation fails when the time values pass 30 bits. The exact day can be calculated by making a small Unix C program, as follows:
In other words, on the 10th of January 2004 the occasional system will perform an incorrect time calculation until its code is corrected. Thanks to Ray Boucher for this observation.
The temporary solution is to replace all (t1 + t2)/2 with (((long long) t1 + t2) / 2) (POSIX/SuS) or (((double) t1 + t2) / 2) (ANSI). (Note that using t1/2 + t2/2 gives a roundoff error.)
The year-2038 bug is similar to the Y2K bug in that it involves a time wrap not coped for by programmers. In the case of Y2K, many older machines did not store the century digits of the date year, hence the year 2000 and the year 1900 would appear the same.
Of course we now know that the prevalence of computers that would fail because of this error was greatly exaggerated by the media. Computer scientists were generally aware that most machines would continue operating as usual through the century turnover, with the worst result being an incorrect date. This prediction withstood through to the new millennium.
There are however several other problems with date handling on machines in the world today. Some are less prevalent than others, but it is true that almost all computers suffer from one critical limitation. Most programs use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to work out their dates. Simply, UTC is the number of seconds elapsed since Jan 1 1970. A recent milestone was Sep 9 2001, where this value wrapped from 999'999'999 seconds to 1'000'000'000 seconds. Very few programs anywhere store time as a 9 digit number, and therefore this was not a problem.
Modern computers use a standard 4 byte integer for this second count. This is 31 bits, storing a value of 231. The remaining bit is the sign. This means that when the second count reaches 2147483647, it will wrap to -2147483648.
The precise date of this occurrence is Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038. At this time, a machine prone to this bug will show the time Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901, hence it is possible that the media will call this The Friday 13th Bug.
Should be a little quicker now :) Traffic out of the img box has just doubled since i changed Apache's conf :P
I think it is the next logical step. I use Google's Desktop Search exclusively to index my conversations so I can search through them.
;-)) - no chance of losing my conversations to hardware failiures or other such disasters that I may somehow encounter.
If I could store my conversations on Google's servers then I'd be sorted (excuse the pun
Skip straight to Thunderbird on Mozilla's FTP server then ;)
:)
I know what you're saying, there are indeed a lot of mods out there that make me think "why did you bother?", usually by some 16 year old kid. Though I think there's a world of difference between the likes of Orac^3 and other case mods like Blackmesa HL2 and the bog standard window-mod and a few case lights by the 16 year old kid with his paper delivery job. It's not so much the case but the new ideas being thought up and the sheer attention to detail, the overall look can sometimes be 1/4 of the fun! 0.02
I completely agree - and this censorship will only push more of this material onto those more difficult to track distribution methods (such as IRC, newsgroups, etc etc).
With regards to the last sentence - What an absolute load of rubbish.