There is honour in taking a lower-paid job creating software that would cure cancer. There is glory to be had in the geek community by helping create a hit computer game. Look at the reverence some people give John Carmack. Look at the praise lavished on successful games by kids and adults alike, millions all over the world. I don't know about your definition of 'glory', but the praise of the gaming community definately fits into mine, especially for a geek.
It doesn't take an hour to parse the key, it takes maybe less than a second - the idea being that it's invisible to 'Joe Sixpack' sending an email to his buddies, but those less-than-a-seconds add up for the spammer spewing out hundreds of thousands of emails advertising that there \/14gr4.
Also, if the zombie machines he uses start running slow because they're now processing hundreds of thousands of those hashes, they're more likely to get an engineer in who will fix the problem.
Who wins? Everyone.
They might be less fearful of a lawsuit from an OSS OS project, but if that floppy driver *is* stolen from MS, that's going to spell trouble for them, especially as they've removed the copyright string.
Actually, in case you hadn't noticed, out-of-the-box, Firefox still shows ads too - you need to install a third-party plugin to stop them. That's something the non-tech user won't want to do.
Also, you're making Firefox users look like elitist jerks with statements like that. Drop the attitude.
I remember taking down an ex of mine's website after we split up in a petty, wounded swipe. It was on Geocities. Brute-forced, you say? No, I just turned off the cache and hit 'Reload' a few times...
When I hear a band I like has a new CD out, unless I'm *really* sure they are musical Gods who could never put a foot wrong, I will download a couple of tracks to see if I actually like the album and it's not just that catchy single drawing me in. If a friend suggests a band to me, I'll download 2 or 3 tracks to see if I like them before I'll spend money on an album - I consider this fair to me and to the record companies. Ditto with games - I'll download it and if I like it I'll buy it.
The reason is threefold: a) I don't like stealing. If I like something, I will pay for it - I just like to know if I'm going to like something before I hand over the cash.
b) I like owning the official media. I'm a collector at heart, and CDs are like collector's items - I like the warm, fuzzy feeling that comes with owning every DVD of my favourite TV series, or every album by my favourite band - Burned copies just don't cut it, and that brings me on to
c) CD-Rs tend to be fairly fragile - I've had the important layer come off in chunks from even the most well-protected CDs after even the most minimal of handling - how do the real warez freaks do it? What are you using that ultra-1337 warezed copy of 3D Studio MAX! (Which every warez kiddie seems to have, but none know how to use) for once that all-important layer's gone? bragging rights?
Personally, I buy far more CDs since I had access to P2P and other filesharing methods - the only CDs I've downloaded and not paid for have been ones I *genuinely* couldn't find availible *anywhere* (US bands' demo-releases rarely make it to these shores), and the same with games - I've been introduced to so many games via the medium of P2P or borrowing copies from friends, for instance Medal of Honour - I copied one game in the series off a mate and guess what? I've now bought every one since - sure I didn't pay for the first one initially, but I wouldn't have paid for any of the others if I hadn't experienced it first with a (technically illegal) 'borrowed' copy.
Just to clarify, I know the grandparent said 'not even a' message, but I'd like that behaviour explained as well - it's just damn weird, going out of their way for no reason to be a deliberate cock.
I visited a site of a major car dealership, and I didn't even get a "this site designed for Internet Explorer". It just flat refused to let me in.
I hate shit like that - Just changing the browser identifier lets you right through, there is *no reason* for these sites to stop you getting in, no reason you must use IE, they've just decided to be a bastard. Plenty of amateur sites do it too, just a bit of Javascript that pops up a smug "You must be using Microsoft Internet Explorer to use this page:)" message and redirects you to Disney.
Maybe the big car dealership took a backhander from MS or something, but what makes the amateur sites do it? Can someone with more psychological savvy than me give me an insight into the mind of these sort of people?
You're allowed to listen to it, but not to copy it. Even the laws saying you can back up CDs you own only allow the owner of the CD to make and own backup copies, not anyone who borrows it.
It's a nice thought, though - just a shame it doesn't hold water.
Totally different scenario. Deserting my email address costs me nothing but the 5 minutes it takes to mass-mail my address book a "hey, this is my new address" mail. To desert my house costs me one house.
Personally I'd rather change email accounts and spend the 5 minutes it takes switching over and informing everybody of it than spend the 5 minutes everyday it takes to pick through a hundredweight of spam looking for the two emails I might want to read. An email address is not a house, and you don't lose much by deserting it - and you gain a lot more in saved time and effort. An exaggerated example doesn't change anything.
- I refuse to use anything that sounds like children's slang for a bogey or some other lump of offensiveness.
Whoever thought that name up needs to be drummed out of marketing forever. The layout of the main page is reminiscent of Ask Jeeves (which is a bad thing, it automatically makes me think 'bad searches') and search pages look cluttered and the vivid background against the soft shades of the foreground looks awful. This 'Clustered Searching' is a good idea, badly executed. Next please.
Is (from the article) a batch of pictures featuring creepy marionettes with the words ?Find(s)me? along with a shot of a lone boy in a forest using a DS as some sort of navigation device really all they have got to go on?
This is all they've developed this huge "OMG TEH W1RELESS GAMING!!!" story from? Ever think that a boy using a gameboy in the forest to navigate might be a 'pushing the frontiers' image? or an 'immersive environment' image? It's a very amiguous photograph, and I'd like to know how this rumour sprang from nowhere, based solely on one picture and a 'find me' slogan Move along, nothing to see here.
Note: My problem isn't with Google being biased, all news services are one way or another. My problem is with these people being stunned that Google isn't an all-loving, caring, sharing, High-Bandwidth Jesus. I couldn't write 100%-accurate ones either, mine would lean towards the left, but I'd do my best to make sure it was even - so long as it pleased the paying clients. My point was that people sit back with sly grins whenever Microsoft dare do anything slightly dodgy, but descend into hysterics if the all-loving Google dare act like a normal corporation and take a corporate or political backhander or two. That was my point, not the 'evils of Google'. No tinfoil hat for me, just amusement at the Slashdot Groupthink.
Many people want recordings of live performances they've been to, just as a souvenir, kinda like you might buy a T-shirt there, too, or any other article of merchandise. Other people will just buy bootlegs of live performances of certain bands because that makes them more 'hardcore' than fans who just buy the albums in the shops. Thirdly, some bands perform songs live that will never see the light of day on an official album, and so bootlegs are the only way to hear them.
Secondly, I find most bootlegs are recorded off the soundboard and not some guy with a casette player in the crowd - maybe I just like lenient bands or perhaps I've just been lucky - Bootlegs recorded from the crowd are notoriously awful.
I think bootlegs are really only for the hardcore fans - regular people won't want them or wont have the will to seek them out. But if you're a dedicated fan, and owning everything there is to possibly own to do with your favourite band is important to you, then a good bootleg of a great performance is more than worth the money.
...and nor do I play one on TV, but I'd rather use Hotmail than Gmail, too - I've got a Gmail account, but I hardly ever use it (except to email large files back and forth to myself when I'm going to want to use them in more than one place - and this is just till I replace my broken USB thumbdrive). It might have something to do with the way Gmail doesn't support Konqueror *at all*, while Hotmail will if I set the identifier to IE. Also, on my Windows machine, it's easier to check when a link to my Inbox is right there in MSN Messenger (yeah, yeah - Gaim's 1.0 now, I don't care - yeah, yeah - it loads up in IE, I still don't care).
Also, my main gripe with using it on my Linux box is the browser problem. I don't want to have to fire up a whole new program to check my non-techy gf's latest 'cute' chain-mail thing - I've frequently got half a dozen to a dozen apps running at once, I don't need extra shit taking up memory and real-estate. I also don't want to switch over to Firefox, so any webmail service that insists I stop using my favourite browser or clutter up my desktop with further junk is going to lose points. No-one's ever going to use 1Gb for email, and if Hotmail let me have a maximum attachment size of, say, 5Mb instead of 2, then I'd drop Gmail completely. It's overhyped, and I don't care if I'm "OMG M$ SHILL LUSER!!!" for saying so. When Google manage to support my favourite browser as well as 'TEH EVIL M$!!!" does, *then* I'll consider the switch.
I'm sorry for the rant, but when I first got Gmail a month ago I was hoping for 'The Holy Grail of Webmail', and all I got was a basic webmail with bigger pockets - And I couldn't even check it without opening up a whole new application, destroying the whole concept of webmail - it's bloody rediculous. My current box has 80Gb of space, I might as well just fire up KMail.
Anyway, excuse me, I've got to go reload my Hotmail tab - I have mail.
Panic in the streets as Google is revealed to not be the second coming of Christ and embodiment of all that is well and good!
Seriously, did you really think Google wasn't biased? That Google wasn't capable of taking 'sponsorship' from certain people in order for them to secure a more prominent podium for their views? Everything Google does is for money, just like any other company. They're not evil, they're just incorporated. We don't gasp in surprise when Microsoft bend the facts a certain way, so why are we shocked when Google does it? If you truly believe Google is benevolent to a fault, you're living in a dream world. They exist to make money, not give you 100% unbiased news. I would say it's very hard to write without a political slant, but as this was just an algorithm and not stories themselves I'm more inclined to think this was deliberate - the sad truth is, lies pay, and while every twist of the facts wrings a few more dollars of 'sponsorship' from conservatives, they'll keep on twisting - less so than Fox News, admittedly, but twisting all the same.
Disclaimer: Yes I did read the article, I just refuse to believe you could 'accidentally' create algorithms that favour low-end right-leaning sites. This is either a reflection of the Google guys' own political views, or a good dose of sponsorship... but the former wouldn't have made for a good rant, now would it? Now what's the punishment for insulting Google? -1, Troll? OK, thanks..
iPods were considered 'cool' long before 50 Cent donned one, and as far as I know MP3 players were never really considered 'geeky' for long - The 'bling' kids at my college have had them for ages - this was the first time I heard the baseball-capped brigade talking about cool in terms of megabytes, but it's been going for a long time.
It's also kinda sad you limited your use of what is, obviously, a device that is supposed to be mobile solely because the latest 'gangsta' rapper hadn't made it 'bling' to own it yet. If you were joking, I apologise, but if you're not, that's a really bad way to live your life.
The grandparent is not a troll - Wikipedia themselves admit they are not an authoritive source - their articles are like the Slashdot polls; They're good to read if you have a general interest in a topic but if you're doing serious research, you want to look to a real encyclopaedia - User-editable resources are far too easily vandalised or skewed. While a normal encyclopaedia might be wrong, they're written by genuine researchers and knowledgable people, and aren't subject to people 'having a laugh' by inserting false information into it's database.
Call me old-fashioned, but I'd feel far more at home with a paper-copy encyclopaedia written by experts than I would with a bunch of globally-editable, easily vandalisable webpages.
This is why Microsoft developing a search engine and Google developing a web browser is a good thing - you can't be too evil if you have a competitor people could easily switch to, e.g. the Redmond boys have more than enough money to throw at developing a search engine to equal Google, and Google has enough support in the OSS community to write a cool browser and then slap a well-known, respected corporate name on the boilerplate and use it to trounce IE.
Even if Google did 'go bad', then two evil companies fighting against each other can only be a good thing, as neither can be too evil or they will lose too much market and mind share to the other side. That's the beauty of the system. Of course, like the US elections, a two-horse race doesn't always give the people at the bottom much choice, but it ensures that neither side goes total fascist/monopolist on us.
I think it's the 'respectability' grey area rather than the legal ones. You'd probably be more willing to stand up in court against someone for DDoS'ing your site selling wicker baskets, for example, than you would to say "yes, your honour, on the first of last month I received an email from a Mr 'I. R. Leet' threatening to DDoS our site, InflateAGranny.com, if we did not pay him the sum of $100,000".
Well if you'd have tried A9 before yesterday, it wouldn't have found it either, then. A9 just parses Google's results and splashes Amazon ads everywhere.
To Amazon: I'll stick to the real deal, thanks. Get your own damn search engine.
Mozilla.org renders buggily in Konqueror. So much for 100%-compatible HTML.
Seriously though, it's been a long time coming, and 'Firefox 1.0' sounds a far more serious product than 'Firefox 0.9.3' or whatever - the latter sounds very much like an amateurish effort, while the former sounds sleek and professional - maybe now I can convince a few more upper-management types at my college to switch over to FF, if we were to slap a Netscape-esque skin on it (I have a dislike for the new default theme in Firefox) as the admins have been bitching for a while now about how much spyware crap they have to clean off the machines at the end of every day. I'm sure they've asked before, but "We'd like to replace Internet Explorer with Firefox Nought-point-Nine-point-Three" is just going to sound to the management like the network guys just hashed it up in an afternoon.
I've just got a few questions, I've been monitoring Badnarik's campaign for a while and there's a few questions I'd like answered - While I'm a huge supporter of Badnarik and Campagna, I'm British and so can't do anything about it in November, but I've been doing my best to spread the word, so I'd relish the oppertunity to ask a few questions to the man himself;
I'm sure how aware you are that the people have considered this election a two-horse race from the very beginning, and I understand how frustrating that must be, so what timeframe would you put on your party's chances for success? If Mr. Bush or Mr. Kerry fail to solve the problems that have occurred over the last 4 years then I'm sure many people would begin seriously looking towards a party such as yours, so do you feel that maybe the next election will be the Libertarians' 'big chance'?
Do you feel the fact that both you and Richard Campagna come from minority backgrounds is an advantage or disadvantage to your campaign? How much are you relying on those minorities for your vote, and how many narrow-minded people have you come up against who hold your ancestry against you?
Being British rather than American, I don't have the oppertunity to vote for you in November, but what's your view on the 'special relationship' between our countries, and do you agree that Mr Bush and Mr Blair are maybe a little too close, considering Mr Bush's recent outburst against Michael Howard, leader of the Conservative Party, saying he'd refuse him entry to the White House? Surely the special relationship should rise above personal alliances? How do you see the situation developing should you be elected?
Finally, what drives a man like yourself to go into a situation like this, fighting to be the third man in a two-horse race? Was there one particular event that made you get up and get into politics, or has the drive always been there? It seems a cheesy question, but I'm seriously interested - I'm studying Government and Politics right now, but it must take a lot more drive and determination to do what you're doing - where does that come from?
Slashdot Mirror
There is honour in taking a lower-paid job creating software that would cure cancer. There is glory to be had in the geek community by helping create a hit computer game. Look at the reverence some people give John Carmack. Look at the praise lavished on successful games by kids and adults alike, millions all over the world. I don't know about your definition of 'glory', but the praise of the gaming community definately fits into mine, especially for a geek.
It doesn't take an hour to parse the key, it takes maybe less than a second - the idea being that it's invisible to 'Joe Sixpack' sending an email to his buddies, but those less-than-a-seconds add up for the spammer spewing out hundreds of thousands of emails advertising that there \/14gr4. Also, if the zombie machines he uses start running slow because they're now processing hundreds of thousands of those hashes, they're more likely to get an engineer in who will fix the problem. Who wins? Everyone.
They might be less fearful of a lawsuit from an OSS OS project, but if that floppy driver *is* stolen from MS, that's going to spell trouble for them, especially as they've removed the copyright string.
Actually, in case you hadn't noticed, out-of-the-box, Firefox still shows ads too - you need to install a third-party plugin to stop them. That's something the non-tech user won't want to do.
Also, you're making Firefox users look like elitist jerks with statements like that. Drop the attitude.
I remember taking down an ex of mine's website after we split up in a petty, wounded swipe. It was on Geocities. Brute-forced, you say? No, I just turned off the cache and hit 'Reload' a few times...
Slashdotting a site just as...
wait, nevermind.
with both games and CDs.
When I hear a band I like has a new CD out, unless I'm *really* sure they are musical Gods who could never put a foot wrong, I will download a couple of tracks to see if I actually like the album and it's not just that catchy single drawing me in. If a friend suggests a band to me, I'll download 2 or 3 tracks to see if I like them before I'll spend money on an album - I consider this fair to me and to the record companies. Ditto with games - I'll download it and if I like it I'll buy it.
The reason is threefold:
a) I don't like stealing. If I like something, I will pay for it - I just like to know if I'm going to like something before I hand over the cash.
b) I like owning the official media. I'm a collector at heart, and CDs are like collector's items - I like the warm, fuzzy feeling that comes with owning every DVD of my favourite TV series, or every album by my favourite band - Burned copies just don't cut it, and that brings me on to
c) CD-Rs tend to be fairly fragile - I've had the important layer come off in chunks from even the most well-protected CDs after even the most minimal of handling - how do the real warez freaks do it? What are you using that ultra-1337 warezed copy of 3D Studio MAX! (Which every warez kiddie seems to have, but none know how to use) for once that all-important layer's gone? bragging rights?
Personally, I buy far more CDs since I had access to P2P and other filesharing methods - the only CDs I've downloaded and not paid for have been ones I *genuinely* couldn't find availible *anywhere* (US bands' demo-releases rarely make it to these shores), and the same with games - I've been introduced to so many games via the medium of P2P or borrowing copies from friends, for instance Medal of Honour - I copied one game in the series off a mate and guess what? I've now bought every one since - sure I didn't pay for the first one initially, but I wouldn't have paid for any of the others if I hadn't experienced it first with a (technically illegal) 'borrowed' copy.
Just to clarify, I know the grandparent said 'not even a' message, but I'd like that behaviour explained as well - it's just damn weird, going out of their way for no reason to be a deliberate cock.
I visited a site of a major car dealership, and I didn't even get a "this site designed for Internet Explorer". It just flat refused to let me in.
:)" message and redirects you to Disney.
I hate shit like that - Just changing the browser identifier lets you right through, there is *no reason* for these sites to stop you getting in, no reason you must use IE, they've just decided to be a bastard. Plenty of amateur sites do it too, just a bit of Javascript that pops up a smug "You must be using Microsoft Internet Explorer to use this page
Maybe the big car dealership took a backhander from MS or something, but what makes the amateur sites do it? Can someone with more psychological savvy than me give me an insight into the mind of these sort of people?
You're allowed to listen to it, but not to copy it. Even the laws saying you can back up CDs you own only allow the owner of the CD to make and own backup copies, not anyone who borrows it.
It's a nice thought, though - just a shame it doesn't hold water.
Totally different scenario. Deserting my email address costs me nothing but the 5 minutes it takes to mass-mail my address book a "hey, this is my new address" mail. To desert my house costs me one house.
Personally I'd rather change email accounts and spend the 5 minutes it takes switching over and informing everybody of it than spend the 5 minutes everyday it takes to pick through a hundredweight of spam looking for the two emails I might want to read. An email address is not a house, and you don't lose much by deserting it - and you gain a lot more in saved time and effort. An exaggerated example doesn't change anything.
"Ewww, Jimmy's got a clusty in his hair!"
- I refuse to use anything that sounds like children's slang for a bogey or some other lump of offensiveness. Whoever thought that name up needs to be drummed out of marketing forever. The layout of the main page is reminiscent of Ask Jeeves (which is a bad thing, it automatically makes me think 'bad searches') and search pages look cluttered and the vivid background against the soft shades of the foreground looks awful. This 'Clustered Searching' is a good idea, badly executed. Next please.
Is (from the article) a batch of pictures featuring creepy marionettes with the words ?Find(s)me? along with a shot of a lone boy in a forest using a DS as some sort of navigation device really all they have got to go on?
This is all they've developed this huge "OMG TEH W1RELESS GAMING!!!" story from? Ever think that a boy using a gameboy in the forest to navigate might be a 'pushing the frontiers' image? or an 'immersive environment' image? It's a very amiguous photograph, and I'd like to know how this rumour sprang from nowhere, based solely on one picture and a 'find me' slogan
Move along, nothing to see here.
Note: My problem isn't with Google being biased, all news services are one way or another. My problem is with these people being stunned that Google isn't an all-loving, caring, sharing, High-Bandwidth Jesus. I couldn't write 100%-accurate ones either, mine would lean towards the left, but I'd do my best to make sure it was even - so long as it pleased the paying clients. My point was that people sit back with sly grins whenever Microsoft dare do anything slightly dodgy, but descend into hysterics if the all-loving Google dare act like a normal corporation and take a corporate or political backhander or two. That was my point, not the 'evils of Google'. No tinfoil hat for me, just amusement at the Slashdot Groupthink.
Many people want recordings of live performances they've been to, just as a souvenir, kinda like you might buy a T-shirt there, too, or any other article of merchandise. Other people will just buy bootlegs of live performances of certain bands because that makes them more 'hardcore' than fans who just buy the albums in the shops. Thirdly, some bands perform songs live that will never see the light of day on an official album, and so bootlegs are the only way to hear them.
Secondly, I find most bootlegs are recorded off the soundboard and not some guy with a casette player in the crowd - maybe I just like lenient bands or perhaps I've just been lucky - Bootlegs recorded from the crowd are notoriously awful.
I think bootlegs are really only for the hardcore fans - regular people won't want them or wont have the will to seek them out. But if you're a dedicated fan, and owning everything there is to possibly own to do with your favourite band is important to you, then a good bootleg of a great performance is more than worth the money.
...and nor do I play one on TV, but I'd rather use Hotmail than Gmail, too - I've got a Gmail account, but I hardly ever use it (except to email large files back and forth to myself when I'm going to want to use them in more than one place - and this is just till I replace my broken USB thumbdrive). It might have something to do with the way Gmail doesn't support Konqueror *at all*, while Hotmail will if I set the identifier to IE. Also, on my Windows machine, it's easier to check when a link to my Inbox is right there in MSN Messenger (yeah, yeah - Gaim's 1.0 now, I don't care - yeah, yeah - it loads up in IE, I still don't care).
Also, my main gripe with using it on my Linux box is the browser problem. I don't want to have to fire up a whole new program to check my non-techy gf's latest 'cute' chain-mail thing - I've frequently got half a dozen to a dozen apps running at once, I don't need extra shit taking up memory and real-estate. I also don't want to switch over to Firefox, so any webmail service that insists I stop using my favourite browser or clutter up my desktop with further junk is going to lose points. No-one's ever going to use 1Gb for email, and if Hotmail let me have a maximum attachment size of, say, 5Mb instead of 2, then I'd drop Gmail completely. It's overhyped, and I don't care if I'm "OMG M$ SHILL LUSER!!!" for saying so. When Google manage to support my favourite browser as well as 'TEH EVIL M$!!!" does, *then* I'll consider the switch.
I'm sorry for the rant, but when I first got Gmail a month ago I was hoping for 'The Holy Grail of Webmail', and all I got was a basic webmail with bigger pockets - And I couldn't even check it without opening up a whole new application, destroying the whole concept of webmail - it's bloody rediculous. My current box has 80Gb of space, I might as well just fire up KMail.
Anyway, excuse me, I've got to go reload my Hotmail tab - I have mail.
Panic in the streets as Google is revealed to not be the second coming of Christ and embodiment of all that is well and good!
Seriously, did you really think Google wasn't biased? That Google wasn't capable of taking 'sponsorship' from certain people in order for them to secure a more prominent podium for their views? Everything Google does is for money, just like any other company. They're not evil, they're just incorporated. We don't gasp in surprise when Microsoft bend the facts a certain way, so why are we shocked when Google does it? If you truly believe Google is benevolent to a fault, you're living in a dream world. They exist to make money, not give you 100% unbiased news. I would say it's very hard to write without a political slant, but as this was just an algorithm and not stories themselves I'm more inclined to think this was deliberate - the sad truth is, lies pay, and while every twist of the facts wrings a few more dollars of 'sponsorship' from conservatives, they'll keep on twisting - less so than Fox News, admittedly, but twisting all the same.
Disclaimer: Yes I did read the article, I just refuse to believe you could 'accidentally' create algorithms that favour low-end right-leaning sites. This is either a reflection of the Google guys' own political views, or a good dose of sponsorship... but the former wouldn't have made for a good rant, now would it? Now what's the punishment for insulting Google? -1, Troll? OK, thanks..
iPods were considered 'cool' long before 50 Cent donned one, and as far as I know MP3 players were never really considered 'geeky' for long - The 'bling' kids at my college have had them for ages - this was the first time I heard the baseball-capped brigade talking about cool in terms of megabytes, but it's been going for a long time.
It's also kinda sad you limited your use of what is, obviously, a device that is supposed to be mobile solely because the latest 'gangsta' rapper hadn't made it 'bling' to own it yet. If you were joking, I apologise, but if you're not, that's a really bad way to live your life.
The grandparent is not a troll - Wikipedia themselves admit they are not an authoritive source - their articles are like the Slashdot polls; They're good to read if you have a general interest in a topic but if you're doing serious research, you want to look to a real encyclopaedia - User-editable resources are far too easily vandalised or skewed. While a normal encyclopaedia might be wrong, they're written by genuine researchers and knowledgable people, and aren't subject to people 'having a laugh' by inserting false information into it's database.
Call me old-fashioned, but I'd feel far more at home with a paper-copy encyclopaedia written by experts than I would with a bunch of globally-editable, easily vandalisable webpages.
This is why Microsoft developing a search engine and Google developing a web browser is a good thing - you can't be too evil if you have a competitor people could easily switch to, e.g. the Redmond boys have more than enough money to throw at developing a search engine to equal Google, and Google has enough support in the OSS community to write a cool browser and then slap a well-known, respected corporate name on the boilerplate and use it to trounce IE.
Even if Google did 'go bad', then two evil companies fighting against each other can only be a good thing, as neither can be too evil or they will lose too much market and mind share to the other side. That's the beauty of the system. Of course, like the US elections, a two-horse race doesn't always give the people at the bottom much choice, but it ensures that neither side goes total fascist/monopolist on us.
I think it's the 'respectability' grey area rather than the legal ones. You'd probably be more willing to stand up in court against someone for DDoS'ing your site selling wicker baskets, for example, than you would to say "yes, your honour, on the first of last month I received an email from a Mr 'I. R. Leet' threatening to DDoS our site, InflateAGranny.com, if we did not pay him the sum of $100,000".
It's a sad day when the spiritual Mecca of self-respecting nerds gets this wrong. Really.
Well if you'd have tried A9 before yesterday, it wouldn't have found it either, then. A9 just parses Google's results and splashes Amazon ads everywhere.
To Amazon: I'll stick to the real deal, thanks. Get your own damn search engine.
Mozilla.org renders buggily in Konqueror. So much for 100%-compatible HTML.
Seriously though, it's been a long time coming, and 'Firefox 1.0' sounds a far more serious product than 'Firefox 0.9.3' or whatever - the latter sounds very much like an amateurish effort, while the former sounds sleek and professional - maybe now I can convince a few more upper-management types at my college to switch over to FF, if we were to slap a Netscape-esque skin on it (I have a dislike for the new default theme in Firefox) as the admins have been bitching for a while now about how much spyware crap they have to clean off the machines at the end of every day. I'm sure they've asked before, but "We'd like to replace Internet Explorer with Firefox Nought-point-Nine-point-Three" is just going to sound to the management like the network guys just hashed it up in an afternoon.
I've just got a few questions, I've been monitoring Badnarik's campaign for a while and there's a few questions I'd like answered - While I'm a huge supporter of Badnarik and Campagna, I'm British and so can't do anything about it in November, but I've been doing my best to spread the word, so I'd relish the oppertunity to ask a few questions to the man himself;
I'm sure how aware you are that the people have considered this election a two-horse race from the very beginning, and I understand how frustrating that must be, so what timeframe would you put on your party's chances for success? If Mr. Bush or Mr. Kerry fail to solve the problems that have occurred over the last 4 years then I'm sure many people would begin seriously looking towards a party such as yours, so do you feel that maybe the next election will be the Libertarians' 'big chance'?
Do you feel the fact that both you and Richard Campagna come from minority backgrounds is an advantage or disadvantage to your campaign? How much are you relying on those minorities for your vote, and how many narrow-minded people have you come up against who hold your ancestry against you?
Being British rather than American, I don't have the oppertunity to vote for you in November, but what's your view on the 'special relationship' between our countries, and do you agree that Mr Bush and Mr Blair are maybe a little too close, considering Mr Bush's recent outburst against Michael Howard, leader of the Conservative Party, saying he'd refuse him entry to the White House? Surely the special relationship should rise above personal alliances? How do you see the situation developing should you be elected?
Finally, what drives a man like yourself to go into a situation like this, fighting to be the third man in a two-horse race? Was there one particular event that made you get up and get into politics, or has the drive always been there? It seems a cheesy question, but I'm seriously interested - I'm studying Government and Politics right now, but it must take a lot more drive and determination to do what you're doing - where does that come from?