So I just went to the zavilla webiste:
The main page says "The development of Zavilia: Identify UK Rioters has been temporarily paused due to a substantial decrease in traffic and in user interactions. However, we fully intend to continue development at some point in the near future."
In other words, either someone has got to them or there wasn't much of an interest anyway. Also, the old website has what? About 20 photos, most of which seem to have been taken from either Getty or Reuters. I can't exactly see this going anywhere.
Ummm... yeah,
The problem being that many local shops and traders who lived in the area also had their shops broken into, stock looted and buildings burnt
I knew as soon as I saw the title in my RSS feed that the summary would be a load of old bollocks. I didn't realise just how much old bollocks it was really going to be though...
...but I truly believe that the honeymoon period is over now.
From the friends in my list of Facebook, I can see that all of those annoying apps (Farmville, Mafia wars etc.) have started to really fall off now, and I don't see any of those updates anymore. I think that smartphones may have something to do with it. If you can play Angry Birds on your phone, then you don't need to log into Facebook to do a similar thing.
Also, I feel that people are starting to get burned by the OTT information that they spew out in their status updates, and are realising that you can't spout inflammatory nonsense without people picking up on it. One of my female friends hates her mother-in-law (and sisters-in-law) with a vengeance. However, they are all still "friends" on Facebook, as it is in that stupid political zone where you can't unfriend with without them noticing and having a go at you for doing such a thing. However, she posted an off-the-cuff comment taking the piss out of them, and all hell broke loose - Phone calls, threats, tears.... all from a throwaway comment that EVERYONE could see.
As this starts to happen to more and more people, I think that they'll either:
a) Bail out of Facebook
or
b) Drastically reduce their friend list to all of 5 people.
Don't get me wrong. I still like Facebook and do think it's a useful tool, but it's beginning to backfire on people now and that could be a problem for Facebook.
It's exactly the same reason as to why we're now getting prequels, reboots and an insane number of sequels now in the film industry. You can keep the same concept, same characters, tweak the story line and graphics a little bit and you're good to go with minimal effort - but still get a good trunk of money by the end of it.
Then when you've flogged the horse until it's knackered, you can put it to rest and finally start again.
...I really don't mind this.
I have no problem with people hacking/modding their PS3, running whatever they want to run on it and playing pirated games that don't connect to the network.
But my chilled out attitude rapidly drops away when it comes to the mess that can happen in online games. MW2 used to be quite a fun experience online, but the hacked lobbies and the blatant cheating have recently made it unplayable. If I were Sony, I'd do exactly the same thing.
Ahhh Carmageddon. One of the most enjoyable games that I've ever played on the PC.
I loved to mow down the cows and the sound of pedestrian hitting windscreen was very meaty!
The menu option to turn giblets on/off has me laughing to this day!
Brick - "I tried to upgrade my PS3 firmware but it bricked my console"
FAIL - "You bought a Nokia instead of an iPhone? FAIL"
Several people have mentioned "LOL" before. It's annoying enough in e-mails and MSN conversations, but when someone actually says "LOL" in a verbal conversation - argh!!!!
There was an episode of Scrubs which featured something like this. A woman who had broken up with her fiancé was admitted to hospital after fainting and other symptoms of a heart attack. Tests didn't reveal any heart abnormalities, but Dr. Cox diagnosed her as having a broken heart due to the stressful breakup.
It appears as if the researchers have messed up and their "study" is completely invalid:
"A note regarding our findings: Further experiments have led us to believe that our initial conclusions that indicated Comcast's responsibility for dropping TCP SYN packets and forging TCP SYN, ACK and RST (reset) packets was incorrect. Our experiments were conducted from behind a network address translator (NAT). The anomalous packets were generated when the outbound TCP SYN packets exceeded the NAT's resources available in it's state table. In this case, TCP SYN, ACK and RST packets were sent. We would like to thank Don Bowman, Robb Topolski, Neal Krawetz, and Comcast engineers for bringing this to our attention. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this posting may have caused."
All M$ bashing aside (which is why I expect this was posted to Slashdot), the ECU is not completely in Microsoft's hands. The project is a colloboration between Microsoft and Siemens called MES - the latter of which have a great deal of expertise in ECUs.
It's true - the Dixons/PC World/Currys chain of stores are truly terrible. Their staff are commission based, barely trained spotty oiks who spout thinks like "...this PC will make your broadband go faster" (this was really said to my Mum when she went in there).
I remember about 10 years ago I bought a mini hi-fi from there which cost about £170, and the sales assistant completely lost interest in me after I stated that I didn't want their overpriced extended warranty. I wonder how much of their profit is made by touting those damned things...
From here:
"Trowbridge and Chicoine operated hubs in a file-sharing network that required members to share between 1GB (gigabyte) and 100GB of material, the equivalent of 250,000 songs, Attorney General John Ashcroft said when the raid was announced.
Oh they'll get round to it eventually and there will be an iTunes/Napster like service for downloading old TV episodes and the such like for small change...
But we'll have to put up with the legal action first, and wait another 2 years for the big companies to catch up.
The problem is that spammers sending their warez via raped zombie machines are sending out their e-mails for free.
They don't have to think about doing targeted marketing, as they can just blast out 10s of millions of e-mails 24/7. It doesn't cost them any more or less to send you an e-mail that they've sent 255 times already.
From TFA:
"You further understand and agree, by installing the software, that the software may, without any further prior notice to you, remove, disable or render inoperative other adware programs resident on your computer."
AdAware prompts me about any spyware. And I delete it. Pronto!
Slashdot Mirror
So I just went to the zavilla webiste: The main page says "The development of Zavilia: Identify UK Rioters has been temporarily paused due to a substantial decrease in traffic and in user interactions. However, we fully intend to continue development at some point in the near future." In other words, either someone has got to them or there wasn't much of an interest anyway. Also, the old website has what? About 20 photos, most of which seem to have been taken from either Getty or Reuters. I can't exactly see this going anywhere.
Ummm... yeah, The problem being that many local shops and traders who lived in the area also had their shops broken into, stock looted and buildings burnt
I knew as soon as I saw the title in my RSS feed that the summary would be a load of old bollocks. I didn't realise just how much old bollocks it was really going to be though...
...but I truly believe that the honeymoon period is over now. From the friends in my list of Facebook, I can see that all of those annoying apps (Farmville, Mafia wars etc.) have started to really fall off now, and I don't see any of those updates anymore. I think that smartphones may have something to do with it. If you can play Angry Birds on your phone, then you don't need to log into Facebook to do a similar thing. Also, I feel that people are starting to get burned by the OTT information that they spew out in their status updates, and are realising that you can't spout inflammatory nonsense without people picking up on it. One of my female friends hates her mother-in-law (and sisters-in-law) with a vengeance. However, they are all still "friends" on Facebook, as it is in that stupid political zone where you can't unfriend with without them noticing and having a go at you for doing such a thing. However, she posted an off-the-cuff comment taking the piss out of them, and all hell broke loose - Phone calls, threats, tears.... all from a throwaway comment that EVERYONE could see. As this starts to happen to more and more people, I think that they'll either: a) Bail out of Facebook or b) Drastically reduce their friend list to all of 5 people. Don't get me wrong. I still like Facebook and do think it's a useful tool, but it's beginning to backfire on people now and that could be a problem for Facebook.
It's exactly the same reason as to why we're now getting prequels, reboots and an insane number of sequels now in the film industry. You can keep the same concept, same characters, tweak the story line and graphics a little bit and you're good to go with minimal effort - but still get a good trunk of money by the end of it. Then when you've flogged the horse until it's knackered, you can put it to rest and finally start again.
...I really don't mind this. I have no problem with people hacking/modding their PS3, running whatever they want to run on it and playing pirated games that don't connect to the network. But my chilled out attitude rapidly drops away when it comes to the mess that can happen in online games. MW2 used to be quite a fun experience online, but the hacked lobbies and the blatant cheating have recently made it unplayable. If I were Sony, I'd do exactly the same thing.
Ahhh Carmageddon. One of the most enjoyable games that I've ever played on the PC. I loved to mow down the cows and the sound of pedestrian hitting windscreen was very meaty! The menu option to turn giblets on/off has me laughing to this day!
Surely Windows ME must count as a "tool" that no-one in their right mind uses anymore!!!
Brick - "I tried to upgrade my PS3 firmware but it bricked my console" FAIL - "You bought a Nokia instead of an iPhone? FAIL" Several people have mentioned "LOL" before. It's annoying enough in e-mails and MSN conversations, but when someone actually says "LOL" in a verbal conversation - argh!!!!
I think he's referring to the incessant drone of the vuvuzelas, rather than the match being boring! They do sound like a swarm of bees!
There was an episode of Scrubs which featured something like this. A woman who had broken up with her fiancé was admitted to hospital after fainting and other symptoms of a heart attack. Tests didn't reveal any heart abnormalities, but Dr. Cox diagnosed her as having a broken heart due to the stressful breakup.
Concert tickets and T-Shirts
So 17"... way too big :-p
That's what she said :D
How scary that this was modded insightful
Isn't this known as "Slamming" in the UK? Isn't that type of selling where-by you switch a customer's supply on the sly illegal now?
It appears as if the researchers have messed up and their "study" is completely invalid: "A note regarding our findings: Further experiments have led us to believe that our initial conclusions that indicated Comcast's responsibility for dropping TCP SYN packets and forging TCP SYN, ACK and RST (reset) packets was incorrect. Our experiments were conducted from behind a network address translator (NAT). The anomalous packets were generated when the outbound TCP SYN packets exceeded the NAT's resources available in it's state table. In this case, TCP SYN, ACK and RST packets were sent. We would like to thank Don Bowman, Robb Topolski, Neal Krawetz, and Comcast engineers for bringing this to our attention. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this posting may have caused."
All M$ bashing aside (which is why I expect this was posted to Slashdot), the ECU is not completely in Microsoft's hands. The project is a colloboration between Microsoft and Siemens called MES - the latter of which have a great deal of expertise in ECUs.
It's true - the Dixons/PC World/Currys chain of stores are truly terrible. Their staff are commission based, barely trained spotty oiks who spout thinks like "...this PC will make your broadband go faster" (this was really said to my Mum when she went in there). I remember about 10 years ago I bought a mini hi-fi from there which cost about £170, and the sales assistant completely lost interest in me after I stated that I didn't want their overpriced extended warranty. I wonder how much of their profit is made by touting those damned things...
It sounds like you speak from experience!
From here: "Trowbridge and Chicoine operated hubs in a file-sharing network that required members to share between 1GB (gigabyte) and 100GB of material, the equivalent of 250,000 songs, Attorney General John Ashcroft said when the raid was announced.
Oh they'll get round to it eventually and there will be an iTunes/Napster like service for downloading old TV episodes and the such like for small change... But we'll have to put up with the legal action first, and wait another 2 years for the big companies to catch up.
The problem is that spammers sending their warez via raped zombie machines are sending out their e-mails for free. They don't have to think about doing targeted marketing, as they can just blast out 10s of millions of e-mails 24/7. It doesn't cost them any more or less to send you an e-mail that they've sent 255 times already.
How do you define a "legitimate" company?
Go and read TechReport then, and stop whining...
From TFA: "You further understand and agree, by installing the software, that the software may, without any further prior notice to you, remove, disable or render inoperative other adware programs resident on your computer." AdAware prompts me about any spyware. And I delete it. Pronto!