Perhaps relatives would suck less if they knew what you had already, and didn't try to buy you
the same steamer-pot set that someone else gave you 2 days ago, or an identical sweater to the one they gave you last year, in the wrong size, or even feces in a can.
I have certain relatives who always include a gift receipt because they don't have time to know what I have, or what I wear. That's why online wish lists and gift certificates have such benefits.
need some psychology on this
on
Pictorial Passwords
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Interestingly enough, this is something that I tried hacking out a few years ago (though not under the pleasure of being funded by an academic institution).
I found that people like to click on distinct places, and not the whitespace between shapes/objects. Otherwise, they won't be able to remember exactly which spot they clicked on. This can be analogous to people using dictionary words for their alphanumeric passwords.
Another annoyance that I found was that hitting the exact pixel that you wanted was nearly impossible. You're more likely to hit one adjacent, or 2 away... so increasing the area of error reduces the number of possibilities.
Finally, when I want to get work done, I don't want to play a video game. Making someone hit their exact spot in a sequence of 5, or 10 images, whatever requires skill and accuracy. If you hit the first 9 right, and mess up by one pixel on the last, you have to start all over again. Imagine if you had to achieve a difficult feat - like slaying 20 characters in Quake on nightmare mode before you can log in... damn.
In summary, I think this is a really cool idea (otherwise, I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of implementing it myself) - but the downsides outweigh the benefits.
Exactly why many people use cash. If everyone knew how much loot you had in your wallet, then you wouldn't be able to negotiate prices. Not to mention that anyone closing their store at night, and taking the cash register deposits to the bank would instantly become targets.
I can see how this stupid move would spell a quick end for any currency.
U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz
Garmatz Federal Courthouse, Suite 4415
101 West Lombard St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
It is my belief that the proposed antitrust settlement with Microsoft
Corporation is not in the best interests of the American people. It
does not protect against future abuses and in fact encourages the
spread of the Microsoft software monopoly by training a vast army of
young people to use their operating system and attendant application
programs to the exclusion of very viable software alternatives.
America is based on freedom of choice; but students in Americas'
public schools can only learn to use computers, an essential skill
for the coming generation of employees, on the products provided to
them. Today, the Dept. of Justice has an opportunity to broaden the
scope of that choice and thus empower generations yet unborn. It also
has the opportunity to cave in to Bill Gates and thus must choose
between greatness and ignominy.
The Northern Territories school district in Australia, with a
population of just over 200,000, finds that it saved $1,000,000 in
the first year alone by using Linux alongside Microsoft products to
provide computer education at all grade levels. This was enough to
allow the school district to purchase an additional 1,000 computers
for distribution in the schools and as loaner units for students (and
their parents) to use at home. In a few short years their children
will be competing, very effectively, on the worldwide intellectual
marketplace against American children whose access to hardware was
hampered by the prohibitive cost imposed by the practice of using
Microsoft products all but exclusively in the public schools. The
Australian experience could have been dramatically more productive
had they used Linux as the operating system on all their computers
but it was a good initial step. The present savings represent its use
in their servers only.
I support the notion that Microsoft should pay its fine in hardware
donations only. It has been brought to my attention that Red Hat
Software of Research Triangle Park, NC, (near Durham, NC) has offered
to provide pro-bono copies of the Linux operating system
corresponding to a Microsoft donation of hardware. It is my desire
that any donation of software that Microsoft might choose to make
would not be included in the proposed settlement but must also be a
pro-bono gesture corresponding to the Red Hat Software offer.
Moreover, any copies of software Microsoft might donate should
require no payment of any sort by the schools at any forward point in
time. It must be a true donation of indefinite duration, just as the
Red Hat offer is. Otherwise, if required to pay, the schools would
eventually have to abandon their training programs for lack of funds
to re-license / upgrade their software.
While Microsoft Corporation should not be excluded from expressing
generosity, such generosity, expressed as software gifts, only
furthers their ability to monopolize the marketplace and should not
be permitted as a part of the penalty for having followed illegal
practices in the establishment of their dominance in the software
market.
Microsoft has painted itself the champion of choice and freewill
while villifying open-source software as being un-American. I think
it is time for their actions, public and private, to match their very
public words.
Software donations should be no part of the proposed settlement.
For small online businesses, I would advise looking into using itransact. They work rather well, don't require quite as much financial disclosure, and have an online API for webshop developers.
Disclosure: I don't work for them, though I recently built an online shop that uses them, and we've had only minor glitches that got resolved quickly.
Not everyone can be an arrogant bastard. I'm surprised I haven't heard this from an OpenBSD user...
This is a aggressive operating system. You probably won't like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the interest or sophistication to be able to appreciate an OS of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory - maybe something with a multi-million dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it's made in a little development house, or one that implies that their unstable ugly weak OS will give you more sex appeal. Perhaps you think multi-million dollar ad campaigns make an OS work better. Perhaps you're mouthing your words as you read this.
I also think about how this will be abused - IM and 'wireless' ads are two that come to mind.
Think the phone companies will go for this? No way, unless they require you to send all your messages through their filter servers... then the FBI can carnivore your mind, and make sure that you don't commit any "thought-crimes", or maybe my fiancee will just kick me in the nuts everytime I walk past another beautiful woman.
Most people choose that moronic music because they're brainwashed to buy it. The airwaves are saturated with idiotic catchy tunes like Hanson, the Spice Girls, N'Sync, etc... That gets into people's subconcious and sticks there telling them that they need to listen to it all the time, and not just when the radio plays it.
Do you think any of these records will have anything more than a historic value 10, 30 years from now? I'm still rocking out to Led Zep, CCR, and Jimi - because they made music, not something that will sell more McDonald's happy meals.
If you want a choice, then support the alternatives, listen to college radio, or live365, or better yet - get the permission for some local artists' recordings, and host your own radio show, then tell people about it.
How will this affect Usability aspects regarding page length? Jakob Neilsen has come up with some pretty good size, and page length guidelines. Essentially, there is a need to balance length with the annoyance of a page that is too short or too long.
...only a brilliant writer can keep users scrolling to the bitter end. The average site is cursed with extremely impatient users who want to get in and out and get answers or buy products fast. Paradoxically, the average site probably has below-average writing, since most commercial sites use repurposed print writing filled with "marketese" which backfires in terms of lowered trust and consumer skepticism.
Are these trends going to change? Will users beg for longer pages, whereas website authors might make more single-page clickthrough stories?
very true - but this sexy Yahoo article only 1.5 months before the release date -> featuring a crisp, shiny image with working readout panel makes it feel a lot less like vaporware than the May IGN article.
As a Darwinist, I can easily see how a full moon has affected animals behavior. Throughout our evolution, animals have found that full moons afford more light for hunting. As this would roughly extend hunting season from around 12 hours to around 24, I could easily see why both predators and prey would want to get excited.
Perhaps another study should be done which compares the amount of moonlight penetrating the atmosphere, and the incidents of animal excitedness. Just an idea, but perhaps you'll find that you get more bites when it's a clear sky out, and they can see the full moon.
this raises the notion that in the future, we could see some serious corporate warfare... If, perhaps AOL/TW were to decide to actually *block* XP users - some brutal choices would be made pretty quickly... and I doubt that RoadRunner has enough leverage to scare people away from XP. Instead, people would just find another ISP.
Now, OTOH, M$ has enough muscle and monopoly power to prevent XP users from using RoadRunner without detrimental effects to their userbase.
This would be the true test of the strength of their monopolies. Viciously attack another monopoly, and see who retreats.
Twenty years from now, if I'm dilligent, I can copy all my CDR to Super-DVDR or whatever...
Fifty Years from now, I can make copies of my Super-DVDR to Quantum Storage, or something similiar...
Sure - you should be able to make perfect digital copies, or even make ternary or quadrany copies... But who's going to have the reader to interpret those bits? Unless you keep that CD of Photoshop or Gimp backed up, with a CPU that can run it - you may have to re-write your own program to interpret the binary and display it as an image.
By that time, who would want to waste time on 2-D non-holographic static images? They'd be boring, you wouldn't be able to taste or smell anything...
and then stupid site administrators will think that everyone on the web is using ie, and that the battle is over.
I am proud to be surfing with Mozilla on my Linux desktop, and they simply not get my page-hits, and I won't link to their pages anymore either. If everyone does this, they'll see significantly reduced traffic to their site, and perhaps it'll fall off the earth.
the one downside here is the more expensive, proprietary hardware. OTOH, it is truly much more elegant than most off the shelf PC stuff, and that hasn't stopped me from owning many of their products myself.
The point would be making an argument to a suit who handles a budget why this may / may not be the best choice.
Of course, you wouldn't want to leave out NeXT, but then the freak that headed that up was bought out by apple, and see what we have today? Perhaps both Linux and FreeBSD/Darwin/OSX/Aqua could learn some things from the BeOS architecture.
It's far more likely that the US Postal Service will be pushed over the brink of bankruptcy, as people will not want to send letters anymore. They've been in severe economic troubles for years now, and the government continues to bail them out as a service to the nation.
I see stamp prices rising to 50 cents (like payphone calls), or even a dollar or two.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps relatives would suck less if they knew what you had already, and didn't try to buy you the same steamer-pot set that someone else gave you 2 days ago, or an identical sweater to the one they gave you last year, in the wrong size, or even feces in a can.
I have certain relatives who always include a gift receipt because they don't have time to know what I have, or what I wear. That's why online wish lists and gift certificates have such benefits.
Interestingly enough, this is something that I tried hacking out a few years ago (though not under the pleasure of being funded by an academic institution).
I found that people like to click on distinct places, and not the whitespace between shapes/objects. Otherwise, they won't be able to remember exactly which spot they clicked on. This can be analogous to people using dictionary words for their alphanumeric passwords.
Another annoyance that I found was that hitting the exact pixel that you wanted was nearly impossible. You're more likely to hit one adjacent, or 2 away... so increasing the area of error reduces the number of possibilities.
Finally, when I want to get work done, I don't want to play a video game. Making someone hit their exact spot in a sequence of 5, or 10 images, whatever requires skill and accuracy. If you hit the first 9 right, and mess up by one pixel on the last, you have to start all over again. Imagine if you had to achieve a difficult feat - like slaying 20 characters in Quake on nightmare mode before you can log in... damn.
In summary, I think this is a really cool idea (otherwise, I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of implementing it myself) - but the downsides outweigh the benefits.
What's in my wallet is my business.
Exactly why many people use cash. If everyone knew how much loot you had in your wallet, then you wouldn't be able to negotiate prices. Not to mention that anyone closing their store at night, and taking the cash register deposits to the bank would instantly become targets.
I can see how this stupid move would spell a quick end for any currency.
Best Distributed Denial of Service in the business... :)
Too bad we can't solve social ills, kill the DMCA and make Microsoft surrender to the DOJ simply by slashdotting.
that microwave dude is like the next Marie Curie.
Seriously, I would not want to live next door to someone doing that shit without a dentist's wall of lead in between.
Can you imagine all those messed up things that happen, and yet we eat food that comes out of it?!
(thanks go to Bill C. from the lugwash list)
2 00 11207001012102
Send this to Judge Motz - Wired reports that he's only got 200 complaint letters so far.
U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz
Garmatz Federal Courthouse, Suite 4415
101 West Lombard St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
It is my belief that the proposed antitrust settlement with Microsoft
Corporation is not in the best interests of the American people. It
does not protect against future abuses and in fact encourages the
spread of the Microsoft software monopoly by training a vast army of
young people to use their operating system and attendant application
programs to the exclusion of very viable software alternatives.
America is based on freedom of choice; but students in Americas'
public schools can only learn to use computers, an essential skill
for the coming generation of employees, on the products provided to
them. Today, the Dept. of Justice has an opportunity to broaden the
scope of that choice and thus empower generations yet unborn. It also
has the opportunity to cave in to Bill Gates and thus must choose
between greatness and ignominy.
The Northern Territories school district in Australia, with a
population of just over 200,000, finds that it saved $1,000,000 in
the first year alone by using Linux alongside Microsoft products to
provide computer education at all grade levels. This was enough to
allow the school district to purchase an additional 1,000 computers
for distribution in the schools and as loaner units for students (and
their parents) to use at home. In a few short years their children
will be competing, very effectively, on the worldwide intellectual
marketplace against American children whose access to hardware was
hampered by the prohibitive cost imposed by the practice of using
Microsoft products all but exclusively in the public schools. The
Australian experience could have been dramatically more productive
had they used Linux as the operating system on all their computers
but it was a good initial step. The present savings represent its use
in their servers only.
http://opensourceschools.org/article.php?story=
I support the notion that Microsoft should pay its fine in hardware
donations only. It has been brought to my attention that Red Hat
Software of Research Triangle Park, NC, (near Durham, NC) has offered
to provide pro-bono copies of the Linux operating system
corresponding to a Microsoft donation of hardware. It is my desire
that any donation of software that Microsoft might choose to make
would not be included in the proposed settlement but must also be a
pro-bono gesture corresponding to the Red Hat Software offer.
Moreover, any copies of software Microsoft might donate should
require no payment of any sort by the schools at any forward point in
time. It must be a true donation of indefinite duration, just as the
Red Hat offer is. Otherwise, if required to pay, the schools would
eventually have to abandon their training programs for lack of funds
to re-license / upgrade their software.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/011120/202744_1.html
While Microsoft Corporation should not be excluded from expressing
generosity, such generosity, expressed as software gifts, only
furthers their ability to monopolize the marketplace and should not
be permitted as a part of the penalty for having followed illegal
practices in the establishment of their dominance in the software
market.
Microsoft has painted itself the champion of choice and freewill
while villifying open-source software as being un-American. I think
it is time for their actions, public and private, to match their very
public words.
Software donations should be no part of the proposed settlement.
For small online businesses, I would advise looking into using itransact. They work rather well, don't require quite as much financial disclosure, and have an online API for webshop developers.
Disclosure: I don't work for them, though I recently built an online shop that uses them, and we've had only minor glitches that got resolved quickly.
Not everyone can be an arrogant bastard. I'm surprised I haven't heard this from an OpenBSD user...
This is a aggressive operating system. You probably won't like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the interest or sophistication to be able to appreciate an OS of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory - maybe something with a multi-million dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it's made in a little development house, or one that implies that their unstable ugly weak OS will give you more sex appeal. Perhaps you think multi-million dollar ad campaigns make an OS work better. Perhaps you're mouthing your words as you read this.
-- Adapted from Arrogant Bastard Ale.
great - if only the leonids were over afghanistan... then perhaps we could lure OBL out of his tent/cave, and zap him like in weird science...
now I'm hungry for some popcorn.... yum.
I doubt most prosecuting teams are savvy enough to think about google's cache.
I also think about how this will be abused - IM and 'wireless' ads are two that come to mind.
Think the phone companies will go for this? No way, unless they require you to send all your messages through their filter servers... then the FBI can carnivore your mind, and make sure that you don't commit any "thought-crimes", or maybe my fiancee will just kick me in the nuts everytime I walk past another beautiful woman.
Most people choose Pop music. It's that simple.
Most people choose that moronic music because they're brainwashed to buy it. The airwaves are saturated with idiotic catchy tunes like Hanson, the Spice Girls, N'Sync, etc... That gets into people's subconcious and sticks there telling them that they need to listen to it all the time, and not just when the radio plays it.
Do you think any of these records will have anything more than a historic value 10, 30 years from now? I'm still rocking out to Led Zep, CCR, and Jimi - because they made music, not something that will sell more McDonald's happy meals.
If you want a choice, then support the alternatives, listen to college radio, or live365, or better yet - get the permission for some local artists' recordings, and host your own radio show, then tell people about it.
How will this affect Usability aspects regarding page length? Jakob Neilsen has come up with some pretty good size, and page length guidelines. Essentially, there is a need to balance length with the annoyance of a page that is too short or too long.
Are these trends going to change? Will users beg for longer pages, whereas website authors might make more single-page clickthrough stories?
very true - but this sexy Yahoo article only 1.5 months before the release date -> featuring a crisp, shiny image with working readout panel makes it feel a lot less like vaporware than the May IGN article.
As a Darwinist, I can easily see how a full moon has affected animals behavior. Throughout our evolution, animals have found that full moons afford more light for hunting. As this would roughly extend hunting season from around 12 hours to around 24, I could easily see why both predators and prey would want to get excited.
Perhaps another study should be done which compares the amount of moonlight penetrating the atmosphere, and the incidents of animal excitedness. Just an idea, but perhaps you'll find that you get more bites when it's a clear sky out, and they can see the full moon.
this raises the notion that in the future, we could see some serious corporate warfare... If, perhaps AOL/TW were to decide to actually *block* XP users - some brutal choices would be made pretty quickly... and I doubt that RoadRunner has enough leverage to scare people away from XP. Instead, people would just find another ISP.
Now, OTOH, M$ has enough muscle and monopoly power to prevent XP users from using RoadRunner without detrimental effects to their userbase.
This would be the true test of the strength of their monopolies. Viciously attack another monopoly, and see who retreats.
Twenty years from now, if I'm dilligent, I can copy all my CDR to Super-DVDR or whatever...
Fifty Years from now, I can make copies of my Super-DVDR to Quantum Storage, or something similiar...
Sure - you should be able to make perfect digital copies, or even make ternary or quadrany copies... But who's going to have the reader to interpret those bits? Unless you keep that CD of Photoshop or Gimp backed up, with a CPU that can run it - you may have to re-write your own program to interpret the binary and display it as an image.
By that time, who would want to waste time on 2-D non-holographic static images? They'd be boring, you wouldn't be able to taste or smell anything...
and then stupid site administrators will think that everyone on the web is using ie, and that the battle is over.
I am proud to be surfing with Mozilla on my Linux desktop, and they simply not get my page-hits, and I won't link to their pages anymore either. If everyone does this, they'll see significantly reduced traffic to their site, and perhaps it'll fall off the earth.
thank you... :)
yeah dogg...
the one downside here is the more expensive, proprietary hardware. OTOH, it is truly much more elegant than most off the shelf PC stuff, and that hasn't stopped me from owning many of their products myself.
The point would be making an argument to a suit who handles a budget why this may / may not be the best choice.
Of course, you wouldn't want to leave out NeXT, but then the freak that headed that up was bought out by apple, and see what we have today? Perhaps both Linux and FreeBSD/Darwin/OSX/Aqua could learn some things from the BeOS architecture.
band together to resist these laws. there's power in numbers, join the ACLU
It's far more likely that the US Postal Service will be pushed over the brink of bankruptcy, as people will not want to send letters anymore. They've been in severe economic troubles for years now, and the government continues to bail them out as a service to the nation.
I see stamp prices rising to 50 cents (like payphone calls), or even a dollar or two.
no - but how many people leave their system booted into windows, since their SO, mom, whatever doesn't know how to:
/sbin/shutdown -r now
# sync
# sync
#
If they could just click on a pretty AOL icon on the linux desktop, a lot of linux-users might drop their windows partition entirely.
been supported on the mac for years...
though I do agree with your point, it could/should spread to other platforms, and end their problems with the monopoly