A recent development in Google technology left me very dismayed -- They started ignoring "common words."
This makes sense on a general level, but when you try searching for a phrase embedded in quotation marks, it's frustrating to have Google decide which parts of a literal string to search for and which to ignore. If I had wanted it to ignore parts of it, I wouldn't have indicated that it was a literal phrase, dangnabbit!
It is possible to include words that you typed in the search phrase, but you have to add an Altavista-style '+' before it.
For example, searching for: "Hail to the chief" would ignore to and the. In order to actually search for the phrase (which I indicated that I wanted to do by surrounding it in quotation marks), I would have to type "Hail +to +the chief". Hardly user-friendly.
Not all the credits panned it. Roger Ebert gave it 3 stars, in recognition that while the plot is mindless, it's got some great action sequences and cool set pieces.
When Siskel died, so did any point to listening to movie critics.
Where the hell do you get off getting into domain issues. So if you go to a supermarket for a can of food you shouldn't be able to purchase it before someone else because someone says so? Discrimination asshole. Now on point with the relevant post script kiddies have nothing to do with patents jackass so post something relevant other than some jackassedly biased crock'o'shit'o'matic opinion
Oh, I'm sorry. Did I hit are a nerve? Are you one of those script kiddies? It is descrimination, and that's a good thing.
If you don't think it is, why don't you try posting something a little more convincing than all caps and a demonstration of how the majority of your vocabulary contains four letters.
Nice to see the USPTO making an effort to improve things. I for one will be submitting my comments ASAP. Here's hoping they will a) listen and b) take proactive steps to improve a process we all know is broken.
I demand that you stop using the word "proactive".
We've discussed this topic ad naseum, so here's an opportunity to make sure that policy-makers understand our perspective.
What exactly is "our" perspective? I'd be willing to bet that your opinion and mine differ greatly.
has some crazy suggestions such as reserving domains using pharmaceutical names and bolstering the claims of commercial entities against 'cybersquatters.
Am I the only person who doesn't like the idea of some script kiddie going in and reserving every trademarked name as soon as the new TLDs arrive? "First come, first served" is a terrible way to run anything, because some punk kid gets everything in the first fifteen minutes and then ransoms them. Yeah, it's real funny when it's Microsoft or Verizon, but what if it was VA Linux?
true, but in our defense, most of this shit isn't worth reading. i don't mean this to be flamebait, but it's bound to happen with any site who's content is primarily generated by users. there's a good chance, even with moderation, that a good number of the comments will be poorly written, perhaps with bad grammar, no thesis or common thought pattern, ignorant and/or completely wrong contect, or even written without capital letters! all of these things make reading comments painful and time-consuming.
That's exactly the point. The fact that massive amounts of information are readily accessible has not improved our cognitive abilities, but hindered them; If we don't get immediate gratification, we search elsewhere. We no longer know how to sit and read something to get information out of it.
and in 14 minutes (assuming you saw the story the second it was posted) you read it a couple times, thought it over, formed/modified an opinion, and took the time to write a response? What a crock buddy
This has nothing to do with "Big Media." Newspapers, magazines, book publishers, etc., are all having the same problems -- we live in a society that is bored with reading.
You don't see blood, guns, t&a, tears, massive armies, explosions, sweat, smiles, or anything else when you read. You imagine them. Television and movies have rotted our brains enough that we are no longer capable of imagination; We simply watch. If it's not in front of us in living color, we can't understand it.
People don't "read" Slashdot. They skim it. Most people don't even really read the posts before they start writing replies, and don't even ask about clicking links to read off-site articles.
This has nothing to do with Big Media and everything to do with information apathy.
I've noticed a trend with regard to this process. No matter how passionately the stoical marketeers defend Microsoft, nor how predictably Linux' yes-men define the particular news story as the turning point in the eternal battle between the forces of freedom and the forces of evil, the truth will lie somewhere in the middle. What's depressing is that those who take the middle ground are morbidly few. Who would have thought the tech sector would create such starry-eyed romantics (as many online activists seem to be)?
That's because only extreme viewpoints gain karma. I usually post on both sides of the fence for anything MS/Linux, and then watch them *both* get modded up.
A global government would be elected. This is virtually impossible, considering the variety of nations that would be participating. We can't even get an accurate election in the United States.
A global government, if elected, would be elected by the people. More likely, it would be elected by governments or corporations.
A global government would have something resembling the Freedom of Information Act, which makes their affairs and paperwork public.
A global government would be democratic and capitalist.
Should I go on?
Re:If democratic and elected, not so sad after all
on
Harm From The Hague
·
· Score: 3
So yes, I consider elected government a more "free" institution than private corporations simply because as a citizen I have at least a say in how policy is enacted and enforced
Again, your views of how "elected government" works is biased. I am assuming by the way you write that you're an American citizen, and thus your idea of a free and (reasonably) fair government are highly skewed.
Re:If democratic and elected, not so sad after all
on
Harm From The Hague
·
· Score: 2
I disagree completely. I'm not frightened by the prospect of a world unified government -- in fact I think we desperately NEED one. Global corporations are using jurisdictional differences between nations to avoid child labor and anti-slavery laws. They're misusing tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
They are using jurisdictional differences between nations to avoid (usually) United States law. Having a world government does not mean having the United States rule the world. It means that whatever laws, rights, and priviliges we have as Americans are secondary to whatever laws are enforced on a global level.
Through the WTO, GATT, NAFTA, MAI the goal is to reduce the power of elected government to a minimum while increasing the power of corporate control over public life. I think we need a world government in place to check the power of multinationals, and to set level playing field in the marketplace. Unfortunately, one can't have a consistent set of rules in a marketplace a government to oversee and regulate the market. It's clear to me that completely deregulated world markets will lead to global monopolies unlike anything we've seen yet, and this will lead to a catastrophe for the citizens of the world -- never mind democracy as an institution.
Your argument is that we should have a world government regulating things in order to protect our freedom? Absurd.
So, to me the issue is not should we implement a world government, but HOW? As far as I'm concerned it must be democratically elected, is must fairly represent all of the nations' interests throughout the world, and it should restrict itself to matters of commerce.
Why should it restrict itself to matters of commerce? That's an arbitrary decision on your part, and such a government would only result in a world primarily focused on corporate endeavors.
In addition, there is no way to "fairly represent all of the nations' interests throughout the world." Ask the Korean government their opinion of parody, and you'll see that it's impossible.
It won't be long until a world government is formed. Some bastarized hybrid of the UN, the EU, and other organizations will eventually take over for the purpose of "clarifying" matters of international jurisdiction, among other things. If you've been paying attention over the past few years, you've probably seen it coming.
The world of the future will have international laws that override local ones, international courts to interpret the law, international economic unions to do "what is best for the world" (instead of for a person's native country), international military forces (the UN's working on this), an international police force (i.e., the United States), and a council of probably-unelected international leaders who are concerned about "the greater good."
What gets lost? Individual rights and community rights. Americans will no longer be able to act as Americans, because of how it might affect a Korean, a Swede, a South African or a New Zealander.
I don't know about you, but I'm not looking forward to it.
The world is heading in an unpleasant direction, and we have to do something to get it to stop before our entire lives are centered around advertising. It's disturbingly postmodern, and the problem is that it has been such a slow process that only a few have noticed it.
First it was the Internet. Cable TV comes next. Then public TV. Within a decade, billboards are going to be changing just for you as you drive down the street.
Targeted advertising is not the problem. The problem is having personal information about your work and personal life spread around the world on computers that any script kiddie with a few free minutes could get into. How long do you think it will be before this sort of information becomes seizeable and admissible into court?
Advertisers are already doing this to an extent by advertising on shows that they think their customers would probably watch. Targeted advertising is nothing new.
This degree of targeting is really no different from targeted internet advertising and the like. The end result is simply that we get advertising we might actually be interested in. Is that really a bad thing?
This is getting absurd. It's a perfectly logical business solution, and hasn't anything to do with Big Brother.
Hey, did you hear that Windows has installed a "Find File" feature in windows so that my sister can spy on me?
Hey, did you hear that Google allows Government thugs to search my personal websites?
Hey, did you hear that flashlights a violation of our personal rights because they are being used to perform surveillance in previously dark corners of my garage?
Anyone stupid enough not to have local copies of their current source tree deserves to lose their project.
That is exactly the attitude of most ASP managers, and that's why ASP will never become a viable medium. They're cute, they're trendy, they're a buzzword, but they will never be a vital part of any substantial project.
Slashdot Mirror
This makes sense on a general level, but when you try searching for a phrase embedded in quotation marks, it's frustrating to have Google decide which parts of a literal string to search for and which to ignore. If I had wanted it to ignore parts of it, I wouldn't have indicated that it was a literal phrase, dangnabbit!
It is possible to include words that you typed in the search phrase, but you have to add an Altavista-style '+' before it.
For example, searching for: "Hail to the chief" would ignore to and the. In order to actually search for the phrase (which I indicated that I wanted to do by surrounding it in quotation marks), I would have to type "Hail +to +the chief". Hardly user-friendly.
Oh, well.
I bet the university would have loved to bust out it's IP policies on Yahoo, but somehow I don't think it'd have any effect.
When Siskel died, so did any point to listening to movie critics.
http://slashdot.microsoft.com:42@1075594134/search .pl?topic=microsoft
You know...basic browser stuff.
This from the only guy whose web site is more outdated than Linus's
Oh, I'm sorry. Did I hit are a nerve? Are you one of those script kiddies? It is descrimination, and that's a good thing.
If you don't think it is, why don't you try posting something a little more convincing than all caps and a demonstration of how the majority of your vocabulary contains four letters.
I demand that you stop using the word "proactive".
What exactly is "our" perspective? I'd be willing to bet that your opinion and mine differ greatly.
has some crazy suggestions such as reserving domains using pharmaceutical names and bolstering the claims of commercial entities against 'cybersquatters.Am I the only person who doesn't like the idea of some script kiddie going in and reserving every trademarked name as soon as the new TLDs arrive? "First come, first served" is a terrible way to run anything, because some punk kid gets everything in the first fifteen minutes and then ransoms them. Yeah, it's real funny when it's Microsoft or Verizon, but what if it was VA Linux?
That's exactly the point. The fact that massive amounts of information are readily accessible has not improved our cognitive abilities, but hindered them; If we don't get immediate gratification, we search elsewhere. We no longer know how to sit and read something to get information out of it.
What operating system do you use at home?
What, you can't read that in 14 minutes?
You don't see blood, guns, t&a, tears, massive armies, explosions, sweat, smiles, or anything else when you read. You imagine them. Television and movies have rotted our brains enough that we are no longer capable of imagination; We simply watch. If it's not in front of us in living color, we can't understand it.
People don't "read" Slashdot. They skim it. Most people don't even really read the posts before they start writing replies, and don't even ask about clicking links to read off-site articles.
This has nothing to do with Big Media and everything to do with information apathy.
That's because only extreme viewpoints gain karma. I usually post on both sides of the fence for anything MS/Linux, and then watch them *both* get modded up.
A global government would be elected. This is virtually impossible, considering the variety of nations that would be participating. We can't even get an accurate election in the United States.
A global government, if elected, would be elected by the people. More likely, it would be elected by governments or corporations.
A global government would have something resembling the Freedom of Information Act, which makes their affairs and paperwork public.
A global government would be democratic and capitalist. Should I go on?
Again, your views of how "elected government" works is biased. I am assuming by the way you write that you're an American citizen, and thus your idea of a free and (reasonably) fair government are highly skewed.
They are using jurisdictional differences between nations to avoid (usually) United States law. Having a world government does not mean having the United States rule the world. It means that whatever laws, rights, and priviliges we have as Americans are secondary to whatever laws are enforced on a global level.
Through the WTO, GATT, NAFTA, MAI the goal is to reduce the power of elected government to a minimum while increasing the power of corporate control over public life. I think we need a world government in place to check the power of multinationals, and to set level playing field in the marketplace. Unfortunately, one can't have a consistent set of rules in a marketplace a government to oversee and regulate the market. It's clear to me that completely deregulated world markets will lead to global monopolies unlike anything we've seen yet, and this will lead to a catastrophe for the citizens of the world -- never mind democracy as an institution.
Your argument is that we should have a world government regulating things in order to protect our freedom? Absurd.
So, to me the issue is not should we implement a world government, but HOW? As far as I'm concerned it must be democratically elected, is must fairly represent all of the nations' interests throughout the world, and it should restrict itself to matters of commerce.
Why should it restrict itself to matters of commerce? That's an arbitrary decision on your part, and such a government would only result in a world primarily focused on corporate endeavors.
In addition, there is no way to "fairly represent all of the nations' interests throughout the world." Ask the Korean government their opinion of parody, and you'll see that it's impossible.
The world of the future will have international laws that override local ones, international courts to interpret the law, international economic unions to do "what is best for the world" (instead of for a person's native country), international military forces (the UN's working on this), an international police force (i.e., the United States), and a council of probably-unelected international leaders who are concerned about "the greater good."
What gets lost? Individual rights and community rights. Americans will no longer be able to act as Americans, because of how it might affect a Korean, a Swede, a South African or a New Zealander.
I don't know about you, but I'm not looking forward to it.
Amen to that. Sometimes these articles and posters need to be flamed, because they're just plain stupid.
First it was the Internet. Cable TV comes next. Then public TV. Within a decade, billboards are going to be changing just for you as you drive down the street.
Targeted advertising is not the problem. The problem is having personal information about your work and personal life spread around the world on computers that any script kiddie with a few free minutes could get into. How long do you think it will be before this sort of information becomes seizeable and admissible into court?
Charmin knows you better than you think.
This degree of targeting is really no different from targeted internet advertising and the like. The end result is simply that we get advertising we might actually be interested in. Is that really a bad thing?
It's an insightful flame, cowlick.
Hey, did you hear that Windows has installed a "Find File" feature in windows so that my sister can spy on me?
Hey, did you hear that Google allows Government thugs to search my personal websites?
Hey, did you hear that flashlights a violation of our personal rights because they are being used to perform surveillance in previously dark corners of my garage?
Shut up already.
That is exactly the attitude of most ASP managers, and that's why ASP will never become a viable medium. They're cute, they're trendy, they're a buzzword, but they will never be a vital part of any substantial project.