(Warning: slightly NSFW.)
Ah, so that’s what they’re for! I’ve wondered since I first heard about them, as they’re too big for the normally understood use of such things, unless you were planning to use them on a horse. And if you know otherwise, I do not want to know about it. 😉
I have to admit, it’s an application I’d never have thought of. And apparently a pretty effective one, too.
Before the Internet became widespread, AOL made money by charging ridiculously high rates to access the content on their network. Afterwards, their content was worth less every day as web sites sprang up everywhere, so they reinvented themselves as an Internet Service Provider (a pretty slick move, in my opinion, not that they had a lot of choice). They got away with charging a premium because they made it easy to get online (a daunting technical task at first), and because they had local telephone numbers (for modems, remember those?) nationwide.
Well, cheaper local ISPs started popping up like mushrooms after a hard rain, and telephone modems became the exception rather than the norm, both of which served to make their local numbers irrelevant. And operating systems simplified the process of getting online to the point that any technophobic grandma could do it, even without their floppy disks and CD-ROMs. Even following Microsoft’s example by forcing themselves onto just about every new PC only slowed their decline.
Now the buzzards are circling, and it looks like they won’t have to wait too much longer. And their CEO says that the company is “getting healthier every day.” After the company folds, maybe he can make it as a stand-up comedian. Or a Hollywood writer, his obvious lack of a strong connection to reality might be an asset there.
robots.txt is a file used by convention to tell web spiders (systems like those at Google or Microsoft that “crawl the web,” indexing files for their search engines) to ignore certain files. It seems that someone at Last.fm has a geeky sense of humor…
User-Agent: *
Disallow: /music?
Disallow: /widgets/radio?
Disallow: /show_ads.php
Disallow: /affiliate/
Disallow: /affiliate_redirect.php
Disallow: /affiliate_sendto.php
Disallow: /affiliatelink.php
Disallow: /campaignlink.php
Disallow: /delivery.php
Disallow: /music/+noredirect/
Disallow: /harming/humans
Disallow: /ignoring/human/orders
Disallow: /harm/to/self
Allow: /See it? If not, brush up on your Asimov and look again. 😉
(Via BoingBoing)
Here’s a bit of Friday-the-13th fun for you. I have to admit, they had me smiling pretty widely.
So you mean that there’s even less reason to consider humans intelligent? 😉
(Actually, I’d argue that the human brain works somewhat the same way, the cells “deciding by committee” what path to pursue based on how strong its good and bad points are.)
(Via BoingBoing)
Sometimes I think Scott Adams (yes, the Dilbert guy) is just throwing outrageous stuff out there on his blog, to provoke reactions. I can’t tell if this article, on getting rid of cash and making all financial transactions digital, is one of those though, or if he truly believes that it’s possible.
It would offer a lot of features that are greatly desirable. He lists many of them, including preventing a great deal of crime and gray-area activity. But some of that gray-area activity (and even the crime) is the kind that politicians and big financial players enjoy indulging in, so there’s zero chance that anything requiring their cooperation will ever be passed.
And even if it were, do you think drug dealers and other criminals would just fold up shop? No way. They’d find some other medium of exchange, or go through a broker that would hide the transaction in large volumes of legitimate transactions. Muggers? They’d mug you for valuables to fence or trade, instead of cash. It would just be a minor inconvenience for all of them. And those with the brains for it would just move to online theft anyway, there’s a lot less risk in it and the rewards can be a lot higher.
(This idea has also been explored, in passing, in at least one science fiction novel that I’ve read. I don’t recall which one, but it could have been Neuromancer.)
It’s a nice idea, but it’s not going to happen in our lifetimes.
I love this… an advertising gimmick gone wrong, and a company that made good on it… after a fashion. 🙂
The sturdy mini-trash-cans that I talked about last time seem to have done the trick, but they needed some extra help.
As I mentioned, Ralph and his relatives didn’t give up easily. It took them several days, but they figured out how to open those cans too. After examining (and cleaning up) the evidence from a few such successful attacks, I thought I saw how they did it: they were knocking the cans over, then unlatching them and nosing the lids open. Two obvious forms of defense suggested themselves: modify the cans to stop the beasties from unlatching them no matter what position they were in, or stop them from knocking the cans over in the first place. I focused on keeping the cans upright, as the easier of the two.
I tried several tricks, with varying levels of success, such as surrounding them with other heavy items like our garden hose caddy. They still found ways to get them out most of the time. Then I lit on the idea of tying the cans to the fence, using a piece of light rope I had handy.
It has been nearly a month since I started doing that, and in all that time, I haven’t had to clean up a single raided trash can. 😀 I’m calling that a success.
Judging from past experience, Ralph and company will prove me wrong as soon as I publish this, just out of spite. But I’m going to do it anyway. Wish me luck. 🙂
I’ve finally discovered my true species classification: Homo Logicus. Or technically, Homo Sapiens Logicus, a subspecies of humanity.
(As opposed to the more common subspecies, Homo Sapiens Idioticus, or the overlapping Homo Sapiens Dipshiticus, several representatives of which I’ve had the misfortune to have to deal with recently. But that’s a completely different subject.)
I’ve often wondered just how Microsoft could be so incompetent. This quote might just shed some light on it:
[…] Notwithstanding Kin’s shortcomings as a product, the most entertaining aspect of the cock-up is that it appears to be the result of ego battles in Redmond: rumor has it that Kin was throttled in its billion-dollar crib by an executive who saw it as a threat to Windows Mobile. […]
Of course it’s a threat to Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile is a piece-of-shit operating system, notable only by its complete mediocrity; any marginally decent phone OS would be a welcome replacement. But that’s not the point of the quote.
The point is: why is this executive still working for the company? The purpose of a company is to make money; the sole task of each and every employee is to follow that purpose. Executives are still employees. If any employee is deliberately destroying company value, he should be fired. Full stop. Non-executives are fired for merely not contributing enough to the bottom line; how does anyone, executive or no, get away with deliberately sucking value out of it?
Microsoft’s tolerance for this kind of behavior explains a lot about the quality of its products over the years.