I've always seen the ones with the screens at roughly eye level, which seems a far better design.
Whatever happened to putting the Times crossword beneath a sheet of glass in the toilet? Much much better.
Ok, the big problem with DDT is that it's cumulative in the food chain. Your mosquitos will get a little, a duck will eat lots of mosquitos, accumulating all the DDT from all the mosquitos it eats. Then, the duck gets eaten by the alligators, and pretty soon all the alligators are dead from DDT poisoning. Then if you continue using DDT, the ducks start dying. You can completely wreck the food chain leaving nothing but the smallest creatures in a particular area by overusing DDT. Why on earth would you want to bring this back?
Bah humbug. There ain't no such thing as the Loch Ness monster, there ain't enough fish in the lake to support even a small population of whateverthehellyouthinkitis.
Do Americans realise that they're the only ones who use the month/day/year system? (rather than the rest of us who use day/month/year)?
Mundus vult decipi
Isn't this an only fool's and horses episode?
We obviously don't get Dasani here in the UK (seems a strange name for Kentish water), but I'm curious whether the Flouride is still in it or is that filtered out?
I recommend dreamhost too. They're not the cheapest, but the give you everything - plenty of space, decent bandwidth, telnet access(!), mysql + loads of other stuff I'll never use.
I tend to register details for sites anyway - Normally Mr. A B from Antarctica, unemployed, and my email address points to x@spam.la - this website allows throw-away email addresses so that I can register and never worry again.
Are you optimising/running update statistics on your database at regular intervals? It might be a simple matter of doing this, or at worst, rebuilding the indexes for the tables, to significantly reduce the load on the processor. (I'm not familiar with MySql - more used to informix databases).
From Jakob's article:
Where TV is warm, the Web is cold. It is a user-driven experience, where the user is actively engaged in determining where to go next. The user is usually on the Web for a purpose and is not likely to be distracted from the goal by an advertisement (one of the main reasons click-through is so low). This active user engagement makes the Web more cognitive, since the user has to think about what hypertext links to click and how to navigate. This again makes the Web less suited for purely emotional advertising. The user is not on the Web to "get an experience" but to get something done. The Web is not simply a "customer-oriented" medium; it's a customer-dominated medium. The user owns the Back button. Get over it: there is no way of trapping users in an ad if they don't want it.
Having used Firebird now for over 6 months, I'm actually surprised when I hear people complain about pop-up adverts because I simply never see them any more. Also, with newspapers, the ability to block ad-servers allows you to read without distractions.
However, I realise however that if everybody followed this example then the advertising revenue would dry up for the internet completely and force newspapers to charge to a subscription fee.
Subscription doesn't work either - too many of your online readers are only surfing past your site for the content and charging a subscription will mean you get (far) less hits - a micro-payments system is appropriate here where you pay a tiny amount (0.001 pence) for the content. Subscription services can only work if all sites offering that particular service (e.g. all newspapers) start charging at the same time - if they don't then the one that remains free (e.g. The BBC) gets the majority market share.
The alternative micro-payments system (payment of some very small amount for each page view) doesn't really work either - the internet would go from being a very open system to a very closed one, as search engines won't be able to pay the cost of all those page hits to other sites. Additionally the abuse of blogs becomes a huge reality, as newspaper articles are slashdotted to boost the author's bank balance.
What other cost models are there for the internet except advertising to the clueless?
I've always seen the ones with the screens at roughly eye level, which seems a far better design. Whatever happened to putting the Times crossword beneath a sheet of glass in the toilet? Much much better.
posted by BigCalm 19 years ago
In "You weren't in the market for a boat, were you? "
I just need to find a spare 6 million dollars and that baby is mine!
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "28 hours a day,"
The French experimented with a decimalised time system.
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In " What the World Needs Now Is DDT"
Ok, the big problem with DDT is that it's cumulative in the food chain. Your mosquitos will get a little, a duck will eat lots of mosquitos, accumulating all the DDT from all the mosquitos it eats. Then, the duck gets eaten by the alligators, and pretty soon all the alligators are dead from DDT poisoning. Then if you continue using DDT, the ducks start dying. You can completely wreck the food chain leaving nothing but the smallest creatures in a particular area by overusing DDT. Why on earth would you want to bring this back?
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "Life after the oil crash."
Try hubbertpeak.com too.
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In ""Nessie on the Web" site reveals the truth IS out there!"
Bah humbug. There ain't no such thing as the Loch Ness monster, there ain't enough fish in the lake to support even a small population of whateverthehellyouthinkitis.
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "ETA suspected in Madrid bombings."
Do Americans realise that they're the only ones who use the month/day/year system? (rather than the rest of us who use day/month/year)? Mundus vult decipi
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "The 16 Best-ever Freeware Utilities."
I don't use *any* of those applications in that list. Where's Perl? MySQL? C compiler? Ad-aware?
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
You can use Mozilla and IE on the same computer at the same time, though it's hard to see why you might use IE after a week or so.
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "Bottled water actually tap water."
I'd imagine that sediment is dissolved chalk from the South Downs as I used to live near there - won't do you any harm.
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
Isn't this an only fool's and horses episode? We obviously don't get Dasani here in the UK (seems a strange name for Kentish water), but I'm curious whether the Flouride is still in it or is that filtered out?
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "Why Can't Everybody Have a Preacher Like This?"
I want a preacher like this NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "Curious George: a stupid webhosting question"
I recommend dreamhost too. They're not the cheapest, but the give you everything - plenty of space, decent bandwidth, telnet access(!), mysql + loads of other stuff I'll never use.
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "Curious George: MoFi census"
Informix database administrator for a mobile phone company. I'm so so sorry.
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "MetaFilter unconditionally surrenders to MonkeyFilter."
One shout as requested...
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "Bypass Compulsory Web Registration. "
I tend to register details for sites anyway - Normally Mr. A B from Antarctica, unemployed, and my email address points to x@spam.la - this website allows throw-away email addresses so that I can register and never worry again.
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "Hutton!"
Hutton smacks down the BBC and Gilligan. But didn't they tell the truth, even if the didn't have evidence? Steve Bell.
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "Curious George: A Cry for Help"
Are you optimising/running update statistics on your database at regular intervals? It might be a simple matter of doing this, or at worst, rebuilding the indexes for the tables, to significantly reduce the load on the processor. (I'm not familiar with MySql - more used to informix databases).
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
In "You can continue reading this page right after these messages"
From Jakob's article: Where TV is warm, the Web is cold. It is a user-driven experience, where the user is actively engaged in determining where to go next. The user is usually on the Web for a purpose and is not likely to be distracted from the goal by an advertisement (one of the main reasons click-through is so low). This active user engagement makes the Web more cognitive, since the user has to think about what hypertext links to click and how to navigate. This again makes the Web less suited for purely emotional advertising. The user is not on the Web to "get an experience" but to get something done. The Web is not simply a "customer-oriented" medium; it's a customer-dominated medium. The user owns the Back button. Get over it: there is no way of trapping users in an ad if they don't want it.
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
Having used Firebird now for over 6 months, I'm actually surprised when I hear people complain about pop-up adverts because I simply never see them any more. Also, with newspapers, the ability to block ad-servers allows you to read without distractions. However, I realise however that if everybody followed this example then the advertising revenue would dry up for the internet completely and force newspapers to charge to a subscription fee. Subscription doesn't work either - too many of your online readers are only surfing past your site for the content and charging a subscription will mean you get (far) less hits - a micro-payments system is appropriate here where you pay a tiny amount (0.001 pence) for the content. Subscription services can only work if all sites offering that particular service (e.g. all newspapers) start charging at the same time - if they don't then the one that remains free (e.g. The BBC) gets the majority market share. The alternative micro-payments system (payment of some very small amount for each page view) doesn't really work either - the internet would go from being a very open system to a very closed one, as search engines won't be able to pay the cost of all those page hits to other sites. Additionally the abuse of blogs becomes a huge reality, as newspaper articles are slashdotted to boost the author's bank balance. What other cost models are there for the internet except advertising to the clueless?
posted by BigCalm 20 years ago
(limited to the most recent 20 comments)