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katlalog
021127 01:29 Browsers
The easiest way to avoid parasite programs, he says, is to stop using Internet Explorer because it is targeted by many of the adware and spyware companies.
021120 23:20 Science fiction
Today on evolt-chat:
>> Just the other day I was told by our alphageek here
>> that the term Trekkies had been deprecated in favor
>> of Trekkers. Anybody else hear that?
>
>Did he actually use the word "deprecated?"Not just deprecated, but I believe that the "trekkers" tag has a new attribute called "life" which is set to "no" by default, so <trekkers> is the same as <trekkers life="no">
021120 17:57 Games + Advertising
I'm looking for reasons not to get Sims Online because I just haven't got the time for it. This might be a good one:
...players could find it difficult to avoid getting their fingers soiled on virtual McDonald's hamburgers. A deal struck between Sims publisher Electronic Arts and the fastfood mega-corporation allows Sims players to open up their own McDonald's kiosk and improve their game stats by consuming McD's greasy goodies.
The article complains that advertising in games should make them cheaper, but it doesn't. It also gives tips on how to protest, be a revolutionary, in the game:
Open your own McDonald's kiosk. Verbally abuse all customers in the name of McDonald's. Loudly proclaim how terrible your food is and how it's made from substandard ingredients (or whatever you think will turn people off). Make sure you preface each such statement with "In my opinion," to avoid libel charges.
021116 19:15 Reality
You just can't believe what you see.
That President Bush photo you keep getting in e-mail? The one where he's reading an upside-down book? Fake. No surprise. In fact, so many Photoshopped shots are circulating that, one observer says, no real photographs will exist in a few years.
021116 18:52 Weird
Ants are bastards. We had an ants nest with eggs and queens and all in the padding of a backpack once. It was pretty gross.
Upon inspection we discovered ants crawling in and out of every hole in the computer. I grabbed my can of compressed air and started blowing! To my horror hundreds of ants started pouring out carrying eggs!
021115 19:56 Science (fiction)
During the Seventies people believed in UFOs. I think that that made them better people because they didn't want to have to be embarrassed about what these aliens might see down here. Maybe it would be good if people believed in UFOs again. Several astronauts claim to have seen them (article in german).
A page about UFO Sightings by Astronauts in english.
021115 15:57 Politics
Justice? Pah! The law is only for the plebs. Big cheeses are above the law. Admiral John M. Poindexter, who in 1988 was found guilty of conspiracy, falsification of documents, lies and obstruction, is now in charge of the new Information Awareness Office, part of DARPA. Shouldn't he be in jail instead?
021114 19:58 Browsers
The new look is a bit overkill and I couldn't get another skin to work yet. Amazing how much people have gotten used to the hover effect, how much all user interfaces nowadays are cramped with these 'interactive' effects. Pretty soon people will believe that if an object or link doesn't change in some way when the mouse hovers over it, that something is wrong, that it is not clickable.
But the thing that really knocked my socks off is the new User Mode handling, which is simply fantastic. A drop-down menu has been added to the Author Mode / User Mode button, which includes some prefab stylesheets. There is an accessibility layout, which shows the access keys (screenshot 1). There is 'show images and links only', 'high contrast', 'skin background', 'disable tables' (i had wondered where that had gotten to),...
...and - now comes the best of them all - 'show structural elements' (which had me in such orgasmic convulsions that even my boyfriend abandoned his game and came dashing over to see what was going on. Really.) (screenshot 2). This is a fantastic tool for web designers. Understanding the difference between structure and presentation has become so important, especially in the context of accessibility. And now Opera has given us a great tool to check our structural markup as well as stylesheet independance.
There is also 'emulate text browser', which did something weird to this site, but worked a treat on another site of mine.
This drop-down menu is still a bit clunky. Selected items wouldn't show up as checked, you have to uncheck some before others work properly, etc.
For these extra options to be available under User Mode, you have to have 'My own styles' etc enabled and 'Page style' turned off under 'User Mode' in File -> Preferences -> Page Style.
Lastly: They warn not to install Opera 7 over an older version.
021111 29:47 Society / Games
[de] Wie Spass zu Arbeit wird. Dieser Artikel weist darauf hin, daß wir durch das Wiedererschaffen wirtschaftlicher Systeme in online Spielwelten, die Freizeit zur Arbeitszeit verwandelt haben und, obwohl das potenziell möglich war, nicht einmal alternative Formen des Zusammenlebens erforscht haben.
[en] This article (in german) argues that by recreating economic systems in online games like Everquest we have turned play into work, that although the potential was there, alternative forms of community were not explored.
021111 16:36 Society : Patriotism
[de] Guter Artikel über den modernen Patriotismus, der leider im letzten Satz enttäuschend auseinanderfällt. Der Autor erklärt, daß Deutsche den Patriotismus weitergehend meiden, diese Energie eher in Naturschutz und und soziale Rundumversorgung lenken, scheint dann aber doch der Meinung zu sein, daß Deutschland besser ein "unverkrampfteres Nationalgefühl" und "positives Selbstbild" entwickeln sollte, damit es nicht "im Ranking der Nationen zurückfällt und den Anschluss verliert".
021111 15:21 Culture : Drugs
The UK destroys over £15 million worth of banknotes every year because they are so heavily contaminated with drugs such as cocaine, heroin and ecstasy.
According to forensic experts, around 80 per cent of all banknotes in circulation are contaminated with drugs, a figure that rises to 99 per cent in the London area
021109 22:15 Politics : Human rights
Death via remote control: The US is accussed of executing the 6 men that died in that car in Yemem... using robotic warfare... in a country not at war. There's a lot I'd like to say about this but, to be honest, I'm getting too scared these days.
While defence experts said the incident could herald a new era of robotic warfare, international lawyers debated the legal implications of the surprising turn in US strategy: killing specific individuals in countries where there is no war.
[de] Lizenz zum Töten auf dem globalen Schlachtfeld
021109 19:29 Web development : Usability
So it's looks that count after all. For this study people were asked to evaluate the credibility of websites. They found that people look at the design more than at information structure. Even advertising makes a website more credible than readability and information clarity!?
Our results about the connection between Design Look and perceived credibility suggests that creating Web sites with quality information alone is not enough to win credibility in users' minds. In most cases Web site designers need also to focus on the impression that the visual design will make, creating a site that achieves what many of our participants described as "a polished, professional look." But the connection between visual design and credibility may not be so simple. Slick-looking Web sites frequently received negative comments. Participants seemed to make judgments about the people behind the site on the basis of the Design Look. Many comments were indicative of this attitude: "It looks like it's designed by a marketing team, and not by people who want to get you the information that you need."
Also, don't miss the ensuing Slashdot discussion where the researcher replies to people questioning the results:
As the lead researcher on the web credibility paper, I can say that we were a bit surprised and disappointed that people were so influenced by the design look of the web site. We'd hoped people would be more rigorous. But the data said otherwise.
Not *everyone* focused so heavily on the visual design. Some people in the study said design didn't matter. Yet the reality is that most people evaluate politicians and TV news in this same superficial way: style over substance.
We didn't include this variable in the study, but it's likely that people with "high need for cognition" (e.g., folks who spend weekends doing research or reading slashdot) evaluate sites differently than people who spend the weekend watching TV.
021107 21:19 Intellectual property
More corporate copyright madness. Russian Harry Potter rip-off is given an ultimatum to withdraw the books.
Lawyers for best-selling British children's author J K Rowling and Warner Brothers have given a Russian publisher until Sunday to withdraw two novels they say plagiarise her Harry Potter novels.
Plagiarise? What they copied the whole book? Hardly likely.
...novels feature magical adventures similar to those which made Harry Potter a household name...
Similar! Not same. 'Household name' is the real give-away. It's not about creative rights, it's about corporate money.
021107 21:15 Health
Inadvertently funny article about how spending too much time at the computer is unhealthy (surprise!):
Mental symptoms such as lethargy, anxiety and "reluctance to go to work," as well as sleep-related problems including insomnia and fatigue, were most common among workers who spent more than 5 hours a day glued to their computer screen.
021107 20:41 Earth
Amazing photo of Etna eruption taken by the crew of the International Space Station.
021107 13:02 Language
German language lesson on slashdot:
In the Bundeswehr something like "Schützengrabenvernichtungspanzerkraftwagen" would probably become something like "SGVPKW". I can safely assure you that _noone_ ever uses such words in Germany.
021106 17:48 Browsers
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot.
I get into this state of childlike excitement every time I discover another cool Mozilla trick. From the above list I just learned about Caret Browsing that you can toggle on and off with F7. It puts a cursor in the page and lets you move around and select text with the keyboard. As an RSI sufferer I love keyboard control.
021103 19:49 Web development
Cameron Barrett is thinking of switching Camworld to CSS layout. Is this becoming a trend? We've been talking about it for years and now it finally seems to happen. Wherever I go on the Internet people are talking about it and are doing it. I just switched a small simple website to an equally simple CSS layout myself - as a practise run for some other sites.
This trend is good. If more and more sites switch, then maybe Netscape 4.7 will also finally die and we can do all those nifty CSS tricks - without having to shuffle stylesheets to accommodate this persistent out-of-date browser. I gave up on Netscape 4.7 when I became embarrassed about visiting some of my favorite sites.
021103 19:25 Science
More evidence that science must have solved all important problems, otherwise they wouldn't have time for deciphering cow moos. (via boingboing)
021103 18:32 Politics
Food for thought: Science News article about alternative voting methods. If you are puzzled by recent election outcomes, like the tiny margin victories in the States in 2000 or the recent German elections, and you're wondering if our voting systems still work, then read this article - thoroughly. It's worth it.
Other voting systems abound. One alternative is the instant runoff, a procedure used in Australia and Ireland that eliminates candidates one at a time from rankings provided by each voter. Another is the Borda count, a point system devised by the 18th-century French mathematician Jean Charles Borda, which is now used to rank college football and basketball teams. A third is approval voting, used by several scientific societies, in which participants may cast votes for as many of the candidates as they choose.
021103 18:24 Comics
021102 23:13 Evil empire
Microsoft wins the Lifetime-Award in the German Big Brother Awards 2002.
021101 23:01 Health
Warnings have been issued about the soaring maternal death rates in Afghanistan after it was revealed that 50 women die each day.