Instead of cluttering the front page with fake product announcements, let's just post them in here instead. One thread where each top-level comment is just a title and a link.
Gee, thanks for that. Next time I'm scooping cooked rice out for dinner I would hope that the other occupants of the house have not used it as a spank paddle.
"...Kenobi's seminal paper "May the Force be with EU" – a strong argument that his experiment should be built in Europe – persuaded the CERN Council to finance..."
This battle was lost the second people started using .net and .org for things that wheren't related network technologies and non-profit orgranizations respectively. The nail was driven into the coffin when people started using country tld's for sites that had nothing to do with that country.
If anything this might be step back in the right direction. Whereas I cannot tell anything about the nature or origin of a site based on the fact that it has a .net or .ly tld, I will be able to tell something about nature and origin of a site if it has a .google or .apple tld.
More generally, as part of ICANN's gTLD approval process, if the gTLD being applied for is a trademark, then it can't go to anyone else besides the trademark holder. So there's actually a lot more assurances that you are dealing with who you expect to be dealing with with gTLDs versus random domain names on .com.
Honest question, trademarked according to who? The Internet is a global thing now, so who wins if there's two entities that happen to both have valid claims to a trademark?
The TLD system is arguably broken, because it never turned out as hierarchical as it was supposed to. All the new TLDs do is force people to shell out more money to squat on pointless domains to avoid them being used for fraud (or, worse, by the competition).
Not happening in my experience. As long as everyone in the industry is earning their share from this madness they'll happily "suggest optimizations to the domain portfolio" of their vict^Wcustomers.
You wouldn't take Google seriously? I'm sure they didn't fork out just for today, they will be using it for their products at some point.
In a few years, it will probably the standard domain for big corps. iphone.apple, macbook.apple, etc. It looks weird now (or an intranet address at best), but once people get used to it, it will be recognisable as a domain just as any.com is now.
Not to mention, an explosion of TLDs for reselling (.futbol .enterprise etc) means people will just equate . on billboards etc with a domain.
The fact that a company needs their own gTLD is silly. Sites like google have a perfectly good domain. Why use iphone.apple if apple can already do iphone.apple.com or apple.com/iphone? At the end of the day the consumer will not start guessing what domain he/she has to use to get what they want. The average consumer uses a search engine and types in "apple iphone". They don't care about iphone.apple they just want to go to the product page.
Well, it's not about need. It's about a story that goes like this:
ICANN: Hey, has anyone noticed that our wallets aren't
very heavy?
Google: We have a bucketload of money just laying around
that will fill your wallets, and wouldn't mind
our own gTLD. It'd be cute.
ICANN: You had us at 'bucketload of money'
We needed more gTLDs anyway. So what if a few mega-companies get their own versions?
> Google isn't going to abandon their perfectly good domains.
Good thing icann just increased the available domain-space from "limited" to "unlimited" then. That sounds good for almost everyone, or at least icann.
"At the auction for Nortel Networks' wireless patents this week, Google's bids were mystifying, such as $1,902,160,540 and $2,614,972,128.
Math whizzes might recognize these numbers as Brun's constant and Meissel-Mertens constant, but it puzzled many of the people involved in the auction, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation on Friday.
...
'It became clear that they were bidding with the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi,' the source said, adding the bid was $3.14159 billion.
'Either they were supremely confident or they were bored.'"
For or against gTLDs Google should not be able to squat .dev is too generic to give to one company. Infact any one company squatting any gtld that isn't their registered trademark leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
It's just a game of "we have money therefor shut up." combined with "The world revolves around the USA"
It's not about shared hosts (at least if I'm understanding the topic correctly) but about /etc/hosts entries on your local machine for your local machine. As in:
Buying an actual registered domain for that sounds like it would be even more confusing than using an unregistered TLD because it makes it hard to tell which hostnames are expected to work across machines and which are strictly "works on my machine".
Except he's not right. ARPANET was one aspect of what would become the Internet. The public Internet as we know it is an amalgamation of technologies which were developed by the U.S., Great Britain, and France. You really can't claim that the U.S. invented the Internet.
That actually reminded me of a bug I submitted a while ago. It appears to be fixed now, but I was pretty surprised at the answer they provided at the time. When instant search first came out, anything that auto-completed to "do a barrel roll" would initiate the animation. It's such a popular term that simply typing "Do a" was enough to trigger it as it was the first result.
Wow, the app is really well done. SPOILERS: Can cd into a programs folder, and launch programs like sms.exe, where I get a blue DOS-style window asking for input. Can use "phone <nr>" to call someone, send e-mails. If i launch "internet" it plays an old modem sound before launching the stock OS browser.
CDing into C:\GAMES\RPS and launching RPS.exe first gives you a question about using "PC Speaker" or "Sound Blaster", and then how many colors you would like. Then the game crashes with "Error! Not enough memory, RPS needs 641KB conventional memory (...)" and then a quote "---Cortana: That's odd, 640 K ought to be enough for anyone", haha. After that, it guides you through using mem and loadhigh to get the game to run. And of course, RPS is Rock-Paper-Scissors in 8-bit glory.
The camera is an ASCII-camera, using letters with only a few colors, or CGA mode. Here are two selfies I took http://imgur.com/a/deajM
The command help gives all useable command: CD, CLS, COLOR, DATE, DIR, ECHO, EDIT (edit autoxec.bat for instance), EXIT, FORMAT, HELP, LOADHIGH, MEM, PATH, TIME, TYPE, VER.
Oh man, those IRQ nightmares! Please don't mention those extended memory settings or I will go into my basement to look for my MEMMAKER notes on how to (maybe) get a game going...
Just boot one in your browser! https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games Yes these are real copies of MS-DOS games running in MS-DOS in a JS emulator in your browser. Some of them have crack screens, but some of them are running from magnetic maps of the disk, with original copy protection schemes intact.
did you load himem.sys? how about emm386.exe?
does your sound card have an OPL3 or the OPL4 MIDI chip?
Does your trident VESA card on the ISA slot have 1MB VRAM?
stacker, drivespace or doublespace? choices!
I just bought me a Seagate medalist 1-Gigabyte hard drive. Should I make it a master or a slave on the ATA bus?
Make sure the Turbo button is pressed, if Doom is slow to load!
Had so much with my friends while in high-school trying to figure out what kind of weird graphics mode this cool game called "Scorched Earth" used... It wasn't 320x200 :)
Mode X and related: programming VGA registers to do what int 10h mode 13h didn't offer. Bonus points for flipping video pages or cycling the palette as to not cause tearing.
Oh man, my fondest early memories with computers was modifying the autoexec.bat and config.sys files so I could play DOS games. I can only describe the feeling of finally figuring it out and getting a certain game to work as pure joy.
Conversely, the feeling when I changed something incorrectly (without backups of the original file, of course) and the system error'd out during boot - sheer panic.
More than 1.5 million Britons signed an online petition calling for Clarkson to be reinstated and for a relaxation of the laws against assault in cases that could be demonstrated to involve banter.
> Note: You may need to increase your iPhone volume, since Dash Button uses ultrasonic tones to sync with your iPhone during setup. If prompted, drag the volume slider to the recommended level, at or above where it says Best.
I actually wrote a library that does this, FSK to WAV and back is just a few lines of code, and fairly reliable. There are even Javascript libraries that can do it.
I think it probably is real, it just shouldn't be. :-/
No reason it shouldn't be. Brilliant idea: put a "reorder consumable product" right where you will be the moment you realize you need to reorder a particular consumable product. Running low on laundry detergent? TP? fabric softener? trash bags? push button. You walk away from that location, you'll immediately forget you needed to order (which means drive to store or fiddle with browser). Devices can be built dirt cheap now: button, minimal wifi, ease setup via (yes) nigh-unto-free microphone. App gathers requests, confirms them (my first thought was "great, kids sit there pushing button and order 137 bottles of Tide"), done, product arrives in 24/48 hours.
Hey, I actually thought it was an April Fools joke as well, but then realized that we've gotten to the point where it is crucial to have 1 day delivery for toilet paper...Honestly, it's cool, but from a sense of self-pride...no. This is how civilizations collapse...let's be honest.
> This is how civilizations collapse...let's be honest.
You're right, it's a little known fact that the cause for downfall of the Roman empire was the ability to order personal hygiene products using a button placed in people's home!
The be vendors that offer the buttons for their products are probably financing the whole thing. They'll also be the ones paying for the buttons, as opposed to customers. Imagine how great it would be for a paper towel company to make buying its towels a single button press (with high coolness factor) whereas any other brand would require a trip to the store, or at least 2 minutes to order on amazon.
They could just automatically include the device in some shipments.
This is embarrassing: if they are too afraid to actually re-style it for a day (with all potential losses), then they shouldn't bother with a static image. Sometimes you get too big to be cool.
I completely disagree. They run a system that is arguably very complex. I would not want to restyle my entire app (for a day) (so people like you would approve of it). They took something that was low risk, made it happen across the board, reliably. Site still works. It drums up chatter around offices. Makes people visit. Enjoy your misery.
"Russian-speaking users can choose between the standard Russian version and two extras: a Soviet version and a Pre-Revolutionary version. Other than language tweaks (e.g. telegrams for messages and comrades for friends) these versions contain other easter eggs. For example, all private messages in the Soviet version have a stamp saying 'passed server censorship'. The pre-revolutionary version uses old-style Russian orthography. Both extra versions are also ad-free."
Amazon is naturally much bigger, but VK is not a small fry either.
Possibly overrating the green field Amazon has left. I can't imagine any less than a savage disregard for Amazon's half-assed retro April fool's joke around my office. YMMV.
552 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 350 ms ] threadhttp://googleasiapacific.blogspot.com/2015/04/introducing-ne...
http://www.audi.jp/gohan/
http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2015/04/cern-researche...
> With the research ongoing, many at CERN are already predicting that the Force will awaken later this year.
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2015/03/chrome-selfie-share...
http://www.sciencealert.com/you-can-play-pac-man-in-google-m...
If anything this might be step back in the right direction. Whereas I cannot tell anything about the nature or origin of a site based on the fact that it has a .net or .ly tld, I will be able to tell something about nature and origin of a site if it has a .google or .apple tld.
Wow. Such nostalgia.
More generally, as part of ICANN's gTLD approval process, if the gTLD being applied for is a trademark, then it can't go to anyone else besides the trademark holder. So there's actually a lot more assurances that you are dealing with who you expect to be dealing with with gTLDs versus random domain names on .com.
In a few years, it will probably the standard domain for big corps. iphone.apple, macbook.apple, etc. It looks weird now (or an intranet address at best), but once people get used to it, it will be recognisable as a domain just as any.com is now.
Not to mention, an explosion of TLDs for reselling (.futbol .enterprise etc) means people will just equate . on billboards etc with a domain.
Google isn't going to abandon their perfectly good domains.
Good thing icann just increased the available domain-space from "limited" to "unlimited" then. That sounds good for almost everyone, or at least icann.
http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/02/us-dealtalk-nortel...
"At the auction for Nortel Networks' wireless patents this week, Google's bids were mystifying, such as $1,902,160,540 and $2,614,972,128.
Math whizzes might recognize these numbers as Brun's constant and Meissel-Mertens constant, but it puzzled many of the people involved in the auction, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation on Friday.
...
'It became clear that they were bidding with the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi,' the source said, adding the bid was $3.14159 billion.
'Either they were supremely confident or they were bored.'"
Those usually go hand in hand.
>
> 1. Purpose of TLD
>
> It would be funny.
It's just a game of "we have money therefor shut up." combined with "The world revolves around the USA"
People here give way too much importance to TLDs.
http://icannwiki.com/.foo
test-service-1.zeus.barrera.io dummy-server.zeus.barrera.i
Etc. No need to create new (possible conflicting, definitely not future proof) TLDs.
Also, The USA invented the Internet.
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/R5A...
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/smartbox-by-inbox-mai...
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/04/gmail-paper-print-y... https://www.gmail.com/mail/help/paper/
http://tinderforuber.com/
*I'm praying this is a joke
"their"
And 'losing', 'April', missing 'fools' (or 'first of').
- Power Wheels Desert Drifters
- Steam-powered Gaming Cabinet
- Voltron Cat Condo
- and more...
http://www.thinkgeek.com/
http://www.wired.com/2010/10/2001-a-space-odyssey-monolith-a...
(which they did end up selling due to demand)
"It's Full of Stars!"
"Zero Points of Articulation"
https://databricks.com/blog/2015/04/01/spark-2-rearchitectin...
This is probably among the most technical, nerdy April fool's.
"Please type your reply above this line" (http://blog.reamaze.com/2015/04/01/please-type-your-reply-ab...)
https://www.google.co.jp/ime/___o/
http://inhabitat.com/google-purchases-dubais-world-of-island...
Announcement: http://lumiaconversations.microsoft.com/2015/04/01/microsoft...
Product page: http://www.microsoft.com/en/mobile/ms-dos/
Edit: Even an app http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/ms-dos-mobile/85...
Wow, the app is really well done. SPOILERS: Can cd into a programs folder, and launch programs like sms.exe, where I get a blue DOS-style window asking for input. Can use "phone <nr>" to call someone, send e-mails. If i launch "internet" it plays an old modem sound before launching the stock OS browser.
CDing into C:\GAMES\RPS and launching RPS.exe first gives you a question about using "PC Speaker" or "Sound Blaster", and then how many colors you would like. Then the game crashes with "Error! Not enough memory, RPS needs 641KB conventional memory (...)" and then a quote "---Cortana: That's odd, 640 K ought to be enough for anyone", haha. After that, it guides you through using mem and loadhigh to get the game to run. And of course, RPS is Rock-Paper-Scissors in 8-bit glory.
The camera is an ASCII-camera, using letters with only a few colors, or CGA mode. Here are two selfies I took http://imgur.com/a/deajM
The command help gives all useable command: CD, CLS, COLOR, DATE, DIR, ECHO, EDIT (edit autoxec.bat for instance), EXIT, FORMAT, HELP, LOADHIGH, MEM, PATH, TIME, TYPE, VER.
Had so much with my friends while in high-school trying to figure out what kind of weird graphics mode this cool game called "Scorched Earth" used... It wasn't 320x200 :)
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/
Conversely, the feeling when I changed something incorrectly (without backups of the original file, of course) and the system error'd out during boot - sheer panic.
univbe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UniVBE
oh my!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-8IufkbuD0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-l1iGKvcog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Zd3HYKCRE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgSJxZZfIA4
Jeremy Clarkson joins campaign for fossil fuel divestment
Practically true.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/04/a-major-...
http://www.startupvitamins.com/products/startup-condoms-trip...
http://www.startupvitamins.com/products/startup-condoms-trip...
> Note: You may need to increase your iPhone volume, since Dash Button uses ultrasonic tones to sync with your iPhone during setup. If prompted, drag the volume slider to the recommended level, at or above where it says Best.
Ultrasonic tone sync?
I think it probably is real, it just shouldn't be. :-/
[1] http://www.thewire.com/technology/2013/07/what-is-clinkle/66...
Sign me up.
You're right, it's a little known fact that the cause for downfall of the Roman empire was the ability to order personal hygiene products using a button placed in people's home!
They could just automatically include the device in some shipments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_%28social_networking_website...
"Russian-speaking users can choose between the standard Russian version and two extras: a Soviet version and a Pre-Revolutionary version. Other than language tweaks (e.g. telegrams for messages and comrades for friends) these versions contain other easter eggs. For example, all private messages in the Soviet version have a stamp saying 'passed server censorship'. The pre-revolutionary version uses old-style Russian orthography. Both extra versions are also ad-free."
Amazon is naturally much bigger, but VK is not a small fry either.
Amazon has been pretty conservative with their UI changes over the years, which could be because their users react poorly to them.
"Hey, have you seen the Amazon.com homepage today?" - someone in every office everywhere today.
http://www.notonthehighstreet.com/happyhatchery