Internet
5 December, 2006
Cleaner searching
Informit offers tips to improve one's usage of the Google suite of search resources – read, inwardly digest and reduce the number of merely inefficient random queries reaching the Ministry.
I thought I knew it all ;) , but one tip was new to me.
Use the '~' operator to search for synonyms; the example given is to use '~elderly' to search for 'elderly', 'senior', 'older', 'aged', etc. This can be combined with the better-known '-' operator: '~term -term' will find synonyms of the term whilst excluding the specific search term itself.
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Posted by Ministry at 20:53
| 95 words
30 October, 2006
Repolishing the Firefox chrome
Lifehacker offers further tips on customising the default Firefox user interface ("chrome") using the browser's in-built settings rather than extensions.
Last time it was items configured through 'about:config'; this time it's items configured through 'userChrome.css'. The focus of the article is to streamline and remove extraneous items from the header bars for maximum viewing area. That's of limited importance to me at present, but I did remove one annoyance: the 'magnifying glass' button beside the search box.
Firefox 2 also displays the name of the chosen search engine in the box unless one enters a specific search term. Does anyone know how to remove it? I'd prefer it to remain blank until used.
Speaking of the search box: in the earlier entry about how I upgraded Firefox 1.5 to Fx2 and refined the result, I mentioned changing the default Google search box URL, 'www.google.com/firefox' to 'www.google.com/'. This is probably a bad idea. I thought I was removing unnecessary branding, but that doesn't seem to be the case, and it's been suggested Mozilla receives financial support if people use the dedicated '/firefox' URL.
[Update 13/06/07: If directly editing files is a little daunting, try the more user-friendly interface of a Firefox plugin, 'Configuration Mania'.]
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Posted by Ministry at 19:10
| 206 words
26 October, 2006
How to update Firefox
I've just updated Firefox 1.5.0.7 to Firefox 2 on my office PC. On reflection, I think I acted too soon, as a number of core extensions (er...) and themes aren't compatible yet. I won't be updating on my home PC, at least until the automatic 'check for updates' pushes it at me. For my own future reference and perhaps the interest of others, this is what I've done:
I suppose I should have timed it, but installation and configuration were really straightforward; ten minutes at most, and that counts time spent reading menus in case anything had changed.
- Installed the basic package over Fx1.5, using the 'Custom' option to decline the DOM Inspector & Feedback Agent. Incidentally, ensure Fx is fully closed (check Task Manager to verify 'firefox.exe' really isn't running), as there's a risk of losing Bookmarks in the 'handover'.
- It automatically verified compatibility with extensions & themes and checked for updates but, as usual, an additional 'forced' check for updates found more. Unfortunately, some important ones were missing.
- Checked the 'Options' submenu. My selections had been carried-over from Fx1.5, so I only made one additional amendment: turned off automatic spellchecking.
- Following Lifehacker's instructions, I used 'about:config' to:
- Decrease the minimum tab width, to minimise scrolling. Fifty pixels (half the default) is enough for me.
- Restore the Fx1.5 style of tab closing: one 'close' button at the right of the entire tab bar rather than one button per tab.
- Prevent prefetching of unselected pages.
- Remove the 'Go' button from the address bar.
- Configured the built-in search facility:
- Removed engines I don't use, via the dropdown menu.
- Reconfigured the ones I kept, by manually editing the .xml files in /Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/searchplugins/.
Specifically, I renamed 'Amazon.co.uk' and 'eBay.co.uk' to 'Amazon' & 'eBay' (I'm in the UK, so I know they're .co.uk sites) and changed the Google URL from 'www.google.com/firefox' to 'www.google.com/'. [No. Don't.]
I'm missing
'Clone Window' (for tab cloning), the
'Undo Close Tab' extension was more convenient (on the right-click context menu) than the new inbuilt utility (on the drop-down
'History' menu), and I'd like the comfort of my preferred theme (
'Someorbityellow'), but otherwise the new version seems okay up to now.
[More tweaks.]
[Update 16:36: The 'Undo Closed Tabs Button' extension satisfactorily replaces 'Undo Close Tab' – the option is added to the context menu when in the tabs bar. 'Clone Window' is almost replicated by 'NewTabURL', though with significant problems, so I'm only using it as a stopgap.]
[Update 16:51: Yay! 'Orbit Yellow 2006' replaces 'Someorbityellow_nb'.
That was a little more fiddly than I initially thought, but I think I've almost replicated all the functionality of Fx1.5, with the bonuses of FX2's security updates and additional features. I'd still recommend waiting a while, though, as the stand-in extensions I found aren't quite as good as the ones I had originally, which hopefully will be updated to Fx2 compatibility soon.]
[Update 17:16: Nope, 'NewTabURL' is more trouble than it's worth. Avoid.]
[Update 27/10/06: My mistake: I'd been using 'Clone Window 0.2.5' which was incompatible with FX2's 'Find Updates' utility. By downloading a fresh copy of version 0.2.8, it's updated perfectly.
That may be worth trying for any other apparently incompatible extensions/themes: check the numbers of the most recent versions available from Mozilla or the plugin authors' websites. If they're newer than you have, download them afresh.]
[One more update 13/06/07: If 'about: config' is a little daunting, try the more user-friendly interface of a Firefox plugin, 'Configuration Mania'.]
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Posted by Ministry at 15:55
| 592 words
25 October, 2006
Firefox 2 is out
In case anyone didn't know, Firefox 2 is out. If you aren't already using Firefox 1.5, why not give it a try?
The link above is to the British English (i.e. English) version, but be aware that due to licencing issues (says Neil) the British English dictionary for the new spellchecker has to be downloaded separately.
Or perhaps not. One of the things I like least about Microsoft Office software is spellchecking as one types. Though I haven't tried the Firefox version yet, I anticipate disabling it. Not something I would have chosen as a core, 'out-of-the-box' feature of the updated browser; an optional third-party extension would have been more than enough.
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20 October, 2006
Not on safari
Bugger. The css error I've been picking-at for two days is a browser bug.
It seems Safari 2 doesn't like nested "absolute" and "relative" -positioned <div>s, in a way Firefox and even IE handle okay.
It kind of goes against my principles to knowingly exclude minority browsers, but I'm afraid I can't rewrite entire pages for less than 1% of a site's visitors, especially considering it's temporary: the bug is fixed in Safari 3, allegedly. Upgrade whenever you get an opportunity!
To a PC....
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Posted by Ministry at 14:35
| 83 words
20 October, 2006
Nostalgia vs. Progression
In a post primarily about the decline of e-mail based discussion groups, Hippydave discusses the alternative career routes of long-established bands: nostalia or progression. Or a combination of the two, though polarity is undeniably more common.
Worth reading, it broadly restates (or at least overlaps) the endless 'prog'-or-progressive debate, mainly in the context of Marillion.
On the initial topic (e-mail groups vs. online fora), I definitely favour the latter, for one main reason: threads. For me, that's the 'killer app' of fora, with which e-mail lists can't compete. I drastically prefer to read the topics I choose, rather than an undifferentiated stream of all traffic.
I liked the pt-darkmatter Porcupine Tree Group at Yahoo!, but found that I gravitated to the PT Forum instead when that became available. The 'signal-to-noise' ratio is probably no different, and I suspect pt-darkmatter has slightly better-informed participants, but at the PT Forum I don't need to read anything off-topic (e.g. last night's US TV programmes), nor on-topic subjects that don't interest me (e.g. musicians' technical discussions).
[Via Tim.]
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11 October, 2006
Closing In
Was Imogen Heap on TV in N.America on Monday night? *
This site experienced an odd traffic spike on Tuesday morning (in the UK; 22:00 Mon – 01:00 Tues in N.America), with ~17% of all visitors – that's a few hundred people – arriving via searches for the phrase 'crop circles in the carpet', an elegant lyric from 'Hide And Seek'. I thought it was just eastern Canada initially (most hits were via Google.ca, where I seem to have the no.1 spot for the search term), but it's just that the western US visitors (e.g. from Salt Lake City or Houston) had gone to bed by the time I glanced at the log.
Curious. It's a lot like the time hundreds of visitors were asking about the Trough of Bowland, presumably for a quiz, but this time the spike has had a persistent tail – the contribution to total traffic hasn't dropped below 2% for ~36 hours.
To give a little perspective, that's about the same traffic volume as a page specifically about the late-2006 Jethro Tull tour, on an ostensibly specialist Tull website (well, part-website) during the late-2006 Jethro Tull tour.
*: Just checked: no, she's on tour in the UK. Maybe 'Hide And Seek' was used in a N.American TV soundtrack again.
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Posted by Ministry at 12:08
| 217 words
4 October, 2006
I know, you know
I hope people realise that access logs are perfectly capable of tracking content saved to other computers, not only those served directly from the website itself.
For example, if I see the following as an entry page:
file:///S:/Projects/Town Centre M60 Gateway/Projects/George Perrin/Talks/Matt/Gas holder, St George's Quay, Lancaster, UK, 2 June, 2004.htm
it rather suggests someone at 193.112.136.# (i.e. Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council) may be 'borrowing' my copyrighted content without asking.
I hope that's not a public talk being prepared, as that'd be unauthorised republishing....
Remember, web-published content has the same protection as printed matter – it's not automatically in the public-domain, and it's not okay to just take it.
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Posted by Ministry at 12:36
| 108 words
29 September, 2006
Note to web store managers
I prefer the option to make one-off purchases. I don't want to have to register with a site, obtaining a username and password, merely to buy one item from a web store I might never visit again. If, for example, I buy a scarf as a gift, that doesn't make me a regular customer of a certain clothes retailer, and I'd rather not have to provide personal details (beyond those essential for payment & delivery) which might be used against me for marketing purposes.
If you do insist on registration, and I do happen to return months or years later, I'm likely to need to use your password retrieval facility – I'm not going to make the vaguest effort to remember login details I didn't want in the first place.
This facility must respond immediately. It is simply unacceptable to say you'll send me an e-mail within one working day. Database technology eliminated that delay a long time ago – if the password is not in my mailbox within 5 minutes, you have lost my custom. Period.
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Posted by Ministry at 16:21
| 176 words
28 September, 2006
Anyone can play GUI
"A website's navigation interface is no more than a filing system, right? Anyone can design that; it's easy."
Clients. What can I say?
Well, without illustrating the usability and aesthetics of a large, blunt instrument, anyway....
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Posted by Ministry at 16:28
| 35 words
20 July, 2006
Creativity for all
The '1% rule', as the Guardian explains, is the emerging pattern that
if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will 'interact' with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.
I wouldn't have ascribed numbers, but now it's been mentioned, I suppose I have been aware of the trend, which inspires a thought: what does this mean for Web 2.0?
Beyond the hype, is it likely to remain the preserve of the 'engaged elite'? The media breathlessly report that n million people have signed-up to Flickr, etc., but if 89% are only there to passively view the output of the 1%, raw membership statistics clearly don't equate to interaction and content generation.
I'm not an especial fan of user-led, interactive web development anyway, and prefer the prior model of provider-led publication by individuals to readers. However, this entry isn't meant to subtextually gloat that Web 2.0 is 'doomed to fail' – I'm genuinely curious how the aspirations of an active minority will extend to a passive majority.
I wouldn't be surprised if, ultimately, very little changes and few people experience more than 'Web 1.5': standard Web 1.0 publishing with a degree of feedback, rather than routine interactivity.
Any thoughts? Can you be bothered to express them?
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Posted by Ministry at 13:49
| 220 words
18 July, 2006
Friends don't send friends virus warnings
Never, ever, under any circumstances, circulate a virus warning message. Ever. Almost invariably – no, there's no 'almost' about it; invariably it's a hoax and the warning itself is the virus, inflating e-mail traffic and spamming discussion groups.
I've been active on the web for over a decade, and have seen a huge number of such virus warning e-mails and forum postings. None – not even one – have been genuine. If you receive a warning, whether forwarded by a stranger or your closest friend, visit the website of a well-known manufacturer of anti-virus software and check the details of the alleged threat.
Think about it: how likely is it that your anonymous friend-of-a-friend has discovered something that's totally eluded every anti-virus professional on the planet? Really?
If (when) you discover it's a hoax, delete the e-mail: take it out of circulation. Never circulate another e-mail telling people it's a hoax – that's just as bad! Simply let it die.
If, by some miracle, you find the warning is about a genuine threat, delete the e-mail. Do not pass on the warning. Yes, really. If the anti-virus companies know about it, their updated software will handle it, so there's absolutely no point in telling people.
If people have outdated or missing anti-virus protection, well, they're on their own. If they can't handle the routine basics, they're unlikely to respond to the exceptional.
Bottom line: if you receive an anti-virus warning, even from someone you trust absolutely, delete it.
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Posted by Ministry at 11:51
| 248 words
4 June, 2006
No AdBlock? No chance!
I don't like adverts. No, really, I don't like adverts.
I'm registered with the Mailing Preference Service and the phone equivalent, I don't read leaflets pushed though my door, I favour a cinema that doesn't show adverts, I tend to video TV programmes then fast-forward through ad breaks, and I refuse to do business with companies which contact me uninvited.
And when browsing the web, I use Adblock.
It's wonderful. It blocks all advertising content, whether banners, pop-ups or text, and if a new ad evades the barrier, it can simply be added to the blacklist.
Slightly confusingly, AdBlock.org¹ is a site campaigning against blanket blocking of all adverts.
As a webmaster and website owner, I rely on advertising to pay for the time and effort it takes to develop and maintain my website. For some, it’s a living. Adblocking software that prevents my ads from being viewed eliminates my opportunity to be compensated for my work.
I understand the argument, but here's the essential point: I don't care.
If site creation and hosting have cost implications for the site owner, they are the owner's alone. As a site visitor, I accept no moral responsibility to load or view marketing material – a site owner's costs are simply not my problem. I always decline to pay for web content, and that includes in the form of screen space within my browser.
Obviously, a site owner has the right to place adverts and
hope someone responds on them, but he/she can't
demand a visitor's participation. On this one issue (I still oppose other user modification of a site owner's content by Greasemonkey
et al.), I feel the visitor's rights take absolute precedence over the content provider's.
While I understand that you may have installed adblocking software as relief from those horrible advertising methods, I ask that you choose to not block ads on my website. In return, I promise to not display distracting and annoying advertisements on my website.
Who defines
'distracting and annoying'? The viewer? The advertiser? So far as I'm concerned, there
are no non-annoying adverts; my policy is zero-tolerence. I don't object to 'distracting' adverts, I object to adverts. Place an ad,
any ad, on your site, and I'll block it. Period.
Besides, users of adblocking software like me are extremely unlikely to click on an an advert even if we see it, so a site owner relying² on 'per click' income is going to get nothing from such visitors anyway. Hence, the visitors might as well block the ads from loading at all – it'll make no difference to the site owner, and vastly improves the browsing experience.
To be fair, on deeper investigation it seems that Adblock.org mainly opposes utilities which indiscriminately block all adverts without the knowledge or express intent of users with limited tech-literacy. It does acknowledge the right of more rabid users like me to knowingly block all adverts. It's the 'knowingly' part which is worthy of investigation.
¹: Note that the link to Adblock.org is a fair citation for the quoted content, not an endorsement or advert.
²: Not that I believe site owners justifiably 'rely' on ad-revenue. If it's a commercial site, hosting is paid for by company income. If it's a private site, it's a matter of personal choice to expend money on a hobby. If one was a recreational skier, would one expect other people on the slopes to pay for one's skis and lift pass?
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Posted by Ministry at 09:54
| 581 words
11 May, 2006
Quick e-mail tips
I've been doing these for a while; they're fairly obvious, but are still worth passing on.
When drafting an e-mail which simply can't leave your computer until it's finished, don't complete the 'To:' field until last. Any earlier, and it's too easy to accidentally send it.
I tend to put the address at the start of the message itself, then cut-and-paste it to the right box when proofreading. I do the same thing when composing replies; my e-mail package autocompletes the 'To:' field, but I delete it until I'm ready.
Conversely, when including an attachment, attach it first, before writing the covering note. Otherwise, it's too easy to send only the covering note.
[Via Lifehacker.]
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Posted by Ministry at 12:59
| 116 words
3 May, 2006
Too many vests
Having run the update installation* of Firefox 1.5.0.3, I've seen the 'update successful' page, which reminds users that we can add extra search engines to the Search Bar. One recommended by Mozilla is "Wikipedia - An incredible, free, online encyclopedia".
Aye, 'incredible' in the sense of 'not credible'....
Wikipedia: wonderful idea, appalling execution. And before anyone says "if you don't like it, change it yourself", I did try, but my amendments, supported by verifiable citations, were immediately edited out by those with personal, or in at least one case, commercial, interests. Kind of discouraging. If certain people choose to appoint themselves 'lead editors' on specific topics, and delete anything challenging their personal perceptions of those topics (however well-intentioned), I really can't be bothered to challenge them; I offered my assistance once, and was rejected. Their loss. If that experience is repeated across the entire site, I have limited confidence in the information published.
*: Go on; update too. If you're on Fx 1.5, subsequent updates are of only the files to be amended, rather than a fresh download of the entire package. It only takes a moment.
[Update 11/5/06: Coincidentally, here's Neil Gaiman's view of Wikipedia.]
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Posted by Ministry at 14:06
| 200 words
26 April, 2006
Avalanche warning?
Uh oh... USA Today, one of the few national US newspapers, has linked to the Ministry....
It's currently accounting for 30% of traffic, but has only been up for an hour or so, and it's still morning across the USA – there could be a bit of a spike later in the (US) day.
Now I know what to look for, there's certainly been an anomalous increase in visits from IP addresses based in Alexandra, Va., attributable to the US Dept. of State....
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Posted by Ministry at 16:29
| 82 words
24 April, 2006
Leave No Trace
One thing that won't exactly assist Anathema's attempts at promotion is the fact that when one searches for 'anathema' or 'anathema band' at Google.com, the band's own site doesn't appear*. Searching for the specific term 'anathema official website' finds it as the no.3 result, but it should really have a high ranking for more generic terms, and for a range of terms.
For a moment I thought something drastic had happened – that the site had been removed from the index, perhaps for illegitimate SEO tactics, but it's simpler than that. Apart from the three words 'AnathemA Official Website' in the <title> tag, the home page contains no text or html links. At all. It's a frameset containing Flash files; the navigation menu is in Flash, as is the introductory text. There's absolutely nothing for a search engine spider to index or follow.
'Make It Right (FFS)'. Is a song on the 'Judgement' album.
*: It's probably there somewhere, but I gave up after the 150th result....
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Posted by Ministry at 14:15
| 169 words
12 April, 2006
Internet clipboard
Nice idea: copy-and-paste between computers. I routinely e-mail blocks of text to myself, which is adequate, but if one wishes to save even the small amount of time taken to log into an e-mail account, try cl1p.net, 'the internet clipboard'.
It's literally that: go to any URL beginning "http://cl1p.net/" (invent your own), paste in the content* to be transferred, and upload it. Then visit the same URL from anywhere else in the world and copy the content.
To clarify a point which eluded me for a moment, one doesn't need to go to the c1ip.net home page, log-in and use a specific user interface: go straight to the URL you invent and the interface is already there. There's no account sign-up, and no hoops to jump through. Use a different URL each time, if you want. Subdirectories are possible e.g. 'http://cl1p.net/test/test', so one could be systematic.
This has possibilities for collaborative working (it that's your thing), but if you don't want the risk of people accidentally wandering into a publicly-accessible page (and theoretically modifying the content), the chosen URL can be password-protected.
*: Attachments of up to 2Mb are fine too, but are automatically deleted after one download.
[Via Lifehacker.]
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Posted by Ministry at 11:31
| 200 words
6 April, 2006
Block ads with Adblock
According to the BBC, major UK media companies are moving away from charging for web content, instead deriving income from display advertising.
This would probably be an appropriate opportunity for me to mention one of my favourite Firefox extensions, Adblock. This filters web pages as they load, removing all adverts. Yes, all of them. Imagine browsing without banner ads, AdSense text blocks, etc. That's how I see the web all the time. The advertising content is simply ignored, so 99% of pages look as if they were never meant to include ads – there are no ugly and equally distracting gaps or broken images. Firefox itself eliminates pop-up ads, of course.
Adblock works by matching content to a blacklist. To save the effort of training your own, download the latest Filterset.G, a collectively-derived pre-populated blacklist.
I presume the advertisers and host site owners still benefit from serving the ads, which is fine with me, so long as I don't have to see the ads! The providers won't get any clickthrough revenue, though. Tough.
Since I last looked, Adblock seems to have been adopted by Mozilla (as opposed to being developed by an independent individual), which might be considered an indication that it could become incorporated into the core product eventually.
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27 March, 2006
No longer missing something
At long last, the 'Delete' button reached the UK version of Gmail (aka Google Mail) this morning, some months after it became available to US users and UK users willing to use the US English interface (which I wasn't).

Posted by Ministry at 12:11
| 39 words
22 March, 2006
Whois tip
If one wishes to trace an IP address , there are a number of 'whois' search utilities on the web. However, it's not always obvious that the best results tend to be obtained by searching the correct regional database.
For example, if I search for
'160.9.41.#' at ARIN, it just tells me that's an address assigned to users in the RIPE NCC region i.e. the target computer is somewhere in Europe. Checking RIPE directly, I get Leeds Met. University – I wonder who that could be...?
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23 February, 2006
Disable error reporting
Whenever a program crashes, Windows attempts to send an error report to Microsoft. This is particularly annoying if it's Firefox that's crashed! I always hit 'Don't Send', but thanks to a quick tip at Lifehacker, I've permanently turned off error reporting in my copy of WinXP Pro.
In Control Panel, select 'System', the 'Advanced' tab and the 'Error Reporting' button. This route might be slightly different in XP Home, but only slightly. Select the 'Disable Error Reporting' radio button.
Simple as that.
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21 February, 2006
Aha! There you are!
This is almost – but not quite – amusing.
Specifically to avoid future junk mail, a BoingBoing reader used a throwaway e-mail address to enter a competition, then discarded the account. A few months later, the company started sending junk mail to her main e-mail account, having researched her real address.
As one of our VIP consumers, you have likely received email communications from us in the past. Recently, however, we have not been able to deliver email messages to the address you originally supplied. We have performed an electronic change of address to update our records so that we can continue to send you special offers, promotions, and announcements via email.
Cheeky ****ers!
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7 February, 2006
The end of cyberspace?
An article in Wired acknowledges that the concept of the internet as 'cyberspace', a virtual destination where people go in order to interact with one another and computers, has become obsolete. Development of Virtual Reality (headsets & gloves) foundered years ago, and immersive alternate realities remained in sci-fi (I don't count the recreational examples of World of Warcraft or Second Life). The distinction between on- and offline activities is fading, and nowadays the internet is simply a facet of everyday, 'real world' life.
The article invites suggestions for a term to replace 'cyberspace', but I'd argue that the very nature of the conceptual change means there's no longer a need for any specific name for 'virtual space'. I agree with Neil Gershenfeld, Director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms (now that's a bad name!), who proposes calling the computer-orientated environment simply 'the world'.
Then again....
At BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow describes cyberspace as the "place of the mind", a concept with which I can identify.
If I'm participating in an online discussion, or reading a blog entry written, published and hosted on the other side of the world, or indeed whilst writing this, my consciousness doesn't really have a meaningful geographical location. Maybe the concept of 'out there' does still apply.
If so, it predates the internet – If I speak to my father in Norway, via a standard 'land line' phone, just as I have done since the 1970s, where is my mind? My full concentration is on the conversation, so it doesn't matter that my head is in the UK.
Hmm. I suspect one could think too hard about such metaphysics – and then where would one be?
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Posted by Ministry at 18:15
| 285 words
3 February, 2006
IE7's out - and?
A certain Mac fangirl makes the (absolutely correct) observation that the IE7 interface looks awful, the probable consequence of having been prepared by a coder rather than a graphic designer.
However, Siobhan's missing the point: it's Inert Exploder, FFS. Of course it totally ignores accepted UI (GUI and otherwise) design standards
I haven't downloaded IE7 myself (and won't whilst it's in beta), but I don't see a single thing advertised in the demo that isn't already covered by Firefox and the main extensions. It mystifies me why Microsoft's attempts to catch up with the functionality of real browsers would be sufficient motivation for people to consider switching. Being 'as good as' real browsers simply isn't good enough; it'd have to be better.
I suppose I'll need to install it eventually, for testing purposes, but I doubt I'll use it any more than IE6 i.e. less than monthly.
Not that I think a Mac designer would have done a better job of the IE7 GUI.
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27 January, 2006
Am I missing something?
It's been announced and well-discussed that Gmail now has a 'Delete' button, as Google has acknowledged that not everyone wishes to archive absolutely every e-mail received. However, the button hasn't appeared in my UK-based interface yet. Has anyone heard anything about when non-US accounts can expect this very welcome feature?
Actually, I've become used to the slightly unwieldy 'Move To Deleted Items' option on the drop-down menu, so it's not that important to me, but still, it'd be good to streamline usage.
[Update 27/03/06: It became available to UK users this morning.]
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9 January, 2006
Bugmenot will return shortly
If anyone's concerned about the fact that Bugmenot is currently unavailable and the domain is parked, don't worry – it's only a temporary problem. Eric promises to work on it this week.
If anyone's unaware of Bugmenot, it's a means of evading 'compulsory' web registration. Want to read an article in, say, the New York Times, but without providing your contact details for marketing purposes? With Bugmenot installed, simply right-click on the login/password field and a fake ID will be drawn from a global database.
Remember, the domain's inactive at the time of writing, so the link in the foregoing paragraph will be dead (well, sleeping heavily). Give it a few days and try again.
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7 January, 2006
Through the keyhole
Sometimes eBay amuses me, both for the sheer variety of items available and the insights into sellers' lives. I love to click on the 'View seller's other items' link, to see that someone is offering a Jethro Tull LP alongside a latex dress and a car's offside wing miror – only the offside mirror. There has to be story there.

Posted by Ministry at 18:01
| 60 words
4 January, 2006
1300
A nice round number, though 'unlucky for some'. It's also the number of sp*m e-mails received by my work account overnight. Not over the week I was away, but overnight.
Admittedly, there were three sp*m flood attacks, but I still think ISS (Uni. 'tech support') need to improve their spam filters.
Another annoying thing is that the filters merely identify suspected sp*m, but still deliver it to mailboxes. That's of limited value....
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Posted by Ministry at 10:05
| 72 words
31 December, 2005
Unleashing the demon
I've just taught my mother how to compose an eBay auction, and she's had a splendid idea:
"Hey! I could copy all my CDs and sell the originals on eBay!"
<sigh>

Posted by Ministry at 17:22
| 31 words
20 December, 2005
Desaturating
El Reg reports that Microsoft is to 'formally kill' the Mac version of IE at the end of January – no more downloads, nor support.
I'm hardly going to complain about the availability of IE declining, nor about software distribution ignoring Macs, but it's undeniable that some web designers unaccountably still use Macs, and it'd be rather useful for them to have access to IE for testing purposes.
27 November, 2005
Firewall repointed
This is going to be irrelevant to 97% of typical visitors and boring to the rest, but anyway:
The incompatibility between ZoneAlarm 6.1.667 and Windows Me, which caused the latter to hang rather than shut down, seems to have been resolved in ZA 6.1.737. It's safe to update.

Posted by Ministry at 10:31
| 48 words
23 November, 2005
Setting my boundaries
It's taken me a while to find this article (via an El Reg response I didn't quite understand), but it expresses my opinion: that Creative Commons licences are pointless other than a naïve political statement, and existing copyright laws are more than adequate.
The most favourable interpretation I can find concludes that CC overlies, but certainly doesn't supercede, copyright, defining the additional rights (beyond standard fair use) the content producer permits the content recipient.
I can see how CC might be seductive to some: "Freedom! Community! Sharing! Love!". However, on a legal level, it means very, very little, and anyway, I don't remotely share those ideals.
Long-term readers of this blog will be aware that my priorities are the rights of the provider, not of the recipient. For example, I object to Google AutoLink and greasemonkey scripts which attempt to modify my content. If I'd intended additional links, I'd have put them in myself: my rights as author extend to what I choose not to say.
In as much as I'm aware of an audience at all, I publish text and graphics/photos for readers and viewers i.e. their (your) role, so far as I'm concerned, is mostly passive, and the relationship is primarily one-way.
Nothing personal, folks, and in my wish to be unambiguous, I suspect the previous sentence might come across as aggressive and overstating my true views. I hope visits to the Ministry are enjoyable, and welcome comments; I merely withhold permission for visitors to redecorate or wander off with the teaspoons!
So; to be absolutely clear:
all material, textual and graphical, published at the Ministry is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Nothing is placed in the public domain, and I do not offer Creative Commons rights.
As anyone who can see beyond CC-evangelist propaganda will understand, that's far from a blanket ban on usage (fair use, remember?), merely being a clarification that this is my property, and remains such unless I specifically say otherwise, on a case-by-case basis (and I'm actually quite approachable).
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Posted by Ministry at 14:47
| 339 words
22 November, 2005
Prioritising results
It's really trivial, but why does a Google search for 'burrow beck hala' (results: 388) suggest "Did you mean: burrowbeck hala" (results: 6)?
Could it be that the former, correct spelling takes one to non-commercial entries merely mentioning the stream, whereas the latter provides links to estate agents i.e. a variety of advertising takes priority?

Posted by Ministry at 13:10
| 55 words
17 November, 2005
Greystone Inn's gone evil
In case occasional readers like me weren't aware, Brad Guigar's web-published strip cartoon, 'Greystone Inn' is in the process of changing address. The story has moved on and the setting has changed (I'll miss the disembodied Narrator), so a rebranding as 'Evil Inc.' makes sense.
There'll be an overlap, with both sites being updated in parallel for the rest of the month, but from December, the original address will only be an archive.
I only visit occasionally, and catch up about a month at a time, but the web comic is well worth reading; a bit 'American' in places (not a criticism, more an acknowledgement that some references mean little to a UK reader).
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Posted by Ministry at 10:48
| 117 words
3 November, 2005
Wasting everyone's time
For the past week or so, I've been receiving what looks a lot like comments sp*m – via the Ministry's 'Contact' form. It's mildly irritating, not least because it's utterly pointless, both for me and for the sender.
That page isn't part of the blog, and I don't have a guestbook; the messages (2-3 per day at present, but these things tend to multiply) aren't published anywhere, they merely go to an e-mail account, and there's no way I'm going to follow dubious links from strangers.
Either some troll is ****ing around just to annoy me, which won't work – I never feed trolls, irrespective of provocation – or some sp*mbot is getting confused.
I suspect it's the latter, as the 'subject' header of each e-mail is identically malformed, as if an automated script is garbling the output in a way a manual submission wouldn't. At least it enables me to set a filter in Thunderbird, and all mail with that header is directed straight to Trash.
I'm pretty sure it is a robot mistakenly 'thinking' it's found a blog comments form, as each hit is preceded by an internal search of the blog for the URL of October's archive – no human would be doing that 2-3 times per day. That clue is drastically easier to trace. Now I have a phone number for the spammer's ISP in Kiev, Ukraine. Pity I don't speak the language....
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Posted by Ministry at 09:31
| 238 words
2 November, 2005
Emergency internet access
This isn't an advert, honest!
I've just discovered that my normal ISP also offers an 'emergency' service whereby anyone in the UK can access the internet for 'free' (no fee for the service, just a standard local-rate phone call). One doesn't have to register for an account, and there's no login or password - just dial the phone number via a modem.
It looks useful for accessing the web when away from home (that includes foreign visitors to the UK) or if one's usual provider experiences an outage, but they also promote it as 'anonymous' web access.
Bookmark it now, though not somewhere like del.icio.us, as you'd need to be online already to get to the bookmark....
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31 October, 2005
Scary security
Last Wednesday, for a reason I've yet to have explained, I was kicked out of Yahoo! Groups. I received an automated e-mail saying that usage of my account had been "identified to be in violation of the terms of service", and shut down. I could no longer log in. I contacted Yahoo! immediately, demanding reinstatement or at least some explanation, but I've received no reply.
Accountability isn't on offer, apparently.
I've still been receiving notification e-mails from the Groups I moderate, requiring me to authorise member activities; I just haven't been able to act on them. This evening, I lost patience, and signed up to Yahoo! afresh, using the same contact details as before, just with a new username and password. I thought I'd have to join my own Groups as a new member, and ask my fellow Moderators to upgrade me back to admin positions with the new ID.
However, that wasn't necessary. As soon as I'd registered and validated my e-mail addresses, Yahoo! informed me that there were existing memberships associated with those addresses, and let me readopt them as if nothing had happened, without my even having to inform the other Moderators that I was back. Great!
Maybe.
I'm no trouble-maker or sp*mmer, but I could have been. What if my Yahoo! membership had been cancelled for a genuine reason? Is it a good thing that I'd be able to adopt a different screen name and log right back in, totally unrecognisable to the other members and Moderators until the next time I struck?
[Update 3/11/05: A full week after my summary expulsion, I've received some explanation.
Several years ago, I had a 'holding' site at Geocities for a month or so, just to make some files available temporarily. When I abandoned it (on 15 May, 2001 – that's the date of last editing access), I cut it down to one page, merely a redirect to the Ministry itself. I didn't realise, and maybe it wasn't at the time, but that's against Geocities (i.e. Yahoo!) rules.
This morning Yahoo! told me that, and reinstated my account, giving me until Monday to make the site compliant. I deleted it outright: sorted.
Why couldn't that have been done a week ago? A warning and ultimatum would make drastically more sense than 'shoot first, accuse later'.]
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Posted by Ministry at 23:14
| 387 words
19 October, 2005
Google Mail in the UK
It seems another company has claimed prior rights to the Gmail name in the UK, and Google are either concerned that the claim might have legal merit, or legal action to keep the name might become too expensive (in terms of financial cost, time and bad publicity) to pursue. It's been announced that from today, new Gmail accounts issued in the UK will be '[whatever]@googlemail.com'.
Fair enough, but the first point that concerns me is that if this other company pushes the issue, existing '@gmail.com' addresses might have to be withdrawn; Google hope that won't happen but can't guarantee it. They recommend everyone re-register the '@googlemail.com' varients of their existing account names, just in case.
The second point which concerns me is that the varient of my existing account name, and the four most obvious permutations of it, have already been registered by other people....
Should I expect a cybersquatting problem?
[Update 18:00: I may have misunderstood; see comments. If correct, it means those with existing UK-based '@gmail.com' accounts won't need to re-register, and the reason I can't register the '@googlemail.com' varient of my current address is that it's already reserved for me!]
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13 October, 2005
Ranting from the backwoods
In a bizarrely arrogant letter to the Guardian, someone in Oregon says:
America generates the internet and some international group wants to steal it
No, ignore that utter rubbish; this is the part I want to comment upon:
I can tell you what US users and the US government are going to say about an international group controlling internet standards within US borders: forget it.
It's unacceptable for a non-US group to operate within the USA, yet absolutely fine for the USA to govern activities within other countries? No. I don't think so.
Personally, I have no problem with a private-sector US company holding the contract to provide admin facilities to the internet, so long as the US Government has no regulatory role – none whatsoever. It's utterly fundamental that no one nation 'owns' the internet, and particularly not the Bush government. That's not a party-political thing, and certainly not an anti-American thing; I'd feel the same way if, say, New Zealand was attempting to annex the internet, but the idea that this specific presidential administration might attempt to regulate the world's internet according to its own perverted morality is simply repugnant.
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11 October, 2005
Search deeply
At the time of writing, Google is considered to have the largest search engine database, indexing about eight billion web pages. However, it's estimated that the public web contains about 250 billion pages overall, and that's only the public web. Something far more glamourous-sounding is the 'deep web', or 'invisible web', thought to be 500 times bigger than the directly searchable web.
The 'deep web' refers to:
the vast repository of information that search engines and directories don’t have direct access to, like databases at university libraries, sites that require passwords to view, or sites that for some reason don’t want search engines to crawl them.
That's a quote from Lifehacker's
review of the subject, which goes on to explain how to gain access. The deep web doesn't necessarily exclude public visitors, it’s just
"a bit trickier to tap into".
Very William Gibson....
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Posted by Ministry at 12:40
| 143 words
21 September, 2005
Why'd it take so long?
I've always said that I'd never use Opera, for one simple reason. I believe that one should never, ever have to pay for a web browser, however good it might be (see my earlier thoughts), so Opera's pricing model (a free version containing adverts or ad-free for a fee) was unacceptable, totally disqualifying it from consideration.
Well, Opera is now available for free.
'Fraid it's a bit late for me, as I'm happy with Firefox, and not looking to switch, but I'm happy to remove the company from my personal blacklist, and I might look at their browser one day.
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Posted by Ministry at 14:22
| 103 words
19 September, 2005
Properły coded
Just for reference: a summary of the 252 core character entities in HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0; not only the everyday '&' (&) but more obscure (yet occasionally useful) ones like 'µ' (µ).
If one requires further, nation-specific characters like the Polish 'ł' (ł), they're summarised here. However, remember that they require the page to be using UTF-8 encoding, which isn't supported by all browsers.
Incidentally, that means the title of this entry will break in some browsers. That's a deliberate joke, okay?
[Via Lifehacker.]
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Posted by Ministry at 15:22
| 86 words
15 August, 2005
Redefining spam
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about companies using contrived 'information' entries to promote themselves via Wikipedia - blatent spam, really.
As Boing Boing reports, the BBC has been accused of doing much the same thing, in a viral marketing campaign for an online game. The BBC denies involvement (I'm not saying "they would, wouldn't they?" – I believe them), but one side effect is that a pro marketer has admitted abusing Wikipedia for viral marketing.
I can't say who I am, but I do work at a company that uses Wikipedia as a key part of online marketing strategies. That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or 'leaks' embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it (evil laugh).
On the other side, I love it from an academia/sociological standpoint, and I don't necessarily have a problem with it used as a viral marketing tool. After all, marketing is a form of information, with just a different end point in mind (consuming rather than learning).
Bollocks.
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Posted by Ministry at 18:04
| 197 words
5 August, 2005
Flash pop-ups downed
This has been known for several months, but only seems to have received wider circulation in recent days; I might as well join in.
Web spammers have been evading pop-up blockers by launching them from Flash. Pete Bevin reports (has devised?) a simple technique whereby Firefox renders the spam technique obsolete. Well done!
- Type about:config into the Firefox location bar.
- Right-click on the page and select New and then Integer.
- Name it privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins
- Set the value to 2.
I'd like to think this'll be the default setting in future versions of Fx, but in the mean time, these instructions can be completed in seconds.
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21 July, 2005
What do you want?
Can I make a suggestion?
It may seem obvious, but when composing a search engine query, it's best to include search terms likely to appear in the target page, rather than a description of the subject, phrased in words not actually on the page itself.
The example that triggered this thought was that someone visited the Ministry earlier today via a Google search for "discussion of Marillion's Angelina".
Fine, but one has to remember that the search engine doesn't read the meaning of the enquiry, nor that of the target page; it'll search for the word 'discussion', rather than text discussing the song.
Consequently, the search found the 'Memes' archive page, which includes the word 'discussion' in one entry, and no more than the song's title in another, but missed an entry entirely about the 'Angelina' single, which doesn't happen to feature the word 'discussion'.
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Posted by Ministry at 13:19
| 147 words
14 July, 2005
Crafty linking
Just attempting another experiment with Google.
A friend and colleague designs handcrafted silver jewellery, sold in such prestigious locations as Manchester City Art Gallery and Urbis (the Museum of Urban Life), also in Manchester. She has a website, but it is considerably outranked on Google by the portfolio page of the site's designer.
I'm going to try a little search engine optimisation/promotion, but before doing that, I'm curious whether my merely mentioning it here will have any effect whatsoever.

Posted by Ministry at 16:12
| 80 words
11 July, 2005
Now we are 1M
That took me by surprise: I've just glanced at my web tracker, and seen that the millionth page since 28/11/01 was served this morning, to something like the 328,400th visitor.

Posted by Ministry at 11:59
| 30 words
9 July, 2005
Strolling around
Just in case there's anyone left who hasn't already tried it, the Gmaps Pedometer is pretty good. I've just traced the route of my daily commute, and it's calculated it to within 0.25 miles of the actual distance measured by my bike computer, a discrepancy easily explained by road details below the scale of the map.
One tiny criticism, which I don't think is avoidable, is that one does have to trace the route, selecting points connected by straight lines – one can't just select the start and end points, and expect it to follow the roads. Hence, it is a pedometer, suitable for short, detailed trips rather than for plotting intercity journeys (though that's possible, if very time-consuming). It's also far more suitable for the purpose than Multimap or Google Maps itself, which calculate distances along automatically-selected routes optimised for cars.
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Posted by Ministry at 09:57
| 141 words
29 June, 2005
That has to hurt
Very odd, and rather disturbing, this Flash... thing has to be one of the most compelling... things I've seen for a while.
[Via Aardvark.dj]

Posted by Ministry at 18:40
| 25 words
8 June, 2005
Custom prices
I'd be surprised if it was legal in the UK (though I was also surprised to hear it's legal in the USA) but here's an example where lack of online anonymity isn't only an issue of privacy but also of financial rights.
A number of online retailers in the USA are able to identify visitors, if not by name but more importantly by purchasing history and usage pattern, and price their goods accordingly.
Read the article for details (there's little point in my just paraphrasing it), and the EFF's comments about it, and take care!

Posted by Ministry at 13:06
| 97 words
6 June, 2005
Put the boot in while they're down
I'm happy with Firefox, so hadn't paid much attention to the release of Netscape 8, but there is one amusing detail to note.
It seems that installing the updated browser accidentally (of course!) disables functionality in Internet Explorer. What a shame. Microsoft recommend removing Netscape until a fix has been discovered. Yeah; right. How about taking the opportunity to just dump Inert Exploder?
I discovered this issue via The Register, at which a correspondent makes the point that:
Netscape 8 disables an application installed on your machine without your express permission, which may collect your personal data (without your permission) and redirect your browser on certain occasions (without your permission).
So Netscape have entered the anti-spyware market?
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Posted by Ministry at 14:28
| 118 words
26 May, 2005
Home from home
Quick tip via Lifehacker: It's possible for Firefox to automatically open multiple homepages at once, in tabs.
From the 'Tools' menu, Select 'Options->General', and enter the required URLs, separated by the '|' character. Alternatively, if you already have the required pages open in tabs, just use the 'Use Current Pages' button in that dialogue box.
22 May, 2005
Hands off
To quote MozDev:
Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of
DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to... easily control any aspect of [it's] design or interaction.
If, like me, you object to visitors modifying one's published content, Greasemonkey can be
blocked.
I haven't implemented it yet, as it's an unexpectedly sunny afternoon and I fancy a bike ride, but I might add it later, and in the mean time, want to spread the word.
It isn't an absolute block, of course, as there are always workarounds, but at least one can stop the less tech-literate using Greasemonkey and make it annoyingly inconvenient for those who can work around it.
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Posted by Ministry at 15:39
| 116 words
21 May, 2005
Cut bait
Interesting idea. If criminals can infiltrate unsecured servers and set up phishing websites (i.e. clones of bank websites , eBay, etc., which merely capture peoples' account details for fraud), then it's at least as easy for vigilantes to infiltrate the same servers and deface the phishing sites, alerting visitors to their true nature.
I'm undecided whether criminal action against criminals is really to be condoned, but all credit to them for lateral thinking.
29 April, 2005
Yet another nail
Heh. I'm no Mac fan, but even I have to applaud Apple for the fact that they haven't bothered to include Inert Exploder with the new edition of their OS.
20 April, 2005
Goodbye Firefox?
Oh, marvelous.
I'm back to using IE, at least at work, seemingly indefinitely. Firefox is dead.
Yesterday afternoon, an 'updates available' alert popped up in Firefox, and I updated two extensions. Very annoyingly, I'm not certain which. From the next restart, there were problems. Fx would crash, then if I closed it using Task Manager, it'd restart basically okay apart from an inability to open new windows or necessary popups.
This morning, nothing. The browser would open, but no page would be displayed and the menus were inaccessible.
I've uninstalled Firefox and deleted the entire /Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/ directory, and taken the opportunity to reinstall using Fx 1.0.3 (I was on 1.0.2), but still nothing.
The big problem is that this is at work - I don't know WinXP Pro nearly well enough to know what else to try, tech support don't support Firefox, and I have work to do, so can't spend time experimenting. I've had to just break out the emergency copy of IE. Ugh.
Any suggestions?
Please note the warning: I don't recommend updating third-party Fx extensions just for the sake of updating. I'm fairly sure that's what killed my installation, as I'd changed nothing else.
Update 11:13: False alarm! Stop panicking, everyone! I may have revived it!
In case anyone else experiences a similar problem, try launching Firefox in Safe Mode (without themes or extensions). At the Windows Start Menu, 'Run':
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -safe-mode
If that works, it rather indicates an extension/theme is the problem. Disable any suspects then close and restart Fx normally. Rather rashly, I've deleted all eight of my extensions (not counting Mycroft, though that seems to have gone anyway – as Neil commented, Mycroft is stored in the program folder, not with extensions, so went when I deleted that directory), and Firefox seems to be back – I'm using it to write and send this update, anyway.
[Update 11/6/05: I finally relented, and updated several extensions to my home installation of Fx 1.0.4 last night, and experienced the same problem. Uninstalling extensions one by one, I identified User Agent Switcher as the apparent culprit. Without it, everything works as normal.]
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19 April, 2005
Wow
Google Maps has reached the UK.
I'll say it again: Wow.
16 April, 2005
Boundaries blurring
A couple of weeks ago, a man in China was killed, for stealing an item from his murderer in a computer game. That's a real stabbing for a virtual theft, of a 'fictional' in-game item.
That's odd enough in itself, but an even more surprising part of the BBC report is an incidental comment that unlike China (and the rest of the world), South Korea has a (real world) police division specially dedicated to in-game activities. I wonder if they ever struggle to claim jurisdiction in Raccoon City, San Andreas, or wherever.
Okay; that's facetious. The real point, which I do find genuinely interesting, is that entirely 'non-existent' property is beginning to acquire real-world value, and real-world society is having to adapt to the virtual. I'm not simply referring to intangible property – text, images, music and data stored in purely digital formats have been with us for a while, but interaction with them is in the real world. Material only relevant to the online world, with which one can only interact in-game... that's the sci-fi part.
I put 'fictional' and 'non-existent' in quotes in foregoing paragraphs because in some ill-defined sense such items aren't quite fictional any more and, in certain practical terms, exist.
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Posted by Ministry at 20:07
| 204 words
15 April, 2005
Quicker linking
Here's an excellent keyboard shortcut for Firefox, just in case you weren't aware of it:
Control+Enter adds the 'http://www.' prefix and '.com' suffix to words in the address bar.
Incidentally, Alt+D moves the cursor to the address bar, selecting all content for immediate overtyping.
[Via Lifehacks]
1 April, 2005
Ooh! So close!
If there had been 32 days in March, the Ministry would have broken the 40,000 hits/month (from 15,000 visitors) barrier.
Maybe next time ;)

Posted by Ministry at 09:58
| 24 words
17 March, 2005
P2P's bad, 'kay?
One of the more common types of search term bringing visitors from Google to the Ministry is for music downloads, so I'd better address the subject directly.
I've mentioned that Porcupine Tree released a download-only single of 'Shallow', but a statement that such a thing exists is as much as you're going to get. Personally, I have absolutely no interest in downloading music, especially that which will be available soon on CD and DVD-A.
No music is offered for download from this site.
I trade unofficial concerts recordings on CD-R, but I don't participate in bit torrent or other p2p communities, and I couldn't direct people on to more appropriate sites even if I wished to.
That covers legal, paid-for downloads and the sharing of unofficial recordings, but recent searches seem to have been for downloads of tracks from, and indeed the whole of, that imminent album, 'Deadwing', so I'd better clarify my view of illegal downloading of commercial recordings, paraphrasing my side of a recent discussion at the PT Forum.
It's theft, and I don't condone it whatsoever.
It's been a while since I was last willing to buy an album 'blind', without hearing online samples as a guide to whether I'd like it, but I don't regard that as sufficient justification to illegally download a leaked/ripped copy of the entire album.
I restrict myself to the samples (extracts from songs, at low-res, not retail-quality full tracks) the artists choose to provide online. Beyond that, I feel one should take the risk by buying an album, then decide whether to keep it. Sometimes one mightn't like it after all. Tough. Return it to the shop, sell it on eBay (without keeping a copy!) or give it to a friend.
Having said that, I'd be naïve to deny that people are going to download, leading to five possibilities:
- Someone illegally downloads and likes the album a lot, and buys a legitimate copy.
- Someone illegally downloads and likes the album a lot, and just keeps the download.
- Someone illegally downloads and rather likes the album, enough to keep the download but not to pay for it.
- Someone illegally downloads and doesn't particularly like the album, but keeps the download anyway.
- Someone illegally downloads and dislikes the album, and deletes the download.
I'd tentatively support the first and last, but I take a pessimistic view of human nature, and suspect that the parasites are the majority. I'd find it difficult to believe that someone claiming to do 1) isn't really doing 2), and that someone claiming to do 5) isn't really doing 4). Needless to say, I don't remotely support 2-4.
It's been argued that:
"What's bad is downloading albums and not buying any. I see absolutely no reason not to download full albums, listen to them, and purchase them if they're worth it."
Idealism aside, I'd agree, but what if they're not worth purchasing? If you decide not to buy one, do you delete it?
Every single time? Honestly?
I can dismiss two other arguments outright:
I can't afford to buy all the music I listen to.
Lack of money is no excuse. Can't afford it? Can't have it. Simple as that. Pop music is a commodity, not a right.
Record companies are greedy. I won't pay the cover price no matter how much I like the album.
The price is the price. Either pay it, and receive the music, or decline to pay and don't receive the music. You can't have it both ways. I agree that CD prices are exorbitant. That's a reason to complain, campaign or boycott, but not to steal. Rolls-Royce cars are ludicrously expensive. Try stealing one of them then explaining to a judge that the manufacturer/retailer obliged you to do it.
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7 March, 2005
Better desktop searching
Back in October, I commented unfavourably about the beta of Google's Desktop Search, as it was almost exclusively tied to Microsoft products I just don't use. In the interests of balance ;) I ought to mention that the finished version, just released, supports Firefox as standard, and plugins extend coverage to other non-MS packages, such as Open Office.
That said, I still don't plan to use it myself, but now because it's just not a facility for which I perceive a need, not because of any apparent inadequacy in the utility itself.

Posted by Ministry at 13:28
| 94 words
7 March, 2005
What's your high score?
So long as it doesn't take over, a little time spent on a mildly-stimulating computer game can improve productivity.
If you're having a tough day, reinvigorate yourself by spending a few minutes with the new Tetris variant publicised as User Friendly's Link Of The Day: Tetris 1D.

Posted by Ministry at 13:08
| 49 words
23 February, 2005
AutoLink 'blocked' (twice)
A quick update to that previous posting about Google's AutoLink 'feature': Jeffrey Zeldman, of A List Apart, offers a JavaScript, er, script to automatically remove any links added without the author's permission, defeating AutoLink.