1) They can often be used to identify you, especially when combined with other HTTP headers or information scraped from the client via JS[0].
2) They are abused by web developers who wish to lock out web browsers that they do not support. This is generally considered to be against the spirit of the web, though is sometimes useful for optimising page load times (for example, not sending IE conditional comments to all browsers).
Thanks. I didn't realize that the combination of headers could produce such a specific target. Apparently my browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 2,474,746 tested so far.
Perhaps OP forgot to put id_ after the capture timestamp in the archive URLs? The id_ makes sure that the Wayback Machine only returns the page as it was when it was indexed.
Should be fixed now. The last point is still ~100k. Running Chromium, if I'm logged in, google.com's HTML saves as 104k. Logged out, it's 94k, as measured by ls -lh.
I can't speak for everyone, but it is most likely the former. The handful of maths teachers I know absolutely loathe word-processed assignments since the majority of students don't bother using proper mathematical notation when they type things up (let alone use a proper type-setting program like LaTeX), so you end up with a bunch of students handing in stuff like:
∫e^x dx = e^x + c
Unfortunately, this sometimes results in teachers abandoning word processing altogether and making pen and paper mandatory.
Not necessarily. The rock may only be a few centimetres underneath the sand dune, in which case it would not appear to protrude out from the dune significantly. There is also the possibility that the "spiders" are black sand[0][1] or silt, as they look suspiciously like some formations on Earth (albeit on a much larger scale):
[2]: This is a sand dune on a sand island, but has some black discolouration from rock just below the surface. I'm not sure how far down this rock extends, but its visibility varies depending on the time of year and number of visitors to the island. Note that there is also some grass (brown) and other vegetation (green) around the edge of the clearing (particularly on the southern edge), which is difficult to distinguish from the black rock.
[3]: Same island, different clearing. There is still some vegetation in the picture, but it's easier to see the black sand and rock underneath the top layer of white sand.
Try playing with the time slider at the top of the page to see how the exposure of the rock changes.
No, but scrolling across is difficult. And they hijack all the scrollbars so that they can show you a light grey box instead of the slightly lighter grey box which your browser normally shows. If they just displayed everything vertically and didn't mess with the scrollbars it would be an infinitely better site.
Oh, and their theme locks up Firefox, however I'm willing to blame that on FF rather than the designer(s).
Interestingly, Facebook sponsored a project to build a prototype PHP interpreter using the PyPy[0] toolchain for JIT compilation, which turned out to be even faster than HipHop[1]. I have to wonder whether statically compiled Ruby would actually be any faster than a JIT interpreter like Rubinius, cold start JIT penalty aside.
Edit: looks like JRuby can/does do JIT compilation, but it is also capable of doing AOT compilation[2]. If JRuby can do AOT, then what is the point of FastRuby?
JRuby does have an AOT compiler, but the resulting code must be shackled to the rather large JRuby runtime. Is also does a slower dynamic call that fastruby (except on invokedynamic).
My goal with fastruby is more to have a still dynamically-typed Ruby-like language without requiring anything more than virtual invocation and a modest runtime library (that can be statically optimized to only what's needed by e.g. Android toolchain).
Could this be mixed with Mirah to have it dynamically typed, but with types added where needed for performance? Sort of like Dart's optional typing, but for the JVM.
I've had thoughts about doing a Rubinius bytecode interpreter in PyPy, but I can't find a decent reference to Rubinius' bytecode format other than the source. That'll take more time to wade through than I've got right now.
But for the love of $DEITY, please wear adequate sun protection. At the very least that means a hat and sunscreen, but you probably want to be using long sleeved clothing and sunglasses if you're outside for an extended period of time.
Vitamin D deficiency is bad, but skin cancer is worse.
Vitamin D has anti-cancer effects which apply more generally than skin cancer. In studies which assess all-cause mortality relative to UV-B exposure, higher UV-B exposure is correlated with lower all-cause mortality. That is, more skin cancer yes, but also less death because of improved overall health and lower overall cancer risks. Importantly, this is not an endorsement of artificial tanning, which correlates with greater all-cause mortality. E.g.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21297041
"If you're fair skinned, experts say going outside for 10 minutes in the midday sun—in shorts and a tank top with no sunscreen—will give you enough radiation to produce about 10,000 international units of the vitamin."
You don't need a lot of sun exposure to get your body to produce enough vitamin D.
I only noticed it in FF15, but it may have been there for longer. Change pdfjs.disabled to false in about:config (followed by a browser restart) if you want to turn it on. Here's a test file[0] should you wish to test it out.
I've been using pdf.js for a while on my Windows box (where it is enabled by default on the FF beta channel) and it has performed remarkably well. Sometimes it's a bit slower than Adobe Reader or messes up colour or formatting, but on the whole I've quite enjoyed using it.
Sweet! (It voids the non-existent FF warranty though...)
What's better is, it allows the (awesome) extension Pentadactyl to click the buttons in the viewer (since it's part of the browser). Have to click on (or tab to?) to the document itself though, in order to be able to use keyboard navigation on it though :-/
1) They can often be used to identify you, especially when combined with other HTTP headers or information scraped from the client via JS[0].
2) They are abused by web developers who wish to lock out web browsers that they do not support. This is generally considered to be against the spirit of the web, though is sometimes useful for optimising page load times (for example, not sending IE conditional comments to all browsers).
[0]: https://panopticlick.eff.org/