In the second act of the drama “The Melting Pot” Mr. Mendel tries to prepare David for the visit of Vera and her company.
Vera brings along Quincy Davenport, a friend of the Revendal family.
He is a famous music producer. Later on Mr. Pappelmeister, he is Quincy’s private music conductor- joins them.
They are interested in David’s music and they want to send him to Germany in order to study composition. Pappelmeister is interested in music, Quincy on the other hand is only eager to produce David?s symphony.
Due to David?s shyness he is not able to present his work and Mr. Pappelmeister has to look at his symphony manuscript. He is highly enthusiastic.
Quincy has an anti-Jewish attitude and generally bad character.
David realizes that the already wealthy Mr. Davenport wants to exploit him and his work in order to become even richer.
They are having an argument and the reader gets to know that David got antipathy towards Quincy. Therefore he refuses to work for him.
Mr. Mendel and Vera try to settle the dispute but have no success.
At the end of the second act it furthermore becomes clear that Vera and David are in love with each other.
The poem “Dover Beach” written by Matthew Arnold is about a human misery.
Nature especially the sea is used in order to draw a comparison between the fights of nature and the human misery.
The poem consists of four stanzas which have a different amount of lines. The first stanza consists of 14 lines, the second of six, the third of eight and the last line of nine lines. The rhyme scheme is very irregular. For example, in the first eight lines of the poem it is abacdbdc.
The first stanza can be divided into two parts. In the first part (line one to line six) the lyrical I describes the motions of the sea in a very positive way. The words “to-night” (l. 1), “moon” (l.2) and “night-air” (l.6) show that it is night. To create a very harmonious mood the poet utilizes adjectives such as “fair”, “tranquil” and “calm”. Matthew Arnold uses an anaphora (“Gleams” and “Glimmering” l.4/5), to underline the harmonious atmosphere of the first six lines. The word “only” in line seven can be seen as a caesura. After line seven the harmonious mood of the first lines is changing into a sad mood. The word sea is personified by the verb “meets” in line seven. The personification and the expression “moon-blanched land” create a mystic atmosphere. With the words of sound “listen”, “hear” and “roar” in line nine Arnold wants to activate the reader”s perception of senses to involve him in his poem. Also, he involves the readership by using the imperatives “come” and “listen”. The verbs “begin” “cease” and “again begin” show that the pebbles” motions are a never ending movement. By using the words “sadness” and “tremulous” the pebbles” motions are illustrated in a woeful and threatening way.
The first stanza can be seen as a description of a present status, whereas the second stanza is a reference to the past. In the second stanza the poet uses “Sophocles”, an ancient Greek philosopher, to show that the people for a long time thought about a comparison between sea and human misery. The verb “hear” in line 16 and in line 20 can be regarded as a connection to the words of acoustic perception in the first stanza. The expression “distant northern sea” is another connecting element between the both stanzas. By mentioning the countries England and France the first stanza is talking about the northern sea. The main topic of the first stanza is the motion of sea. The reader can only guess that it refers to human misery, but the second stanza talks about to the human misery in line 18.
The third stanza abstracts the image of the sea and uses it as a metaphor (“sea of faith”) to show that “once” (l.22) humanity was more religious. The metaphor of “bright girdle furled” emphasizes that faith was inseparable to earth. The words “But now” in line 24 are a caesura. The first three lines of the stanza create a feeling of hope, whereas the last lines sound sad and hopeless.
The word “only” show that the lyrical I feels only the sadness of the world. To amplify the negative mood of the last lines Arnold utilizes words such as “melancholy”, “drear” and “naked”.
The last stanza refers to the misery of humanity and can be seen as a conclusion of the preceding stanzas. The lyrical I compares the world to a “land of dreams” which is “various” “beautiful” and “new”. This means that the world and the people who live on it might be happy and live together in peace. To underline the positive mood, the lyrical I uses the word “love” at the beginning of the stanza. The verb “seems” shows that it is only a dream or an illusion of the lyrical I which can never become reality.
Line 33 is a caesura, wherefrom the lyrical I describes his real life. The enumeration in line 33 and 34 “”nor love, nor light, nor peace”" shows the cruelness of the world. The plural form “us” and “we” illustrates that not only the lyrical I but also many other people feel the cruelness. The words “sweep” and “clash by night” both together form an allusion to the preceding stanzas. The motions of the sea are used to clarify the bad relations between other people.
The poem illustrates the contrast between hope and reality. There are many caesuras in the poem, which definitely show the changing mood of the lyrical I. It wishes a peaceful world, but it also knows that it is almost impossible.
Maybe Matthew Arnold refers to the industrial revolution which was a big change of life for everybody. Many people were very unhappy with their new life.
Read MoreThe sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits;–on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the {AE}gean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Faith
I honestly believe that Arnold is talking about how the question of faith has left the world in darkness. In the beginning of the poem, he expresses how calm averything seems, and it’s like any other night. However, as the poem progresses, he mentions how Sophocles heard the sadness in the Aegean sea, just as he was hearing the sadness in his own sea. In mentioning the Sea of Faith, he reveals that while it looks calm and normal on the surface, really, the sea is singing a song of sadness and despair. during this time, people began questioning religion and turning to Darwinism. Arnold is expressing how people used to not think twice about what they believed, but now the world was unsure. In telling his love to stay true to him, he is hoping that at least one thing in the world will remain the same and true. To him, the world was left in darkness by the threat against faith.
I had some questions prior to studying,
here are some of them:
#1 The core topics of ibms are
* International Management
* International Marketing
* Management and Financial Accounting
* Management Information Systems
what does that mean in detail?
#2 After completion of this 4 year course what title / qualification do I have?
#2a If that is “Bacherlor”, what Master courses are offered after completion?
#2b What can I do after completion of the 4 years?
#2c What happens in those 4 years? Roughly, schedule ?
#3 Work placement: free to choose company? Germany / netherlands?
#3a Graduation assignment: What does that mean in detail, what topics e.g.?
#4 major / minor system? what combination makes sense?
#5 maths? what is needed? level of math?
#6 admission, when to register?
#7 tests, how often?
#7a marks and points?
#8 what to do afterwards?
#9 what is the drop out quota?
#10 how many students quit before completion?
#11 class size?
#12 student / teacher quota?
#13 study times, example
CNN.com – ‘Dr. Chaos’ goes to prison for hacking – Dec 1, 2005
Read MoreGTA and GTA 2 : Rockstar Classics – Free Downloads
Just enter any data in the forms below and enjoy the download of a legendary game.
Currently available (11-17-05) gta and gta2 (+ some wierd game)
This was posted in “Rants and Raves”
Yes, you. You sick fucker.
On Wednesday morning I emerged from my girlfriend’s building by U.N. Plaza to find that you had sawed the tops off both the sparkplugs on my motorcycle.
At the time, I had no idea why anyone would do that.
Other than the sparkplugs, the bike was untouched.
Some kind of bizarre vandalism?
A fraternity prank gone awry?
I had no idea.
All I knew is that I looked like a huge douchebag riding the Muni to work in a padded motorcycle jacket and helmet.
Because the bike was immobilized I got a $35 street sweeping ticket that night.
Thursday I had it towed to the shop ($45) where they replaced the sparkplugs and the boots ($50 including labor).
They explained to me that “people” – I use the term loosely here – like you break off the tops of spark plugs and use the porcelain tubes to smoke crack.
As an engineer and former MacGyver fan, in a way I think this is kind of cool.
But then I remember that I just paid $100 for YOUR crackpipes, and I get angry again.
Crackhead, it was really good to have my bike back though.
I rode home from the shop with a couple of spare sparkplugs and a smile on my face.
I figured the next time I parked at my girlfriend’s place overnight I would have to buy some crackpipes and tape them to my bike as a peace offering.
Overall, I wasn’t that upset. Despite having to ride the bus for three days and dropping a hundred bones at the shop, I had gained some fascinating knowledge, a new set of sparkplugs, and a pretty funny anecdote about how fucked up you are, and how our paths once crossed briefly in the night.
But you couldn’t just let sleeping dogs lie, could you Crackhead.
You couldn’t just stay in on Friday, watch Letterman through the window of a home electronics store and then call it a night. You couldn’t rest on your laurels. Two porcelain sparkplug crackpipes just wasn’t enough for you, was it Crackhead?
You just had to come back for more.
This morning, a scant fifteen hours after I rode it out of the shop, I found my motorcycle violated once again.
This time you only took the right one – maybe you were having an off night.
At least this time I had a spare sparkplug and the tools to fix it – or so I thought – having ordered a 73-piece toolset from SEARS.com last week. But no, the sparkplug socket in my new toolset was for American sparkplugs. So I had to go down to the neighborhood Ace hardware. They had an 18mm socket that would fit over my sparkplug, but it was for a 1/2″ drive ratchet. My toolkit only has 1/4″ and 3/8″ ratchets. So I had to buy a 1/2″ ratchet along with the socket. Even though the clerk took pity on me and gave me the senior citizen discount (I’m 25) it still cost me $22 all told. Now, you might say that I should have just gotten a 3/8″-to-1/2″ drive adaptor instead of springing for the whole ratchet. And to that I say “Shut the hell up, Crackhead, I’m not finished. And besides, I was eventually going to buy a 1/2″ ratchet anyway so it’s probably not worth it to take it back now.”
OK, now I’m rambling. But the point is, Crackhead, that you have done me wrong. Now, I get that you love crack. That is totally understandable. I’ve heard it is really fun, at first, and quite addictive. What I don’t understand is,
YOU ARE A CRACKHEAD. WHY DON’T YOU OWN A CRACKPIPE?
I am an engineer. Do you ever see me shaking down bums in the Loin for a calculator and sliderule? No, you don’t. Because engineering is the main thing I do, I went and bought myself a calculator. The main thing you do is crack. How do you get by without a crackpipe? The other crackheads must clown on you non-stop. I mean, the fucking saw you used to saw off my sparkplugs is probably worth five or ten bucks. Why not sell or trade it for a crackpipe? You really haven’t put much thought into this, have you?
Please, Crackhead, please don’t tell me you sold your crackpipe to buy crack. Even a stupid crackhead such as yourself couldn’t possibly be that stupid.
I’ve decided that taping crackpipes to my motorcycle would be tantamount to appeasement. You have crossed a line, Crackhead – specifically California Street. You have come onto my own street and you have desecrated that which I hold dear. You have stolen from me, and you have caused me to spend the last half hour writing this post instead of engineering shit, and it is concievable, if not likely, that my boss could find out about this and fire me. I am hella pissed at you dude.
Here are my options as I see them:
1. Write a note saying that I have coated both of my sparkplugs in rat poison and tape it to my bike at night. You can thank Tim for that one, it was his idea.
2. Don’t write a note, but just coat both sparkplugs in rat poison. This is probably closer to a punishment that would fit your despicable crime. I’m sure this is super illegal and shit, but it’s not like anyone is going to miss you, Crackhead. Don’t fool yourself.
3. Wait in an alley near my bike armed with my new stainless steel mirror-finish Ace Professional brand 1/2″ drive socket wrench, my 18mm sparkplug socket, and my searing rage. It’s pretty heavy and well balanced. I am not a large man, but I am angry.
In conclusion, Crackhead, why don’t you just do both of us a favor and buy yourself a crackpipe? It will both enhance your crack smoking experience and save me a lot of time and felony assault charges. Think about it.
Sincerely, Matt
Posted in something that is called “Rants and Raves” by “Matt”. Whoever you are Matt, good post.
Read MoreWhat better way to start the new year than with more Traffic to your web site. Web Traffic is a critical part of your internet business and it is imperative that you design it to bring you the most amount of Traffic possible.
Designing your site for Traffic includes offering good content, easy navigation and a logical flow. Additionally you must also build your site to draw Traffic from the search engines because if you can obtain high search engine ranking, you can enjoy free Traffic.
It’s important to note, however that good ranking won’t do you much good without a well designed site and a well designed site can’t bring you visitors if no one knows it’s there. Both high ranking and good design need to work together.
How do we pull all this together? Let’s take a look.
-A Word About Design-
A huge mistake I see many website owners make is that they get caught up in making their site cute. They love the little animations, buttons and dramatic backgrounds. What they fail to consider is that these things are worthless if you don’t offer good content, easy navigation and a logical flow.
First of all don’t try to be everything to everyone. Design your site around a theme, preferably a niche theme. Don’t confuse your readers with links all over the page. Design a logical flow. Lead your viewers to where you would like them to go. Leave plenty of white space and keep your pages organized. Clearly state at the top of your pages what you are about and what you would like your viewers to do.
Secondly, I don’t recommend pop-ups. I find that the majority of internet users find them annoying. The demand for pop-up blockers is a good indication that viewers don’t want to see them.
Thirdly, offer good content. Provide information on your site that will help viewers solve a problem. Offer information that they might not get elsewhere. Write reviews regarding your products. Write newsletters and articles and most importantly offer something of value for fr?e. Give your viewers a reason to come back. It will also build trust in you.
-Traffic Builders-
Good search engine ranking can bring lots of visitors to your site. It often takes a few months to rank well but the payoff is lots of qualified Traffic. While it’s not practical to depend solely on search engines for Traffic it can complement your other advertising campaigns nicely. Aiming for high search engine placement is always a plus.
Keep these in mind when developing your site for the search engines:
- Domain Names
Choose a domain name that has your site keywords in it. For example, if you’re a site about pet care, try to include the words “pet care” or words related to pet care in your domain name if you can.
- Keywords
Keywords require research and there are several tools to help you out in this area. These are my favorites:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
I suggest focusing on only one keyword or keyword phrase per page of your website. This may not seem like a lot but if your site has 20 pages you can focus on 20 keywords. Each page should be considered a landing page for your site. If you have proper navigation on your pages, it will easily allow viewers to see everything you have to offer.
Include your keyword or keyword phrase at the top of your page as well as in at least one header phrase. Also work the keywords into the body of your text as often as you can without sounding redundant.
Your keywords should be in the Title tag as well as in your page description tag. Many search engines no longer look at the keyword tags, but I recommend using them and including the plural forms as well.
- Alt Tags
Search engines don’t index images, therefore any text on your site that is presented in image format won’t get indexed. To solve this problem, you can enter the image description in the ALT tag. To be sure that the search engines recognize all the content on your site, fill in your ALT tags with your keywords. This will boost your keyword frequency and help your site achieve better ranking.
- Linking
Search engines will rate your site by who is linking to your site, so it’s important to establish quality, related links. This can be accomplished in a few ways. One way is to establish reciprocal links with other like sites. When exchanging links be sure to include your keywords in your site title.
Review the page you are exchanging links with. Be sure it is a site that you find easy to navigate and informative. I also recommend that the site’s index page have a Google PR rating of at least one. This ensures that the site is not being penalized by Google. If it is a penalized site then you could be penalized as well for linking to it.
- Include a ‘tell a friend’ and ‘bookmark’ scr?pt on your site.
This gives viewers an easy way to bookmark you and most of all return to your site.
- Include a Site Map
Site Maps let visitors know what information you have, how it’s organized, where it is located with respect to other information, and how to get to that information with the least amount of clicks possible.
Site maps also provide spider food for search engine robots. This can increase your chances of becoming indexed because a site map allows the search engines to easily visit every page of your site.
A site map works best if you include a link to your site map in the navigation of every page on your site.
Finally, don’t let your site become stale. I have found that my search engine rankings improve when I periodically add new pages to my site and keep the content new and fresh. Follow these tips and 2005 may be your year for Traffic.
About The Author
Elizabeth McGee has spent 20 years in the service and support industry. She has moved her expertise to the world wide web helping businesses find trusted tools, enhance customer service, build confidence and increase sal?s.
If you’ve been feeling like Tom Cruise climbing up the side of some remote jagged mountain in the blazing hot sun and concerned you’re facing “mission impossible”, chances are you own a web site.
Adding to the intense thrill of web site ownership are keyword comparisons and bidding for good keyword positions in search engines. You might hire a search engine optimization specialist who can track elusive algorithm clues and is unfazed by pagerank drama. Your programmers and designers insist they get along. The marketing department actually believes deadlines are met. The new bank account is waiting for fresh revenue. And oh yes, it’s assumed someone will come looking for your web site and wants to use it.
You did build it for them, right?
For every search result, there is the possibility that:
a. The engine will display a description that makes sense. Or not.
b. The page the search engine refers to does what the description said it would do and is about what the search engine said it would cover. Or not.
Your SEO/SEM, if you hired a good one, helped you write your title tag statement and Meta page description and structured it so it makes sense in SERPs (search engine results pages).
Your Usability professional, if you hired one, evaluated the page to make sure it would meet customer expectations and convince visitors there are other hot pages inside the web site to look at too. Without call to action prompts, well displayed, logically labeled navigation links and credible content, the chance of someone remaining on that page is pretty slim.
Says Gordon Hotchkiss, President and CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions, Inc., in a recent Search Day article written by Shari Thurow, called Creating Compelling Search Engine Ads and Landing Pages, “Once searchers arrive on your landing pages, you have 13.2 seconds to convince visitors that they are on the right site.”
Impossible Mission?
Had enough of web page abandonment? Are those cost-per-click fees putting you further in cred?t card debt and not producing any bang for your buck? Which part of “understand your web site visitor” didn’t make it to the drawing board?
I know this is hard. You’re not a mind reader. Unless you have access to costly studies and data about who to build your web site for and their computer usage habits, chances are you simply wanted a web site and hoped people would find it and use it. By incorporating the skills and expertise of an SEO/SEM along with a user centered design specialist, you will not be wastefully tossing your web site off the search engine cliff. Rather, your adoring fans will clamor up the cliff to get to it.
Sometimes a web designer is also trained in these fields or is partnered with people who are. This is something to consider when shopping around for web site assistance.
Below are some things to keep in mind when studying your web site. You can also ask your team to consider these points.
1. What happens after your site reaches top rank? It’s lonely up there, if nobody notices your page or understands the page description. How effective is high rank? Do people really cl?ck on “sponsored” pages vs. natural results?
2. Pay attention to inside “landing” pages. Optimize them for easy indexing and point visitors to your homepage, sale products or fr?e stuff.
3. Be wise about what you invest. Every cost-per-click must be productive. If not, a usability web site review can locate roadblocks.
4. It’s about the user experience. Really. It’s a common habit for web site owners to create the site for themselves based on what they like and want. When you receive a complaint, consider it a favor. Yes, some people are mean and critical. But, enhancements are improvements that sometimes benefit a lot of people, and you too, in the long run.
5. Don’t settle for minimum effort. One of your goals is to reach potential customers and readers. Your optimized pages reach people looking for them. Your user centered pages reach people wanting to use them and will refer them to friends.
6. Your competition does it better. Not by packing hidden keywords and buying links, but by carefully targeting keywords, providing cleverly written content and delivering user centered design.
7. Think sustainability. If you plan on your web site being around for a while, make this a checkpoint for every future decision related to your site. If someone has an idea that won’t impact the long-term sustainability of the site, the site may disappear out of sheer user boredom. And search engines do notice.
8. Understanding your visitors and customers allows for more creative keyword combinations. Put a feedback form on your web site. Ask them how they found your web site. Ask them what keywords they used. Ask them why they came or what they wanted to find. Ask them if they found what they were looking for and if not, provide room for comments so they can explain what happened. This information is a gold mine for you.
9. Never mislead your visitors. Be accurate with what you say a site or page is about. Search results relevancy establishes trust from the start.
10. The elegance of action. The act of landing on a relevant, accurate, persuasive, interesting page leads to the fluid, unencumbered desire to know more and cl?ck deeper. Aim for this.
Do not drop your web site over the search engine cliff without considering the usability effect. Design it to be productive and user centered. This will pay off in many ways. Remember your original requirements and goals and trace back every dollar you spend to meeting them. Marketing efforts are strengthened when you make your visitors feel welcome, informed and productive once they arrive at your web site.
About The Author
Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com, Cre8pc.com, Cre8asiteForums and co-founder of the Cre8asiteNetwork. Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development. Copyright 2004 Cre8pc.com/Kimberly Krause Berg/UsabilityEffect.com. All Rights Reserved. Reprint rights by Permission of the Author.
Well, no … probably not. At least not if you haven’t deliberately installed some of their software.
But Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware identifies a standard registry key included with Internet Explorer as “Data Miner” spyware, with little or no further explanation, and offers to delete it. I hope this page offers a better explanation, and other alternatives to deletion. Spybot identifies it too, also without much explanation, though they have a smarter strategy to deal with it (more below).
The issue is the ‘Related Links’ feature of IE which appears as the ‘Tools’/'Show Related Links’ menu item (and a corresponding toolbar button if you added it from the ‘Customize…’ link on the toolbar). If you use that feature, IE will contact the Alexa servers to obtain information about other web pages which might be, er, related, open an Explorer Bar, and display those (plus adverts and whatnot). Go check the Alexa web site to see if you think that is a good idea (and, just to be clear, I think it’s a sucky idea), or just to double-check that you haven’t deliberately or unintentionally or absent-mindedly installed some of their software.
And due to a recently discovered bug in IE, you might even transmit (potentially sensitive) URL information if you reload pages long after you close the Explorer Bar, about (even secure HTTPS/SSL) pages for which you didn’t request Related Links.
But if you don’t use that menu or button, Alexa will not hear from you. No spying will take place. Wierd.
Just to be clear, this feature is still ‘spyware’, if you use it,. If you do so, you will be sending information to MSN and Alexa obtained by spying, and there is nowhere that Microsoft adequately discloses and documents that privacy ‘leak’. Sure, Alexa have some information on it, and a pretty clear privacy policy, but you don’t get to know of Alexa’s involvement until after you use the feature, and even then you have to hunt for it, and even then no mention is made of MSN’s interstitial involvement. Don’t blame Alexa though – it’s Microsoft’s responsibility to provide their users with complete and truthful disclosure – and they haven’t.
But if you don’t use it, it won’t be spying on you behind your back, and you may sleep soundly.
Here are some options:
- You can let Ad-Aware delete it, with no harm done (though if you later repair, or patch or upgrade IE, it may get re-established).
- You can ignore the alert and leave it be, with no harm done.
- You can fiddle with it so that it just doesn’t work (so that even if you, or someone else using your PC, accidentally tries it, it won’t contact Alexa).
- Or you can fiddle with it so that it uses Google to find related links, instead of Alexa. See the instructions below.
Here’s the skinny . . .
The existing Alexa/Show Related Links gubbins is just a registry key [#1], creating a menu item [#2], pointing to a local web page [#3], pointing to an MSN search page [#4], which uses the Alexa engine. All that is ‘installed’ on your PC is that HTML page [#3], which uses MSN and Alexa, only if you use it.
[#1] HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Extensions\{c95fe080-8f5d-11d2-a20b-00aa003c157a}
[#2] Within IE, see Tools / ‘Show Related Links’
[#3] C:\Windows\Web\related.htm (for Win9X and XP it’s here. Other O/S’s may be slightly different).
[#4] http://related.msn.com/related.asp?url=
Open ‘Related.htm’ in Notepad to see what it does, if you like. Or try, say, this link . . .
http://related.msn.com/related.asp?url=grc.com
If you don’t use the ‘Show Related Links’ menu links, and if you haven’t installed any extra Alexa stuff [#5] then you are NOT in danger of it spying on you.
[#5] Maybe from Microsoft Internet Explorer Web Accessories)
So, what to do about it?
If you don’t want ‘Related Links’, and/or don’t want anyone else using your PC from inadvertently contacting MSN/Alexa, you could just let Ad-aware delete it for you. Or you could fiddle with it so that it doesn’t work, by just editing the line in your own copy of ‘Related.htm’ (by opening it in Notepad) to one of these :-
from . . .
RelatedServiceURL=”http://related.msn.com/related.asp?url=”;
to . . .
RelatedServiceURL=”http://no_way_no_how.org/=”;
or simply . . .
RelatedServiceURL=”http://127.0.0.1″;
Or if you do want ‘Related Links’ (see Note 4 re security implications), you could . . .
- Install the Google toolbar which has that option (if you’re happy to interact with Google. I am).
- Or just do ‘related’ searches in this format . . . http://www.google.com/search?q=related:www.grc.com
- Or hit the “Similar pages” link shown on all Google search results.
- Or you could just edit the line in your own copy of ‘Related.htm’ . . .
from . . .
RelatedServiceURL=”http://related.msn.com/related.asp?url=”;
to . . .
RelatedServiceURL=”http://www.google.com/search?q=related:+”;
Notes
If you later repair, or patch, or upgrade IE, it may get overwritten by a new ‘Related.htm’. So far I think Service Patches and version upgrades tend to overwrite it, whilst normal or cumulative patches don’t – but it’s anyone’s guess next time. If so you’ll need to do this tweak again (or just save a tweaked copy, then put your version back after the upgrade).
You can choose any search engine or search function you like, of course. You might get some ideas from here (and you’ll find appropriate URLs by looking within the Bookmarklets with Notepad.
Spybot users. If you select their “Alexa Related: What’s related link (Replace file)” option from scan results window, Spybot will effectively overwrite the same line within ‘Related.htm’ with …
RelatedServiceURL=”http://www.google.de/search?q=”;
Well, that’s okay. But it asks Google only to search on the current URL, not for pages related to the current URL. You can manually change it as above if you prefer to keep the ‘what’s related’ functionality, and of course you can change it from the German Google page to the main one, or indeed any localisation of your choosing.
Secunia have recently discovered a bug in IE which means that if you use the “Related Items” menu/button, then any time in the same IE session you happen to press Ctrl+R to refresh a page (including ‘secure’ SSL-enabled pages), even if you’ve already closed the Explorer Bar, the current page’s URL will be transmitted (in plain text, even for SSL pages) to MSN/Alexa!
As Secunia point out: “The data transmitted to “msn.com” and “alexa.com” is the complete URL. In some cases this could contain sensitive information such as username, password, session id, search string, “secret paths”, and more.”
Secunia’s workaround (to block MSN and Alexa at your firewall or Hosts file etc) is good, if you don’t normally need access to those sites. But changing Related.htm (instead or as well) is even better, because it still covers you if MS/MSN/Alexa quietly change servers in the future.
So, until MS patch the bug, you may wish to subvert Related.htm to use an invalid or loopback address, rather than even Google.
Found on the net. Thought of it to be quite useful.
Read MoreSome call startup parameters command line parameters, do as you wish, but here is some solid information. I was sick of searching the net over and over again after having formatted my pc and loosing my startup parameters for halflife, tfc, cs, dod (not playing those two… but guess some of you do and find this useful as well), halflife 2 and basicly every mod that uses the mentioned hl engine.
There are many other command line commands that you can use in the shortcut. Actually you can use any config variable, but that is too tedious. There are two places to put these; in steam, click games, right-click counter-strike, select properties, click launch options, and plug them in there. Also you can create a shortcut to CS 1.6 with:
D:\Steam\Steam.exe -applaunch 10 will launch steam will supplied parameters
numericping (shows numeric ping by the bars in the server list)
-win (run CS in a window)
-full (run CS full screen)
-heapsize (specify the number of memory to use for Counter-Strike, example:
-heapsize 192000 means to set aside 192 MB of RAM for use) (usually causes a crash, best to leave alone)
-zone X
This switch allocates x amount of KiloBytes of memory for use with the console system. This can fix some of the crashes/errors that you may experience by entering long commands/scripts into the console or your configs.
-noip
This disables the use of UDP, which is part of the TCP/IP protocol. Most internet servers use UDP, so ignore this command. This is only really useful if you play the game solely on an IPX/SPX network/server, or don’t have TCP/IP installed.
-noipx
This disables the use of the IPX/SPX protocol. You should add this command if you don’t have IPX/SPX installed.
-gl
Run in OpenGL
-d3d
Run in Direct3d
-32bpp and -16bpp
Use 32bit or 16 bit colors. Can also be changed in video options.
-nojoy
This disables joystick support in CS. It shaves a little bit off the memory footprint of CS, so add this if you don’t use a joystick.
-wavonly
Disable the use of direct sound, only use if you are having sound problems.
-noforcemparms
-noforcemaccel
Turn off mouse acceleration while in CS.
-noforcemspd
People say it is another command line option to get rid of some mouse accel parameter, but I don’t think it is.
For example you can use
c:\hl\hl.exe -noforcemspd -noforcemaccel -noforcemparms -nojoy -heapsize 2560000
or open steam (more up to date) and click onto the game panel, select your desired game and lookout for startup properties or something similar. Do enter the string of commands there but leave out the hl.exe.
If you have problems with this or other useful (seriously) parameters, drop me a line or comment.
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