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I got into the habit of scanning wifi on my Palm to see where I was on a long bus commute. ("Damn, are we passing the corner of linksys and default again?!") They now have a display sign and are planning (hoping?) to add wifi access in the bus. They could do some interesting geospatial projects with that.

heh yea right :) this might be considered very attractive for apple customers ... maybe time for me to write for this on :)... the new leopard might get top level actions

aww that's alot of money. http://carlocab.blogspot.com/

I'd have to strongly disagree. First of all, in my experience, the intellectual quality of bloggers really puts syndicated columnists to shame. (I'm talking about the upper end of them -- no doubt you can find lots of bad quality.) They can write much more and link to the basis for their claims. If anything is in error, they'll typically have comment and trackback capability so others can instantly expose them. Rarely will columnists deign to defend their assertions. After reading blogs for a few years, I checked back to some of the syndicated columns I had read (this is what I had in mind) and just marveled at how intellectually shallow they were. In contrast, check out this list of some of the blogs I read:

http://econlog.econlib.org/
http://www.overcomingbias.com/
http://www.economist.com/debate/freeexchange/
http://www.janegalt.net/
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/
http://patrick.net/wp/

Several of those are professors. Now, tell me they're not more refined than the columns you'd read in the paper.

Graph 5a is "Immigrant Groups Founding Engineering and Technology Companies in California." India is out in front at 20%, followed by Taiwan (13%), and China (10%). This time, Mexico makes the chart, but with only 1% [...]

"Why ZFS for home": - http://uadmin.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-zfs-for-hom e.html

"Here are ten reasons why you'll want to reformat all of your systems and use ZFS.": http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1446/zfs_ten_reason s_to_reformat_your_...

And some more technical explanations from Sun's Chief Engineer: - http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/zfs_end_to_end_ data - http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/smokin_mirrors

>> Bottom line, my opinion, users are not lazy, they just want to get some work done without needing the equivalent of a Bachelor's in Computer Science to get that work done.

I wouldn't say user's are lazy, but they often don't seem to care about the choices that exist in what it is they want to do. Regardless of needing a bachelor's degree in computer science, how about at least understanding the complexity of the task they've chosen to do, or at least have some appreciation for the complexity. The average user is very simple minded. They don't want to know about the things they've chosen to do. They want only to know about the small piece of it that they have patience for. In that sense, yes, they are VERY lazy.

While I agree with some particular gripes that Platt has, I think his general approach is overly simplistic, does not address the actual CAUSE to the problem, and is unrealistic. As I'm sure many have already said here, tasks people want to do are NOT often simple, especially not when dealing with all the different variations and choices there are to be made when performing the task. Oversimplifying will frustrate other users. I think that David Thomas has a much more realistic and practical appreciation for the problem. It's not about lumping all users into a simple-minded bucket and catering to them. It's about understanding the users of a particular environment and working to streamline for those users. It's about understanding the needs and truly getting to understand the needs of the user. Platt does not do this. He has a preconceived notion that all users are like his view of the least common denominator. He has a statement to "programmers": YOUR.USERS.ARE.NOT.YOU. Well, to throw that back at him... our users are not him, either.

Platt uses a lame example (of many lame examples). The "Do you want to save" prompt. If it were to be changed to "Do you want to throw your work away?" more people will hit "Yes" by mistake. I'd be willing to best that statistics would show people are more likely to make that mistake and be frustrated than there is frustration with being asked to save. He just bitches because he wants it to be HIS way (see my comment about our users not being him). Sure, we all have our frustration with how certain software works and their defaults... but try seeing past your own narrow needs, and understand what the software is actually TRYING to cater to.

It's worth going and reading the comments on his blog. Many people quite intelligently rip his views apart. And also recognize... Platt is trying to sell a book... he's shooting for the "hype" and position that will get people "talking" about his book. It just makes me a HECK of a lot more skeptical about the validity to his claims, versus his attempts to sell a book:

http://suckbusters2.blogspot.com/2006/12/web-site- that-just-works-and-one-that.html

-Alex

Nicely done; you fit most of the skeptics' standard and discredited talking points in 3 lines. And added a dash of standard logical fallacy as well.

You can go here, here, or here for more info.

There are a few implementations of object oriented COBOL for .Net out there...

Fujitsu COBOL and NetCOBOL for .NET
Micro Focus Net Express

Both of those are rather expensive, and I've not seen any open-source ones yet. I thought it would be fun to write a COBOL compiler for .Net as a pet project. I've started it, but haven't had much time to spend on it recently. My plan was to get it to a point where it can do some useful things then put it on sourceforge.

Lighten up. (...) I think its safe to assume the claims in their patent applications will not be for "an idea." More than likely, their claims will recite a method of treating cancer.

There is no law requiring citizens to carry identification. This has actually led to the controversy over having a "National ID" for voting: because the right to vote is reaffirmed not just within the articles of the constitution, but also within several amendments, barring a constitutional amendment requiring a national identification card to be presented when voting, there won't be any laws requiring a national id for a while. Implementation of such a law would be prohibitively expensive. See here for a more in-depth discussion.

Available here!

I've been working at Google for four months, and of all the companies I interviewed at, Google seemed to care the least about my past projects, experience, or my GPA. Google's interviewing process is all about finding very smart computer people. You simply must know the core computer science principles, but it does not matter if you were able to regurgitate them on your college exams. It matters that you can explain them in an interview and use them towards solving a problem. Once I got here, I can understand the reasoning behind the hiring process: Lots of Google infrastructure and technology is unique to Google. Look at the published articles on Bigtable and MapReduce to get a glimpse of the unique systems used every day here. For people to learn these systems and begin being productive quickly, Google doesn't care if you have an MSCE or know the syntax of Apache's httpd.conf. Google just needs you to be smart.

note: These are my opinions and not necessarily those of Google's. And I try not to post on Google articles nowadays, but this doesn't pertain to our business strategy so I'm comfortable sharing it. BTW we had an awesome free lunch today here in Kirkland, Washington. :)

I wrote this one in my blog back when I still worked for my cable ISP (The now defunct Adelphia)

http://wearyman.blogspot.com/2005/05/im-surrounded -by-morons.html

Enjoy!

Even I am also new to Cross site scripting and I am learning about it. Today I discovered that I was wrong when I said third party websites cant make POST request to websites in different domain. Actually they can make POST requests through iframes but they cant read the data sent by the server due to same origin policy[1].

When a request is sent to the server either one of the following things may happen,
1. Data remains the same in the server after the server completes the request.
Ex. Get the list of all contacts. In this case data is not changed in the server side. This is just a Data request.
2. Data gets changed due to the incoming request.
Ex. Transfer $100 from Account A to B. In this case data gets changed in the server side.

My solution works only for request which are of type 1 and it will fail for requests of type 2. Gmail vulnerability discovered now belongs to type 1 request where data is not changed. Even if the third party web sites makes a POST request to Google site, they will not be able to read the data. So my solution works for Gmail vulnerability but it may not work for other type of requests where data is changed in the server side due to the client request.

[1] I simulated this case in my pc, I was able to make POST requests using to a different website iframes. But I was not able to read the data that was sent from the server to the iframe. If you want peek at these files, just drop me an email.

Oh, yeah, because I'd really rather get my Internet service from PEPCO instead of Comcast. No, thanks. First you subsidize the hell out of the service and grant it a monopoly, until it's the only game in town. Then you ratchet up the rates -- and why not? It's not like people are going to go somewhere else.

At least now I can maybe choose who I get screwed by: the phone company or the cable company; that's more of a choice than I have about my water or gas.

The solution to a dearth of competition is not to eliminate it altogether. It's the special monopoly status that municipalities gave away to cable and telcos that's the root cause of a variety of problems (plus the same companies' bald-faced interference in politics in order to maximize profits and reduce competition).

There is definitely a public interest in developing infrastructure, but just saying "it's a right" and attempting to force companies to roll it out isn't the way to make it happen. There might be some situations where it could be beneficial for a municipality to pay for the deployment of, and subsequently own, the 'last mile' fiber infrastructure, and then allow ISPs to use this to deliver services to customers. However even then, I'd be wary of whether the municipality would actually use its infrastructure as a level playing field that companies could compete on for customers, or whether it would just engage in exclusive sweetheart deals, serving up the now-captive customer base as a burnt offering to a buyer for the right price.

In short, I don't trust Comcast further than I can throw all of their collective corporate assets. But I trust my local municipal government to not fuck up my Internet even less.

It's on the front page of the main site which, for some reason, isn't the web site the code is on:

http://applefun.blogspot.com/

Thank you for linking to my piece on global warming. You may also wish to know that this entire discussion is moot because science is dead.

Thank you for linking to my piece on global warming. You may also wish to know that this entire discussion is moot because science is dead.

First of all, I must say that I don't believe global warming exists no matter how much evidence scientists come up with to support it. I think it's just a lot of fear-mongering from ice berg-hugging scientists who are trying to distract us from the War on Terror.

Oh, by the way... how is the "Month of Apple being proven the security train wreck it really is" working out? Only 28 more flaws left in the month!

People who live in glass operating systems shouldn't throw stones.

Apple!!! Lunix!!! pwnt!!!

Not waiting for funding, United seems to have found an alternative way of funding UFO research. http://evilunitedairlines.blogspot.com/

Microsoft (with the help of the robots) is planning to take over the world
Denis the SQL Menace
http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/

United employees were paying so much attention tho the UFOs that they forgot to take care of their passengers http://evilunitedairlines.blogspot.com/

adwords

and had serious issues with stability and networking. I detailed my experience at my blog if anyone is interested. I also tried using the Linux version of Parallels and had similar issues. If anyone has gotten Vista to run under Xen I would be very interested in your feedback

Sorry dude, but it is true.

Here's a link that I could google easily but I remember a story here at slashdot about this as well. This link is not as cut and dried as the slash post that included stolen cd's as well.

http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2005/10/first-sal e-hard-copies-and-digital.html [blogspot.com] ...A spokesperson for the Recording Industry Association of America, the group known for filing lawsuits to stop digital-music swapping, pointed me to a document from the Copyright Office to support the idea that you aren't allowed to keep a digital music file once you sell the physical CD...
I e-mailed a top industry executive, whose assistant contacted me to say my rights to digital music would end when I sell the physical CD. But the executive was apparently wary of expressing that view in public, as his assistant suggested I refer to him as "an unnamed industry source.

Seriously. It was reported here a few months ago.

Here's a link that I could find easily but I remember a story here at slashdot about this as well.

http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2005/10/first-sal e-hard-copies-and-digital.html

UAL Extorts nearly $3000 from elderly couple, offers coupons worth $600 and refuses to refund the money

Here is another issue you might have to face with. My parents did http://evilunitedairlines.blogspot.com/

And there IS NO free version of Acronis. The Acronis 7.0 offer was only if you got a certain European PC magazine and could access the Acronis site for a free serial number.

See here: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/11/acronis-true-im age-7-available-for.html

I just gave it a shot a few days ago. All I can say is WOW.

If you have not tried Ubuntu, please do. I can't say enough good things about it.

Next to "does not show it" the author clearly states it isn't there.. To try it yourself (and succeeding in finding the url-bar), go to the url: http://thefinalzone.blogspot.com/2006/10/running-o lpc-emulator.html In short, get Q-Emu running and download the image from: http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/devel opment/

http://bmaurer.blogspot.com/2007/01/beware-random- captchas-found-on.html

- If your OCR can read 1/2 the chars on the page, the md5sum lets you crack the others. Really quickly
- Forget OCR. It doesn't check that the server itself generated the hashes. Hash "apple" then submit the hash and the word "apple".
- There are no checks for duplicates. You can solve one captcha and submit it 1000000 times.
- You can delete any jpeg file on the website, due to the non-checking of the hash for the word ".."
- You can fill up the dude's disk by requesting lots of captchas but

I am optimistic about getting back the $2860 that UAL extorted from my parents. UAL Extorts nearly $3000 from elderly couple, offers coupons worth $600 and refuses to refund the money

I'd be on Solaris 10 tomorrow morning if there was a way of running Windows as a guest on there (VMware, Qemu, etc.).
I recently tried to move from Fedora to Ubuntu, and detailed the fun involved here. It would have been easier to move to Solaris if not for the virtualisation thing!

This decision is bad! There are many websites, tech articles, blogs like mine [Ocean Of Technologies] http://victwu.blogspot.com/ that reference to the link http://download.fedoralegacy.org./ I spent quite a fair bit of time on this blog and now I have to keep an eye on when the fedoralegacy goes disappear. Can anyone suggest me the alternative reference? Victor Wu

I would also like to nominate the UAL Customer Relations department for this award
http://evilunitedairlines.blogspot.com/

'cause this might happen to you too... http://evilunitedairlines.blogspot.com/

So this is more reason to upgrade to the latest and greatest

http://otherthingsnow.blogspot.com/

Mmmm must be new years eve for such a lame story to hit the front page
http://otherthingsnow.blogspot.com/

Yeah, you guessed it: DA Mike Nifong's Hunt for the Great White Defendants in the Duke Lacrosse Frame-Up is a no-show. You see, the long-running pattern of hate crime hoaxes victimizing white male college students is nothing compared to, say, #8 on Lithwick's List, the Bush Administration "Slagging the Media."

In recent news, the hoax continues to implode. Nifong dropped the rape charges but is pressing on with other felony charges. Meanwhile, the North Carolina State Bar is investigating Nifong for ethics violations. And now the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys has asked him to recuse himself from the case.

We're trying to incorporate more Linux systems in our office, but as an accounting firm, almost everything is Windows only. From Quickbooks to the ProSystemFX suites of Engagement and Tax, we're pretty well stuck on Windows for the most part.

That said, we've been working with Citrix on an experimental basis in order to add better remote functionality to our staff - and Linux boxes might wind up being the way to go on the client end. I know I've been using Ubuntu on my laptop exclusively for a year now, and a lot of our users have been coming up to me and asking what the deal is with the cube and whatnot (Beryl - check it out if you haven't yet, very very cool - http://www.beryl-project.org/), and I just use remote desktop to manage servers and once in a while run Windows apps if I really need to.

Also, and this is a total self-serving link, I just wrote about giving my kids Linux laptops. http://endcycle.blogspot.com/ - SO FAR, they love Edubuntu. We'll see how long that lasts, though. :) I think it's going to be good. My younger took about 3 minutes to look around, and the next thing I knew, she had changed her background and theming - I was really impressed. AAAAAaaanyway, back to the discussion.

I just got infected! Look what they made me do. http://evilunitedairlines.blogspot.com/

And I think you might be overestimating the effect of all that integration because I yet have to encounter a company that uses all those features you mention. What I do see is a lot of companies that use it just for the email and calendar functions.

So why Exchange? Well let me put it the other way around: what else? What else is out there that does email and calendars and is easy enough to find, install, manage and use?

My current company still uses Lotus Notes, when I started working here one year ago it had been about 10 years since I last used it and my god it still sucked as bad as it did 10 years ago, they did not improve AT ALL! First thing lots of people do here is install Outlook with the Lotus connector to be able to use a user friendly client (hey, seems clients are important too). Luckily they have decided to move to Exchange which will be used for... email (being a Telco they do their own telephony and nobody here is interested in IM).

If I would have thought that there was a FLOSS alternative that would that would be good enough I would have pointed it out but you just can't if there are still comments like this from the community: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2006/12/new-years-resol utions-for-other-people.html

Not just with the IPTV loophole, but on the commissioners too. Adelstein said: "the Commission takes a long-awaited and momentous step in this Order by requiring the applicants to maintain neutral network and neutral routing in the provision of their wireline broadband Internet access service. This provision was critical for my support of this merger and will serve as a "5th principle," ensuring that the combined company does not privilege, degrade, or prioritize the traffic of Internet content, applications or service providers, including their own affiliates."
but Martin said "These conditions are voluntary, enforceable commitments by AT&T but are not general statements of Commission policy and do not alter Commission precedent or bind future Commission policy or rules."

More here

like why the ff2.0 user's gmail vanished before they upgrade it to 2.0.0.1

Yes, but she will take all your stuff.

This is a cat-related article! The correct grammar is "Yes, but sheez takin' all ur stuff!"

--Rob

Really? Without the tabbed browsing hack I'm not a fan of the Wii browsing experience. YouTube and Wii-targetted flash games are the only real reason to use it - anything else is clunky and awkward.