Domain: wired.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to wired.com.
Comments · 12,699
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Not surprising
This is not the first time that open source has been accused of being a vector for illegal activity, also, it has been labeled as communist http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/bparchive?year=2007&post=2007-05-14,1 http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism Those are just two mild examples
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Re:10 year old vs 20 year old
Check out heavy rain - I'd like to myself, if I had a ps3
:-)An excerpt from wired's review:
"...We’re well into the era of games-for-everyone, where if dinner isn’t on the table it’s because mom is too busy playing FarmVille. But what if she’s in the mood to trade in cartoon cows for adult drama? There’s practically nothing to serve this expanding audience. That’s why games like Heavy Rain are going to be a big part of gaming’s future.
Heavy Rain, which will be released Tuesday in North America, is not perfect. But it’s a successful experiment. And when it’s good, it’s good in ways that traditional games rarely touch."
And the link: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/02/review-heavy-rain/
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Re:Great
Pay at the counter.
How does that help?
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/florida_skimming/ -
that might be..
.. but then again, placebos have become more powerful more powerful and are catching up with non homeopathic drugs as well.
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Citations.
Coal Ash more radioactive than Nuclear Waste
Meltdown proof reactors (search for meltdown to find the relevant part)
And the better overall part?: No greenhouse gases. -
Re:unbelievable, yet very believable
For Apple to have "China like rules" they would be throwing people in jail for writing the apps for android that they don't like. Right now they are no different that a tee shirt shop that doesn't want to carry tee shirts pro KKK shirts.
Nope... they already ban political apps.
Apple rejected a free iPhone application that advocated a single-payer health system, calling the application “politically charged,” according to the app’s developer.
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Re:Fists.
The only reason that Google got so pissy over this attack was because apparently the hacker stole some of their proprietary source code during the hack. Until this threat to their actual IP, they didn't give a rat's ass how many people they turned over for imprisonment in China or how much they filtered out words like "democracy" from their search results. This isn't about Google standing up to evil totalitarion China--it's about Google saying "Look, we'll turn over dissidents and censor our search results all you want, BUT YOU THREATEN OUR PROFITS AND WE WILL FUCK YOU UP!"
It's all about money for Google, and this is all just posturing.
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Re:Child Pornography Laws
Tell that to these girls (in Pennsylvania, no less): http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/03/aclu-sues-da-ov/
Your average jackass D.A. will prosecute anyone for anything.
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Re:Label them as sex offender
Looks like the key criterion is: "Is the off-school behavior potentially disruptive to the educational process in school?" You can see how liberally that might be applied. For example, earlier this month the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court upheld a suspension for a girl mocking the principal on a MySpace page, after the school argued that students were talking about it in class instead of studying. (At the same time, a different court ruled the opposite in a separate case. My guess is if any of this goes to the current SCOTUS, they will uphold extensive power rights to school administrators.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35244016/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/rulings-leave-us-student-speech-rights-unresolved/
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/22/nyregion/at-issue-discipline-off-school-grounds.htmlPA School District Rules: "When and where the rules apply. The Code of Student Conduct covers students when they are on school grounds, or on the way to or from school. The rules also cover behavior at school events off grounds, as well as any off-grounds behavior (including behavior in the neighborhood) that is likely to lead to disruption at school. (The law is not clear on how far schools can go in punishing students for misbehavior that occurs off grounds or outside of school hours. If your case is of this type, you may wish to seek further advice from a private attorney or the Education Law Center.)"
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Re:Hmm
IF YOU ARE A SCHOOL OFFICIAL PEEKING AT KIDS' PRIVATE MOMENTS, HOW MUCH OF A FREAKIN' BONEHEAD DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO CONFRONT THEM WITH EVIDENCE OBTAINED BY SUCH QUESTIONABLE MEANS?
Bonehead is practically the definition of low-level admin staff in K12 schools. I deal with technology and provide services for K12 schools. So I pretty much have to deal with the high school administrators and tech staff at schools. All the time. And while there are people I certainly admire, there are far more than follow a certain mold:
1) They are not only incompetent, they are grossly so. Their main claim to fame is that they can reload windows. Sometimes they follow the lead of Mordac, Preventer of Information Services and make life a living hell for the other staff, in order to show that they are actually doing something and are "needed".
2) They are terrified that somebody might come along and expose them for the useless consumers of oxygen that they are. So they are very, VERY quick to dismiss any technology or solution that doesn't involve them installing and/or administering it. Especially if there's a cost benefit to doing so. I've seen such people actually shoot down proposals that would benefit the school by over a million dollars because the change was specifically recommended against earlier. In spite of the fact that there were no security or legal risks that could be enumerated by the party involved!
3) They purposefully use barely applicable technical jargon as often as possible to sound intelligent and "on the ball". Often the words are used in a laughably inappropriate manner. Phrases like "The FTP protocol probably had a virus that caused the network routr to hang up". No, I'm not kidding.
4) It seems that they avoid any situation where they might learn something for fear of giving away what they don't know. I think it's a variation of "better to keep quiet and have them wonder if you are a moron than to open your mouth and remove all doubt". Thus, not only are they clueless, they will forever remain so.
5) The school administrators often have a deep-down fear that the tech weenies are incompetent and/or malevolent, but because they can't understand what's going on or why, they are uniquely incapable of doing anything about it. They are afraid of being held "hostage", and rightly so, because it does happen!.
When I'm faced with such people, I have to make sure that every solution or mention of a solution includes mentions of the "capable tech staff" and brown nose until my eyes hurt from the smell. People who think that being "secure" means having an FTP password like "1337god" or their login name spelled backwards.
I'm not at ALL surprised that one such tech got the idea of enforcing their version of justice when they found that they had the technical ability.
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Re:Well in that case
Unless your nation has a track record of spying on its citizens web traffic, then you have a much more unfounded claim.
You mean, like when the FBI put splitters into AT&T offices to monitor all the internet traffic going through them?
Remember, any authority that can be abused will be abused. I wouldn't trust any certificate authority to protect me against the government.
Except that the FBI and NSA can't do a MITM with your encrypted communications like CNNIC theoretically can. The above example is also why everything should be encrypted by default regardless of perceived "value".
The splitter worked because the majority of traffic in plain text. If everything was cipher text then the best the TLAs could do is traffic analysis.
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Re:Well in that case
Unless your nation has a track record of spying on its citizens web traffic, then you have a much more unfounded claim.
You mean, like when the FBI put splitters into AT&T offices to monitor all the internet traffic going through them?
Remember, any authority that can be abused will be abused. I wouldn't trust any certificate authority to protect me against the government.
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Re:some facts about nuclear energy.
It's a win-win. We get cheap power now and when the storage facility starts to leak or the plant melts down we have a wildlife preserve safe from human development for the next 10,000 years!
Seriously, though. Does anyone know what type of reactors these are? I assume only light water reactors are being built. I just read on Wired [ http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/ ] about theoretical Thorium based reactors, but I don't think there's any firm plans to build one of those. I think there's also something called "pebble bed" reactors or something like that. I'd be interested to know what the real state of the art in nuclear plants is right now.
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Re:from the wikipedia page
In short, that same article basically says you can use different thorium cycles to make bomb making much more difficult. This article is also fairly old. Wired did a more recent one (obviously not a scientific journal. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/ )
From the article that line is taken from
"A more sophisticated thorium cycle would include a little U 238 - enough to make the resultant U 233/U 238 mixture less than 20% and therefor unsuitable for a bomb without (expensive and tedious) isotope separation. But then Pu 239 would be produced from the U 238 and the problems of the plutonium cycle would reappear. But the LANL group argues that although the problems of plutonium would reappear, they would be less serious because the mix would include a large fraction of the isotope Pu 238 (produced from the thorium) which generates a lot of heat and makes the mixture impossible to use in present designs and difficult to use in other designs. This was raised with considerable optimism by Coops (1995) and was discussed at an IAEA meeting (Altshuler, Janouch and Wilson 1997), but some scientists who are knowledgeable about bomb design insist that a bomb can be made with any amount of Pu 238. But to the extent that it is more difficult, this may be a non-proliferation advantage. "
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Thorium
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Re:Trade Secret?
Does Google not want Microsoft to scoop them on their new blacksploitation search engine?
Ask's parent, IAC, tried that. It was called "RushmoreDrive.com". The search results returned were Ask results interspersed with marginally relevant black-related results. The home page took at least 7 seconds to load, every time, being heavily loaded with both ads and video. The business lasted less than a year.
Interesting concept, but like most IAC online businesses, badly executed.
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Wired
Wired ran a long article about Max Butler last year.
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Re:Major details wrong
"32GB is enough for anyone".
Turns out that quote you miss quoted was made up.
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Re:Question
You gotta love the weasley quote from "Frenchy" Lunning, "Handley is not a pedophile. He had no photographs of child pornography."
I suppose it would be a waste of time to photograph child porn. Scanning seems like a much better way to retain all the juicy details.
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Re:If you haven't already, watch this video.
Watch the lecture.
I did. It was nothing I didn't expect or know already. You have to ask yourself why he stopped at 400 million years. He's cherry picking his data, ignoring well known facts that contradict his entire presentation, and he completely omitted a "bigger knob" that has nothing to do with the atmosphere. Good science doesn't leave out the anomalous results. The Cult of Climate Change would do well to accept defeat.
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Re:Southwest Airlines "Customer of Size" Q&A
So, Kevin's skinny ankles wouldn't have saved him, eh?
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God's Little Toys
To those who immediately say "No", I'd just like to submit this essay by William Gibson as a talking point.
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Convertible tablets
This IdeaPad U1 is nice, but you have a basically different computer when you have the keyboard than when not. A better approach are convertible tablets, like i.e. from the same manufacturer IdeaPad s10-3t, you can turn the capacitive touchscreen to make it look like a tablet, is the same OS in both cases, 10 hours of battery, and a reasonable price. Is definately bulkier than the iPad, but have several advantages over it.
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Re:Dumb cheats are easy to catch
Nope; Obfuscation isn't enough. Specialized parsers measuring similarity exist:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/02/10464
While you can't catch everyone, disguise is not enough. (And not a measure of skill either).
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Re:Hoooly crap...
> Did your tinfoil hat tell you some reason why I shouldn't trust them?
If my tinfoil hat talked to me, I don't think it would be doing its job correctly.
;)Why shouldn't I trust Microsoft? Oh I dunno...
- Antitrust lawsuits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
- IIS Backdoors: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/05/14/1858201
- OOXML bribery: http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/08/ooxml_vote
- Naked PC Campaign: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39261437,00.htm
- Vendor lock-in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in#Microsoft
- "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguishThose are just the ones on the top of my head. Actually, there's a wikipedia page just on criticism of Microsoft, with other resources/references, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
Want more? I got plenty more.
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Re:Obligatory 1984 Reference
That is a lot of cost. And even if you figure the initial cost is gone after the first year, you still have the cost of paying 1,000 people to watch cameras in order to solve 10 crimes. That is still a lot of cost. 1000 x annual wages or salary, to solve 10 crimes.
The same holds true here. Generally when shortening is discovered, it is rectified & generally costs the city a good hunk of change.
http://blog.motorists.org/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/
Also, many cities are removing traffic cameras now, because people are driving safer which has led to a loss of revenue for the police dept. Which I think is hilarious, personally.
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Re:No way.
In April last year, a robot made a scientific discovery by itself: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/robotscientist/
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Re:No way.
Haha... wait, you're serious?
- Roomba learns your room layout while it works
- Automated surveillance cameras in the UK, recognising number-plates and issuing speeding fines
- DARPA grand challenge
- In April last year, a robot made a scientific discovery by itself: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/robotscientist/
- Simulated brains already "exceed" those of a cat's cortex: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/111809-ibm-brain-simulations.html
- Computers are used to prove the accuracy of some advanced mathematics that are beyond the ability of a human to verify
- I'm already using AI to help me write music... and it's better at it than I am: http://www.youtube.com/KitsuneSoftware#p/u/2/pnQHRdWJWgU
On that last point... yes, my business model does include developing AI to the point that it's not necessary to employ other people. I doubt very much that I'll be the first to get there (especially as I have to do a lot of other stuff to keep the money coming in and only write the AIs as needed), but I'm sure going that way.
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Re:Clipper Chip deja vu?
Anyone remember the US government initiative in the 90's to be able to snoop on its citizens phone calls?
The Clipper Chip failed because it was subjected to citizen protest. However, around the same time CALEA was passed, which is very very similar in effect.
Aside from abuses afforded by CALEA, the US government's spy networks have repeatedly snooped on its citizens' phone calls. There was no victory with the Clipper Chip. It was just a minor setback.
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Re:Just pollin'
If the only thing it ever does is become the way college students use textbooks it will be a huge success. I would kill to have my copy of Warren (Organic Chem) on an iPad. It may be 10" across, but it doesn't weigh 3kg, and is a lot thinner.
Not to mention being able to avoid page-flipping and use search instead.
For the price of 5 textbooks, I could get the cheapest one, and the price is only going to come down.
Here I disagree... you'll still have to buy your textbooks, but you'll be getting a digital download... and what makes you think they'll be any cheaper? The iPad launch has already successfully allowed MacMillan and other publishers to negotiate prices increases on Amazon.
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Re:Biased Reports?
Oh Come on. This is ridiculous, you can't go around calling countries "tax happy tree hugging commie states". This has no basis in reality at all. I'm going to take a WILD guess and say that you're American.
None of your post is insightful.
Based on shoddy evidence, an entire continent is taxing energy production where there was no tax before and this is just phase 1.
The scheme has produced a robust market for the trade of credits. More than 8 million tons of CO2 emissions worth $130 billion were traded in Europe last year. Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/hackers-steal-carbon-credits#ixzz0esawbQzh
Seriosly. If you don't think this is big money, big business and big power for governments and corporations you're out of your mind.
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Re:Biased Reports?
Orly? What do you think these guys were stealing?
greenhouse gas taxes are already in place around the world and there is big money already being made trading the credits.
European Union
Main article: European Union Emission Trading SchemeThe European Union Emission Trading Scheme (or EU ETS) is the largest multi-national, greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme in the world and was created in conjunction with the Kyoto Protocol.
After voluntary trials in the UK and Denmark, Phase I commenced operation in January 2005 with all 15 (now 25 of the 27) member states of the European Union participating.[47] The program caps the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted from large installations with a net heat supply in excess of 20 MW, such as power plants and carbon intensive factories and covers almost half (46%)of the EU's Carbon Dioxide emissions.[48][49] Phase I permits participants to trade amongst themselves and in validated credits from the developing world through Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism.
Whilst the first phase (2005–2007) has received much criticism due to oversupply of allowances and the distribution method of allowances (via grandfathering rather than auctioning), Phase II links the ETS to other countries participating in the Kyoto trading system. The European Commission claims that it has been tougher on Member States' Plans for Phase II, dismissing many of them as being too loose again.[50] However, the use of carbon offsets means that the entirety of the emissions reductions required by the cap in phase 2 could be met outside of the EU itself.[51]
All EU member states have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and so the second phase of the EU ETS has been designed to support the Kyoto mechanisms and compliance period. Thus any organisation trading through the ETS should also meet the international trading obligations under Kyoto.
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For anyone that missed it...
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+1 for MS? :)
Moonlight 3.0 will support Theora.
Since Apple is competing with Google for the title of the company that can "Do most evil", should we be cheering on Miguel and MS in the hopes that Theora gains some traction? -
Re:No worries.
Kernel of truth here - consider that in the next ~70 years (the number thrown around in this thread) we're likely to be able to cure things like CF and hemophilia using gene therapy. Single-gene mutations will be first, probably, but more complicated cures will come as nanotechnology allows us to design our own restriction enzymes.
I mean shit, they're already worried about this popping up in this year's Olympics. -
Re:news flash
It's easy to forget, but around five or so years ago there used to be a *very* fanboyish and indulgent attitude towards Google on Slashdot. That's very much changed now...
Google is a truly innovative company that have done great things for open source and standards, not to mention how useful they are becoming at keeping Microsoft in check. Their Android operating system and the upcoming Chrome OS will transform the landscape. Between Google and Apple, Microsoft is backed into a corner. Now with Symbian gone open source as the last straw, we may see Microsoft withdraw from the mobile market by year's end. I have not seen any change in attitudes towards Google. What I have seen is a concerted campaign by Microsoft shills on Slashdot and elsewhere to demonize Google. Microsoft has realized that it simply cannot keep up with Google in terms of innovation, since they are not innovators. Their search bling is only growing via buying clients. Their browser is dying. The only way Microsoft knows how to compete is via under-handed attacks on the competition.
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fMRI is not perfect
If you haven't check out this study publicized in Wired, where they detected human emotion activity in the brain of a salmon. A dead salmon.
Just because the fMRI shows some colors, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's really cognition going on. It could just be false detections from imperfect scanning, or it could be scientists seeing patterns in data that don't really exist, or it could be the result of our imperfect understanding of how the brain works, or a whole slew of other things.
This is made worse by things like the Houben case, which used Facilitated Communication to "prove" that Houben had an intact consciousness. FC hasn't passed any rigorous scientific study (i.e. blind tests to prevent the facilitator's motivations/desires from modifying the results), but stories like Houben cause those with loved ones with sever brain damage in PVS to start clamoring that there may still be hope. James Randi has written about FC, and the Houben case in particular.
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Re:False Positive
The problem of improper controls and false positives is really serious with these fMRI studies. It can be summed up in three words, really: Thinking dead salmon.
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Cal me skeptical...
On one hand, this would be very scary, if one were locked in like that, unable to speak, move, and thought to be in a vegetative state. TFA does a great job drumming up that fear in the readers.
On the other hand, fMRI studies also find dead salmon do a lot of thinking. The whole fMRI field suffers from what we'll generously call "Statistical Issues," and until we get better handle on it, I'm going to remain somewhat dubious about fMRI studies that claim to be able to detect this or that. 4/27 is not a stellar rate, and it isn't implausible that these 4 are really vegetative people who have various parts of their brains active as a matter of course. -
Re:Block em for starters
Already did that... it doesn't work. China used a proxy in texas - rackspace. read.
That will be all. -
Re:Google
It is called Embrace, Extend and Extinguish. I thought it only applies to MS. Well I think, Do no Evil is gone through the window
:)Well, we know what Steve Jobs said about Google's "Don't Be Evil" mantra--"It's bullshit." Or, "a load of crap," depending on your source.
Considering it's coming from the CEO of one of the single most evil US companies, I think by "bullshit" he means, "it's bullshit that a business would try to operate based on anything other than trying to increase profit. It's their problem, and that's why we're going to win," not "bullshit" as in "they're not trying to not do evil."
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Re:The next line states...
Actually, "the serotonin-deficit theory of depression is built on a foundation of tissue paper" This is one reason why SSRI drugs are basically no more effective than placebos for most depressed people.
Actually, the placebo effect has increased markedly in the U.S. over the last decade, so much so, that if the clinical trials for current anti-depressants had taken place today most of them would not have crossed the "threshold of futility" and been approved for market by the FDA. And quite possibly the reason the placebo effect has increased is because people are being subjected to so much Big Pharma advertisement over the last decade or so since the FDA permitted the industry to market its wares directly to the public. Kinda funny, actually, in an effort to increase sales (and incidentally, hypochondria and anxiety in society at large) the drug companies may have made it much harder for themselves to release new compounds as their patents slowly expire. My heart pumps piss... -
Re:Google
Well, we know what Steve Jobs said about Google's "Don't Be Evil" mantra--"It's bullshit." Or, "a load of crap," depending on your source.
Is that actually based on anything though?
Yes - it's based on one rich guy being annoyed that another rich guy threatened to take some of his richness. From the linked article:
On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.
Steve Jobs wasn't making some deep point about Google's manipulation of FOSS, he was just ranting about unfair competition (for 'unfair competition to Apple in the eyes of Steve Jobs' read 'Giant, friendly, happy-go-lucky Silicon Valley company treating design and user experience as important'). He may as well have just complained that Google won't share their toys.
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Re:Google
Well, we know what Steve Jobs said about Google's "Don't Be Evil" mantra--"It's bullshit." Or, "a load of crap," depending on your source.
Is that actually based on anything though? You have to remember that 'evil' is a point of view and when a company gets that large and that diversified obviously they are eventually going to step on the toes of someone who has a different interpretation of what is 'evil'.
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Re:Google
It is called Embrace, Extend and Extinguish. I thought it only applies to MS. Well I think, Do no Evil is gone through the window
:)Well, we know what Steve Jobs said about Google's "Don't Be Evil" mantra--"It's bullshit." Or, "a load of crap," depending on your source.
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Re:What's the big deal?
I just don't see why Ballmer signing a Mac has any significance at all.
Because people, including myself, like to forget that Microsoft helped Apple out in 1997 to the tune of $150 Million.
So that we don't have to entertain the thought of thanking MS that Apple survived long enough for the product to exist.This story is far less significant than Bill Gates face on the big screen at an Apple keynote.
Boos, then cheers. Classic. Say hi to the new Apple. -
Appropos of slashdot..
I haven't seen anyone mention that the growth in Autism spectrum disorders may be partially due to geek lovin'.
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sad, sad, demo?
i have swallowed the google pill for sure, but that demo just makes me sad. for goodness sake, there are already companies with *real* android tablets and many of them were demoed at CES. why did google feel the need to put together shoddy youtube video showing a fake tablet running a mocked up OS?
why don't they just spend a few more dollars to make people aware of the awesome android tablets that are already announced? for example, the vega tablet,
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/vega-tablet-beats-apple-and-crunchpad/and the MSI tablet,
http://phandroid.com/2010/01/29/msi-android-tablet-harmony/ -
Re:Can someone please answer this?
The best that I can figure is that GOOGLE itself was NOT HACKED. Just the accounts of people using Google services were hacked. Those people were external. But because newspeople are clueless about technology they equate "wah, my google account got hacked" with "Google got hacked". You are right; outside of some simple virtual machines for testing their code changes against IE6 nobody at Google uses IE6.
Wrong. If that's the best you can figure out, you're either a Google shill or really lack reading comprehension. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/operation-aurora/
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blame the tool
It would be more noticeable to the people using it if more of them actually were interested in understanding what other people are saying.
It boils down to blaming the tool or blaming the tool. I'm in favour of blaming the tool.
Burden of clarity has been posted here before, today is my turn.
At the high school level, much of the educational process involves jumping through hoops. Students making it into Waterloo have obviously done something right. Top departments there have entrance requirements in the CMU bracket. I recall a year in the 1980s where the median GPA out of high school for entrance to Systems Design Engineering program was 93%. More than a few of these flunked the English assessment test.
Who created the hurdles where you could gain entrance to an elite program such as that and then flunk a basic test of composition and grammar? The adults. And somehow, every generation, the adults get stupider. I have a friend who went to an engineering school in Ontario in the same time frame who had an instructor who promised the class "you'll all thank me later for learning how to neatly hand-letter your engineering blueprints". Twenty years later, it's still too soon to tell. Maybe "later" meant at some point in the aftermath of peak oil and the evacuation of Bangladesh.
If you train your muscle memory to generate "cuz" when you mean "because" it's not the easiest thing to suppress in the heat of the moment when they spring the assessment exam on you in your frosh week. Stopping to correct your hands will interfere with your composition process, which will also be graded negatively.
Another fallacy in play here is Paul Collier's"bottom billion. Fifty years ago the bottom billion was a quartile. Now it's much less than that. Meanwhile, the bell of the income curve has shifted significantly to the right. So despite the fact that the bottom billion has made little progress, there's reason to be optimistic about the bottom quartile.
Notice the effect doesn't show up in an elite university whose intake funnel has not widened to the same degree as the post-secondary education in general.
Clive Thompson on the New Literacy
For the record, I've posted that link before. A rare data point in a sea of whinging is worth posting twice.
Lunsford is interviewed about her own writing process at How I Write which is an excellent resource for those us who would rather walk around the office with our fly undone than pen "your" as a verb in business correspondence.
At 90wpm I'm about 90% at fielding your/you're, their/there/they're, it/it's on the fly. At that speed, I have a poorer track record on than/that or dropping negatives (the last part of the trace to fill in) and the ed/ing problem, which comes to the fingers so swiftly the hands outrace the mind.
I recall that Knuth once brought in Mary-Claire van Leunen as part of a minicourse in mathematical writing, for which I found a fragment: Mathematical Writing by Donald E. Knuth, Tracy Larrabee, and Paul
...IIRC, she gave one piece of advice I've never been brave enough to try: compose an essay using a crayon to gain insight into your mental processes. That would certainly throw a wrench into my autonomic nervous system. I'm sure it would illuminating if I survived the process with sanity intact.
That's effectively what Waterloo did when I was there: handed me a speed crayon (Bic pen) and wondered why my composition process suffered. I was one of those young people who just weren't as good as my predecessors.