Free Software is only free if you value your time at $0.
I use free software quite effectively in the course of my work. Dia is a great tool for drawing diagrams, while OpenOffice is a fine tool for my needs as a software developer.
(And my clients clients pay me a decent amount of money for the work I do for them)
Fortunately. Most people don't define "good user experience" by what will run well on a 32M 486.
While that is too under powered, I think that the web would be much better if websites were designed to run well on very low end PCs.
Years ago, I met a developer from SGI. He told me that he and his follow developers used low end workstations. When they complained that builds ran too slowly, they were given the ability to submit build jobs to a shared, high end server. Though he and his coworkers were disappointed in not having the best workstations, he admitted the apps they created were much better for having been developed on the low end stations.
They need not be. Javascript and, especially, Flash, were designed with too much power. ActiveX is even worse and should not be on the web at all. There are some useful things that JS and Flash can add to webpages, but mostly the scripts are being used gratuitously.
I'd say the testing you are proposing is already being done. Schools are required to evaluate the performance of their students.
There are schools that allow smarter children to enroll in subjects at the level they perform at. Then at the end of each term, are tested, and allowed to skip ahead if their performance warrants that.
This works. My daughter is in such a school and doing very well.
Society is best served by allowing the cream to force itself to the top [emphasis mine]
At least in the case of my daughter, this is all I am asking: That she be allowed to move up. Despite the fact that she was demonstrably performing 2 grade level above her age group, the public school requires her to be enrolled in the same grade level as her age group.
At first, this required us to home school her in the evenings and on weekends. This had the side effect of severely her contact with other kids.
Fortunately for her, a private school was not only willing to enroll her based on her performance, but also grant a scholarship. She is now performing at 3 levels above her age group in most subects.
I completely changed track and got a masters in CS last year at the age of 46 and managed to get a great job doing technical work at a very cool place
You imply you changed fields. If that is the case, then how did your pay compare to that of people with 5 or more years experience in CS related work? I yours was significantly less, then I think that you saw what I will call the "reboot effect". By going back to school, you demonstrated you were truly willing to change fields and not just switching out of need, thus, the hiring manager had less concern that you would be seeking to return to your previous field of work.
I want to work where you do. My company hires management based on management experience, not experience in the field I work in. Then they quit after two months because they don't know what's going on
At least those managers had the grace to leave. At all too many of my clients, such managers don't care that they don't understand what their subordinates do.
I think the difference is that papers and other news outlets used to have very many smaller advertisers so that the risk of offending advertisers was lower - if even several pulled their ads, the publisher still had plenty more happily paying for the ad-space. Thus news was more about providing a quality product to customers.
Now, with so much being concentrated in a small number of conglomerate companies, publishers are being forced to bow to advertiser interests.
The tech part is simple, but you are right about the promotional aspects.
The poster is likely questioning the fee charged to customers as compared to the fee paid to the photographers. Is it really $49.70 per image purchased? I don't know. How did the meta data get into the services' databases? Was it just sucked from the meta data in the images? Are the customers buying images really getting good value for their money? Are the photographers being fairly compensated?
One way or another, practicality forces interdependence. Even a cooperative effort among creators involves ceding some control. I would, however, be better than what we have - as long as the members can keep the association under control.
True, they have. But that is no guarantee they will continue to help the little guys.
Once upon a time, the record companies helped little guys. Now, they have gotten themselves into a position where can collect royalties on tracks from indy artists. True, the indies can claim the royalties due them, but are required to pay $50 (per year, as I recall) to do so. Yes, I know this is nominally to cover costs, but if my tracks do not "earn" enough in statutory royalties, then they get to keep some of my money (either the difference after paying the $50, or all the royalties if I don't pay the $50).
Google's motto is "Don't be evil." It says nothing about being good. Even if they continue to live up to their motto, they can still fail to be good.
Do not get me wrong. While I do, truly, appreciate the help from Amazon and Google, I am quite aware that even they could become part of the problem.
The law says that stored information can only be requested by the police or prosecutors if a serious crime has been committed (or the suspicion of a serious crime).
How is "serious crime" defined? If it is at the discretion of the prosecutor, then IP could be considered sufficiently serious.
The only true way the US government can protect its citizens is to limit our freedom in order to protect our freedom.
Even if we give away all of our freedoms, there is still no guarantee the government can protect us.
Also, if we let the scare mongers persuade us to give away our freedoms, then they win. And there will be every motivation for them to keep making us give them more.
And, about the traffic light cameras, I'm not really concerned about them. They might be an invasion of privacy, they might be not, but with the cameras springing up on the streets and everywhere I already lost that privacy.
The other cameras are owned by many private businesses (and even individuals), so getting their images requires asking those owners. This makes tracking individuals a lot of work.
The redlight cameras, however, are owned by the government, so all the images are immediately available.
It's like the difference between interviewing a dozen of more witnesses verses someone following you. Only with the camera network, the follower can do so from the comfort his desk (with computer assisted tracking).
I don't know why anyone has their money in large banks anymore. Move it to a local credit union and let those large bank fuckers die out.
If you check your routing numbers, you might just find that those local credit unions, and other local banks, are clients of the "big banks". My credit union is/was a client of Wamu.
Well, depending on the day of the week (and weather) during the day, I was either outside for 10 to 12 hours, or in school followed by outside time, then about 3 hours TV in the evening. No asthma.
Though I suppose all that outside activity had something to with with that.
I'd rather see the government actually use OSS and buy support contracts than give a handout.
How many OSS developers benefit from those support contracts? As best I can determine, only the ones lucky enough to be able to do OSS professionally.
Why shouldn't the little guys get a little financial incentive, too?
Also, what actually defines a hobby? (other than the tax authorities definition of "Does it actually make money after a reasonable time?")
Example, I once had a business I ran purely as a hobby. I actually made a lot of money from it. Then I took the money I raised and started a different (though closely related) business. Big mistake. I was much better at running the first business.
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Free Software is only free if you value your time at $0.
I use free software quite effectively in the course of my work. Dia is a great tool for drawing diagrams, while OpenOffice is a fine tool for my needs as a software developer.
(And my clients clients pay me a decent amount of money for the work I do for them)
Unfortunately, he would still be on unofficial sexual offender lists
You're fired. Look up "mens rea". Proof of intent "beyond a reasonable doubt" is required for felony convictions.
Unless you can convince the judge to dismiss based on lack of proof of intent, it won't matter. Juries often don't care about intent.
As I recently discovered, the WPA performance is limited, so only wired and open WiFi will get full performance.
Array slices and mapping types have been around for decades. Not even Perl was the first to provide tham, et alone Python.
Can somebody call hell to see if they can host the next Winter Olympics?
As of this writing (2:34 AM EST, November 11, 2009), Hell is reporting -1.61 C (29.1 F).
(http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/hdfForecast?query=Hell%2C+MI&searchType=WEATHER)
Fortunately. Most people don't define "good user experience" by what will run well on a 32M 486.
While that is too under powered, I think that the web would be much better if websites were designed to run well on very low end PCs.
Years ago, I met a developer from SGI. He told me that he and his follow developers used low end workstations. When they complained that builds ran too slowly, they were given the ability to submit build jobs to a shared, high end server. Though he and his coworkers were disappointed in not having the best workstations, he admitted the apps they created were much better for having been developed on the low end stations.
"scripts" are a vector for MALWARE.
They need not be. Javascript and, especially, Flash, were designed with too much power. ActiveX is even worse and should not be on the web at all. There are some useful things that JS and Flash can add to webpages, but mostly the scripts are being used gratuitously.
I'd say the testing you are proposing is already being done. Schools are required to evaluate the performance of their students.
There are schools that allow smarter children to enroll in subjects at the level they perform at. Then at the end of each term, are tested, and allowed to skip ahead if their performance warrants that.
This works. My daughter is in such a school and doing very well.
Society is best served by allowing the cream to force itself to the top [emphasis mine]
At least in the case of my daughter, this is all I am asking: That she be allowed to move up. Despite the fact that she was demonstrably performing 2 grade level above her age group, the public school requires her to be enrolled in the same grade level as her age group.
At first, this required us to home school her in the evenings and on weekends. This had the side effect of severely her contact with other kids.
Fortunately for her, a private school was not only willing to enroll her based on her performance, but also grant a scholarship. She is now performing at 3 levels above her age group in most subects.
I completely changed track and got a masters in CS last year at the age of 46 and managed to get a great job doing technical work at a very cool place
You imply you changed fields. If that is the case, then how did your pay compare to that of people with 5 or more years experience in CS related work? I yours was significantly less, then I think that you saw what I will call the "reboot effect". By going back to school, you demonstrated you were truly willing to change fields and not just switching out of need, thus, the hiring manager had less concern that you would be seeking to return to your previous field of work.
I want to work where you do. My company hires management based on management experience, not experience in the field I work in. Then they quit after two months because they don't know what's going on
At least those managers had the grace to leave. At all too many of my clients, such managers don't care that they don't understand what their subordinates do.
I think the difference is that papers and other news outlets used to have very many smaller advertisers so that the risk of offending advertisers was lower - if even several pulled their ads, the publisher still had plenty more happily paying for the ad-space. Thus news was more about providing a quality product to customers.
Now, with so much being concentrated in a small number of conglomerate companies, publishers are being forced to bow to advertiser interests.
Poorly run... Let's see - What did they do: They asked the question "How can we make the most profit in the shortest possible time?"
How did AIG (remember them? "Too big to be allowed to fail"?) run its business: "How can we make the most profit in the shortest possible time?"
Pick a currently successful company. What are they doing? Most likely "How can we make the most profit in the shortest possible time?"
The tech part is simple, but you are right about the promotional aspects.
The poster is likely questioning the fee charged to customers as compared to the fee paid to the photographers. Is it really $49.70 per image purchased? I don't know. How did the meta data get into the services' databases? Was it just sucked from the meta data in the images? Are the customers buying images really getting good value for their money? Are the photographers being fairly compensated?
One way or another, practicality forces interdependence. Even a cooperative effort among creators involves ceding some control. I would, however, be better than what we have - as long as the members can keep the association under control.
True, they have. But that is no guarantee they will continue to help the little guys.
Once upon a time, the record companies helped little guys. Now, they have gotten themselves into a position where can collect royalties on tracks from indy artists. True, the indies can claim the royalties due them, but are required to pay $50 (per year, as I recall) to do so. Yes, I know this is nominally to cover costs, but if my tracks do not "earn" enough in statutory royalties, then they get to keep some of my money (either the difference after paying the $50, or all the royalties if I don't pay the $50).
Google's motto is "Don't be evil." It says nothing about being good. Even if they continue to live up to their motto, they can still fail to be good.
Do not get me wrong. While I do, truly, appreciate the help from Amazon and Google, I am quite aware that even they could become part of the problem.
Is something wrong when 100% of the people do it?
Yes. "Everyone else is doing it" does not make a wrong, right.
The law says that stored information can only be requested by the police or prosecutors if a serious crime has been committed (or the suspicion of a serious crime).
How is "serious crime" defined? If it is at the discretion of the prosecutor, then IP could be considered sufficiently serious.
The only true way the US government can protect its citizens is to limit our freedom in order to protect our freedom.
Even if we give away all of our freedoms, there is still no guarantee the government can protect us.
Also, if we let the scare mongers persuade us to give away our freedoms, then they win. And there will be every motivation for them to keep making us give them more.
And, about the traffic light cameras, I'm not really concerned about them. They might be an invasion of privacy, they might be not, but with the cameras springing up on the streets and everywhere I already lost that privacy.
The other cameras are owned by many private businesses (and even individuals), so getting their images requires asking those owners. This makes tracking individuals a lot of work.
The redlight cameras, however, are owned by the government, so all the images are immediately available.
It's like the difference between interviewing a dozen of more witnesses verses someone following you. Only with the camera network, the follower can do so from the comfort his desk (with computer assisted tracking).
I don't know why anyone has their money in large banks anymore. Move it to a local credit union and let those large bank fuckers die out.
If you check your routing numbers, you might just find that those local credit unions, and other local banks, are clients of the "big banks". My credit union is/was a client of Wamu.
Well, depending on the day of the week (and weather) during the day, I was either outside for 10 to 12 hours, or in school followed by outside time, then about 3 hours TV in the evening. No asthma.
Though I suppose all that outside activity had something to with with that.
I'd rather see the government actually use OSS and buy support contracts than give a handout.
How many OSS developers benefit from those support contracts? As best I can determine, only the ones lucky enough to be able to do OSS professionally.
Why shouldn't the little guys get a little financial incentive, too?
Also, what actually defines a hobby? (other than the tax authorities definition of "Does it actually make money after a reasonable time?")
Example, I once had a business I ran purely as a hobby. I actually made a lot of money from it. Then I took the money I raised and started a different (though closely related) business. Big mistake. I was much better at running the first business.
While extensions (or features) like NoScript, FlashBlock, etc are nice, even better would be secure Java, JavaScript, Flash, etc. engines.
Sometimes, a surgical scalpel is better than a chainsaw.