Have you tried the good ol' 'quick and dirty bash script'? I haven't written it up, because I haven't run into a significant problem yet, but it doesn't seem like it'd be anything hard.
This is my only complaint with my experience as a EE undergrad (actually ECE, at UT-Austin), high-school through the first couple of semesters of undergrad I was making high grades, and I had gotten accustomed to it. If you were learning and staying on top of things, you had an A or B, and knew were you stood. As it is now in the upper-level courses, you work your ass off for what is typically known as failing grades (50s and 60s on midterms, etc) and feel miserable the entire semester, until you finally get your grade report and realize you have an A or B. Going through semester after semester feeling like you're constantly on the edge of failing, with no hint of support from professors or other students (read: the competition) is torture.
There's always this office-hours dialog:
"I got a ___ on the midterm. Where do I stand?"
"I won't know until all of the semester grades are in. I don't want to tell you something that will end up being false."
"All I need is some sort of indication."
"As of right now, the class average is a ___."
That's it. If you ask how they plan on curving, its rarely something standard, if they know at all. Usually they just look at gaps. The first chunk of grades gets an A. The second is a B. And so on. There's no sense of solid ground. Your knowledge and its value is all relative to the intelligence of the rest of the class.
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but can't they design the classes and exams in such a way that if you understand the material, you score in the traditional A or B range?
Also interesting to note in the PDF: on page one, Yahoo and MSN are listed as intergrated partners.
When google was asked for comment, their response was:
"Did you mean: integrated"
It's kind of like burning your hand lighting a cigarette one day, and then the next day having it crushed under a giant boulder. You suddenly realize that that little burn didn't really bother you that much...
vista will do everything they want, since what they want is a pc that will browse the web and play games. XP does this too, but the security model in XP is a disaster, Vista at least improves on it a bit. as I'm sure it is with most/.ers, I've had to help all sorts of friends, friends of friends, parents, and friends' parents with their various computer problems. One of the things that has become very clear over the last few months is that I can only get their computers to "do everything they want" by changing a lot of things that the average user doesn't really know how to do. It's really frustrating to see someone with a brand-new, right out of the box Vista machine not be able to load their fantasy football page with cable internet without it taking dial-up speeds.
Also, even if they only want to use their machine for menial tasks, Vista still asks them to approve or deny every little action.
I'll downgrade to XP in the same way I'll "downgrade" to a first-class airline ticket or a supersized meal. But then again, it sounds like you're a fan of bloat, so Vista might be the way to go.
A lot of broadcast corps have been offering pretty decent quality shows on their site. My wife and I watched all of Heroes s1 online, several episodes of Fox's Stand-Off, Every episode of The Black Donneley's, and my wife watched the whole first season of Ugly Betty. I believe that covers three networks.
It's a really nice free thing they offer, and there are fewer commercial interruptions than if you watched it broadcast. With only a VGA cable, I hooked up my Dell laptop to my Samsung TV, and watched the whole thing on a 32" TV instead of a 15" monitor. And please, if you've never utilized the service, don't knock the quality off-hand, because it's actually pretty good.
I'm all for fighting the man and what-not, but let's at least be intelligent enough to give credit where credit is due.
I am fairly good with accents and to me, the southern drawl is not an issue. However, I know several people who DO have a problem with understanding various accents within the US including the southern drawl, the NY talk and ebonics. There is nothing about the indian accent that is unintelligible either.
The phonetic differences between a southern and NY accent are slight, as they are both rooted in the same primary language. The phonetic attributes of an Indian accent are a bit more difficult for an American to understand, based on fundamental differences in the languages. Different languages use different vowel sets, inflection, and pitch. For a scientific breakdown, see the IPA consonant charts for languages:
English Hindi
Then I guess it is also common sense to assume that if the hiring pool for a hospital is in a nation where the majority of citizens don't have degrees in medicine, then the majority of hires will have limited medical skills?
That's comparing apples and oranges. Doctors require formal training in the field of medicine. It is against the law to practice medicine without a license. Therefore, the hiring pool for a hospital is a subset of said nation, specifically the subset of citizens that have medical degrees. No formal training is legally mandated in order to work in a call center.
Additionally, whether you learn a language as a first language or a second language is irrelevant to your skills in that language. I am better at understanding and communicating in my fifth language (Hindi) than several native speakers of the same due to better communication skills. When you learn a language is not so important as linguistic and communicative abilities.
There's a prevalent theory in linguistics that posits a critical-period during youth for language-acquisition. The Nicaraguan Sign-Language case-study is the strongest evidence as to date. link
Point is that the difference between a NY accent and the southern drawl (which I semi-consciously find to be a mark of politeness) is no different from the differences between a Texan and a well educated Indian.
This may be true, and may not. Let's assume it is. It is safe to assume that since call-centers are outsourced to reduce operating costs, the companies who run the call-centers are not going to spend top-dollar on the most educated employees. This also drives to your original points about how the implementation of call-centers is flawed, and that outsourced call-centers would be more efficient if better equipment and smarter workers were hired, etc. The implementation stands as it is because costumer service does not turn a profit, therefore companies skimp on cost on the implementation. If they were willing to spend money on better equipment etc, then they wouldn't have even outsourced in the first place.
My upbringing was not especially fortunate. My parents spoke 3 languages at home and they just picked one to teach me. I picked up the other two as well and was very comfortable using them. I am by no means an exception like I said, a good portion of India's urban population have kids speaking english by the time the kids are in kindergarten. Regardless, it doesn't matter as long as peolpe (sic) like me DO exist and CAN be hired as opposed to dimwits who can't communicate.
Back to the age of learning point, you, and the children you mention, speak English so well because you learned it while so young. However, I would assume that someone like yourself would cost too much to hire. If I called customer support and was connected with someone of your intellect, and apparent English skills, I would be delighted.
I do happen to be from Texas. There's nothing about a southern drawl that is unintelligible.
In all of the times I've called customer support (both domestic centers and outsourced) I've never had anyone not understand what I was saying. I've had more difficulty understanding them.
And while it's great for you that you happened to learn English as your first language, that doesn't automatically mean that we can assume the entire nation of India speaks perfectly fluent English. It's only common sense to assume that if the hiring pool is in a nation where the majority of citizens don't learn English as their first language, then the majority of hires will speak limited English.
You seem to have an acute case of closed-mindedness. It was ignorant of you to make such a statement about the fine people of Texas, and it was also ignorant of you to assume that you, with your fortunate upbringing, represent the whole, or even the majority of citizens of "ESL" nations.
Interesting though, that smoking is being researched as a fast and effective delivery method for painkillers.
(link)
The Palo Alto, California-based company is developing drugs that can be "smoked," and, like nicotine in cigarettes, pass through the lungs and into the bloodstream almost instantly.
Investors like the idea.
That's What I'm saying. Sorry I didn't spell it out so good.
Sometimes people have to pay for things that may not benefit them directly in order to provide a necessary infrastructure that serves the needs of the populace.
So, to tie it all together, taxes geared towards funding things like BBC online, or PBS online here, or whatever, may not benefit people who don't have computers, or can't decode the content, or whatever. But they would serve for the good of the society in general. Much like homeowners pay for public education that may not directly help them or their posterity, but that does provide for the greater good.
BBC's choice of format, however, is still unfortunate.
Paying taxes for something you don't/can't actually use is nothing new. Homeowners here in Texas pay for public schools, whether or not they have children. And things of that nature are pretty similar across the board.
I believe we're invoking the age-old D-The-Ends-Justify-The-Means argument, which of course means we're destined to spiral way off-topic.
So let's to it.
IMHO, the ends don't always justify the means. I lost a lot of respect for Novell, and for Xandros, when they made deals with Microsoft. I feel that, no matter what good could be gained from it, that these things upheld the philosophical underpinnings of the OSS community. Even if GPLv3 gets twisted in such a way that MS gets bent over a barrel and has to release their code, that won't be good. It will have been sneaky and underhanded, and we would be just as bad as them.
In much the same way, if Google resorts to the same power-brokering that Microsoft does, they will be doing evil. Doing evil is what makes one be evil. (Sorry for getting it wrong earlier, btw)
This could quickly become a PR nightmare for Google if they get painted in the wrong light, and for something that I see as trivial. Google is one of those companies, like Apple, where looking cool is important to their image, and their market base. Why risk it?
Google went over the heads of justice department and state regulators to appeal directly to a federal judge to impose greater restrictions on the software company.
Does skipping steps in the legal process, (steps that the average small company would have to take) count as doing no evil?
Please, kind sir, point me in the direction of a clear and distinct definition of what DRM is, because from what I can tell, it's quite a nebulous phrase. Take a look.
And no, I don't enjoy the -1s. I feel like it is undeserved. If everyone here disagrees with what I have to say, that's fine. That doesn't make me a troll. I'm not posting goatce clones. I'm not rambling about the fascist government's attempts to impregnate our brains with computer chips. I'm engaging in an intelligent conversation with other people who happen to have a background in technology. From what I can tell, some people agree with me. They didn't happen to have mod points at the time. Whoopee.
But as I said before, you guys are almost constantly missing the forest for the trees.
Back to the topic though. I contend that "watermarking" is in fact DRM. Digital Rights Management is not about managing the consumer's rights, or curbing them, it's about managing the rights of the artists and the record companies that represent them.
Therefore, to all of the responders who claim it's not DRM because it doesn't restrict the rights of the user, you're an idiot.
It is not unreasonable to claim that a tracking system attached to a track is an attempt to MANAGE the RIGHTS of said DIGITAL content. Pretty simple.
Also, I couldn't care less what the impelmentation is. Ok, so it's a text file. It's easy to edit and delete. If the watermark is seen as DRM by a judge (which, following the previous line of reason, it wouldn't be that far-fetched) and they can prove that a consumer deleted or altered said watermark then said consumer would be in violation of the DMCA for circumventing or attempting to circumvent a copyright protection scheme.
So let me make my position very clear and simple, so that all of the wonderful slashdotters don't (once again) miss the forest for the trees. I can physically go to a store, buy a CD, rip the songs to my hard-drive, and that's it. Content, in any format I please, that is compatible with any device I choose. (For example, I don't buy songs on iTunes because I can't chop them up with Audacity and make ringtones out of them.) There are no watermarks. There is no "metadata" for me to have to even think about editing or deleting. Until the online multimedia vendors provide the exact same experience for the price, I will continue to buy CDs and rip them.
One more thing, if someone steals my CD collection, but I still have the jewel cases, insurance covers it. Trust me, it happened to me. If someone steals my harddrive, iTunes makes me buy the tracks all over again. You have to have the actual file on hand, and if you lose it, too bad.
If they want my business, they have to earn it. You can't just promise DRM-free tracks and then "attach metadata" to them with my information on it. That's crap. Sorry I'm a troll for thinking that's crap. But you're dumb if you don't think it's crap. If Amazon ends up offering tracks that are identical to tracks I would acquire from ripping CDs, then they will have won my dollars.
This has been a very impressive PR stunt. Let's claim to be DRM free and then we're the heroes who stand up for the little guy, the customer.
Let's not forget, they still encode e-mail addresses and names in these 'DRM free' tracks. I still consider that DRM.
If we're gonna love someone for providing DRM free tracks, remember Amazon is providing actual unencoded MP3s.
Something I don't understand is why firewalls at public schools are almost always on a blacklist system instead of a whitelist. There is no way even the most skilled IT professionals can block everything inappropriate, the internet grows too fast. But what they can do is allow sites that are explicitly appropriate. Then things aren't so rushed when it comes to adding to the list.
Let's compare:
"Oh no, the kids found a way to access porn and they're doing it a rate of 250 hits a day! Fix it now! Oh no! Popups! Viruses! Lawsuits!!!!! Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!"
vs
"Hey, there's this site that has some useful stuff that I wanted to show my students. Could you verify it and put it on the list?"
I know, it violates the whole/. ethic of not censoring the internet ever. But it covers everyone's asses. It prevents the all-out ban of the internet in schools. And hey, maybe some really sharp geeks out there will have to develop some real hacking skills.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you tried the good ol' 'quick and dirty bash script'? I haven't written it up, because I haven't run into a significant problem yet, but it doesn't seem like it'd be anything hard.
Might I recommend passing the -I option? I have rm aliased to 'rm -I' on my work machine.
This is my only complaint with my experience as a EE undergrad (actually ECE, at UT-Austin), high-school through the first couple of semesters of undergrad I was making high grades, and I had gotten accustomed to it. If you were learning and staying on top of things, you had an A or B, and knew were you stood. As it is now in the upper-level courses, you work your ass off for what is typically known as failing grades (50s and 60s on midterms, etc) and feel miserable the entire semester, until you finally get your grade report and realize you have an A or B. Going through semester after semester feeling like you're constantly on the edge of failing, with no hint of support from professors or other students (read: the competition) is torture. There's always this office-hours dialog: "I got a ___ on the midterm. Where do I stand?" "I won't know until all of the semester grades are in. I don't want to tell you something that will end up being false." "All I need is some sort of indication." "As of right now, the class average is a ___." That's it. If you ask how they plan on curving, its rarely something standard, if they know at all. Usually they just look at gaps. The first chunk of grades gets an A. The second is a B. And so on. There's no sense of solid ground. Your knowledge and its value is all relative to the intelligence of the rest of the class. Maybe I'm just ignorant, but can't they design the classes and exams in such a way that if you understand the material, you score in the traditional A or B range?
Also interesting to note in the PDF: on page one, Yahoo and MSN are listed as intergrated partners.
When google was asked for comment, their response was:
"Did you mean: integrated"
It's about damn time all those techno-nerds did somethin' worthwhile.
It's kind of like burning your hand lighting a cigarette one day, and then the next day having it crushed under a giant boulder. You suddenly realize that that little burn didn't really bother you that much...
I found this really funny, not off-topic at all. If only I had some meta-moderation points left...
A lot of broadcast corps have been offering pretty decent quality shows on their site. My wife and I watched all of Heroes s1 online, several episodes of Fox's Stand-Off, Every episode of The Black Donneley's, and my wife watched the whole first season of Ugly Betty. I believe that covers three networks. It's a really nice free thing they offer, and there are fewer commercial interruptions than if you watched it broadcast. With only a VGA cable, I hooked up my Dell laptop to my Samsung TV, and watched the whole thing on a 32" TV instead of a 15" monitor. And please, if you've never utilized the service, don't knock the quality off-hand, because it's actually pretty good. I'm all for fighting the man and what-not, but let's at least be intelligent enough to give credit where credit is due.
flamebait.
The phonetic differences between a southern and NY accent are slight, as they are both rooted in the same primary language. The phonetic attributes of an Indian accent are a bit more difficult for an American to understand, based on fundamental differences in the languages. Different languages use different vowel sets, inflection, and pitch. For a scientific breakdown, see the IPA consonant charts for languages:
English
Hindi
Then I guess it is also common sense to assume that if the hiring pool for a hospital is in a nation where the majority of citizens don't have degrees in medicine, then the majority of hires will have limited medical skills?
That's comparing apples and oranges. Doctors require formal training in the field of medicine. It is against the law to practice medicine without a license. Therefore, the hiring pool for a hospital is a subset of said nation, specifically the subset of citizens that have medical degrees. No formal training is legally mandated in order to work in a call center.
Additionally, whether you learn a language as a first language or a second language is irrelevant to your skills in that language. I am better at understanding and communicating in my fifth language (Hindi) than several native speakers of the same due to better communication skills. When you learn a language is not so important as linguistic and communicative abilities.
There's a prevalent theory in linguistics that posits a critical-period during youth for language-acquisition. The Nicaraguan Sign-Language case-study is the strongest evidence as to date. link
Point is that the difference between a NY accent and the southern drawl (which I semi-consciously find to be a mark of politeness) is no different from the differences between a Texan and a well educated Indian.
This may be true, and may not. Let's assume it is. It is safe to assume that since call-centers are outsourced to reduce operating costs, the companies who run the call-centers are not going to spend top-dollar on the most educated employees. This also drives to your original points about how the implementation of call-centers is flawed, and that outsourced call-centers would be more efficient if better equipment and smarter workers were hired, etc. The implementation stands as it is because costumer service does not turn a profit, therefore companies skimp on cost on the implementation. If they were willing to spend money on better equipment etc, then they wouldn't have even outsourced in the first place.
My upbringing was not especially fortunate. My parents spoke 3 languages at home and they just picked one to teach me. I picked up the other two as well and was very comfortable using them. I am by no means an exception like I said, a good portion of India's urban population have kids speaking english by the time the kids are in kindergarten. Regardless, it doesn't matter as long as peolpe (sic) like me DO exist and CAN be hired as opposed to dimwits who can't communicate.
Back to the age of learning point, you, and the children you mention, speak English so well because you learned it while so young. However, I would assume that someone like yourself would cost too much to hire. If I called customer support and was connected with someone of your intellect, and apparent English skills, I would be delighted.
I do happen to be from Texas. There's nothing about a southern drawl that is unintelligible.
In all of the times I've called customer support (both domestic centers and outsourced) I've never had anyone not understand what I was saying. I've had more difficulty understanding them.
And while it's great for you that you happened to learn English as your first language, that doesn't automatically mean that we can assume the entire nation of India speaks perfectly fluent English. It's only common sense to assume that if the hiring pool is in a nation where the majority of citizens don't learn English as their first language, then the majority of hires will speak limited English.
You seem to have an acute case of closed-mindedness. It was ignorant of you to make such a statement about the fine people of Texas, and it was also ignorant of you to assume that you, with your fortunate upbringing, represent the whole, or even the majority of citizens of "ESL" nations.
If more people are dumb, it makes us smart people worth more. It's economically viable for us to invest in these movie studios.
(link)
The Palo Alto, California-based company is developing drugs that can be "smoked," and, like nicotine in cigarettes, pass through the lungs and into the bloodstream almost instantly. Investors like the idea.
That's What I'm saying. Sorry I didn't spell it out so good.
Sometimes people have to pay for things that may not benefit them directly in order to provide a necessary infrastructure that serves the needs of the populace.
So, to tie it all together, taxes geared towards funding things like BBC online, or PBS online here, or whatever, may not benefit people who don't have computers, or can't decode the content, or whatever. But they would serve for the good of the society in general. Much like homeowners pay for public education that may not directly help them or their posterity, but that does provide for the greater good.
BBC's choice of format, however, is still unfortunate.
Sorry for the mis-understanding.
Paying taxes for something you don't/can't actually use is nothing new. Homeowners here in Texas pay for public schools, whether or not they have children. And things of that nature are pretty similar across the board.
I believe we're invoking the age-old D-The-Ends-Justify-The-Means argument, which of course means we're destined to spiral way off-topic.
So let's to it.
IMHO, the ends don't always justify the means. I lost a lot of respect for Novell, and for Xandros, when they made deals with Microsoft. I feel that, no matter what good could be gained from it, that these things upheld the philosophical underpinnings of the OSS community. Even if GPLv3 gets twisted in such a way that MS gets bent over a barrel and has to release their code, that won't be good. It will have been sneaky and underhanded, and we would be just as bad as them.
In much the same way, if Google resorts to the same power-brokering that Microsoft does, they will be doing evil. Doing evil is what makes one be evil. (Sorry for getting it wrong earlier, btw)
This could quickly become a PR nightmare for Google if they get painted in the wrong light, and for something that I see as trivial. Google is one of those companies, like Apple, where looking cool is important to their image, and their market base. Why risk it?
Google went over the heads of justice department and state regulators to appeal directly to a federal judge to impose greater restrictions on the software company.
Does skipping steps in the legal process, (steps that the average small company would have to take) count as doing no evil?
With Google's wide array of various products/services, I seriously doubt this is going to turn them into victims.
Please, kind sir, point me in the direction of a clear and distinct definition of what DRM is, because from what I can tell, it's quite a nebulous phrase. Take a look.
And no, I don't enjoy the -1s. I feel like it is undeserved. If everyone here disagrees with what I have to say, that's fine. That doesn't make me a troll. I'm not posting goatce clones. I'm not rambling about the fascist government's attempts to impregnate our brains with computer chips. I'm engaging in an intelligent conversation with other people who happen to have a background in technology. From what I can tell, some people agree with me. They didn't happen to have mod points at the time. Whoopee.
But as I said before, you guys are almost constantly missing the forest for the trees.
Seriously, stop being so elitist, prick.
So I'm a troll now, awesome.
Back to the topic though. I contend that "watermarking" is in fact DRM. Digital Rights Management is not about managing the consumer's rights, or curbing them, it's about managing the rights of the artists and the record companies that represent them.
Therefore, to all of the responders who claim it's not DRM because it doesn't restrict the rights of the user, you're an idiot.
It is not unreasonable to claim that a tracking system attached to a track is an attempt to MANAGE the RIGHTS of said DIGITAL content. Pretty simple.
Also, I couldn't care less what the impelmentation is. Ok, so it's a text file. It's easy to edit and delete. If the watermark is seen as DRM by a judge (which, following the previous line of reason, it wouldn't be that far-fetched) and they can prove that a consumer deleted or altered said watermark then said consumer would be in violation of the DMCA for circumventing or attempting to circumvent a copyright protection scheme.
So let me make my position very clear and simple, so that all of the wonderful slashdotters don't (once again) miss the forest for the trees. I can physically go to a store, buy a CD, rip the songs to my hard-drive, and that's it. Content, in any format I please, that is compatible with any device I choose. (For example, I don't buy songs on iTunes because I can't chop them up with Audacity and make ringtones out of them.) There are no watermarks. There is no "metadata" for me to have to even think about editing or deleting. Until the online multimedia vendors provide the exact same experience for the price, I will continue to buy CDs and rip them.
One more thing, if someone steals my CD collection, but I still have the jewel cases, insurance covers it. Trust me, it happened to me. If someone steals my harddrive, iTunes makes me buy the tracks all over again. You have to have the actual file on hand, and if you lose it, too bad.
If they want my business, they have to earn it. You can't just promise DRM-free tracks and then "attach metadata" to them with my information on it. That's crap. Sorry I'm a troll for thinking that's crap. But you're dumb if you don't think it's crap. If Amazon ends up offering tracks that are identical to tracks I would acquire from ripping CDs, then they will have won my dollars.
QED, bitches.
This has been a very impressive PR stunt. Let's claim to be DRM free and then we're the heroes who stand up for the little guy, the customer. Let's not forget, they still encode e-mail addresses and names in these 'DRM free' tracks. I still consider that DRM. If we're gonna love someone for providing DRM free tracks, remember Amazon is providing actual unencoded MP3s.
Ummm...Surface.
Something I don't understand is why firewalls at public schools are almost always on a blacklist system instead of a whitelist. There is no way even the most skilled IT professionals can block everything inappropriate, the internet grows too fast. But what they can do is allow sites that are explicitly appropriate. Then things aren't so rushed when it comes to adding to the list.
/. ethic of not censoring the internet ever. But it covers everyone's asses. It prevents the all-out ban of the internet in schools. And hey, maybe some really sharp geeks out there will have to develop some real hacking skills.
Let's compare: "Oh no, the kids found a way to access porn and they're doing it a rate of 250 hits a day! Fix it now! Oh no! Popups! Viruses! Lawsuits!!!!! Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!"
vs
"Hey, there's this site that has some useful stuff that I wanted to show my students. Could you verify it and put it on the list?"
I know, it violates the whole