I find it sad that People feel that they aren't able to express their emotions properly without swearing. Swearing was (and still is by most people) considered "inappropriate" language. The fact that people swear a lot these days does not meant that they would do so in court or in a religious building. This indicates that there is something not quite respectful or respectable about swearing. By extension when one swears at work one is indicating a certain lack of respect and respectability. This is certainly true when one swears about (or about the actions) of a co-worker with whom one is offended/annoyed. One is clearly showing a lack of respect for that person. I would argue that the degradation of respect for co-workers caused by swearing in these cases FAR outways any catharatic benefit of swearing. I realize that the study was specifically referred to swearing done in non-negative fashion, but the lack of respect is still there, and causes other more negative responses to be more likely.
Really I think that the greater problem is with mass media grabbing a few points and stating them as 'truths'. Alot of the bad press that scientific studies have nowadays is from some major new organization blowing something out of proportion, having everyone accept that as 'truth', and then discovering a few years later that it was wrong/inaccurate/whatever.
On a side note I agree with the previous poster that as far as getting the information across most people are not concerned with the details so much as the general idea. If then, in your article, you provide a sense of how 'certain' the information is most people will pick up on that as well. You can then get the idea across, as well as an impression of how many assumptions have been made or how fragile the results are. To most people that is better than a lot of detail that is out of context.
The fact is that "life on the web" is controlled and monitored anyway by various government organizations. And while we all may not like that the current trend is toward more control not less. I don't think this is any different than a school punishing a child for any other activity done outside of school time (of which there have been a few instances lately). The only arguable difference is that this could be said to affect the kids in schools as well via mobile devices.
Really there are two types of machines that corporations use - employee PCs and servers. These have different requirements. While a nag screen may
work on employee PCs it definitely won't work on servers that need to be able to reboot by themselves (and if the nag screen does not halt booting of the program than you have not accomplished anything as in many cases no-one will see it). In the same way you *MAY* get away with phone home software on a PC, but it definitely would not work on a server - especially one that may not have any direct internet access.
I would agree with previous posters that a one time installation code would be acceptable, and even perhaps one that expires over time (though that would certainly be annoying) as long as the process to upgrade is easily scriptable.
For employee PCs you might be able to get away with a call-in-on-boot type scheme as long as it uses standard protocols like http or ftp. But I would certainly understand people balking at this sort of thing.
It depends on where your software is intended to be installed.
I would instead worry more about the encrypting all that security data while in network transit. (Sorry, can't recall if that is a firm requirement of PCIDSS 1.1 or not). Unfortunately, this makes use of syslog a less trivial solution. Authenticity is also an issue to be concerned with. Using an ssh tunnel you could get both easily.
Slashdot Mirror
If we add this to the technology that can ID a person by the way they walk as seen here we wind up with no added privacy at all.
Despair.com (the people who supposedly TM'ed the frownie) is also a funny site though they sell real products. The frownie trademark is a joke.
I find it sad that People feel that they aren't able to express their emotions properly without swearing. Swearing was (and still is by most people) considered "inappropriate" language. The fact that people swear a lot these days does not meant that they would do so in court or in a religious building. This indicates that there is something not quite respectful or respectable about swearing. By extension when one swears at work one is indicating a certain lack of respect and respectability. This is certainly true when one swears about (or about the actions) of a co-worker with whom one is offended/annoyed. One is clearly showing a lack of respect for that person. I would argue that the degradation of respect for co-workers caused by swearing in these cases FAR outways any catharatic benefit of swearing. I realize that the study was specifically referred to swearing done in non-negative fashion, but the lack of respect is still there, and causes other more negative responses to be more likely.
Really I think that the greater problem is with mass media grabbing a few points and stating them as 'truths'. Alot of the bad press that scientific studies have nowadays is from some major new organization blowing something out of proportion, having everyone accept that as 'truth', and then discovering a few years later that it was wrong/inaccurate/whatever. On a side note I agree with the previous poster that as far as getting the information across most people are not concerned with the details so much as the general idea. If then, in your article, you provide a sense of how 'certain' the information is most people will pick up on that as well. You can then get the idea across, as well as an impression of how many assumptions have been made or how fragile the results are. To most people that is better than a lot of detail that is out of context.
The fact is that "life on the web" is controlled and monitored anyway by various government organizations. And while we all may not like that the current trend is toward more control not less. I don't think this is any different than a school punishing a child for any other activity done outside of school time (of which there have been a few instances lately). The only arguable difference is that this could be said to affect the kids in schools as well via mobile devices.
work on employee PCs it definitely won't work on servers that need to be able to reboot by themselves (and if the nag screen does not halt booting of the program than you have not accomplished anything as in many cases no-one will see it). In the same way you *MAY* get away with phone home software on a PC, but it definitely would not work on a server - especially one that may not have any direct internet access.
I would agree with previous posters that a one time installation code would be acceptable, and even perhaps one that expires over time (though that would certainly be annoying) as long as the process to upgrade is easily scriptable.
For employee PCs you might be able to get away with a call-in-on-boot type scheme as long as it uses standard protocols like http or ftp. But I would certainly understand people balking at this sort of thing.
It depends on where your software is intended to be installed.