Lying about an affair? I don't care. Paying an underage girl for sex? That's different. That's the allegation in Italy. There are even media reports that the Mafia has compromising pictures of Berlusconi. Also, Clinton didn't run around trying to act like a paragon of virtue with a lot of support from religious conservatives.
To an outside observer, it seems that Berlusconi has stayed in politics for one primary reason - to make sure that he can keep changing laws every time there's an attempt to prosecute him for some misdeed. With that tactic, he's rendered the judiciary largely irrelevant. He owns a vast media empire, and hasn't been forced to keep his media holdings at arm's length while in office, so he's used that to prop up his political empire. The Italian Parliament doesn't seem to be able to deal with the issue. The disconnect between those in power and a good chunk of the population is very high, according to some recent news reports.
Given his personal behavior, you have to wonder just how corrupt his government actually is, and who may have been in a position to blackmail him for favors over the last twenty years. If he'd managed to avoid sexual misconduct that seemed deplorable to his core supporters, he wouldn't be in trouble now.
If Italy was in another part of the world, there would probably be a lot of questions about how democratic it actually is.
Yeah, that's great. Too bad most of the Tea Party supporters seem to be oblivious or unconcerned that a ton of the money flowing into the "movement" is actually coming from some wealthy quarters (Koch Brothers, anyone?). They have no interest in you, your common cause, or any ideology. I'd question whether or not they even really care about the country or society. Folks like that just want to stay on top. They're using the Tea Party to make sure they're unregulated - so they can do whatever they want to their workers, pollute, lower their own taxes, move money around, and make sure that anything they need - infrastructure, pollution cleanup, whatever, are being paid for by the rest of us.
Your genuine dissatisfaction with how things are today is being used by the very people who have caused the situation to line their own pockets. Americans actually think that income is more evenly distributed than it actually is in this country today, and think it should be even more evenly distributed than they think it is. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201008238184.htm
Enjoy serfdom. Because to a large part of that that upper 1%, that's all most Americans will ever be.
For larger companies and not-for-profits (more than 10 computers), you're supposed to license Microsoft Forefront. For many, that means adding it to your corporate or campus license agreement. It's a pretty good deal.
Want to get the TSA screeners begging to get the policy changed? Have as many people as possible ask for the pat down and act like they're enjoying it when the agent gets to the "right spots". Might as well make them as uncomfortable as they're making everyone else. Just don't move much or do anything to prevent the pat-down.Nothing wrong with a few involuntary sounds, right?
Years ago (must have been 1997 or so), right before Visual Explanations was published, if I remember correctly (you went, got the first two books, and received Visual Explanations later).
It was terrific. And he had a few items from his library on hand to use as examples, which was pretty cool. One of the really great things about the course was his ability to put things in context and provide a vast array of examples of all different sorts.
In the end, they'll agree to share information. Odds are, Google is going to have to pay Facebook or give them a cut of ad revenue from ads targeted using the social networking information gained from Facebook. Can't say I have a problem with Facebook wanting cash, assuming that's part of the issue - they have information Google wants, Google ought to pay for the privilege. They already make enough money off serving ads while indexing other people's websites. At least the Facebook users know they're posting or uploading information to Facebook.
The question about how Facebook users feel about such a deal is a different issue - and one they should be concerned about. Given the option. I'd block Google from seeing details on Facebook and vice-versa.
Basically, they need the category data - book / clothing / housewares / etc. That allows them to figure out what is taxable and what isn't. For instance, in NJ, groceries and clothing are not taxed, but household items, books, etc. are. So you go to the grocery store, and the 5 cases of Coke aren't taxed, but toilet paper and shampoo are. Alcohol is taxed twice - there's an alcohol tax built into the price, and a sales tax on the total (that changed about 10-12 years ago, it used to just be the alcohol tax, no sales tax). Given the decline in state sales/use tax revenue (whether or not you agree with the tax model), combined with the growth of things like Amazon, it's hard not to think that we need a better system for taxes to be collected. The voluntary reporting model doesn't work, it needs to be calculated by the seller (and before anyone claims Amazon can't do that, LL Bean, Barnes and Noble, etc. all manage to do it. Clearly you can buy sales tax data or have a service that does it).
They're wondering why Google should generate additional revenue off their viewers without their getting a cut. As long as Google is generating huge profits, but generating almost no content themselves, that's a fair question. And I'm sure there's some way Google is making money off this. Google needs to figure out how to be a "good parasite" in a number of areas. Otherwise, they're going to find less and less useful content for them to use to shovel ads at users.
There's also the point that the networks don't "own" all the shows. In some cases, an independent company produces them. And they may have something to say about this. The networks also have to worry about angering local affiliates. And before you say you don't need them, it's not like Google is covering local news. And that does matter. With the decline of local media we're probably going to enter a new golden age of corruption at the local level. Google's not helping anyone out there - "Google News" doesn't work if there's nothing for it to feed off of.
This isn't the "big guy" vs. the "little guy". Google seems to pretend that inconvenient laws, contracts and IP rights don't matter (Google Books, anyone?), not because they believe information ought to be free, but because they're not in favor of anything that interferes with their desired business model. You may think copyright needs a big overhaul, fine. But understand that any common ground you have with Google on this issue is a marriage of convenience.
who happens to use Cablevision as an ISP you get screwed. As News Corp. has been pushing DirecTV as an alternative to Cablevision for Fox programming, that's probably not a can of worms they really wanted to open. Most of the DirecTV customers I know in the northern NJ area are using Cablevision as an ISP.
The really lame part of this is how much of an increase News Corp is asking for - they currently get $22 per subscriber per year, they're looking for $44. The FCC really, really should be able to take this sort of thing into account when local affiliate broadcasting licenses come up for renewal.
And if VW sold cars like the Polo in the US, there'd be even less reason. With the BlueMotion 1.2 TDI 75PS diesel engine (manual transmission), it gets 67.3 mpg city and 91.1 mpg highway. They've got some standard gasoline engines that get over 40 mpg city and 62 mpg highway. There's a hell of a lot that can be done without resorting to hybrids, and it seems (to me) insane to be using all this lithium to get barely better gas mileage than you can get with a really good diesel engine. The "pure" electric car will never take off outside of US cities and dense suburbs until the range gets to 400 miles or more.
I know several other teachers, I have three school-aged kids. And from what I can see, I don't see the technology that's employed helping, nor do I see any chance that it's going to get better. The bigger thing? They need to stop buying these expensive curriculum products - which essentially have no research backing them. Then they change how they teach math, reading, etc. every few years when they don't see big improvements. Lack of consistency is probably as big a problem as everything else.
Oh, and have society try to deal with poverty, nutrition, crime and environmental lead exposure instead of it making the schools deal with it on their own. That would actually help.
In 1960 they weren't getting paid extraordinary sums. Well, but no extraordinary. In 2002 dollars, it would be equivalent to $100,000 a year on average, with a team franchise value of a bit under $34 million, again, in 2002 adjusted dollars.
In 2001, the average was over $2 million, and the average franchise value was about $289 million.
Seriously, that's the least of it. Eric Schmidt is now regularly making grand, dystopian predictions as if his vision of the future is all we deserve. Add a big, swivel chair and a Persian cat and he'd come off like a Bond villain. Because remember, the little people don't deserve the privacy that HE deserves. After all, our privacy gets in the way of his profits. As do some laws. So we'd better change those to his liking in a hurry!
Huh? eDirectory and Identity Manager are major products in that space. It's the preferred IDM solution for SAP, for example. Zenworks (especially with the endpoint security add-ons) has been doing well, and there are still a lot of GroupWise customers (running it on Linux, even). Novell Access Manager (take a look at what it does) is also a really terrific product in its arena as well.
If you declare a revolution and talk about how everything will change, you can get published. Present at conferences. Invited to speak. And maybe even get paid for it, or else get new job offers or consulting gigs.
And everyone is so desperate to improve education that they'll grasp at anything to prove to the public that they're making big strides in changing education, even if there's NO PROOF of any change in educational income. It's snake oil.
The expensive, commercial, packaged curriculum products have the same problem. There's little evidence to back up one versus the other, and few studies showing any educational benefit. But the districts, desperate to fend of being attacked for doing nothing, spend limited educational dollars on them.
My prediction? Perversely, schools will spend more money on technology and materials as their funding is squeezed and test scores count more and more. After a couple of years of declining scores, they'll abandon whatever the current efforts are and spend a ton on new ones. And it'll just keep going.
Seriously, given that the actual market numbers (Apple is selling more machines, but so is everyone else, so Apple is still less than 10%), and how much of their revenue is actually coming from iPhone / iPod type devices (we'll see how the iPad does), how long are they going to bother with desktops and notebooks?
The trend at Apple has been for the computers to be account for a smaller percentage of revenue in recent years. If that continues, the major shareholders will eventually wonder why R&D, manufacturing and support dollars are being spent on products that are no longer central to the company's revenue. Again, IF. Jobs' departure will speed up the shareholder pressure. It's likely to make the share price drop significantly, and without him there, the major shareholders will have more influence on the board. And Jobs himself has really been making comments about "traditional" computers in general in a way that makes me think that he's not overly interested in them as products any longer.
Back in the day, my University had the source code for VAX/VMS 4.2 or so on microfiche. Endless lines of Macro-32 and BLISS. We had some of the the AT&T Unix materials as well. It wasn't that difficult to arrange, if you were a higher ed institution or a customer of a certain size.
Yup - the value of the information is that 1) you see ads and 2) Google can figure out how to better stuff ads in your face based on what you're searching for. It's like ad-funded television - the product isn't the shows, it's the commercials. The shows are just a way of getting you to watch the commercials.
"Freedom from censorship" is "freedom of expression". "Freedom from discrimination" is "equal rights under the law". "Freedom from murder" - well, again, since you presumably have a right to life and liberty, yes, murdering you abridges that right. But it's not a "freedom from".
Rights are better stated in the affirmative. If you talk about all the things you should be protected against (since that's somewhat limitless), it's difficult to enumerate all of them. Stating an affirmative right ("freedom of expression" or "freedom of religion") makes it clear that there are few, if any exceptions, unless it tramples on someone else's affirmatively stated rights.
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Lying about an affair? I don't care. Paying an underage girl for sex? That's different. That's the allegation in Italy. There are even media reports that the Mafia has compromising pictures of Berlusconi. Also, Clinton didn't run around trying to act like a paragon of virtue with a lot of support from religious conservatives.
To an outside observer, it seems that Berlusconi has stayed in politics for one primary reason - to make sure that he can keep changing laws every time there's an attempt to prosecute him for some misdeed. With that tactic, he's rendered the judiciary largely irrelevant. He owns a vast media empire, and hasn't been forced to keep his media holdings at arm's length while in office, so he's used that to prop up his political empire. The Italian Parliament doesn't seem to be able to deal with the issue. The disconnect between those in power and a good chunk of the population is very high, according to some recent news reports.
Given his personal behavior, you have to wonder just how corrupt his government actually is, and who may have been in a position to blackmail him for favors over the last twenty years. If he'd managed to avoid sexual misconduct that seemed deplorable to his core supporters, he wouldn't be in trouble now.
If Italy was in another part of the world, there would probably be a lot of questions about how democratic it actually is.
Yeah, that's great. Too bad most of the Tea Party supporters seem to be oblivious or unconcerned that a ton of the money flowing into the "movement" is actually coming from some wealthy quarters (Koch Brothers, anyone?). They have no interest in you, your common cause, or any ideology. I'd question whether or not they even really care about the country or society. Folks like that just want to stay on top. They're using the Tea Party to make sure they're unregulated - so they can do whatever they want to their workers, pollute, lower their own taxes, move money around, and make sure that anything they need - infrastructure, pollution cleanup, whatever, are being paid for by the rest of us.
Your genuine dissatisfaction with how things are today is being used by the very people who have caused the situation to line their own pockets. Americans actually think that income is more evenly distributed than it actually is in this country today, and think it should be even more evenly distributed than they think it is. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201008238184.htm
Enjoy serfdom. Because to a large part of that that upper 1%, that's all most Americans will ever be.
Great. Those comparisons bring to mind a sex tape. I think I just threw up in my mouth.
For larger companies and not-for-profits (more than 10 computers), you're supposed to license Microsoft Forefront. For many, that means adding it to your corporate or campus license agreement. It's a pretty good deal.
Want to get the TSA screeners begging to get the policy changed? Have as many people as possible ask for the pat down and act like they're enjoying it when the agent gets to the "right spots". Might as well make them as uncomfortable as they're making everyone else. Just don't move much or do anything to prevent the pat-down.Nothing wrong with a few involuntary sounds, right?
Years ago (must have been 1997 or so), right before Visual Explanations was published, if I remember correctly (you went, got the first two books, and received Visual Explanations later).
It was terrific. And he had a few items from his library on hand to use as examples, which was pretty cool. One of the really great things about the course was his ability to put things in context and provide a vast array of examples of all different sorts.
In the end, they'll agree to share information. Odds are, Google is going to have to pay Facebook or give them a cut of ad revenue from ads targeted using the social networking information gained from Facebook. Can't say I have a problem with Facebook wanting cash, assuming that's part of the issue - they have information Google wants, Google ought to pay for the privilege. They already make enough money off serving ads while indexing other people's websites. At least the Facebook users know they're posting or uploading information to Facebook.
The question about how Facebook users feel about such a deal is a different issue - and one they should be concerned about. Given the option. I'd block Google from seeing details on Facebook and vice-versa.
Basically, they need the category data - book / clothing / housewares / etc. That allows them to figure out what is taxable and what isn't. For instance, in NJ, groceries and clothing are not taxed, but household items, books, etc. are. So you go to the grocery store, and the 5 cases of Coke aren't taxed, but toilet paper and shampoo are. Alcohol is taxed twice - there's an alcohol tax built into the price, and a sales tax on the total (that changed about 10-12 years ago, it used to just be the alcohol tax, no sales tax). Given the decline in state sales/use tax revenue (whether or not you agree with the tax model), combined with the growth of things like Amazon, it's hard not to think that we need a better system for taxes to be collected. The voluntary reporting model doesn't work, it needs to be calculated by the seller (and before anyone claims Amazon can't do that, LL Bean, Barnes and Noble, etc. all manage to do it. Clearly you can buy sales tax data or have a service that does it).
I'm sure other media outlets will provide a more balanced view of the technology industry.
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/pew_no_one_gets_more_coverage_than_apple1/
Or not.
They're wondering why Google should generate additional revenue off their viewers without their getting a cut. As long as Google is generating huge profits, but generating almost no content themselves, that's a fair question. And I'm sure there's some way Google is making money off this. Google needs to figure out how to be a "good parasite" in a number of areas. Otherwise, they're going to find less and less useful content for them to use to shovel ads at users.
There's also the point that the networks don't "own" all the shows. In some cases, an independent company produces them. And they may have something to say about this. The networks also have to worry about angering local affiliates. And before you say you don't need them, it's not like Google is covering local news. And that does matter. With the decline of local media we're probably going to enter a new golden age of corruption at the local level. Google's not helping anyone out there - "Google News" doesn't work if there's nothing for it to feed off of.
This isn't the "big guy" vs. the "little guy". Google seems to pretend that inconvenient laws, contracts and IP rights don't matter (Google Books, anyone?), not because they believe information ought to be free, but because they're not in favor of anything that interferes with their desired business model. You may think copyright needs a big overhaul, fine. But understand that any common ground you have with Google on this issue is a marriage of convenience.
who happens to use Cablevision as an ISP you get screwed. As News Corp. has been pushing DirecTV as an alternative to Cablevision for Fox programming, that's probably not a can of worms they really wanted to open. Most of the DirecTV customers I know in the northern NJ area are using Cablevision as an ISP.
The really lame part of this is how much of an increase News Corp is asking for - they currently get $22 per subscriber per year, they're looking for $44. The FCC really, really should be able to take this sort of thing into account when local affiliate broadcasting licenses come up for renewal.
And if VW sold cars like the Polo in the US, there'd be even less reason. With the BlueMotion 1.2 TDI 75PS diesel engine (manual transmission), it gets 67.3 mpg city and 91.1 mpg highway. They've got some standard gasoline engines that get over 40 mpg city and 62 mpg highway. There's a hell of a lot that can be done without resorting to hybrids, and it seems (to me) insane to be using all this lithium to get barely better gas mileage than you can get with a really good diesel engine. The "pure" electric car will never take off outside of US cities and dense suburbs until the range gets to 400 miles or more.
I know several other teachers, I have three school-aged kids. And from what I can see, I don't see the technology that's employed helping, nor do I see any chance that it's going to get better. The bigger thing? They need to stop buying these expensive curriculum products - which essentially have no research backing them. Then they change how they teach math, reading, etc. every few years when they don't see big improvements. Lack of consistency is probably as big a problem as everything else.
Oh, and have society try to deal with poverty, nutrition, crime and environmental lead exposure instead of it making the schools deal with it on their own. That would actually help.
In 1960 they weren't getting paid extraordinary sums. Well, but no extraordinary. In 2002 dollars, it would be equivalent to $100,000 a year on average, with a team franchise value of a bit under $34 million, again, in 2002 adjusted dollars.
In 2001, the average was over $2 million, and the average franchise value was about $289 million.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/haupert.mlb
Seriously, that's the least of it. Eric Schmidt is now regularly making grand, dystopian predictions as if his vision of the future is all we deserve. Add a big, swivel chair and a Persian cat and he'd come off like a Bond villain. Because remember, the little people don't deserve the privacy that HE deserves. After all, our privacy gets in the way of his profits. As do some laws. So we'd better change those to his liking in a hurry!
Huh? eDirectory and Identity Manager are major products in that space. It's the preferred IDM solution for SAP, for example. Zenworks (especially with the endpoint security add-ons) has been doing well, and there are still a lot of GroupWise customers (running it on Linux, even). Novell Access Manager (take a look at what it does) is also a really terrific product in its arena as well.
Was that his assertion that people don't want Google to help them find information, people want Google to tell them what to do.
If you declare a revolution and talk about how everything will change, you can get published. Present at conferences. Invited to speak. And maybe even get paid for it, or else get new job offers or consulting gigs.
And everyone is so desperate to improve education that they'll grasp at anything to prove to the public that they're making big strides in changing education, even if there's NO PROOF of any change in educational income. It's snake oil.
The expensive, commercial, packaged curriculum products have the same problem. There's little evidence to back up one versus the other, and few studies showing any educational benefit. But the districts, desperate to fend of being attacked for doing nothing, spend limited educational dollars on them.
My prediction? Perversely, schools will spend more money on technology and materials as their funding is squeezed and test scores count more and more. After a couple of years of declining scores, they'll abandon whatever the current efforts are and spend a ton on new ones. And it'll just keep going.
Seriously, given that the actual market numbers (Apple is selling more machines, but so is everyone else, so Apple is still less than 10%), and how much of their revenue is actually coming from iPhone / iPod type devices (we'll see how the iPad does), how long are they going to bother with desktops and notebooks?
The trend at Apple has been for the computers to be account for a smaller percentage of revenue in recent years. If that continues, the major shareholders will eventually wonder why R&D, manufacturing and support dollars are being spent on products that are no longer central to the company's revenue. Again, IF. Jobs' departure will speed up the shareholder pressure. It's likely to make the share price drop significantly, and without him there, the major shareholders will have more influence on the board. And Jobs himself has really been making comments about "traditional" computers in general in a way that makes me think that he's not overly interested in them as products any longer.
Why wouldn't Krypto act as an assistance dog?
Back in the day, my University had the source code for VAX/VMS 4.2 or so on microfiche. Endless lines of Macro-32 and BLISS. We had some of the the AT&T Unix materials as well. It wasn't that difficult to arrange, if you were a higher ed institution or a customer of a certain size.
Yup - the value of the information is that 1) you see ads and 2) Google can figure out how to better stuff ads in your face based on what you're searching for. It's like ad-funded television - the product isn't the shows, it's the commercials. The shows are just a way of getting you to watch the commercials.
That the supermassive black holes found that larger jets look slimming.
"Freedom from censorship" is "freedom of expression". "Freedom from discrimination" is "equal rights under the law". "Freedom from murder" - well, again, since you presumably have a right to life and liberty, yes, murdering you abridges that right. But it's not a "freedom from".
Rights are better stated in the affirmative. If you talk about all the things you should be protected against (since that's somewhat limitless), it's difficult to enumerate all of them. Stating an affirmative right ("freedom of expression" or "freedom of religion") makes it clear that there are few, if any exceptions, unless it tramples on someone else's affirmatively stated rights.