when you navigate with a GPS, you turn right on particular coordinates, and the actual road you take can be pretty much anything
That's certainly the case, but it's not what's happening in this particular situation. iOS Maps has placed the "city" in the wrong spot. It's not that the GPS part of the app is causing problems (although I'm sure it does) it's that the map is intentionally guiding you to the wrong place.
If you were following a paper map that had the same mistake (i.e. had marked Mildura as being in the middle of the National Park) then you'd ended up in exactly the same life-threatening situation.
Disclaimer: As others have said it's really hard to answer this well without more information, so this is best guess from the little you've given us
they think a free product should have free telephone support as well
The problem is that you've let them get the idea that this is a "free" (no-cost) product. In one of your comments you mention that the people calling up often aren't the people that installed it, so I asume that they don't think it's no-cost because they downloaded and installed it themselves. They have an idea in their heads that this product is "no-cost", and that is probably because you're branding/marketing it that way. And that's how they can go around and tarnish your reputation after the fact, saying "it's not really no-cost - it's a scam".
So, if your product provides value to your customer, why are you positioning it as a no-cost solution? I think you need to work on your branding. By all means continue to make it open source, and continue to provide your users with all sorts of software freedoms, but stop sending the message that those things mean "free".
It sounds like your produce should be viewed as commercial software (that is also proud to be open source), so say that. Have the splash screen (or about page, or whatever) say something along the lines of: This software package is a commercial product. Annual support and maintenance plans are available for purchase at {our website}. No support agreement has been purchased for this installation. Source code is provided to customers under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
So far the NBN has been pretty hideous cost wise as the increased speed for many is simply not worth the significant increase in cost
You mean like how internode's 25/5 NBN entry level plan (30Gb quota) is $5 cheaper than their equivalent Naked ADSL plan and their 300Gb quota plan is $15 cheaper than Naked ADSL.
iPrimus's NBN plans aren't particularly competitive - their 25/2 plans are $10 more expensive than their equivalent naked ADSL plans (unless you "bundle" with an expensive VOIP phone service) and around $5 more expensive than the Internode & iiNet NBN plans, but their 12/1 plans are the same price as their Naked ADSL, so you can switch to NBN with no change in cost (but potentially slower speeds, depending on the length&quality of your current copper)
While I agree with your argument about the difference between the programmer and the administrator, the original book review says:
Java programmers need to understand JVM tuning, and here it is given a whole chapter
which is a poor choice of words from the reviewer.
Programmers don't need to understand JVM tuning. Administrators do. A lot of the time 1 person will perform both roles, but they are still different roles.
Of course, I'm not sure how that poor choice of words on the reviewers behalf justifies Lunix Nutcase's rants.
Right. But server administrators are not programmers.
Nothing (*) in the Java Language Environment (which is what the linked document covers) requires the programmer to do explicit memory management.
Optimally tuning your system requires additional knowledge beyond the language environment. That's true in every system.
CGI removed the need for developers to understand the implementation details of HTTP and TCP/IP, but if you want to tune your web-server, then you're going to need to understand those.
"Everything is a file" is all well and good for a C/Unix developer, but the system administrator needs to know the difference between the kernel parameters for TCP/IP and for Disk I/O.
SQL developers care about tables and indexes and queries and don't need to worry about physical storage or the number of execution engines, or the size of the procedure cache, but DBAs need to care about all those things.
If you somehow believed that because "Java technology completely removes the memory management load from the programmer", then no one was ever going to need to think about how much memory was used by a system built in Java, and somehow system administrators could run large Java applications without even thinking about how to tune them, then I don't know what I can say to help you.
Yes, for good or bad, Java removes memory management load from programmers - but it does not remove it from administrators, and I'm not aware of any documentation that claimed it would.
(*) Direct memory buffers (which were added long after that document was written), allow the programmer to do some memory management if so desired, but they are still not required
I agree.
His writing style is pretty ordinary, and he expresses his ideas badly, but I don't think that what he actually said was that bad.
It mostly boiled down to:
Hiring freelancers through DeviantArt is cheaper than going out to a "professional" artist and gets better results
Ask them to set their own price for the work you 're requesting
Pay a fixed price, rather than a % of sales.
Pay on completion of the work, not upfront.
Once the deal's done, and you've paid them the agreed price, it's none of their business how much you are/aren't making from the game.
I think the way he expressed himself leaves a lot to be desired, and it's might well be the case that he's out to screw people. But the actual process he recommends seems to be fairly standard for freelance artwork.
That's completely ridiculous.
Replay value impacts the appropriate price-point, but that doesn't make a game "suck".
There are plenty of movies that are worth renting on DVD for a few dollars, that are absolutely not worth watching a second time (because you know the ending). Do they automatically suck?
Every game has some limits to how many times you want to replay it. For some games that's high. For others it's lower. That doesn't mean every game sucks.
WoG provided you with 3 hours of entertainment. Is that worth $20? Perhaps not. Is it worth $3? I would assume so. (Surely you value entertainment at at least $1 per hour)
Oh, and the other part of your thesis is also false - WoG has an OCD goal, where you try and complete each level within a set of defined limits (like number of moves, % saved, etc). I very much doubt anyone has hit all the OCD goals in 3 hours of playing. If you aren't interested in doing that, then that's your choice, but there certainly is replay value for people who enjoyed the game.
Ras is right - you claimed to disagree with him (or her?), and then proceeded to restate his point.
"stuff your below the line vote up" is colloquial for your vote being ruled informal.
That's only in the ACT (which is the default option on btl.org.au, so you might not have intended it)
The ACT senate election is a bit peculiar (see http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2010/07/the-act-senate-contest.html), but I'm still surprised (and disappointed) at the Dem's decision there.
Any system which relies on a particular assumption to be true (and remain true) needs to be designed so as to create the greatest possibility of that assumption holding true.
In this case, that should mean making the police aware that they are being watched, that their behaviour is being monitored, that certain behaviours are unacceptable, and that there will be consequences if they engage in those behaviours.
Since those safeguards are not being supported by the courts, they are making it increasingly more likely that their base assumption will disappear entirely.
Fundamentally, you can't build any system on top of a set of assumptions and then rely on blind hope to make those assumptions true - or worse, actively work to erode them.
Who cares if they display millions of ads and only charge a few dollars for each one, they're serving it up so they should have hordes of people verifying every ad before it's allowed to go live
I'm sure Google will make a very similar argument if this goes to court, but the fact of the matter is, Google's business model is under their own control. They could, in theory, choose to charge thousands of dollars for each ad, and the TV station could charge a few dollars. (Neither company would make money in that situation, but that is a simple fact of life. Not every business model is profitable, or legal)
The courts do tend to at least listen to arguments based on the economic conditions - the test of what is "reasonable" for a company to do, does depend on how much money is changing hands - but it's not an overly persuasive argument. Clearly a pharmaceutical company cannot say "Oh, we only sell our pain relieving drugs for a few dollars, so we can't afford to perform safety tests".
At the very least Google will have to show that they took reasonable steps to ensure that the ads they displayed were legal. As I mentioned above, "reasonable" does depend somewhat on economics, but because they're trying to shirk a significant responsibility they will need to, at the very least, show that they looked into all the possible options for controlling this, and none of them were feasible. If the court decides that (for example) an extra $10 per ad (i.e. per ad submission, not per impression) would have allowed Google to do basic checking, then it will be pretty clear that Google didn't take all reasonable steps. It won't really matter if Google claims that the $10 would have sent them bankrupt. It's their problem to make the business work (legally) or get out. The law does not have to bend to accommodate every possible business plan.
I agree, Google is involved in the generation and preparation of advertising material, and has taken on a great deal of legal responsibility by doing so.
However I think your assumption that Channel 6 couldn't (or wouldn't) be chased by the ACCC is false.
It is my understanding that if a corporation distributed advertising that they knew, or should reasonably have known, was false, then they would be liable under section 52 of the TPA.
e.g. If you walked down the street handing out leaflets containing misleading or deceptive information, and you knew that to be the case, then you will have engaged in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive.
Luckily you're not a corporation, so the legislation would not apply to you.
Alternatively if a business was paid to put an advertising poster in their window that they knew contained misleading information, then they could be held liable, even if
They didn't prepare the ad
The ad wasn't for their business
Section 52 of the TPA doesn't care about who produce the advertising or whose products the advertising was for. In fact it doesn't even mention the word advertising. A corporation shall not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive.
That can apply to a TV station, a newspaper, a billboard owner, or any website that is engaged in trade or commerce.
is Google being deceptive as part of trade or commerce?
I'd argue that "misleading" is the more applicable word than deceptive, but that's just semantics really.
does our usage of their search engine count as trade or commerce
Yes. It's similar to free to air TV (*), or open-air billboards.
They have a valuable commodity (your attention) and are trading it to advertisers for cold hard cash.
It's clear that your page view has value, because Google is selling it. (**)
So a trade takes place - you give a page view, and Google gives you search results.
If a billboard owner knowingly allowed their billboard to be used to display misleading or deceptive ads, then I would expect to see the ACCC attempt to make a case against both the advertiser and the billboard owner.
Furthermore, in this case as you mention, Google is selling keywords and targeting the ads. That moves them far beyond just being the medium by which the advertising takes place, and puts them squarely in the business of generating and preparing ads.
(*) Technically TV is a more directly controlled and regulated medium, partly due to the scarcity of the resource (the frequency spectrum) and mostly for historical reasons, so the actions of the ACCC in that space tend to be handled differently.
(**) Well technically, they're selling clicks, not views, but I doubt that'll change very much if it gets to court.
I got 8/10 on the java test, because I refused to say "always do input validation on the middle tier". Blanket rules like that are
(a) wrong
(b) dangerous
(c) short-sighted
(d) all of the above
Even the ones I got right, in very few cases did I think the question was sensible or well considered.
The question about errors vs exceptions is just plain wrong, and their filters questions is arguably wrong also.
Josh and his attorney want the tape to be shown to the judge first presumably so that the judge can see the _entire_ situation
My reading is that part of Josh's contention is that the tape contains information unrelated to the crime in question, and that the US attorney should not be entitled to those parts of the video.
Specifically, it has not been established that mere attendance at the protest constituted a crime, so the US attorney is not entitled to information about who was there.
it's not costing you any more than it is to pay me to sit at home and surf the web.
It almost certainly is.
Not all companies know how much it's costing them, but it would be costing them something. It costs me around $10 per hour to have a desk for an employee. That includes rent for the floor space, power (including air-con), a phone, a computer (including support), and the physical desk. Then there's insurance, etc.
If you give notice at a point where I'm running low on space, it may be worthwhile for me to let you go and use your desk for someone else.
That's not our policy though. Based on the work we do, and the types of people we hire, our general position is that we're better off having them work through the notice period. But that's our policy based on our risk assessment.
I know it's pretty standard for people working in any financial processing area (such as a bank branch) to be stood down within 24 hours of resigning. Mostly they'll be escorted off the premises immediately, but sometimes they'll be asked to come in for 1 more day to hand over their work, under supervision. It goes with the territory - there's a lot of money to be lost. One of the things companies rely on to reduce the risk of internal fraud is your ties to the job, your pay and benefits, your loyalty to the company and/or your colleagues, etc. Once you resign that mitigant is at the very least greatly diminished, if not reversed, and the risk assessment changes so that it's a better risk management strategy to pay out your time than to have you work there.
Slashdot Mirror
That's certainly the case, but it's not what's happening in this particular situation. iOS Maps has placed the "city" in the wrong spot. It's not that the GPS part of the app is causing problems (although I'm sure it does) it's that the map is intentionally guiding you to the wrong place.
If you were following a paper map that had the same mistake (i.e. had marked Mildura as being in the middle of the National Park) then you'd ended up in exactly the same life-threatening situation.
The problem is that you've let them get the idea that this is a "free" (no-cost) product. In one of your comments you mention that the people calling up often aren't the people that installed it, so I asume that they don't think it's no-cost because they downloaded and installed it themselves. They have an idea in their heads that this product is "no-cost", and that is probably because you're branding/marketing it that way. And that's how they can go around and tarnish your reputation after the fact, saying "it's not really no-cost - it's a scam".
So, if your product provides value to your customer, why are you positioning it as a no-cost solution? I think you need to work on your branding. By all means continue to make it open source, and continue to provide your users with all sorts of software freedoms, but stop sending the message that those things mean "free".
It sounds like your produce should be viewed as commercial software (that is also proud to be open source), so say that. Have the splash screen (or about page, or whatever) say something along the lines of: This software package is a commercial product. Annual support and maintenance plans are available for purchase at {our website}. No support agreement has been purchased for this installation. Source code is provided to customers under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
You mean like how internode's 25/5 NBN entry level plan (30Gb quota) is $5 cheaper than their equivalent Naked ADSL plan and their 300Gb quota plan is $15 cheaper than Naked ADSL.
And iiNet's 100Gb (Peak) + 100Gb (Off Peak) 25/5 plan is $5 cheaper than their 100Gb (any time) Naked ADSL plan, for more quota, and 500Gb+500Gb 25/5 NBN is cheaper than 400Gb Naked ADSL.
iPrimus's NBN plans aren't particularly competitive - their 25/2 plans are $10 more expensive than their equivalent naked ADSL plans (unless you "bundle" with an expensive VOIP phone service) and around $5 more expensive than the Internode & iiNet NBN plans, but their 12/1 plans are the same price as their Naked ADSL, so you can switch to NBN with no change in cost (but potentially slower speeds, depending on the length&quality of your current copper)
So what's this "hideous" cost you speak of?
which is a poor choice of words from the reviewer.
Programmers don't need to understand JVM tuning. Administrators do. A lot of the time 1 person will perform both roles, but they are still different roles.
Of course, I'm not sure how that poor choice of words on the reviewers behalf justifies Lunix Nutcase's rants.
Nothing (*) in the Java Language Environment (which is what the linked document covers) requires the programmer to do explicit memory management.
Optimally tuning your system requires additional knowledge beyond the language environment. That's true in every system.
CGI removed the need for developers to understand the implementation details of HTTP and TCP/IP, but if you want to tune your web-server, then you're going to need to understand those.
"Everything is a file" is all well and good for a C/Unix developer, but the system administrator needs to know the difference between the kernel parameters for TCP/IP and for Disk I/O.
SQL developers care about tables and indexes and queries and don't need to worry about physical storage or the number of execution engines, or the size of the procedure cache, but DBAs need to care about all those things.
If you somehow believed that because "Java technology completely removes the memory management load from the programmer", then no one was ever going to need to think about how much memory was used by a system built in Java, and somehow system administrators could run large Java applications without even thinking about how to tune them, then I don't know what I can say to help you.
Yes, for good or bad, Java removes memory management load from programmers - but it does not remove it from administrators, and I'm not aware of any documentation that claimed it would.
(*) Direct memory buffers (which were added long after that document was written), allow the programmer to do some memory management if so desired, but they are still not required
If they're not happy, then too bad. They made their own bed.
The "immaculate conception" refers to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the sinlessness of Mary, and has nothing to do with virgin births.
The fact that you didn't know about that is probably a validation of the complaints about the UI.
Disclaimer: I don't have any vested interests in Atlassian, but one of the founders is a friend-of-a-friend
His writing style is pretty ordinary, and he expresses his ideas badly, but I don't think that what he actually said was that bad.
It mostly boiled down to:
I think the way he expressed himself leaves a lot to be desired, and it's might well be the case that he's out to screw people. But the actual process he recommends seems to be fairly standard for freelance artwork.
Replay value impacts the appropriate price-point, but that doesn't make a game "suck".
There are plenty of movies that are worth renting on DVD for a few dollars, that are absolutely not worth watching a second time (because you know the ending). Do they automatically suck?
Every game has some limits to how many times you want to replay it. For some games that's high. For others it's lower. That doesn't mean every game sucks.
WoG provided you with 3 hours of entertainment. Is that worth $20? Perhaps not. Is it worth $3? I would assume so. (Surely you value entertainment at at least $1 per hour)
Oh, and the other part of your thesis is also false - WoG has an OCD goal, where you try and complete each level within a set of defined limits (like number of moves, % saved, etc). I very much doubt anyone has hit all the OCD goals in 3 hours of playing. If you aren't interested in doing that, then that's your choice, but there certainly is replay value for people who enjoyed the game.
It would be nice if you were right;
Ras is right - you claimed to disagree with him (or her?), and then proceeded to restate his point.
"stuff your below the line vote up" is colloquial for your vote being ruled informal.
That's only in the ACT (which is the default option on btl.org.au, so you might not have intended it)
The ACT senate election is a bit peculiar (see http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2010/07/the-act-senate-contest.html), but I'm still surprised (and disappointed) at the Dem's decision there.
Anyone with less than 8GB of memory in their machine. :)
In this case, that should mean making the police aware that they are being watched, that their behaviour is being monitored, that certain behaviours are unacceptable, and that there will be consequences if they engage in those behaviours. Since those safeguards are not being supported by the courts, they are making it increasingly more likely that their base assumption will disappear entirely.
Fundamentally, you can't build any system on top of a set of assumptions and then rely on blind hope to make those assumptions true - or worse, actively work to erode them.
So, if I use the decoder to watch a really bad movie (that I don't enjoy) in Chrome, am I violating the license?
Eclipse 3.3 for Solaris
I can assure that quite a good proportion of our country is, in fact, in the middle of a two week drug binge.
And what do you know, the comments are almost identical to the last time...
The courts do tend to at least listen to arguments based on the economic conditions - the test of what is "reasonable" for a company to do, does depend on how much money is changing hands - but it's not an overly persuasive argument. Clearly a pharmaceutical company cannot say "Oh, we only sell our pain relieving drugs for a few dollars, so we can't afford to perform safety tests".
At the very least Google will have to show that they took reasonable steps to ensure that the ads they displayed were legal. As I mentioned above, "reasonable" does depend somewhat on economics, but because they're trying to shirk a significant responsibility they will need to, at the very least, show that they looked into all the possible options for controlling this, and none of them were feasible. If the court decides that (for example) an extra $10 per ad (i.e. per ad submission, not per impression) would have allowed Google to do basic checking, then it will be pretty clear that Google didn't take all reasonable steps. It won't really matter if Google claims that the $10 would have sent them bankrupt. It's their problem to make the business work (legally) or get out. The law does not have to bend to accommodate every possible business plan.
I agree, Google is involved in the generation and preparation of advertising material, and has taken on a great deal of legal responsibility by doing so. However I think your assumption that Channel 6 couldn't (or wouldn't) be chased by the ACCC is false.
It is my understanding that if a corporation distributed advertising that they knew, or should reasonably have known, was false, then they would be liable under section 52 of the TPA.
e.g. If you walked down the street handing out leaflets containing misleading or deceptive information, and you knew that to be the case, then you will have engaged in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive.
Luckily you're not a corporation, so the legislation would not apply to you.
Alternatively if a business was paid to put an advertising poster in their window that they knew contained misleading information, then they could be held liable, even if
- They didn't prepare the ad
- The ad wasn't for their business
Section 52 of the TPA doesn't care about who produce the advertising or whose products the advertising was for. In fact it doesn't even mention the word advertising. A corporation shall not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive. That can apply to a TV station, a newspaper, a billboard owner, or any website that is engaged in trade or commerce.They have a valuable commodity (your attention) and are trading it to advertisers for cold hard cash.
It's clear that your page view has value, because Google is selling it. (**)
So a trade takes place - you give a page view, and Google gives you search results.
If a billboard owner knowingly allowed their billboard to be used to display misleading or deceptive ads, then I would expect to see the ACCC attempt to make a case against both the advertiser and the billboard owner.
Furthermore, in this case as you mention, Google is selling keywords and targeting the ads. That moves them far beyond just being the medium by which the advertising takes place, and puts them squarely in the business of generating and preparing ads.
(*) Technically TV is a more directly controlled and regulated medium, partly due to the scarcity of the resource (the frequency spectrum) and mostly for historical reasons, so the actions of the ACCC in that space tend to be handled differently.
(**) Well technically, they're selling clicks, not views, but I doubt that'll change very much if it gets to court.
I got 8/10 on the java test, because I refused to say "always do input validation on the middle tier". Blanket rules like that are
(a) wrong
(b) dangerous
(c) short-sighted
(d) all of the above
Even the ones I got right, in very few cases did I think the question was sensible or well considered.
The question about errors vs exceptions is just plain wrong, and their filters questions is arguably wrong also.
I'd give them about a 3/10.
- It's either:
- do insecure thing "X", but always make sure you do "A" at the same time in order to undo the damage of doing X
- do secure thing "B" all the time
If you forget to do "B", you app simply doesn't work. If you forget to do "A" (but still do "X") then your app works, but in insecure.It's much safer to use safe practices all the time than to apply "fixes" on top of unsafe practices.
Specifically, it has not been established that mere attendance at the protest constituted a crime, so the US attorney is not entitled to information about who was there.
Not all companies know how much it's costing them, but it would be costing them something. It costs me around $10 per hour to have a desk for an employee. That includes rent for the floor space, power (including air-con), a phone, a computer (including support), and the physical desk. Then there's insurance, etc.
If you give notice at a point where I'm running low on space, it may be worthwhile for me to let you go and use your desk for someone else.
That's not our policy though. Based on the work we do, and the types of people we hire, our general position is that we're better off having them work through the notice period. But that's our policy based on our risk assessment.
I know it's pretty standard for people working in any financial processing area (such as a bank branch) to be stood down within 24 hours of resigning. Mostly they'll be escorted off the premises immediately, but sometimes they'll be asked to come in for 1 more day to hand over their work, under supervision. It goes with the territory - there's a lot of money to be lost. One of the things companies rely on to reduce the risk of internal fraud is your ties to the job, your pay and benefits, your loyalty to the company and/or your colleagues, etc. Once you resign that mitigant is at the very least greatly diminished, if not reversed, and the risk assessment changes so that it's a better risk management strategy to pay out your time than to have you work there.