This is probably why they sent out quick release keychain clips a while ago and recommended removing your Speedpass from your keychain before giving your keys to a valet. Of course, I wouldn't trust a valet to park anything more valuable than an old pair of running shoes...
You could walk in with $20, and a student ID, and " borrow " a copy of Windows, or Office, or whatever! Complete with License sheet and CD. Everything you get in the "OEM" release! They didn't even write down your student ID #!
And, if you didn't return it, you were out only $20...
The school I went to took the opposite approach - they would "borrow" $20 from each student each semester, and then the students could check assorted Microsoft software CDs out of the library and make legal copies of them. If the students didn't want any Microsoft software, they were out of luck (and $20 a semester). From the three semesters this was in place while I was there, I got Windows98, Office, Visual Studio, and a bunch of other stuff for the Windows box I never use. I don't think it was a good deal...
It's really quite simple - the only right of a consumer is to buy stuff, so if you are doing anything else, you must be an evil, un-American, commie bastard criminal. Since people obviously aren't playing along and sending all of their money to groups like the MPAA, RIAA, etc. in small, unmarked, non-sequential bills left under the third tier of the right field bleachers at the high school at precisely 6pm, they have no choice but to have all of their rights removed. We didn't bow down to our lord and god Big Business, paying tribute to its greatness with gifts of gold and promises of eternal servitude, so it shall smite us with the sting of a thousand legal restrictions. It's really quite fair when you consider that we've been given such wonderful gifts as the opportunity to pay for Britney Spears "music" and cinematic gems like "Super Troopers." So get out your checkbooks and bend over America, it's time for your medicine...
How is changing the order of the songs on my CDs theft? Contrary to corporate belief, they don't control what I do with their products in the privacy of my home.
Rip - Copy songs from my CDs to my computer.
Mix - Change the order of these songs to create a playlist that is superior to the individual CDs.
Burn - Write this playlist to CDs so I can listen to these songs the way I want to listen to them.
I don't care how many laws Disney buys, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. What these ads really suggest is that Apple won't try to make listening to music impossible because of some misguided notion that pissing off your customers is good for business.
Ok, let me get this straight - they compiled lots of data, archived it with some nifty modified laserdisc thing, and forgot about it for 15 years. Now they're complaining that they can't read the data because the equipment used to read it is obsolete. Huh? If it were truly obsolete, then it wouldn't be around because newer technology is capable of doing the job better. Since nothing new is doing the job at all, the old technology is not obsolete - it is still more useful than anything else for retrieving the data. It sounds like they got rid of the old technology because newer technology could do other things better, completely forgetting what they were using the technology for in the first place. If you are archiving electronic data, you need to maintain the data AND the technology to recover it! This isn't like that really stupid episode of Sliders (redundant, I know) where they encode all the knowledge of a civilization holographically onto a crystal and send it away in a rowboat with a couple of kids who know nothing about holography, expecting the data to somehow make itself readable. On second thought, that's exactly what happened here...
That means we have to find a way to emulate this data, in other words to turn into a form that can be used no matter what is the computer format of the future.
Hey moron, why not move the data over to the new media formats as they gain popularity? This isn't a "write once, throw in closet for all eternity" application we're talking about here - isn't the point to have access to the information? It's not like you need to get monks to spend their lives transcribing text to copy the data - it's already in an electronic form that can be copied automatically and checked against the original with little or no difficulty (unless the data format is proprietary and requires a custom reader that nobody knows how to build, which somehow wouldn't surprise me). And it's not like old formats disappear overnight - there are still people using 8-Tracks and Beta VCRs, so I don't think CDs and DVDs will vanish before the data can be copied (unless the SSSCA takes hold, in which case it won't matter because we won't have control over information anyway). If I can maintain copies of school reports I wrote 15 years ago and have no need to access, why can't people maintain data that cost 2.5 million pounds to gather?
When browsing the web, make a list of all the little annoying things about other web sites. Background music, no contact information, bad color schemes, too many graphics, poorly defined links, no coherent structure, all flash (or Flash) and no substance, etc. Pay particular attention to issues like page loading, accessibility of information, and ease of navigation. You want people to be able to find information on your site (unless you're a sadistic bastard), so think about what information your site's visitors will be looking for and make it easy to find. Avoid large graphics in your pages (link them to thumbnails) and load up on descriptive text (including ALT tags). Test in every browser you can get your hands on - some browsers tolerate mistakes that could cause others to choke.
Any person caught proposing a law or voting for a law which is later found to be in violation against the Constitution shall be banned from any government work, either as elected or appointed.
Just disbanding Congress would have the exact same effect with much less paperwork.
Anyone else up for a law that allows up to shoot elected officals that we feel aren't acting in our best intrests?
I suppose if you limit it to days that Congress isn't in session, it could encourage them to work for the entire year, but then you would have to deal with the "I thought he was a Congressman" defense whenever someone is arrested for murder.
Seriously though, how about a "How'm I doin'?" board that visitors pass on the tour of the Senate and House floors? People would be allowed to push either the "Approve" or "Disapprove" button for their respective representatives. The "Approve" button would result in a gold star being stuck on the forehead of the representative, while the "Disapprove" button would give the representative a mild electric shock. Not only would this help our elected representatives to understand how we feel, but it would also increase tourism in DC and reinforce the idea of common people playing an active role in government. And imagine the practical jokes involving switching the star-sticking mechanism with the shocking mechanism...
Aren't the Democrats supposed be the party that sticks up for the common people as opposed to big media interests like Disney and the MPAA?
The Democrats are the ones who talk about personal freedoms, equality, and a kinder, gentler government that forces everyone to be kinder, gentler people, while taking money from special interests and being as corrupt as they think they can get away with.
The Republicans are the ones who talk about war, family, morality, and using government to bring everyone in line with their morality, while taking money from special interests and being as corrupt as they think they can get away with.
That's right, the big guy upstairs has a hand in everything, and therefore should be held responsible. Free will, good/evil, intelligence, computers - they all came from God one way or another, isn't that the way it's supposed to work? And if churches are "Houses of God," doesn't that make them His assets, which could be confiscated to cover damages? It was God's will that people should share files, and therefore He is the guilty party - lock Him up and take away all His stuff.
Or maybe instead of bullying everyone who did anything that allowed someone to do something they didn't like, they could just go after the people who committed these "crimes." Right, that would force them to address the issue... Sorry for being realistic, I'll go hit myself over the head with a baseball bat until this makes sense...
A - Exact bit-for-bit duplication of products from legally obtained originals, with the resulting copies sold on streetcorners and eBay. B - Production of products that rely on stupidity to make money and are of little or no value to the consumer. C - Evil naughty hackers.
2. What should you do to ensure that "piracy" does as little damage as possible?
A - Produce products with enough value that people would prefer to purchase a legitimate copy rather than deal with quality and legality issues of questionable copies. B - Encourage harsh prosecution of those who profit from the sale of "pirated" content and launch a PR campaign explaining your side of the case. C - Punish all consumers for not giving you enough money and argue that you should have complete control over everything you sell for all eternity, followed by evil laughter.
3. When your product can no longer provide adequate profit in your market, you should:
A - Change your product to better fit the market. B - Move to a different market. C - Grab market by the legs, spread them wide, and shove your product up the most convenient orifice.
With an IM conversation, it is a real time exchange. I know that you have the ability to record it, but don't necessarily expect that you are doing so. This is more like a phone conversation.
Not exactly. An IM does not require the other party to be present, nor is the information time limited. With a phone conversation, it takes action on the part of one party to record the conversation; with IMs, it takes action on the part of one party to erase the conversation - the full text of the conversation will remain until the IM window is closed. This is more like a digital answering machine than a phone conversation because it takes action to erase or archive the conversation, but not to indefinitely maintain it in some form. If the issue is expectation of privacy of information after it has been received (with no differentiation between volatile and archival copies), then there should be no difference between e-mail, snail mail, and IMs - all of them persist in a readable form until the end user takes action to remove the message, and that fact should be enough for people sending IMs to realize that they do not have the expectation of privacy they have with a phone conversation. Of course, this is based on a logical examination of the facts, the courts will probably come to a different conclusion.
Like actually bothering to translate your contact messages into various non-English languages.
I usually have no problem getting replies from foreign ISPs in English. For some reason though, they all seem to keep telling me about some postmaster account being over quota...
From the early days of the CIA's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, there are tire spikes, bombs and "liberator pistols." The latter were mass produced for $1.72 each and dropped to resistance fighters during World War II.
Somehow, I don't think I'd want to brag about poorly designed, cheap guns that were dropped in large quantities to anyone claiming to be a "resistance fighter," which many times turned out to be a German intelligence operative. Or maybe they were hoping that the Germans would try to use them...
But one device CIA officials say they never had was a version of the KGB's deadly umbrella that was used by an unknown assailant to kill Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978. A model of the umbrella is part of the display.
Death lasers, early death from too much sleep, Unix configurations, deadly umbrellas... I realize that Valentines day was just a few days ago, and a certain someone is entering into a particularly serious contract, but there's really only so much death you need on the front page...
I recently discovered that any e-mail I sent with the return address listed here (and elsewhere on the web) will not get through to AOL. There's no notice of this of course, so I just never got responses from people on AOL. This had nothing to do with my mail server (I tested this with multiple mail servers and return addresses), it was completely based on the Reply-To header - changing the reply to address fixed the problem. Based on my experience, I see two main problems with blacklists:
Without notice that your message was rejected, it seems like the message is getting through, but the recipient is unwilling or unable to respond. This is a real pain with eBay, especially with Paypal payments (the sellers apparently never noticed that money had magically appeared in their accounts unless they received an e-mail notice).
Basing the filter on the Reply-To header is rather stupid, because it can easily be changed or forged. Spammers can simply spam under your address until it gets blacklisted, then move on to another, leaving you screwed. Sure it is simple to just change your return address, but how do you know that you have to if nobody tells you that you're blacklisted?
Other then C.P. Snow, what else is there to show that art and science ever diverged, or that this was even a popular view? The whole "Two Cultures" thing is popular to throw around in academia, but it is often forgotten rather quickly (I have forgotten it twice myself, I'll have to dig up my copy of it sometime so I can forget it again). There is more of a split between academia and reality than there has ever been between art and science.
How many times have people talked about "the art of" something and "the science of" the same thing in the same sentence? Better yet, how many times has this been used in commercials? This is the tired old element of painting something as more of one thing and saying that you do the other (meaning that you must be far superior to the competition), and this is the same thing that Katz is trying to push. By giving techies and coders the new title of "artist," the intent is to elevate them beyond their current status with nothing more than empty rhetoric.
Sure there's room for a lot of art in science, but as long as the science is dominant in a particular field, people in it are not likely to be recognized for their artistry, just like artists who make use of technology to create their art are not known as scientists - you have to do more than use the art or science to be an artist or scientist. There are plenty of art-dominant areas to play around in if you want the title of artist (and the criticism that comes with it) - poetry, photography, music (even computer generated music), etc.
The main problem with the idea of the Net having a heart is that it isn't a single distinct entity. The "elite" in the areas of computers and networking might like to think of the internet as one big giant single entity because all parts of it are connected in some way, but there's more involved than just connection - you need at least some minimal sense of unity and uniform purpose to have an entity with a figurative heart.
Aside from a few tech columnists and other such computer-hip people, people don't think of themselves as internet citizens. The internet isn't a way of life, no matter what those AOL commercials might try to represent as common behavior. It might be fun to play with, it might be useful, and it might even be essential, but in the end it is just a tool. More people consider their devotion to a sports team to be a way of life than their web surfing.
Ignoring that for a moment, people still don't use the internet in the same ways. All of Katz's examples seem to be new uses that were popular for a while because they were new - academic work, music "sharing,".coms, etc. were the next big things that bandwagon jumpers-on embraced until the next one came along. They still existed afterward, sometimes even becoming more popular and/or useful long after the hype was gone, but they aren't in fashion.
The Net can't have a heart because of the freedom and flexibility given to its users - the Net is what you want it to be, more or less. It isn't a newspaper or magazine, all in a neat, well-organized package; it isn't a city, with everything linked by proximity and a common body of residents that identify themselves with that city more than another; it isn't even a single industry, with multiple distinct entities linked by common interests, feeding off each other while at the same time trying to improve their relative positions.
The internet is a network - nodes, links, and bits of data. It isn't restricted to certain uses or users, so it is difficult to characterize it as anything more than a general purpose medium. Its "heart" is whatever you want it to be - research document sites for academics,/. for those of you reading this, e-mail address harvesters for spammers, porn for lonely geeks, etc. - because the "heart" of the Net isn't a characteristic of the Net itself, it is a projection of the individual's own bias onto a general medium.
"I can't be quoted on this until the figures are finished," a friend and research analyst e-mailed me, "but I believe online shopping really saved retailing last year."
Never tell Katz you can't be quoted - that's one challenge you can be sure he'll take on.
Um, where did I apologize for TV? I simply pointed out that the problems he attributed to TV were not completely due to the TV itself. In reality, things are rarely all-or-nothing - there are usually multiple areas of concern, and focusing on only one and ignoring the others is not a good thing to do.
and also recommend keeping it on in the background?
For you, I would suggest reading comprehension classes. I stated that it was not absolutely necessary to turn the TV off; nowhere did I suggest that it was a better idea to leave it on. The important part was focusing your mind elsewhere - again, blaming the TV and ignoring the mind is the wrong way to think.
If you aren't watching it TURN IT OFF! The article (and many comments on/.) specifically state that they are constantly distracted by a TV nearby.
I can have a TV on right next to me and completely ignore it if I am occupied with something else, sometimes even when I am very interested in what is on. If you are easily distracted by a TV, turning it off may do nothing more than open you to other distractions. The important part is occupying your mind, which is easily ignored if you just blame the TV. Once you have this part down, it won't matter what the TV is doing.
The TV inteferes with your time and ability to use it in the first place. How can you address issues if you simply don't have the time to do so? TV doesn't give you commands but it occupies your brain so you can't give it any either.
Are you really too helpless to defy the will of an electronic picture-box? You don't have to let it control you. Hiding from the problem won't make it go away.
Turning it off was the best thing he could've done. It isn't the ultimate solution but it sure is a big part of the problem.
Once again, you assume that "good enough" equals "best." The best thing he could have done would have been to seek professional help. If what he said was true, then he was becoming seriously delusional after watching TV shows. Turning off the TV and noting that the symptoms are no longer present will most likely give him a false sense of security and cause him to stop trying to identify and correct the actual problem. When his problems manifest themselves again, there may not be a quick fix solution available. This is similar to getting a prescription for antibiotics and only taking them until the symptoms go away - in reality you are just getting rid of the easy targets while leaving yourself wide open to the less affected ones.
So I decided that I would cut it out till June. And give it a rest. Man it's hard. The first thing I realized was the reflex that I had developed. Come home sit and watch. Wake up sit and watch.
You might be going about it the wrong way. Instead of trying to stop watching TV, start doing something else. It sounds like you were just using it to kill time, so it should be fairly low on your list of priorities. If you want to get by without it, just find something else to do. Build furniture, learn about photography, refine your typing skills, start an exercise routine, write about the decline of modern civilization - just do something, anything. You might be amazed at how quickly time moves when it isn't metered out by commercial breaks. You don't even necessarily need to keep the TV off, just keep your mind occupied with something else.
Another thing that I think TV does, when TV is you primary source of entertainment and social interaction it warps the mind. TV lets you hand out with hot chicks, go on a thrilling adventure, and fall in love. You begin to believe (subconsciously) that you really do have a relationship to these people. It tricks the mind into believing that you are a smart, good looking, intelligent person with a ton of interesting friends and stories.
Either you bought your TV from your friendly neighborhood covert brainwashing clinic, or a significant part of the problem was with you. The TV just provides you with information (and fairly passive information in the case you describe), it does not instruct you in how to process that information. Your experience may have been a symptom of a more serious problem, and you should seriously consider therapy. Pulling the plug on the TV may have been a short term solution, but it does not address the underlying problem.
Your major in college doesn't determine what job you will end up with, it determines what classes you will take. Therefore, major in an area with classes that you will enjoy. In my case, I enjoyed technical courses with stuff like math and electronics, so I majored in EE. At the same time, I had interests in literature, writing, and philosophy, but I didn't particularly like classes in those areas (some of the literature courses were quite interesting, but I absolutely hated the one philosophy course I took), so I pursued those as outside interests. I also enjoyed playing around with computers, but I had no interest in CS classes. The result was a resume with a pair of EE degrees, a good range of technical skills, and various activities well outside the realm of EE (school newspaper, writing tutor, etc.).
When it came time to look for a job, my coursework and project experience didn't point at any one specific job - I had enough skills and experience to get a job in a variety of areas like hardware design, telecommunications, systems engineering, software design, consulting, and probably many others. The company I work for now does a lot of systems engineering, but you'll have a hard time finding anyone with a systems engineering degree - as far as I know, that major does not exist (and if it does exist somewhere, it shouldn't). When you get a job, you will have specific tasks that will usually require you to draw on your experience in general and not specific coursework. You may find some details helpful, but most jobs aren't the same as any college class (I would suggest staying away from those that are, as they could lock you into a specific position with no room to move).
Remember, even within a single major, there are many paths that you can take, making even an EE or CS degree a bit ambiguous. What will ultimately matter will be your full range of skills, not the letters on a piece of paper (unless those letters are "MCSE" of course). What is important is to enjoy what you do and build skills in the areas you are interested in. When deciding which of your interests (assuming that your interest is equal in all cases) to make your major and which to make a minor or hobby, start with the ones that will give you the most flexibility in the future and match those to the positions that require the most rigid structure to provide the greatest reward. For me, an EE degree provided the best opportunities, so I majored in that and left the rest to hobbies and outside interests. You need to rank your interests similarly.
For example, if your interest is in becoming a computer security specialist, as in your example, an EE or CS (I would suggest EE, Master's if you can do it) degree with a concentration in communications/crypto/etc., a minor in physics, and system administration as a hobby would put you in the best position to get the specific job you want, while still giving you the necessary skills for jobs in many other areas. Going straight at a specific job area without other supporting skills or getting a degree in another area with just an interest in the job area will put you at a competitive disadvantage (especially with the recent change in the job market). If you change your mind later or find an opportunity in another area that is too good to pass up, the more flexible skill set will put you in the best position to succeed. It is always possible to do something like major in Chinese history and go on to design propulsion systems for NASA, but don't go convincing yourself that you can always get away with that just because someone else did. There are a lot of variables at work, so you need to do as much as possible to minimize their effect on you if you want to pull off a big career shift.
It's all a plot to level the playing field...
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Don't worry, everything is going according to plan. You see, those of us who have a hard time at social gatherings are bringing the rest of the world down with us. We can't enjoy life outside, so we come up with all these fun things to do inside - games, porn, file sharing, etc. The corporations bought on because there was money in it, and once enough people were hooked, the outside world stopped being interesting. Outside businesses have to cut corners to keep going, reducing all stores to Wal-Mart or Home Depot style shopping centers where socialization is impossible. With nothing left outside, people are forced online for their entertainment, to meet people, or just to get a cheap thrill. Now those of us who have been stuck there all along have the advantage - we might not be able to speak to a person, but we can communicate electronically; we can't find a specific item in a store, but we can find it at half price online; we couldn't make a girl notice us outside, but we can sweep them off their feet from across a wire. It's our world now, and it's only just beginning. [Cue evil laughter.]
If Eisner is so concerned about the industry's destruction, why doesn't he consider what his customers want? I realize that most people have the IQ of various garden vegetables, but I'm not going to buy something that's a pain in the ass to use. If all of this copy protection crap becomes mandatory, I'll just have to fall back on all the books I've been stockpiling at about 5 cents each. I already have enough to last me many, many years, so I think I can afford to miss the characters on Friends whining and the characters on ER facing yet another personal crisis that has nothing to do with medicine (yes, I know that those are on NBC and Disney owns ABC, but I don't know what shows are on ABC, I don't even know what number channel it is around here), not to mention the recent torture fad... I suppose I should start recording the few good shows out there that aren't likely to be released on a reasonably priced set of DVDs (not that I particularly care for CSS and region coding, but at least there are ways around those) while I'm at it. It feels like an information cold war - better stock up while you can, it might not be around tomorrow...
Its almost like you get visions of a 30 year old desk, wooden chair, a XT computer, monochrome monitor, yellow lined notepads, in a room painted light yellow or baby blue. You get thoughts wondering if a pocket protector is mandatory.
Well, my desk is nothing fancy, but I've got a Steelcase Leap chair, PowerBook G4 (Titanium), and 19" monitor (probably due to be replaced in a year or so), in a room painted off-white. Of course, I'm in a 100% government-funded non-profit company, so it isn't exactly the same as being a government contractor, but close enough. However, we're not hiring, because people won't leave (attrition is at about 0%).
Re:Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, JDAM
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It's still not Attack of the Drones because the UAVs don't shoot at anything, or drop munitions.
This statement isn't entirely accurate. The UAVs don't select targets or decide when to attack, but the CIA's Predators do carry Hellfire missiles. Katz is still way off, because humans (and lots of them), not machines, are running the show.
Once again, Katz is totally clueless
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The Drone War
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· Score: 2
There is no war in recent human history that involved so few humans, at least on one side of the conflict.... A handful of human soldiers guide and direct the increasingly sophisticated technological arsenal that has devastated the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda networks...
Handful? HANDFUL?!?!?! I can't believe anyone who claims to be capable of thinking would say something so ridiculously wrong. Unless you have hands the size of the Pacific ocean, there is no way that all of the humans fighting this war could be described as a handful. Guess what - all those unmanned vehicles, remote sensors, guided weapons - they are operated by humans, as are all of the manned aircraft, ground stations, surface ships, etc. The Predator doesn't fly itself, nor does it give itself orders, nor does it interpret sensor data, nor does it repair itself - humans still do all of that and more, and anyone with even a semi-functional brain could understand that. The humans are still there, they just have more time to spend on directing efforts toward maximum effectiveness with minimal casualties through information superiority. Way to go Katz, you just insulted thousands upon thousands of American and coalition soldiers and support personnel, not to mention all of the hard-working engineers operating slightly removed from the fighting, who are the real reason why there have been "stunningly few U.S. military casualties and American civilian casualties beyond September 11 and the anthrax attacks." First he calls Behind Enemy Lines a good movie, now this. Will someone please keep this idiot away from military issues?
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This is probably why they sent out quick release keychain clips a while ago and recommended removing your Speedpass from your keychain before giving your keys to a valet. Of course, I wouldn't trust a valet to park anything more valuable than an old pair of running shoes...
And, if you didn't return it, you were out only $20...
The school I went to took the opposite approach - they would "borrow" $20 from each student each semester, and then the students could check assorted Microsoft software CDs out of the library and make legal copies of them. If the students didn't want any Microsoft software, they were out of luck (and $20 a semester). From the three semesters this was in place while I was there, I got Windows98, Office, Visual Studio, and a bunch of other stuff for the Windows box I never use. I don't think it was a good deal...
It's really quite simple - the only right of a consumer is to buy stuff, so if you are doing anything else, you must be an evil, un-American, commie bastard criminal. Since people obviously aren't playing along and sending all of their money to groups like the MPAA, RIAA, etc. in small, unmarked, non-sequential bills left under the third tier of the right field bleachers at the high school at precisely 6pm, they have no choice but to have all of their rights removed. We didn't bow down to our lord and god Big Business, paying tribute to its greatness with gifts of gold and promises of eternal servitude, so it shall smite us with the sting of a thousand legal restrictions. It's really quite fair when you consider that we've been given such wonderful gifts as the opportunity to pay for Britney Spears "music" and cinematic gems like "Super Troopers." So get out your checkbooks and bend over America, it's time for your medicine...
Rip - Copy songs from my CDs to my computer.
Mix - Change the order of these songs to create a playlist that is superior to the individual CDs.
Burn - Write this playlist to CDs so I can listen to these songs the way I want to listen to them.
I don't care how many laws Disney buys, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. What these ads really suggest is that Apple won't try to make listening to music impossible because of some misguided notion that pissing off your customers is good for business.
That means we have to find a way to emulate this data, in other words to turn into a form that can be used no matter what is the computer format of the future.
Hey moron, why not move the data over to the new media formats as they gain popularity? This isn't a "write once, throw in closet for all eternity" application we're talking about here - isn't the point to have access to the information? It's not like you need to get monks to spend their lives transcribing text to copy the data - it's already in an electronic form that can be copied automatically and checked against the original with little or no difficulty (unless the data format is proprietary and requires a custom reader that nobody knows how to build, which somehow wouldn't surprise me). And it's not like old formats disappear overnight - there are still people using 8-Tracks and Beta VCRs, so I don't think CDs and DVDs will vanish before the data can be copied (unless the SSSCA takes hold, in which case it won't matter because we won't have control over information anyway). If I can maintain copies of school reports I wrote 15 years ago and have no need to access, why can't people maintain data that cost 2.5 million pounds to gather?
When browsing the web, make a list of all the little annoying things about other web sites. Background music, no contact information, bad color schemes, too many graphics, poorly defined links, no coherent structure, all flash (or Flash) and no substance, etc. Pay particular attention to issues like page loading, accessibility of information, and ease of navigation. You want people to be able to find information on your site (unless you're a sadistic bastard), so think about what information your site's visitors will be looking for and make it easy to find. Avoid large graphics in your pages (link them to thumbnails) and load up on descriptive text (including ALT tags). Test in every browser you can get your hands on - some browsers tolerate mistakes that could cause others to choke.
Just disbanding Congress would have the exact same effect with much less paperwork.
Anyone else up for a law that allows up to shoot elected officals that we feel aren't acting in our best intrests?
I suppose if you limit it to days that Congress isn't in session, it could encourage them to work for the entire year, but then you would have to deal with the "I thought he was a Congressman" defense whenever someone is arrested for murder.
Seriously though, how about a "How'm I doin'?" board that visitors pass on the tour of the Senate and House floors? People would be allowed to push either the "Approve" or "Disapprove" button for their respective representatives. The "Approve" button would result in a gold star being stuck on the forehead of the representative, while the "Disapprove" button would give the representative a mild electric shock. Not only would this help our elected representatives to understand how we feel, but it would also increase tourism in DC and reinforce the idea of common people playing an active role in government. And imagine the practical jokes involving switching the star-sticking mechanism with the shocking mechanism...
The Democrats are the ones who talk about personal freedoms, equality, and a kinder, gentler government that forces everyone to be kinder, gentler people, while taking money from special interests and being as corrupt as they think they can get away with.
The Republicans are the ones who talk about war, family, morality, and using government to bring everyone in line with their morality, while taking money from special interests and being as corrupt as they think they can get away with.
I hope this clears things up for you.
God
That's right, the big guy upstairs has a hand in everything, and therefore should be held responsible. Free will, good/evil, intelligence, computers - they all came from God one way or another, isn't that the way it's supposed to work? And if churches are "Houses of God," doesn't that make them His assets, which could be confiscated to cover damages? It was God's will that people should share files, and therefore He is the guilty party - lock Him up and take away all His stuff.
Or maybe instead of bullying everyone who did anything that allowed someone to do something they didn't like, they could just go after the people who committed these "crimes." Right, that would force them to address the issue... Sorry for being realistic, I'll go hit myself over the head with a baseball bat until this makes sense...
1. Which has the biggest impact on profits?
A - Exact bit-for-bit duplication of products from legally obtained originals, with the resulting copies sold on streetcorners and eBay.
B - Production of products that rely on stupidity to make money and are of little or no value to the consumer.
C - Evil naughty hackers.
2. What should you do to ensure that "piracy" does as little damage as possible?
A - Produce products with enough value that people would prefer to purchase a legitimate copy rather than deal with quality and legality issues of questionable copies.
B - Encourage harsh prosecution of those who profit from the sale of "pirated" content and launch a PR campaign explaining your side of the case.
C - Punish all consumers for not giving you enough money and argue that you should have complete control over everything you sell for all eternity, followed by evil laughter.
3. When your product can no longer provide adequate profit in your market, you should:
A - Change your product to better fit the market.
B - Move to a different market.
C - Grab market by the legs, spread them wide, and shove your product up the most convenient orifice.
Not exactly. An IM does not require the other party to be present, nor is the information time limited. With a phone conversation, it takes action on the part of one party to record the conversation; with IMs, it takes action on the part of one party to erase the conversation - the full text of the conversation will remain until the IM window is closed. This is more like a digital answering machine than a phone conversation because it takes action to erase or archive the conversation, but not to indefinitely maintain it in some form. If the issue is expectation of privacy of information after it has been received (with no differentiation between volatile and archival copies), then there should be no difference between e-mail, snail mail, and IMs - all of them persist in a readable form until the end user takes action to remove the message, and that fact should be enough for people sending IMs to realize that they do not have the expectation of privacy they have with a phone conversation. Of course, this is based on a logical examination of the facts, the courts will probably come to a different conclusion.
I usually have no problem getting replies from foreign ISPs in English. For some reason though, they all seem to keep telling me about some postmaster account being over quota...
From the early days of the CIA's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, there are tire spikes, bombs and "liberator pistols." The latter were mass produced for $1.72 each and dropped to resistance fighters during World War II.
Somehow, I don't think I'd want to brag about poorly designed, cheap guns that were dropped in large quantities to anyone claiming to be a "resistance fighter," which many times turned out to be a German intelligence operative. Or maybe they were hoping that the Germans would try to use them...
But one device CIA officials say they never had was a version of the KGB's deadly umbrella that was used by an unknown assailant to kill Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978. A model of the umbrella is part of the display.
Death lasers, early death from too much sleep, Unix configurations, deadly umbrellas... I realize that Valentines day was just a few days ago, and a certain someone is entering into a particularly serious contract, but there's really only so much death you need on the front page...
I recently discovered that any e-mail I sent with the return address listed here (and elsewhere on the web) will not get through to AOL. There's no notice of this of course, so I just never got responses from people on AOL. This had nothing to do with my mail server (I tested this with multiple mail servers and return addresses), it was completely based on the Reply-To header - changing the reply to address fixed the problem. Based on my experience, I see two main problems with blacklists:
Without notice that your message was rejected, it seems like the message is getting through, but the recipient is unwilling or unable to respond. This is a real pain with eBay, especially with Paypal payments (the sellers apparently never noticed that money had magically appeared in their accounts unless they received an e-mail notice).
Basing the filter on the Reply-To header is rather stupid, because it can easily be changed or forged. Spammers can simply spam under your address until it gets blacklisted, then move on to another, leaving you screwed. Sure it is simple to just change your return address, but how do you know that you have to if nobody tells you that you're blacklisted?
Other then C.P. Snow, what else is there to show that art and science ever diverged, or that this was even a popular view? The whole "Two Cultures" thing is popular to throw around in academia, but it is often forgotten rather quickly (I have forgotten it twice myself, I'll have to dig up my copy of it sometime so I can forget it again). There is more of a split between academia and reality than there has ever been between art and science.
How many times have people talked about "the art of" something and "the science of" the same thing in the same sentence? Better yet, how many times has this been used in commercials? This is the tired old element of painting something as more of one thing and saying that you do the other (meaning that you must be far superior to the competition), and this is the same thing that Katz is trying to push. By giving techies and coders the new title of "artist," the intent is to elevate them beyond their current status with nothing more than empty rhetoric.
Sure there's room for a lot of art in science, but as long as the science is dominant in a particular field, people in it are not likely to be recognized for their artistry, just like artists who make use of technology to create their art are not known as scientists - you have to do more than use the art or science to be an artist or scientist. There are plenty of art-dominant areas to play around in if you want the title of artist (and the criticism that comes with it) - poetry, photography, music (even computer generated music), etc.
The main problem with the idea of the Net having a heart is that it isn't a single distinct entity. The "elite" in the areas of computers and networking might like to think of the internet as one big giant single entity because all parts of it are connected in some way, but there's more involved than just connection - you need at least some minimal sense of unity and uniform purpose to have an entity with a figurative heart.
.coms, etc. were the next big things that bandwagon jumpers-on embraced until the next one came along. They still existed afterward, sometimes even becoming more popular and/or useful long after the hype was gone, but they aren't in fashion.
/. for those of you reading this, e-mail address harvesters for spammers, porn for lonely geeks, etc. - because the "heart" of the Net isn't a characteristic of the Net itself, it is a projection of the individual's own bias onto a general medium.
Aside from a few tech columnists and other such computer-hip people, people don't think of themselves as internet citizens. The internet isn't a way of life, no matter what those AOL commercials might try to represent as common behavior. It might be fun to play with, it might be useful, and it might even be essential, but in the end it is just a tool. More people consider their devotion to a sports team to be a way of life than their web surfing.
Ignoring that for a moment, people still don't use the internet in the same ways. All of Katz's examples seem to be new uses that were popular for a while because they were new - academic work, music "sharing,"
The Net can't have a heart because of the freedom and flexibility given to its users - the Net is what you want it to be, more or less. It isn't a newspaper or magazine, all in a neat, well-organized package; it isn't a city, with everything linked by proximity and a common body of residents that identify themselves with that city more than another; it isn't even a single industry, with multiple distinct entities linked by common interests, feeding off each other while at the same time trying to improve their relative positions.
The internet is a network - nodes, links, and bits of data. It isn't restricted to certain uses or users, so it is difficult to characterize it as anything more than a general purpose medium. Its "heart" is whatever you want it to be - research document sites for academics,
Never tell Katz you can't be quoted - that's one challenge you can be sure he'll take on.
Why do you recommend doing other activities
So far so good...
but then apologize for TV
Um, where did I apologize for TV? I simply pointed out that the problems he attributed to TV were not completely due to the TV itself. In reality, things are rarely all-or-nothing - there are usually multiple areas of concern, and focusing on only one and ignoring the others is not a good thing to do.
and also recommend keeping it on in the background?
For you, I would suggest reading comprehension classes. I stated that it was not absolutely necessary to turn the TV off; nowhere did I suggest that it was a better idea to leave it on. The important part was focusing your mind elsewhere - again, blaming the TV and ignoring the mind is the wrong way to think.
If you aren't watching it TURN IT OFF! The article (and many comments on /.) specifically state that they are constantly distracted by a TV nearby.
I can have a TV on right next to me and completely ignore it if I am occupied with something else, sometimes even when I am very interested in what is on. If you are easily distracted by a TV, turning it off may do nothing more than open you to other distractions. The important part is occupying your mind, which is easily ignored if you just blame the TV. Once you have this part down, it won't matter what the TV is doing.
The TV inteferes with your time and ability to use it in the first place. How can you address issues if you simply don't have the time to do so? TV doesn't give you commands but it occupies your brain so you can't give it any either.
Are you really too helpless to defy the will of an electronic picture-box? You don't have to let it control you. Hiding from the problem won't make it go away.
Turning it off was the best thing he could've done. It isn't the ultimate solution but it sure is a big part of the problem.
Once again, you assume that "good enough" equals "best." The best thing he could have done would have been to seek professional help. If what he said was true, then he was becoming seriously delusional after watching TV shows. Turning off the TV and noting that the symptoms are no longer present will most likely give him a false sense of security and cause him to stop trying to identify and correct the actual problem. When his problems manifest themselves again, there may not be a quick fix solution available. This is similar to getting a prescription for antibiotics and only taking them until the symptoms go away - in reality you are just getting rid of the easy targets while leaving yourself wide open to the less affected ones.
You might be going about it the wrong way. Instead of trying to stop watching TV, start doing something else. It sounds like you were just using it to kill time, so it should be fairly low on your list of priorities. If you want to get by without it, just find something else to do. Build furniture, learn about photography, refine your typing skills, start an exercise routine, write about the decline of modern civilization - just do something, anything. You might be amazed at how quickly time moves when it isn't metered out by commercial breaks. You don't even necessarily need to keep the TV off, just keep your mind occupied with something else.
Another thing that I think TV does, when TV is you primary source of entertainment and social interaction it warps the mind. TV lets you hand out with hot chicks, go on a thrilling adventure, and fall in love. You begin to believe (subconsciously) that you really do have a relationship to these people. It tricks the mind into believing that you are a smart, good looking, intelligent person with a ton of interesting friends and stories.
Either you bought your TV from your friendly neighborhood covert brainwashing clinic, or a significant part of the problem was with you. The TV just provides you with information (and fairly passive information in the case you describe), it does not instruct you in how to process that information. Your experience may have been a symptom of a more serious problem, and you should seriously consider therapy. Pulling the plug on the TV may have been a short term solution, but it does not address the underlying problem.
Your major in college doesn't determine what job you will end up with, it determines what classes you will take. Therefore, major in an area with classes that you will enjoy. In my case, I enjoyed technical courses with stuff like math and electronics, so I majored in EE. At the same time, I had interests in literature, writing, and philosophy, but I didn't particularly like classes in those areas (some of the literature courses were quite interesting, but I absolutely hated the one philosophy course I took), so I pursued those as outside interests. I also enjoyed playing around with computers, but I had no interest in CS classes. The result was a resume with a pair of EE degrees, a good range of technical skills, and various activities well outside the realm of EE (school newspaper, writing tutor, etc.).
When it came time to look for a job, my coursework and project experience didn't point at any one specific job - I had enough skills and experience to get a job in a variety of areas like hardware design, telecommunications, systems engineering, software design, consulting, and probably many others. The company I work for now does a lot of systems engineering, but you'll have a hard time finding anyone with a systems engineering degree - as far as I know, that major does not exist (and if it does exist somewhere, it shouldn't). When you get a job, you will have specific tasks that will usually require you to draw on your experience in general and not specific coursework. You may find some details helpful, but most jobs aren't the same as any college class (I would suggest staying away from those that are, as they could lock you into a specific position with no room to move).
Remember, even within a single major, there are many paths that you can take, making even an EE or CS degree a bit ambiguous. What will ultimately matter will be your full range of skills, not the letters on a piece of paper (unless those letters are "MCSE" of course). What is important is to enjoy what you do and build skills in the areas you are interested in. When deciding which of your interests (assuming that your interest is equal in all cases) to make your major and which to make a minor or hobby, start with the ones that will give you the most flexibility in the future and match those to the positions that require the most rigid structure to provide the greatest reward. For me, an EE degree provided the best opportunities, so I majored in that and left the rest to hobbies and outside interests. You need to rank your interests similarly.
For example, if your interest is in becoming a computer security specialist, as in your example, an EE or CS (I would suggest EE, Master's if you can do it) degree with a concentration in communications/crypto/etc., a minor in physics, and system administration as a hobby would put you in the best position to get the specific job you want, while still giving you the necessary skills for jobs in many other areas. Going straight at a specific job area without other supporting skills or getting a degree in another area with just an interest in the job area will put you at a competitive disadvantage (especially with the recent change in the job market). If you change your mind later or find an opportunity in another area that is too good to pass up, the more flexible skill set will put you in the best position to succeed. It is always possible to do something like major in Chinese history and go on to design propulsion systems for NASA, but don't go convincing yourself that you can always get away with that just because someone else did. There are a lot of variables at work, so you need to do as much as possible to minimize their effect on you if you want to pull off a big career shift.
Don't worry, everything is going according to plan. You see, those of us who have a hard time at social gatherings are bringing the rest of the world down with us. We can't enjoy life outside, so we come up with all these fun things to do inside - games, porn, file sharing, etc. The corporations bought on because there was money in it, and once enough people were hooked, the outside world stopped being interesting. Outside businesses have to cut corners to keep going, reducing all stores to Wal-Mart or Home Depot style shopping centers where socialization is impossible. With nothing left outside, people are forced online for their entertainment, to meet people, or just to get a cheap thrill. Now those of us who have been stuck there all along have the advantage - we might not be able to speak to a person, but we can communicate electronically; we can't find a specific item in a store, but we can find it at half price online; we couldn't make a girl notice us outside, but we can sweep them off their feet from across a wire. It's our world now, and it's only just beginning. [Cue evil laughter.]
Or maybe that's what they want you to think...
If Eisner is so concerned about the industry's destruction, why doesn't he consider what his customers want? I realize that most people have the IQ of various garden vegetables, but I'm not going to buy something that's a pain in the ass to use. If all of this copy protection crap becomes mandatory, I'll just have to fall back on all the books I've been stockpiling at about 5 cents each. I already have enough to last me many, many years, so I think I can afford to miss the characters on Friends whining and the characters on ER facing yet another personal crisis that has nothing to do with medicine (yes, I know that those are on NBC and Disney owns ABC, but I don't know what shows are on ABC, I don't even know what number channel it is around here), not to mention the recent torture fad... I suppose I should start recording the few good shows out there that aren't likely to be released on a reasonably priced set of DVDs (not that I particularly care for CSS and region coding, but at least there are ways around those) while I'm at it. It feels like an information cold war - better stock up while you can, it might not be around tomorrow...
Its almost like you get visions of a 30 year old desk, wooden chair, a XT computer, monochrome monitor, yellow lined notepads, in a room painted light yellow or baby blue. You get thoughts wondering if a pocket protector is mandatory.
Well, my desk is nothing fancy, but I've got a Steelcase Leap chair, PowerBook G4 (Titanium), and 19" monitor (probably due to be replaced in a year or so), in a room painted off-white. Of course, I'm in a 100% government-funded non-profit company, so it isn't exactly the same as being a government contractor, but close enough. However, we're not hiring, because people won't leave (attrition is at about 0%).
It's still not Attack of the Drones because the UAVs don't shoot at anything, or drop munitions.
This statement isn't entirely accurate. The UAVs don't select targets or decide when to attack, but the CIA's Predators do carry Hellfire missiles. Katz is still way off, because humans (and lots of them), not machines, are running the show.
There is no war in recent human history that involved so few humans, at least on one side of the conflict. ... A handful of human soldiers guide and direct the increasingly sophisticated technological arsenal that has devastated the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda networks...
Handful? HANDFUL?!?!?! I can't believe anyone who claims to be capable of thinking would say something so ridiculously wrong. Unless you have hands the size of the Pacific ocean, there is no way that all of the humans fighting this war could be described as a handful. Guess what - all those unmanned vehicles, remote sensors, guided weapons - they are operated by humans, as are all of the manned aircraft, ground stations, surface ships, etc. The Predator doesn't fly itself, nor does it give itself orders, nor does it interpret sensor data, nor does it repair itself - humans still do all of that and more, and anyone with even a semi-functional brain could understand that. The humans are still there, they just have more time to spend on directing efforts toward maximum effectiveness with minimal casualties through information superiority. Way to go Katz, you just insulted thousands upon thousands of American and coalition soldiers and support personnel, not to mention all of the hard-working engineers operating slightly removed from the fighting, who are the real reason why there have been "stunningly few U.S. military casualties and American civilian casualties beyond September 11 and the anthrax attacks." First he calls Behind Enemy Lines a good movie, now this. Will someone please keep this idiot away from military issues?