Because if it just comes down to a secure and fast browser, MS has much more money and resources to make this come true than FF, I believe, let me know where I'm wrong.
IE is insecure mostly because of Microsoft's philosophy, not because of development resources. Public statements and publicity stunts to the contrary, Microsoft is more interested in building and maintaining their monopoly, adding new features, etc. than providing a secure browser (or OS, for that matter).
And furthermore, not even FF adheres only to the standards, as outlined in the paragraph that speaks of the w3
First, the whole standards process assumes that, in addition to supporting the standards, implementors will also support non-standard new features. These new features are supposed to be tried out in practice, and then submitted to the next version of the standard when all the kinks are worked out. When there are multiple implementations, and one of them gets picked for the standard, you're supposed to implement the new version.
Microsoft's problem isn't that they added non-standard features. Their problem is that they used non-standard features to tie web pages to IE, and failed to fix broken or incomplete implementations of standards. This combined with IE's massive market share made a lot of people develop non-standard websites that only worked with IE.
Permission to quote is normally freely given, as is the permission to reproduce text or images for such noncommercial use as illustrating a thesis or a dissertation. The Mandeville Special Collections Library assesses a fee for the publication of reproductions for commercial purposes.
which sounds to me like a non-commercial project like gutenberg would probably not have to pay the access fees. the other UCSD policy mostly talks about limiting duplication because it stresses the rare and original materials that the special collection is setup to preserve.
it doesn't surprise me that gutenberg didn't fall into their ordinary categories (commercial or academic). so any request to copy an entire volume would probably result in an interal discussion about how the special collections materials are preserved, accessed, possibilities for digitization, etc. in particular, librarians are very wary of digitizing things piecemeal without sustainable plans for organizing and maintaining them afterwards. (because it usually leads to doing the same work over again later).
if you gave me a list of materials you wanted to scan, i could talk to some people about what plans are being developed to digitize things. especially if the materials were things that only UCSD had, we could probably give priority to digitizing the materials where people had expressed actual interest in the content.
At the same time, UC libraries prohibit scanning for Project Gutenberg or other true "open" content projects unless they receive $$$$ in royalities.
do you have a source for this? do you mean that a UC library tried to stop someone from checking out books and scanning them? or do you mean that they didn't allow the gutenberg folks to setup a scanning shop inside a library? there's a huge difference between those two.
i work at a UC library, and i've certainly never heard of any policies about project gutenberg. i'm not sure what kind of arrangements yahoo made, where the scanning is going to happen, etc. but i would imagine that yahoo agreed to (at least) cover the expense and hassle of any library facilities they're going to be using. project gutenberg might not have that kind of funding.
this is all assuming that this was involving public domain books, where the only leverage that UC libraries would have would be their facilities and lending policies. if you're talking about stuff that UC owns the copyright to, then that would be another kettle of fish. it would not surprise me to learn that a campus counsel or some such wouldn't let a library give away rights to content that UC held the rights to (like a library's special collections holdings).
Yes, companies and non-profit employers exist that care about their employees. I work for a university for exactly that reason -- much higher respect for work-life balance, quality of life, advancement, training, etc. And not having to worry about being laid off at any moment helps, too.
But it's not just universities. I've seen rankings of top companies based on their family-friendly policies. These are things like flexible work arrangements, good benefits, low overtime, etc. I don't know for sure, but I'd wager that the companies that rank high on these lists do so because they've decided it's better to invest in their employees and keep them happy.
Of course, company-wide policies are only part of the picture. Your vacation time and flexible work arrangements are only as good as your boss's willingness to let you exercise them. So I'd definitely add a question or two about quality-of-life issues to your list of questions you ask prospective employers. I know that I consider it a very good sign when applicants ask these kinds of questions.
This is sick. I'm sorry, but it is. There is *NOTHING* on the web that can compare, in both depth and breadth, to a well stocked research library.
that's where you're wrong.
speaking as a programmer for a research university's library, i can say there is more and more relevant material online. particularly in the sciences, most current research is done using pre-publication drafts obtained from colleagues. by the time it's printed it's out of date.
more to the point, this article is talking about an undergrad library, not the main research library. the vast majority of undergrad library users are more interested in internet access and a good place to study than in books. they rarely need anything that's not online (and they can head over to the research library when they do need it).
People don't want a version of Windows without WMP, and that's not the point of this judgement, anyway.
The point is that if Dell wants to ship PCs with iTunes and Quicktime installed instead of WMP, they should be able to do that. The reasoning (from the MS antitrust filings) was that Dell wouldn't ship two of any app because it would increase support costs. So the only way they could economically use an alternative is if they could remove the MS app completely.
The argument was for IE, but I think it's just as valid for media players, given the fact that they steal file associations from each other and use incompatible file formats.
The fact that the WMP-less Windows costs the same will probably slow the use of this option. But the fact remains that before the WMP-less version, it would have been illegal for Dell to strip out WMP and replace it with an alternative.
some people get good IT budgets, lots of training funding, lots of staff, etc. other people have a lot less resources, especially if a centralized IT department is supposed to be meeting their needs (these people will often hire their own IT people and duplicate the centralized IT services).
in general though, the benefits will be good; and the atmosphere, dress code and deadlines will be a lot more relaxed. supervision is often lax or non-existent. the parking will suck, the salary will be considerably lower, and the bureaucracy can be crushing.
there will be a lot more "process" people -- people who care how decisions are made, as opposed to what (if anything) actually gets done. some people will care very deeply about education, public service, community relations etc. (especially if you work for a public or urban university).
in my experience, the whole PC/politics thing is overblown. there is a lot of PC doublespeak, but most of the people just roll their eyes. there is a lot of political infighting, but you can pretty much avoid it if you're not involved in campus-level budgeting. i've seen incompetent people loudly and routinely say incredibly offensive things, mock anything political, and keep their jobs (and get promoted) for years and years.
a few years back, i went to a conference at moscone and was going to stay a few days afterwards and have the wife come up to join me. but i couldn't afford the hotel my employer was paying for, so i got a good deal on a hotel three blocks away.
unfortunately, those three blocks were straight into the tenderloin.
as i was walking to my new hotel at 3pm on friday, i walked past a group of whores on the corner (a block from my hotel), and one of them delivered the most succint come-on i've ever heard: "want head?". she was the most strung-out crack whore i've ever seen. i resisted the temptation to tell her i wouldn't let her touch any part of my body, and got to my hotel.
needless to say, i bailed on that hotel and found another place.
This sounds like a decent idea. At least, I've long wanted something very similar to this. I carry an iPod with me everywhere, and I'd love to be able to plug a keyboard into it and use it to enter notes on the go.
Or better yet, I've always thought that the best setup would be an iPod with the UI of a Palm device (I call this a "PalmPod", when I occasionally rant about all the stuff I carry around). You could do basic stuff with just the PalmPod, but it would sync and be a decent-sized hard drive.
Too bad this Modular PC costs a small fortune -- it seems like a pretty close approximation of what I'm looking for.
3: There's no way easy way save a hierarchy and have it integrate into the browser in a slick way.
with foxylicious, you can designate a hierarchy separation character, and it will build a hierarchy for you. personally, i mostly file things by geography (i live in CA, but i lived in the UK for a couple of years, and i'm moving to FL in six months...) or by subjects. so i have location.ca, location.fl, location.england, etc. foxylicious makes this into a top-level location folder, with subfolders for ca, fl, and england.
Here's a better idea: go to university and do a study abroad program for a semester or a year. If you take a major that isn't too demanding, you can fit in a free semester very easily, and maybe even a free year if you don't take too many electives. Otherwise, you can just tack on a semester at the end.
Meanwhile, get a job on campus. Not fast-food or service work, either. There are lots of jobs in departmental offices and research labs. Assuming you're interested in programming or system administration (you are posting to Ask Slashdot...), there are often opportunities to learn real programming, which many of the student workers I've seen like a lot more than their CS classes. It's amazing how much pent-up demand there is for simple database programs, little tools to do text and data processing, etc., so even if your job isn't stricly IT-related, there might be opportunities to get some coding in.
Net result: you get a bachelor's degree, get to do some travel, get some decent job experience. And then you can use your connections and college internship/placement services to get a better job than you're going to get on your own (esp. with no degree and little experience).
Your boss is being completely unreasonable. I don't know where you are, and what your local laws are, but most states in the US are at will -- unless there is an explicit notice period in your job contract, you can walk away with zero notice.
My first real job out of university ended much like yours. I was the only one left in the company who could maintain their servers, and do several other things. (I also got a 20% pay cut with worthless private stock, which is taxed like income, for the other 20%). When I gave two weeks notice, the boss demanded four weeks notice, and all kinds of other things.
I told him I didn't have to give any notice and would walk that second if he didn't change his tune. Needless to say, he did.
You're the one in the position of strength -- don't let them bully you.
Though I think that, in the end, I agree with you. I think Novak is a conservative tool. I think he behaved terribly in this case -- probably criminally.
And yet, he can plausibly assert that he was exposing nepotism. Novak was told that Wilson got the job because Plame suggested his name, and that suggestion got forwarded to Cheney. Prosecuting Novak for this will make it a lot easier for the govt to suppress other, legitimate whistleblowers by intimidating journalists and editors.
Indeed, Novak hasn't displayed an abundance of judgement or journalistic integrity. But that doesn't mean he wasn't exposing alleged government abuse, or that he's not entitled to whatever journalist shild laws were in place.
You're clearly not able to read what I've written objectively.
I know that Wilson was very well qualified to be the fact-finder in the Niger uranium case -- no sane person disputes that. And from what I've read, the forgery and misrepresentation of the documents was a far greater government abuse.
But that doens't mean that handing a job to your spouse (which is what was being alleged by Novak, et al., whether or not it's true) would still be a government abuse worth exposing.
As much as I hate to say anything in defense of a slimeball like Novak, I don't think this precedent applies.
Novak was reporting on something that was clearly in the public interest (nepotism). So that means that the journalist shield laws would apply in his case. It's also not clear that he knew that exposing an undercover operative was a crime -- though I'm not sure that's relevant.
Of course, there are a couple of other journalists being held in contempt of court over this, so I'm not sure what the status is. It does seem a little odd that they'd try to get the info out of unrelated journalists (some of whom never published articles about the subject) instead of Novak, though.
My wife bought a 15G iPod the day before the 20G iPods came out (with the better clickwheel, and at the same price). If she'd read the rumor sites, she would have known, and would have 5G more space on her iPod today.
It's an extreme example, but it gets to the heart of the problem: Apple is so secretive that there is no other good source of info about what's going on, when upgrades are going to happen, etc.
-Esme
Re:The Government has no business defining journal
on
Is Blogging Journalism?
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I never said there could never be a public interest in exposing something Apple or Microsoft were doing. This case doesn't set the precedent that there will never be a public interest in reporting on illegal activity using a blog. If they were breaking antritrust laws, or doing something else illegal, the shield laws for journalists should apply to bloggers just as much as newspapers.
But let's not kid ourselves. I like reading Think Secret and the rest of the rumor sites. It's fun and I don't think it hurts anybody. But Apple is totally within their rights in figuring out who violated their NDA, and firing them. Apple isn't trying to cover up a crime or unethical behavior -- they announced everything in the ThinkSecret reports at a conference. The laws that journalists use to keep sources confidential are completely inapplicable.
-Esme
Re:Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press
on
Is Blogging Journalism?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
There are related laws to protect non-journalist whistle-blowers. They generally prohibit firing, reducing pay, changing work duties, and any other forms of retaliation.
I think the reason why journalists are treated differently is because they are in a unique position to disseminate information quickly and widely. Blogs are changing that, though.
I would expect a web-only journalist to be treated the same way as a traditional journalist. Though I would also expect a few years of court challenges before that's accepted -- the people trying to cover things up generally have better lawyers, and there are bound to be a few judges who come down on the wrong side before precedents are set.
-Esme
Re:Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press
on
Is Blogging Journalism?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Isn't everyone protected by the First Amendment? If so, should everyone ALSO be protected as journalists?
No.
The reason why some states give journalists the right to shield their confidential sources is to encourage whistle-blowing and reporting about government abuses, fraud, etc. Though even on that ground, the courts aren't always willing to accept it (see the Plame/Novak case).
There is no blanket right to shield confidential sources. Getting the scoop on MacWorld is fun and all, but it doesn't serve the public interest in any way.
I think it depends on how productive and disciplined you are.
Personally, when I'm working at the office, I goof off a lot. I read slashdot. I check out stuff at wikipedia. I browse amazon and on and on. But I'm also very productive, and can work like a dog when there's something time-sensitive to work on. I did the same when I telecommuted 2 days a week from a mile away. I did the same when I telecommuted full-time from 8 time zones away. And I've never had anything but glowing praise for my productivity.
The discipline to put the work away (mentally, too!) and relax in your free time is important, too. There's a much lower barrier to work when all your work stuff is in the next room, and you can just walk over to your computer/files/whatever. Taking a look at "one little thing" or reading "a couple of emails" can quickly turn into several hours of work.
And even if you're not actually doing work, just being in the same environment all the time can lead to blurring the lines between your professional and private lives. It can lead to having your work be at the edge of thought all the time, creeping into your thoughts any time you're not actively doing something else.
I saw a presentation by Gabriele Wienhausen (provost of Sixth College at UCSD) about their "digital playroom". I couldn't find a page for it, but did find a press release about Sony donating a bunch of stuff.
Basically it's a room that students need to swipe their ids to enter. Once inside, they've got free access to camcorders, digital cameras, lots of computers, etc. I think it's unattended, and open very long hours (24/7 during finals).
The key is making the students feel like the equipment is theirs, so taking it would be stealing from their friends. Otherwise, any unattended system is going to be plagued by theft.
I wonder what point in human evolution we became "unnatural"
around 20k years ago, give or take. that's the point when our technological advancement began progressing much more quickly than evolution.
previously, our behavior was regulated by evolution. if one group started doing something that had negative long-term consequences, evolution would kill them out. but since then, human societies have been increasingly interrelated, and our technological progress has progressed so rapidly, that evolution has been left in the dust.
which is not to say that humans aren't still evolving. but evolution is no longer effective in regulating our behavior, like it is with beavers.
More than that, my (admittedly unscientific) look at Dell's prices found them to be just as expensive for the same features.
I went to Dell's webstore, picked the $500 PC link on the home page, and made a few mods to bring the two boxes in line: removed monitor, added firewire, upgraded CD-ROM to DVD-ROM/CD-RW.
At that point, the machines aren't apples-to-apples -- the Dell box has 512MB RAM and a faster processor. But all the other specs are the same.
The price was $570 ($520 after a mail-in rebate). And this is for a huge cheesy-black, mini-tower case, not for an aesthetically pleasing, smaller-than-a-shoebox Mac Mini case.
So I agree with you about the software and the other intangibles. But at least as far as I can tell, the actual prices of the Mac Mini and a chepo Dell machine are basically the same.
Slashdot Mirror
IE is insecure mostly because of Microsoft's philosophy, not because of development resources. Public statements and publicity stunts to the contrary, Microsoft is more interested in building and maintaining their monopoly, adding new features, etc. than providing a secure browser (or OS, for that matter).
First, the whole standards process assumes that, in addition to supporting the standards, implementors will also support non-standard new features. These new features are supposed to be tried out in practice, and then submitted to the next version of the standard when all the kinks are worked out. When there are multiple implementations, and one of them gets picked for the standard, you're supposed to implement the new version.
Microsoft's problem isn't that they added non-standard features. Their problem is that they used non-standard features to tie web pages to IE, and failed to fix broken or incomplete implementations of standards. This combined with IE's massive market share made a lot of people develop non-standard websites that only worked with IE.
-esme
the UCSD policy you cite says:
which sounds to me like a non-commercial project like gutenberg would probably not have to pay the access fees. the other UCSD policy mostly talks about limiting duplication because it stresses the rare and original materials that the special collection is setup to preserve.
it doesn't surprise me that gutenberg didn't fall into their ordinary categories (commercial or academic). so any request to copy an entire volume would probably result in an interal discussion about how the special collections materials are preserved, accessed, possibilities for digitization, etc. in particular, librarians are very wary of digitizing things piecemeal without sustainable plans for organizing and maintaining them afterwards. (because it usually leads to doing the same work over again later).
if you gave me a list of materials you wanted to scan, i could talk to some people about what plans are being developed to digitize things. especially if the materials were things that only UCSD had, we could probably give priority to digitizing the materials where people had expressed actual interest in the content.
-esme
do you have a source for this? do you mean that a UC library tried to stop someone from checking out books and scanning them? or do you mean that they didn't allow the gutenberg folks to setup a scanning shop inside a library? there's a huge difference between those two.
i work at a UC library, and i've certainly never heard of any policies about project gutenberg. i'm not sure what kind of arrangements yahoo made, where the scanning is going to happen, etc. but i would imagine that yahoo agreed to (at least) cover the expense and hassle of any library facilities they're going to be using. project gutenberg might not have that kind of funding.
this is all assuming that this was involving public domain books, where the only leverage that UC libraries would have would be their facilities and lending policies. if you're talking about stuff that UC owns the copyright to, then that would be another kettle of fish. it would not surprise me to learn that a campus counsel or some such wouldn't let a library give away rights to content that UC held the rights to (like a library's special collections holdings).
-esme
Yes, companies and non-profit employers exist that care about their employees. I work for a university for exactly that reason -- much higher respect for work-life balance, quality of life, advancement, training, etc. And not having to worry about being laid off at any moment helps, too.
But it's not just universities. I've seen rankings of top companies based on their family-friendly policies. These are things like flexible work arrangements, good benefits, low overtime, etc. I don't know for sure, but I'd wager that the companies that rank high on these lists do so because they've decided it's better to invest in their employees and keep them happy.
Of course, company-wide policies are only part of the picture. Your vacation time and flexible work arrangements are only as good as your boss's willingness to let you exercise them. So I'd definitely add a question or two about quality-of-life issues to your list of questions you ask prospective employers. I know that I consider it a very good sign when applicants ask these kinds of questions.
-Esme
that's where you're wrong.
speaking as a programmer for a research university's library, i can say there is more and more relevant material online. particularly in the sciences, most current research is done using pre-publication drafts obtained from colleagues. by the time it's printed it's out of date.
more to the point, this article is talking about an undergrad library, not the main research library. the vast majority of undergrad library users are more interested in internet access and a good place to study than in books. they rarely need anything that's not online (and they can head over to the research library when they do need it).
-esme
People don't want a version of Windows without WMP, and that's not the point of this judgement, anyway.
The point is that if Dell wants to ship PCs with iTunes and Quicktime installed instead of WMP, they should be able to do that. The reasoning (from the MS antitrust filings) was that Dell wouldn't ship two of any app because it would increase support costs. So the only way they could economically use an alternative is if they could remove the MS app completely.
The argument was for IE, but I think it's just as valid for media players, given the fact that they steal file associations from each other and use incompatible file formats.
The fact that the WMP-less Windows costs the same will probably slow the use of this option. But the fact remains that before the WMP-less version, it would have been illegal for Dell to strip out WMP and replace it with an alternative.
-esme
i think it depends a lot on your department.
some people get good IT budgets, lots of training funding, lots of staff, etc. other people have a lot less resources, especially if a centralized IT department is supposed to be meeting their needs (these people will often hire their own IT people and duplicate the centralized IT services).
in general though, the benefits will be good; and the atmosphere, dress code and deadlines will be a lot more relaxed. supervision is often lax or non-existent. the parking will suck, the salary will be considerably lower, and the bureaucracy can be crushing.
there will be a lot more "process" people -- people who care how decisions are made, as opposed to what (if anything) actually gets done. some people will care very deeply about education, public service, community relations etc. (especially if you work for a public or urban university).
in my experience, the whole PC/politics thing is overblown. there is a lot of PC doublespeak, but most of the people just roll their eyes. there is a lot of political infighting, but you can pretty much avoid it if you're not involved in campus-level budgeting. i've seen incompetent people loudly and routinely say incredibly offensive things, mock anything political, and keep their jobs (and get promoted) for years and years.
-esme
Right now, I've got:
In the not-too-distant future, I'm going to be telecommuting full-time, and add:
-esme
trust me, you probably don't want to find out.
a few years back, i went to a conference at moscone and was going to stay a few days afterwards and have the wife come up to join me. but i couldn't afford the hotel my employer was paying for, so i got a good deal on a hotel three blocks away.
unfortunately, those three blocks were straight into the tenderloin.
as i was walking to my new hotel at 3pm on friday, i walked past a group of whores on the corner (a block from my hotel), and one of them delivered the most succint come-on i've ever heard: "want head?". she was the most strung-out crack whore i've ever seen. i resisted the temptation to tell her i wouldn't let her touch any part of my body, and got to my hotel.
needless to say, i bailed on that hotel and found another place.
-esme
This sounds like a decent idea. At least, I've long wanted something very similar to this. I carry an iPod with me everywhere, and I'd love to be able to plug a keyboard into it and use it to enter notes on the go.
Or better yet, I've always thought that the best setup would be an iPod with the UI of a Palm device (I call this a "PalmPod", when I occasionally rant about all the stuff I carry around). You could do basic stuff with just the PalmPod, but it would sync and be a decent-sized hard drive.
Too bad this Modular PC costs a small fortune -- it seems like a pretty close approximation of what I'm looking for.
-Esme
with foxylicious, you can designate a hierarchy separation character, and it will build a hierarchy for you. personally, i mostly file things by geography (i live in CA, but i lived in the UK for a couple of years, and i'm moving to FL in six months...) or by subjects. so i have location.ca, location.fl, location.england, etc. foxylicious makes this into a top-level location folder, with subfolders for ca, fl, and england.
-esme
Here's a better idea: go to university and do a study abroad program for a semester or a year. If you take a major that isn't too demanding, you can fit in a free semester very easily, and maybe even a free year if you don't take too many electives. Otherwise, you can just tack on a semester at the end.
Meanwhile, get a job on campus. Not fast-food or service work, either. There are lots of jobs in departmental offices and research labs. Assuming you're interested in programming or system administration (you are posting to Ask Slashdot...), there are often opportunities to learn real programming, which many of the student workers I've seen like a lot more than their CS classes. It's amazing how much pent-up demand there is for simple database programs, little tools to do text and data processing, etc., so even if your job isn't stricly IT-related, there might be opportunities to get some coding in.
Net result: you get a bachelor's degree, get to do some travel, get some decent job experience. And then you can use your connections and college internship/placement services to get a better job than you're going to get on your own (esp. with no degree and little experience).
-Esme
Your boss is being completely unreasonable. I don't know where you are, and what your local laws are, but most states in the US are at will -- unless there is an explicit notice period in your job contract, you can walk away with zero notice.
My first real job out of university ended much like yours. I was the only one left in the company who could maintain their servers, and do several other things. (I also got a 20% pay cut with worthless private stock, which is taxed like income, for the other 20%). When I gave two weeks notice, the boss demanded four weeks notice, and all kinds of other things.
I told him I didn't have to give any notice and would walk that second if he didn't change his tune. Needless to say, he did.
You're the one in the position of strength -- don't let them bully you.
-Esme
There wasn't any other post than this.
Though I think that, in the end, I agree with you. I think Novak is a conservative tool. I think he behaved terribly in this case -- probably criminally.
And yet, he can plausibly assert that he was exposing nepotism. Novak was told that Wilson got the job because Plame suggested his name, and that suggestion got forwarded to Cheney. Prosecuting Novak for this will make it a lot easier for the govt to suppress other, legitimate whistleblowers by intimidating journalists and editors.
-Esme
-Esme
You're clearly not able to read what I've written objectively.
I know that Wilson was very well qualified to be the fact-finder in the Niger uranium case -- no sane person disputes that. And from what I've read, the forgery and misrepresentation of the documents was a far greater government abuse.
But that doens't mean that handing a job to your spouse (which is what was being alleged by Novak, et al., whether or not it's true) would still be a government abuse worth exposing.
-Esme
As much as I hate to say anything in defense of a slimeball like Novak, I don't think this precedent applies.
Novak was reporting on something that was clearly in the public interest (nepotism). So that means that the journalist shield laws would apply in his case. It's also not clear that he knew that exposing an undercover operative was a crime -- though I'm not sure that's relevant.
Of course, there are a couple of other journalists being held in contempt of court over this, so I'm not sure what the status is. It does seem a little odd that they'd try to get the info out of unrelated journalists (some of whom never published articles about the subject) instead of Novak, though.
-Esme
My wife bought a 15G iPod the day before the 20G iPods came out (with the better clickwheel, and at the same price). If she'd read the rumor sites, she would have known, and would have 5G more space on her iPod today.
It's an extreme example, but it gets to the heart of the problem: Apple is so secretive that there is no other good source of info about what's going on, when upgrades are going to happen, etc.
-Esme
I never said there could never be a public interest in exposing something Apple or Microsoft were doing. This case doesn't set the precedent that there will never be a public interest in reporting on illegal activity using a blog. If they were breaking antritrust laws, or doing something else illegal, the shield laws for journalists should apply to bloggers just as much as newspapers.
But let's not kid ourselves. I like reading Think Secret and the rest of the rumor sites. It's fun and I don't think it hurts anybody. But Apple is totally within their rights in figuring out who violated their NDA, and firing them. Apple isn't trying to cover up a crime or unethical behavior -- they announced everything in the ThinkSecret reports at a conference. The laws that journalists use to keep sources confidential are completely inapplicable.
-Esme
There are related laws to protect non-journalist whistle-blowers. They generally prohibit firing, reducing pay, changing work duties, and any other forms of retaliation.
I think the reason why journalists are treated differently is because they are in a unique position to disseminate information quickly and widely. Blogs are changing that, though.
I would expect a web-only journalist to be treated the same way as a traditional journalist. Though I would also expect a few years of court challenges before that's accepted -- the people trying to cover things up generally have better lawyers, and there are bound to be a few judges who come down on the wrong side before precedents are set.
-Esme
No.
The reason why some states give journalists the right to shield their confidential sources is to encourage whistle-blowing and reporting about government abuses, fraud, etc. Though even on that ground, the courts aren't always willing to accept it (see the Plame/Novak case).
There is no blanket right to shield confidential sources. Getting the scoop on MacWorld is fun and all, but it doesn't serve the public interest in any way.
-Esme
I think it depends on how productive and disciplined you are.
Personally, when I'm working at the office, I goof off a lot. I read slashdot. I check out stuff at wikipedia. I browse amazon and on and on. But I'm also very productive, and can work like a dog when there's something time-sensitive to work on. I did the same when I telecommuted 2 days a week from a mile away. I did the same when I telecommuted full-time from 8 time zones away. And I've never had anything but glowing praise for my productivity.
The discipline to put the work away (mentally, too!) and relax in your free time is important, too. There's a much lower barrier to work when all your work stuff is in the next room, and you can just walk over to your computer/files/whatever. Taking a look at "one little thing" or reading "a couple of emails" can quickly turn into several hours of work.
And even if you're not actually doing work, just being in the same environment all the time can lead to blurring the lines between your professional and private lives. It can lead to having your work be at the edge of thought all the time, creeping into your thoughts any time you're not actively doing something else.
-Esme
I saw a presentation by Gabriele Wienhausen (provost of Sixth College at UCSD) about their "digital playroom". I couldn't find a page for it, but did find a press release about Sony donating a bunch of stuff.
Basically it's a room that students need to swipe their ids to enter. Once inside, they've got free access to camcorders, digital cameras, lots of computers, etc. I think it's unattended, and open very long hours (24/7 during finals).
The key is making the students feel like the equipment is theirs, so taking it would be stealing from their friends. Otherwise, any unattended system is going to be plagued by theft.
-esme
around 20k years ago, give or take. that's the point when our technological advancement began progressing much more quickly than evolution.
previously, our behavior was regulated by evolution. if one group started doing something that had negative long-term consequences, evolution would kill them out. but since then, human societies have been increasingly interrelated, and our technological progress has progressed so rapidly, that evolution has been left in the dust.
which is not to say that humans aren't still evolving. but evolution is no longer effective in regulating our behavior, like it is with beavers.
-esme
I went to Dell's webstore, picked the $500 PC link on the home page, and made a few mods to bring the two boxes in line: removed monitor, added firewire, upgraded CD-ROM to DVD-ROM/CD-RW.
At that point, the machines aren't apples-to-apples -- the Dell box has 512MB RAM and a faster processor. But all the other specs are the same.
The price was $570 ($520 after a mail-in rebate). And this is for a huge cheesy-black, mini-tower case, not for an aesthetically pleasing, smaller-than-a-shoebox Mac Mini case.
So I agree with you about the software and the other intangibles. But at least as far as I can tell, the actual prices of the Mac Mini and a chepo Dell machine are basically the same.
-Esme