I have no doubt that are many people who just want to waste the nations tax money with frivolous requests. Up to January of this year I still had conservative persons that were sure there would be a January 26 trail in which Obama would be removed from office. Of course anyone who would read knew this was not the case, and wondered why conservatives would support deserters. In any case, I can only speculate the number of frivolous requests generated by the belief that this trial was going to happen, and the anger when it did not.
There are many other cases. Who knows how many requests are related to acorn and the fraudulence tapes collected by the criminals who attacked the duly representatives of this country. As I said, I would probably like to see more FOI requests accepted, but without a context it is difficult to say whether this is possible.
Pretty much to break into consumer market, and expect people to actually pay for the product, Google has to partner with a company that has consumer credibility. Right now consumers expect Google to give everything away, while providing no support. Lost you email, sorry, nothing we can do about it. That is ok with a free product, but not something for which you pay good money. Sony is such a brand.
We see that Google has little intention of funding direct human support. Look at the Nexus One. It is a Google phone, but Google denies having anything to do with it other than selling it. Once you buy it, it is your problem. I know that is not true, but given the way it sold, that is the way it is perceived. It is clear that that strategy is not working for mass sales.
A TV set top box requies a fair amount of handholding. Sony knows how to provide that hand holding and price products in such a way that it can make a profit. This may require a closed system. But the system will have to be sold on quality and support, not low cost and openess. After all, the only reason Intel would be involved is to move high end inventory.
Would a doctor admitted that he or she could not read past a tenth grade level? I think not. Yet I am amazed at the number of apparently educated people who are willing, even to the point of being proud, of the fact that they cannot do anything basic high school math.
Statistics is a very difficult subject. I have taken several courses and still cannot tell you the when to use a Paisson or Binomial distribution, but I do know the basics. For instance, most naturally occurring variable be frequency distributed according to a normal distribution. The key idea is that the variable is random. What this means in terms of medical studies is that the participants are chosen randomly. Defining how random a variable is a particularly hairy, yet important, part of statistics. If the sample is random, and representative, then the result are crap.
I know enough doctors and medical researchers to know that the statics illiteracy is universal. There are relatively simple books that explain much of what a researcher must know(I can't recall the names, but researchers around the hospital probably can recommend one). And, like I tell students, it is possible to know whether the results of a calculator, or SPSS, is reasonable.
A person may not enter or cause to be
entered false information into a telephone caller identification system with the intent to deceive, defraud or mislead the recipient of a call.
The bill includes intent. Unless one is trying to deceive or defraud your customer, there is no violation.
Just to be clear this Texas. Not only Texas, but central Texas. To get from Austin to a civilized area outside of Texas, i.e. Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and back is going to take a person several hours. In fact, it would make more sense to leave the country and go into mexico.
As another point, I hope that the dealership is prosecuted for this. If they are providing loans, they have sensitive data, and if they are not changing passwords when an employee is terminated, one can assume that they have equally ineffective control of customer data, such as social security numbers. It is a good this that this guy was only trying to be annoying, or at least we hope so.
I disagree that programs are bloated. In most cases, we code to deliver a product at a reasonable cost. Competent trained humans are much more expensive than gates. This is why few people code in C. They want fancy features like trash collection, signaling, and GUI. While all of these can be custom coded on a case by case basis so that only the features needed are included, and the libraries are optimized. Of course competent programmers do not need trash collection, but it sure makes life easier, and can cut down on programming hours. So we tolerate a bit of inefficiency because, frankly, very few people are going to pay double the price so they can use a 500 MHz 256B computers. The average person is more likely going to pay $400 for a 2 GHZ @GB machine, and then want the software for little or no money.
Now, that is not to say the libraries should not be optimized. It makes economic sense to spend significant time on such code. Just look at MS Vista. But complaining that we unnecessary library code is sometimes included does not really solve any problems.
So what you are saying is that every car with an automatic transmission is crippled so that grandmas can drive it. Any claims of superiority over a manual transmission are excuses proposed by advertisers and fanboys. I pretty much agree. The only reason the automatic transmission is so heavily advertised is because it provides an extreme up front profit and requires prohibitively expensive repairs, many of which are done by the dealer as the transmission is so unreliable.
We also see in real estate that walled gardens are valued. People seem perfectly willing to pay huge amounts of money to live in controlled gated community. I do not believe that they provide any additional security, I have never needed to live in one and an perfectly safe, but I do not see AGs going after them for fraudulent PR.
I am not going to say any Apple product is superior to any non apple product. I like the laptops because I transfer video through firewire, and I can do so with no additional drivers. Same thing for cameras. Same this for mass storage. I expect people to buy the machine they need, not the machine they are told to buy to look good.
I don't see how this applies. Apple forked KHTML into Webkit, which is now one of the standards, along with Gecko and Trident. Webkit works so well that Google uses this, to compete with Apple. I don't see Apple suing Google over the use.
Open source is the new business model. It helps alleviate these patent disputes and build support. When Nokia bought QT, the bought significant good will and a large user base. Unfortunately this was not enough to counteract years of bad decisions. What bad decisions? Nokia advertised cool stuff, but they treated the gadgets as something that was a privilege to own. They also never challenged the carrier lock in the US. Apple succeeded by designing something the custoer wanted, not something that the carriers wanted.
I pretty much ignore these patent things. Either the company, like Apple, will have defensive patents in place or they will pay for the use of the patents. If Nokia asked for such a large sum of money as to put the iPhone out of the market, they are a fool. Apple is one company that pays for patents, even the useless one-click. It seems that, like MS, Nokia is no longer willing to compete, just whine about losing market share.
For those that RTFA, it states that MS only reimburses service charges for phones that us MS software. This would tend to indicate that at least some people pay extra to use Apple hardware.
Also, according to the article, the use at MS is hardly rampant. It reports market penetration in general for iPhone is 25%, but penetration at MS is only 10%.
There is third thing. Getting out of the multibutton mentality. While there are reasons for more than one mouse button, much to the time it is really a way to make lazy UI decisions. Furthermore, if the UI has been build for million button mouse rather than a mutlitouch trackpad, it is going to be much harder to move to a touch screen.
This is the secret of innovation and goof program. Developing not only for what currently exists, but also for what might exist.
I have to agree with this. Textbooks make sense only if one are trying to control information. If one is teaching, then a wide variety of sources makes more sense. In the past this was not feasible. Today it is. Consider that a school will pay not only huge upfront costs for a text book, but also recurring storage, administrative, and shrinkage costs. These costs can not usually be recouped by the student, but must be paid by the public purse.
Look at it this way. A medium sized school can be equipped with computers with high speed printers, in every classroom, for under 2 million dollars. The 10 year cost for supplying a single student with a text book is 10-15K range. If no text books were ordered, ever, and schools invested in computer based primary sources, money would be saved. We would still have consumables, but dealing with companies that would provide electronic consumables rather than paper consumables would save money, and resources.
If trained, kids will use computers in ways that they will never use textbooks. If allowed, they will find interesting things. We needs literature, and some printer resources, but by and large textbook, and the time we spend developing them, at least for non-college work, are a waste of money.
I am not sure why I want multitasking on the iPhone. The stated use is to allow a chat window to be always present. What would that look like though, a piece of my small screen dedicated to such an application? Does this mean I have a small browser window.
In the old days, we had background processes that always had to run. Now we have signals and the like that can awake idle processes so they do not have to run. Then we had TSR applications, and similar items on the Mac, like the Talking Moose. The former was created to solve the long start up time of applications on DOS and Windows. Multiple windows and such were useful on the PC, with larger screens, but somewhat harder to use on the Mac. The Mac seemed to launch applications faster, so I don't have a recollections of being annoyed that Finder was not multitasking.
Multitasking is a solution to solve some problem on the general computer. I am not sure it is the right solution for a small screen mobile small battery device. I would rather see innovative solutions rather than rehashing the same old thing. I think there this might be a useful solution for the iPad. My concern is that iPhone 4.0 is built for the next iPhone, and will make current iPhones harder to use. This is what happened with iPhone 3.0, which does not run very well on the first generation iPhone.
On the PC virus scanning software has become a primary problem. It is a problem that PC users must tolerate because of the virus problem on PC. An PC with virus scanning software is only slightly more usable than an infected PC. This is why few people have such software on the Mac, even though there is an equally serious threat.
Spyware and port monitoring software is something different. Programs like Spybot and the like can be implemented without seriously degrading the user experience. My question is if people who load programs on their iPhone have a understand and have real issues with the information exchanged with the vendor. It is like Facebook and Google. Many would agree that the amount of information both have is dangerous, but most seen to have no issue with it.
Ten years ago the NASDAQ reached 5132, no long after it lost more than half the value. The reason was that people believed the rules no longer applied. For some reason, conservation of energy, momentum, mass, were considered to be obsolete antiquated concepts. Sometimes it takes a smack in the ass to get people back to reality.
The real issue here, and one that is not addressed, is the quality of code. What the MMM addressed, IMHO, was adding developers to a project with defined metrics and ending up with code that met those metrics and integrated well with a larger code base. The reason that adding people did not work was the overhead needed to communicate between the develpers, which is 2^n proposition
As such, until the code is proven in service one cannot really say if the experiment worked. If the code is just going to have to be re-factored, or interfaces rewritten, then nothing was done other spending money to achieve a minimal product to meet a deadline. This is important, but does not prove or disprove anything.
Welcome to the corporate entitlement culture. Firms are entitled to do as they please, and are only required to apologize if caught red handed with no other way out. If the common excuses, like someone else messed up, or the customer misunderstood does not work, then they are required only to do the minimum to correct the problem, thereby providing no incentive to make sure the same problem does not happen again. After all, only the peasants got hurt.
As technical as/. seems to be, I am amazed at how people cannot work through simple process. I mean how can work with computers and not understand process?
At any allegation, teachers have to be removed from the classroom. This is a liability issue. A kid get a bad grade on a test, says the teacher touched her, and the teacher has to be removed. The teacher cannot be fired because nothing has been proven. The teacher cannot simply be moved around, because there is still the liability issue.
Most private industry has other options. For instance, if someone is stealing money, it is often useful to the let the situation happen until enough evidence is collected. If someone is guilty of sexually harassment they can be moved around, and then use the infraction later as an excuse to fire the employee.
In addition to all this, New York City is special case in the educational system. The union is very strong. The pay tends to be low. One issue with firing teachers is hiring new teachers. If word is on the street that a teacher can be fired for allegation, who but the worst teachers would want to work there? Would you want to work somewhere that if one your coworkers said you harassed them you would be fired with a bad recommendation? Not even an incompetent employee would want that.
I see it more as careful marketing. New Egg is The Geek store. In my observation they are no more or less legitimate than Fry's or Tiger Direct. All three operate to minimize cost to the customer, and sometimes when one does that things go wrong. At the minimum. one attracts customers that are only interesting in price. Such customers will inevitably cause problems, which is why it is better to shop for service than price, when possible.
I would think that it is not completely New Eggs fault. I am sure they found they source of product at a ridiculously low price, and too advantage of it. Perhaps they were told it fell off the back of the truck. Perhaps it was a wholesale clearance. In any case, they were taken in by the fraud, and purposefully or not, perpetrated similar fraud on their customers. It is now up to them to take responsibility for the actions, not balme someone else.
There is nothing that makes me trust some one less than when they blame someone else. It is like a bank that once told me it was the partners responsibility to monitor an advertised program. The materials had the banks name on the materials, the bank should be responsible. If the bank is just a clearinghouse, if New Egg is just a company that takes and then asks others to fulfill orders, why are we paying either?
Given the unprecedented level of forgiveness for such fraudulent behavior without a compelling explanation, it just had to be said.
Here is the thing. On one hand I think the shuttles are good enough, and we should use them indefinitely. Of course, indefinitely means until one of the three remaining shuttles fail, most likely taking another crew. I don't think most people want this to happen, which is why they are being retired now that we know and have seen the consequences of some sub optimal design decisions. In effect we have a choice of giving up this year,or simply not setting a date certain. I think the later might be a reasonable decision.
In any case, the decision must be made in terms of safety and effective spending of tax money, not politics. Those people who are going to be fired, are, after all, in conservative terms, are overpaid federal bureaucrats. Now, the people most effected by this are the people of clear lake,TX. These fine people elected Pete Olson, a fine conservative. Pete Olson does not believe in socialism. Pete Olson does not believe in extending unemployment checks, as one conservative said if you feed a stray animal the just multiply. Olson voted against a bill to help keep people in thier homes, a decision which I do not disagree with. Given this, it is clear that the only right and proper thing we must do is look at the technical side, and disregard all this fear mongering about jobs. These are allegedly technical and educated people. They will be able to find or create jobs. Unemployment in Texas is 2 points below the national average, and for professionals much lower.
The thing to do is to look at what is best for the country, and what is best to reduce the tax burden of the American People,and limit the role of government. That is what the last election cycle clearly indicated was the will of the people. If a few people in Clear Lake have to find other jobs to achieve that goal, then maybe that is what needs to happen.
Certainly Google is going after the low hanging fruit that we know as MS. For those of us who use MS for serious work, as well as Apple for other serious work, it is unclear why any of this Google paraphernalia matters. I have looked at Chrome on the PC. On my machines I can't get java or flash to run reliably. As far as the Macs, Camino already has all this stuff plus Flash Control. I don't know why the Google folks are so afraid of Adobe that they won't include the same functionality.
Take the airline example. Quality may have declined, but prices have allowed many more people to fly. This expanded market has allowed airlines to expand. Under regulation such things were not possible.
When we talk 'what the future holds' we are talking about management. The issues we have seen is that managers have not been doing their jobs, but have still gotten paid sometimes huge sums and often get hired again.
In the late 90's this bad management took the form of mark to market. This was used to overvalue future income and sometimes resulted in huge upfront payments for product of little or no value to the vendor or customer. Companies failed due to huge expenses and no income. Price fixing would have done nothing except created inflated prices for customers.
In the current example, managers and entrepreneurs see a hot product and want to enter the market. Capital manager also want to get into the hot market and loan money without proper due diligence. As time goes on, the market becomes overstated. One way to fix this is to lower prices so that demand can be increased. Such a thing would not possible with price fixing. Another way to fix this would be to let the businesses fail, a long with the irresponsible financial agents. As log as this firms are small, this is not an issue. It will not cause widespread problems. What we are seeing is large integrated businesses, sometimes supported by the government, sometimes created by corrupt government regularion.
In any case, when we cannot let a firm fail, or when we must fix prices and force customers to buy the product, we know we are in deep shit.
The problem is that a NASA project is long term, while a Senator only sees mid term. The space shuttle development ran from the late 60's to the first launch in 1981. Even Apollo was a seven year program, one year longer than the term of a senator. This means that most are looking for the pork they can send home this year and in the next few years, while NASA needs to be funded long term. The problem with Constellation is that it was funded in 2005, and years after Columbia disintegrated. If it would have funded fully in 2004, with a deadline of 2013, maybe we could have done it. Or else had some vision that STS was ending, and funded it in 2000 with the installation of the conservative government that apparently is so dedicated to space exploration.
Then, of course, there is the pork. Representative Olsen, not of the senate, has voting against the economic stimulus package, which consensus seems to indicate that it has stopped the hemorrhaging of jobs, and now he is complaining that a few thousand government employees are going to lose their jobs. What is it Pete? Do we want to balance the budget or keep support a federal jobs program where the average salary is over 70K a year? Sure the NASA jobs are great, but the budget is the budget. These jobs and ancillary costs could save over a billion a year. I know that Clear Lake is the probably the most federally subsidized place in America, but we really need real jobs based on capitalism, not socialism.
Reading one of the articles, on the possible surveillance used, it seems like people have conflicting points. I will make an over arching statement that I think everything the school district did was wrong because there was not full disclosure. I think many of the problems might have been solved with disclosure and a better thought out policy.
First, monitoring the computers at school. Many, if not all, schools have software to monitor the users actions on school computers. This is particularly useful for testing, or simply to make sure students are on tasks. Traditionally these computers have been school based desktops, so home issues are not a problem. Also, traditionally these computers have been monitored by people the students know, and the rules are well known. In this way extension to the laptop makes sense.
Which leads to the second question. Can student use a personal computer at school. I would say that school policy would go either way. I might suggest that a teacher might not want a students to use a unmonitored computer in a classroom where all the other computers are monitored. In TFA, a study hall situation was mentioned where the computer was taken up. The kid, of course, is not going to mention if they were off task, perhaps downloading music from limewire, but there may have been a reason. A school does not have to allow a personal computer any more than an iPod.
That said there should be a provision where a student can carry a personal computer which is used in unmonitored situation. In my experience, most of a students work can fit on an external drive, and it is not a big deal to hook it up, especially to Macs. Since MS machines require a driver for every single device, no matter how generic, there can be issues with permissions.
That said, laptops in schools is not a simple solution to anything. Taxpayers need to have their property protected, and students are a special case when it comes to spying by adults. Children are also a special case when it comes to the often underpaid employees who are paid to monitor the network. If policies and audit trails are not clearly laid out, then parent will of course be concerned.
You are absolutely correct, one cannot comment unless one has traveled the mile in the local shoes. However, two things stand out. First, even the imminent collapse of a bridge does not mean that taxpayer, perhaps federal, can forfeit their right to due diligence. Taxpayers deserve a fully explored plan. If that means studies and whatnot delay it, then so be it. There are many bridges that need to be replaced, and critical bridges that no longer exist. For instance, I think there is a bridge in Vermont that was allowed to go out, even though the nearest alternative route is at least an hour away. In the case of MS, there seems to alternatives within 10 miles that can support traffic in the '520' went away. Sure it would be a hassle, but not the end of the world. I myself have to make a 5 mile detour right now due to such issues.
Second, I wonder why MS did not enumerate the other people that are dependent on the bridge. For instance, why didn't the ad state that there were 5000 MS employees and x other persons. Is it because only MS needs this bridge? I am not saying that MS should pay for the bridge, but if the taxpayers are paying for a bridge to MS specification, then it seems a lot like the recent wall street bailout. Bad planning requires us to pay for a business that is too big to fail.
It is easy to believe that MS wants a new bridge, and wants the tax payers to fund it, at least partially. While I would not suggest that MS pays for the bridge, I would suggest that if it wants a custom MS bridge, then maybe MS should fund it.
There is only one peice of sensationalism. That students were issue with computer that random people could have, maybe not did, but could spied on minors without their knowledge. Yes this was a valid security issue, but look at it from the point of view of parents. A girl is using a computer in her sleep clothes, and some minimum wage tech staring at her getting his jollies, probably selling videos on the internet. We don't know what controls there are to prevent this. Sure, it probably never happened, but we can't be sure.
In any case the result is exactly what should have happened in the first place. Full disclosure. With full disclosure parents have options, such as investigating the audits of who is viewing the cameras, limiting use, or even buying personal equipment.
One thing that school is supposed to teach is that people make mistakes, these mistakes have consequences intended to insure those same mistakes are not made again. In this case, it was mistake to not fully disclose the security. The consequences in the real world for such mistakes is often a court action. Hopefully all schools have learned to be less secretive.
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I have no doubt that are many people who just want to waste the nations tax money with frivolous requests. Up to January of this year I still had conservative persons that were sure there would be a January 26 trail in which Obama would be removed from office. Of course anyone who would read knew this was not the case, and wondered why conservatives would support deserters. In any case, I can only speculate the number of frivolous requests generated by the belief that this trial was going to happen, and the anger when it did not.
There are many other cases. Who knows how many requests are related to acorn and the fraudulence tapes collected by the criminals who attacked the duly representatives of this country. As I said, I would probably like to see more FOI requests accepted, but without a context it is difficult to say whether this is possible.
We see that Google has little intention of funding direct human support. Look at the Nexus One. It is a Google phone, but Google denies having anything to do with it other than selling it. Once you buy it, it is your problem. I know that is not true, but given the way it sold, that is the way it is perceived. It is clear that that strategy is not working for mass sales.
A TV set top box requies a fair amount of handholding. Sony knows how to provide that hand holding and price products in such a way that it can make a profit. This may require a closed system. But the system will have to be sold on quality and support, not low cost and openess. After all, the only reason Intel would be involved is to move high end inventory.
Would a doctor admitted that he or she could not read past a tenth grade level? I think not. Yet I am amazed at the number of apparently educated people who are willing, even to the point of being proud, of the fact that they cannot do anything basic high school math.
Statistics is a very difficult subject. I have taken several courses and still cannot tell you the when to use a Paisson or Binomial distribution, but I do know the basics. For instance, most naturally occurring variable be frequency distributed according to a normal distribution. The key idea is that the variable is random. What this means in terms of medical studies is that the participants are chosen randomly. Defining how random a variable is a particularly hairy, yet important, part of statistics. If the sample is random, and representative, then the result are crap.
I know enough doctors and medical researchers to know that the statics illiteracy is universal. There are relatively simple books that explain much of what a researcher must know(I can't recall the names, but researchers around the hospital probably can recommend one). And, like I tell students, it is possible to know whether the results of a calculator, or SPSS, is reasonable.
The bill includes intent. Unless one is trying to deceive or defraud your customer, there is no violation.
As another point, I hope that the dealership is prosecuted for this. If they are providing loans, they have sensitive data, and if they are not changing passwords when an employee is terminated, one can assume that they have equally ineffective control of customer data, such as social security numbers. It is a good this that this guy was only trying to be annoying, or at least we hope so.
Now, that is not to say the libraries should not be optimized. It makes economic sense to spend significant time on such code. Just look at MS Vista. But complaining that we unnecessary library code is sometimes included does not really solve any problems.
We also see in real estate that walled gardens are valued. People seem perfectly willing to pay huge amounts of money to live in controlled gated community. I do not believe that they provide any additional security, I have never needed to live in one and an perfectly safe, but I do not see AGs going after them for fraudulent PR.
I am not going to say any Apple product is superior to any non apple product. I like the laptops because I transfer video through firewire, and I can do so with no additional drivers. Same thing for cameras. Same this for mass storage. I expect people to buy the machine they need, not the machine they are told to buy to look good.
Open source is the new business model. It helps alleviate these patent disputes and build support. When Nokia bought QT, the bought significant good will and a large user base. Unfortunately this was not enough to counteract years of bad decisions. What bad decisions? Nokia advertised cool stuff, but they treated the gadgets as something that was a privilege to own. They also never challenged the carrier lock in the US. Apple succeeded by designing something the custoer wanted, not something that the carriers wanted.
I pretty much ignore these patent things. Either the company, like Apple, will have defensive patents in place or they will pay for the use of the patents. If Nokia asked for such a large sum of money as to put the iPhone out of the market, they are a fool. Apple is one company that pays for patents, even the useless one-click. It seems that, like MS, Nokia is no longer willing to compete, just whine about losing market share.
Also, according to the article, the use at MS is hardly rampant. It reports market penetration in general for iPhone is 25%, but penetration at MS is only 10%.
This is the secret of innovation and goof program. Developing not only for what currently exists, but also for what might exist.
Look at it this way. A medium sized school can be equipped with computers with high speed printers, in every classroom, for under 2 million dollars. The 10 year cost for supplying a single student with a text book is 10-15K range. If no text books were ordered, ever, and schools invested in computer based primary sources, money would be saved. We would still have consumables, but dealing with companies that would provide electronic consumables rather than paper consumables would save money, and resources.
If trained, kids will use computers in ways that they will never use textbooks. If allowed, they will find interesting things. We needs literature, and some printer resources, but by and large textbook, and the time we spend developing them, at least for non-college work, are a waste of money.
In the old days, we had background processes that always had to run. Now we have signals and the like that can awake idle processes so they do not have to run. Then we had TSR applications, and similar items on the Mac, like the Talking Moose. The former was created to solve the long start up time of applications on DOS and Windows. Multiple windows and such were useful on the PC, with larger screens, but somewhat harder to use on the Mac. The Mac seemed to launch applications faster, so I don't have a recollections of being annoyed that Finder was not multitasking.
Multitasking is a solution to solve some problem on the general computer. I am not sure it is the right solution for a small screen mobile small battery device. I would rather see innovative solutions rather than rehashing the same old thing. I think there this might be a useful solution for the iPad. My concern is that iPhone 4.0 is built for the next iPhone, and will make current iPhones harder to use. This is what happened with iPhone 3.0, which does not run very well on the first generation iPhone.
Spyware and port monitoring software is something different. Programs like Spybot and the like can be implemented without seriously degrading the user experience. My question is if people who load programs on their iPhone have a understand and have real issues with the information exchanged with the vendor. It is like Facebook and Google. Many would agree that the amount of information both have is dangerous, but most seen to have no issue with it.
The real issue here, and one that is not addressed, is the quality of code. What the MMM addressed, IMHO, was adding developers to a project with defined metrics and ending up with code that met those metrics and integrated well with a larger code base. The reason that adding people did not work was the overhead needed to communicate between the develpers, which is 2^n proposition
As such, until the code is proven in service one cannot really say if the experiment worked. If the code is just going to have to be re-factored, or interfaces rewritten, then nothing was done other spending money to achieve a minimal product to meet a deadline. This is important, but does not prove or disprove anything.
Welcome to the corporate entitlement culture. Firms are entitled to do as they please, and are only required to apologize if caught red handed with no other way out. If the common excuses, like someone else messed up, or the customer misunderstood does not work, then they are required only to do the minimum to correct the problem, thereby providing no incentive to make sure the same problem does not happen again. After all, only the peasants got hurt.
At any allegation, teachers have to be removed from the classroom. This is a liability issue. A kid get a bad grade on a test, says the teacher touched her, and the teacher has to be removed. The teacher cannot be fired because nothing has been proven. The teacher cannot simply be moved around, because there is still the liability issue.
Most private industry has other options. For instance, if someone is stealing money, it is often useful to the let the situation happen until enough evidence is collected. If someone is guilty of sexually harassment they can be moved around, and then use the infraction later as an excuse to fire the employee.
In addition to all this, New York City is special case in the educational system. The union is very strong. The pay tends to be low. One issue with firing teachers is hiring new teachers. If word is on the street that a teacher can be fired for allegation, who but the worst teachers would want to work there? Would you want to work somewhere that if one your coworkers said you harassed them you would be fired with a bad recommendation? Not even an incompetent employee would want that.
It all has to do with process.
I would think that it is not completely New Eggs fault. I am sure they found they source of product at a ridiculously low price, and too advantage of it. Perhaps they were told it fell off the back of the truck. Perhaps it was a wholesale clearance. In any case, they were taken in by the fraud, and purposefully or not, perpetrated similar fraud on their customers. It is now up to them to take responsibility for the actions, not balme someone else.
There is nothing that makes me trust some one less than when they blame someone else. It is like a bank that once told me it was the partners responsibility to monitor an advertised program. The materials had the banks name on the materials, the bank should be responsible. If the bank is just a clearinghouse, if New Egg is just a company that takes and then asks others to fulfill orders, why are we paying either?
Given the unprecedented level of forgiveness for such fraudulent behavior without a compelling explanation, it just had to be said.
In any case, the decision must be made in terms of safety and effective spending of tax money, not politics. Those people who are going to be fired, are, after all, in conservative terms, are overpaid federal bureaucrats. Now, the people most effected by this are the people of clear lake,TX. These fine people elected Pete Olson, a fine conservative. Pete Olson does not believe in socialism. Pete Olson does not believe in extending unemployment checks, as one conservative said if you feed a stray animal the just multiply. Olson voted against a bill to help keep people in thier homes, a decision which I do not disagree with. Given this, it is clear that the only right and proper thing we must do is look at the technical side, and disregard all this fear mongering about jobs. These are allegedly technical and educated people. They will be able to find or create jobs. Unemployment in Texas is 2 points below the national average, and for professionals much lower.
The thing to do is to look at what is best for the country, and what is best to reduce the tax burden of the American People,and limit the role of government. That is what the last election cycle clearly indicated was the will of the people. If a few people in Clear Lake have to find other jobs to achieve that goal, then maybe that is what needs to happen.
Form the zombie guide to management (Z.E.O): Use yours, eat theirs.
Certainly Google is going after the low hanging fruit that we know as MS. For those of us who use MS for serious work, as well as Apple for other serious work, it is unclear why any of this Google paraphernalia matters. I have looked at Chrome on the PC. On my machines I can't get java or flash to run reliably. As far as the Macs, Camino already has all this stuff plus Flash Control. I don't know why the Google folks are so afraid of Adobe that they won't include the same functionality.
When we talk 'what the future holds' we are talking about management. The issues we have seen is that managers have not been doing their jobs, but have still gotten paid sometimes huge sums and often get hired again.
In the late 90's this bad management took the form of mark to market. This was used to overvalue future income and sometimes resulted in huge upfront payments for product of little or no value to the vendor or customer. Companies failed due to huge expenses and no income. Price fixing would have done nothing except created inflated prices for customers.
In the current example, managers and entrepreneurs see a hot product and want to enter the market. Capital manager also want to get into the hot market and loan money without proper due diligence. As time goes on, the market becomes overstated. One way to fix this is to lower prices so that demand can be increased. Such a thing would not possible with price fixing. Another way to fix this would be to let the businesses fail, a long with the irresponsible financial agents. As log as this firms are small, this is not an issue. It will not cause widespread problems. What we are seeing is large integrated businesses, sometimes supported by the government, sometimes created by corrupt government regularion.
In any case, when we cannot let a firm fail, or when we must fix prices and force customers to buy the product, we know we are in deep shit.
Then, of course, there is the pork. Representative Olsen, not of the senate, has voting against the economic stimulus package, which consensus seems to indicate that it has stopped the hemorrhaging of jobs, and now he is complaining that a few thousand government employees are going to lose their jobs. What is it Pete? Do we want to balance the budget or keep support a federal jobs program where the average salary is over 70K a year? Sure the NASA jobs are great, but the budget is the budget. These jobs and ancillary costs could save over a billion a year. I know that Clear Lake is the probably the most federally subsidized place in America, but we really need real jobs based on capitalism, not socialism.
First, monitoring the computers at school. Many, if not all, schools have software to monitor the users actions on school computers. This is particularly useful for testing, or simply to make sure students are on tasks. Traditionally these computers have been school based desktops, so home issues are not a problem. Also, traditionally these computers have been monitored by people the students know, and the rules are well known. In this way extension to the laptop makes sense.
Which leads to the second question. Can student use a personal computer at school. I would say that school policy would go either way. I might suggest that a teacher might not want a students to use a unmonitored computer in a classroom where all the other computers are monitored. In TFA, a study hall situation was mentioned where the computer was taken up. The kid, of course, is not going to mention if they were off task, perhaps downloading music from limewire, but there may have been a reason. A school does not have to allow a personal computer any more than an iPod.
That said there should be a provision where a student can carry a personal computer which is used in unmonitored situation. In my experience, most of a students work can fit on an external drive, and it is not a big deal to hook it up, especially to Macs. Since MS machines require a driver for every single device, no matter how generic, there can be issues with permissions.
That said, laptops in schools is not a simple solution to anything. Taxpayers need to have their property protected, and students are a special case when it comes to spying by adults. Children are also a special case when it comes to the often underpaid employees who are paid to monitor the network. If policies and audit trails are not clearly laid out, then parent will of course be concerned.
Second, I wonder why MS did not enumerate the other people that are dependent on the bridge. For instance, why didn't the ad state that there were 5000 MS employees and x other persons. Is it because only MS needs this bridge? I am not saying that MS should pay for the bridge, but if the taxpayers are paying for a bridge to MS specification, then it seems a lot like the recent wall street bailout. Bad planning requires us to pay for a business that is too big to fail.
It is easy to believe that MS wants a new bridge, and wants the tax payers to fund it, at least partially. While I would not suggest that MS pays for the bridge, I would suggest that if it wants a custom MS bridge, then maybe MS should fund it.
In any case the result is exactly what should have happened in the first place. Full disclosure. With full disclosure parents have options, such as investigating the audits of who is viewing the cameras, limiting use, or even buying personal equipment.
One thing that school is supposed to teach is that people make mistakes, these mistakes have consequences intended to insure those same mistakes are not made again. In this case, it was mistake to not fully disclose the security. The consequences in the real world for such mistakes is often a court action. Hopefully all schools have learned to be less secretive.