I think the intent would be to reduce the use of image manipulation. Sort of like how the labels on cigarettes have made them.
My response to this is photography is an art, and the intent is not to duplicate reality, but to offer a personal interpretation of reality. The simplest way to push this is simply to hire artists to paint the scene, and then photograph the painting. Likewise, if the photographs were run through a filter to make the entire image appear less real, then perhaps the more gullible people would not mistake a photograph for reality.
None of this, however, helps anorexia, or unhealthy body types. That requires a change in designer attitude. Just like one has a hard time buying fashionable clothes for obese people, one might find underweight persons. Of course while there are many terms for obese people, there are few terms for underweight persons. It is considered not only a non issue, but a positive characteristic that designers like to accentuate. Simply adding a label is not going to fix the fact that many designs are made for size zero crowd, and interest in high fashion dwindles as the size increases. I mean a size 14 women, or a 44 waist in men, in not particularly unhealthy, yet finding a true 12 or 44 can be very difficult.
I don't think the Apple employees are anything special. Most I have worked are relatively unknowledgeable about the product, most seem to have been working for less than a year.
The thing about the Apple store, as with many successful higher end store, is the customer service. Not the fact service at some restaurants, where they greet you but immediately have to get rid of you, but sustained personal service. The guy who helped my pick a computer was a saint of customer service.
While hiring managers who have been already trained in this philosophy of helping the customer will jump start the MS stores, if they are not committed to the customer it will not matter. For instance, my experience in the Apple store with iPhone hacking is very low key. A sign on the counter, and an instance that the geniuses will not help. When I asked about running a single copy of aperture on tow machines, the Apple people did not recommend it, but said it might work if I wasn't going use the two machines at the same time. I say a customer come in irate because the computer he just bought would not have the updated iWork on it. The manager promised to give him a copy.
One wonder if the MS employees would be so helpful if one wanted to buy a single retail box of windows so you could, separately run a home and office computer, or would give the customer a new version of Office when the customer bought a previous version a couple days before the official free upgrade period.
Exactly. As far as I can tell, sane copyright law, prior to the hyper corporate control of the post WWII world, would have the copyright expire soon after 2014. At that point we could all use characters such as Thor that were stolen from the public domain.
It is about teachers and standardized testing, and that is one of the reasons why the software in the TI calculator needs to be secure. But it is unlikely the primary reason. Prior to use on test, TI has an application that clear the calculator to essentially factory state. This application only runs from the calculator installed, and cannot be transferred to other calculators. This calculator could be modified to actually reinstall an OS, which would be time consuming, but the safest thing to do for testing. Control freak teachers do run the application. Most don't. Real control freak teachers don't even let students use a calculator because there is nothing a calculator can do that a students should not be able to do faster. It takes more time to put in the equation of a graph or table than to just find the roots or the regression equation by hand. The problem is those middle of the road teachers that have sympathy for the students who can't add two integers, but still want them to, at least in some cases, manipulate variables by hand.
The desire to keep the code secure is in a fact a desire to insure sales. For instance, the TI application for the computer is not free, and, IIRC, not site licensed. If the ROM were available, like it is on most of the HP calculators, then someone could easily develop an OSS application and make drive TI sales away. I know that some applications are available, but they require a calculator to download the ROM, and the solutions are not as elegant as the HP calculator.
Tell the FCC what. That I want uniform products with no product differentiation, no innovation, no new methods.
Google is talking the old idea of the telephone and using it to turn this iPhone into a boring telephone, just like so many others do. Look at the iphone, and the main complaint. That is takes several keystrokes to make a call. Texting is easier than calling. Sending an email is almost easier. Well, duh,the phone is just one app, and it is ATT, at least in the US. Google needs to be innovative, not just reinvent the wheel.
There are things that make wonderful party games. Medicine cards, runes, reading body language, etc. There is really nothing wrong with these games.
The problem is when we start using these perfectly reasonable tools to begin to make real decisions. You are guilty because the runes said so. Most of us tend to believe that decisions should be made on some direct evidence, not indirect assumption. I mean it is not liek some guys think, that every girl that won't go out with them is a lesbian and every guy that hates football is gay.
There is the issue of what makes a person gay, straight, or bi. Just like sleeping with large numbers of the opposite sex does not make one straight, and may indicate a deep seated concern, there is nothing other than a self identification that can suggest a real sexual preference. I don't think a professional, or computer program, or parent can within a reasonable certainty state a sexual preference for another person. And this has nothing to do with the controversy. It has to do with weather we live by reason and evidence or by superstition and hearsay. I think the MIT people are simply too infatuated with cult of technology.
If he is a prison in texas, he will most certainly be able to gain access to a cell phone with which to update his status regularly. Texas only seems to be able to lock people up, but not actually keep them secure.
I used MS Excel before it became part of MS Office, and I installed MS Office from all varieties of floppies more time than I care to remember. I still use MS office occasion, but I also use other programs depending on what I want to do. The main reason that I do not use MS anything as my primary software is simply because it does not do what I want it to do. OO.org does things very well, as does the iWorks.
I am now looking at the online options, not because they are better, but because they will serve a purpose. For people who can move, many will use things like Google because it is so available. One of the reasons that MS Office is so often cited as a necessity is that it is the only way to make sure that other can read documents you create. Everyone has MS Office. Well, everyone has a google account, and I can share my document just by adding their google account to my share list. No danger that they may still be running 2003 while I have 2007, and not have the time to install a filter. No danger that the filter might mess up formatting. Google provides now what MS claimed to provide, but never really delivered.
If MS plays this game of delivering an inferior online product to protect it's Office franchise, then Google will likely provide a better collaborative product within a couple years,and OO.org will likely provide an equal online experience. The only firms that will be using MS products are those that are so dependent on kickbacks that they can't afford to move. MS would do much better providing a subscription service that provides some superior features as compared to MS Office.
Such an offering assumes two things. One is that they have the technical expertise to deliver a cross platform solution. Two is that they have the ability to provide customer service without the OEMs running interference(i.e. it is not a MS problem, contact the vendor of you hardware). Three is that they are willing to give up the MS desktop monopoly and compete on quality products, which they totally can do, but simply will require more work.
To be honest, the iPod does not have an app store. The iPhone does, and the iPod Touch can use it. Likewise, apple has always been able to do anything they wished to the iPhone/iPod. This wish often manifested itself in keeping tht phone locked.
I am not sure if we will see the free for all 3rd party development of software for these mobile devices. MS certainly tries to some small extent to minimize such development by the warning when one tries to install uncertified software. Those who know ignore the warnings. We are returning to the closed system that existed prior to Compaq cracking the IBM pc. The Zune is closed. The iPod is closed. The N800 appears to be closed. The Kindle is closed.
As much as some want open, and I certainly appreciate open source, the complications for the average user simply are not worth the benefits. Almost no one upgrades their computers. A $300 laptop can be replaced once a year. As shown on the iPhone, most do not use more than a few applications. We are back in the world where we want a device that can accomplish the few tasks we want. MS does not need developers to provide functionality, as it is now trying to earn a premium designing good products rather than sell based on a feature checklist, although it has not yet completely gotten over the idea that bloat equals good design.
It is a bad analogy, and has little to do with real situation. Reminds me of the reel world and the real world they did on MST3k.
In the reel world people with no visible income can afford luxurious apartments. In the real world people must often compromise on their accommodations to eat. In the reel world people can afford any arbitrary level of privacy. In the real world we make compromises on privacy to minimize opportunity costs. In the reel world every person can manage their own computers and server and has redundant backups. In the reel world, people have cheap PCS and all they understand is how to work the web browser.
I think what google is doing is dangerous, and I would prefer that users understood the implications. OTOH, I understand, to use the analogy, that given a free room and board that some might compromise on privacy. Obviously, being a for profit company, one must assume that value of the privacy in some way exceeds that value of the service provided, but that point is often not relevant for people who have a choice of having or not having.
Look at credit cards and short terms loans. People seem perfectly happy to pay double to have something today instead of tomorrow. So why would they not do the same with google? As the previous weekend shows, you can get all sort of response when you tell people their free stuff is going to be taken away, even if it is only an illusion.
Exactly. The problem with economic theory can be reduced to two point. First economists believe in the mythical rational agent.Second,economist believe in faeries, a la the invisible hand. By and large, I tend not to take advice or lend any practical credence to persons who base their financial decisions on mythology.
It really is a good social attack, reminiscent of the days when advertisers put 'click ok to continue' buttons to trick users to a promotional web site.
In this case, it runs a mock scan, states the computer is infected, and then pretends to offer help. The exe file sometimes gets downloaded. From the way I have seen IE work lately, I would not think the file would download without user intervention, but, the page does a good job of scaring users, so I suspect some might download the files.
The malware site is protection-check07com
malwareurl.com has the owner listed as Elton John, perhaps on can think that this is pseudonym. Kind of lends credence to rules that require valid information on domain name registrations.
In any case, this is where the address is listed. Looks residential, so maybe that is fake as well. I hope the protection-check people are not setting up some poor sod. Ha, protection check.
Of course this does bring up two issues. Everyone is afraid of viruses, so it easy to translate that fear into irrational action. It might make us think about some activities that went on this past weekend. Second, such attacks work on mimicking the theme of certain systems, so perhaps one countermeasure is to allow users to vary they theme. This might be very good for corporate machines, as firms might like custom themes. On Macs and *nix, of course, the attack did not work because the web page did not integrate into the background, an elephant is going to look quite conspicuous in a field of leopards.
On one hand you are correct, and there are scenarios that would indicate for manufacturers to not interfere. For instance, I am mad at a friend of mine, so I report a device stolen to the manufacturer, and the manufacturer turns it off. The manufacturer is then in the middle of a domestic squabble, which may incur significant cost, and probably raise the price for the rest of us.
Or take a look at it this way. I could sell the device, and just to be a prick,report it stolen to the manufacture. It would not be a rational thing to do, but a few of these would kill the second hand market for these devices. Instead of whining that the manufactures are not doing anything to make a profit, we would be whining that they are killing the used market to make a profit.
However, if I file a police report and send a copy of the police report to the manufacturer, I do not see how they can in all good faith not disable the device, if they indeed have the option. I mean, in many cases I am sure they would do so if I stopped paying, so why not if the device is part of suspected illegal activity. By not doing so they are accomplices. This is not like a car, as a car does not come standard with kill software, as the kindle does. If a car did come with such control, I can assure you they would use it, with little more than a police report.
No, the requirement for personal police and court attention definitely makes them accomplices to criminals. They are hiding behind the law to minimize the responsibility to the customer, maximize the risk of the customer, and maximize the potential for profit from the criminal behavior. A police report fine,but a visit from a police officer, standard corporate waste of our court system.
You know I say unpopular things and get modded down,but I don't go and cry like a baby and create crazy conspiracy theories. I accept that some people are motivated by dogma or money rather than reason and logic. That is why some people, adults not kids, feel they can deny statements and ideas that most reasonable people would consider valid.
What is worse, some people can have temper tantrums, promote insance conspiracy theories, call others who disagree with them corrupt, brainwashed cowards, and get modded up. Uncivilized discussion should never be tolerated in a civilized world. When I go crazy, I expect to be modded down. I hope I never write anything as hypocritical as the parent. I also have mode points, almost always, and my karma is high. However, as the faq says, karma is not dick or teat size. Abusing the karma, or treating it as something real, is pretty pathetic. Saying the no one can hurt you because your karma is so high is not dissimilar to a person who goes on a murder spree because they feel they cannot be caught.
To the matter at hand, no one knows why MS is all of the sudden being so nice, but there is evidence it is not completely benign. They probably have violated GPL and similar licenses in the past, and some of the donations may have been settlements for those illegal activities. The courts are pretty convinced that MS destroyed the i4i bussiness, and it is only the massive number of MS lawyers that keep MS Word on the market. MS is not apologetic about this piracy, and claim that since the business is already destroyed, why should there be any damages? Then there is the matter of the patents that MS tried to sell on the idea that the price could be recouped by suing OSS providers. In all, there is no evidence that the MS tactics of sneak attacks and massive budgets for lawyers has changed.
It is easy for the young people to just use the OSS without realizing that it is a right that many had to work for. MS helped in this fight, by giving software away, but then kind of lost the faith by writing whiny letter, not unlike the parent, and randomly asserting copyrights as it needed extra cash. But know the kids have OSS, and are willing to take it for granted. Just like women who can now work, vote, and wear pants. Or non-whites who have equal rights and justice. Or kids who get a minimum wage and have some assurance of actually receiving the money.
Honestly the C64 emulator is not the problem, nor is there a particular threat to iPhone. The iPhone does what most want it to do, and solves the issue that makes people hate the Apple. In particular, it is cheap enough, and it plays games. Which is what most complain about when talking about the Apple. The iPhone has Apps, and now people want to complain that it does not have enough apps, or that this irrelevant app is not there. What do people want? It is a phone, it connects to the internet, it has games.
It would be pretty to think that if Apple went back to it's more open roots, people would stop complaining. But that is just a world where people have to pay for equipment and don't have enough games to while away the what must extremely boring and painful days. So Apple does not have market share.
Lets look at the past. I never needed games for Apple, because of the development tools. I spent hours playing with the shape table, making funny things happen with poke, and the like. Even on the Mac many fund things could be done. Sure, most people wanted store bought games, and I had a few, but making the machines do what I wanted to was the fun.
Of course now the fun is over. All we have is store bought games, and now programming. That is the price we seem to have to pay for widely popular Apple phone. I suppose they could have gone another way, but then no one would have bought it because it did not play games. God help us if we might actually want to have some non corporate sponsored jam.
My real world training was that being clever about the use of technology was more important than knowing the trivia or dedicating oneself to some dogma that might be out of sync in 10 years. Just imagine what might happen if one had been so focused on the VAX or UNIX OS that one did not work on the MS or Apple computers. The people I know today who are really successfully might have started on a Dec Vax, moved to an SGI machine, and now work on PC. Versatility is important.
At a certain level college cannot be about preparing for the real world today. That is technical school or the like. College should prepare on for the real world in twenty years. The fallacy that we focus education on what is happening know is why so many people are sitting at home playing videos games wondering when someone is going to call them about that VBA job.
It is also about efficiency. Now that MS standards are being commoditized and fewer people are accepting the new one, trick me once and all that, an person versed in computers can basically get anything to work anywhere. About the only time one has to us a MS is for some specialized applications. In those cases, the OS is secondary and one makes whatever modifications to run the program.
OK, I can lose property, and then it can be resold. So if I 'lose' a track, can the local virtual pawn shop buy it back at a nickel on the dollar, then resell it for 25 cents on the dollar?
Or, to protect against loss, can I insure it for a penny on the dollar and the recover my losses if something happens to it?
The problem with most current schemes is that are extremely consumer hostile. I might have a CD stolen, but I can buy a used one very cheap. Digital music must be cheaper to distribute, no loss, no theft of the CD, but we still pay the same amount for the music, and have not option of buying it again in the secondary market.
Likewise, if some steals a car from me, I can have the cops do something about it. If someone steals my iPod, nothing is likely to be done. Not the cops, not Apple, not the labels will help me recover my property. They will, however, happily profit off the crime. OTOH, if I put a few songs up for people to copy, I will be liable for millions. Go figure.
In articles like this, the conclusion is often not the interesting item. Very often the conclusion is impractical and ineffective. What is sometimes interesting is the process they went through. For instance, one of the IEEE mags recently published a methods of secure offsite testing. As far as I can tell, while it prevents the cat from getting a degree, it does not protect against feeding answer to the traditional students. So it is not 100%, but the methods they use are interesting. It would be nice if the summaries would include some interesting bits, rather than just a naked conclusion, which is rather useless.
It seems to me that codes such as this has been on the way out since the OS X arrived and began to give credence to the kludgy extension convention. With a resource fork all the data related to a file, it's icon, type, any meta data, was right there. Resedit was always there to help you make any changes.
Although it is not the change to *nix that forced extensions upon us, it certainly was a major factor, along with the desire to interact with MS Windows. In any case it is nothing sudden or disturbing, just another step along the path of leaving OS 9 behind, and arriving at the OS to come after X.
Conservatives do often claim that liberals attack people while conservatives in their infinite goodness only attack policies. Therefore it is not surprising that some would say that Obama is expected to kill the program simply because they hate Bush.
In fact, as has been mentioned, there are many reasons why the Ares program, and the some of the US space program objectives over the past five years make little sense. It is very arguable that sending humans to the moon and other planets is not really cost effective. It is very arguable that developing a significant present in LEO, of which the ISS is a very good start, is the way to go. It is likely that if we are going to make our way to other planets, the best method would be with vehicles designed to escape the earths gravity, then other vehicles to get us to the moon, the other vehicles to get us elsewhere.
Right now we are focused on basically throw away vehicles that will get us from earth to where we want to go. Even the shuttle has to be rebuilt after every mission, and only the airframe is reusable. The Ares continues on these assumption, simply separating the human and cargo rated components. It is an improvement, but really won't get us to the moon or anywhere else in an efficient manner.
I have few problems with texting. I think it is much more efficient than a phone call,which for all the benefits suffers from the lack of direct eye contact, which is often a significant part of verbal communication. Texting requires us to reflect on what we want to say, and then concisely phrase the thought.
The problem is the ease and frequency of communication. At an average of 2000 messages a month,that is one every 15 minutes. Even if each takes only a minute to read and write,that is around 10% of the time texting,and that does not include other interactions. To put it another way, on average, for every hour long class, or client meeting, or interview, there will be, on average, 4 interruptions.
The problem is made worse by the fact that most people treat this asynchronous communication method as primarily synchronous, insisting on responding to messages they arriver, often creating sever inefficiencies by disrupting other activities. And before one talks about multitasking,multitasking does not work. We have seen enough families murdered and I have seen enough kids failing classes to know that young people do not have the ability to switch tasks without significant loss of effeciency.
If you had rs-232 ports on both machines, a calbee and a null modem will establish a physical connection that can be read by any number of programs. I wonder if the same could be done with bluetooth if an adaptor canb be f found for the older machine.
I would like to see how this is true. As a base, Humanities does include art, and art can be expensive. For instance, many schools produce large expensive plays, musicals, recitals. Many do not charge anything, and even when they do not all expenses are covered. Many school have special positions for celebrity professors to promote their english department.
Science department generally require faculty to write grants to cover part of their salary. Furthermore, non capital purchases often incur a fee payable to the university. For instance, if a grant pays for $1000 of supplies, then the researcher might have to pay $200 to the university from the grant.
Then grants often cover graduate students,who tend to teach the basic freshman courses.
I really don't believe that any courses subsidize other courses. For a person who completes a degree, they may pay a little more up front and get the extras later on, be it a lab, or access to celebrity artists, or professors with industry contacts. Those that do not finish a degree has other issues, like financial aid that need to be repaid on minimum wage.
IN fact, the profit center for many universities is the professional degrees, such as the corporate MBA programs.
I didn't think you 'bought' MS Windows, so how can some have confidence and know exactly 'what they are buying' when they are buying nothing, but licensing a product that can be revoked, or modified, or additional constraints can be placed on the use of the product. MS Windows is licensed, and one of the greatest benefits of *nix, to use the vernacular, is that one has choices. One can take out features that are not needed and recompile the kernel. One can add device drivers.On can even move to another machine without fear of the MS police going after you.
I recently updated a machine that had not been used in about a year. This machine is on a site license, using the standard MS products. In the update i was greeted wth the MS Office anti-piracy update, and warned that if I did not update I would not know if I had a pirated copy, and that if I did there might be security implications. Of course we had spent a great deal of money acquiring the software, and the update reminded that no matter what, MS could pull the plug at any time, and they would not consider this properly licensed software valid until I added this spyware to my machine.
The cool thing is that Google is taking this licensing deal to the next level with the cloud. The cloud, at least in it's free form, is not all that useful for people who want a little more control over their computers, but for those who are raised MS, it is the next logical step. For all those that have focused on the simplified MS development model, and MS controlled software and hardware, I wonder what they will do in if google has all the software on the backend, and users just have chrome laptops.
I have seen blatant advertising in the editorial section/., but this is a new level of inclusion.
The first thing that comes to mind is that this is not bucking the system, or at least not the system of traditional college education. Rather, this is bucking the more recent trend of exorbitant prices for sheets of paper, not even sheep skin, where what the student has learned is perhaps of little or no consequence. To be frank, compared to what the University of Phoenix of Walden charges, this may be a steal.
I did not read the links, but the ad copy stated that the college provides freshman credits, which implies that the credits can be transfered to another university. I am sure the ad is not lying, and the implied transfer of credits can happen, Universities do not have to accept transfer credit. I do not know if they offer degrees, but again, employers do not have accept degrees from all universities as equal. Therefore there may be value there in cost effective remedial courses, but time will only tell if the college provides educational value.
Of course, if we are optimistic there is no reason why it should not. For instance, at $100 a month, a semester is around $500. For community colleges, one might be able to get 6 hours for not much more than that. A full load would cost up to four times that much. That, however, pays for a lot of brick and motor, a lot of face to face time with professors, and perhaps way too much administration. It seems that someone could harness the efficiencies and supply a decent alternative at a 25% saving. I am just not sure why anyone would, at least in terms of a for profit corporation.
In any case, like all education, it is buyer beware. Verify that the credits are transferable. Watch for other fees that at some places can double the cost. If there are degree programs, are they what one needs. The big thing lately are they pushing financial aid and loans. Some places seem to solely exist to get kids to take out loans to pay tuition, without providing any credible product in return. This is an issue because, unlike other loans, there is often no way to shed college financial aid, short of paying off every penny of the principe, interest, and fees.
MS often attacked free *nix because it did not have any formal corporate support behind it. Sure one could get Red Hat, but mostly it was a fly by night operation where there were plenty of random people who would give you the software and maybe help you install it, but no long term help
The interesting thing about these parties is they are using the random person model. Instead of controlling the message, they are allowing unvetted random representatives to push the product. What next, MLM marketing? Of course this is running full circle, as MS software once most often entered the market through pirated copies installed by amateurs on cheap computers.
If MS is trying to become part of the High Street, as indicated by thier opening of fancy stores, I am not sure if house parties are the way to do it. Perhaps they should have spent the recent glut of ad money on well orchestrated street parties in the major cities.
Slashdot Mirror
My response to this is photography is an art, and the intent is not to duplicate reality, but to offer a personal interpretation of reality. The simplest way to push this is simply to hire artists to paint the scene, and then photograph the painting. Likewise, if the photographs were run through a filter to make the entire image appear less real, then perhaps the more gullible people would not mistake a photograph for reality.
None of this, however, helps anorexia, or unhealthy body types. That requires a change in designer attitude. Just like one has a hard time buying fashionable clothes for obese people, one might find underweight persons. Of course while there are many terms for obese people, there are few terms for underweight persons. It is considered not only a non issue, but a positive characteristic that designers like to accentuate. Simply adding a label is not going to fix the fact that many designs are made for size zero crowd, and interest in high fashion dwindles as the size increases. I mean a size 14 women, or a 44 waist in men, in not particularly unhealthy, yet finding a true 12 or 44 can be very difficult.
The thing about the Apple store, as with many successful higher end store, is the customer service. Not the fact service at some restaurants, where they greet you but immediately have to get rid of you, but sustained personal service. The guy who helped my pick a computer was a saint of customer service.
While hiring managers who have been already trained in this philosophy of helping the customer will jump start the MS stores, if they are not committed to the customer it will not matter. For instance, my experience in the Apple store with iPhone hacking is very low key. A sign on the counter, and an instance that the geniuses will not help. When I asked about running a single copy of aperture on tow machines, the Apple people did not recommend it, but said it might work if I wasn't going use the two machines at the same time. I say a customer come in irate because the computer he just bought would not have the updated iWork on it. The manager promised to give him a copy.
One wonder if the MS employees would be so helpful if one wanted to buy a single retail box of windows so you could, separately run a home and office computer, or would give the customer a new version of Office when the customer bought a previous version a couple days before the official free upgrade period.
Exactly. As far as I can tell, sane copyright law, prior to the hyper corporate control of the post WWII world, would have the copyright expire soon after 2014. At that point we could all use characters such as Thor that were stolen from the public domain.
The desire to keep the code secure is in a fact a desire to insure sales. For instance, the TI application for the computer is not free, and, IIRC, not site licensed. If the ROM were available, like it is on most of the HP calculators, then someone could easily develop an OSS application and make drive TI sales away. I know that some applications are available, but they require a calculator to download the ROM, and the solutions are not as elegant as the HP calculator.
Google is talking the old idea of the telephone and using it to turn this iPhone into a boring telephone, just like so many others do. Look at the iphone, and the main complaint. That is takes several keystrokes to make a call. Texting is easier than calling. Sending an email is almost easier. Well, duh,the phone is just one app, and it is ATT, at least in the US. Google needs to be innovative, not just reinvent the wheel.
The problem is when we start using these perfectly reasonable tools to begin to make real decisions. You are guilty because the runes said so. Most of us tend to believe that decisions should be made on some direct evidence, not indirect assumption. I mean it is not liek some guys think, that every girl that won't go out with them is a lesbian and every guy that hates football is gay.
There is the issue of what makes a person gay, straight, or bi. Just like sleeping with large numbers of the opposite sex does not make one straight, and may indicate a deep seated concern, there is nothing other than a self identification that can suggest a real sexual preference. I don't think a professional, or computer program, or parent can within a reasonable certainty state a sexual preference for another person. And this has nothing to do with the controversy. It has to do with weather we live by reason and evidence or by superstition and hearsay. I think the MIT people are simply too infatuated with cult of technology.
If he is a prison in texas, he will most certainly be able to gain access to a cell phone with which to update his status regularly. Texas only seems to be able to lock people up, but not actually keep them secure.
I am now looking at the online options, not because they are better, but because they will serve a purpose. For people who can move, many will use things like Google because it is so available. One of the reasons that MS Office is so often cited as a necessity is that it is the only way to make sure that other can read documents you create. Everyone has MS Office. Well, everyone has a google account, and I can share my document just by adding their google account to my share list. No danger that they may still be running 2003 while I have 2007, and not have the time to install a filter. No danger that the filter might mess up formatting. Google provides now what MS claimed to provide, but never really delivered.
If MS plays this game of delivering an inferior online product to protect it's Office franchise, then Google will likely provide a better collaborative product within a couple years,and OO.org will likely provide an equal online experience. The only firms that will be using MS products are those that are so dependent on kickbacks that they can't afford to move. MS would do much better providing a subscription service that provides some superior features as compared to MS Office.
Such an offering assumes two things. One is that they have the technical expertise to deliver a cross platform solution. Two is that they have the ability to provide customer service without the OEMs running interference(i.e. it is not a MS problem, contact the vendor of you hardware). Three is that they are willing to give up the MS desktop monopoly and compete on quality products, which they totally can do, but simply will require more work.
I am not sure if we will see the free for all 3rd party development of software for these mobile devices. MS certainly tries to some small extent to minimize such development by the warning when one tries to install uncertified software. Those who know ignore the warnings. We are returning to the closed system that existed prior to Compaq cracking the IBM pc. The Zune is closed. The iPod is closed. The N800 appears to be closed. The Kindle is closed.
As much as some want open, and I certainly appreciate open source, the complications for the average user simply are not worth the benefits. Almost no one upgrades their computers. A $300 laptop can be replaced once a year. As shown on the iPhone, most do not use more than a few applications. We are back in the world where we want a device that can accomplish the few tasks we want. MS does not need developers to provide functionality, as it is now trying to earn a premium designing good products rather than sell based on a feature checklist, although it has not yet completely gotten over the idea that bloat equals good design.
In the reel world people with no visible income can afford luxurious apartments. In the real world people must often compromise on their accommodations to eat. In the reel world people can afford any arbitrary level of privacy. In the real world we make compromises on privacy to minimize opportunity costs. In the reel world every person can manage their own computers and server and has redundant backups. In the reel world, people have cheap PCS and all they understand is how to work the web browser.
I think what google is doing is dangerous, and I would prefer that users understood the implications. OTOH, I understand, to use the analogy, that given a free room and board that some might compromise on privacy. Obviously, being a for profit company, one must assume that value of the privacy in some way exceeds that value of the service provided, but that point is often not relevant for people who have a choice of having or not having.
Look at credit cards and short terms loans. People seem perfectly happy to pay double to have something today instead of tomorrow. So why would they not do the same with google? As the previous weekend shows, you can get all sort of response when you tell people their free stuff is going to be taken away, even if it is only an illusion.
Exactly. The problem with economic theory can be reduced to two point. First economists believe in the mythical rational agent.Second,economist believe in faeries, a la the invisible hand. By and large, I tend not to take advice or lend any practical credence to persons who base their financial decisions on mythology.
In this case, it runs a mock scan, states the computer is infected, and then pretends to offer help. The exe file sometimes gets downloaded. From the way I have seen IE work lately, I would not think the file would download without user intervention, but, the page does a good job of scaring users, so I suspect some might download the files.
The malware site is protection-check07com
malwareurl.com has the owner listed as Elton John, perhaps on can think that this is pseudonym. Kind of lends credence to rules that require valid information on domain name registrations.
In any case, this is where the address is listed. Looks residential, so maybe that is fake as well. I hope the protection-check people are not setting up some poor sod. Ha, protection check.
Of course this does bring up two issues. Everyone is afraid of viruses, so it easy to translate that fear into irrational action. It might make us think about some activities that went on this past weekend. Second, such attacks work on mimicking the theme of certain systems, so perhaps one countermeasure is to allow users to vary they theme. This might be very good for corporate machines, as firms might like custom themes. On Macs and *nix, of course, the attack did not work because the web page did not integrate into the background, an elephant is going to look quite conspicuous in a field of leopards.
Or take a look at it this way. I could sell the device, and just to be a prick,report it stolen to the manufacture. It would not be a rational thing to do, but a few of these would kill the second hand market for these devices. Instead of whining that the manufactures are not doing anything to make a profit, we would be whining that they are killing the used market to make a profit.
However, if I file a police report and send a copy of the police report to the manufacturer, I do not see how they can in all good faith not disable the device, if they indeed have the option. I mean, in many cases I am sure they would do so if I stopped paying, so why not if the device is part of suspected illegal activity. By not doing so they are accomplices. This is not like a car, as a car does not come standard with kill software, as the kindle does. If a car did come with such control, I can assure you they would use it, with little more than a police report.
No, the requirement for personal police and court attention definitely makes them accomplices to criminals. They are hiding behind the law to minimize the responsibility to the customer, maximize the risk of the customer, and maximize the potential for profit from the criminal behavior. A police report fine,but a visit from a police officer, standard corporate waste of our court system.
What is worse, some people can have temper tantrums, promote insance conspiracy theories, call others who disagree with them corrupt, brainwashed cowards, and get modded up. Uncivilized discussion should never be tolerated in a civilized world. When I go crazy, I expect to be modded down. I hope I never write anything as hypocritical as the parent. I also have mode points, almost always, and my karma is high. However, as the faq says, karma is not dick or teat size. Abusing the karma, or treating it as something real, is pretty pathetic. Saying the no one can hurt you because your karma is so high is not dissimilar to a person who goes on a murder spree because they feel they cannot be caught.
To the matter at hand, no one knows why MS is all of the sudden being so nice, but there is evidence it is not completely benign. They probably have violated GPL and similar licenses in the past, and some of the donations may have been settlements for those illegal activities. The courts are pretty convinced that MS destroyed the i4i bussiness, and it is only the massive number of MS lawyers that keep MS Word on the market. MS is not apologetic about this piracy, and claim that since the business is already destroyed, why should there be any damages? Then there is the matter of the patents that MS tried to sell on the idea that the price could be recouped by suing OSS providers. In all, there is no evidence that the MS tactics of sneak attacks and massive budgets for lawyers has changed.
It is easy for the young people to just use the OSS without realizing that it is a right that many had to work for. MS helped in this fight, by giving software away, but then kind of lost the faith by writing whiny letter, not unlike the parent, and randomly asserting copyrights as it needed extra cash. But know the kids have OSS, and are willing to take it for granted. Just like women who can now work, vote, and wear pants. Or non-whites who have equal rights and justice. Or kids who get a minimum wage and have some assurance of actually receiving the money.
It would be pretty to think that if Apple went back to it's more open roots, people would stop complaining. But that is just a world where people have to pay for equipment and don't have enough games to while away the what must extremely boring and painful days. So Apple does not have market share.
Lets look at the past. I never needed games for Apple, because of the development tools. I spent hours playing with the shape table, making funny things happen with poke, and the like. Even on the Mac many fund things could be done. Sure, most people wanted store bought games, and I had a few, but making the machines do what I wanted to was the fun.
Of course now the fun is over. All we have is store bought games, and now programming. That is the price we seem to have to pay for widely popular Apple phone. I suppose they could have gone another way, but then no one would have bought it because it did not play games. God help us if we might actually want to have some non corporate sponsored jam.
At a certain level college cannot be about preparing for the real world today. That is technical school or the like. College should prepare on for the real world in twenty years. The fallacy that we focus education on what is happening know is why so many people are sitting at home playing videos games wondering when someone is going to call them about that VBA job.
It is also about efficiency. Now that MS standards are being commoditized and fewer people are accepting the new one, trick me once and all that, an person versed in computers can basically get anything to work anywhere. About the only time one has to us a MS is for some specialized applications. In those cases, the OS is secondary and one makes whatever modifications to run the program.
Or, to protect against loss, can I insure it for a penny on the dollar and the recover my losses if something happens to it?
The problem with most current schemes is that are extremely consumer hostile. I might have a CD stolen, but I can buy a used one very cheap. Digital music must be cheaper to distribute, no loss, no theft of the CD, but we still pay the same amount for the music, and have not option of buying it again in the secondary market.
Likewise, if some steals a car from me, I can have the cops do something about it. If someone steals my iPod, nothing is likely to be done. Not the cops, not Apple, not the labels will help me recover my property. They will, however, happily profit off the crime. OTOH, if I put a few songs up for people to copy, I will be liable for millions. Go figure.
In articles like this, the conclusion is often not the interesting item. Very often the conclusion is impractical and ineffective. What is sometimes interesting is the process they went through. For instance, one of the IEEE mags recently published a methods of secure offsite testing. As far as I can tell, while it prevents the cat from getting a degree, it does not protect against feeding answer to the traditional students. So it is not 100%, but the methods they use are interesting. It would be nice if the summaries would include some interesting bits, rather than just a naked conclusion, which is rather useless.
Although it is not the change to *nix that forced extensions upon us, it certainly was a major factor, along with the desire to interact with MS Windows. In any case it is nothing sudden or disturbing, just another step along the path of leaving OS 9 behind, and arriving at the OS to come after X.
In fact, as has been mentioned, there are many reasons why the Ares program, and the some of the US space program objectives over the past five years make little sense. It is very arguable that sending humans to the moon and other planets is not really cost effective. It is very arguable that developing a significant present in LEO, of which the ISS is a very good start, is the way to go. It is likely that if we are going to make our way to other planets, the best method would be with vehicles designed to escape the earths gravity, then other vehicles to get us to the moon, the other vehicles to get us elsewhere.
Right now we are focused on basically throw away vehicles that will get us from earth to where we want to go. Even the shuttle has to be rebuilt after every mission, and only the airframe is reusable. The Ares continues on these assumption, simply separating the human and cargo rated components. It is an improvement, but really won't get us to the moon or anywhere else in an efficient manner.
The problem is the ease and frequency of communication. At an average of 2000 messages a month,that is one every 15 minutes. Even if each takes only a minute to read and write,that is around 10% of the time texting,and that does not include other interactions. To put it another way, on average, for every hour long class, or client meeting, or interview, there will be, on average, 4 interruptions.
The problem is made worse by the fact that most people treat this asynchronous communication method as primarily synchronous, insisting on responding to messages they arriver, often creating sever inefficiencies by disrupting other activities. And before one talks about multitasking,multitasking does not work. We have seen enough families murdered and I have seen enough kids failing classes to know that young people do not have the ability to switch tasks without significant loss of effeciency.
If you had rs-232 ports on both machines, a calbee and a null modem will establish a physical connection that can be read by any number of programs. I wonder if the same could be done with bluetooth if an adaptor canb be f found for the older machine.
Science department generally require faculty to write grants to cover part of their salary. Furthermore, non capital purchases often incur a fee payable to the university. For instance, if a grant pays for $1000 of supplies, then the researcher might have to pay $200 to the university from the grant.
Then grants often cover graduate students,who tend to teach the basic freshman courses.
I really don't believe that any courses subsidize other courses. For a person who completes a degree, they may pay a little more up front and get the extras later on, be it a lab, or access to celebrity artists, or professors with industry contacts. Those that do not finish a degree has other issues, like financial aid that need to be repaid on minimum wage.
IN fact, the profit center for many universities is the professional degrees, such as the corporate MBA programs.
I recently updated a machine that had not been used in about a year. This machine is on a site license, using the standard MS products. In the update i was greeted wth the MS Office anti-piracy update, and warned that if I did not update I would not know if I had a pirated copy, and that if I did there might be security implications. Of course we had spent a great deal of money acquiring the software, and the update reminded that no matter what, MS could pull the plug at any time, and they would not consider this properly licensed software valid until I added this spyware to my machine.
The cool thing is that Google is taking this licensing deal to the next level with the cloud. The cloud, at least in it's free form, is not all that useful for people who want a little more control over their computers, but for those who are raised MS, it is the next logical step. For all those that have focused on the simplified MS development model, and MS controlled software and hardware, I wonder what they will do in if google has all the software on the backend, and users just have chrome laptops.
The first thing that comes to mind is that this is not bucking the system, or at least not the system of traditional college education. Rather, this is bucking the more recent trend of exorbitant prices for sheets of paper, not even sheep skin, where what the student has learned is perhaps of little or no consequence. To be frank, compared to what the University of Phoenix of Walden charges, this may be a steal.
I did not read the links, but the ad copy stated that the college provides freshman credits, which implies that the credits can be transfered to another university. I am sure the ad is not lying, and the implied transfer of credits can happen, Universities do not have to accept transfer credit. I do not know if they offer degrees, but again, employers do not have accept degrees from all universities as equal. Therefore there may be value there in cost effective remedial courses, but time will only tell if the college provides educational value.
Of course, if we are optimistic there is no reason why it should not. For instance, at $100 a month, a semester is around $500. For community colleges, one might be able to get 6 hours for not much more than that. A full load would cost up to four times that much. That, however, pays for a lot of brick and motor, a lot of face to face time with professors, and perhaps way too much administration. It seems that someone could harness the efficiencies and supply a decent alternative at a 25% saving. I am just not sure why anyone would, at least in terms of a for profit corporation.
In any case, like all education, it is buyer beware. Verify that the credits are transferable. Watch for other fees that at some places can double the cost. If there are degree programs, are they what one needs. The big thing lately are they pushing financial aid and loans. Some places seem to solely exist to get kids to take out loans to pay tuition, without providing any credible product in return. This is an issue because, unlike other loans, there is often no way to shed college financial aid, short of paying off every penny of the principe, interest, and fees.
The interesting thing about these parties is they are using the random person model. Instead of controlling the message, they are allowing unvetted random representatives to push the product. What next, MLM marketing? Of course this is running full circle, as MS software once most often entered the market through pirated copies installed by amateurs on cheap computers.
If MS is trying to become part of the High Street, as indicated by thier opening of fancy stores, I am not sure if house parties are the way to do it. Perhaps they should have spent the recent glut of ad money on well orchestrated street parties in the major cities.