It is very believable. Teachers often say 'go to the internet' or 'write a letter', and they train their kids to know that this means open IE and open word. I once took a test where 'computer literate' was equated to knowing which MS office application were used for which purpose, and tested knowledge of specific menu commands to do a task. In this case, it was not out of line, as the software to be learned was run on MS Windows, but the fact still remains that computer literacy=MS.
Here is the issue. First, how many people over the age of forty actually are computer literate. Now think of the number of teachers over the age of 40. If they barely can use a computer, how can they teach it? Second, school budgets are always under constraints. With enough money, there should be no reason why a school should not have MS Windows lab for those applications, a Mac lab for those applications, and even a access to a mainframe, not to mention a *nix lab. This was my setup when I was in school, so I had a renaissance computer education. Most people did not have such an education. There were taught on thing, and that it what they know. When one focuses on a single machine, be it *nix, MS, or Mac, then the overall educational process is reduced
Third, how many people are going to go into a profession where they pay is 22-60K, the 60K being after 40 years. I support the statements that if you want to change the system, then do something constructive, don't just whine. Going into a teachers classroom and disrupting it by putting on a dog and pony show is not constructive. Doing what the Dell Foundation is doing, which is giving teachers training to teach kids to think, and not just mimic, is. Even though it is obvious PC centric, the math and science skills allow kids to make their own informed choices, not just follow the herd. BTW, a first year teacher at AISD makes 40K. It is a nice place to live. Given all the layoffs, I would expect many technical people to apply for jobs there. Of course, we complain about teachers, but how many techies, who should know better, are even more aggressive at towing the MS party line.
I have any number of teachers become almost aggressive towards the fact that I do not us and MS DOS PC. I understand that this comes from ignorance or self preservation, in the same way that a *nix person might hat e the Mac, or a MS developer might hate anything that reduces the value of her product. in the case of schools, it is hard to beat the value of a MS Windows machine. It would be nice to have other machines, but hard to, right now, justify the money,
The problem is that she does not understand what college is. In the United States, K-12 eduction is mostly a right. Pretty much everyone is forced to take advantage of at least 10 years of such education, though perhps 50% of the population only completes nine years, at max. College, OTOH, is a privilege. A privilege tht one pays for, like driving. They payment grants a privilege, not right. And there are choices. One can choose not to go. One can choose to go to a school with low rigor. One can choose to go to a school that will give a diploma in exchange for money, with little to no work.
What one cannot do is think that payment grants any rights beyond basic human decency. The professor I had were all caring, competent, and rigorous. The work was challenging. Sometimes it was challenging enough that I had to drop the class. But I always knew it was a privilege to be in school, and that my acceptance might have resulted in another not gaining such a opportunity. It was a responsibility.
If some bozo wants to whine that classes that are too hard, that is fine. But when they also whine that life is unfair, and they have to pay consequences for their actions, that simply makes me lose all respect for the person. Fight for opportunities, not against the consequences when you fuck up the opportunities. Look at it this way. It is perfectly fine to fight for the opportunity to go college, but don't waste anyone time when one screws up the interview because of the need to party the night before.
December 9 is a big day. The computer mouse. John Milton. Redd Foxx.
As a tool, computers with the mouse, particularly the WIMP interface, really revolutionized the game. For some things, like repetitive data entry into vertical business apps, I believe the mouse has not contributed to simplicity. It has allowed a user to perform more tasks in such apps, but that complications has been a mixed blessing. And the over complicated mouse, with 20 buttons, and 3D motions, make me craze the old days of the command line, particalarly an intelligent command line like DEC had.
I think it has little to do with morality, and a lot to do with the abuse of power. The war on drugs has allowed to wreak havok on many other countries, while holding many of the consumers in this country mostly out of harms way. For instance, cocaine penalties are relatively small, one need half a kilo to do anything resembling hard time, yet due to our liency on our drug addicts, we spend huge sums on money, and divert critical military resources, and create dangerous enemies, to destroy the source. Of course, if the scum of the earth cocaine users face the same fines as crack users, we might not have such a problem. Crack usage has declined, while cocaine is more popular than ever.
I believe that the powers that be has created a irrationality over drug use which has allowed them to abuse powers. For instance, our president has clearly abused drugs his entire life, but has never been in prison? Why. If he had stopped abusing drugs in his 20's like most of my friends that would be one thing, but he had a drunk driving charge when he was 30. By that time my freinds and I had settled down. The one who didn't went to jail.
Then we have Rush Limbaugh, an addictive personality if ever i saw one. He clearly makes no effort to control what he eats, just grows fatter all the time. As a result he is in poor health, abused prescription drugs, lied to the police, and then claimed he was somehow different from a crack addict. I believe that when he loses a pound. Why wasn't he in jail? Drug abuse is drug abuse, and by coddling the abusers we are simply enriching the suppliers and encouraging terrorism.
It is true that no one forces anyone to take drugs. it is true that everyone who uses drugs knows there are consequences. It is also clear that those consequences are not equal for everyone, so while smoking a joint in public school or the projects might get you in trouble, I think doing the same at private school or the country club might come a significantly less risk.
Back at the time of the formation of the United States, one of the big beefs was the existance of aristocracy, who felt themselves better than the self made families of the united states. On thing that characterizes an aristocrat is having a family that has money, while the aristocrat seves no useful purpose. This means that one has a large number of unproductive members of society, often leeching of the productive people.
The original copyright law fulfilled this fuctnionh of alowing productive members to gain wealth, while insuring their families would have to do the same. The problem can when fictional institutions were given a significant degree of personhood, something opposed by a significant faction of the early US intelligence. Now we have fictional entities that did not die, and in fact had national implication if they died. Look at the big auto companies in the US. They should be allowed to die, but we won't let them. They are our new aristocracy. Not contributing to society(proven in marketplace because no one wants to buy the products), but important enough to be placed on the Civil List with unlimited access to the public purse. Thousands of pairs of socks, designer pants, girls, drugs, anything the aristocrat needs.
And in the middle of this, a realization that if disney is going to survive, they need a copyright that will last the lifetime of the modern aristocrat, the corporation. It would be irresponsible not to have the kind of IP laws we currently have unless we were willing to allow the corporations to fail. Clearly we are not, so there it is.
Clearly to win the PR campaign, the RIAA should do background checks and only sue those person between, say, 18-40 who have no serious medical conditions or other situations that could be used in articles to ridicule the RIAA.
I seriously believe that the RIAA tactics are counterproductive, but so is running stories on every grandmother, cancer patient, orphan, or paraplegic that they sue. If the RIAA are bullies, then everyone they sue is a victim, not just the old and infirm. If the RIAA is following even marginally proper protocol in these cases, then even the old and infirm must answer for their actions. In this case, we can believe that the person is innocent simply because they have not committed a crime. This does not, however, mean that this person never downloaded a unlicensed file, something for which we know the RIAA will sue.
Let us focus on the law and order side of this travesty, not the dog and pony show.
It may seem heartless, but we are not taking about the death of 1 or a few children, or even long term chronic effects. After all, power lines do kill children, but we still use them. High fat, concentrated sugar food, certainly do kids no good but we still base a large part of the economy on them.
In this case, there may be small risk that some kids might die from the vaccine. OTOH, there is a real risk that some unvaccinated might prove to be a potent vector and deliver the disease to some youngster who are not fully vaccinated, or have a particular susceptibility. The parents decision then is accept the tiny risk to the child, or the force a possible larger risk on everyone else child. of course, the more children that are not vaccinated, the greater risk of outbreak, and the greater risk of many children suffering long term effects.
I think the story that is emerging now is that now one believes that the risks of these diseases are real, so instead of balancing the risk of the disease over the risk of the vaccine, the risk fo the vaccine is considered in an environment where the disease does not exist at all, and the vaccines only purpose it to enrich drug companies and government officials.
Like torture, the so called civilized american values are only in effect until our oversize cards and houses are in jeopardy. Once that happens, all rules are out the windows. Rule of law. Gone. Habeas corpus. Gone.
This ruling is more evidence we are in a depression. While do not want price fixing, we also do not want deflation. Such deflation has already hit the wages of the average amercian, which is fine, as lower wages boost the stock market. What does not boost the stock market is falling profits on rising revenue, which is what the ruling was intended to prevent.
Many retailers will sell a product for whatever it takes to the product to move in this recession/depression economy. While our values indicate that we should allow the market to work in this way, the risk to a few is too great to allow such market adjustments, although we know from history tha such meddling is not all it is cracked up to be.
This fairness thing is crap. Anytime I hear someone talk about it, and over the pst 15 years it has been mostly conservatives, at least with respect to monetary issues, I want to ask them, like, what are you, 10?
The consumers use bandwidth, and it is the consumers who should shoulder a significant cost of the bandwidth. Google, et al, need to pay for the redundant lines that connect their facility. It is true that due to different usage patterns, some consumer will pay out of proportion. It is also true that some taxpayers will pay for something they do not use. But such is life.
Let's say that I am in the city. I drive like 20 or 20 miles a day, and the roads I do use are well traveled and largely cheap surface roads. Then why am I paying taxes and high gas taxes to subsidize the suburbanites excessive travel and wear and tear on the roads? Well, for one thing I do not want them in the city. Second, i need them in the city to serve me. I am likely paying out of proportion of my direct use, but not me total use.
It is the same thing with taxes. Suppose I am in the top 25% of the income. I likely am part of the group that pays a huge percentage of the nations taxes, maybe even in excess of the proportion of money that I earn. This is caused by the fact that the bottom third of the wage earners pay almost no taxes. A family earning 30K, after deductions, maybe a token couple thousand. That is, of course, because we all get a deduction basic living expenses, just like business only pays on profit, actual humans pay taxes only on their excess income, and the more money you make, the more actual excess income you have. It is an observable that 50% of the population have almost no excess income, while, when on reaches the 10 20% of the wage earners, excess income becomes the majority.
On one hand this is bad, as it means I pay higher taxes. OTOH, this allows us to keep wages low, as it is possible to pay barely enough to keep a family together. If everyone had to pay, say, 10%, then many family might double their tax bill, which might force them to ask for raises, which they would need to have to survive. This might mean that a couple who had been earning $9 an hour each, might now need to ask for $10, which might be more than a business could afford without increasing costs.And since business do not increase cost proportionately, such an increase could end up costing more overall. Or at least this is the conservative arguments.
So, fairness is not really crap, but fairness is dangerous, as people will inevitable skew the facts to make themselves the victims.
You said a mouthful. If ATT would open their network, then one good buy an open source phone, such as the Moko, and use it. Likewise, if Verizon was not so much control freaky, it might have allowed the Apple phone on it's network, thus solidifing it's grip as the #1 provider in the US.
As it is, Apple has provided the Smartphone For The Rest of US, and expanded the market beyond what anyone would have predicted a year ago. Now everyone else is trying to catch up and make a smartphone to complete. ATT, quite logically, is trying to create a low end smartphone for those who want the basic functionality of a smart phone, but not the price.
In college we ran the ATT Unix PC for a year or so. Apple also used this memory scheme. IIRC, the physical memory is first used for the kernel and system processes. How every much these processes take, that memory becomes more or less unavailable for the user. In your case, since you have 4GB physical, and 2GB used, this may mean that Vista is using 2GB for the system, if all memory is used.
What is left over is the physical memory needed by the system. It seems like the OS preferred a fixed amount of memory, so it would just set up fixed space on the hard disk. So, even if all you have a 1 MB of available memory, the system would set up say 10MB, and that is what would be used. The pages that are being used will be stored in the physical ram, while everything would be stored on the HD.
If page management is working correctly, this should be transparent to the user. The management software or hardware will predict what pages were needed, and transfer those page to ram. One issue we I had was available memory was not hard disk plus physical available ram, but was limited by the available hard disk space.
So, it seems to me that virtual paged memory is still useful because with multiple applications loaded, memory can be a mess, and big fast hard drives it should not be an issue. I don't how Vista works, but it seems that *nix works very hard to insure that the pages that are needed are loaded to physical memory, and page faults do not occur. In this case, where virtual memory equals available physical memory, it would seem that since only physical memory is being used, there would be no performance hit from virtual memory. it is only there in case an application is run that need more memory. It is nice that we do not get those pesky memory errors we got in the very old days.
MS Windows might be a stumbling block to future sales, but the OEMs are hardly doing anything about it. Decent laptops are not that cheap. A decent laptop, wth decent screen size, and decent memory, are $900. If one upgrades to the full Vista, then it is $1000. Sure one can get a cheap laptop, but I would hardly consider those vista ready. Sony of course has really nice, really expensive machines, better than Apple, if you don't care about battery life.
I have said this before. If MS windows OS was an issue, HP/Compaq have the experience to fix it. Dell, Sony, etc and the others only flog whatever they are told to flog, so they are pretty much stuck. the only reason any of them would want to sell Mac OS machines is to have an excuse to raise the price of the machines, like they have done with *nix machines.
What we saw in the previous Mac OS licensing experiment was that it was difficult to support all those clones. I know many people whose machines worked at first, but over time become incompatible with the OS. One part of the Apple strategy is that it will only support it tech that it wants to. We no longer have SCSI. We no longer have firewire on the low end machines. We have not seen a floppy on a Mac since 1999. The strategy of the PC OEM, which is to use whatever is cheapest component at the moment, and expect MS to support it, will not work with Apple. It only works because of most offices, computers are set up as a redundant array of cheap PCs, in which any machine is expected to fail, and redundancies are built in.
The reason for antivirus on the mac is the same for universal inoculation. If everything is inoculated, then the virus will tend to no longer be a problem. With Macs not inoculated, even though macs may be immune, the could be a vector.
Because of this many, including me, have chosen not to use malware detectors, not wishing to sacrifice the money, the cycles, the headache of updating, the headache of flaky software. This does, however, leave macs as a potential target if anyone feels like taking the time to make the delivery package.
It would be good for apple to piggy back on some general malware project, like spybot, and create a scanner for the mac. Spybot could keep the signatures up to date, and Apple could maintain the app.
It seems kind of standard stuff. As a student, it seems most of your stuff belongs to the professor sponsoring you. For instance, if you help create data for an article, is that article yours? Not an exact thing, but I have never seen an assumption that students work as part of the research is theirs to control. That would just lead to anarchy. Some student would inevitably blackmail the school into using code that they paid for. Not only the school, but also the canadian tax payers through the grant.
I know with facebook, and yahoo, and even MS, everyone thinks the code they write in school is going to make them a millionaire. Maybe it will, but, seriously, is that the case. It would be hard to state the amount of research code me and the group I worked with created. Signal decomposition, algorithms to assemble and decode telemetry, data acquisition when it required homemade custom interfaces, full robotic controls for 20 i/o systems, full windowing systems before MS had MS Windows, abstraction layers for output. You name it. It was good fun and good practice, but the reward was the opportunity to have time to do such things, to test such things in a relaxed environment, to learn from people who knew more than we did.
If there is a worry about about the code being commercialized or otherwise misused, release it to the wild. Publish it in a journal. Put in on sourceforge. Mail a copy to 100 friends. Don't get caught in the IP fiasco that is ruining the world, where every little thing is clutched to like it is the only thing one will ever create. And, especially, don't pay attention to any of the bullshit posted on/., including this.
There are several issues here. First, 10% is a typical point where people feel there are going to lose control of a situation. As long as the minority player is under 10%, everyone feels safe. We seem to inherently fear 10%, os welcome any comments that claim the minority players will never exceed, or even approach, 10%.
Second, i don't see apple having huge problems with hardware. They have problems releasing pretty hardware that stays pretty, and has occasional issues with high performance, but in 20+ years of buying Apple hardware, I have never received a significantly defective product. I know other have, but often those defects are 'a barely visible crack on the edge of case after a month of use after I dropped it on the ground' kind of defects.
Clearly the market will not bear a computer that costs $1500+ dollars, at least at the 25% market penetration. Clearly Apple will have to the push iMacs and MacBooks that are closer to $500. They have no done so, and may never do so. They may always remain between 10 and 20%. This is not bad. If Apple has 15%, and *nix has 5%, then MS will have 80%. What this means is that we will no longer have the MS centric world in which standards are set by a single monolithic entity.
As far as licensing Mac OS, Apple cannot exhort the prices that MS can, so it cannot survive as a seller of software. How many companies do? It cannot subsidize the OEM, so it is unclear if an Apple computer can ever be as cheap as a MS. Aren't *nix boxes more expensive that the comparable MS?
In any case, i would much prefer someone like HP or Sun to develop a competitor laptop to the macbook than a bunch of POS Apple clones. We have enough crappy computers. What I want is a good computer.
This is what I don't understand. This is a known problem. This is an ongoing problem. So why has a system not been set up to fix it? Why is ok for an order to sit for two days and no one to fix it.
This is not unique to Dell. My last Apple repair had a hitch, and sat in a room for two days before someone was able to tell me what happened. This was a case where there is no synchronous on demand communication between Apple customer service and their contractor.
So, while the situation is explained, it hardly relives Dell of their obligation in this case. A customer has been told the order should have arrived. It did not. I don't care if the order had to be shipped to mars. Dell has the responsibility to do so, or say honestly it cannot. I mean this isn't quantum physics. The rules of what can shipped out of the country are known. The parts can be listed as export/no export, so configuring an acceptable machine can be done at order time. Everything else can be equally automated, and if the front line customer service cannot do it, then the back office people with experience should do it. And if the paper work needs to be revised, certainly dell order system has the ability to tag an exception with a note.
No, this is just a case of spending money on pretty offices and corporate jets instead of competent people and process software.
The asshole defense does not always apply. Sometimes, in the words of TAWP, the assholes goes too far and we need a dick to fuck them up. Sure it is not ideal, and can set unfair precedents, but there you are. The world is neither perfect or fair.
As far as free speech goes, it is not clear it applies. Facebook may be private property, but even if it is a commons, like a shopping mall, free speech still has limits. Do we not deny people the right of free speech in the mall to ask the patron passing by for change? Do we not deny the people the right of free speech to disrupt the public street by using amplification devices? Would it not be inappropriate for an adult to dress up as a child and claim that bush/obama/bin laden raped them? These are complex questions, and we must work through them.
This may not be the best decision, but it certainly set a standard that an adult posing as someone they are not and harassing a child is not acceptable. I ask why would it be, and why is the decision so bad? It is premeditated psychological abuse of a child. We would convict a man for just touching a girl the wrong way. Why shouldn't we do the same to a women? Just because there was no touch? Is the damage not the same. Kind to thing about it, I wonder why this mother is not forced to sign up for the child rape list. It might be a good idea to expand the list from sexual predators to general psychological predators. Who knows how many girls this mother might kill.
In any case, it is simply a matter of parents getting too much into their kids lives. kids need to know how to deal with problems themselves. Killing the head cheerlieader or a competitive class mate is not going to help the child succeed in the long run. At some point the mother will no longer be around to kill the competitors, and the child will have to know how to commit such crimes on thier own.
It seems to me that the compromise between security and privacy has always been made. It seems reasonable that people formed village to increase security, thus hurting privacy. As villages got bigger, and not everyone was completely known, i.e. is was possible to do things that not the whole group new about, then added measures were added.
But privacy does fluctuate. One can imagine kids having the ability to venture to play whatever games kids play with no one the wiser. This was even possible 30 years ago, before parents started putting cameras in the kids rooms. On can imagine reading a book and no one knew you ever read it, which changed when library records become public information. Thinking this is a recent innovation, even in evolutionary terms, is,to me, naive.
The argument now is really what is the marginal benefit of privacy, or, to put another way, are you willing to go onto big brother, have all your movements, nude body, and sex acts, filmed for the possibility of a prize and 5 minutes of fame. Maybe privacy is not worth even that much.
This, of course, is the basis of tinkle down theory
Give the rich everything they want, and they will invest in infrastructure, buy luxury goods, and generally line the streets with cream and gold.
When the billionaire car people last received a loan, they squandered it mercilessly, producing only a single fuel efficient vehicle, one that, due to general arrogance of the upper crust to the peasants, did not do so well. What was mostly done was the building of abuse of a loop hole that the car manufacturers begged for to, wait for it, help the rich by not forcing them to pay more for their big trucks. As a result, big trucks became cheap, and, combined with cheap gas, helped lead to a critical security situation in which unfriendly nations control our energy supply.
The only reason car companies should get tax money is to push the national security agenda. That is, reduce dependance on foreign energy. As much as coal is a problem, at least it is local. We can stand to make it safer by paying higher prices. Same thing for nuclear. Same thing for biofuels. Carbon is removed from the environment this year, and put back in next year when it is burned.
Clearly plug in electric cars are a solution, but like the SUV, we should learn that luxury vehicles do not lead to long term success. Yes, for a time, they allow people to sublimate their inadequacies, but at some point the piper must be paid. There is no way to build a economy based on consumer spending with yachts. Sure we need a few high ticket items, but what we are really saying we need stuff cheap enough so lots of stuff get sold. In terms of cars, we are taking about most of the population replacing a car every few years, either with a new one, or a with an older car. If cars are so expensive that many people can't afford to replace a car, then that is a big problem.
Let me tell you what we did prior to the internet. If we wanted a book, we would go to the a physical building called a library, go into a drawers filled with maybe hundred of thousands organized index cards, find it's location, and check it out. If it wasn't in the library we would ask the experts employed there to find out where it was, and nine time out of ten the expert, i.e. librarian, would be able to get it, especially if the library was a university library as they have powerful interlibrary loans. At that point if we wanted a copy of it we would then go find a copy machine and copy it. At prevailing prices at the time, it would cost about $5 per hundred pages, while kept the actual illegal copying down, as it was almost always easier and cheaper just to buy the book. Unless it was a text book, in which case smart students just make copies.
That aside, I don't believe anyone has a right to a particular good or service. This is why I don't have a problem with the prices Apple, MS, or Prada charges. Now, I do have a problem with Disney having the ability to continue to limit derivative works by harassing those that wish to expand the idea, but if steamboat willie ever becomes public domain is a limited consequence to me. That said, I do not think that anyone has a right to a book. If a publisher does not want to release in a new format, fans may be annoyed but in most cases it is not critical. We can get the content if we wish to, and hopefully no one will prosecute for private use. Like the old days, we were free to copy as much as we wished. We just were not free to mass copy and then ask for a fee to offset out copying expense.
I wonder how many of the people who complain actually have worked on device drivers, or even interfaced with device drivers.
First, device drivers, if properly written, are part of the delivered hardware. If one asks for the drivers to be open, one might as well ask for the firmware in the device to be open. Now, I would argue this would be a good thing, but not such a good thing that I would want to arbitrarily limit the selection by making it a requirement.
Second, at the device driver level, there should be no constantly changing API. There should be a relatively fixed abstract patten or adapter to provides a uniform interface to whatever driver is delivered by the manufacturer. This is the open source part.
If one is serious about keeping things open source, then one solution might be to only buy products that will work with standard based generic drivers that can be open sourced. The generic post script driver. The Picture Transfer Protocol, or TWAIN. Or we have Webdav.
Of course products that support such formats are often more expensive, and many people complain that freedom is not free.
To satisfy those people, we used closed source drivers, with an agreement that, since the drivers are part of the hardware, and not the software, there will be no charge beyond the purchase of the machine the needs the driver. Of course, if a vendor does not feel they are going to sell enough machines to pay for the driver, or the machine has been made to work with a single OS, then such an agreement may not be possible. Which means that one is back to buying standards compliant machine.
I thought the whole point of the iphone was to not have to reformat content, the iphone can display it the way it is. I know some sites, like amazon, are so badly formatted that the owners feel the site has to be rewritten for iPhone, but it does not help much. Other sites, like NYT, wrote an app, but that appears to be for ad revenue purposes, as iPhone does not have flash. The same for Youtube.
So, at the end of the day, I fail to see how this applies to any modern smart phone. Only the older phones, or non-smart phones, can't render HTML as is. Of course most of these problems are caused by graphic designers not understanding HML, and borking the standard so we now have web pages that make no sense in almost an common browser.
The government is allowed to do many things, but individuals may or may not be. For instance, it may be ok to smuggle drugs, but not ok to get a blowjob. There, I was partisan. It might be ok for one person to go AWOL, but another, who was decorated in battle, still is seen to be inferior commander in chief because of partisan ramblings.
America is a country of the people, by the people, and for the people, and only an idiot would assume a get out jail free card is ethically valid. We are not a dictatorship in which one will die if one contradicts the government. A person who knowingly does something wrong, even if that person thinks there is a higher reason, is still wrong. Eric Rudolf, and all the people at Justice that protected him, were wrong even though I am sure they all believe and still believe that God wanted that women dead. I am sure that everyone who wiretaps believes they are doing good, but in a country of the people, for the people, and by the people, we cannot externalize ethics to the government. The government may say that owning a person is legal, or not hiring a person because of skin color is legal, or that killing a person is legal, but in a country of the people, for the people, and by the people, each on of us has free will and must account for our actions with ourselves and whatever we find holy, with no regard to what what protections some criminal corrupt persons in government might have enacted.
From what I can tell, this is old news and the protocol has been set. Destroy documents every so often. Do it consistently. Do not wait until there is a budget. Continuously go through everything and destroy everything that older than a cutoff. If you are told to stop, stop, and don't start trying to catch up on the destruction. This has been SOP since the Enron mess.he legal requirement is to follow protocol and not destroy stuff after you are told not to. This is nothing new, and if Apple does not have a consistent policy, then that is bad for them. The fact is that the paper trail is there. If you don't want a paper trail, have an undocumented face to face meeting.
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Here is the issue. First, how many people over the age of forty actually are computer literate. Now think of the number of teachers over the age of 40. If they barely can use a computer, how can they teach it? Second, school budgets are always under constraints. With enough money, there should be no reason why a school should not have MS Windows lab for those applications, a Mac lab for those applications, and even a access to a mainframe, not to mention a *nix lab. This was my setup when I was in school, so I had a renaissance computer education. Most people did not have such an education. There were taught on thing, and that it what they know. When one focuses on a single machine, be it *nix, MS, or Mac, then the overall educational process is reduced
Third, how many people are going to go into a profession where they pay is 22-60K, the 60K being after 40 years. I support the statements that if you want to change the system, then do something constructive, don't just whine. Going into a teachers classroom and disrupting it by putting on a dog and pony show is not constructive. Doing what the Dell Foundation is doing, which is giving teachers training to teach kids to think, and not just mimic, is. Even though it is obvious PC centric, the math and science skills allow kids to make their own informed choices, not just follow the herd. BTW, a first year teacher at AISD makes 40K. It is a nice place to live. Given all the layoffs, I would expect many technical people to apply for jobs there. Of course, we complain about teachers, but how many techies, who should know better, are even more aggressive at towing the MS party line.
I have any number of teachers become almost aggressive towards the fact that I do not us and MS DOS PC. I understand that this comes from ignorance or self preservation, in the same way that a *nix person might hat e the Mac, or a MS developer might hate anything that reduces the value of her product. in the case of schools, it is hard to beat the value of a MS Windows machine. It would be nice to have other machines, but hard to, right now, justify the money,
What one cannot do is think that payment grants any rights beyond basic human decency. The professor I had were all caring, competent, and rigorous. The work was challenging. Sometimes it was challenging enough that I had to drop the class. But I always knew it was a privilege to be in school, and that my acceptance might have resulted in another not gaining such a opportunity. It was a responsibility.
If some bozo wants to whine that classes that are too hard, that is fine. But when they also whine that life is unfair, and they have to pay consequences for their actions, that simply makes me lose all respect for the person. Fight for opportunities, not against the consequences when you fuck up the opportunities. Look at it this way. It is perfectly fine to fight for the opportunity to go college, but don't waste anyone time when one screws up the interview because of the need to party the night before.
As a tool, computers with the mouse, particularly the WIMP interface, really revolutionized the game. For some things, like repetitive data entry into vertical business apps, I believe the mouse has not contributed to simplicity. It has allowed a user to perform more tasks in such apps, but that complications has been a mixed blessing. And the over complicated mouse, with 20 buttons, and 3D motions, make me craze the old days of the command line, particalarly an intelligent command line like DEC had.
I believe that the powers that be has created a irrationality over drug use which has allowed them to abuse powers. For instance, our president has clearly abused drugs his entire life, but has never been in prison? Why. If he had stopped abusing drugs in his 20's like most of my friends that would be one thing, but he had a drunk driving charge when he was 30. By that time my freinds and I had settled down. The one who didn't went to jail.
Then we have Rush Limbaugh, an addictive personality if ever i saw one. He clearly makes no effort to control what he eats, just grows fatter all the time. As a result he is in poor health, abused prescription drugs, lied to the police, and then claimed he was somehow different from a crack addict. I believe that when he loses a pound. Why wasn't he in jail? Drug abuse is drug abuse, and by coddling the abusers we are simply enriching the suppliers and encouraging terrorism.
It is true that no one forces anyone to take drugs. it is true that everyone who uses drugs knows there are consequences. It is also clear that those consequences are not equal for everyone, so while smoking a joint in public school or the projects might get you in trouble, I think doing the same at private school or the country club might come a significantly less risk.
The original copyright law fulfilled this fuctnionh of alowing productive members to gain wealth, while insuring their families would have to do the same. The problem can when fictional institutions were given a significant degree of personhood, something opposed by a significant faction of the early US intelligence. Now we have fictional entities that did not die, and in fact had national implication if they died. Look at the big auto companies in the US. They should be allowed to die, but we won't let them. They are our new aristocracy. Not contributing to society(proven in marketplace because no one wants to buy the products), but important enough to be placed on the Civil List with unlimited access to the public purse. Thousands of pairs of socks, designer pants, girls, drugs, anything the aristocrat needs.
And in the middle of this, a realization that if disney is going to survive, they need a copyright that will last the lifetime of the modern aristocrat, the corporation. It would be irresponsible not to have the kind of IP laws we currently have unless we were willing to allow the corporations to fail. Clearly we are not, so there it is.
I seriously believe that the RIAA tactics are counterproductive, but so is running stories on every grandmother, cancer patient, orphan, or paraplegic that they sue. If the RIAA are bullies, then everyone they sue is a victim, not just the old and infirm. If the RIAA is following even marginally proper protocol in these cases, then even the old and infirm must answer for their actions. In this case, we can believe that the person is innocent simply because they have not committed a crime. This does not, however, mean that this person never downloaded a unlicensed file, something for which we know the RIAA will sue.
Let us focus on the law and order side of this travesty, not the dog and pony show.
duh
Think laterally. Security is a complex issue. Not every person can be secure. Not every low level threat can be eliminated. There are alway tradeoffs.
In this case, there may be small risk that some kids might die from the vaccine. OTOH, there is a real risk that some unvaccinated might prove to be a potent vector and deliver the disease to some youngster who are not fully vaccinated, or have a particular susceptibility. The parents decision then is accept the tiny risk to the child, or the force a possible larger risk on everyone else child. of course, the more children that are not vaccinated, the greater risk of outbreak, and the greater risk of many children suffering long term effects.
I think the story that is emerging now is that now one believes that the risks of these diseases are real, so instead of balancing the risk of the disease over the risk of the vaccine, the risk fo the vaccine is considered in an environment where the disease does not exist at all, and the vaccines only purpose it to enrich drug companies and government officials.
This ruling is more evidence we are in a depression. While do not want price fixing, we also do not want deflation. Such deflation has already hit the wages of the average amercian, which is fine, as lower wages boost the stock market. What does not boost the stock market is falling profits on rising revenue, which is what the ruling was intended to prevent.
Many retailers will sell a product for whatever it takes to the product to move in this recession/depression economy. While our values indicate that we should allow the market to work in this way, the risk to a few is too great to allow such market adjustments, although we know from history tha such meddling is not all it is cracked up to be.
The consumers use bandwidth, and it is the consumers who should shoulder a significant cost of the bandwidth. Google, et al, need to pay for the redundant lines that connect their facility. It is true that due to different usage patterns, some consumer will pay out of proportion. It is also true that some taxpayers will pay for something they do not use. But such is life.
Let's say that I am in the city. I drive like 20 or 20 miles a day, and the roads I do use are well traveled and largely cheap surface roads. Then why am I paying taxes and high gas taxes to subsidize the suburbanites excessive travel and wear and tear on the roads? Well, for one thing I do not want them in the city. Second, i need them in the city to serve me. I am likely paying out of proportion of my direct use, but not me total use.
It is the same thing with taxes. Suppose I am in the top 25% of the income. I likely am part of the group that pays a huge percentage of the nations taxes, maybe even in excess of the proportion of money that I earn. This is caused by the fact that the bottom third of the wage earners pay almost no taxes. A family earning 30K, after deductions, maybe a token couple thousand. That is, of course, because we all get a deduction basic living expenses, just like business only pays on profit, actual humans pay taxes only on their excess income, and the more money you make, the more actual excess income you have. It is an observable that 50% of the population have almost no excess income, while, when on reaches the 10 20% of the wage earners, excess income becomes the majority.
On one hand this is bad, as it means I pay higher taxes. OTOH, this allows us to keep wages low, as it is possible to pay barely enough to keep a family together. If everyone had to pay, say, 10%, then many family might double their tax bill, which might force them to ask for raises, which they would need to have to survive. This might mean that a couple who had been earning $9 an hour each, might now need to ask for $10, which might be more than a business could afford without increasing costs.And since business do not increase cost proportionately, such an increase could end up costing more overall. Or at least this is the conservative arguments.
So, fairness is not really crap, but fairness is dangerous, as people will inevitable skew the facts to make themselves the victims.
As it is, Apple has provided the Smartphone For The Rest of US, and expanded the market beyond what anyone would have predicted a year ago. Now everyone else is trying to catch up and make a smartphone to complete. ATT, quite logically, is trying to create a low end smartphone for those who want the basic functionality of a smart phone, but not the price.
What is left over is the physical memory needed by the system. It seems like the OS preferred a fixed amount of memory, so it would just set up fixed space on the hard disk. So, even if all you have a 1 MB of available memory, the system would set up say 10MB, and that is what would be used. The pages that are being used will be stored in the physical ram, while everything would be stored on the HD.
If page management is working correctly, this should be transparent to the user. The management software or hardware will predict what pages were needed, and transfer those page to ram. One issue we I had was available memory was not hard disk plus physical available ram, but was limited by the available hard disk space.
So, it seems to me that virtual paged memory is still useful because with multiple applications loaded, memory can be a mess, and big fast hard drives it should not be an issue. I don't how Vista works, but it seems that *nix works very hard to insure that the pages that are needed are loaded to physical memory, and page faults do not occur. In this case, where virtual memory equals available physical memory, it would seem that since only physical memory is being used, there would be no performance hit from virtual memory. it is only there in case an application is run that need more memory. It is nice that we do not get those pesky memory errors we got in the very old days.
I have said this before. If MS windows OS was an issue, HP/Compaq have the experience to fix it. Dell, Sony, etc and the others only flog whatever they are told to flog, so they are pretty much stuck. the only reason any of them would want to sell Mac OS machines is to have an excuse to raise the price of the machines, like they have done with *nix machines.
What we saw in the previous Mac OS licensing experiment was that it was difficult to support all those clones. I know many people whose machines worked at first, but over time become incompatible with the OS. One part of the Apple strategy is that it will only support it tech that it wants to. We no longer have SCSI. We no longer have firewire on the low end machines. We have not seen a floppy on a Mac since 1999. The strategy of the PC OEM, which is to use whatever is cheapest component at the moment, and expect MS to support it, will not work with Apple. It only works because of most offices, computers are set up as a redundant array of cheap PCs, in which any machine is expected to fail, and redundancies are built in.
Because of this many, including me, have chosen not to use malware detectors, not wishing to sacrifice the money, the cycles, the headache of updating, the headache of flaky software. This does, however, leave macs as a potential target if anyone feels like taking the time to make the delivery package.
It would be good for apple to piggy back on some general malware project, like spybot, and create a scanner for the mac. Spybot could keep the signatures up to date, and Apple could maintain the app.
I know with facebook, and yahoo, and even MS, everyone thinks the code they write in school is going to make them a millionaire. Maybe it will, but, seriously, is that the case. It would be hard to state the amount of research code me and the group I worked with created. Signal decomposition, algorithms to assemble and decode telemetry, data acquisition when it required homemade custom interfaces, full robotic controls for 20 i/o systems, full windowing systems before MS had MS Windows, abstraction layers for output. You name it. It was good fun and good practice, but the reward was the opportunity to have time to do such things, to test such things in a relaxed environment, to learn from people who knew more than we did.
If there is a worry about about the code being commercialized or otherwise misused, release it to the wild. Publish it in a journal. Put in on sourceforge. Mail a copy to 100 friends. Don't get caught in the IP fiasco that is ruining the world, where every little thing is clutched to like it is the only thing one will ever create. And, especially, don't pay attention to any of the bullshit posted on /., including this.
Second, i don't see apple having huge problems with hardware. They have problems releasing pretty hardware that stays pretty, and has occasional issues with high performance, but in 20+ years of buying Apple hardware, I have never received a significantly defective product. I know other have, but often those defects are 'a barely visible crack on the edge of case after a month of use after I dropped it on the ground' kind of defects.
Clearly the market will not bear a computer that costs $1500+ dollars, at least at the 25% market penetration. Clearly Apple will have to the push iMacs and MacBooks that are closer to $500. They have no done so, and may never do so. They may always remain between 10 and 20%. This is not bad. If Apple has 15%, and *nix has 5%, then MS will have 80%. What this means is that we will no longer have the MS centric world in which standards are set by a single monolithic entity.
As far as licensing Mac OS, Apple cannot exhort the prices that MS can, so it cannot survive as a seller of software. How many companies do? It cannot subsidize the OEM, so it is unclear if an Apple computer can ever be as cheap as a MS. Aren't *nix boxes more expensive that the comparable MS?
In any case, i would much prefer someone like HP or Sun to develop a competitor laptop to the macbook than a bunch of POS Apple clones. We have enough crappy computers. What I want is a good computer.
This is not unique to Dell. My last Apple repair had a hitch, and sat in a room for two days before someone was able to tell me what happened. This was a case where there is no synchronous on demand communication between Apple customer service and their contractor.
So, while the situation is explained, it hardly relives Dell of their obligation in this case. A customer has been told the order should have arrived. It did not. I don't care if the order had to be shipped to mars. Dell has the responsibility to do so, or say honestly it cannot. I mean this isn't quantum physics. The rules of what can shipped out of the country are known. The parts can be listed as export/no export, so configuring an acceptable machine can be done at order time. Everything else can be equally automated, and if the front line customer service cannot do it, then the back office people with experience should do it. And if the paper work needs to be revised, certainly dell order system has the ability to tag an exception with a note.
No, this is just a case of spending money on pretty offices and corporate jets instead of competent people and process software.
As far as free speech goes, it is not clear it applies. Facebook may be private property, but even if it is a commons, like a shopping mall, free speech still has limits. Do we not deny people the right of free speech in the mall to ask the patron passing by for change? Do we not deny the people the right of free speech to disrupt the public street by using amplification devices? Would it not be inappropriate for an adult to dress up as a child and claim that bush/obama/bin laden raped them? These are complex questions, and we must work through them.
This may not be the best decision, but it certainly set a standard that an adult posing as someone they are not and harassing a child is not acceptable. I ask why would it be, and why is the decision so bad? It is premeditated psychological abuse of a child. We would convict a man for just touching a girl the wrong way. Why shouldn't we do the same to a women? Just because there was no touch? Is the damage not the same. Kind to thing about it, I wonder why this mother is not forced to sign up for the child rape list. It might be a good idea to expand the list from sexual predators to general psychological predators. Who knows how many girls this mother might kill.
In any case, it is simply a matter of parents getting too much into their kids lives. kids need to know how to deal with problems themselves. Killing the head cheerlieader or a competitive class mate is not going to help the child succeed in the long run. At some point the mother will no longer be around to kill the competitors, and the child will have to know how to commit such crimes on thier own.
But privacy does fluctuate. One can imagine kids having the ability to venture to play whatever games kids play with no one the wiser. This was even possible 30 years ago, before parents started putting cameras in the kids rooms. On can imagine reading a book and no one knew you ever read it, which changed when library records become public information. Thinking this is a recent innovation, even in evolutionary terms, is,to me, naive.
The argument now is really what is the marginal benefit of privacy, or, to put another way, are you willing to go onto big brother, have all your movements, nude body, and sex acts, filmed for the possibility of a prize and 5 minutes of fame. Maybe privacy is not worth even that much.
Give the rich everything they want, and they will invest in infrastructure, buy luxury goods, and generally line the streets with cream and gold.
When the billionaire car people last received a loan, they squandered it mercilessly, producing only a single fuel efficient vehicle, one that, due to general arrogance of the upper crust to the peasants, did not do so well. What was mostly done was the building of abuse of a loop hole that the car manufacturers begged for to, wait for it, help the rich by not forcing them to pay more for their big trucks. As a result, big trucks became cheap, and, combined with cheap gas, helped lead to a critical security situation in which unfriendly nations control our energy supply.
The only reason car companies should get tax money is to push the national security agenda. That is, reduce dependance on foreign energy. As much as coal is a problem, at least it is local. We can stand to make it safer by paying higher prices. Same thing for nuclear. Same thing for biofuels. Carbon is removed from the environment this year, and put back in next year when it is burned.
Clearly plug in electric cars are a solution, but like the SUV, we should learn that luxury vehicles do not lead to long term success. Yes, for a time, they allow people to sublimate their inadequacies, but at some point the piper must be paid. There is no way to build a economy based on consumer spending with yachts. Sure we need a few high ticket items, but what we are really saying we need stuff cheap enough so lots of stuff get sold. In terms of cars, we are taking about most of the population replacing a car every few years, either with a new one, or a with an older car. If cars are so expensive that many people can't afford to replace a car, then that is a big problem.
That aside, I don't believe anyone has a right to a particular good or service. This is why I don't have a problem with the prices Apple, MS, or Prada charges. Now, I do have a problem with Disney having the ability to continue to limit derivative works by harassing those that wish to expand the idea, but if steamboat willie ever becomes public domain is a limited consequence to me. That said, I do not think that anyone has a right to a book. If a publisher does not want to release in a new format, fans may be annoyed but in most cases it is not critical. We can get the content if we wish to, and hopefully no one will prosecute for private use. Like the old days, we were free to copy as much as we wished. We just were not free to mass copy and then ask for a fee to offset out copying expense.
First, device drivers, if properly written, are part of the delivered hardware. If one asks for the drivers to be open, one might as well ask for the firmware in the device to be open. Now, I would argue this would be a good thing, but not such a good thing that I would want to arbitrarily limit the selection by making it a requirement.
Second, at the device driver level, there should be no constantly changing API. There should be a relatively fixed abstract patten or adapter to provides a uniform interface to whatever driver is delivered by the manufacturer. This is the open source part.
If one is serious about keeping things open source, then one solution might be to only buy products that will work with standard based generic drivers that can be open sourced. The generic post script driver. The Picture Transfer Protocol, or TWAIN. Or we have Webdav.
Of course products that support such formats are often more expensive, and many people complain that freedom is not free.
To satisfy those people, we used closed source drivers, with an agreement that, since the drivers are part of the hardware, and not the software, there will be no charge beyond the purchase of the machine the needs the driver. Of course, if a vendor does not feel they are going to sell enough machines to pay for the driver, or the machine has been made to work with a single OS, then such an agreement may not be possible. Which means that one is back to buying standards compliant machine.
So, at the end of the day, I fail to see how this applies to any modern smart phone. Only the older phones, or non-smart phones, can't render HTML as is. Of course most of these problems are caused by graphic designers not understanding HML, and borking the standard so we now have web pages that make no sense in almost an common browser.
America is a country of the people, by the people, and for the people, and only an idiot would assume a get out jail free card is ethically valid. We are not a dictatorship in which one will die if one contradicts the government. A person who knowingly does something wrong, even if that person thinks there is a higher reason, is still wrong. Eric Rudolf, and all the people at Justice that protected him, were wrong even though I am sure they all believe and still believe that God wanted that women dead. I am sure that everyone who wiretaps believes they are doing good, but in a country of the people, for the people, and by the people, we cannot externalize ethics to the government. The government may say that owning a person is legal, or not hiring a person because of skin color is legal, or that killing a person is legal, but in a country of the people, for the people, and by the people, each on of us has free will and must account for our actions with ourselves and whatever we find holy, with no regard to what what protections some criminal corrupt persons in government might have enacted.
From what I can tell, this is old news and the protocol has been set. Destroy documents every so often. Do it consistently. Do not wait until there is a budget. Continuously go through everything and destroy everything that older than a cutoff. If you are told to stop, stop, and don't start trying to catch up on the destruction. This has been SOP since the Enron mess.he legal requirement is to follow protocol and not destroy stuff after you are told not to. This is nothing new, and if Apple does not have a consistent policy, then that is bad for them. The fact is that the paper trail is there. If you don't want a paper trail, have an undocumented face to face meeting.