This is not as bad as some of the comments suggest. I recall that I did many of my school labs in Excel, and before the Quatro and Lotus 123. Given that I could write about twice as fast on the computer as paper, I did most of my labs on the computer. Even today I do 'back of the envelope' calculations in Excel/oo.org.
OTOH, once I started doing real work, I dropped excel as inexact and slow. It was far faster, and cheaper, to write C++ routines and run the output through gnuplot. There was no workflow time saving using MS Office as MS Word was an order magnitude slower at math than Latex, and putting a picture in can be done in one line of code rather copy and pastes that are not always reliable.
I do think that this type of book falls under the heading of "when all you know how to use is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". MS office is everywhere, so users tend to redefine problems in such a way that they fit the Office philosophy. This is good and bad. For teaching, it might be bad because students only learn one tool to solve the problem, a tool that may not be nearly as good as an HP50 or mathematica. But if neither of these are available, something unlikely at the four year university level, then Excel is better than nothing.
The program that was banned appeared to do nothing that mail.app did not do. The google thing has been part of it for a while. If this app allows direct access to the lotus server, then that is something new and maybe useful, especially if it works. I cannot get the phone to work with exchange.
It is annoying that apple will just not allow any app that is not malicious, but I haven't seen a case where something useful (other than voip and other things that ATT will not allow) has been banned.
I truly agree with this. Before this week, I believed that religion fundamentalism had emptied the Republican party of every fiscal conservative and replaced them with borrow and spend irresponsible fiscal extremists and religious fundamentalist whose primary concern was to create a government big enough to enforce the beliefs of the few on the people. The nomination of Sarah Palin did nothing to tame these beliefs.
After Monday, I must humbly retract these views, and state that only 33% of the Republican party are fiscal socialists. The number of Al-Qaeda like religious extremist are unknown.
The fact that only 1/3 of democrats voted against it is troubling, but what can be done. Democrats tend to give money away, but usually in small amounts so we don't tend to end up with a trillion dollar bill at the end of the administration. Much better to pay in out in manageable installments of 10 billion dollars a month, like the war. The war was a much more civilized way to move one trillion dollars from the middle to ultra rich. It has a the proper finesse, not so much obvious theft involved.
I did not realize that either phone had a bar code scanner, which means that this must mean the user has to a picture of the bar code.
I just did an experiment and indeed the phone does not seem to be able to take a reliable picture of a bar code. I don't think it has to do with resolution as much as the crappy lens inherent in cell phone cameras along with the the fact that cell phone cameras were not made for macro photography, a tricky proposition even with a real cameras. To take back the resolution thing, a higher resolution may let the software extract the bar from a normal, non macro, photo.
So here are my two questions. First, is the lens on the G1 that much better? Second, Isn't this fundamentally a software problem. A bar code is a defined form with a known and rigid structure. Even with a blurry/fuzzy photograph, it should be possible to clean up the bars. For that matter, why are we even dealing with bars. The numbers are there under the bars. Why not use those?
In any case, how many people use this application? This is the first I heard of it. I certainly don't go around taking pictures of bar codes. The only time I thought about doing it was for my library, but a scanner seems like a faster solution.
If a tape player broke, one would have to buy another one or not use a tape. All those vinyl records, one either had to keep a record player or just scrap them. It only recently has become easy to transfer analog recording. The CDs are easy to transfer so no one noticed when we moved to mp3 players. Any, or course if the media got damaged, you were SOL
The thing is that formats change all the time. This is nothing interesting. Songs were bought in one format, and now they are in another. It is even less of deal because it costs two orders of magnitude less to burn tracks to cd than to buy new ones. With proper backups, you need never rebuy content, which is of course is what kept media executives up a night. In the old days, i notice that the may have bought the some content in two or three differnt forms.
And this is not an analogue hole. The analogue hole is, for instance, hooking up the speaker out from one computer to the speaker in to another. This is some fortunate sanity put into the music DRm to allow valid backups, something that does not exist in most video DRMs.
If there is a lesson to be learned from this, it is that DRM without a digital hole is bad. Many of us bought VHS recordings and we were stuck tapes that were not very useful. Back them, most had copy protection so you could not even make a crappy backup. But we did not know any better. DVDs improved the situation a bit because a digital copy can be made. Now we have blueray, which costs more but in some sense is worth less because the industry is fighting even harder to make sure no one can copy it. And if you break the media, then you are SOL. Digital downloads are almost as bad, but at least backups are possible, but not real backups. And when the DRM servers go dark, then we have a problem. There appears no simple way to move this to DRM free, unless, or course, the exectutives provide us with one out the goodness of their hearts. So at least the video industry is winning.
To a large part I agree, except that they have to learn how to use mail, and it is a thing they may need occasionally. I remember what it was like to get a letter in the mail. Of course, up to a certain age, I did not get any mail that my parents didi not screen first. Then I started bringing in the mail myself. Mostly was an issue of being tall enough to reach the mail box. This is an issue with google. Even though it may be good at filtering mail, the child is exposed to possibly questionable ads.
This model might work will younger children. For instance, in Mac OS X parents can whitelist websites and email. This way a child can learn to use email but won't be exposed to any mail that they parent does not approve. It can even send permisiion. I am not promoted OS X, just the features it has to allow a child a safer space to become familiar with the internet.
I think it is important that children become familiar with internet and how to use it, and what the rules are, at a young age. In my experience it is not long after 10 years old that they learn to create their own email account on Yahoo or Google or whatever, and use the proxy servers to bypass filtering. The proxy servers is why I like the Mac OS Whitelist feature. By 13 or 14 some of them are chatting with strange people on line.
Like most things, I don't see the benefit in hiding things from kids and then letting them learn about it all once. Like forbidding alchohol until they first college party, then drinking themselves silly. Limiting mail and Web browsing seems like a good thing, with the restriction gradually easing.
There is nothing to be suprised, amazed, or astonded by. Almost all press releases, and even things like obits, are drafted prior to the event. There simply is not enough time to write it and get it distributed.
Aa far fabricating actual dialog, that is nothing interesting either. Every press release has quotes, and many times those quotes are fabricated specifically for the press release, and then, maybe, spoken after the fact. But it this case it may not even rise to this minimal level of illusion. I assume that the chinese practice the mission every bit as any other country, and I assume that communication is as stylized, even more given that every person on the mission was ranking military. Therefore, assuming that everything goes well, much of the dialog is standard.
It seems to me that might just be a case of sour grapes, or more likely just someone who has never had to meet a deadline in their life. It is at least someone who has no understanding of how difficult achieving these goals can be, and how important it to the techology of the world that as many people as possible should be working, and succeeding, in space travel. Four years ago the US declared it would make space travel a high priority and bee on the moon by 2015. Without any compitition to prod it, the US won't even have a workable human spec space vehicle by 2015.
What is doubly annoying the undertones that this might cover up a failure, which means that three people might have died, and this somehow is a joke. All indications is that this is a publishing mistake, which happens from time to time anywhere. Wishes the chinese to fail, or laughing at them, is just bad form.
OMG, a verbal assurance made by made to some random develop in an loosely knit association. Let's take that to the bank and use it for a loan. Even better, let's just give the banks 700 billion on the verbal assurance that they need it.
I don't what is sadder. The belief in the fuel fairy that will reduce prices next year, or the belief in the totally honest corporate executive.
And just imagine, if he had suspended from school for calling the teacher a pedophile on the internet, he might have learned his lesson and not called the judge a racketeer. Of course I do not see why there is problem in the current situation, as he did not call the judge a racketeer in the courtroom, but only made broad allegations to the press outside the courtfoom. In any case, this punishment is clearly out of line as it hurts the poor mans sense of self esteem.
Forbes, amongst others are reporting that the hearing is not be held until late friday the 25h. According to this article, the intent is to block Kentucky access to these sites. While it is true that anyone in Kentucky can simply use a proxy to override such blocking, the technology nevertheless exists to at least attempt such blocking. At the very least they could not accept payments from Kentucky. I do not know whether banning offshore gambling is a good or bad thing, but it is presently with the jurisdiction of the state to do so. Therefore, if one does business in the state, even without a business presence, the state does have the right to seek redress.
Of course it is not ironic the kentucky would play hardball to stop offshore gambling, as Gambling is often seen a zero sum game, i.e. no value is added, and therefore every dollar used in offshore gambling is one dollar less that can be taxed by the state. Texas, for instance, would unlikely take such stand since everyone in texas tends to go to Louisiana.
In the end, this is only a matter for those who to circumvent united states laws for profit. This is not some blogger who is trying to get his or her message out to the world, or some troupe creating edgy political satire. These are businesses trying to make a quick buck, and Kentucky says it can't be done in this state. The seizure of domains is just like the seizure of any other property. Again, i necessarily agree with it, like I don't necessarily agree with the seizure of so-called drug trade profits. But the offshore gambling industry has been challenges these laws for a while, and clearly have the resources to defend themselves, and maybe make some equitable changes in law. I don't see why anyone should feel sorry or get freaked because one battle has been lost in war that they are clearly willing to fight.
It is a developer freindly platfrom, but like MS, we will see if all applications are accepted. Don't forget that even MS, when will kill applications that they don't like, and not always with the introduction of a better or cheaper product. The person who controls the platform, controls what software goes on it. Sure the level of control for unimportant things tend to be minor, but major applications are controlled by MS.
One can put almost any software on the iPhone once it is Hacked. It is unclear how clear it is going to be hack an G1 and still have it work on the, in the US, T-Mobile network. Likewise, if Google opens up an App store, will they, for instance, accept an application that runs.me instead of Google? Will T-mobile actually allow a VOIP client. To answer, maybe if data is not unlimited, which appear to be twice as much as the $20 ATT iphone plan. But the will lose the international billing.
So the key here is that G1 as a method to increase the possibility that people will use google to store all their personal data is certainly going to be a success. The G1 as a platform for development will be a success. However it increasing looks like a general purpose computer that happens to include a phone rather than a phone with some data processing capabilities. I am not sure how many people, outside the crackberry market, really wants this.
Boycotting is always an option, but an option with oppotunity costs, just like caving into a publisher. It is right there in the post. The developer cave because it is the only way to get published, and the public cave because it is the only way to get the product. These are trade offs, compromises, and the way the world works. I don't really believe that there are developer or writers or any one out there that truly are forced in commercial deals that are truly against thier values. If one works with a publisher that demands DRM, then the expressed values, that one deserves maximum profit from one's work, are clearly expressed. Likewise, if one buys such a game, then one's values that entertainment is not worth sacrificing for abstract ideals, are clearly expressed.
Boycotting does not work because the opportunity and real costs of not monetizing one's effort, not having the latest HD definition TV, or latest Rianna album, or paying twice as much for shoes to insure that they were not made by slaves, is simply too great. It is really a high level of dishonesty to say otherwise. No one on this planet has a necessity to own a copy of Spore. It is a want, and as a want accurately expresses our values.
Just read. You buy a movie and download it. It is your responsibility, just like any other purchase, to keep up with it. That may mean that if you do not have a backup, and lost your machines, then you will lose your purchase. Just like if you car is stolen and you left you music in it.
I see no place how this is more restrictive than normal. I don't know any service in which one purchases content to be stores on you own media where a second download is allowed. Now, if one is not allowed to backup the content, or transfer it to another device, then that may be considered more restrictive than normal. But as it stands this is just par for the course for DRM.
This is not the best analogy. The issue here is the celebrity status, powers differential and the existence of due process. In the example you site, Jerry Fawell is celebrity, as defined by the fact he was a well known media personality who exploited this media presence for personal gain. Once someone is celbrity, most libel claims are difficult to bring. For instance most people are free to call Fawell a racist whore, and, at least in the US all that can be done is to cause trouble by filing a frivolous lawsuit. We see this in numerous examples, for instance Spears and Us Weekly.
A second consideration is that Fawell and Hustler were about the same power level. Hustler attack an equal target, and Fawell was free, and had the funds to fight back. Due process was had through the lawsuit, and the opinion of Fawell was not, for the most part, changed. Those that he was dick now had proof because he couldn't take a little help, and those that thought he was the second c-mmin were mollified through the lawsuit.
None of this applies to case of student alleging actionable misconduct in a public venue. In particular, when a child alleges than an adult has engaged in actionable misconduct, the law mandates that certain professionals report the allegations, and that something be done about it. If a teacher, or nurse, or coach, even outside of school, were told that by this by this child that her father were having sex with her, then that had to be reported, even if the girl thought it was funny and was just a joke, then that girl would likely be removed from the home and put in custody of the state, prior to due process. Likewise, if the the allegation of pedophelia were taken seriously, and allowed to stand, then every principle who was libeled on myspace would have to be removed from their position, prior to due process, until an investigation revealed that child was "just kidding". And the principle would look petty suing a child for libel.
The prime issue here is that the stuff that goes on between the media and the celebrities is just a game that benefits both parties through increased profits. OTOH, the interaction between child and educator is to educate the child, not only in subject, but in social norms. It is one thing to declare that you teacher or boss is uncle fucker in private, or even to secretly paint on his or her car, it is quite another to do so in public or semi-public form. If you dishonestly call your teacher a pedophile, you are depriving the other students of an education and depriving the teacher of an income that is probably needed to feed the family. If you do this to your boss, you will probably get fired. Civilized person might say, therefore, that creating disincentives to such behavior might therefore be the social interest, and suspension might be the softest way to create that disincentive. Of course others might say that kids need freedom, and the children at the next table screaming at their top of thier lungs are merely expressing themselves, the same is true for the teenager that tells every adult to fuck off, and making them conform to social norms are fascist.
I say that is a child or family cares more about spouting profanities that gaining an education, there is always home school. If is hardly a good use of the public funds to spend the hour dealing with a child that feels the need to call the person who is trying to help them a pedophile on the internet. There are plenty of kids who want to lean all they can at school so when they live they can create original works that helps everyone.
I believe the punishment should be the same as those who intend to defraud the public trust by willfully, or perhaps ignorantly, using unofficial channels to conduct government business. The republicans have set a precedent on this by prosecuting Clinton over similar ethics violations while he was governor. Now lets see it they have the character to do so to one of their own.
In the states most the cell cos are a bit more honest about this. They generally put a 5 GB cap for the month, and that costs about 33 pounds, which seems to be more than an equivalent contract service would cost in the UK. It is also possible to get the dongle for free.
OTOH, for this type of service I am not sure if 3GB is not nearly unlimited. One would have to be downloading nearly 100KB every minutes of every day to reach that limit.
Yes, duplicating functionality is the basis for competition. That is why there are so many phones out there, and each person is free to buy the phone that meets their needs. OTOH, the limitations on the iPhone have always been clear, and are only an issue with those that want more than a phone, a web browser and a decent email client. For those who want or need more, perhaps another phone would be better.
As for me, I don't want to live in random application wasteland. On issue with MS, for example, is that there are a million applications to do anyone thing, none of them very good, but nothing free and easy to do something as simple, as, for example, print to PDF. The application in question adds nothing. It is a essentially a clone of mail.app, which can already automatically add a google, aol, yahoo, etc account. We already have the store littered with a million bible applications, some with the gall to charge money for distributing the word, do we need a million mail application. Can't someone do some original work?
Perhaps the google phone will be a better formula. Perhaps no one will mind that their calls and internet activity is being mined for advertising goodness and everything they do is being stored in a personally identifiable format for at least a year. Perhaps that is a better tradeoff than limitation of apps. Perhaps openmoko is the ideal, where everyone rolls their own and then shares. I myself am just happy to be able to browse over the cell network when I have no other computer or internet access.
There are issues, but it is true that for the elderly driving can provide a will to live. The elderly are increasingly becoming familiar with computers. The elderly also have a lot of experience driving, and are often familiar with they places they drive to, and therefore often do a better job driving than most, even if they drive slowly. Public transportation is not always a solution due to the need to walk and carry things.
In fact public transportation is a solution to the other side of the equation, the young, who are not familiar with the machines they drive, are not familiar with the roads, are distracted by the electronic gizmos, I cannot tell you the number of young people i have seen over the past week, talking on their cell phones, fail to stop at a broken stop light, or pull into restricted lanes to get past the traffic that the stop light had caused. Truly, if anyone is a danger, it is the 16-25 year old driver who thinks that multitasking is appropriate.
On the other hand, I know many elderly drivers who would benifit from a GPS system telling them where to go, as long as the system is accurate and can be customized to the users taste in driving. Proximity sensors, view screens of what is behind them(because that is far for the frail eye to see) would also be helpful. It will not be for every, but a good percentage will be safer on the road with these aids.
I agree. A smart phone is perfect for short notes. Any full computer is overkill. OTOH, there used to be mid priced and mid sized devices for such things, especially for longer notes
In the old days I had my tandy 100 or 200, which I used extensively. Then there was the newton with an external keyboard. Transfer was over ethernet. Now when I want something small I have to carry around my old 12" powerbook, which is ready in about 10 seconds, but a bit of an overkill for short notes. I suppose that one of the new ULPC, or perhaps a very small not so ULPC, would do the trick. For instance a MacBook Air should wake up in much less than 10 seconds. I don't what an eee pc with linux would do.
When the World Wide Web was created by stitching together a bunch of very clever technologies, life was good, and we all mostly used mosaic, though a few broswers predated it. We were happy. Then netscape created an innovative way to look at web content, called netscape navigator. It was on of many commercial entries, and coincided with the opening of the web to personal and commercial interests, away from the academic focus. Netscape was good, and along with other browsers, made the OS you were using unimportant.
This, of course, worried MS, so they bought a web browser and tightly integrated with their MS Windows Desktop. This did three things. First, it made the WWW a MS product, as many sites would now only run on MS Windows. Second, it allowed a much tighter control over presentation, which broke the HTML standard that focused on context tags, not presentation. Three, much like the DOS days where MS put most third developers at a great disadvantage by limiting information, Netscape was not able to compete and keep a OS neutral product.
This caused netscape problems, and while many of us who were not slaves to MS continued to use it, many thought netscape was inferior because it properly and rightly broke when put forth with substandard programming the MS encouraged. Truth be told, as Netscape lost market share, the browser itself became in fact bad, and the death was likely a good thing.
By that time everyone used IE, and the web was broken, apparently beyond all hope. It took about 5 years to fix it. Several technologies that allowed the compulsive types to impose look and feel, like flash and CSS, helped this trend. The emergence of Scandanavia and western europe as serious player in the software game also helped. Google, as well as web retailers in general, pushing for maximum customer base, developed other technologies that rendered the IE hacks much less crucial. The key though was the commodization of the web engine, which meant that most of use one of a small set of engines, with the notable exception of IE and Opera.
The thing is that the new web war is moot. As long as MS has a desktop monopoly, they will abuse it by tying IE and pushing customers to related assets. Google is going to have a hard time leveraging it's essential search monopoly to making customer use a special web browser to access content. Perhaps in certain enterprise setting, but what enterprise is going to release ownership of sensitive data.
In any case, the new game in town is virtualization, and this provides a method to wean customers away from MS as well as provide the central control and distribution of big iron while retaining the benefits of the microcomputer. Given that virtualization implies that the current OS is flexible, one might assume that a browser that runs on any OS, like Firefox, or Opera, or even Safari if Apple can get it up, will be the browser of choice.
what is the point. If someone uses the mrthods pr result, they have to cite the paper. Every cites everyones paper anyway because that is how cred is developed, by having your paper cited. Is there something more that is needed? That might be the ccal. Otherwise 100 years of publishing might not be wrong
It is possible, at least theoretically, that even BillG could grow a beard. I would not put money on it, but it is not totally out of the realm of possibility. At least not any less likely than a tennis ball tunneling though a wall.
I am not sure that this is a problem with the patent system or capitalism. The patent system is largely protecting the inventor. I don't think any of the right holders of these codecs are poor, although the inventors might well be. Likewise the market is doing what it always does; provide products. This is why, for the most part, market economies do not have empty shelves, or people waiting in line for hours for product that does not exist. This is the working part of the market system. It is not feasible to create a product, and then deny it to the market. This is why we have knock off Gucci bags.
Of course, the other half of the market system is a legal framework that does not encourage socialism. That is, make producers liable for the products, and prevent the government from limiting those liabilities. Of course, in the name of public safety and stability, there is some benefit to some market meddling. Of course, the problem occurs when government socializes businesses while stil leaving them in large private hands, as has happened this week in the US. The executives reap huge rewards while the taxpayer takes a bath.
So, in this case, there is no simple legal and free way to get a driver for linux, so the market created one, in terms of gray market drivers. The market has also created a 100% above board driver. The only question remains, for a market point of view, is it worthwhile to prosecute those that use the grey market download. Certainly from a socialist point of view it is, because the government will pay the bills, and the right owner will reap the reward. Perhaps from a law and order point of view this is also prudent. But what it comes down to is that patents do not be defended to remain valid, the money lost through these grey downloads are likely not significant, and like MS Windows, the benefit of universal access probably outweighs any issue of lost revenue.
At least since the late 70's, and certainly through the 80's, one of the best practices was functions that had limited scope and data knowledge. Of course this was codified into OO languages, but even in old style languages it was always bad to know too much or make too many assumptions about what was going on elsewhere.
We can see this philosophy in C where, except where huge data structures are involved, it is best to make a copy of data rather than work to work on someone else's copy. Likewise functions do one thing, do it well, and, again except for huge data structures, return a copy. Memory is manually allocated, and deallocated, possibly from the functions local heap.
It is interesting to me how it all comes back to just best practices. Make sure you know how much memory you need. Make sure you are only doing what needs to be done right now. Make sure the interfaces are clear. If data is ready, then it should be ok to work on it. To me functional programming is what happens after data models, or objects, are defined. Once the data structure is defined, you can treat it as stateless immutable input. Output is a another structure. Again, the only limitation is if the object is so large that duplicating become a cost performance issue.
Of course there are many different types of sense of humor. I know many people found Seinfeld funny. I always thought it was curious I did not, at least not consistently. I thought it was because they tried to do too much. For instance, the almost perfect soup nazi episode had the horrible b-plot. In the end Seinfeld is not funny because it tried to be about nothing, which is an old and worthwhile model, but also tried to be about too much. It is something that has infected many modern TV shows. I Love Lucy was perfect perfect because it was, generally about nothing, and there was one nothing it was about, and it did not apologize.
So no one is a retard, it is merely how complex and distracting one wants one's humor. Some like that type of complexity, some do not. There really is nothing wrong with spending half an hour as build up to a tremendous gag, other than it requires the attention span that may no longer be widely present.
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OTOH, once I started doing real work, I dropped excel as inexact and slow. It was far faster, and cheaper, to write C++ routines and run the output through gnuplot. There was no workflow time saving using MS Office as MS Word was an order magnitude slower at math than Latex, and putting a picture in can be done in one line of code rather copy and pastes that are not always reliable.
I do think that this type of book falls under the heading of "when all you know how to use is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". MS office is everywhere, so users tend to redefine problems in such a way that they fit the Office philosophy. This is good and bad. For teaching, it might be bad because students only learn one tool to solve the problem, a tool that may not be nearly as good as an HP50 or mathematica. But if neither of these are available, something unlikely at the four year university level, then Excel is better than nothing.
It is annoying that apple will just not allow any app that is not malicious, but I haven't seen a case where something useful (other than voip and other things that ATT will not allow) has been banned.
After Monday, I must humbly retract these views, and state that only 33% of the Republican party are fiscal socialists. The number of Al-Qaeda like religious extremist are unknown.
The fact that only 1/3 of democrats voted against it is troubling, but what can be done. Democrats tend to give money away, but usually in small amounts so we don't tend to end up with a trillion dollar bill at the end of the administration. Much better to pay in out in manageable installments of 10 billion dollars a month, like the war. The war was a much more civilized way to move one trillion dollars from the middle to ultra rich. It has a the proper finesse, not so much obvious theft involved.
I just did an experiment and indeed the phone does not seem to be able to take a reliable picture of a bar code. I don't think it has to do with resolution as much as the crappy lens inherent in cell phone cameras along with the the fact that cell phone cameras were not made for macro photography, a tricky proposition even with a real cameras. To take back the resolution thing, a higher resolution may let the software extract the bar from a normal, non macro, photo.
So here are my two questions. First, is the lens on the G1 that much better? Second, Isn't this fundamentally a software problem. A bar code is a defined form with a known and rigid structure. Even with a blurry/fuzzy photograph, it should be possible to clean up the bars. For that matter, why are we even dealing with bars. The numbers are there under the bars. Why not use those?
In any case, how many people use this application? This is the first I heard of it. I certainly don't go around taking pictures of bar codes. The only time I thought about doing it was for my library, but a scanner seems like a faster solution.
The thing is that formats change all the time. This is nothing interesting. Songs were bought in one format, and now they are in another. It is even less of deal because it costs two orders of magnitude less to burn tracks to cd than to buy new ones. With proper backups, you need never rebuy content, which is of course is what kept media executives up a night. In the old days, i notice that the may have bought the some content in two or three differnt forms.
And this is not an analogue hole. The analogue hole is, for instance, hooking up the speaker out from one computer to the speaker in to another. This is some fortunate sanity put into the music DRm to allow valid backups, something that does not exist in most video DRMs.
If there is a lesson to be learned from this, it is that DRM without a digital hole is bad. Many of us bought VHS recordings and we were stuck tapes that were not very useful. Back them, most had copy protection so you could not even make a crappy backup. But we did not know any better. DVDs improved the situation a bit because a digital copy can be made. Now we have blueray, which costs more but in some sense is worth less because the industry is fighting even harder to make sure no one can copy it. And if you break the media, then you are SOL. Digital downloads are almost as bad, but at least backups are possible, but not real backups. And when the DRM servers go dark, then we have a problem. There appears no simple way to move this to DRM free, unless, or course, the exectutives provide us with one out the goodness of their hearts. So at least the video industry is winning.
This model might work will younger children. For instance, in Mac OS X parents can whitelist websites and email. This way a child can learn to use email but won't be exposed to any mail that they parent does not approve. It can even send permisiion. I am not promoted OS X, just the features it has to allow a child a safer space to become familiar with the internet.
I think it is important that children become familiar with internet and how to use it, and what the rules are, at a young age. In my experience it is not long after 10 years old that they learn to create their own email account on Yahoo or Google or whatever, and use the proxy servers to bypass filtering. The proxy servers is why I like the Mac OS Whitelist feature. By 13 or 14 some of them are chatting with strange people on line.
Like most things, I don't see the benefit in hiding things from kids and then letting them learn about it all once. Like forbidding alchohol until they first college party, then drinking themselves silly. Limiting mail and Web browsing seems like a good thing, with the restriction gradually easing.
Aa far fabricating actual dialog, that is nothing interesting either. Every press release has quotes, and many times those quotes are fabricated specifically for the press release, and then, maybe, spoken after the fact. But it this case it may not even rise to this minimal level of illusion. I assume that the chinese practice the mission every bit as any other country, and I assume that communication is as stylized, even more given that every person on the mission was ranking military. Therefore, assuming that everything goes well, much of the dialog is standard.
It seems to me that might just be a case of sour grapes, or more likely just someone who has never had to meet a deadline in their life. It is at least someone who has no understanding of how difficult achieving these goals can be, and how important it to the techology of the world that as many people as possible should be working, and succeeding, in space travel. Four years ago the US declared it would make space travel a high priority and bee on the moon by 2015. Without any compitition to prod it, the US won't even have a workable human spec space vehicle by 2015.
What is doubly annoying the undertones that this might cover up a failure, which means that three people might have died, and this somehow is a joke. All indications is that this is a publishing mistake, which happens from time to time anywhere. Wishes the chinese to fail, or laughing at them, is just bad form.
I don't what is sadder. The belief in the fuel fairy that will reduce prices next year, or the belief in the totally honest corporate executive.
And just imagine, if he had suspended from school for calling the teacher a pedophile on the internet, he might have learned his lesson and not called the judge a racketeer. Of course I do not see why there is problem in the current situation, as he did not call the judge a racketeer in the courtroom, but only made broad allegations to the press outside the courtfoom. In any case, this punishment is clearly out of line as it hurts the poor mans sense of self esteem.
Of course it is not ironic the kentucky would play hardball to stop offshore gambling, as Gambling is often seen a zero sum game, i.e. no value is added, and therefore every dollar used in offshore gambling is one dollar less that can be taxed by the state. Texas, for instance, would unlikely take such stand since everyone in texas tends to go to Louisiana.
In the end, this is only a matter for those who to circumvent united states laws for profit. This is not some blogger who is trying to get his or her message out to the world, or some troupe creating edgy political satire. These are businesses trying to make a quick buck, and Kentucky says it can't be done in this state. The seizure of domains is just like the seizure of any other property. Again, i necessarily agree with it, like I don't necessarily agree with the seizure of so-called drug trade profits. But the offshore gambling industry has been challenges these laws for a while, and clearly have the resources to defend themselves, and maybe make some equitable changes in law. I don't see why anyone should feel sorry or get freaked because one battle has been lost in war that they are clearly willing to fight.
One can put almost any software on the iPhone once it is Hacked. It is unclear how clear it is going to be hack an G1 and still have it work on the, in the US, T-Mobile network. Likewise, if Google opens up an App store, will they, for instance, accept an application that runs .me instead of Google? Will T-mobile actually allow a VOIP client. To answer, maybe if data is not unlimited, which appear to be twice as much as the $20 ATT iphone plan. But the will lose the international billing.
So the key here is that G1 as a method to increase the possibility that people will use google to store all their personal data is certainly going to be a success. The G1 as a platform for development will be a success. However it increasing looks like a general purpose computer that happens to include a phone rather than a phone with some data processing capabilities. I am not sure how many people, outside the crackberry market, really wants this.
Boycotting does not work because the opportunity and real costs of not monetizing one's effort, not having the latest HD definition TV, or latest Rianna album, or paying twice as much for shoes to insure that they were not made by slaves, is simply too great. It is really a high level of dishonesty to say otherwise. No one on this planet has a necessity to own a copy of Spore. It is a want, and as a want accurately expresses our values.
I see no place how this is more restrictive than normal. I don't know any service in which one purchases content to be stores on you own media where a second download is allowed. Now, if one is not allowed to backup the content, or transfer it to another device, then that may be considered more restrictive than normal. But as it stands this is just par for the course for DRM.
A second consideration is that Fawell and Hustler were about the same power level. Hustler attack an equal target, and Fawell was free, and had the funds to fight back. Due process was had through the lawsuit, and the opinion of Fawell was not, for the most part, changed. Those that he was dick now had proof because he couldn't take a little help, and those that thought he was the second c-mmin were mollified through the lawsuit.
None of this applies to case of student alleging actionable misconduct in a public venue. In particular, when a child alleges than an adult has engaged in actionable misconduct, the law mandates that certain professionals report the allegations, and that something be done about it. If a teacher, or nurse, or coach, even outside of school, were told that by this by this child that her father were having sex with her, then that had to be reported, even if the girl thought it was funny and was just a joke, then that girl would likely be removed from the home and put in custody of the state, prior to due process. Likewise, if the the allegation of pedophelia were taken seriously, and allowed to stand, then every principle who was libeled on myspace would have to be removed from their position, prior to due process, until an investigation revealed that child was "just kidding". And the principle would look petty suing a child for libel.
The prime issue here is that the stuff that goes on between the media and the celebrities is just a game that benefits both parties through increased profits. OTOH, the interaction between child and educator is to educate the child, not only in subject, but in social norms. It is one thing to declare that you teacher or boss is uncle fucker in private, or even to secretly paint on his or her car, it is quite another to do so in public or semi-public form. If you dishonestly call your teacher a pedophile, you are depriving the other students of an education and depriving the teacher of an income that is probably needed to feed the family. If you do this to your boss, you will probably get fired. Civilized person might say, therefore, that creating disincentives to such behavior might therefore be the social interest, and suspension might be the softest way to create that disincentive. Of course others might say that kids need freedom, and the children at the next table screaming at their top of thier lungs are merely expressing themselves, the same is true for the teenager that tells every adult to fuck off, and making them conform to social norms are fascist.
I say that is a child or family cares more about spouting profanities that gaining an education, there is always home school. If is hardly a good use of the public funds to spend the hour dealing with a child that feels the need to call the person who is trying to help them a pedophile on the internet. There are plenty of kids who want to lean all they can at school so when they live they can create original works that helps everyone.
I believe the punishment should be the same as those who intend to defraud the public trust by willfully, or perhaps ignorantly, using unofficial channels to conduct government business. The republicans have set a precedent on this by prosecuting Clinton over similar ethics violations while he was governor. Now lets see it they have the character to do so to one of their own.
OTOH, for this type of service I am not sure if 3GB is not nearly unlimited. One would have to be downloading nearly 100KB every minutes of every day to reach that limit.
As for me, I don't want to live in random application wasteland. On issue with MS, for example, is that there are a million applications to do anyone thing, none of them very good, but nothing free and easy to do something as simple, as, for example, print to PDF. The application in question adds nothing. It is a essentially a clone of mail.app, which can already automatically add a google, aol, yahoo, etc account. We already have the store littered with a million bible applications, some with the gall to charge money for distributing the word, do we need a million mail application. Can't someone do some original work?
Perhaps the google phone will be a better formula. Perhaps no one will mind that their calls and internet activity is being mined for advertising goodness and everything they do is being stored in a personally identifiable format for at least a year. Perhaps that is a better tradeoff than limitation of apps. Perhaps openmoko is the ideal, where everyone rolls their own and then shares. I myself am just happy to be able to browse over the cell network when I have no other computer or internet access.
In fact public transportation is a solution to the other side of the equation, the young, who are not familiar with the machines they drive, are not familiar with the roads, are distracted by the electronic gizmos, I cannot tell you the number of young people i have seen over the past week, talking on their cell phones, fail to stop at a broken stop light, or pull into restricted lanes to get past the traffic that the stop light had caused. Truly, if anyone is a danger, it is the 16-25 year old driver who thinks that multitasking is appropriate.
On the other hand, I know many elderly drivers who would benifit from a GPS system telling them where to go, as long as the system is accurate and can be customized to the users taste in driving. Proximity sensors, view screens of what is behind them(because that is far for the frail eye to see) would also be helpful. It will not be for every, but a good percentage will be safer on the road with these aids.
In the old days I had my tandy 100 or 200, which I used extensively. Then there was the newton with an external keyboard. Transfer was over ethernet. Now when I want something small I have to carry around my old 12" powerbook, which is ready in about 10 seconds, but a bit of an overkill for short notes. I suppose that one of the new ULPC, or perhaps a very small not so ULPC, would do the trick. For instance a MacBook Air should wake up in much less than 10 seconds. I don't what an eee pc with linux would do.
This, of course, worried MS, so they bought a web browser and tightly integrated with their MS Windows Desktop. This did three things. First, it made the WWW a MS product, as many sites would now only run on MS Windows. Second, it allowed a much tighter control over presentation, which broke the HTML standard that focused on context tags, not presentation. Three, much like the DOS days where MS put most third developers at a great disadvantage by limiting information, Netscape was not able to compete and keep a OS neutral product.
This caused netscape problems, and while many of us who were not slaves to MS continued to use it, many thought netscape was inferior because it properly and rightly broke when put forth with substandard programming the MS encouraged. Truth be told, as Netscape lost market share, the browser itself became in fact bad, and the death was likely a good thing.
By that time everyone used IE, and the web was broken, apparently beyond all hope. It took about 5 years to fix it. Several technologies that allowed the compulsive types to impose look and feel, like flash and CSS, helped this trend. The emergence of Scandanavia and western europe as serious player in the software game also helped. Google, as well as web retailers in general, pushing for maximum customer base, developed other technologies that rendered the IE hacks much less crucial. The key though was the commodization of the web engine, which meant that most of use one of a small set of engines, with the notable exception of IE and Opera.
The thing is that the new web war is moot. As long as MS has a desktop monopoly, they will abuse it by tying IE and pushing customers to related assets. Google is going to have a hard time leveraging it's essential search monopoly to making customer use a special web browser to access content. Perhaps in certain enterprise setting, but what enterprise is going to release ownership of sensitive data.
In any case, the new game in town is virtualization, and this provides a method to wean customers away from MS as well as provide the central control and distribution of big iron while retaining the benefits of the microcomputer. Given that virtualization implies that the current OS is flexible, one might assume that a browser that runs on any OS, like Firefox, or Opera, or even Safari if Apple can get it up, will be the browser of choice.
what is the point. If someone uses the mrthods pr result, they have to cite the paper. Every cites everyones paper anyway because that is how cred is developed, by having your paper cited. Is there something more that is needed? That might be the ccal. Otherwise 100 years of publishing might not be wrong
It is possible, at least theoretically, that even BillG could grow a beard. I would not put money on it, but it is not totally out of the realm of possibility. At least not any less likely than a tennis ball tunneling though a wall.
Of course, the other half of the market system is a legal framework that does not encourage socialism. That is, make producers liable for the products, and prevent the government from limiting those liabilities. Of course, in the name of public safety and stability, there is some benefit to some market meddling. Of course, the problem occurs when government socializes businesses while stil leaving them in large private hands, as has happened this week in the US. The executives reap huge rewards while the taxpayer takes a bath.
So, in this case, there is no simple legal and free way to get a driver for linux, so the market created one, in terms of gray market drivers. The market has also created a 100% above board driver. The only question remains, for a market point of view, is it worthwhile to prosecute those that use the grey market download. Certainly from a socialist point of view it is, because the government will pay the bills, and the right owner will reap the reward. Perhaps from a law and order point of view this is also prudent. But what it comes down to is that patents do not be defended to remain valid, the money lost through these grey downloads are likely not significant, and like MS Windows, the benefit of universal access probably outweighs any issue of lost revenue.
We can see this philosophy in C where, except where huge data structures are involved, it is best to make a copy of data rather than work to work on someone else's copy. Likewise functions do one thing, do it well, and, again except for huge data structures, return a copy. Memory is manually allocated, and deallocated, possibly from the functions local heap.
It is interesting to me how it all comes back to just best practices. Make sure you know how much memory you need. Make sure you are only doing what needs to be done right now. Make sure the interfaces are clear. If data is ready, then it should be ok to work on it. To me functional programming is what happens after data models, or objects, are defined. Once the data structure is defined, you can treat it as stateless immutable input. Output is a another structure. Again, the only limitation is if the object is so large that duplicating become a cost performance issue.
So no one is a retard, it is merely how complex and distracting one wants one's humor. Some like that type of complexity, some do not. There really is nothing wrong with spending half an hour as build up to a tremendous gag, other than it requires the attention span that may no longer be widely present.