Look at the current predominant UI, the WIMP. Xerox had a somewhat polished product, which Apple implemented for the consumer, and created enough competition so that MS had to hack together a solution for DOS.
Networking existed in many microcomputers in the mid 80's in the OS, except that PCs required a third party solution, often Novel. MS eventually fixed this hole in MS Windows 3.11 for workgroups.
The cheap microcomputer itself is largely a product of Compaq reverse engineering the IBM PC. The innovation of the OS consisting of a significant part of the cost of computer is an MS innovation.
The internet, which externalized the communication costs, is the result of many public and private firms, most notably DARPA.
Perhaps the most significant MS innovation, as it often is, is the programming tools which allow ordinary people to develop software. This may have lead to the significant number of dishonest person who broke the Alta Vista engine by putting in unrelated keywords on their page, and thereby ended the happy days of the internet, forcing us to use a ad driven power hungry search engine.
I think when we look for who innovated the internet, look at who has the machines, who has the IP blocks, and who carries the traffic. For not innovating, look at who is used to send out the attacks.
In the US, I believe, consumer protection laws and anti-trust laws prohibit a manufacturer from demanding that consumers only use OEM replacements, or forced branded consumables on the consumer. So, I suppose,at least in the US, one could argue to the AG that Vista was a suitable product and for usability it had to be replaced with a *nix. By refusing to honor the warranty, the vendor was enforcing OEM replacements, which could be illegal. IANAL, but it seems it would be like a car dealer refusing to honor a warranty because the owner replaced the floor mats with non EOM materials.
This may mirror image of the tobacco suits. If so, the lessons are the same. First, if one is involved in legal proceedings it is important to keep everything perfectly legal. Tobacco should never have been so flippant with congress, and the RIAA should never have been so flippant with the law suits. In the former such behavior really broke the 100% winning streak, and in the later such behavior gives then no hope for a completely fair jury trial, and every child of the juror is potential target of the unfocused extortion campaign. I use the word extortion because it is the only time I see such a wide use of negotiated settlements, and such fear of a trial.
As a mechanism to fight piracy, the policy was a reasonable one. However, instead of promoting law suit abuse, they should have been more careful about making sure the person they sued was really legitimate. It would have had the same effect, without becoming extortion.
Let me expand on this. Science fiction often is not used in schools as it is not written to the literary standards of academia. English often appears to be primarily concerning the promotion of a certain standard rather than the promotion of critical thinking. For instance, when on reads a passage there is but on interpretation, and if one does not interpret the passage as such, and bubble in the correct answer, you do not graduate.
By itself, this is not necessarily a problem. The one right answer anti-thinking philosophy permeates all education, and the more 'rigorous' the education, the more it appears to permeate. Here is where the problem exists, at least with respect to science and math. Science and math is about the discovery of fact patterns that will lead to a cause and effect. Good literature, which often involves fantasy and magical thinking, promotes the idea that cause and effect is not paramount, that magical thinking is acceptable, and that work is not required. Someone or something will save us, or we will be sold to a sports team, or the government will protect us. Occasionally good literature, like the Wizard of OZ, does promote cause and effect, but all too often such literature is ignored in favour of harry potter or Tolkien. A book, such as The Jungle, that is investigative, is uniformly represented as evil incarnate.
What science fiction often supports is cause and effect. Everything happens for a reason. There is no magic, merely advanced and strange machines. We can break the current of laws of physics, but that is because we have put those laws in a certain domain, a la newtonian mechanics, and are now working with rules that more accurately describe the universe. On a more concrete level, a la Pohl and Heinlein, we learn we can't fire the post office lady as she would have not other work, or insurance rates are a statistical process. On a more recent trend, we learn from Robinson that if our current application of science is true, we might be in for nasty climate patterns. It any of this fact. Of course not. It is presented as opinion for the reader to ponder. The only assumption is cause and effect.
And in middle school this idea of cause and effect must be made second nature to fight off the magical thinking that will be treacherous in high school. When a kid enters ninth grade the problem is not that they do not want to work. Not that they can't sit down. But they think that grades are magically given, effort has no consequence, the patterns and processes learned in math and science apply only on that day, as the rules will certainly change tomorrow. In short, their naturally tendency to believe in magic has been supported in the cause of proper literature while their developmental needs are not met.
In terms of books, just encourage the kids to read anything. I still remember that my middle school reading list was so emaciated that there were only two rational books on the list. Likewise in elementary school. How did I know this? My parents had built an awesome library for themselves and my older siblings. If they have a book on grade level, or at Lexile, let them read it. Unless one is teaching the unique kid who hates to read, but will still make it into an ivy league graduate school, we can leave the 18th century conventions behind.
In honor of the recently passed, I will recommend a Wrinkle in time, which is certainly good for children. If you can find a copy of Professor Diggon's Dragrons, that is good, but likely not for middle school. Any biography, even novelized, that illustrates the stuggle of discover, is also good.I note, for instance, that some of Edison's biographies are not good, as the stuggle is minimized, while many of Washington Carver's are.
Best Buy, WalMart, Circuit City, AFAIK, all have signs that say you can be searched. We all know you can be searched. If you want the prices for the products they have, then you have to play the game. I have, in the past, done annoying things when exiting the store and have been asked to proved that I have bought what I had, but if the employees get this crazy, why would anyone want to cause such grief to those making $6 an hour, not to mention wasting the police time. We all know the rules, why be even more jerks than these employees are? There is no point to proven. You bought their product. You gave them a profit. You proved that such draconian measures are tolerated.
I have often wondered if I darkened the doors of such stores again, what I might do in such situations. I have decided that I would put the purchase down, call the credit card company, and ask for a charge back due to the fact that the store employees would not let me leave with the product. Now, would I waste my time doing this. No. I make money now and can go to a reputable store, or buy online, where I do not have to deal with such shenanigans.
I hope these guys do not further waste their time and money pushing a lawsuit. Hopefully the ticket will be suspended with court costs, which is a fair punishment for wasting time of the police. The police have enough to do without jerks who just go around trying to game the system. Hopefully these jerks do not waste anymore time or money suing anyone, as I cannot see a judge who would give them any money what so ever. Especially since if the buyers did not want to show the bag, could simply have returned the product. At that point, if the store employees were still being Nazis, then these guys might have had something to fight for. As it is, this is just another case of materialism gone awry, and people getting pissed off that they can't have everything they want.
While it is true that technology can be overused, there is really little use in complaining that new technology is overused. The only way to learn something is to use it, and when one is unsure of the use, the ideal use is often unclear. Take, for example, the car. When the car was new, everyone did everything with it. Some of it stuck, other things, like the drive in movie, which was great, did not. When driving a car is a novelty, we do everything in the car, even have sex. But as the novelty wears off, we often find a house to be more conformable.
Same thing with new technology. The only way to see where it fits, is to use it. It is better at teaching functions. It is better at graphing. What additional knowledge does the student gain. What is lost. At the end of the day, the bottom line is the bottom line. Is the benefit of the technology worth the costs.
The greatest piece of technology, the pencil, is a prime example of use and misuse. Over 50% of the time it is a distraction. The students is drawing body parts, throwing it at other students, using it as an excuse to wander around the classroom. But it is still useful enough that we require every student to have and learn to use this technology. The pencil is cheap enough so that even if it often misused, it does not matter. The same is not true for a computer.
So this is what I say. If one has a tool, use the hell out of it. If one finds there is an overall reduction in learning, cut back and find the sweet spots, if any. The kids will benefit because they are being exposed to the technology being used in a more or less productive manner. For instance, isn't is good that they can learn to use a computer to solve problems other than who to go out with?
At the end of the day, my experience is that new tools are ignored not because they not beneficial, but because people do not know how to use them. And while not knowing how to use a tool is a very good reason not to use the tool, it seems that if the tool might be useful, a professional might find it in his or her best interest to learn to use the tool. Otherwise we would still be stuck with sticks and slates.
Given the catholics track record at preventing sex before marriage, contraception, sex with others while married, gratuitous killing of the rest of god's children, drinking, drugs, and general looting and pillaging, I think the church should quit while they are ahead. In fact many of these are greater problems in largely catholic countries than not.
It is not that I disagree with the sentiments. In fact I believe the biggest problem we have in this country is people earning great deal of monies in the country, and then refusing to return a share to insure that such opportunities continue. It is like a person driving a big car with a support the troops sticker on it, then complaining that gas it too expensive(even though it is often cheaper than coke or coffee), and demanding that we deserve tax rebates, even though our troops desperately need the money. No, it is merely that people seem to love to do the opposite of what their church says, so often the safest thing for a church to do is just remain silent, expecially when the church does the opposite of what it is proposing.
I don't think there was a golden age of music, and I do not believe the stuff we have now is objectively any worse. And I don't think some old dude listening to music and determining the next big thing is the solution. In fact it is the problem. The solution is to diversify.
I recall the time when startup network and cable channels came on the air. The old network channels were decimated because the new channels could do more innovative programming as they were not aiming for huge shares. So Fox had Married with Children and 21 Jump Street, and NBC responded with the throw back conservative Seinfied, which kept the innovators at bay for a while, but now NBC is a the bottom of the heap. And they will stay that way because while they are willing to sell shows, they are not willing to do so at decent terms. Networks now choose programming to minimize cost rather than really compete.
So there is quite a bit of good music, and my music budget is still respectable. The only issue I see is that the major labels are increasingly concentrating their marketing on a few big acts, therefore making it seem like there is little music available for the audiences with uncommon tastes. Cheaper CD packaging, online sales, and the like should let them market even greater number of acts, but instead they are retreating behind obsolete models, i.e. old guys listening to music and deciding what the young people want. Of course perhaps it is also unrealistic expectations in which even the most boring acts expect million dollar deals, and the studios still milk that money for all it is worth, rather than update the deals for modern needs.
This does not even account for the truly sad cases, like the owners of the Beatles catalog, who still believe it has some long term private sales value in the current market. U@ was brilliant to sell his songs on an iPod, and the more has bin the group the more sense such a move makes, especially when the back catalog is large. There is still money to be made for licensing for public performance, and of course they are pissing that money away by killing net radio, but very few people are going to buy the same song 5 times, as was the case in the past.
Honestly, most of us simply use a convenient label and then do what we please. For instance Conservatives might say they believe in market forces, yet regularly pass laws to limit what I may sell in the market. The belief is held until their little boy comes home with a copy of Swank. A true conservative would simply not shop at stores that sell Swank, and trust that market would put the publication out of business. Likewise all these dole payment to commercial interests would be gone as they distort the market and cause problems such the current mortgage issue.
Likewise liberal persons are supposed to believe in the ability of the government to help people. Yet they support direct dole payment, a conservative invention created not to help the people though infrastructure and education, but to artificially support obsolete businesses. Liberals spend governments money on what will help the populous to prosper long term, like roads,schools, medical care, knowing that the free market cannot be trusted to always do what in best for the country.
Of course libertarians are no better. It often seems even more so that other, they have a simplistic view of life, almost Randian in the sense that they believe a single person can actually do something without the support of others. That somehow MS can to be without the support of university level computing power. Or google was created in a vacuum. Or that the internet, on which most depend, is not the product of the narco/military/industrial cartel.
I don't know why people want these labels. The values of good living does seem to be rather immutable and independent of labels. Be nice to other people. Don't take more than one needs. Have humility in one's achievements, knowing that we see so far only because of those that came before us, and those that are have helped us up. And, of course, attain a broad liberal education so that one does not have a warped brain that confuses the models we use to survive with reality.
In the same way that for years one could not get cheap DSL, or DSL at all in some places, unless on was running ms windows. If one were smart enough, as in this case, one could hack hack around it.
The truly sad part is that many of these services were limited to MS windows platforms as other platforms would not allow the installation of the spyware.
If such a thing happened in my town I would likely to what the service providers, and some web sites, still say to do. Buy a machine that works.
Most computer services at big box stores are unnecessary and expensive. They have to be because most customers come in looking for a $200 machine. No one but MS makes any money on such a machine. So they offer to install memory, install a hard disk, back up the disk. To anyone on/. such service is a waste of money, but to someone who is unsure, or has money laying around, it may be worthwhile. look at it this way. Many people blow $50 on beers, or $100 on dinner, or $200 on a piece of jewelry. For such people $30 might be a good deal.
In this case the store was lying. Most computer do automatically make the backup, if you understand it, if you know how to do it, and if you don't get nervous. I know many people who would be incapable. Sure you can get them from HP cheaper, but that is only if time is worse nothing. I wonder if this same customer would be yelling at the store clerk if her machine did go down and she never made the backups.
At the bottom of this is consumers decision to put price above any other aspect of a purchase. It is silly to expect service or honesty when the store might lose a sale over a trivial difference in price. If one wants honesty and service, pay for it. If a recovery disk is important enough to be a consideration, but a machine that includes one. The only reason they took them out, like a manual, is that they were losing sales to unscrupulous people like Best Buy and Dell who sell crap at bargain prices. Honestly fly by night organizations has taken over most of the computer market.
In this case MS is correct. Most MS users are unsophisticated, which is one reason why MS products are so prone to bugs. At is heart, MS is a company that assumes a specialized user base but in fact sell to masses. I am frankly surprised they let this go on so long. Clearly, they have left themselves open to potential hijacking by fake updates. MS has the funds to host and deliver updates itself, and any third party hosting should be completely unnecessary. While it is true that many updates are provided in this fashion, any sane security model would forbid OS level updates delived in this way, especially to the common user.
I looked through the test and found it mostly application of trivia. A few problem, like the digital versus analogue questions, tried to apply concepts, but the answers were dependent on the vague terms. Such tests are dependent on the student being taught the test, not concepts. For instance question 20 has a couple obviously wrong answer, but no answer that can be deemed obviously correct from basic physics concepts.
OTOH, for a 15 year old, it does test a reasonable battery of basic knowledge, and has not egregious errors. I took one exam last year for an engineering program, and the writers completely used an incorrect definition of work. This kind of thing is incompetence. The questions on this test are merely questionable. There are questions that are tricky for no compelling reason and should be removed. I have seen the same thing on the US AP exams.
Broadband is a luxury for most people, but not for business. OTOH, I doubt that it is impossible to get broadband to most places, except for the most rural of the rural. For instance, several years ago I had no problem installing a T1 line to a suburb of a small town. it just cost bunches of money, but it was the cost of doing business.
It really is a matter of money. People look for cheap properties, and then expect the amenities of expensive properties, like reliable electricity and phone and well paved roads. The problem is that the tax base can't support these things, so residents in more densely populated area tends to subsidize, which is not an issue, except for the rural complaints. We would all like to live in the land of milk and honey, but the reality is that few of us can afford to.
What moved me away from MS Office was it lack of support for single author multi file documents, or indeed documents in which an author was in strict control of the content of a single file. OO.org does a very good job of bringing this multiple files into a single master document and creating a cohesive unified document.
The key, as is often the case, is separating the responsibility for content from the visual formating. Each author is responsible for content, while the master document is responsible for formatting via style sheets. To me this separation i natural. My writing often starts out in a text editor, and only later moves to Latex or word processor or some GUI page layout application.
More on topic, I look forward to looking at this release of NeoOffice. I suppose the versioning has been updated to match the OO.org release, and does not necessarily reflect that expected stability of a 2.2 release. As for X11 use, I don't see the reason to move away from the existing OO.org port.
I think what is lost in all this is that there must be some income related to the product being served. In my brief stints of this kind of thing, I have come to believe more in internal profit centers rather than productivity. I believe the later is preferred because if cost is minimized at each step, then the top managers can collect on the short term savings, while in the later long term employment of workers and dividends to stock holders are placed about managers.
From what I understand from said brief stints, the income from the widget being sold is used to pay for the internal services used to create or support the widget. Prevailing market forces determines the sale price, the money is divided proportionately, and productivity is not set by manager salary targets, but by available funds. I have seen this work. If everyone is productive, and products are well supported and well produced, then surplus income is generated, which results in bonuses, without any money being wasted on artificial unit of production.
One thing I saw during the dot com bust was companies spending money they had no real expectation of ever receiving. In many cases the productivity of a salesperson or manager or IT person was rewarded, when that productivity did not actually result in any real income. The feedback loop bypassed revenue generation, so companies went tits up.
I agree, but there is still a use for these types of filters. They can serve as a gentle reminder, like a lock on the liquor cabinet, of the rules of the house. The unsophisticated kid will say that the lock serves no purpose and easily circumvented. More sophisticated kids will realize that lock is symbolic. Furthermore, the lock is choice made by the parent, not the state.
This is an interesting case as the child disabled the gentle warning without letting others know the warning was disabled. For such a kid gentle reminders are not going to work, and in fact is the reason why draconian laws exist. Put simply, parents aren't just going to sit idly by and look on as the kid becomes a member of the darwin awards, and if a kid does not respond to warnings, most parents will take more aggressive actions.
Many will say the teens are sexual creatures, and the same is true for drugs and bad driving, which is absolutely true. The key is convince the kid not to abuse these things. Such abuse can not only negatively effect the teen, but also innocent people, such as truck drivers, who get caught up in the drama.
Let me just say this. Sexually explicit images are more readily available today than at any other time I can remember. It is no longer necessary to steal magazines, or sneak to the back of bookstores, or leaf through womens magazines in libraries. Even with filters, the images and text available far surpass what was available even 10 years ago. I would be concerned about a kid so desperate to find more of this material that they need to bypass the gentle reminders.
At one time, like when the razr came out, people would just complain that the feature had been disabled so that ATT could charge for the service, or on a positive note, for security reasons. But now with the iPhone, and it's challenge to the safe designs, one has to say that Blackberry is so superior to the iPhone that ATT had to disable features to make the iPhone seem less lame.
Of course this ignores the fact that the phones are targeted to different people. The Blackberry is the corporate phone that allows the IT Gods to exert their divine control and the workers to be be 24 hour push leash. The iPhone, which, as we know from all the bitching, does not even have corporate accounts, is designed for the person who just wants to communicate. I certainly have no desire to pay $3k for a blackberry enterprise server when i can pay $100 for a.mac account. And I don't need data pushed to me to read while I am driving.
this is a valid debate. I think the american people need to know if these candidates are jut expressing a political view, or have a fundamental misunderstanding of science. The process of science has lead to the idea that we as planet has evolved, and that process ha been verified in the geologic record and by current evolution of certain organisms.
If the candidates simply believe that man was created, then they are expressing a religious view, and have every right to so do. Such a candidate should be as proud to make such a statement in the ame way that they believe in Jesus Christ, or that Jesus visited the Americans, or that god has taken a particular interest in their lives and that is why they are so well off, while the poor and sick could be just as well off is such persons simply had faith. But if the candidates are saying the process of science is flawed, that is quite another. Such a candidate, if elected, would put America at a considerable economic disadvantage, and threaten that very thing that has made this country great. The freedom to discover, no matter how those discoveries might offend some radical fundamentalists who believe that they have the "truth", that such a truth is immutable, and that such a truth must be forced on others by any means necessary.
This is my experience as well. As a GT student in high school my graduating class of less than 100 had everything we wanted, while other students got nothing. I know that this is still the case. We had the computers, the science labs, the books, and the freedom to move around as we needed.
What we didn't have and really didn't need was the constant scrutiny by teachers and administrators. There were times we did not have a teacher. We were left alone to do our own thing, to set our learning goals. We were not hindered by this idea that somehow people would cater to our need, create a customized situation just so we would be "motivated" to work. We were told what to learn, and then told we should find the discipline to learn the subject, or leave the school. An examples was computer and drafting classes in grade 9. The people who didn't work simply were removed from the program at the end of the year. This was invaluable, as, unlike most students, I did not go into the workplace as a worker in need of constant supervision, but as a person who could be counted on to independently create and implement solutions. Which, as the parent indicates,translates into cash.
Children with actual special needs are expensive to educate as there might effectively be one teacher for each student. Even regular students require extra tutoring, extra supervision, and likely extra basic supplies. But I ask this question to the advanced students out there. Would you rather have a teacher hovering over you all day, or be left alone with your toys to learn as you wish. In my education, the amount of money spent on me was never the issue. It was the freedom to learn, to explore, and to create, a freedom never granted to non-GT students. Also in my education, not all the costs were accounted for through public expenditure, as we received many private grants as industry needed our skills, and needed people who were not coddled beyond hope in school.
So what you are saying is that OOXML has such poor support that people who use it feel compelled to save it in a more universal forma, while ODF is sufficiently universal that people feel comfortable posting it as is.
In any case, your first point, that people save in PDF, is of no real issue. First, the study, as flawed as it may be, is meant to indicate formats that are universal enough to be predictably exchanged. Second, the same argument applies to ODF, only more so. I, for instance, seldom post in ODF as OO.org saves to PDF without any complex spyware ridden third party hacks.
One interpretation is that the purpose of education is to provide choices, and in order to make a choice students must be aware that choices exist. A second idea, in this world where kids are raised to do only the things that satisfy their immediate impulses, is to provide a context for the learning o the students will be willing to learn.
To address specific parent points. First, colleges know nothing of the stuggles of high school. They generally allow a select group, and then get rid of those that won't play ball. Reputable colleges will underselect, that is reject qualified candidates, so thay are not accused of taking money.
Second, drop out occur for many reasons. One is that the kids sees no use for the education, and there are no interesting courses. If the schools provide a context for the high school experience, and provides courses to back them up, then drop out rates might fall. These choices has to go beyond trade, as that just limits choice. Some kids drop out because there are no advanced academics. Even if all the kid wants is a trade, a school at least have the responsibility to offer the alternative choices.
If done properly, these kids are going to be better prepared for any career of college. These kids will have thier core courses, plus experiential electives in which to learn new content and apply cross curricular skills. I know that some high schools will use this to limit or pigeonhole the studetns, but those are the schools that would not provide a broad educational experience under any scenario.
Here is the thing. Public college prep high schools have generally been thematic. One can chooses a high school based on interest in art, science, engineering, etc. It works to increase the rigour, that is provides a compensation for the additional pain the students are going to be expected to endure. We don't to cargo cult this concept, but there are pieces that might apply to other situations.
In any case, the bottom line is choice. Perhaps the students just want to get out of high school and work retail. Perhap the student has a genuine talent for something else. Even if the student ends up in retail, and I have seen this, and it is fine, at least someone has told the student they have a choice.
I think if people do not have experience with something, then maybe they will believe a movie. So, since most of us have no seen a car fly off he freeway, then maybe we might believe that a car might fly 50 feet. Likewise, if we have never seen someone get shot, perhaps we will believe that shooting someone is no such a big deal because our heros get shot all the time, and i does not seem to effect them. The same for rampant sexual activity with no consequences.
I think we will all agree that such links are tenuous at best. For example, we only need to burn out finger to learn that fire hurts. We are capable of realizing cause and effect without any direct experience. Most of us go through our entire lives without putting a baby in he microwave, or shooing our playmate. I certainly believe that kids burned down their houses and mutilated frogs even before Beavis and Butthead. In fact these las two are probably so common they aren't even news.
So what makes science any different. At least in the US I suppose it is a matter of magical thinking. Science is based on cause and effect. It is based on the functional form that the given a set of inputs results in predictable outputs. Scientists are not going to sit there running the same experience, with the same parameters, and expect widely different results. They are not going to pray for better result any more than they most devout person choose to pray for the lights to come rather than flipping the switch.
Certainly such magical thinking is to be expected in children, and children's movies take advantage of that wonderful innocence. As the child grows up, however, the child is suppose to understand cause and effect, gain experience, and therefore movies become increasing based in reality, with a continued healthy dose of imagination that still requires a suspension of belief. It is, however, understood that reality is what one lives, not what is in a book or what is on the screen. The unfortunate truth is that many people never maure out of magical thinking, and in the extreme these people do bad things to themselves and others, and in minor cases they simply never fully comprehend cause and effect, and continue to believe the childhood stories are true, and this has been the unfortunate situation long before movies existed. It likely has gotten no worse. Just look at the people who wished to kill Galileo, for simply stated what he believed his experiments showed was reality. People are stupid and prefer to live in the security of their mythology rather than face the harsh reality. This is even true for smart people, the people who say they are doing something because they believe in it, rather than because they have evidence of the truth, even if the result of the actions are devastating.
Precisely. I doubt either of these individuals have any legal standing in the case. They are paid by their respective employers to perform the stupid human tricks that will fill the time between commercials. No matter how enjoyable these tricks are, and no matter how popular they are, it s unlikely that the contracts allow the control of the distribution of the product that are a part of.
I suppose they could renegotiate their contract, or create their own content, and then allow it to be put up on youtube.
Before the lame flame starts, let me be clear that I believe that places like youtube are going to be key to the continuing success of the traditional media, even though that means the traditional media may not be as profitable. I also believe that enlightened performers should push for this change, as it is in their own self interest. It is just that these depositions are so clearly simple stupid lawyer tricks that are intended to waste time and increase costs. Of course, since this is also the popular tactic of viacom against it's customers, viacom really doesn't have any justification in complaining.
This could be considered a commission only salesperson position, in which there opportunity for unlimited income, and, with the backing of a reputable organization, one can achieve the dream. Such a situation allows flexibility for the contract worker, minimizes risk for the organization, and allow person who might not otherwise be able to work gainful employment. This is the positive spin, and obviously anyone who needs money and does not take advantage of this is really dumb. It is a valid income opportunity, and beats not working at all.
I think the situation is more complex than this. In particular, I distrust any organization that will allow just anyone to represent their product. How good can the product be when a firm will just let anyone represent it. For all you know the representative could be a convicted murderer escaped from prison. Is that the image one wants to present? Friends of murderers? This is why most legitimate companies prefer, and pay for, professional representation. I have done some work in the sales representative fields, and I can tell you that standards, however how low, exist.
Obviously this is a bit of hyperbole, but I think google is leaning to MLM schemes, and such things are problematic. Where does the contractors liability end, and googles begin? One can imagine a situation in which a business misrepresents itself, the misrepresention get passed google, a customer get hurts, and in this sue happy society it causes a bit of trouble for the contractor. Though such a scenario is unlikely to occur, and the actual risk is probably much less than, say, MLM schemes involving vitamins, I must wonder why I would take on even such a slight risk for $2.
Even more, as a consumer I must question the validity of any google ad now that I know they are being generated by amateur staff, more interested in a quick $10 than the quality of the firm. Google is not paying $10 just to get listings on a map. They are, in fact, paying for warm leads.
Slashdot Mirror
Networking existed in many microcomputers in the mid 80's in the OS, except that PCs required a third party solution, often Novel. MS eventually fixed this hole in MS Windows 3.11 for workgroups.
The cheap microcomputer itself is largely a product of Compaq reverse engineering the IBM PC. The innovation of the OS consisting of a significant part of the cost of computer is an MS innovation.
The internet, which externalized the communication costs, is the result of many public and private firms, most notably DARPA.
Perhaps the most significant MS innovation, as it often is, is the programming tools which allow ordinary people to develop software. This may have lead to the significant number of dishonest person who broke the Alta Vista engine by putting in unrelated keywords on their page, and thereby ended the happy days of the internet, forcing us to use a ad driven power hungry search engine.
I think when we look for who innovated the internet, look at who has the machines, who has the IP blocks, and who carries the traffic. For not innovating, look at who is used to send out the attacks.
In the US, I believe, consumer protection laws and anti-trust laws prohibit a manufacturer from demanding that consumers only use OEM replacements, or forced branded consumables on the consumer. So, I suppose,at least in the US, one could argue to the AG that Vista was a suitable product and for usability it had to be replaced with a *nix. By refusing to honor the warranty, the vendor was enforcing OEM replacements, which could be illegal. IANAL, but it seems it would be like a car dealer refusing to honor a warranty because the owner replaced the floor mats with non EOM materials.
As a mechanism to fight piracy, the policy was a reasonable one. However, instead of promoting law suit abuse, they should have been more careful about making sure the person they sued was really legitimate. It would have had the same effect, without becoming extortion.
By itself, this is not necessarily a problem. The one right answer anti-thinking philosophy permeates all education, and the more 'rigorous' the education, the more it appears to permeate. Here is where the problem exists, at least with respect to science and math. Science and math is about the discovery of fact patterns that will lead to a cause and effect. Good literature, which often involves fantasy and magical thinking, promotes the idea that cause and effect is not paramount, that magical thinking is acceptable, and that work is not required. Someone or something will save us, or we will be sold to a sports team, or the government will protect us. Occasionally good literature, like the Wizard of OZ, does promote cause and effect, but all too often such literature is ignored in favour of harry potter or Tolkien. A book, such as The Jungle, that is investigative, is uniformly represented as evil incarnate.
What science fiction often supports is cause and effect. Everything happens for a reason. There is no magic, merely advanced and strange machines. We can break the current of laws of physics, but that is because we have put those laws in a certain domain, a la newtonian mechanics, and are now working with rules that more accurately describe the universe. On a more concrete level, a la Pohl and Heinlein, we learn we can't fire the post office lady as she would have not other work, or insurance rates are a statistical process. On a more recent trend, we learn from Robinson that if our current application of science is true, we might be in for nasty climate patterns. It any of this fact. Of course not. It is presented as opinion for the reader to ponder. The only assumption is cause and effect.
And in middle school this idea of cause and effect must be made second nature to fight off the magical thinking that will be treacherous in high school. When a kid enters ninth grade the problem is not that they do not want to work. Not that they can't sit down. But they think that grades are magically given, effort has no consequence, the patterns and processes learned in math and science apply only on that day, as the rules will certainly change tomorrow. In short, their naturally tendency to believe in magic has been supported in the cause of proper literature while their developmental needs are not met.
In terms of books, just encourage the kids to read anything. I still remember that my middle school reading list was so emaciated that there were only two rational books on the list. Likewise in elementary school. How did I know this? My parents had built an awesome library for themselves and my older siblings. If they have a book on grade level, or at Lexile, let them read it. Unless one is teaching the unique kid who hates to read, but will still make it into an ivy league graduate school, we can leave the 18th century conventions behind.
In honor of the recently passed, I will recommend a Wrinkle in time, which is certainly good for children. If you can find a copy of Professor Diggon's Dragrons, that is good, but likely not for middle school. Any biography, even novelized, that illustrates the stuggle of discover, is also good.I note, for instance, that some of Edison's biographies are not good, as the stuggle is minimized, while many of Washington Carver's are.
I have often wondered if I darkened the doors of such stores again, what I might do in such situations. I have decided that I would put the purchase down, call the credit card company, and ask for a charge back due to the fact that the store employees would not let me leave with the product. Now, would I waste my time doing this. No. I make money now and can go to a reputable store, or buy online, where I do not have to deal with such shenanigans.
I hope these guys do not further waste their time and money pushing a lawsuit. Hopefully the ticket will be suspended with court costs, which is a fair punishment for wasting time of the police. The police have enough to do without jerks who just go around trying to game the system. Hopefully these jerks do not waste anymore time or money suing anyone, as I cannot see a judge who would give them any money what so ever. Especially since if the buyers did not want to show the bag, could simply have returned the product. At that point, if the store employees were still being Nazis, then these guys might have had something to fight for. As it is, this is just another case of materialism gone awry, and people getting pissed off that they can't have everything they want.
Same thing with new technology. The only way to see where it fits, is to use it. It is better at teaching functions. It is better at graphing. What additional knowledge does the student gain. What is lost. At the end of the day, the bottom line is the bottom line. Is the benefit of the technology worth the costs.
The greatest piece of technology, the pencil, is a prime example of use and misuse. Over 50% of the time it is a distraction. The students is drawing body parts, throwing it at other students, using it as an excuse to wander around the classroom. But it is still useful enough that we require every student to have and learn to use this technology. The pencil is cheap enough so that even if it often misused, it does not matter. The same is not true for a computer.
So this is what I say. If one has a tool, use the hell out of it. If one finds there is an overall reduction in learning, cut back and find the sweet spots, if any. The kids will benefit because they are being exposed to the technology being used in a more or less productive manner. For instance, isn't is good that they can learn to use a computer to solve problems other than who to go out with?
At the end of the day, my experience is that new tools are ignored not because they not beneficial, but because people do not know how to use them. And while not knowing how to use a tool is a very good reason not to use the tool, it seems that if the tool might be useful, a professional might find it in his or her best interest to learn to use the tool. Otherwise we would still be stuck with sticks and slates.
It is not that I disagree with the sentiments. In fact I believe the biggest problem we have in this country is people earning great deal of monies in the country, and then refusing to return a share to insure that such opportunities continue. It is like a person driving a big car with a support the troops sticker on it, then complaining that gas it too expensive(even though it is often cheaper than coke or coffee), and demanding that we deserve tax rebates, even though our troops desperately need the money. No, it is merely that people seem to love to do the opposite of what their church says, so often the safest thing for a church to do is just remain silent, expecially when the church does the opposite of what it is proposing.
I recall the time when startup network and cable channels came on the air. The old network channels were decimated because the new channels could do more innovative programming as they were not aiming for huge shares. So Fox had Married with Children and 21 Jump Street, and NBC responded with the throw back conservative Seinfied, which kept the innovators at bay for a while, but now NBC is a the bottom of the heap. And they will stay that way because while they are willing to sell shows, they are not willing to do so at decent terms. Networks now choose programming to minimize cost rather than really compete.
So there is quite a bit of good music, and my music budget is still respectable. The only issue I see is that the major labels are increasingly concentrating their marketing on a few big acts, therefore making it seem like there is little music available for the audiences with uncommon tastes. Cheaper CD packaging, online sales, and the like should let them market even greater number of acts, but instead they are retreating behind obsolete models, i.e. old guys listening to music and deciding what the young people want. Of course perhaps it is also unrealistic expectations in which even the most boring acts expect million dollar deals, and the studios still milk that money for all it is worth, rather than update the deals for modern needs.
This does not even account for the truly sad cases, like the owners of the Beatles catalog, who still believe it has some long term private sales value in the current market. U@ was brilliant to sell his songs on an iPod, and the more has bin the group the more sense such a move makes, especially when the back catalog is large. There is still money to be made for licensing for public performance, and of course they are pissing that money away by killing net radio, but very few people are going to buy the same song 5 times, as was the case in the past.
Likewise liberal persons are supposed to believe in the ability of the government to help people. Yet they support direct dole payment, a conservative invention created not to help the people though infrastructure and education, but to artificially support obsolete businesses. Liberals spend governments money on what will help the populous to prosper long term, like roads,schools, medical care, knowing that the free market cannot be trusted to always do what in best for the country.
Of course libertarians are no better. It often seems even more so that other, they have a simplistic view of life, almost Randian in the sense that they believe a single person can actually do something without the support of others. That somehow MS can to be without the support of university level computing power. Or google was created in a vacuum. Or that the internet, on which most depend, is not the product of the narco/military/industrial cartel.
I don't know why people want these labels. The values of good living does seem to be rather immutable and independent of labels. Be nice to other people. Don't take more than one needs. Have humility in one's achievements, knowing that we see so far only because of those that came before us, and those that are have helped us up. And, of course, attain a broad liberal education so that one does not have a warped brain that confuses the models we use to survive with reality.
The truly sad part is that many of these services were limited to MS windows platforms as other platforms would not allow the installation of the spyware. If such a thing happened in my town I would likely to what the service providers, and some web sites, still say to do. Buy a machine that works.
In this case the store was lying. Most computer do automatically make the backup, if you understand it, if you know how to do it, and if you don't get nervous. I know many people who would be incapable. Sure you can get them from HP cheaper, but that is only if time is worse nothing. I wonder if this same customer would be yelling at the store clerk if her machine did go down and she never made the backups.
At the bottom of this is consumers decision to put price above any other aspect of a purchase. It is silly to expect service or honesty when the store might lose a sale over a trivial difference in price. If one wants honesty and service, pay for it. If a recovery disk is important enough to be a consideration, but a machine that includes one. The only reason they took them out, like a manual, is that they were losing sales to unscrupulous people like Best Buy and Dell who sell crap at bargain prices. Honestly fly by night organizations has taken over most of the computer market.
In this case MS is correct. Most MS users are unsophisticated, which is one reason why MS products are so prone to bugs. At is heart, MS is a company that assumes a specialized user base but in fact sell to masses. I am frankly surprised they let this go on so long. Clearly, they have left themselves open to potential hijacking by fake updates. MS has the funds to host and deliver updates itself, and any third party hosting should be completely unnecessary. While it is true that many updates are provided in this fashion, any sane security model would forbid OS level updates delived in this way, especially to the common user.
OTOH, for a 15 year old, it does test a reasonable battery of basic knowledge, and has not egregious errors. I took one exam last year for an engineering program, and the writers completely used an incorrect definition of work. This kind of thing is incompetence. The questions on this test are merely questionable. There are questions that are tricky for no compelling reason and should be removed. I have seen the same thing on the US AP exams.
It really is a matter of money. People look for cheap properties, and then expect the amenities of expensive properties, like reliable electricity and phone and well paved roads. The problem is that the tax base can't support these things, so residents in more densely populated area tends to subsidize, which is not an issue, except for the rural complaints. We would all like to live in the land of milk and honey, but the reality is that few of us can afford to.
The key, as is often the case, is separating the responsibility for content from the visual formating. Each author is responsible for content, while the master document is responsible for formatting via style sheets. To me this separation i natural. My writing often starts out in a text editor, and only later moves to Latex or word processor or some GUI page layout application.
More on topic, I look forward to looking at this release of NeoOffice. I suppose the versioning has been updated to match the OO.org release, and does not necessarily reflect that expected stability of a 2.2 release. As for X11 use, I don't see the reason to move away from the existing OO.org port.
From what I understand from said brief stints, the income from the widget being sold is used to pay for the internal services used to create or support the widget. Prevailing market forces determines the sale price, the money is divided proportionately, and productivity is not set by manager salary targets, but by available funds. I have seen this work. If everyone is productive, and products are well supported and well produced, then surplus income is generated, which results in bonuses, without any money being wasted on artificial unit of production.
One thing I saw during the dot com bust was companies spending money they had no real expectation of ever receiving. In many cases the productivity of a salesperson or manager or IT person was rewarded, when that productivity did not actually result in any real income. The feedback loop bypassed revenue generation, so companies went tits up.
This is an interesting case as the child disabled the gentle warning without letting others know the warning was disabled. For such a kid gentle reminders are not going to work, and in fact is the reason why draconian laws exist. Put simply, parents aren't just going to sit idly by and look on as the kid becomes a member of the darwin awards, and if a kid does not respond to warnings, most parents will take more aggressive actions.
Many will say the teens are sexual creatures, and the same is true for drugs and bad driving, which is absolutely true. The key is convince the kid not to abuse these things. Such abuse can not only negatively effect the teen, but also innocent people, such as truck drivers, who get caught up in the drama.
Let me just say this. Sexually explicit images are more readily available today than at any other time I can remember. It is no longer necessary to steal magazines, or sneak to the back of bookstores, or leaf through womens magazines in libraries. Even with filters, the images and text available far surpass what was available even 10 years ago. I would be concerned about a kid so desperate to find more of this material that they need to bypass the gentle reminders.
Of course this ignores the fact that the phones are targeted to different people. The Blackberry is the corporate phone that allows the IT Gods to exert their divine control and the workers to be be 24 hour push leash. The iPhone, which, as we know from all the bitching, does not even have corporate accounts, is designed for the person who just wants to communicate. I certainly have no desire to pay $3k for a blackberry enterprise server when i can pay $100 for a .mac account. And I don't need data pushed to me to read while I am driving.
If the candidates simply believe that man was created, then they are expressing a religious view, and have every right to so do. Such a candidate should be as proud to make such a statement in the ame way that they believe in Jesus Christ, or that Jesus visited the Americans, or that god has taken a particular interest in their lives and that is why they are so well off, while the poor and sick could be just as well off is such persons simply had faith. But if the candidates are saying the process of science is flawed, that is quite another. Such a candidate, if elected, would put America at a considerable economic disadvantage, and threaten that very thing that has made this country great. The freedom to discover, no matter how those discoveries might offend some radical fundamentalists who believe that they have the "truth", that such a truth is immutable, and that such a truth must be forced on others by any means necessary.
What we didn't have and really didn't need was the constant scrutiny by teachers and administrators. There were times we did not have a teacher. We were left alone to do our own thing, to set our learning goals. We were not hindered by this idea that somehow people would cater to our need, create a customized situation just so we would be "motivated" to work. We were told what to learn, and then told we should find the discipline to learn the subject, or leave the school. An examples was computer and drafting classes in grade 9. The people who didn't work simply were removed from the program at the end of the year. This was invaluable, as, unlike most students, I did not go into the workplace as a worker in need of constant supervision, but as a person who could be counted on to independently create and implement solutions. Which, as the parent indicates,translates into cash.
Children with actual special needs are expensive to educate as there might effectively be one teacher for each student. Even regular students require extra tutoring, extra supervision, and likely extra basic supplies. But I ask this question to the advanced students out there. Would you rather have a teacher hovering over you all day, or be left alone with your toys to learn as you wish. In my education, the amount of money spent on me was never the issue. It was the freedom to learn, to explore, and to create, a freedom never granted to non-GT students. Also in my education, not all the costs were accounted for through public expenditure, as we received many private grants as industry needed our skills, and needed people who were not coddled beyond hope in school.
In any case, your first point, that people save in PDF, is of no real issue. First, the study, as flawed as it may be, is meant to indicate formats that are universal enough to be predictably exchanged. Second, the same argument applies to ODF, only more so. I, for instance, seldom post in ODF as OO.org saves to PDF without any complex spyware ridden third party hacks.
To address specific parent points. First, colleges know nothing of the stuggles of high school. They generally allow a select group, and then get rid of those that won't play ball. Reputable colleges will underselect, that is reject qualified candidates, so thay are not accused of taking money.
Second, drop out occur for many reasons. One is that the kids sees no use for the education, and there are no interesting courses. If the schools provide a context for the high school experience, and provides courses to back them up, then drop out rates might fall. These choices has to go beyond trade, as that just limits choice. Some kids drop out because there are no advanced academics. Even if all the kid wants is a trade, a school at least have the responsibility to offer the alternative choices.
If done properly, these kids are going to be better prepared for any career of college. These kids will have thier core courses, plus experiential electives in which to learn new content and apply cross curricular skills. I know that some high schools will use this to limit or pigeonhole the studetns, but those are the schools that would not provide a broad educational experience under any scenario.
Here is the thing. Public college prep high schools have generally been thematic. One can chooses a high school based on interest in art, science, engineering, etc. It works to increase the rigour, that is provides a compensation for the additional pain the students are going to be expected to endure. We don't to cargo cult this concept, but there are pieces that might apply to other situations.
In any case, the bottom line is choice. Perhaps the students just want to get out of high school and work retail. Perhap the student has a genuine talent for something else. Even if the student ends up in retail, and I have seen this, and it is fine, at least someone has told the student they have a choice.
I think we will all agree that such links are tenuous at best. For example, we only need to burn out finger to learn that fire hurts. We are capable of realizing cause and effect without any direct experience. Most of us go through our entire lives without putting a baby in he microwave, or shooing our playmate. I certainly believe that kids burned down their houses and mutilated frogs even before Beavis and Butthead. In fact these las two are probably so common they aren't even news.
So what makes science any different. At least in the US I suppose it is a matter of magical thinking. Science is based on cause and effect. It is based on the functional form that the given a set of inputs results in predictable outputs. Scientists are not going to sit there running the same experience, with the same parameters, and expect widely different results. They are not going to pray for better result any more than they most devout person choose to pray for the lights to come rather than flipping the switch.
Certainly such magical thinking is to be expected in children, and children's movies take advantage of that wonderful innocence. As the child grows up, however, the child is suppose to understand cause and effect, gain experience, and therefore movies become increasing based in reality, with a continued healthy dose of imagination that still requires a suspension of belief. It is, however, understood that reality is what one lives, not what is in a book or what is on the screen. The unfortunate truth is that many people never maure out of magical thinking, and in the extreme these people do bad things to themselves and others, and in minor cases they simply never fully comprehend cause and effect, and continue to believe the childhood stories are true, and this has been the unfortunate situation long before movies existed. It likely has gotten no worse. Just look at the people who wished to kill Galileo, for simply stated what he believed his experiments showed was reality. People are stupid and prefer to live in the security of their mythology rather than face the harsh reality. This is even true for smart people, the people who say they are doing something because they believe in it, rather than because they have evidence of the truth, even if the result of the actions are devastating.
I suppose they could renegotiate their contract, or create their own content, and then allow it to be put up on youtube.
Before the lame flame starts, let me be clear that I believe that places like youtube are going to be key to the continuing success of the traditional media, even though that means the traditional media may not be as profitable. I also believe that enlightened performers should push for this change, as it is in their own self interest. It is just that these depositions are so clearly simple stupid lawyer tricks that are intended to waste time and increase costs. Of course, since this is also the popular tactic of viacom against it's customers, viacom really doesn't have any justification in complaining.
I think the situation is more complex than this. In particular, I distrust any organization that will allow just anyone to represent their product. How good can the product be when a firm will just let anyone represent it. For all you know the representative could be a convicted murderer escaped from prison. Is that the image one wants to present? Friends of murderers? This is why most legitimate companies prefer, and pay for, professional representation. I have done some work in the sales representative fields, and I can tell you that standards, however how low, exist.
Obviously this is a bit of hyperbole, but I think google is leaning to MLM schemes, and such things are problematic. Where does the contractors liability end, and googles begin? One can imagine a situation in which a business misrepresents itself, the misrepresention get passed google, a customer get hurts, and in this sue happy society it causes a bit of trouble for the contractor. Though such a scenario is unlikely to occur, and the actual risk is probably much less than, say, MLM schemes involving vitamins, I must wonder why I would take on even such a slight risk for $2.
Even more, as a consumer I must question the validity of any google ad now that I know they are being generated by amateur staff, more interested in a quick $10 than the quality of the firm. Google is not paying $10 just to get listings on a map. They are, in fact, paying for warm leads.