Which has nothing to do with the current SEC investigation, which involves stock fraud. It wasn't called stock fraud back then, it was just a nify way for board members to funnel cash to the executives without the direct knowledge of the shareholders. The biggest problem was that the practice undermined the explicit goal of stock options, which was to link the success of the compnay to the payment of the executive. Not a big deal, the people in charge lie to investors all the time, especially when those investors are also the employees.
OTOH, this might have something to do with situation. On the software side game developers hide code that will not make it throught the ratings, hoping that they can hide behind due diligence. When the code is discovered, instead of taking responsibility, they run and hide. Remember, a lot of white collar folks would have been fine if they continued to follow procedures and fully admitted thier actions.
I hope the EFF does not take actions, unless it is on the side of abused game developers, who according to reports are underpaid and overworked, all so their bosses can get unauthorized bonuses.
Ok, I tried to understand what this guy is saying, and came away confused. On one hand, he keeps saying we know this and we know that. In fact, we know squat. We know that we don't regualarly float off the earth for no apparent reason, and we think we have an idea why. We know that when we look up we see stars, and we think we have an idea why. We know that if we are in a vacuum there is very little air, but even if there are no atoms, there are other stuff.
One point he is correct. We are pretty sure there are virtual particles that pop in and out of existance, and by the nature of their existance they do may not add to the energy of the vacuum. These particles are created and destroyed around us all the time. They are so short lived that the universe "does not notice", in the heisenberg sense. OTOH, we also know that QM states minimum energy levels, and this might indicate a minimum energy of the universe. After all, waves are not localized, and thier energy presumable spreads throughout the cosmos. I believe most of this stuff has been at least suspected for most of my lifetime. How to interpret this stuff is the trick, because enchanted perfect particles and magical waves are not that confortable to physicists.
I was most disappointed becuase there are interesting questions. The energy of the vacuum is likely nonzero, and it seem pretty clear that if the energies are added you come up with a huge number, reminiscent of the Ultraviolet catastrophe. Likewise we have black holes, which form another disturbing infiintiy. And then we have the reemergence of the Eistein gravity hack. This does not even get into the wierd copenhagen interpretation of QM, most recently discussed in the FPS, a publication of the APS.
From what I can tell, most of this involves a bunch of old line physicist complaining about string theory, and there is nothing wrong with that as this is what old line physicists are supposed to do. But we always have had, and will continue to have, issues in the interpretation of our physical models. Instead of going around saying what we know, it seems more useful to look at where what we think we know does not mesh with the observables, and how that effects our assumption. Are constants constant? Do observations collaps waves in particles, or are the wave and particle one in the same? Is the universe one of three structures? These are why being a scientist is going to cool for the kids entering college today.
It is not about whether a individual thinks that a particulat item is art, or whether the creator believes a particular item is art. What is at stake is a person who produces a work having control over the a creation for some time.
The bit you quoted says it all. Most of the content in question relates to a profit generating enterprise. In order to maximize that profit, the film has to be protected so as to promote a consistant image. For instance, if a francise has made money showing teats, then editing out those bits can do damage to the franchise. In spite of any warnings, the movie is still beng advertised as the original movie, and the editing company is still using the good reputation of the filmmaker to generate a profit for themselves.
And here is where the hypocrasy comes about, and all the whining fails. These editing companies are taking succesful films and reediting them arbitrarily. These editing company then are selling the movies primarily based on the repetation of the film producers and actors, and only secondarily on the basis of the editing. In effect by rediting the films instead of producing original content, these editors are acknowledging the good reputation of the filmmaker, and pocketing a pretty penny in the process.The only hipocrites here are the film editors that deny a reputation with one hand, while banking the profits of the reputation on the other.
Again it comes down to the fact that we own our own toys. If cleanflix or whoever wants to make the clean movies, the technology is there and it is no longer extremely expensive. Some like little home on the praire could be done for a very modest amount.
Looking over at cleanflix I just noticed something else. There is not even enough damand for them to make a DVD. They only sell semi-legal DVRs. Probably make nothing on the legal DVDs, but the china-grade DVRs are probably nearly all profit. Oops. I just notice that the orginal movies they sell are used. There you go. Making a killing off someone elses work. It should be a Dilbert strip.
I wonder if for some sports, where equipment has never been the major thing, all this money spent on equipment is overrated. For example, Amercian football is significantly about the equipment, and if you can't afford good equipment you don't play professionally, but the other football is not so much about the equipment, and everyone has an good chance of competing, even if they are not rich.
For example, it was reputed that the shark skin suits of the past couple olympics were the reasons for new world records, though I have not seem any anylsis that showed the more records were set. Putting the suits on olympics swimmers, often with compensation, seems more a marketing thing than a performance thing. All attire options are about the same, so why not choose the option that will bring in a little cash. It is good investment for the company as consumers will see the product, percieve value, and be more willing to pay the offered price.
None of which proves the suit is a useful product. In fact when reading about the suits, the issue seems more about insuring the suit is not counterproductive rather than significantly improving on bare skin. In the past they have said things "like four percent impovement over the past model", and then cited all the deficiencies of the past model.
Because it is not about the lawsuit. It is that for some people, the accumulation of money is more about the accumiliation of stuff rather than power. Trophy spouses, trophy yatchs, trophy planes, and trophy houses. And such people get really upset when they don't get exactly what they want and start acting like brats. It is amusing to those of us in the real world that actually have to deal with finite resources. We are happy to have a decent bed, and don't get stomach aches because it is the wrong color or does not have silk sheets.
Certainly some people have so much money that they have everything they want, and then they start giving it away. The good ones don't make a big deal about it, but others just want to make into another trophy, saying how generous they are that they have given away all this money and are just left with a billion in property and a billion in cash. Somehow this is more interesting that the person who gives a few hundred dollars a year away and still manages to raise a family on $40,000 a year. And the fact that such donation are a clever way to insure thier hiers are cared for, without tax liabilities, just make the situation more humourous. This is not to say that the a person does not deserve the money he or she earns, just that it is not particularly generous to give away extremely excess income.
Basically it failed to deliver for the reasons listed, and comes down to a lack of leadership. In any feature set the resources to develop, the resources to run, not to mention the resources to meet certain milestones, must be allocated. What this means is that the leadership must understand the finite resources of the computer, and comprehend that if the GUI or network traffice is to be expanded, there will probably be fewer resources for underlying technology. Furthermore, if aggressive milestones are set, then the more experimental features are best left to future releases.
File systems will evolve, from flat, to heirachical, to who knows what, but in terms of MS Windows, and any other GUI based system, the underlaying storage format takes a back seat to the way the form at is visualized in the GUI. A flat file system is fine as long as the GUI represents it as organized. This is why some people say that MS hacks peices together. There is never a unified style of the system, and while it is true that modules should not have initmate knowledge of each other, it helps if the interfaces between the modules are customized to fit togeter as perfectly as possible.
In the end the new file system was just a marketing ploy, and the MS failure was not understanding how difficult the implementation would be, and, with the GUI interface, how unimporatant it ultimately was.
Which is to say that if we wish to control people, we must always push them to edge and see if they fight back. For most people, they simply do not have the suffucient level of cynism to fight against these attacks. I think it is sweet.
It is like all these meaningful parents feeding thier kids junk, buying them junk, not knowing any better because why would the government let stuff be sold to kids if it weren't safe? All these people buying SUVs, driving them inappropriately, and then complaining that they roll over. All these people smoking in the last 40 years, and now complaining they have been taken advantage of. The first reports on the harm of smoking were published in the 19th century folks. The list goes on. We have to hassle anyone named Muhamod for out own safety. We have to get rid of all guns for our own safety. We have to allow all conversations to be monitored for our own safety. God and his appointed prophets will save us, we don't need to think.
So, what is the ad supposed to portray? It is one person attacking another person. What is the context? Which is the victim and which is the bully, or are both culpable? IS this ad taunting the people who wish to regulate video games by saying "yeah we promote meaningless violence, what are you gonna do about it?"
Any ad agency must judge it message for effectiveness not only with the norms of the target audience, but also the society. Yes if one looks at the world in terms of race the ad is racist. OTOH, if one is a racist, then the ad is very good. It shows an aryan person victimizing a black person. This for some people is a very good thing, and certainly for those people the ad says we share your values so buy our product. For other people, who do not think violence is a good way solve issues, it says don't buy our product.
So I must wonder what the message of the ad is, beyond just the colors of the boxen? I do not assume that Sony is trying to market to the those who wish the aryan race to gain control of the US. It is possible they think this is shocking and will get people to see thier logo. It is possible they are taunting Hillary Clinton, though that would be an unwise thing to do. In the end this is like a beer commercial. Interesting on some level to post-adolescent youth, but disturbing to everyone else.
All of this is set up so that a transactions can be conducted in a reletively free and secure manner. As a firm, I do not have to go to the MS main office and buy a license. I can in fact pop down to the corner software vendor and purchase a license. This license should have certain security features, and as long as I have something that any resonable person would consider a valid license, I as the consumer of the product should be protected. Now, perhaps the vendor has done something wrong, but not me.
If such a standard is not used, then why should I put myself at risk and use a product? If I am going to be hassled, when I have followed all procedures, what motivation do I have to follow legitimate procedures. If I am going to have trouble no matter what I do, why shouldn't I just buy a license out of the back of car.
This is why the WGA, and BSA audits, are so stupid. If the vendors are forging certificates, then MS should go after the vendor. If a consumer has a issue, then perhpas some action is justified as long as it is not a fishing expedition. But there is no reason that I, as a paying customer, should be regularly hassled becuase a manufacturer has set up unwidely guidlines.
so why has no one tried this? Why has no one done a dictionary attack on.mac and tried a get a some slave macs? I mean it is only maybe half a million users, but if mac users are so bad with computers, and 1% fall victim, then one has a botnet of 5000. Not a huge botnet, but not a botnet that is going have a lot of competition nor a lot of pesky spyware detectors.
No, if it were simple to do, someone would have done it. What is protecting the mac is that the MS Windows is not the softer target. What is also protecting the Mac is that probably the average script kiddie does not have a mac, much less a script to attack the mac. Remember, you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have outrun your friend.
One should be careful about these broad generalizations. With the iPod, if one chooses to use the iTunes store, one is locked into the iPod family of products. However, since music can be downloaded to any number of players, if something happens to a player, the music can be downloaded to another player. With all the changes to fairplay, this has been a constant rule. Shuffles are not even tethered to a single mac.
What MS is doing here is the same thing it did with the PCs in the late 80s. It is bringing up the danger of single source vending, e.g. everthing comes from Apple, while brushing over the single source software, i.e. everything software come from MS. Even though one may have some buffer in that one has choices in hardware, there is still much pain cuased by the fact that MS ultimately control your fate, in much the same way that Apple does.
But there is a greater problem that is overlooked. Play for sure does not seem to be a fixed playing field like fairplay is. Each vendor, each manufacturer, each label, each artist can set limits on what can be done to the music. For example, we might find that it can only be downloaded to one device, or burned to a single backup in WMP format only, or not shared. Perhaps when MS updates the OS, the music files will not validate until the user has a legal copy of the updated OS. I am not try to spread FUD, just saying we do not know what the MS device will do becuase it does not exist, nor do we know what MS will do if it gets the 80% market share. All we know it what it has in the past.
And Apple learned from its mistakes, now you can use USB 2.0 or FireWire.
Historical revisionism. The iPod was originally introduced as a Mac only device. Many macs had USB 1.0, which was next to useless, but all macs since around 1999 had Firewire, which is full 400 Mbs, without the complex slave/master thing which can slow stuff down, especially the was it appears to implemented on the Mac. Also firewire daisy chains so there is no need for a hub. At that time USB was slow. Very slow. Beleive me, I had to transfer stuff USB for my old Nomad. It was not fun even for just 64 MB.
Now that nearly all machines less than 3 years old has hi-speed USB 2.0, and Apple is selling to Windows users, the iPods are mostly just USB devices. Sucks for those of us with old Macs, but those are the breaks.
In terms of what we expect from the MS, I suspect it will be the same as what came from Sony, and what Apple tries to do on the shuffle, and perhaps the Nano(I do not have one of these). That is all tracks will probably be converted to play for sure format, unless the user specifically asks not to. Therefore most will have encrypted tracks on the device, even if the originals are not. This then means that it will be harder to hack the device to retrieve the tracks.
Spelling is not a matter of thinking. It is a matter of rules with many exeptions. The only sense in which thinking is even remotely involved is that it can lead to historical explorations. Note that I did not say historical derivations, because for the most part this is just another set of memorized fact.
I am not saying that spelling is not important. I am not even saying that memorizing rules are not important. There is some creativity involved in applying known rules to solve new situations, for example how to spell a novel word. But in some sense many of these words have even outlived thier historical usefullness, and lead to unnecesary confusion, confusion that could be used to teach some contempory fact.
For example, we have the word through. Some might argue that the modern spelling thru is terrible, but why is it wrong? In point of fact, pronouncing 'through' as 'thu' is the incorrect usage, and as such it can be effectively argued that spelling it as 'thru' makes great sense.
I am all over the idea that we should be getting our physical activity doing meaningful tasks, like planting food that we can then eat instead of the food stuffs that we are expected to eat. But to me the issue is not what we have lost, but how we adapt. We have standard american spelling, and we have machines that can help us perfect, and we even as we misspell we can still communicate. Therefore going through the trouble to simplify the english spelling, and losing a history in the process, seems a bit of a waste of time. After all we have significantly corrupted english to fit our American needs, already causing great confusion. Why do we wish to make it worse?
First, there are many rich people in Texas. Many of these people have more pathetic rag to riches stories than Ken Lay. Rising from nothing to person of wealth is nothing extremely inteseting. It is the American dream, and is possible for those who wish to work. The thing with Ken Lay was, as oppossed to most wealthy people in Texas, is he appered to have no morals or humility.
Second, I have never though of being the child as a preacher as a necessary asset. A preacher asks for money in the name of god, not for the value of a direct service or product. There was a time when this was ok, like for a King or a Lord or something, where the sefs starved while one sat in a guilded highrise. But America now mostly knows that work is what brings wealth, and there is no cosmic cash machine. However, if one is raised on the principle of entitlement, then one might do anything to insure that entitlement.
Third, independent persons with knowledge knew Enron was bad juju. I myself was told by those in the know to stay away. It was not just that Enron was encoraging staff to buy Enron stock, almost every company was guilty of that practice. It was not just that Enron was booking and paying commission on sales that generated not positive cashflow. Again, that was a standard dot com practice. Rather, it was the products made no sense and there was no core direction. As was suspected before the fact, and known after, the products were shills of productivity.
In the end Ken Lay was nothing special except for his cluelessness and lack of humility. Many people realized he was simply incompetent, and would have accepted a statement of responsibility and an apology. Rather, he his behind technicalities and avoided the responsiblities that were ultimately his as the head of the enterprise.
A government is by definition always afraid of the people becuazse the people can cause the government many problem. Even a government by the people and for the people has some significant level of fear from the populous because number of officials are always going to abuse the position to their own benifit. This is to expected and human nature.
So, it is arguable that our freedoms have always been under attack both from within and without, that is by domestic terrorist, non-domestic terrorist, and corrupt government officials. All these persons wish to limit out freedoms for various reasons, but in the end to maximize personal power.
There were probably dozens of programs on the table that would not fly pre-9/11. For example, number of reports indicate that Bush and others worked out a plan to invade Iraq, even before bush was elected. What 9/11 acheived, to the terrorists delight, was create a political climate in which the protections fo the constitution could be roled back, and Bush could be the closest thing to a dictator that we ever had. Remember, he is claiming the right to do anything to prisoners, even without the consent of congress. The way he is treating prisoners seems very much like the spanish inquisition.
And the terrosists are happy. The operations in Iraw are giving them first hand experience in how to dispatch the US. All of our tricks and technology are continously thwarted not only by terrorist ingenuity, but American selfishness. Whose idea was it to use a civilian unarmored transport as a military carrier, when a military carrier was available, and then hack armour on the military carrier which makes it so unstable as to put the gunman at extreme risk. Iraq has shown the terrorist our vunerabilities. Instead of fixes the vunerabilities, the admistration has gone to full blown security through obscurity and threatened the media. There again we have a freedom being threatened that government wishes they could control.
In the end we have officials that are greedy and want to cut coners. Most of the time we can keep them in check, and for the most part we are keeping them in check. Lay who only wants white people to have a vote is in deep trouble. The problem is we now have an opening, due to a president that truly believes big governement is answer, just look a the budget, the added department of homeland security, the added security forces,. and the people cannot be trusted.
It is very important for Google to the first result in a search using MSN. The MS market plan depends on IE users typing google into IE, being transered to the MSN page where ads can be billed and tracking cookies set, at which point they can move to the Google page. MS has no problem with google, as long as everyone has to go through MS first.
On a more serious note, if Google does not solve the link farm problem soon, like before vista and MS IE 7 are desployed with special 'features' meant to break google, then MSN may see some serious growth. At this point Google is becoming a bit too much of an oneline ad broker, and too little of online service provider. On all but the most mundane searches, I hardly expect to get more than one real result, often in the middle of the page.
The blanket statement 'best' without clarification is often an overstatement of fact. From around 1996 onward, MS IE was and is the best browser if the markup is generated by MS web generators or it the code is specifically hackedto work in IE. In other words, if the content is not meant to be a generalized web page, but a front end to a resource, then IE is going to the best solution. This has not changed. IE is still the best front end to MS generated content and specific applications.
What has changed is that there are enough problems so that MS IE is no longer the best web browser, and I would argue that it was never the best web browser, becuae it never played well nor failed gracefully in the general web environment. I say this as a person that started on Mosaic, moved to netscape, then Opera, then Camino. I only use IE for certain 'safe' spaces that require IE. Except in few cases, I generally do not give my money to companies that write only for IE, because if they can't write an a page that works in any broweser, how responsible can they be. For instance, Amazon has always worked in anything I can throw at it.
So, in the sense that most people were introduced to the web on MS IE, and most people think the web is MS IE, and most people need at least one MS IE specific web site, and most people are not going to understand that they need one browser for an application front in used when browsing safe sites, and another for the general web, then in this sense MS IE has been, is, and probably will continue to be the best browser. Especially since most people think that at one time it was the best, and wrote borked code to run with it.
First, believing what a firm discloses without doing independent analysis is what routinely leads to catastrophic stock devaluation. Some might say that there is x billion in sales and x million in profit, and that is distributed along such lines as so, but who is say that those figures represent reality, or at the reality of the investor. Even if the number follow all SEC rules and standard accounting practices. At the very least, income and expenses can be creatively classified to maximize profit, not to mention other issue such as stock dilution and options backdating with can signficantly increase management compensation without the knowledge of the shareholders.
Therefore it seems to me a major part of the analyst job is at least to smell check the numbers released a firm, and in reality to generate independent data on major products services. Instead of complaining that Apple is not releasing profit margins, any analyst should be celebrating that Apple is now using mostly off the shelf compenants with widely known acquisition and integration costs. Furthermore, manufacturing costs should not be impossible as these seem to be also widely known in the competative market.
As far as the markets, Apple has for a long time produced solutions. They produced a solution for graphic artists, a solution for home users, etc. This is why the fact that the mac was closed was not a big issue. When one bought a mac, it was a solution. Now apple has found some success with music and video solutions. It is not new becuae it is applying integrated technology, both hardware and software, to solve a problem. Some analyst get confused about solutions becuase they have been raised with MS philosophy of suppling components that others will turn into solutions. Compenents work for some people, but most of us buy a completed car, a completed refrigerator, a completed TV, and don't expect the manufacturer to deny responsibility because a component is made elsewhere.
The only thing that has changed is that computing technology has become consumer technology, not the Apple has all of the sudden become a consumer technology company.
I think one good thing that Apple did was separate their consumer and pro lines of computers. You could have a PowerMac or an iMac. You could have a Powerbook or an iBook. The later would be cheaper machines, partly because of cheaper components, but also a reduction in style and quality of the "non essential" materials, like the case and the handling. It was understood that an iBook was not a Powerbook, and though many people bitched, the compromise was a mac for $1000, educational pricing.
So I think Apple is screwing themselves by combining the consumer and pro brand into 'MacBook'. All the quality problems, which are to be expected for a machine that is designed to a low pricepoint, are going to infect the pro line. We even see this with the iPod. The Nano, which was clearly designed to cheap and accessible, does not have the ruggedness of the original machines. I would like to see even more differentiation in brand so we don't have all the headline 'MacBook is a piece of crap, Apple doesn't support.'
This is another reason to hope that we have a creative *nix laptop in the next few years, a fully intergrated solution, not just hacked together like most of the MS and x86 stuff is. Perhaps Sun will become the new boutique of useful computing.
The security problem has much to do with marketing. Banks made a number of critical mistakes when they first started online banking, mostly having to do with using email as a semi-secure communication link. I would recieve emails from my bank, and would write back asking how I knew it was from then and not a third party. They said the email.
But really banks have been compromising customer security to maximize profits for years. For instance, banks will license thier logo to third parties for advertisements purposes. When one calls the bank and ask about this, they say they have nothing to do with it. Well, does that mean the third party is illigally using your logo and my information?
The only thing that has saved these institution is the US federal mail fraud laws and the cost of postage. I could have 20 years ago sent an official looking mail from some bank to 10,000 people saying they had to reactivate the account, along with a bogus 800 number. The scam would have probably netted 1 hit in 10,000, but it would have cost at leat $10,000 to run, and the feds would have been on my ass.
Financial instutions were slow to realize the security issues, and still want to maximize profit more than anything else. The current issue with phisshing is just a symptom of the general lack of consideration form the customer, which is really our fault. How many of us pay for bank service? We are really exchanging our willing to see advertising in exchange for a service, and so I guess we really can't complian about the situation. There are still problems, like banks losing data about customers that have not been with them for a couple years.
Which of course means that the school can no longer protect the students. Anyone with an axe to grind can prosecute the kids for underage drinking, and force the school to crack down on the student body.
In the end, this just ruins it for everyone that is not abusing the alcohol, all so that some guy can say to his friends 'look at me, I'm a badass, I breakin' the law, and no one can do anything to me!"
I am not saying that 18-20 year olds drinking and carousing is a good thing. But when these pictures are so in the public, and the half of public that never graduated college feel like the kids are just playing around, often at taxpayer expense, that just leads to letters to congress urging for the crackdown of underage drinking. Perhaps it will even lead to the wide perception that college is just party time, and grants might be cut and interest rates for student loans might be raised, because why should some hard working person subsidize drunk kids, especailly when the average person was never able to have that subsidized experience.
There was a time when kids were more free, but it only takes one greedy/lazy/whiny/selffish kid to ruin it for everyone. For the most part, this is what I see some of the posters at facebook doing. Taking a creative outlet,, which should be avaiable to everyone, and can provide a same place for expression, and ruining it. The sad thing is instead of blaming th students whose behavior has forfieted the privilege, they blame the school. This might have flown in high school, but, as so many people have pointed out, adults can be held responsible for thier actions. Perhpas this is a an argument against the commoditization of th college education.
Also, it is interesting that this has been the major fight between developers and MS for at least the past 10 years. It was alleged that it was difficult to compete with MS in DOS because they not release all the interrupts even though those interupts appeared to be used in MS software. Later, it was alleged that MS would change the behavior of private interfaces, i.e. interfaces that MS did not want others to use, so as to break non MS software.
No matter where one stands, it is clear that MS considers MS windows to be it's private property, which is reasonable, and only wishes others to interact with it under very controlled circumstances. The problem is that this is like leasing a location to open a firm, but knowing that at any minute the lease could be terminated.
Many defenders of MS say that the API problems comes about merely because MS has never mapped all the APIs, and the damage to third party software is unintentional. Given the problems with MS vista, I am willing to believe that MS has a completely borked development process. OTOH, given the wonderful books that have come out of MS, especially the Mac division, I also believe that MS has the ability to do better. Therefore, this EU ruling should be seen as a good thing. If it forces MS to clean up it's engineering, that will only be a benifit to MS and it's customers. The APIs can then be released to the public as the standards tha MS wants then to be.
Makes you wonder why they even bother providing internet connections on college campuse
Um, perhaps because it is easeir to plagerize papers using the internet? But seriously, one could consider research for papers, help with math and science papers. Most universities, perhaps you haven't been in one recently, pay for a large number of resources, that are really quite expensive, to thier students and faculty.
Of course, it may be that millions of dollars of infrastructure and millions in connections fees are what is neccesary for the modern college student to get a date. I just had to ask the babe that sat next to me in Calculus.
To be more serious, I understand that this ban has more to do with public image, and could be construed as censorship. But think of ti this way. The average athelete is on scholarship, which mean he or she is there at the whim of the university and those alumni that donate to the university. If, due to something posted on the net, such funds become unavailable or the students freedom becomes compromised, then the student does not get an education. We all know that adolescents and young adult do silly things, and none of us really want to impose any significant consequences for the most of the silly things kids do. The minor things are often best handled in house in such a way that boundries are enforced, but the future of the student is not compromised. It may seem funny to post teammates drinking, or in drag, or pretending to commit some felony, but in the competitive world of althletics, where perhaps 1:500 gets into college ball, and 1:2000 gets into pro ball, such actions may not be insignificant.
And think of it another way. When one enters college, escpecially on an scholarship, and especially on an athelitic scholar ship, one is asking the college to help guide you to a hopefully more promising future. A significant number of freedoms and rights are given away. Unlike other 18 year olds, you are in class and studying, instead of working at starbucks for 8 hours then coming to you apartements and doing nothing. The college students has any number of people using thier experience to navigate a specific educational journey, even though it is theorectically possible to navigate that same path using free resources. In other words, the student is attending the university to help insure a specific outcome, and has accepted some limitations to achieve that outcome.
To put it simpler, if facebook is so important, an athelete could gain an education and even break into the majors without a university. It is not impossible to his the minors and work the ladder to the majors. But if one wants a univeristy degree, or wants the NCAA help, then one should have a little trust in the people in charge. If there is no trust, then why go to that school? If the school is so corrupt, then why accept the tainted money?
I found incredible interesting that a magazine, whose bussinees model presumable depends on the hypothesis that people will pay for someone to filter through the din to find the few bits of interesting information, would promote the notion that all editor based publications are going to fall under the pressure of BLOG.
Such an assertion not only implies the death of bussiness 2.0, but every other publications that is primarily a source of old news and punditry.
On the one hand, NASA must play politics and say what will keep the public and thier representatives happy. OTOH, it is nice when NASA just tells it like it is. I would think that any reasonable person would be reluctant to make any predictions about what can and cannot happen with the manned space program given present data. It seems to me that such questions will be answered in July when we see what the foam does.
We have three space shuttles, all have flown over 20 missions, and are much over 10 years old. This is all the hardware we have for manned space travel. We have to use it for Hubble, ISS, and whatever else we need to build or fix. I hope that any decision concerning missions will wiegh the risk of losing another vehicle much more that the loss of the Hubble, or even the completion of ISS. While the hubble is extremely useful, and has provided a large data set to help answer some very basic questions, it is not worth the a premature ending to manned space exploration.
So unless we see much better that expected results this summer, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that we will use the remaining fleet sparingly and that Hubble is going to limp along past 2008. It is my hope it can survive. If it doesn't, I hope we will have a larger launch vehicle in the future so that the next telescope can have larger mirrors.
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OTOH, this might have something to do with situation. On the software side game developers hide code that will not make it throught the ratings, hoping that they can hide behind due diligence. When the code is discovered, instead of taking responsibility, they run and hide. Remember, a lot of white collar folks would have been fine if they continued to follow procedures and fully admitted thier actions.
I hope the EFF does not take actions, unless it is on the side of abused game developers, who according to reports are underpaid and overworked, all so their bosses can get unauthorized bonuses.
One point he is correct. We are pretty sure there are virtual particles that pop in and out of existance, and by the nature of their existance they do may not add to the energy of the vacuum. These particles are created and destroyed around us all the time. They are so short lived that the universe "does not notice", in the heisenberg sense. OTOH, we also know that QM states minimum energy levels, and this might indicate a minimum energy of the universe. After all, waves are not localized, and thier energy presumable spreads throughout the cosmos. I believe most of this stuff has been at least suspected for most of my lifetime. How to interpret this stuff is the trick, because enchanted perfect particles and magical waves are not that confortable to physicists.
I was most disappointed becuase there are interesting questions. The energy of the vacuum is likely nonzero, and it seem pretty clear that if the energies are added you come up with a huge number, reminiscent of the Ultraviolet catastrophe. Likewise we have black holes, which form another disturbing infiintiy. And then we have the reemergence of the Eistein gravity hack. This does not even get into the wierd copenhagen interpretation of QM, most recently discussed in the FPS, a publication of the APS.
From what I can tell, most of this involves a bunch of old line physicist complaining about string theory, and there is nothing wrong with that as this is what old line physicists are supposed to do. But we always have had, and will continue to have, issues in the interpretation of our physical models. Instead of going around saying what we know, it seems more useful to look at where what we think we know does not mesh with the observables, and how that effects our assumption. Are constants constant? Do observations collaps waves in particles, or are the wave and particle one in the same? Is the universe one of three structures? These are why being a scientist is going to cool for the kids entering college today.
The bit you quoted says it all. Most of the content in question relates to a profit generating enterprise. In order to maximize that profit, the film has to be protected so as to promote a consistant image. For instance, if a francise has made money showing teats, then editing out those bits can do damage to the franchise. In spite of any warnings, the movie is still beng advertised as the original movie, and the editing company is still using the good reputation of the filmmaker to generate a profit for themselves.
And here is where the hypocrasy comes about, and all the whining fails. These editing companies are taking succesful films and reediting them arbitrarily. These editing company then are selling the movies primarily based on the repetation of the film producers and actors, and only secondarily on the basis of the editing. In effect by rediting the films instead of producing original content, these editors are acknowledging the good reputation of the filmmaker, and pocketing a pretty penny in the process.The only hipocrites here are the film editors that deny a reputation with one hand, while banking the profits of the reputation on the other.
Again it comes down to the fact that we own our own toys. If cleanflix or whoever wants to make the clean movies, the technology is there and it is no longer extremely expensive. Some like little home on the praire could be done for a very modest amount.
Looking over at cleanflix I just noticed something else. There is not even enough damand for them to make a DVD. They only sell semi-legal DVRs. Probably make nothing on the legal DVDs, but the china-grade DVRs are probably nearly all profit. Oops. I just notice that the orginal movies they sell are used. There you go. Making a killing off someone elses work. It should be a Dilbert strip.
For example, it was reputed that the shark skin suits of the past couple olympics were the reasons for new world records, though I have not seem any anylsis that showed the more records were set. Putting the suits on olympics swimmers, often with compensation, seems more a marketing thing than a performance thing. All attire options are about the same, so why not choose the option that will bring in a little cash. It is good investment for the company as consumers will see the product, percieve value, and be more willing to pay the offered price.
None of which proves the suit is a useful product. In fact when reading about the suits, the issue seems more about insuring the suit is not counterproductive rather than significantly improving on bare skin. In the past they have said things "like four percent impovement over the past model", and then cited all the deficiencies of the past model.
Certainly some people have so much money that they have everything they want, and then they start giving it away. The good ones don't make a big deal about it, but others just want to make into another trophy, saying how generous they are that they have given away all this money and are just left with a billion in property and a billion in cash. Somehow this is more interesting that the person who gives a few hundred dollars a year away and still manages to raise a family on $40,000 a year. And the fact that such donation are a clever way to insure thier hiers are cared for, without tax liabilities, just make the situation more humourous. This is not to say that the a person does not deserve the money he or she earns, just that it is not particularly generous to give away extremely excess income.
File systems will evolve, from flat, to heirachical, to who knows what, but in terms of MS Windows, and any other GUI based system, the underlaying storage format takes a back seat to the way the form at is visualized in the GUI. A flat file system is fine as long as the GUI represents it as organized. This is why some people say that MS hacks peices together. There is never a unified style of the system, and while it is true that modules should not have initmate knowledge of each other, it helps if the interfaces between the modules are customized to fit togeter as perfectly as possible.
In the end the new file system was just a marketing ploy, and the MS failure was not understanding how difficult the implementation would be, and, with the GUI interface, how unimporatant it ultimately was.
It is like all these meaningful parents feeding thier kids junk, buying them junk, not knowing any better because why would the government let stuff be sold to kids if it weren't safe? All these people buying SUVs, driving them inappropriately, and then complaining that they roll over. All these people smoking in the last 40 years, and now complaining they have been taken advantage of. The first reports on the harm of smoking were published in the 19th century folks. The list goes on. We have to hassle anyone named Muhamod for out own safety. We have to get rid of all guns for our own safety. We have to allow all conversations to be monitored for our own safety. God and his appointed prophets will save us, we don't need to think.
Any ad agency must judge it message for effectiveness not only with the norms of the target audience, but also the society. Yes if one looks at the world in terms of race the ad is racist. OTOH, if one is a racist, then the ad is very good. It shows an aryan person victimizing a black person. This for some people is a very good thing, and certainly for those people the ad says we share your values so buy our product. For other people, who do not think violence is a good way solve issues, it says don't buy our product.
So I must wonder what the message of the ad is, beyond just the colors of the boxen? I do not assume that Sony is trying to market to the those who wish the aryan race to gain control of the US. It is possible they think this is shocking and will get people to see thier logo. It is possible they are taunting Hillary Clinton, though that would be an unwise thing to do. In the end this is like a beer commercial. Interesting on some level to post-adolescent youth, but disturbing to everyone else.
If such a standard is not used, then why should I put myself at risk and use a product? If I am going to be hassled, when I have followed all procedures, what motivation do I have to follow legitimate procedures. If I am going to have trouble no matter what I do, why shouldn't I just buy a license out of the back of car.
This is why the WGA, and BSA audits, are so stupid. If the vendors are forging certificates, then MS should go after the vendor. If a consumer has a issue, then perhpas some action is justified as long as it is not a fishing expedition. But there is no reason that I, as a paying customer, should be regularly hassled becuase a manufacturer has set up unwidely guidlines.
No, if it were simple to do, someone would have done it. What is protecting the mac is that the MS Windows is not the softer target. What is also protecting the Mac is that probably the average script kiddie does not have a mac, much less a script to attack the mac. Remember, you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have outrun your friend.
What MS is doing here is the same thing it did with the PCs in the late 80s. It is bringing up the danger of single source vending, e.g. everthing comes from Apple, while brushing over the single source software, i.e. everything software come from MS. Even though one may have some buffer in that one has choices in hardware, there is still much pain cuased by the fact that MS ultimately control your fate, in much the same way that Apple does.
But there is a greater problem that is overlooked. Play for sure does not seem to be a fixed playing field like fairplay is. Each vendor, each manufacturer, each label, each artist can set limits on what can be done to the music. For example, we might find that it can only be downloaded to one device, or burned to a single backup in WMP format only, or not shared. Perhaps when MS updates the OS, the music files will not validate until the user has a legal copy of the updated OS. I am not try to spread FUD, just saying we do not know what the MS device will do becuase it does not exist, nor do we know what MS will do if it gets the 80% market share. All we know it what it has in the past.
Historical revisionism. The iPod was originally introduced as a Mac only device. Many macs had USB 1.0, which was next to useless, but all macs since around 1999 had Firewire, which is full 400 Mbs, without the complex slave/master thing which can slow stuff down, especially the was it appears to implemented on the Mac. Also firewire daisy chains so there is no need for a hub. At that time USB was slow. Very slow. Beleive me, I had to transfer stuff USB for my old Nomad. It was not fun even for just 64 MB.
Now that nearly all machines less than 3 years old has hi-speed USB 2.0, and Apple is selling to Windows users, the iPods are mostly just USB devices. Sucks for those of us with old Macs, but those are the breaks.
In terms of what we expect from the MS, I suspect it will be the same as what came from Sony, and what Apple tries to do on the shuffle, and perhaps the Nano(I do not have one of these). That is all tracks will probably be converted to play for sure format, unless the user specifically asks not to. Therefore most will have encrypted tracks on the device, even if the originals are not. This then means that it will be harder to hack the device to retrieve the tracks.
I am not saying that spelling is not important. I am not even saying that memorizing rules are not important. There is some creativity involved in applying known rules to solve new situations, for example how to spell a novel word. But in some sense many of these words have even outlived thier historical usefullness, and lead to unnecesary confusion, confusion that could be used to teach some contempory fact.
For example, we have the word through. Some might argue that the modern spelling thru is terrible, but why is it wrong? In point of fact, pronouncing 'through' as 'thu' is the incorrect usage, and as such it can be effectively argued that spelling it as 'thru' makes great sense.
I am all over the idea that we should be getting our physical activity doing meaningful tasks, like planting food that we can then eat instead of the food stuffs that we are expected to eat. But to me the issue is not what we have lost, but how we adapt. We have standard american spelling, and we have machines that can help us perfect, and we even as we misspell we can still communicate. Therefore going through the trouble to simplify the english spelling, and losing a history in the process, seems a bit of a waste of time. After all we have significantly corrupted english to fit our American needs, already causing great confusion. Why do we wish to make it worse?
Second, I have never though of being the child as a preacher as a necessary asset. A preacher asks for money in the name of god, not for the value of a direct service or product. There was a time when this was ok, like for a King or a Lord or something, where the sefs starved while one sat in a guilded highrise. But America now mostly knows that work is what brings wealth, and there is no cosmic cash machine. However, if one is raised on the principle of entitlement, then one might do anything to insure that entitlement.
Third, independent persons with knowledge knew Enron was bad juju. I myself was told by those in the know to stay away. It was not just that Enron was encoraging staff to buy Enron stock, almost every company was guilty of that practice. It was not just that Enron was booking and paying commission on sales that generated not positive cashflow. Again, that was a standard dot com practice. Rather, it was the products made no sense and there was no core direction. As was suspected before the fact, and known after, the products were shills of productivity.
In the end Ken Lay was nothing special except for his cluelessness and lack of humility. Many people realized he was simply incompetent, and would have accepted a statement of responsibility and an apology. Rather, he his behind technicalities and avoided the responsiblities that were ultimately his as the head of the enterprise.
So, it is arguable that our freedoms have always been under attack both from within and without, that is by domestic terrorist, non-domestic terrorist, and corrupt government officials. All these persons wish to limit out freedoms for various reasons, but in the end to maximize personal power.
There were probably dozens of programs on the table that would not fly pre-9/11. For example, number of reports indicate that Bush and others worked out a plan to invade Iraq, even before bush was elected. What 9/11 acheived, to the terrorists delight, was create a political climate in which the protections fo the constitution could be roled back, and Bush could be the closest thing to a dictator that we ever had. Remember, he is claiming the right to do anything to prisoners, even without the consent of congress. The way he is treating prisoners seems very much like the spanish inquisition.
And the terrosists are happy. The operations in Iraw are giving them first hand experience in how to dispatch the US. All of our tricks and technology are continously thwarted not only by terrorist ingenuity, but American selfishness. Whose idea was it to use a civilian unarmored transport as a military carrier, when a military carrier was available, and then hack armour on the military carrier which makes it so unstable as to put the gunman at extreme risk. Iraq has shown the terrorist our vunerabilities. Instead of fixes the vunerabilities, the admistration has gone to full blown security through obscurity and threatened the media. There again we have a freedom being threatened that government wishes they could control.
In the end we have officials that are greedy and want to cut coners. Most of the time we can keep them in check, and for the most part we are keeping them in check. Lay who only wants white people to have a vote is in deep trouble. The problem is we now have an opening, due to a president that truly believes big governement is answer, just look a the budget, the added department of homeland security, the added security forces,. and the people cannot be trusted.
On a more serious note, if Google does not solve the link farm problem soon, like before vista and MS IE 7 are desployed with special 'features' meant to break google, then MSN may see some serious growth. At this point Google is becoming a bit too much of an oneline ad broker, and too little of online service provider. On all but the most mundane searches, I hardly expect to get more than one real result, often in the middle of the page.
What has changed is that there are enough problems so that MS IE is no longer the best web browser, and I would argue that it was never the best web browser, becuae it never played well nor failed gracefully in the general web environment. I say this as a person that started on Mosaic, moved to netscape, then Opera, then Camino. I only use IE for certain 'safe' spaces that require IE. Except in few cases, I generally do not give my money to companies that write only for IE, because if they can't write an a page that works in any broweser, how responsible can they be. For instance, Amazon has always worked in anything I can throw at it.
So, in the sense that most people were introduced to the web on MS IE, and most people think the web is MS IE, and most people need at least one MS IE specific web site, and most people are not going to understand that they need one browser for an application front in used when browsing safe sites, and another for the general web, then in this sense MS IE has been, is, and probably will continue to be the best browser. Especially since most people think that at one time it was the best, and wrote borked code to run with it.
Therefore it seems to me a major part of the analyst job is at least to smell check the numbers released a firm, and in reality to generate independent data on major products services. Instead of complaining that Apple is not releasing profit margins, any analyst should be celebrating that Apple is now using mostly off the shelf compenants with widely known acquisition and integration costs. Furthermore, manufacturing costs should not be impossible as these seem to be also widely known in the competative market.
As far as the markets, Apple has for a long time produced solutions. They produced a solution for graphic artists, a solution for home users, etc. This is why the fact that the mac was closed was not a big issue. When one bought a mac, it was a solution. Now apple has found some success with music and video solutions. It is not new becuae it is applying integrated technology, both hardware and software, to solve a problem. Some analyst get confused about solutions becuase they have been raised with MS philosophy of suppling components that others will turn into solutions. Compenents work for some people, but most of us buy a completed car, a completed refrigerator, a completed TV, and don't expect the manufacturer to deny responsibility because a component is made elsewhere.
The only thing that has changed is that computing technology has become consumer technology, not the Apple has all of the sudden become a consumer technology company.
So I think Apple is screwing themselves by combining the consumer and pro brand into 'MacBook'. All the quality problems, which are to be expected for a machine that is designed to a low pricepoint, are going to infect the pro line. We even see this with the iPod. The Nano, which was clearly designed to cheap and accessible, does not have the ruggedness of the original machines. I would like to see even more differentiation in brand so we don't have all the headline 'MacBook is a piece of crap, Apple doesn't support.'
This is another reason to hope that we have a creative *nix laptop in the next few years, a fully intergrated solution, not just hacked together like most of the MS and x86 stuff is. Perhaps Sun will become the new boutique of useful computing.
But really banks have been compromising customer security to maximize profits for years. For instance, banks will license thier logo to third parties for advertisements purposes. When one calls the bank and ask about this, they say they have nothing to do with it. Well, does that mean the third party is illigally using your logo and my information?
The only thing that has saved these institution is the US federal mail fraud laws and the cost of postage. I could have 20 years ago sent an official looking mail from some bank to 10,000 people saying they had to reactivate the account, along with a bogus 800 number. The scam would have probably netted 1 hit in 10,000, but it would have cost at leat $10,000 to run, and the feds would have been on my ass.
Financial instutions were slow to realize the security issues, and still want to maximize profit more than anything else. The current issue with phisshing is just a symptom of the general lack of consideration form the customer, which is really our fault. How many of us pay for bank service? We are really exchanging our willing to see advertising in exchange for a service, and so I guess we really can't complian about the situation. There are still problems, like banks losing data about customers that have not been with them for a couple years.
In the end, this just ruins it for everyone that is not abusing the alcohol, all so that some guy can say to his friends 'look at me, I'm a badass, I breakin' the law, and no one can do anything to me!"
I am not saying that 18-20 year olds drinking and carousing is a good thing. But when these pictures are so in the public, and the half of public that never graduated college feel like the kids are just playing around, often at taxpayer expense, that just leads to letters to congress urging for the crackdown of underage drinking. Perhaps it will even lead to the wide perception that college is just party time, and grants might be cut and interest rates for student loans might be raised, because why should some hard working person subsidize drunk kids, especailly when the average person was never able to have that subsidized experience.
There was a time when kids were more free, but it only takes one greedy/lazy/whiny/selffish kid to ruin it for everyone. For the most part, this is what I see some of the posters at facebook doing. Taking a creative outlet,, which should be avaiable to everyone, and can provide a same place for expression, and ruining it. The sad thing is instead of blaming th students whose behavior has forfieted the privilege, they blame the school. This might have flown in high school, but, as so many people have pointed out, adults can be held responsible for thier actions. Perhpas this is a an argument against the commoditization of th college education.
No matter where one stands, it is clear that MS considers MS windows to be it's private property, which is reasonable, and only wishes others to interact with it under very controlled circumstances. The problem is that this is like leasing a location to open a firm, but knowing that at any minute the lease could be terminated.
Many defenders of MS say that the API problems comes about merely because MS has never mapped all the APIs, and the damage to third party software is unintentional. Given the problems with MS vista, I am willing to believe that MS has a completely borked development process. OTOH, given the wonderful books that have come out of MS, especially the Mac division, I also believe that MS has the ability to do better. Therefore, this EU ruling should be seen as a good thing. If it forces MS to clean up it's engineering, that will only be a benifit to MS and it's customers. The APIs can then be released to the public as the standards tha MS wants then to be.
Um, perhaps because it is easeir to plagerize papers using the internet? But seriously, one could consider research for papers, help with math and science papers. Most universities, perhaps you haven't been in one recently, pay for a large number of resources, that are really quite expensive, to thier students and faculty.
Of course, it may be that millions of dollars of infrastructure and millions in connections fees are what is neccesary for the modern college student to get a date. I just had to ask the babe that sat next to me in Calculus.
To be more serious, I understand that this ban has more to do with public image, and could be construed as censorship. But think of ti this way. The average athelete is on scholarship, which mean he or she is there at the whim of the university and those alumni that donate to the university. If, due to something posted on the net, such funds become unavailable or the students freedom becomes compromised, then the student does not get an education. We all know that adolescents and young adult do silly things, and none of us really want to impose any significant consequences for the most of the silly things kids do. The minor things are often best handled in house in such a way that boundries are enforced, but the future of the student is not compromised. It may seem funny to post teammates drinking, or in drag, or pretending to commit some felony, but in the competitive world of althletics, where perhaps 1:500 gets into college ball, and 1:2000 gets into pro ball, such actions may not be insignificant.
And think of it another way. When one enters college, escpecially on an scholarship, and especially on an athelitic scholar ship, one is asking the college to help guide you to a hopefully more promising future. A significant number of freedoms and rights are given away. Unlike other 18 year olds, you are in class and studying, instead of working at starbucks for 8 hours then coming to you apartements and doing nothing. The college students has any number of people using thier experience to navigate a specific educational journey, even though it is theorectically possible to navigate that same path using free resources. In other words, the student is attending the university to help insure a specific outcome, and has accepted some limitations to achieve that outcome.
To put it simpler, if facebook is so important, an athelete could gain an education and even break into the majors without a university. It is not impossible to his the minors and work the ladder to the majors. But if one wants a univeristy degree, or wants the NCAA help, then one should have a little trust in the people in charge. If there is no trust, then why go to that school? If the school is so corrupt, then why accept the tainted money?
Such an assertion not only implies the death of bussiness 2.0, but every other publications that is primarily a source of old news and punditry.
We have three space shuttles, all have flown over 20 missions, and are much over 10 years old. This is all the hardware we have for manned space travel. We have to use it for Hubble, ISS, and whatever else we need to build or fix. I hope that any decision concerning missions will wiegh the risk of losing another vehicle much more that the loss of the Hubble, or even the completion of ISS. While the hubble is extremely useful, and has provided a large data set to help answer some very basic questions, it is not worth the a premature ending to manned space exploration.
So unless we see much better that expected results this summer, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that we will use the remaining fleet sparingly and that Hubble is going to limp along past 2008. It is my hope it can survive. If it doesn't, I hope we will have a larger launch vehicle in the future so that the next telescope can have larger mirrors.