Re:He was a philosopher, not a physicist.
on
The Unknown Newton
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The world is truly facinating place. Not only because it exists at all, but also because there are so many wonderful mysteries and miricles. The truly curious person is not going to be limited by a job title or degree. So there is no back in the day. There is only curiosity and the desire and ability to infer, the confirm, conclusions from a limited set of facts.
Einstein was a natural philosopher. Feynman was a natural philosopher. In twenty years, hopefully, the current set of great scientist will be knowns as philosophers.
The mere scientist is a well educated technician who knows how to write grants and execute experiments using generally accepted methodologies. Natural philosopher has the additional skill of looking at equations and seeing that something is amiss, not because the equations are wrong, but because the equations look 'ugly' These people also have the ability to see interesting things while playing by a pool, or in the desert, or simply walking their dog, and realizing that the interesting thing might be important enough to study.
The reason that this might matter is the same reason that google is perceived as a more reliable source of information that Yahoo or MSN.
Unlike MSN, and to a lesser extent Yahoo, Google is a primarily a search engine. It will provide a list of results based on the user query. The results will be ordered based on a predetermined method or ranking that attempts to put 'top ranked' results at top. Because Google's purpose appears to be to serve users, and not cross promote other corporate assets, users will tend to believe the results are relevant to their queries. It is true that outside sources try to manipulate the results, but that is not intentional manipulation by Google. All ads are marked, and manipulation generally obvious.
All this is idealized, but the issue remains. MSN, like most MS products, do not primarily focus on providing customer service. While all MS products provide a generally useful service, they are all have reduced usefulness because an equal priority of the product is to cross promote MS goods and services.
Why is MSN behind google? Most would say simplicity. Most of the public doesn't understand simplicity. What they understand is trust, and google, due to it's lack of inherent corporate conflicts of interest, has trust. This bit of shenanigans just reinforces MS lack of credibility.
Google search results are not as good as they used to be. There is plenty of room for improvement, and therefore an opportunity for MS to compete. However, a better search engine may not be profitable. Clearly profit is not a currently a major concern for MS, however it may make improvements less likely.
Take Yahoo for example. A year ago they had what I think was the best product search. The redesign, which made paid placement more prominent. This reduced the overall usefulness of the sight, but probably increased revenue to Yahoo. This should have meant the Froogle would have an opening, but Google has yet to match even the reduced functionality of Yahoo. The likely cause is the lack of profit opportunities.
This is not the time of Altavista, where a technology rules. Any search engine is going to have to compete in term of revenue and functionality. MS traditionally has been reluctant to forgo revenue for the sake of usability.
Class warfare plays well to capitalist types as well. Look at the Republican commercials over the years. The are laden with class demagoguery.
Of course, since the courts of the land has deemed MS to a monopoly, there is little relation between MS and the free market. Unless, of course, you don't believe in law and order. In which case I must assume you are a democrat or a socialist or a communist. Just joking.
But seriously, the issue is that a few people with a bunch of money is not free market or capitalism or democracy. People must have money to buy stuff for a free market consumer economy to function. Extending easy credit just goes so far. At some point sacrifices have to be made at the top to insure that everyone can buy stuff. After all, the a single wealthy can only buy so much stuff. A million poor people allowed to earn a few extra dollars is going to buy quite a bit more stuff. This might mean that the weathly can no longer own people, but that went out of style years ago.
I've mentioned this before. I am waiting for apple to come out with a catagory defying phone. No speaker or mic. No keyboard. WiFi and bluetooth and firewire built in. Just an iPod like setup and bluetooth headset. Optional accesories like the iPod. Wireless connectivity to.Mac for automagic calendar and address book update.
Cell phones are really getting annoying. I want to make a call and preferably not have to use the useless keypad to enter info. The fact that no one has done this yet just speaks to the lack of creativity in the sector. It is this lack of creativity, and the useles bloat, that is causing the sector to go zero profit.
What kind of really bad trip are you on. At least I hope it is a trip because such lack of insightfulness indicates a need for profesional help.
/. is not specifically a scoops site. It is not a breaking news site. It is a news consolidation site. Almost all news is old, at least in internet time. The fact that you happened to have read a story prior to the appearance on/. is of no interest. Most stories are old to any reasonable widely read person. The value added on/. is the energetic discussion which often provides interesting if flawed analysis. This in fact is done faster and better than many popular magazines.
The reality is that most of us have very important adult things to do and cannot read every site, every journal, and every paper that is pertinent to out lives. So we rely on a service such as/. to bring us the highlights. Mature people know this is a useful service, and some random or arbitrary judgments are necessary, so we do not complain much about the occasional slip up. In particular we are not so juvenile as to complain about something that is arguable not even part of the site responsibilities.
Turning off the TV is what everyone wants to prevent.
TV is the perfect medium. It passively places the rabble in a harmless state without the negative effects of other methods such as alcohol. Such pacification is a critical part of social control.
TV allows the elite to clearly define the norms and customs of said rabble and set the appropriate expectations. This means that every person in America knows that he or she must consume. It means that every person in America has a common cultural basis.
TV clearly presents people in similar economic and social situations as the rabble, but with better stuff. This implies that the lack of stuff is caused by some personal defect, and not the fact that your job pays nothing. Friends was brilliant in this regard, convincing gullible young adults that life is good and good things could be had even if the means to pay for them was non existent
Remember that the one mistake Bradbury made in Fahrenheit 451 was the notion that we would need walls of TVs for social control. We now know that a single set will do the job. We now have confirmation that people will go into debt to acquire this means of social control.
In An Incomplete Guide to the Art of Discovery Oliver addresses this notion of "ideology of adventure." His basic premise is that WWII took a generation of men who otherwise would have sat relatively idly in their towns and on their farms and exposed them to a broader world. While it may have been unfortunate that it was a war that caused this to happen, his notion is that these men then went out and became explorers. In the process of going to places that no one else had been, they discovered great things, such as the novel theory of plate tectonics.
I am in quite a bit of agreement with this thesis. Knowledge is gained not only in the act of exploration, but also in the development of the tools we need to explore. Such exploration is dangerous and often unpleasant. Many of us are not up to the task. However, personal exploration is the one thing that defines us as people of action instead of wussies that would do anything, including cheating, to avoid action, and then lie about the fact that we instead chose to live our life in a drug induced stupor safely protected under our parents control.
This of course does not mean that everyone of us has to go out there and risk our life to discover novel information. Just that we should all realize it as a fundamental task done in exchange for the gifts we have all been given.
If you really want to get paranoid, the more likely situation is this. The US releases a product that is purported to be effective at identifying manipulated photographs. This method works on all photographs manipulated using commonly available technologies. The product is widely available so that independent parties can run thier own test.
The US releases a photo, say of nukes in Iraq or Michael Moore molesting a child, and allows any interested party to examine it. The photo passes all test at authenticity, including that of the said product. The photo is reported as passing the test, and therefore could be authentic. Fox news reports the photo as 100% authentic beyond any question.
Re:Even if it's user error...
on
Are You Annoying?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I will one step further. The humans in the process are able to be retrained or terminated. But another part of the process is available resources and human vagaries. For example, there may be no resources for training or replacement with more qualified humans. Likewise, the process may not allow particular humans to be terminated, either because of real or perceived value.
Now, the help desk people generally do not have the personal or company resources to adjust the processes to accommodate the available humans. However, there are many people in every organization who do have these resources, and yet do nothing. They sit at their expensive desks jacking off and shopping instead of finding creative solutions to quality and user interface issues. They blame the wage slaves and customers for not precisely following their half assed implementation of a process. They waste company resources by making expensive wage slave replacement a part of the process. I have seen both sides of this, so I am not talking from theory.
So, if you see a problem, and cannot fix it yourself, document the problem, think of a solution, and don't just blame the people calling you.
He is also a leader in philanthropy. And not like the robber barons or Bill Gates. He was giving money before the current round of philanthropy became fashionable, and continues to give even though his stock has tanked. He doesn't make a big deal about much of his giving.
Just because he is media doesn't mean that he represents the sickness that is sucking this country dry. Back in the day the robber barons has pissing contents with houses and wives and congress hos. Now it is yachts and starlets and congress hos. He has yachts, but also give a billion to the UN.
Now many would say that this is simply self interest, not enlighten self interest. And most conservatives hate his priorities. But that is just politics, and has little to do with this country's need for diverse media outlets, which is basic do democracy, with a small d.
This would be very easy to do. In proper coding presentation is seperate from data, knowledge is in one well known location, functionality is discrete with high module independence.
MS should, and at one time did, do a fairly good job modeling these ideals. Now with IE integrated into the OS, the GUI designer of Visual Studio encouraging random and duplicate placement of knowledge, that has all gone away.
For instance, the recent issues that appeared in Mozilla and MSN and Word, but not IE, indicates that MS may not have a properly defined place for security protocol knowledge. A small thing, but when the small things are done right the big things are much easier.
One also questions with all thier fancy visual development tools, whether anything interesting has been done to automatically implement regressiont testing, something which probably would have detected the error before going live.
I just finished watching the commentary on Once Upon a Time in Mexico by Robert Rodriguez, which was really just a 100 minute rant on how much film cameras suck, and how great digital cameras are. He is clearly not a film maker that feels the texture and grain of film justifies the additional complications. The art form is not in the processing of film. He might have a point since he did the shoot in seven weeks. It is also interesting that the movie seems to be all practical shots.
So this is my question to those of you that do film. Is film really that much more complicated. Are we going to lose and gain as much as when we moved from black and white to color stock? I look at the old movies and the lack of color seemed to force a creativity, just like the lack of simple fx seems to force more creative solutions. Can some of the artistic manipulation done with film be done with digital, or does it matter? For digital fx, clearly digital is better, but for practical shots?
I have no idea how to shoot a film, and barely can shoot a picture, but am curious about the art form.
Windows update is not that simple. It requires some level of user knowledge. The promotional updates are mixed with the critical updates. This has gotten better, but it used to make the process more difficult than neccesary. Likewise, at certain times update would not be installed but would be reported as installed.
It has been only recently that MS has dutifully limited critical updates to security and implemented the process into the OS, a la Apple Software Update.
What apes break these phones. I am the most ruthless mobile device owner I know. I have broken portable computers, PDA, Walkmans, MP3 players, mostly within the first year or two. Most of my working equipment has nicks all over it where I have dropped the device.
OTOH, my startac, maybe three years old, is mechanically in very good condition. I had to replace my original because it got water in it and rusted the electronics. It may be that new phones are not as durable, but that is true across the board.
Frankly I would be terribly afraid to carry around those long thin phones. I think it would be very easy to accidently develop enough torque at the midpoint to snap it. Even more silly are those phones that have a bulge for the antennae.
Also, I have no need to pay for such overengineering. My temper is well under control, i stay away from psychos, and if I want at attack someone i live in a state where i can carry gadgets made for such a purpose.
This stuff is partially the fault of the big companies. In this case MS has been harking on users for years that they must update computer the minute patches come out. They harangued customers that did not properly update machines, blaming such customers for all problems. However, they have only recently given consumers the tools needed to easily update their machines, and then only if the customer has broadband. This left a wide hole for someone else to exploit the fear. Fear that was created because MS chose to blame customers. This was especially true when update were erratic and most more common that today. The design on Windows led to the exploits. All MS had to do is take a bit more responsibility for their design decisions.
I have noticed this with bank websites as well. When online banking first grew big, I got an email survey that asked for personal information and led me to a third party site. I asked the bank if the survey was legit and they said it was. More recently the bank started letting users log in from an unsecured home page. Passwords seem to be protected, but we now have introduced a system in which users are accustomed to submitted sensitive information on unsecured pages. This habit can only benefit the crooks. I mean the latest exploit, involving ads on bank pages, should have been identified early as a security risk. I guess the risk to customer was less than the greed of the banks.
Just to clarify, there is quite a bit of evidence that drug laws came about because of race and class issues. Look at which drugs were originally criminalized, and what kind of penalties are currently enforced, not to mention how they are enforced. Also look at licensing issues on types of alcohol
One of the most interesting example, at least in the U.S., was the ban on the smoking of opium. Opium was still widely and legally available, but smoking, a habit favored by chinese immigrants, was criminalized
Perhaps because the people who make bad music are best qualified to pass judgement on bad music.
Just kidding. TMBG isn't my style of music, but that does mean it is bad. One thing to note. If one is selling music, then the definition of good or bad is whether the target audience buys the music. Therefore, making music that people are not willing to pay for is pretty much an indication of the music being bad. Entertainment is all about branding, and making people think the brand in worth hard cash. Now, if you are doing "art", the situation is different.
These two things are not the same. The morality you mention is going to cost consumer more money and only help labor. While it is moral to minimize the oppresion of labor, it has nothing to with MS.
MS has a marketing problem. There are other products that do basically the same thing that cost much less. Increasingly, MS is depending on it's branding to justify significantly higher prices. Unfortunately the brand has suffere some serious setbacks and in many cases is no longer percieved to be customer centered. To wit, Sony, ignoring the DRM crippled music for the moment, has provided products that seem to be customer centered, while MS has generally provided products that put MS needs in front of the customer. In an ideal world, corporate and customer needs will be alligned, but this is not generally the case for MS.
Therefore, MS is losing customer trust. xbox does not sell because few trust MS to deliver customer centered games. If they follow the Windows path, the primary purpose will be to artificially lock customers into MS, not provde a good user experience.
Many people consider MS a good value, and willingly give money for the privilage of using thier products. You believe the value is better than the compition, in the same way that an average person believes a Nike shoe is better values than a no name costing 80% less. That is marketing. Nothing more, nothing less.
It is not rocket science. The number of people who have successfully put a person into space(not LEO), is relatively small, even though the technology is over a generation old. The same is not true for software.
Note that most security bugs do not involve the implementation of the web specific area of the browser, i.e. the rendering, but the more basic technologies, such as connected. These technologies is web browsers are not quite so old, but many people have used them to create many secure network connected devices. There are best practices of programming, and one ignores them at ones own risk.
It is above all a design issue. For instance, I believe, the Germans, interested in security of passenger cars, do not allow cup holders and demand first aid kits in the cars. In the US, OTOH, the number of cupholder we demand in cars approach infinity. Do we design to uninformed end users, or impose a requirement that the user pay attention rather than enabling a compulsive eating disorder.
For those of you who are young, or perhaps never watched PBS, you have no understanding of the cultural freedoms we used to enjoy. PBS was allowed this freedom because the hicks, red necks, and vengeful religious fanatics did not watch it. Even more amazing, in the best US traditions of freedom of speech and religion, these people tended to leave PBS alone.
Then, one day, the fanatics and freaks got control of congress. They complained about money being spent on the PBS and said it was used to promote non-US values. They insisted that the US was a Christian country, which is news to the Jews and Muslims and Buddhist and Atheists and Taoists and you get the idea, and proceeded to gut the funding for PBS and used the money to increase funding to their personal religious projects.
Now, for many, the fact that PBS no longer has cultural freedom is a small thing. One might think it means that a word can't be said, or a breast can't be shown, or certain political conversations cannot occur. Many would cheer the day when we no longer had to hear about Mrs. Slocombe's pussy. But, as someone that was, as we say, raised on TV, and particularly on PBS, I can tell you the change is chilling. PBS is one place for a kid stuck in the inner city to attain a wider culture, a sense that the world is more than the streets. I consider this good, but clearly many think inner city kids are just another brick on the wall, and need no more culture than what is needed to die in a the street or a war, or, perhaps, to slave away on an assembly line.
Everyone was good until the pompous assholes starting imposing their beliefs on everyone.
My understanding is that if a premium is given in exchange for a donation, the premium has a fair market values (FMV) associated with it. The donor may deduct the value of the donation minus the FMV. Therefore, if the donation is in the form of a sale, the difference will reasonable be zero, which will also be the allowed deduction. IANATA, This is just a guess.
The nice thing is that complaining to customer service costs the cell company money. I think that the spam problem is being attacked not because of bandwidth concerns, which the customer pays for, but because of the cost of providing customer service.
I suspect if 50% of customer service costs were attributed to unsolicited commercial SMS, something would get done.
Formal education can only do so much. The great scientists are able to look for the areas of the world which we have not fully explored, and then, without prejudice, collect data or create models in such a way as to support refute existing theories. All this must be done in a logical, auditable, and repeatable manner.
I think in America we are losing this sense of adventure. I hear more people espousing their beliefs and superstitions as if it were The Truth. They are afraid of exploration and the unknown. Modern science does not exist to confirm personal beliefs any more that the CIA exists to promote political agendas. Both are there to discover what is, in a significantly tangible way, real about the world. Reality is often hard for us to understand and accept, but we are much better off when we have some assurance that we are close to the truth. The past few hundred years have shown one of the most reliable processes to get close to the truth is the scientific method.
But we have a few religious nuts afraid of anything that will contradict their carefully crafted fiction. These people subvert the educational process and teach our kids that the scientific method is wrong. Make no mistake. If one claims evolution is wrong on the basis of scripture, if one claims that the earth is a few thousand years old on the basis of scripture, if on claims that one can go from an a priori truth, construct a data set that fit those facts, and then claim that is science, then one is so wrong as to be the greatest enemy of science, progress, and even the free market.
When one makes these fantastic claims, that everything that does not fit your reality is wrong, even if a process that has proved successful for hundreds of years says it is correct, a thing called cognitive dissidence is set up in the mind of a child. I believe this often leads to the child falling on the side of superstition, and a scientist is lost. I believe that a whole generation of American scientists have been lost to this attack on science. An attack based on the assumption that it is preferable to get an MBA and oppress a workforce for personal profit, but not ok to challenge ancient superstitions for the sole betterment of the human race.
Let me state I am not anti-religion. I am quite for it and have seen organized religion to a great many wonderful things. I am, however, against the use of religion, or anything else for that matter, solely for the purpose of personal gain, and without respect of what it does to other people. Certainly Christianity tells us not to harm others, that the truth will set us free, and in the example of Jesus, that personal sacrifice is not only expected but necessary.
God may not play dice, but I am thankful every day for the quantum wells that make my life so much more convenient than my parent's.
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Einstein was a natural philosopher. Feynman was a natural philosopher. In twenty years, hopefully, the current set of great scientist will be knowns as philosophers.
The mere scientist is a well educated technician who knows how to write grants and execute experiments using generally accepted methodologies. Natural philosopher has the additional skill of looking at equations and seeing that something is amiss, not because the equations are wrong, but because the equations look 'ugly' These people also have the ability to see interesting things while playing by a pool, or in the desert, or simply walking their dog, and realizing that the interesting thing might be important enough to study.
Unlike MSN, and to a lesser extent Yahoo, Google is a primarily a search engine. It will provide a list of results based on the user query. The results will be ordered based on a predetermined method or ranking that attempts to put 'top ranked' results at top. Because Google's purpose appears to be to serve users, and not cross promote other corporate assets, users will tend to believe the results are relevant to their queries. It is true that outside sources try to manipulate the results, but that is not intentional manipulation by Google. All ads are marked, and manipulation generally obvious.
All this is idealized, but the issue remains. MSN, like most MS products, do not primarily focus on providing customer service. While all MS products provide a generally useful service, they are all have reduced usefulness because an equal priority of the product is to cross promote MS goods and services.
Why is MSN behind google? Most would say simplicity. Most of the public doesn't understand simplicity. What they understand is trust, and google, due to it's lack of inherent corporate conflicts of interest, has trust. This bit of shenanigans just reinforces MS lack of credibility.
Take Yahoo for example. A year ago they had what I think was the best product search. The redesign, which made paid placement more prominent. This reduced the overall usefulness of the sight, but probably increased revenue to Yahoo. This should have meant the Froogle would have an opening, but Google has yet to match even the reduced functionality of Yahoo. The likely cause is the lack of profit opportunities.
This is not the time of Altavista, where a technology rules. Any search engine is going to have to compete in term of revenue and functionality. MS traditionally has been reluctant to forgo revenue for the sake of usability.
Of course, since the courts of the land has deemed MS to a monopoly, there is little relation between MS and the free market. Unless, of course, you don't believe in law and order. In which case I must assume you are a democrat or a socialist or a communist. Just joking.
But seriously, the issue is that a few people with a bunch of money is not free market or capitalism or democracy. People must have money to buy stuff for a free market consumer economy to function. Extending easy credit just goes so far. At some point sacrifices have to be made at the top to insure that everyone can buy stuff. After all, the a single wealthy can only buy so much stuff. A million poor people allowed to earn a few extra dollars is going to buy quite a bit more stuff. This might mean that the weathly can no longer own people, but that went out of style years ago.
Cell phones are really getting annoying. I want to make a call and preferably not have to use the useless keypad to enter info. The fact that no one has done this yet just speaks to the lack of creativity in the sector. It is this lack of creativity, and the useles bloat, that is causing the sector to go zero profit.
The reality is that most of us have very important adult things to do and cannot read every site, every journal, and every paper that is pertinent to out lives. So we rely on a service such as /. to bring us the highlights. Mature people know this is a useful service, and some random or arbitrary judgments are necessary, so we do not complain much about the occasional slip up. In particular we are not so juvenile as to complain about something that is arguable not even part of the site responsibilities.
TV is the perfect medium. It passively places the rabble in a harmless state without the negative effects of other methods such as alcohol. Such pacification is a critical part of social control.
TV allows the elite to clearly define the norms and customs of said rabble and set the appropriate expectations. This means that every person in America knows that he or she must consume. It means that every person in America has a common cultural basis.
TV clearly presents people in similar economic and social situations as the rabble, but with better stuff. This implies that the lack of stuff is caused by some personal defect, and not the fact that your job pays nothing. Friends was brilliant in this regard, convincing gullible young adults that life is good and good things could be had even if the means to pay for them was non existent
Remember that the one mistake Bradbury made in Fahrenheit 451 was the notion that we would need walls of TVs for social control. We now know that a single set will do the job. We now have confirmation that people will go into debt to acquire this means of social control.
I am in quite a bit of agreement with this thesis. Knowledge is gained not only in the act of exploration, but also in the development of the tools we need to explore. Such exploration is dangerous and often unpleasant. Many of us are not up to the task. However, personal exploration is the one thing that defines us as people of action instead of wussies that would do anything, including cheating, to avoid action, and then lie about the fact that we instead chose to live our life in a drug induced stupor safely protected under our parents control.
This of course does not mean that everyone of us has to go out there and risk our life to discover novel information. Just that we should all realize it as a fundamental task done in exchange for the gifts we have all been given.
The US releases a photo, say of nukes in Iraq or Michael Moore molesting a child, and allows any interested party to examine it. The photo passes all test at authenticity, including that of the said product. The photo is reported as passing the test, and therefore could be authentic. Fox news reports the photo as 100% authentic beyond any question.
Now, the help desk people generally do not have the personal or company resources to adjust the processes to accommodate the available humans. However, there are many people in every organization who do have these resources, and yet do nothing. They sit at their expensive desks jacking off and shopping instead of finding creative solutions to quality and user interface issues. They blame the wage slaves and customers for not precisely following their half assed implementation of a process. They waste company resources by making expensive wage slave replacement a part of the process. I have seen both sides of this, so I am not talking from theory.
So, if you see a problem, and cannot fix it yourself, document the problem, think of a solution, and don't just blame the people calling you.
Just because he is media doesn't mean that he represents the sickness that is sucking this country dry. Back in the day the robber barons has pissing contents with houses and wives and congress hos. Now it is yachts and starlets and congress hos. He has yachts, but also give a billion to the UN.
Now many would say that this is simply self interest, not enlighten self interest. And most conservatives hate his priorities. But that is just politics, and has little to do with this country's need for diverse media outlets, which is basic do democracy, with a small d.
MS should, and at one time did, do a fairly good job modeling these ideals. Now with IE integrated into the OS, the GUI designer of Visual Studio encouraging random and duplicate placement of knowledge, that has all gone away.
For instance, the recent issues that appeared in Mozilla and MSN and Word, but not IE, indicates that MS may not have a properly defined place for security protocol knowledge. A small thing, but when the small things are done right the big things are much easier.
One also questions with all thier fancy visual development tools, whether anything interesting has been done to automatically implement regressiont testing, something which probably would have detected the error before going live.
So this is my question to those of you that do film. Is film really that much more complicated. Are we going to lose and gain as much as when we moved from black and white to color stock? I look at the old movies and the lack of color seemed to force a creativity, just like the lack of simple fx seems to force more creative solutions. Can some of the artistic manipulation done with film be done with digital, or does it matter? For digital fx, clearly digital is better, but for practical shots?
I have no idea how to shoot a film, and barely can shoot a picture, but am curious about the art form.
It has been only recently that MS has dutifully limited critical updates to security and implemented the process into the OS, a la Apple Software Update.
OTOH, my startac, maybe three years old, is mechanically in very good condition. I had to replace my original because it got water in it and rusted the electronics. It may be that new phones are not as durable, but that is true across the board.
Frankly I would be terribly afraid to carry around those long thin phones. I think it would be very easy to accidently develop enough torque at the midpoint to snap it. Even more silly are those phones that have a bulge for the antennae.
Also, I have no need to pay for such overengineering. My temper is well under control, i stay away from psychos, and if I want at attack someone i live in a state where i can carry gadgets made for such a purpose.
I have noticed this with bank websites as well. When online banking first grew big, I got an email survey that asked for personal information and led me to a third party site. I asked the bank if the survey was legit and they said it was. More recently the bank started letting users log in from an unsecured home page. Passwords seem to be protected, but we now have introduced a system in which users are accustomed to submitted sensitive information on unsecured pages. This habit can only benefit the crooks. I mean the latest exploit, involving ads on bank pages, should have been identified early as a security risk. I guess the risk to customer was less than the greed of the banks.
One of the most interesting example, at least in the U.S., was the ban on the smoking of opium. Opium was still widely and legally available, but smoking, a habit favored by chinese immigrants, was criminalized
Perhaps because the people who make bad music are best qualified to pass judgement on bad music.
Just kidding. TMBG isn't my style of music, but that does mean it is bad. One thing to note. If one is selling music, then the definition of good or bad is whether the target audience buys the music. Therefore, making music that people are not willing to pay for is pretty much an indication of the music being bad. Entertainment is all about branding, and making people think the brand in worth hard cash. Now, if you are doing "art", the situation is different.
MS has a marketing problem. There are other products that do basically the same thing that cost much less. Increasingly, MS is depending on it's branding to justify significantly higher prices. Unfortunately the brand has suffere some serious setbacks and in many cases is no longer percieved to be customer centered. To wit, Sony, ignoring the DRM crippled music for the moment, has provided products that seem to be customer centered, while MS has generally provided products that put MS needs in front of the customer. In an ideal world, corporate and customer needs will be alligned, but this is not generally the case for MS.
Therefore, MS is losing customer trust. xbox does not sell because few trust MS to deliver customer centered games. If they follow the Windows path, the primary purpose will be to artificially lock customers into MS, not provde a good user experience.
Many people consider MS a good value, and willingly give money for the privilage of using thier products. You believe the value is better than the compition, in the same way that an average person believes a Nike shoe is better values than a no name costing 80% less. That is marketing. Nothing more, nothing less.
Note that most security bugs do not involve the implementation of the web specific area of the browser, i.e. the rendering, but the more basic technologies, such as connected. These technologies is web browsers are not quite so old, but many people have used them to create many secure network connected devices. There are best practices of programming, and one ignores them at ones own risk.
It is above all a design issue. For instance, I believe, the Germans, interested in security of passenger cars, do not allow cup holders and demand first aid kits in the cars. In the US, OTOH, the number of cupholder we demand in cars approach infinity. Do we design to uninformed end users, or impose a requirement that the user pay attention rather than enabling a compulsive eating disorder.
Then, one day, the fanatics and freaks got control of congress. They complained about money being spent on the PBS and said it was used to promote non-US values. They insisted that the US was a Christian country, which is news to the Jews and Muslims and Buddhist and Atheists and Taoists and you get the idea, and proceeded to gut the funding for PBS and used the money to increase funding to their personal religious projects.
Now, for many, the fact that PBS no longer has cultural freedom is a small thing. One might think it means that a word can't be said, or a breast can't be shown, or certain political conversations cannot occur. Many would cheer the day when we no longer had to hear about Mrs. Slocombe's pussy. But, as someone that was, as we say, raised on TV, and particularly on PBS, I can tell you the change is chilling. PBS is one place for a kid stuck in the inner city to attain a wider culture, a sense that the world is more than the streets. I consider this good, but clearly many think inner city kids are just another brick on the wall, and need no more culture than what is needed to die in a the street or a war, or, perhaps, to slave away on an assembly line.
Everyone was good until the pompous assholes starting imposing their beliefs on everyone.
Not if they can help it! The US presidential election, evidently, is optional
My understanding is that if a premium is given in exchange for a donation, the premium has a fair market values (FMV) associated with it. The donor may deduct the value of the donation minus the FMV. Therefore, if the donation is in the form of a sale, the difference will reasonable be zero, which will also be the allowed deduction. IANATA, This is just a guess.
I suspect if 50% of customer service costs were attributed to unsolicited commercial SMS, something would get done.
I think in America we are losing this sense of adventure. I hear more people espousing their beliefs and superstitions as if it were The Truth. They are afraid of exploration and the unknown. Modern science does not exist to confirm personal beliefs any more that the CIA exists to promote political agendas. Both are there to discover what is, in a significantly tangible way, real about the world. Reality is often hard for us to understand and accept, but we are much better off when we have some assurance that we are close to the truth. The past few hundred years have shown one of the most reliable processes to get close to the truth is the scientific method.
But we have a few religious nuts afraid of anything that will contradict their carefully crafted fiction. These people subvert the educational process and teach our kids that the scientific method is wrong. Make no mistake. If one claims evolution is wrong on the basis of scripture, if one claims that the earth is a few thousand years old on the basis of scripture, if on claims that one can go from an a priori truth, construct a data set that fit those facts, and then claim that is science, then one is so wrong as to be the greatest enemy of science, progress, and even the free market.
When one makes these fantastic claims, that everything that does not fit your reality is wrong, even if a process that has proved successful for hundreds of years says it is correct, a thing called cognitive dissidence is set up in the mind of a child. I believe this often leads to the child falling on the side of superstition, and a scientist is lost. I believe that a whole generation of American scientists have been lost to this attack on science. An attack based on the assumption that it is preferable to get an MBA and oppress a workforce for personal profit, but not ok to challenge ancient superstitions for the sole betterment of the human race.
Let me state I am not anti-religion. I am quite for it and have seen organized religion to a great many wonderful things. I am, however, against the use of religion, or anything else for that matter, solely for the purpose of personal gain, and without respect of what it does to other people. Certainly Christianity tells us not to harm others, that the truth will set us free, and in the example of Jesus, that personal sacrifice is not only expected but necessary.
God may not play dice, but I am thankful every day for the quantum wells that make my life so much more convenient than my parent's.