Well played sir, I might have bought the authenticity of your post but then I realised you were posting under AC. And for everyone who does recommend a chiropractor (or at least one of the "good ones"), consider seeing a physiotherapist instead. You have better odds of seeing someone with actual medical education.
That was exactly my one objection to the entire story. I couldn't care less that this guy who didn't pay the fee had his stuff burnt to the ground. I do believe fire dept. should be fully funded through tax, but he knew that wasn't the system there and just opted out of his quasi fire insurance. But to go there and then let the animals burn to death? That shit is just unethical; it's not their fault the owner of the house was a moron.
I wonder how much the fine would have been if each spam message contained a song "owned" by one of the MAFIAA. You could generate a fine larger than the entire money supply of the whole world put together. This feels almost like a challenge now.
I'll admit, I kind of wanted to see a picture of a little mini galaxy type thing and have all my high-school textbook images of an (over-simplified) atom come to life.
I know, unrealistic, but that's what I was hoping for in my mind's eye.
I'm going to clarify what the word "unlimited" means in this context (regardless of how it's complete bullshit).
On an "unlimited" plan, you get for example 50 gig. This 50 gig is at the maximum (theoretically) speed allowed by that plan by the ISP. Should you exceed that 50gig, your speed gets throttled down (or "shaped" to use the weasel word). You still can use your connection to do whatever you want, and for no extra charge, it's just that it's practically near impossible to actually do so when your speeds are cut to nearly nothing. They claim it is "shaped" to dialup speeds of 64kbps, but at least on my plan that is never really the case and I'm lucky to get 15.
That's what unlimited means, theoretically infinite amounts of data, but only 50gigs of that is at the speeds associated with how fast the technology allows. Nothing to do with time or anything like that.
Where optus has run into problems is not with the term "unlimited", it's a pretty common term thrown about by ISPs in Australia. The only problem they ran into is by claiming the speeds are "supersonic" indicating they're superfast, when, if you're throttled, they're nothing of the kind. That's it, that's the entire story.
Because no tiny interest group in any other country has demanded something ridiculous and outlandish to be put into law.
What's stupid is reading the headline on Slashdot and assuming it's somehow unadulterated fact. But this shouldn't even be on the front page, the Pedestrian Council aren't even a vaguely influential group as far as I know.
Not the OP, nor is this probably the most definitive scientific source for such statistics, but the w3c at least has been reporting XP use as levelling off and dropping. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
This won't be popular with the libertarians out there, but how about it's just mandated that you can only advertise the theoretical maximum when you clearly outline what the median speed is for your existing customers and that the stated median has to be re-evaluated before any new piece of advertising can go out. It can go in the small print at the bottom of the screen/poster/whatever but it has to be visible on there somewhere.
I for one know that this information would be the first thing I'd look for when choosing a new connection/ISP and save a fair bit of digging in their websites.
Coping mechanism one: Swearing, bitching, alcohol and cigarettes.
Coping mechanism two: Losing any emotional investment in your designs. You want to design something awesome? You're probably going to have to do that in your own time unless you're some sort of established artist/designer.
Coping mechanism three: The pay and the resumé fodder.
Coping mechanism four: Lying to myself. I'm actually designing and developing for small children instead of mature, responsible, capable adults. Also, I will become a better person and designer through this experience. Like I said, lying.
Oh, I'm well aware there is a gap in training. But given this isn't a central organisation with one or two sites where all this target audience works -- proper training is impractical at best without a serious funds injection. Which isn't going to happen. If the upper escalons even realised the need for it in the first place. As such, it's up to me to learn how to design for what is truly the lowest common denominator when it comes to the internet. Perhaps it'll make me a better designer in the long run; don't tell me it won't, or you'll crush one of my coping mechanisms.
Theoretically yes. Practically, doesn't end up working that way unless you're working for a company who has and is willing to spend the money actually developing things properly with a dedicated team. Alternately you're working for a company whose primary business is design and development. I work for neither of those categories.
Fact of the matter is, companies and institutions are expecting more and more from their web people, and my formal education was in both design and development in order to supply that perceived need and make me a more marketable employee.
The sad part is, my organisation didn't actually know the difference between a web designer and developer (and hence didn't know they needed the latter) until I got here. The upside is I'm now officially "indispensable".
You have no idea how much I empathise. My current job is to design and develop websites for what is probably the most computer illiterate demographic on earth. 45-65 year olds working in a non-technical environment, the majority being women. The assumptions and knowledge that have been ingrained into me does not apply to this group of people - this is something I very quickly learnt.
Dropdown select boxes? Not enough of a visual cue, despite being pretty standard interface elements for decades now. The word online? That's fine. The word offline? Too technical. The phrase 'more options' in the context of a search box? They didn't understand what that meant.
Everytime I do user testing, my mind is absolutely blown by the number of things I've taken for granted about user interfaces. Swearing usually entails after finding out your design is no longer possible due to one of these underlying assumptions. The moral of the story being, you need someone else to test your work... and if you have no eye for user interface design, find someone who does.
Basically octopi is wrong. People went "oh, this must be a latin word and everyone knows every latin word that ends in -us is pluraised to -i". Which is a rule with which many (most perhaps?) but not all words comply. Compound this with the problem that it's not even a latin word, it's greek. Octopi is one of those hypercorrect plurals (along with platypi, etc) that have become the norm despite being objectively incorrect to begin with.
If you want to make octopus a plural, in greek it becomes octopodes, in latin it even becomes octopodes too. In english? That's up to you, I usually just use "octopuses" to avoid confusion with the people who didn't spend too many years studying Latin like I did.
Speak for yourself. Some of us actually took a lot of pleasure in getting a higher education and used it as a step to further self-development rather than just to land a higher-paying job. That part was just gravy. Having been in "the real world" of cubicles for a while now, I'm looking more and more forward to enrolling into a post-grad degree.
But this is from the perspective of somebody who went into University pursuing interests in the first place. And I'm glad I did. Maybe you'd have been happier if you did the same thing.
On one hand this feels wrong, on the other I think I would have got a motivation boost back in university if this were around then. I also kind of like the idea for potentially rewarding students for pushing themselves academically. I'm torn.
I think you can even cut out two of the three items in that list. The patent seems to be:
1. Reading the header and body of an email using a program and seeing if there's any identifying info.
I think the plaintiff has grossly limited himself, it's pretty clear under this he could also sue... the makers of every program that deals with email ever. I for one look forward to this development and the associated waste of the plaintiff's resources.
Proposed web filter. The proposed and not yet implemented and not being implemented for the foreseeable future due to extreme unpopularity amongst other reasons web filter.
I know it's a lot easier to ignore everything past the headlines, but at least try a little harder in the future before propagating such misinformation.
Science is educated guessing. People get the facts and attempt to make the most plausible theory which fits said facts. When more facts are discovered, the theory is altered to fit said facts.
All science should be therefore taken with a grain of salt, it's kind of the point. There is now a theory for a spot on Neptune, you aren't obligated to take it as some sort of absolute truth.
And then to apply the 'logic' of "well we suck at this aspect of science so how could we be right about this other completely separate aspect", come on. You don't have to accept this at face value, but at least use a better argument than this.
Just roll with the theories or feel free to put forward a new and better one - it's how science works.
The Pirate Bay and Pirate Party tend to be quite kindred spirits, and The Pirate Bay's policy has always been to actively remove any child porn torrents and the like that ends up on their site. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the Pirate Party's ISP will take a similar stance on these issues, although how they will implement such a stance is an interesting problem (pretty sure they've thought about that though).
Half the point of the Pirate Bay and Pirate Party is that they are, currently at least, not violating Swedish law even though the media cartels place pressure on the government to enforce their copyright agenda. They're not about facilitating illegal and genuinely bad activity, they're about actively opposing what they perceive to be bad copyright concepts pushed by those who stand to make money from it and preached as gospel absolute truth. As such, I'm not personally too concerned about a Pirate Party ISP turning into a black hole of morality; I'm pretty convinced they'll find a way to do the right thing when it comes to things like child porn. Sure, it's faith without proof, but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt for now.
Don't worry, I'm sure this is just more Hollywood Accounting for the benefit of the public. It's really a fantastic scheme, claim your income is nothing due to the nasty 'pirates' impinging on good ol' capitalist ingenuity. Also, claim the money you did have has all gone to those greedy lawyers. Everyone already hates lawyers, right? Result: A good honest company, ruined!
Slashdot Mirror
If I could mod you +1 "Mental imagery", I totally would.
Well played sir, I might have bought the authenticity of your post but then I realised you were posting under AC. And for everyone who does recommend a chiropractor (or at least one of the "good ones"), consider seeing a physiotherapist instead. You have better odds of seeing someone with actual medical education.
Headline should actually read for more accuracy:
Tech CEOs Tell US Gov't How To Increase Their Profits By $1 Trillion
That was exactly my one objection to the entire story. I couldn't care less that this guy who didn't pay the fee had his stuff burnt to the ground. I do believe fire dept. should be fully funded through tax, but he knew that wasn't the system there and just opted out of his quasi fire insurance. But to go there and then let the animals burn to death? That shit is just unethical; it's not their fault the owner of the house was a moron.
I wonder how much the fine would have been if each spam message contained a song "owned" by one of the MAFIAA. You could generate a fine larger than the entire money supply of the whole world put together. This feels almost like a challenge now.
I'll admit, I kind of wanted to see a picture of a little mini galaxy type thing and have all my high-school textbook images of an (over-simplified) atom come to life.
I know, unrealistic, but that's what I was hoping for in my mind's eye.
Not the only one at all. I wanted to see a photograph of an atom.
The good news is I went and found it, the bad news is it's probably not as cool as I'd hoped: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED1009/S00122/university-of-otago-atom-breakthrough-represents.htm
I'm going to clarify what the word "unlimited" means in this context (regardless of how it's complete bullshit).
On an "unlimited" plan, you get for example 50 gig. This 50 gig is at the maximum (theoretically) speed allowed by that plan by the ISP. Should you exceed that 50gig, your speed gets throttled down (or "shaped" to use the weasel word). You still can use your connection to do whatever you want, and for no extra charge, it's just that it's practically near impossible to actually do so when your speeds are cut to nearly nothing. They claim it is "shaped" to dialup speeds of 64kbps, but at least on my plan that is never really the case and I'm lucky to get 15.
That's what unlimited means, theoretically infinite amounts of data, but only 50gigs of that is at the speeds associated with how fast the technology allows. Nothing to do with time or anything like that.
Where optus has run into problems is not with the term "unlimited", it's a pretty common term thrown about by ISPs in Australia. The only problem they ran into is by claiming the speeds are "supersonic" indicating they're superfast, when, if you're throttled, they're nothing of the kind. That's it, that's the entire story.
Because no tiny interest group in any other country has demanded something ridiculous and outlandish to be put into law.
What's stupid is reading the headline on Slashdot and assuming it's somehow unadulterated fact. But this shouldn't even be on the front page, the Pedestrian Council aren't even a vaguely influential group as far as I know.
Not the OP, nor is this probably the most definitive scientific source for such statistics, but the w3c at least has been reporting XP use as levelling off and dropping. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
This won't be popular with the libertarians out there, but how about it's just mandated that you can only advertise the theoretical maximum when you clearly outline what the median speed is for your existing customers and that the stated median has to be re-evaluated before any new piece of advertising can go out. It can go in the small print at the bottom of the screen/poster/whatever but it has to be visible on there somewhere.
I for one know that this information would be the first thing I'd look for when choosing a new connection/ISP and save a fair bit of digging in their websites.
Coping mechanism one: Swearing, bitching, alcohol and cigarettes.
Coping mechanism two: Losing any emotional investment in your designs. You want to design something awesome? You're probably going to have to do that in your own time unless you're some sort of established artist/designer.
Coping mechanism three: The pay and the resumé fodder.
Coping mechanism four: Lying to myself. I'm actually designing and developing for small children instead of mature, responsible, capable adults. Also, I will become a better person and designer through this experience. Like I said, lying.
You get used to it, I guess.
Oh, I'm well aware there is a gap in training. But given this isn't a central organisation with one or two sites where all this target audience works -- proper training is impractical at best without a serious funds injection. Which isn't going to happen. If the upper escalons even realised the need for it in the first place. As such, it's up to me to learn how to design for what is truly the lowest common denominator when it comes to the internet. Perhaps it'll make me a better designer in the long run; don't tell me it won't, or you'll crush one of my coping mechanisms.
Theoretically yes. Practically, doesn't end up working that way unless you're working for a company who has and is willing to spend the money actually developing things properly with a dedicated team. Alternately you're working for a company whose primary business is design and development. I work for neither of those categories.
Fact of the matter is, companies and institutions are expecting more and more from their web people, and my formal education was in both design and development in order to supply that perceived need and make me a more marketable employee.
The sad part is, my organisation didn't actually know the difference between a web designer and developer (and hence didn't know they needed the latter) until I got here. The upside is I'm now officially "indispensable".
You have no idea how much I empathise. My current job is to design and develop websites for what is probably the most computer illiterate demographic on earth. 45-65 year olds working in a non-technical environment, the majority being women. The assumptions and knowledge that have been ingrained into me does not apply to this group of people - this is something I very quickly learnt.
Dropdown select boxes? Not enough of a visual cue, despite being pretty standard interface elements for decades now. The word online? That's fine. The word offline? Too technical. The phrase 'more options' in the context of a search box? They didn't understand what that meant.
Everytime I do user testing, my mind is absolutely blown by the number of things I've taken for granted about user interfaces. Swearing usually entails after finding out your design is no longer possible due to one of these underlying assumptions. The moral of the story being, you need someone else to test your work... and if you have no eye for user interface design, find someone who does.
Basically octopi is wrong. People went "oh, this must be a latin word and everyone knows every latin word that ends in -us is pluraised to -i". Which is a rule with which many (most perhaps?) but not all words comply. Compound this with the problem that it's not even a latin word, it's greek. Octopi is one of those hypercorrect plurals (along with platypi, etc) that have become the norm despite being objectively incorrect to begin with.
If you want to make octopus a plural, in greek it becomes octopodes, in latin it even becomes octopodes too. In english? That's up to you, I usually just use "octopuses" to avoid confusion with the people who didn't spend too many years studying Latin like I did.
Speak for yourself. Some of us actually took a lot of pleasure in getting a higher education and used it as a step to further self-development rather than just to land a higher-paying job. That part was just gravy. Having been in "the real world" of cubicles for a while now, I'm looking more and more forward to enrolling into a post-grad degree.
But this is from the perspective of somebody who went into University pursuing interests in the first place. And I'm glad I did. Maybe you'd have been happier if you did the same thing.
On one hand this feels wrong, on the other I think I would have got a motivation boost back in university if this were around then. I also kind of like the idea for potentially rewarding students for pushing themselves academically. I'm torn.
Alternate conclusions from these results:
Iphone users are more likely to exaggerate or overcompensate. Iphone users have a greater fear of commitment.
It's about as verifiable/falsifiable as any of the numbers and other conclusions you could draw from this 'study'.
I think you can even cut out two of the three items in that list. The patent seems to be:
1. Reading the header and body of an email using a program and seeing if there's any identifying info.
I think the plaintiff has grossly limited himself, it's pretty clear under this he could also sue... the makers of every program that deals with email ever. I for one look forward to this development and the associated waste of the plaintiff's resources.
Proposed web filter. The proposed and not yet implemented and not being implemented for the foreseeable future due to extreme unpopularity amongst other reasons web filter. I know it's a lot easier to ignore everything past the headlines, but at least try a little harder in the future before propagating such misinformation.
Science is educated guessing. People get the facts and attempt to make the most plausible theory which fits said facts. When more facts are discovered, the theory is altered to fit said facts.
All science should be therefore taken with a grain of salt, it's kind of the point. There is now a theory for a spot on Neptune, you aren't obligated to take it as some sort of absolute truth.
And then to apply the 'logic' of "well we suck at this aspect of science so how could we be right about this other completely separate aspect", come on. You don't have to accept this at face value, but at least use a better argument than this.
Just roll with the theories or feel free to put forward a new and better one - it's how science works.
The Pirate Bay and Pirate Party tend to be quite kindred spirits, and The Pirate Bay's policy has always been to actively remove any child porn torrents and the like that ends up on their site. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the Pirate Party's ISP will take a similar stance on these issues, although how they will implement such a stance is an interesting problem (pretty sure they've thought about that though).
Half the point of the Pirate Bay and Pirate Party is that they are, currently at least, not violating Swedish law even though the media cartels place pressure on the government to enforce their copyright agenda. They're not about facilitating illegal and genuinely bad activity, they're about actively opposing what they perceive to be bad copyright concepts pushed by those who stand to make money from it and preached as gospel absolute truth. As such, I'm not personally too concerned about a Pirate Party ISP turning into a black hole of morality; I'm pretty convinced they'll find a way to do the right thing when it comes to things like child porn. Sure, it's faith without proof, but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt for now.
How about this for what is missing: an attempt to fix a (now very publically known) flaw in a somewhat timely manner.
Don't worry, I'm sure this is just more Hollywood Accounting for the benefit of the public. It's really a fantastic scheme, claim your income is nothing due to the nasty 'pirates' impinging on good ol' capitalist ingenuity. Also, claim the money you did have has all gone to those greedy lawyers. Everyone already hates lawyers, right? Result: A good honest company, ruined!