"How many women geniuses are there?" I hope you meant, "How many famous woman geniuses are there?" There have always been lots of woman geniuses; it's just that in previous eras they were mostly stuck at home, washing their non-genius husband's laundry. Not to start a whole harangue about the male-dominated society, but that comment really smacks of the "Math is Hard!" Barbie attitude that still pervades to a great extent.
There have been famous scientists who were women... Madame Curie, Ada Loveless, Grace Hopper... granted, not as large a sample set as you have with famous male scientists, but how scientific was this study, anyway? 280 online biographies? I'm not sure that that's a representative sample to begin with. Women could have at least rated a mention.
How can something be called SmarterChild when it's primary responses include "I dunno" and "mebbe"? It's most useful purpose seems to be looking up movie listings.
Maybe it should be called "Dumber_Media-Influenced_Child" instead. Or would that get truncated in the buddy list?
While there may normally be lots of help available, in this situation there wasn't. According to the article, there were "no teaching assistants or professors available on a campus off-week"
You can argue that the guy should have waited until school was back in session to ask a TA, but maybe the assignment was due on the first day back from break (that's not unheard of). Since "many" other students in the class didn't turn in the assignment at all, it seems he wasn't the only one who had a problem and wasn't able to get answers using the permitted resources.
Re:It remembers your IP address
on
XP, Phone Home
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· Score: 1
An IP address isn't personally usually personally identifying
Unless you have a static IP address. Or if you have an "always-on" connection, like DSL. My router keeps the same IP for months at a time. It really only changes if there's an equipment problem or power outage that lasts long enough for the lease to expire. It's pretty easy for the ISP to find out who's using a particular IP, how long they've had it, etc. Not saying the ISP's are going to turn that info over to MS, though, except maybe MSN Broadband??
But the point really is that if they're tracking what you're searching for, they're storing your IP, they can access your local machine, they can track you on the net -- how long before they tie all that together, include your product registration info, and voila, a nice profile of who you are.
Just don't use the built-in search
on
XP, Phone Home
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· Score: 1
From the newsbytes article:
"Anytime a Navigator user performs a search by typing terms into the browser's URL bar and pressing the adjacent Search button, or by using the Search tab on the browser's My Sidebar feature, the user data is sent to a server at info.netscape.com using a uniform resource locator (URL) forwarding system."
As long as you go directly to the search engine and search from there, you're safe. I have Google in my personal toolbars in NS & Opera, so it's just a single click and I'm there.
The problem is that, at least in this case, it costs a lot more to have your day in court than it does to settle. The one guy settled for $5,000 after the defense fund ran through the $15,000 it had raised.
Most people, given the rock/hard place choice of spending X to settle and spending 5X to prove they're right, will be forced to settle.
The article said that they hadn't activated the network yet. From the article: "The company plans to wake up the millions of computers that have installed its software in as soon as four weeks."
Actually, I don't think name resolution would stop, but it would take longer because 5 servers would be handling the load of 13. That's where the slowdown occurs. The Internet doesn't technically slow down -- throughput is still the same everywhere. But it takes longer from the time you click on a link to the time the page loads due to extra time looking up the host name.
Personally, I think this is a really stupid ad campaign on MS' part. The only thing I can think is they've deluded themselves into believing their product is somehow superior. I suppose there are a few people, who think (or hell, maybe they can) that they could maintain an MS server themselves but couldn't maintain a Unix server, who might fall for the line, but not very many.
I think MS is aiming this campaign on the suits who make purchasing decisions -- people for whom The Server is something on another floor or in another building that they've never even seen. These guys aren't even going to contemplate maintaining any server themselves, but they might think, "Hey, we can get rid of the $80,000 a year Unix guy and hire someone for $30,000 a year, because Windows is so easy to use."
I honestly don't know if Microsoft thinks, or even cares, that their product is superior. They're just trying to move into a new market. They know that sales of new workstation PC's (their mainstay) is slowing, so they're looking for other ways to make money. It's the same thinking that's behind the the upgrade-every-year licensing.
Good information -- I was wondering about how well it worked when your kid was 30 feet away, hiding in the middle of a rack of dresses. Doesn't seem like it would work too well in the lost at the beach or at Disneyland situation, either.
I also wonder about how well it would work in an actual abduction scenario, where the child is in a moving vehicle, or has been taken to a remote location -- the woods, wherever.
Yes, but the threat of withholding a reward can be used as a punisment. It's negative reinforcement, just like a parent saying, "no TV unless you clean your room". Microsoft is saying, "no market development money (which could amount to millions of dollars) unless you're a good little OEM and do what we tell you".
A DLS server is a Dynamic Lookup Service server that is used by Netscape Conference to find out who's logged on to to a particular audioconference or videoconference.
No trojans use those ports as far as I know. Maybe some l33t hax0r has a script that hacks a DLS server for some reason?
I think there's a big difference between this and the advertisements on the free web-based e-mail services in terms of the quantity and type of content.
On e-mails from users of yahoo, hotbot, etc. the service adds one or two lines at the very end of the user's message -- something along the lines of "Hotbot--search smarter" and a URL. It's more like a sig, and it's pretty unobtrusive.
With this MSN Explorer, there's several lines of content that comprise almost all of the message. The user isn't even allowed to add their own content. Granted, it doesn't add this to every message the user sends (hopefully!), but this address change message has more advertisement content than personal content. That sounds like spam to me.
I couldn't tell from the article whether or not the user saw the message before it was sent. The article says the setup program creates the e-mail, and sends it out if the user clicks "send", but not whether there's a preview of the e-mail. Or whether there's an easy way to back out once you've gotten that far.
Regardless, it just seems kind-of slimey to include a paragraph of gushing about the beauty of the Microsoft Network written in the first person. It sounds like those forwarded chain letters -- "this is so great I had to tell you about it..."
It seems that AOL's parental control filters block the Democratic National Party and the Green Party, but not the Republican National Party. They also allow the NRA and various gun manufacturers' sites through, but block several gun safety and anti-violence sites.
It seems that another source of cross-contamination is the large amount of dead skin cells that's in the air already. I remember being vaguely creeped-out when I learned what a large percentage of the air in a closed building (like an office, school or... airport) was made up of dead human skin.
It makes me wonder
How many other people's skin is in my body's "heat plume"?
How can this machine avoid sucking in some general air as well?
I guess before anyone can give you a lot of help, the question has to be asked...newby to what? In other words are you new to the Internet, to open source software, to programming...etc.? Slashdot covers a lot of topics.
One good, all-things-computer, general reference site is whatis.com It has an alphabetical reference, "learning curves" that organize all the related entries on a specific topic together, and a wealth of other information.
Also using any search engine and typing in the topic of interest along with "how to" or "tutorial" usually turns up lots of helpful sites.
Technology changes amazingly fast. (big, fat Duh!) Kids are on the bleeding edge because when they start to learn, they learn what's new. The kid who knows Java or Perl probably doesn't (and never will) know COBOL or assembly language. Which is OK, they can find plenty of work with the knowledge they have.
The danger of superannuation lies in not keeping up with new developments. You can't expect to learn a bunch of stuff when you're 16 or 17 and then never learn anything else. None of the young Turks are going to be begging for your advice on writing a Nibbles game, but if you're one of the first ones to learn whatever the next new language is, you'll have plenty to offer.
Good point! V.92 will probably work great for someone who lives close to their provider's modem banks, and has a good modem. But for all-too-many users who live 10 miles outside of Bufutown, have a POS Winmodem, and are using phone lines that were probably put in as a WPA project -- they'll still have to limit DTE to 19200 and disable compressions to have a prayer of getting/staying connected.
While I know sexual harrassment can occur anywhere, I'd be surprised to find that it's very common in technology fields. My technologically-adept male friends, co-workers, and classmates all seem far less interested in the whole power-trip thing that goes along with sexual harrassment and more interested in sharing an idea about how to code something more cleanly, or telling me about the new system they're setting up, etc.
In my experience (I know, not a significant statistical sampling) it seems that the members of the tech-frat care less about what gender you are than about what you know and can do.
I don't think socializing is an activity that's gender-specific. Some people are more social than others. Some of those people are female; some are male.
I think it's more likely that too many girls are still surrounded by the "Math is hard" Barbie doll and the "Oh, you're just going to college to get your 'MRS' degree" attitude to think seriously about studying computers or engineering. The girls who were interviewed are at an age where they are just starting to think for themselves, and haven't had a chance to really explore what they want to do or to look past the misconceptions of what it's like to be a computer programmer, sys admin, whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been famous scientists who were women... Madame Curie, Ada Loveless, Grace Hopper... granted, not as large a sample set as you have with famous male scientists, but how scientific was this study, anyway? 280 online biographies? I'm not sure that that's a representative sample to begin with. Women could have at least rated a mention.
You can't beat Schrodinger's Cat!
Maybe it should be called "Dumber_Media-Influenced_Child" instead. Or would that get truncated in the buddy list?
You can argue that the guy should have waited until school was back in session to ask a TA, but maybe the assignment was due on the first day back from break (that's not unheard of). Since "many" other students in the class didn't turn in the assignment at all, it seems he wasn't the only one who had a problem and wasn't able to get answers using the permitted resources.
Unless you have a static IP address. Or if you have an "always-on" connection, like DSL. My router keeps the same IP for months at a time. It really only changes if there's an equipment problem or power outage that lasts long enough for the lease to expire. It's pretty easy for the ISP to find out who's using a particular IP, how long they've had it, etc. Not saying the ISP's are going to turn that info over to MS, though, except maybe MSN Broadband??
But the point really is that if they're tracking what you're searching for, they're storing your IP, they can access your local machine, they can track you on the net -- how long before they tie all that together, include your product registration info, and voila, a nice profile of who you are.
"Anytime a Navigator user performs a search by typing terms into the browser's URL bar and pressing the adjacent Search button, or by using the Search tab on the browser's My Sidebar feature, the user data is sent to a server at info.netscape.com using a uniform resource locator (URL) forwarding system."
As long as you go directly to the search engine and search from there, you're safe. I have Google in my personal toolbars in NS & Opera, so it's just a single click and I'm there.
Most people, given the rock/hard place choice of spending X to settle and spending 5X to prove they're right, will be forced to settle.
Check again in a month or two.
Hey, maybe having Yoga Inside will make my system more agile! Where can I get one of those?
Actually, I don't think name resolution would stop, but it would take longer because 5 servers would be handling the load of 13. That's where the slowdown occurs. The Internet doesn't technically slow down -- throughput is still the same everywhere. But it takes longer from the time you click on a link to the time the page loads due to extra time looking up the host name.
I think MS is aiming this campaign on the suits who make purchasing decisions -- people for whom The Server is something on another floor or in another building that they've never even seen. These guys aren't even going to contemplate maintaining any server themselves, but they might think, "Hey, we can get rid of the $80,000 a year Unix guy and hire someone for $30,000 a year, because Windows is so easy to use."
I honestly don't know if Microsoft thinks, or even cares, that their product is superior. They're just trying to move into a new market. They know that sales of new workstation PC's (their mainstay) is slowing, so they're looking for other ways to make money. It's the same thinking that's behind the the upgrade-every-year licensing.
I also wonder about how well it would work in an actual abduction scenario, where the child is in a moving vehicle, or has been taken to a remote location -- the woods, wherever.
Don't forget about the outOfHotWaterException. If not caught properly, it results in a blue screen of freezing.
Yes, but the threat of withholding a reward can be used as a punisment. It's negative reinforcement, just like a parent saying, "no TV unless you clean your room". Microsoft is saying, "no market development money (which could amount to millions of dollars) unless you're a good little OEM and do what we tell you".
- John Gribbin
- Paul Davies
Both write about physics for the non-scientist, non-mathmatician.I was just sitting here reading the Googlewhacking link, when my new mail pops up with the whatis.com word of the day. That word -- Googlewhacking.
Is this some sort of cosmological conspiracy?
Which makes me wonder, do you get more Googlewhacking cred by using alliteration?
From the port list at http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/port- numbers
A DLS server is a Dynamic Lookup Service server that is used by Netscape Conference to find out who's logged on to to a particular audioconference or videoconference.
No trojans use those ports as far as I know. Maybe some l33t hax0r has a script that hacks a DLS server for some reason?
I think there's a big difference between this and the advertisements on the free web-based e-mail services in terms of the quantity and type of content.
On e-mails from users of yahoo, hotbot, etc. the service adds one or two lines at the very end of the user's message -- something along the lines of "Hotbot--search smarter" and a URL. It's more like a sig, and it's pretty unobtrusive.
With this MSN Explorer, there's several lines of content that comprise almost all of the message. The user isn't even allowed to add their own content. Granted, it doesn't add this to every message the user sends (hopefully!), but this address change message has more advertisement content than personal content. That sounds like spam to me.
I couldn't tell from the article whether or not the user saw the message before it was sent. The article says the setup program creates the e-mail, and sends it out if the user clicks "send", but not whether there's a preview of the e-mail. Or whether there's an easy way to back out once you've gotten that far.
Regardless, it just seems kind-of slimey to include a paragraph of gushing about the beauty of the Microsoft Network written in the first person. It sounds like those forwarded chain letters -- "this is so great I had to tell you about it..."
Check out this CNet article from a few months ago.
It seems that AOL's parental control filters block the Democratic National Party and the Green Party, but not the Republican National Party. They also allow the NRA and various gun manufacturers' sites through, but block several gun safety and anti-violence sites.
Just what kind of protection is this?
It seems that another source of cross-contamination is the large amount of dead skin cells that's in the air already. I remember being vaguely creeped-out when I learned what a large percentage of the air in a closed building (like an office, school or... airport) was made up of dead human skin.
It makes me wonder
I guess before anyone can give you a lot of help, the question has to be asked...newby to what? In other words are you new to the Internet, to open source software, to programming...etc.? Slashdot covers a lot of topics.
One good, all-things-computer, general reference site is whatis.com It has an alphabetical reference, "learning curves" that organize all the related entries on a specific topic together, and a wealth of other information.
Also using any search engine and typing in the topic of interest along with "how to" or "tutorial" usually turns up lots of helpful sites.
Technology changes amazingly fast. (big, fat Duh!) Kids are on the bleeding edge because when they start to learn, they learn what's new. The kid who knows Java or Perl probably doesn't (and never will) know COBOL or assembly language. Which is OK, they can find plenty of work with the knowledge they have.
The danger of superannuation lies in not keeping up with new developments. You can't expect to learn a bunch of stuff when you're 16 or 17 and then never learn anything else. None of the young Turks are going to be begging for your advice on writing a Nibbles game, but if you're one of the first ones to learn whatever the next new language is, you'll have plenty to offer.
Good point!
V.92 will probably work great for someone who lives close to their provider's modem banks, and has a good modem. But for all-too-many users who live 10 miles outside of Bufutown, have a POS Winmodem, and are using phone lines that were probably put in as a WPA project -- they'll still have to limit DTE to 19200 and disable compressions to have a prayer of getting/staying connected.
While I know sexual harrassment can occur anywhere, I'd be surprised to find that it's very common in technology fields. My technologically-adept male friends, co-workers, and classmates all seem far less interested in the whole power-trip thing that goes along with sexual harrassment and more interested in sharing an idea about how to code something more cleanly, or telling me about the new system they're setting up, etc.
In my experience (I know, not a significant statistical sampling) it seems that the members of the tech-frat care less about what gender you are than about what you know and can do.
Says who?
I don't think socializing is an activity that's gender-specific. Some people are more social than others. Some of those people are female; some are male.
I think it's more likely that too many girls are still surrounded by the "Math is hard" Barbie doll and the "Oh, you're just going to college to get your 'MRS' degree" attitude to think seriously about studying computers or engineering. The girls who were interviewed are at an age where they are just starting to think for themselves, and haven't had a chance to really explore what they want to do or to look past the misconceptions of what it's like to be a computer programmer, sys admin, whatever.