I'd have to agree with you, but the bleeding hearts in this country would never let that happen. To them, it's apparently better to subject 1000 kids to daily violence and a shitty education than to "leave behind" a few kids.
Actually, most liberals (the ones to whom "bleeding hearts" usually applies) oppose stuff like No Child Left Behind.
Most of the teachers I know (including my partner) are liberals; all of them would rather see kids with severe behavioral problems — which is to say, behaviors that are regularly violent or otherwise require an inordinate amount of teacher/assistant resources to mitigate — put into specialized programs. The problem is, of course, that when we have done that, the programs were ill-designed, and set up as essentially detainment centers rather than environments where the behaviors would be addressed. So, the problem was only made worse for those kids.
With crap like No Child Left Behind, though, the problem isn't helped at all — merely ignored. And to make matters worse, not only does it lower the quality of education that the average student recieves, the same programs also effectively eliminate programs for gifted students. And that's why most liberals are against such programs: they simply aren't effective.
Despite these programs, though, I'm absolutely in favor of the possibility of home schooling: I just wish that those home-school parents would be required to take a few courses on educational psychology and cirriculum design. Home school doesn't have to mean poor socialization (in fact, in our community there is a group of home-school families that gets together regularly for field trips, sporting events, etc.). In fact, it can be better because the parents have the opportunity to socialize their kids to a more diverse population in terms of age and, in some cases, race. (Side note: does it bother anyone else when an all-African school is marketed as "diverse"?) Unfortunately, parents have to be aware of that need, and the courses I suggested above would (hopefully) solve that.
Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of parents who choose home schooling as a way to "protect" their kids from society; no amount of courses is going to convince these parents to socialize their kids. Since they were (are?) the majority of home-schooled kids, home-schooling got a bad rap.
What next, coining their own money and then claiming payments can only be made with their own eBucks? I think the US Federal Reserve would have a thing or two to say about that.
Um... no. There is no law that prevents you from creating private currency systems. If you make your bills and coins look far too much like official US money, you might run into problems with counterfeiting laws -- but that's not the same thing.
In fact, the US Federal Reserve has already weighed in on Liberty Dollars, an alternative private currency in the US, and they've determined that the currency is perfectly legal. Of course, no US business is required to accept it, either...
This is why I like PerlTidy. Various coders I work with like different styles, and they simply run PerlTidy with their own settings on any code before they edit it -- that way, it looks the way they want it to.
Our source control repository is set up to run the project-standard PerlTidy against check-ins so that the deltas are minimized and all source files are in the standard format. Problem solved.
If this can be done with Perl (which is annoyingly hard to parse), why not with other languages?
I think Apple should buy them, and then when they make a call, they replace the PC with a Mac. Simple, and then there would be no return call.
I think General Dynamics should buy them, and then when they make a call, they replace the PC with an armed bomb. Simple, and then there would be no return call.
Well, it would be, except for the tiny detail that this program is being launched in Canada. I never really say "RTFA", but is RTFS(ummary) so difficult?
threaten legal action against the location, the employees and T-mobile
Be careful about this advice. In many places, it is illegal to threaten a lawsuit if you have no intention of following through -- in such a place, if T-mobile calls your bluff, you may end up with the expense of suing just to avoid being sued.
Before threatening legal action anywhere, you should be sure of the relevant laws -- the best way to do that is consult an attorney licensed in your area. Often, you will be advised on whether you'd reasonably have a case at no charge. If no private attorney will do this for you, you can contact a free legal help line or your State's equivalent of the Dept. of Consumer Affairs for assistance.
but if a metal object, such as a phone, is in contact with the skin it disrupts the flashover and increases the odds of internal injuries and death.
Most phones have very little metal in them, and none in contact with your skin. They're mostly plastic.
Based on the idea of metal touching the body increases the chances you'll die if you're hit by lightining, then one could just as easily publish this same article s/cell phone/jewlery/g
In order for having metal in contact with your skin to increase your chances of dying, you have to actually be hit by lightining in the first place; holding a small metal object doesn't increase that exposure.
he bought a Kill-A-Watt and measured the power his current file server was using. It was using 100W, vs. the 12W of the NAS. That's a difference of 88W. However, at our current electricity rates, that amounts to a whopping $8/month savings.
There's more to this than your friend realizes.
Firstly, don't forget the heat generation: 100W sever generates significantly more heat than the 12W NAS, and when you're cooling your home you end up paying for that power twice -- once to run the server, and again to remove the heat from your living space.
Secondly, $8 x 12 months = $96/year. I was able to find NAS enclosures for around $110, making the ROI slightly over a year, which is outstanding. Even if you pony up for the $250 model, your ROI is under 3 years (assuming the price of electricity doesn't rise in that time, which is a big assumption).
Finally, "energy conservation" is about more than cost savings. Personally, knowing that I saved 63.36kWh of power each month ([24h*30d*88W]/1000) -- and thereby reduced my environmental footprint by a smidgeon -- is worth the couple hundred bucks.
SO when the dailai lama meets the president he should be wearing a suit? When the prince of Saudi Arabia meets the president he should be wearing a suit? Ghandi and mother Teresa should have been walking around in suits?
Enough with the argumentum ad absurdum. Diplomatic functions allow for some variance: when the Dailai Lama meets with the president, he wears what is considered formal for his culture and role, and the President wears what's formal for his.
The same rules go for other heads of state, and religious figures (three of your four examples) generally wear prescribed garb. Cultural respect goes both ways, that's not a hard concept. But when you are from a country where suits are formal, and so is the person you're meeting, then you should wear the suit. Obviously regligious prescription, etc. must be considered.
"Annoying man denied unscheduled audience with PM: film at 11"
Seriously, this is a publicity stunt. Not that it's an invalid tactic, but there is no "deep message" here -- except that RMS wants to make his point badly enough to stage a stunt.
You have made the implicit assumption of superiority, that being that those who wear suits are better than those who do not.
Wrong -- and pretentiously wrong at that.
If anything, those who insist that people in positions of respect (managers, political officials, etc.) listen to them even if they dress in a slovenly way are the ones guilty of assuming superiority -- they think they are (or their message is) important enough to disregard the manners and cultural expectations of their audience. That is, simply put, snobbery of the worst kind -- it masquerades as egalitarianism.
You know why people are taken more seriously in a suit? Because it's our culture's accepted formal attire for business. If your audience is important enough, you will respect their culture. If their culture says "formal meetings involve suits", then you should wear a suit. Simple.
We already implicitly acknowledge this when it comes to other formalities like the exchange of business cards, shaking of hands, etc. For example, in Japan, one offers and accepts business cards with both hands, out of respect for the Japanese culture. In France, as in the US, one wears a suit to meet with those in positions of respect or power (politicians, management, etc.).
Can OpenSSL claim it's secure? I guarantee you there are attacks against it that haven't yet been discovered and will be... But it's as secure as they know how to make it today.
Exactly so.
In most cases involving negligence, fraud, false advertising, and other similar matters -- that is, the realm in which software liability would exist -- the legal hurdle one must clear to defend oneself is a demonstration of due care. In other words, did the organization and/or authors, at a minimum, do what any reasonable peer would have done? For example, did they respond to security bug reports, follow generally accepted security practices during development, etc.?
Then they meet the due care requirement, and there would be no actionable issue.
I don't realy want a $200,000 SSL library.
And you wouldn't have one, so long as OpenSSL was (a)open about how secure the product is, and (b)exercise due care w.r.t. security. They already do this, so there's very little risk.
While I agree that single-DES is not very secure, it is more secure than no encryption at all and therefore may warrant being called "secure". Without a truly vast and Byzantine body of law to define what various words mean, such claims are without value.
Simply put, I disagree.
When companies advertise as "secure" products which (a)have not been independently evaluated, and (b)employ technology that has very publicly been demonstrated to be broken, they need to be held liable.
I'm not looking for the false advertising part of liable (though that's certainly applicable in some cases), but for the idea of "if you market your product as secure, and don't exercise due care in actually trying to be secure, you can be prosecuted for negligence."
There's no good precedent that establishes this, and there needs to be. I don't think you need regulatory pressure for this; it's just that existing laws regarding negligence and related torts need to apply to this space.
The article is horribly misrepresented, here. The core of the article is about the security principle of aligning capability with interest -- that is, when you want something done, you find out who can do it and take steps to interest them (offer them money, the potential of something free, a fine if they *don't* do something, etc.).
Near the end, Bruce mentions the concept of "software liability" as an example of how interest can be aligned with capability. Bad on Bruce for not defining how he uses the term, but bad on the submitter for not researching it before sending in this FUD. Anyone who has followed what Bruce has done knows that he's a huge supporter of OSS.
When Bruce talks about software liability, he's talking about making software makers liable for their marketing claims about security, not for "bugs found in software". OSS would be safe, as long as those project don't say "we're secure" when they aren't.
And on this point, I agree: if I buy a security product that claims "secure file storage", and I find out that they implement this single-DES encryption -- and espeicially if my data is compromised as a result -- the vendor should be liable. They made a false claim!
But if we catch terrorists and avert attacks, what's the harm in the government monitoring these phone calls? It doesn't affect my daily life one bit - but an attack not thwarted most definitely would!
Sure, it doesn't affect your life, but what about the lives of the current administration's (whomever that may be at any given time) political opponents? And no, this isn't tinfoil-hat talk: it's been done before by other administrations, and is a large part of why we have the wiretapping laws to begin with!
Further, what about abuses? Even if abuse isn't systematic, the government is made up of people: what if one person decided to record your phone records and extort you with them. Easy example -- "I see that you've been calling divorce lawyers. I'm betting your spouse would find that very interesting...". Or even s/divorce lawyers/abuse shelters/ in some cases.
It's not about "how much it affects our lives" -- it's that we have this thing called "due process". The basic idea is that the government stays the hell out of my personal life unless they have "probable cause" to go poking around. They want to tap my phone or get my phone records? Cool -- all they have to do is get a judge to agree that there's a reason for it, and they can even do that after they've started in most cases. So why'd they skip that part?
Anyone have any other simple, cheap, and education little home ideas (for my crew targetted at age 7-10, though anything would be nice)?
Thre: make soap, make candles, make and glaze simple pottery.
Soap can be a blast to make for kids, esp. if you do clear-ish glycerin soap and put cool stuff in it (rubber insects are poplular with the young lads). Coloring/scenting the soap can be fun, and challenging mentally -- some of the coloring agents start out as one color, and change when they hit the soap.
Candles can be fun, too, especially if you layer waxes, and color your own wax. It's more art than science, but you can do a lot with melting points and the like. Treating the wick to make colored flames can be fun as well.
Glazing your own pottery can be done w/o a kiln, if you buy the right glazes. This is a neat thing for kids, because the color they paint on and the color that occurs when the glaze reacts to heat are often very different. Plus, if you use food-grade glaze, the kids can eat off their science experiments.;-)
"Slacking" is rarely a problem.
on
On Point On Slacking
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· Score: 3, Insightful
First, let me get the definition out of the way: "slacking" is "not working when one is supposed to be working". Vacation, therefore, is not slacking, but reading Slashdot at work probably is.
There are certainly times when slacking is an issue. If an air-traffic controller is playing her DS when she should be watching the radar, there's certainly a problem. When people slack so much that they aren't meeting the requirements of their work, there's a problem.
But I'd argue that a little slacking in most industries is actually good for business.
The problems really enter when management sees work as quantitative when it is qualitative. Knowledge workers are typically qualitative workers -- that is, it's more important (in general) to do their tasks well then to get a lot done. These people should be allowed to have some unstructured recreation at work (if they were allowed, it wouldn't be "slacking" any more!;D), because it allows them to do better work.
It's pretty unusual for someone to be able to simply sit and work for long periods of time, every day, on something that requires a significant chunk of brain power. Anyone who's done significant development knows that the best way to solve some kinds of problems is to do something completely unrelated for a while. When I get stumped, I play Lumines for a while. It's usually only a few levels in when I suddenly think of something helpful, and can get back to work.
I've also noticed that the most talented and truly productive (measured in terms of quantity * quality) developers, business modellers, architects, engineers, etc. have long ago recognized this need to "percolate" on occasion. Good management lets people "slack" a little during work time, because they know that these same people are often "working" during their fun time. I know that some of my best solutions have occurred to me late at night while playing Final Fantasy or browsing for fun from home. If work is going to encroach on my "fun time" (and really, it can't be helped in knowledge work, because you can't turn off your brain), then it's reasonable to get in a little fun at work, too.
We don't need more work, or more "slacking" -- we need to stop forcing the dichotomy when it doesn't make sense.
Only the government can "censor" anyone. ISPs routinely "censor" content, and have no restrictions on doing so.
Wrong and wrong.
"To censor" means "to examine (as a publication or film) in order to suppress or delete any contents considered objectionable" (from the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary of Law via dictionary.com). Other definitions follow this basic idea as well; therefore, if I can effectively cause you not to say something, I censor you. Censorship is part of polite society -- e.g., theatres will remove people who talk loudly during the performance (thereby censoring them). It's government-sponsored censorship (esp. of the press, or of materials that criticise the government) that is problematic; though we do tend to tolerate limited censorship, like censoring false or misleading advertising.
Second, ISPs (at least in the USA) have common carrier status [definition]. This means that they cannot be held responsible for content that is carried on their network. In order to maintain that status, they cannot get into the business of filtering information for any other purpose than maintaining their availability (including QoS). This is part of why AOL provides client-side software filters for parents to install and enable, rather than performing these operations on the server side.
In the net-neutrality debate, censorship is not an issue -- ISPs are not planning to block sites, just reduce their availability for the ISP's customers unless such site pays a fee. The ISPs argue that this is a logical evolution of Quality of Service (QoS) methods that have long been in play; e.g. a site operator may pay their ISP more money for guaranteed service as opposed to "best-effort" service.
The opponents of the ISPs' proposals don't buy the QoS argument, because the teired model is essentially extortion. With neutral service, a provider (say, an eCommerce site) pays their ISP for enough bandwidth and QoS to serve their expected customer base, and customers (you) pay their ISPs for the bandwidth to connect to those sites at a given bitrate and QoS. This works very well.
Under a teired service arrangement, the above stays the same, but providers have to pay again to multiple ISPs (the ones their customers are using), or be artifically limited in bandwidth to consumers. Ignoring the visceral "this seems like extortion" reaction this invokes, there are a few problems with this for the consumers.
First, consumers end up paying more for products sold online, because the providers now have to recover the cost of paying for a higher-tier service. Small businesses are hurt because they cannot afford to pay for priority service, meaning customers go elsewhere. Small ISPs are also hurt, since big players will only pay the top-tier premiums to the few major ISPs (AOL, MSN, etc.). Non-profit and public-service sites are also hurt; they are unlikely to be able to pay for top-tier preference, and so will be very slow once popular. ISPs would also be able to refuse to provide top-tier service at their discretion, meaning that political action groups with whom, say, AOL might disagree will have a harder time reaching AOL's customers.
A lot of these problems stem from using RFID as authentication (esp. single-factor) rather than identification.
Most of the good RFID-enabled security measures I've seen essentially use the RFID as a rapid user ID. When I approach a secured door, the RFID says "this is Proteus", and a second device (PIN-pad, hand scanner, etc.) says "ok, prove it". That's much the same as a username/password pair, except cloning the RFID has a higher work-factor than guessing a user ID (e.g. it requires physical proximity and specialized hardware).
That doesn't mean RFID isn't secure. It's just that too many people are using it as magical techno-faery-dust to solve security problems, and that behavior leads to insecurity.
Of course, there are real security issues with certain RFID applications. The DoS that can result from removing/altering the tags is concerning -- makes one wonder why the RFID tag in a library book (for example) needs more data than an unalterable serial number. Can't the readers correlate that number with record in a DB?
Add to that the issue of tracking that comes with things like implantable RFID chips. Yeah, those could just be a serial number. But imagine stores putting RFID scanners in their doorways: they know the ID# of everyone who went in and out of the store, and even if they can't correlate that with your identity, the police could. Now, what if I clone your ID# and rob a store?
Again, though, that's not a problem with the RFID tech, but with an ill-concieved implementation and too much trust. The only security problem with the tech itself is the overwriting/erasing issue.
The feeling I get from them is that they throw Columbine into any argument because they know it will get them noticed. Students know that adults are scared to death of a school shooting, so it's an easy way to make an impact without thinking. Much like how profanity is used.
Or Nazis. The mention of Columbine in Middle/High Schools is the next generation's version of Godwin.
Which makes sense when you think about it. Columbine was a massively-publicized event that highlighted how schools that turn a blind eye to how their students interact, and allow severe and continual bullying to go unchecked, contribute to really screwing some kids up. Any student who has been a subject of bullying since that time -- and has seen the school not only ingore it, but become a sort of institutionalized bully -- now has a frame of reference.
Now, kids can say to schools "didn't you learn anything? You saw Columbine, you know how it happened, why are you still ignoring the problem?" Unfortunately, many of the kids who feel the need to make that point do not have well-developed rhetorical skill (another failing of our State-mandated cirriculum, IMO), and so go for the concise emotional outburst.
Do people have choice of "only text"/"text and video"/"video only"?
Considering that Google already serves image ads through AdSense, and that AdSense subscribers can choose not to have image ads on their site, it's a good bet that sites will be able to opt-out of displaying video ads as well.
It's a shame I can't set a cookie in my browser (or something) that tells Google I have no interest in video ads. The advertisers would like it because they wouldn't waste an impression on an annoyed viewer, and the users would like it because they can choose what kinds of ads to view.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the teachers I know (including my partner) are liberals; all of them would rather see kids with severe behavioral problems — which is to say, behaviors that are regularly violent or otherwise require an inordinate amount of teacher/assistant resources to mitigate — put into specialized programs. The problem is, of course, that when we have done that, the programs were ill-designed, and set up as essentially detainment centers rather than environments where the behaviors would be addressed. So, the problem was only made worse for those kids.
With crap like No Child Left Behind, though, the problem isn't helped at all — merely ignored. And to make matters worse, not only does it lower the quality of education that the average student recieves, the same programs also effectively eliminate programs for gifted students. And that's why most liberals are against such programs: they simply aren't effective.
Despite these programs, though, I'm absolutely in favor of the possibility of home schooling: I just wish that those home-school parents would be required to take a few courses on educational psychology and cirriculum design. Home school doesn't have to mean poor socialization (in fact, in our community there is a group of home-school families that gets together regularly for field trips, sporting events, etc.). In fact, it can be better because the parents have the opportunity to socialize their kids to a more diverse population in terms of age and, in some cases, race. (Side note: does it bother anyone else when an all-African school is marketed as "diverse"?) Unfortunately, parents have to be aware of that need, and the courses I suggested above would (hopefully) solve that.
Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of parents who choose home schooling as a way to "protect" their kids from society; no amount of courses is going to convince these parents to socialize their kids. Since they were (are?) the majority of home-schooled kids, home-schooling got a bad rap.
In fact, the US Federal Reserve has already weighed in on Liberty Dollars, an alternative private currency in the US, and they've determined that the currency is perfectly legal. Of course, no US business is required to accept it, either...
This is why I like PerlTidy. Various coders I work with like different styles, and they simply run PerlTidy with their own settings on any code before they edit it -- that way, it looks the way they want it to.
Our source control repository is set up to run the project-standard PerlTidy against check-ins so that the deltas are minimized and all source files are in the standard format. Problem solved.
If this can be done with Perl (which is annoyingly hard to parse), why not with other languages?
This is from the Jargon File; way to plagarize, ass-hat.
I think General Dynamics should buy them, and then when they make a call, they replace the PC with an armed bomb. Simple, and then there would be no return call.
I never really say "RTFA", but is RTFS(ummary) so difficult?
Before threatening legal action anywhere, you should be sure of the relevant laws -- the best way to do that is consult an attorney licensed in your area. Often, you will be advised on whether you'd reasonably have a case at no charge. If no private attorney will do this for you, you can contact a free legal help line or your State's equivalent of the Dept. of Consumer Affairs for assistance.
Firstly, don't forget the heat generation: 100W sever generates significantly more heat than the 12W NAS, and when you're cooling your home you end up paying for that power twice -- once to run the server, and again to remove the heat from your living space.
Secondly, $8 x 12 months = $96/year. I was able to find NAS enclosures for around $110, making the ROI slightly over a year, which is outstanding. Even if you pony up for the $250 model, your ROI is under 3 years (assuming the price of electricity doesn't rise in that time, which is a big assumption).
Finally, "energy conservation" is about more than cost savings. Personally, knowing that I saved 63.36kWh of power each month ([24h*30d*88W]/1000) -- and thereby reduced my environmental footprint by a smidgeon -- is worth the couple hundred bucks.
The same rules go for other heads of state, and religious figures (three of your four examples) generally wear prescribed garb. Cultural respect goes both ways, that's not a hard concept. But when you are from a country where suits are formal, and so is the person you're meeting, then you should wear the suit. Obviously regligious prescription, etc. must be considered.
"Annoying man denied unscheduled audience with PM: film at 11"
Seriously, this is a publicity stunt. Not that it's an invalid tactic, but there is no "deep message" here -- except that RMS wants to make his point badly enough to stage a stunt.
If anything, those who insist that people in positions of respect (managers, political officials, etc.) listen to them even if they dress in a slovenly way are the ones guilty of assuming superiority -- they think they are (or their message is) important enough to disregard the manners and cultural expectations of their audience. That is, simply put, snobbery of the worst kind -- it masquerades as egalitarianism.
You know why people are taken more seriously in a suit? Because it's our culture's accepted formal attire for business. If your audience is important enough, you will respect their culture. If their culture says "formal meetings involve suits", then you should wear a suit. Simple.
We already implicitly acknowledge this when it comes to other formalities like the exchange of business cards, shaking of hands, etc. For example, in Japan, one offers and accepts business cards with both hands, out of respect for the Japanese culture. In France, as in the US, one wears a suit to meet with those in positions of respect or power (politicians, management, etc.).
In most cases involving negligence, fraud, false advertising, and other similar matters -- that is, the realm in which software liability would exist -- the legal hurdle one must clear to defend oneself is a demonstration of due care. In other words, did the organization and/or authors, at a minimum, do what any reasonable peer would have done? For example, did they respond to security bug reports, follow generally accepted security practices during development, etc.?
Then they meet the due care requirement, and there would be no actionable issue.
And you wouldn't have one, so long as OpenSSL was (a)open about how secure the product is, and (b)exercise due care w.r.t. security. They already do this, so there's very little risk.
When companies advertise as "secure" products which (a)have not been independently evaluated, and (b)employ technology that has very publicly been demonstrated to be broken, they need to be held liable.
I'm not looking for the false advertising part of liable (though that's certainly applicable in some cases), but for the idea of "if you market your product as secure, and don't exercise due care in actually trying to be secure, you can be prosecuted for negligence."
There's no good precedent that establishes this, and there needs to be. I don't think you need regulatory pressure for this; it's just that existing laws regarding negligence and related torts need to apply to this space.
The article is horribly misrepresented, here. The core of the article is about the security principle of aligning capability with interest -- that is, when you want something done, you find out who can do it and take steps to interest them (offer them money, the potential of something free, a fine if they *don't* do something, etc.).
Near the end, Bruce mentions the concept of "software liability" as an example of how interest can be aligned with capability. Bad on Bruce for not defining how he uses the term, but bad on the submitter for not researching it before sending in this FUD. Anyone who has followed what Bruce has done knows that he's a huge supporter of OSS.
When Bruce talks about software liability, he's talking about making software makers liable for their marketing claims about security, not for "bugs found in software". OSS would be safe, as long as those project don't say "we're secure" when they aren't.
And on this point, I agree: if I buy a security product that claims "secure file storage", and I find out that they implement this single-DES encryption -- and espeicially if my data is compromised as a result -- the vendor should be liable. They made a false claim!
Smells like someone's making Frog Soup!
But if we catch terrorists and avert attacks, what's the harm in the government monitoring these phone calls? It doesn't affect my daily life one bit - but an attack not thwarted most definitely would!
Sure, it doesn't affect your life, but what about the lives of the current administration's (whomever that may be at any given time) political opponents? And no, this isn't tinfoil-hat talk: it's been done before by other administrations, and is a large part of why we have the wiretapping laws to begin with!
Further, what about abuses? Even if abuse isn't systematic, the government is made up of people: what if one person decided to record your phone records and extort you with them. Easy example -- "I see that you've been calling divorce lawyers. I'm betting your spouse would find that very interesting...". Or even s/divorce lawyers/abuse shelters/ in some cases.
It's not about "how much it affects our lives" -- it's that we have this thing called "due process". The basic idea is that the government stays the hell out of my personal life unless they have "probable cause" to go poking around. They want to tap my phone or get my phone records? Cool -- all they have to do is get a judge to agree that there's a reason for it, and they can even do that after they've started in most cases. So why'd they skip that part?
Soap can be a blast to make for kids, esp. if you do clear-ish glycerin soap and put cool stuff in it (rubber insects are poplular with the young lads). Coloring/scenting the soap can be fun, and challenging mentally -- some of the coloring agents start out as one color, and change when they hit the soap.
Candles can be fun, too, especially if you layer waxes, and color your own wax. It's more art than science, but you can do a lot with melting points and the like. Treating the wick to make colored flames can be fun as well.
Glazing your own pottery can be done w/o a kiln, if you buy the right glazes. This is a neat thing for kids, because the color they paint on and the color that occurs when the glaze reacts to heat are often very different. Plus, if you use food-grade glaze, the kids can eat off their science experiments.
First, let me get the definition out of the way: "slacking" is "not working when one is supposed to be working". Vacation, therefore, is not slacking, but reading Slashdot at work probably is.
;D), because it allows them to do better work.
There are certainly times when slacking is an issue. If an air-traffic controller is playing her DS when she should be watching the radar, there's certainly a problem. When people slack so much that they aren't meeting the requirements of their work, there's a problem.
But I'd argue that a little slacking in most industries is actually good for business.
The problems really enter when management sees work as quantitative when it is qualitative. Knowledge workers are typically qualitative workers -- that is, it's more important (in general) to do their tasks well then to get a lot done. These people should be allowed to have some unstructured recreation at work (if they were allowed, it wouldn't be "slacking" any more!
It's pretty unusual for someone to be able to simply sit and work for long periods of time, every day, on something that requires a significant chunk of brain power. Anyone who's done significant development knows that the best way to solve some kinds of problems is to do something completely unrelated for a while. When I get stumped, I play Lumines for a while. It's usually only a few levels in when I suddenly think of something helpful, and can get back to work.
I've also noticed that the most talented and truly productive (measured in terms of quantity * quality) developers, business modellers, architects, engineers, etc. have long ago recognized this need to "percolate" on occasion. Good management lets people "slack" a little during work time, because they know that these same people are often "working" during their fun time. I know that some of my best solutions have occurred to me late at night while playing Final Fantasy or browsing for fun from home. If work is going to encroach on my "fun time" (and really, it can't be helped in knowledge work, because you can't turn off your brain), then it's reasonable to get in a little fun at work, too.
We don't need more work, or more "slacking" -- we need to stop forcing the dichotomy when it doesn't make sense.
Wrong and wrong.
"To censor" means "to examine (as a publication or film) in order to suppress or delete any contents considered objectionable" (from the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary of Law via dictionary.com). Other definitions follow this basic idea as well; therefore, if I can effectively cause you not to say something, I censor you. Censorship is part of polite society -- e.g., theatres will remove people who talk loudly during the performance (thereby censoring them). It's government-sponsored censorship (esp. of the press, or of materials that criticise the government) that is problematic; though we do tend to tolerate limited censorship, like censoring false or misleading advertising.
Second, ISPs (at least in the USA) have common carrier status [definition]. This means that they cannot be held responsible for content that is carried on their network. In order to maintain that status, they cannot get into the business of filtering information for any other purpose than maintaining their availability (including QoS). This is part of why AOL provides client-side software filters for parents to install and enable, rather than performing these operations on the server side.
In the net-neutrality debate, censorship is not an issue -- ISPs are not planning to block sites, just reduce their availability for the ISP's customers unless such site pays a fee. The ISPs argue that this is a logical evolution of Quality of Service (QoS) methods that have long been in play; e.g. a site operator may pay their ISP more money for guaranteed service as opposed to "best-effort" service.
The opponents of the ISPs' proposals don't buy the QoS argument, because the teired model is essentially extortion. With neutral service, a provider (say, an eCommerce site) pays their ISP for enough bandwidth and QoS to serve their expected customer base, and customers (you) pay their ISPs for the bandwidth to connect to those sites at a given bitrate and QoS. This works very well.
Under a teired service arrangement, the above stays the same, but providers have to pay again to multiple ISPs (the ones their customers are using), or be artifically limited in bandwidth to consumers. Ignoring the visceral "this seems like extortion" reaction this invokes, there are a few problems with this for the consumers.
First, consumers end up paying more for products sold online, because the providers now have to recover the cost of paying for a higher-tier service. Small businesses are hurt because they cannot afford to pay for priority service, meaning customers go elsewhere. Small ISPs are also hurt, since big players will only pay the top-tier premiums to the few major ISPs (AOL, MSN, etc.). Non-profit and public-service sites are also hurt; they are unlikely to be able to pay for top-tier preference, and so will be very slow once popular. ISPs would also be able to refuse to provide top-tier service at their discretion, meaning that political action groups with whom, say, AOL might disagree will have a harder time reaching AOL's customers.
I am now trademarking... Web Pi.
Sorry, you can't trademark that, it's already been thought of
A lot of these problems stem from using RFID as authentication (esp. single-factor) rather than identification.
Most of the good RFID-enabled security measures I've seen essentially use the RFID as a rapid user ID. When I approach a secured door, the RFID says "this is Proteus", and a second device (PIN-pad, hand scanner, etc.) says "ok, prove it". That's much the same as a username/password pair, except cloning the RFID has a higher work-factor than guessing a user ID (e.g. it requires physical proximity and specialized hardware).
That doesn't mean RFID isn't secure. It's just that too many people are using it as magical techno-faery-dust to solve security problems, and that behavior leads to insecurity.
Of course, there are real security issues with certain RFID applications. The DoS that can result from removing/altering the tags is concerning -- makes one wonder why the RFID tag in a library book (for example) needs more data than an unalterable serial number. Can't the readers correlate that number with record in a DB?
Add to that the issue of tracking that comes with things like implantable RFID chips. Yeah, those could just be a serial number. But imagine stores putting RFID scanners in their doorways: they know the ID# of everyone who went in and out of the store, and even if they can't correlate that with your identity, the police could. Now, what if I clone your ID# and rob a store?
Again, though, that's not a problem with the RFID tech, but with an ill-concieved implementation and too much trust. The only security problem with the tech itself is the overwriting/erasing issue.
Both Sony and Microsoft can go fuck themselves.
Yes! Get a Wii and stick it to 'em. Erm... maybe that's not the best way to put that...
The feeling I get from them is that they throw Columbine into any argument because they know it will get them noticed. Students know that adults are scared to death of a school shooting, so it's an easy way to make an impact without thinking. Much like how profanity is used.
Or Nazis. The mention of Columbine in Middle/High Schools is the next generation's version of Godwin.
Which makes sense when you think about it. Columbine was a massively-publicized event that highlighted how schools that turn a blind eye to how their students interact, and allow severe and continual bullying to go unchecked, contribute to really screwing some kids up. Any student who has been a subject of bullying since that time -- and has seen the school not only ingore it, but become a sort of institutionalized bully -- now has a frame of reference.
Now, kids can say to schools "didn't you learn anything? You saw Columbine, you know how it happened, why are you still ignoring the problem?" Unfortunately, many of the kids who feel the need to make that point do not have well-developed rhetorical skill (another failing of our State-mandated cirriculum, IMO), and so go for the concise emotional outburst.
Do people have choice of "only text"/"text and video"/"video only"?
Considering that Google already serves image ads through AdSense, and that AdSense subscribers can choose not to have image ads on their site, it's a good bet that sites will be able to opt-out of displaying video ads as well.
It's a shame I can't set a cookie in my browser (or something) that tells Google I have no interest in video ads. The advertisers would like it because they wouldn't waste an impression on an annoyed viewer, and the users would like it because they can choose what kinds of ads to view.