I just don't know many people that can afford the luxury of traveling to another continent. The few I have encountered tend to be a bit snobbish.
I've found that there is no correlation between affluence and the behaviour of Americans. Rich or poor, from all walks of life, I've found Americans to be excellent hosts and poor guests. For many Americans Canada is very accessible (quite a few god ol' blue-collar types travel to places like Windsor to enjoy casinos, etc.) and the behaviour is just the same for those of more modest means.
I'm encoursged to see replys to my original post from Americans thanking me for my honest assesment and that they even try to be "good ambassadors" when abroad. That is why I refer to it as a stereotype--it is all to often true but definitely not universally true and I hope those of us in Canada or Europe or elsewhere realise that and welcome American guests with open arms instead of apprehension or derision. Say what you will about how the US gov't conducts itself, the American people have always welcomed foreign visitors with open arms from my experience.
I have a question. Have you been hearing funny clicks during telephone conversations? Have strangers been unusually interested in your garbage? Notice any packet sniffing going on at work that looked suspicious?
only once I said I was English not American did the non-Americans even acknowledge my existence
This is becasue of the stereotype associated with a typical American. Basically it is as follows:
"Americans are the best hosts in the world, however they make the lousiest guests"
And it's a stereotype that persists because it is largely true. I have travelled the US extensively and can say first hand that American people treat visitors like their own families (perhaps even better). Hospitality and service is second-to-none. The food is delicious (and big....y'all have REALLY BIG FOOD in most of the US...and not very heart-healthy....but it's very tasty). People are very knowledgable about their locality and will not hesitate to offer you their assistance in making your stay an enjoyable one. Contrast this level of hospitality and service to what is offered in "friendly Canada". Service and hospitality in Canada is utter crap in comparison...service is polite and friendly but not considerate---tourists have to ask for help even if it is obvious by their appearance. People do not know their own back yards, there is no attention to detail and not the level of pride in their homeland as compared with the US. It is quite a noticeable difference in culture given that these two countries share the same language and land mass and have so much culteral cross-pollination.
The case of a US tourist in another country is the exact opposite situation. The US Tourist sees himself as an HONOURED GUEST. They expect (some would say demand) the same kind of treatment that they would give to an honoured guest back home. "Heck, we liberated your continent you should at least show your respect" some might be thinking as they travel Europe (never mind that the British Commmonwealth just kinda-sorta helped out with that liberation-of-Europe thing too). When in Canada the American Tourist gets annoyed at the lack of consideration, attention-to-detail and so on. In some parts of Europe, where offering a modicum of hospitality is seem as some great favour, it gets even worse--the American Tourist gets angry. Not only are the locals offended by the thought of having to bow down and treat the American Tourist as royalty, they are also afraid of the consequences--they don't want confrontation. Thus, the poor American Tourist is simply avoided entirely by the locals whenever possible.
Canadians aren't THAT much different culturally from the Americans, but as is the case with how each country treats its tourists, Canadians behave much differently as tourists. This is where the "quiet, polite, friendly-but-boring Canadian" stereotype comes from. As a guest, the Canadian feels grateful for being accomodated and doesn't want to put the host out. The Canadian Tourist says "sorry" for the slightest inconvenience put upon the host, and "thank you" for the slightest little favour. And to one degree or another many other cultures are the same. This is why a tourist with a Canadian flag is catered to much more warmly overseas...they are simply great guests. That above all (including current and past foreign policy) has to do with how tourists are treated.
I do agree with the parent poster here...to the American Tourists out there, remember that not everyone shares your way of live, nor wants to...and when you are a guest in another nation do try to be a GOOD guest and leave a good impression. I'd like to add to that however--TO EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD: Americans may have a brash way of living but they have a level of civic pride that is sorely lacking in the rest of the world. Take your own advice, live and let live. Furthermore, visit the USA and learn what it is to have real pride in your homeland and HOW TO BE GOOD HOSTS.
If we simply learned more from one another then the world would be a much better place. After that things like foreign policy in the middle east and institutional reform in government would work themselves out much more smoothly as well.
Mr. Universe competitors are VERY LEAN and muscular, but this study looks as BODY MASS INDEX, which is a fundamentally flawed metric by which to measure a person's physical condition. The medical community should entirely abandon it in my opinion.
A BMI of 30 or more is considered obese, so if you are six feet tall and not much over 200 pounds you are considered obese. I think it's a safe bet that conidering BMI alone that every single serious competitive bodybuilder is obese. I am just under six feet tall and about 210 pounds and just fall into the "obese" category myself and I am NOT a competitve bodybuilder, though I am built on the muscular side and pretty health conscious (stay active, etc). Since I started getting it tracked I have had between 14 and 16 percent bodyfat, which is far from "competition level" but is generally considered "physically fit". This flies right in the face of the fact my BMI is 30 and tells me I'm obese.
So, if the headline is correct then most bodybuilders would be stupid and forgetful, as would I. I can't speak for bodybuilders but I do know that throughout school I scored well on aptitude tests (typically 95th percentile). How well such tests measure true intelligence is sometimes debatable, however they do indicate that I do well with symbolic logic and memory recall. I suppose I'm just a statistical freak, however I really do think that the persistence of BMI as a method of measuring physical health has more to do with its effectiveness as a merketing tool for the weight loss industry than any solid basis in science.
Much better studies would measure against metrics like precent body fat, cholesterol levels, caloric intake or overall diet, physical activity levels and so on.
Why don't we place the same requirements on the appliance and automotive industries?
Wehere I live, we ALREADY have mandatory recycling for refrigerators and freezers (by law they MUST be taken to an approved disposal facility--and all of those facilities recover the refrigerant and have the rest of the appliance recycled). As for other large appliances, recycling is not mandatory but they are virtually all recycled at the end of their useful lives already so it makes no sense to waste time legislating it.
Automotive industry recycling is the same here as well--used oil must be disposed of at apporved facilities by law, and those facilities almost universally recycle this oil. When we purchase new tires here we have to pay a "recycling fee" similar to paying a deposit on softdrink containers (though the consumer never gets that fee back....hmmm). There are few laws mandating automotive recycling however it is almost universally practised already. When you go to a parts store you always get credit for "core exchange" when you turn in the old/broken part. Nearly 100 percent of some parts are now recycled (starters, alternators, water pumps and so on).
So I don't know what box you've been hiding in but the appliance and automotive industries (ESPECIALLY the latter) are pioneers in recycling. In fact automobiles are one of (if not the most) extensively recycled items in the world. There is not only an automotive industry, but a very large AUTOMOTIVE RECYCLING industry. And guess what? They have very good lobbyists too! In fact, the automotive recycling lobbyists have managed to successfully out-lobby the automobile manufacturers lobbyists on a few occasions! I recall a case where one of the big 3 carmakers (can't remember if it was Ford, GM or Chrysler) was lobbying for regulations that would make it tougher to recycle or provide aftermarket parts (kinda like Lexmark trying to shut down ink cartridge refillers). Of course, this would hurt auto wreckers and aftermarket parts makers so their lobbyists fought back. The recyclers one that battle.
Have you been through teacher preparation courses? Some of it is inane, repetitive, and useless. However, much of it, when properly presented and implemented, is useful.
Not personally but a dorm mate was. I am talking from a Canadian perspective and assumed (perhaps inaccurately) that the US system was similar (both systems produce similar results though). It seemed to me that a disproportionate amount of courses were "Educational Methodology" courses (or some such similarily inane title). Much of it was a lot of child-psychology claptrap. It didn't look to be of any practical use, and he didn't think much of the content either. Judging from the texts and assignments, if there WAS practical value to these courses it certainly wasn't "properly presented and implemented".
There should be a happy-medium where students can learn in an environment that shows them the positive and negative consequences of their actions.
There should be, but there isn't. It seems that teachers (inupper grades) do the upmost to do as little to upset the poor precious student as possible. Guess what? Sometimes a student will mess up and should have to face APPROPRIATE consequences. There are often no consequences at all. Now we are havingto deal with dangerous sociopathic teenagers shooting up schools, criminally harassing others and so on. Thankfully dangerously sociopathic teens are an extreme rarity, but the criminal incidents are extreme and it seems schools and teachers aren't equipped to cope. As a result the reaction becomes extreme and the slightest disturbing signals from any student are then blown out of proportion and we get ridiculous, draconian and indiscriminant "zero tolerance enforcement" where six year olds are expelled from class for pointing fingers and saying "bang". It rapidly swings from one extreme to another, but all withthe same goal, which is to "protect the children"
What form of teacher training would you recommend instead? What would it look like? Here's a little bit of insight for you... All psychology is inherently theoretical. [...] That is what "child centered" instruction is supposed to deal with - finding the method that works best for each student. Such a proverbial shotgun approach will be more likely to reach more students than teaching using just one method. As I said above, preserving self-esteem at all costs is a different creature. Please do not confuse the two.
Well not all of teacher training is bad, it is just that it is very unbalanced. Here is what I observed about student teachers wher I'm from: It is all very good to teach concepts of psychology and behavioural theory. Indeed it is quite important, however it seems that at some points it is EVERYTHING. And there is so much time devoted to it that much of the content is total fluff. I KNOW all psychology is inherently theoretical, however some theories are invalid or relatively unproven. The classroom is for learning, not psychological experimentation.
As a result of this imbalance, when it came time for the students to actually to classroom training--to actually teach real classes underthe guidance of an experienced teacher--they were COMPLETELY unprepared. There were almost NO courses that actually taught how to TEACH! Why the hell were these courses called educational METHODOLOGY if they didn't teach actual METHODS? Where are courses on effective testing methods, lesson planning and so on? *I* would suggest that the MAJORITY of training be on "the mechanics" of teaching--how to plan a lesson, audio and visual presentation techniques, curriculum planning and so on. Get rid of ALL the psychology garbage (and eventhe stuff that isn't garbage, which is less than half of what is now taught) until the final year of training (at least until after they know the mechanics and have had some real teaching experience). Once teachers in training know the methodsof teaching THEN they can learn how to identify which methods are most effective with each student.
...then buy a Mac. There are games for Mac. There is Photoshop for Mac. there is no 3ds max for mac...but Autodesk also has Maya that does largely the same thing,and it is availablefor macOS X. Oh wait...it's also available for Linux too if Blender isn't enough for you. Maya is probably #2 to 3ds and perfectly feature-laden and some prefer using it quite a bit over 3ds.
Which brings me to another question: why isn't blender good enough anyways? Or Gimp or Inkscape? I know they aren't as fancy as the big expensive closed stuff. Are you a professional, full-time game developer rollingout the sleeping bag under your desk for the night at Electronic Arts? Or are you jsut a hardcore enthusiast with a penchant for big fancy stuff?
Seriously, if you are a hobbyist I can't think of why the Free alternatives are unacceptable. The great thing about adopting the Free alternatives is that you are doing your part to advance the cause of Free software...the "chicken and egg" theory applies and if Free software is to become (or remain) competitive then it is the enthusiasts who'll have to deal with the pain of laying the first egg...and when that chicken hatches (critical mass) it'll lay its own eggs and become more self sustaining.
I guess that's what we should expect from the creators of Woody
Well, I for one would not initially expect a "globe-humping weasel" logo from a bunch of people who are fans of the Pixar movie "Toy Story". But then again it does convey what the Debian project thinks the Mozilla Foundation can do with its trademark policy.
Thinking about it though, adult animation enthusiasts DO tend to have a slightly twisted sense of humour...
Its about time that someone puts part of the blame on the parents.
Fine and dandy...if that is the case then IT IS ABOUT TIME THAT SOMEONE PUTS PART OF THE BLAME ON TEACHERS too. Computer access at public schools is still horribly unsupervised, and it is probably at least as likely (and probably more so) that students could use school resources, during ther breaks between classes, to do commit exactly the same libel as happened here. I haven't heard anything about schools being sued for neglecting to adequately supervise students whilst they are in the care of teachers..either it doesn't happen or it isn't reported in the news. It has happened numerous times where websites with threatening statements or plots to pull another Columbine, and these were done using school resources. The students are swiftly disciplined (suspended or expelled and even at times charged with criminal offences) but I've not heard parent of these kids trying to go after teachers or schools for the woeful lack of supervision or effective preventative actions.
I do agree tha too many parents have neglected to be properly involved in their children's lives and it has had a profoundly negative impact on our children's development. Somewhere we all lost our way and got caught up in buying nice big houses and SUVs and struggling to make the payments with two incomes and overtime--as if having large houses and SUVs would make us happy and our kids more well adjusted. HOWEVER, this is NOT the only main problem with how our children are raised.
The other problem is our education system, and the methods and practices taught to our teachers for educating our children. It is at least as important as proper parental involvement in children's lives. Besides teachers being overworked and underpaid so as to make proper supervision and discipline next to impossible, new teachers are also badly trained. Too much teacher training is spent on theroetical child psychology and educational methodology courses...and it seems the content of those courses is based on unproven ideas and shaky research. Young idealistic teachers all too often come out of college with their heads filled with phychological garbage about "child centered environments" and "preserving self esteem" at the cost of real methods to teach children how to learn, think critically, be civically responsible and so on. Thus, when a student fails to perform his or her academic responsibilities it is viewed not as a failure on the students part but a "lack of self esteem". Instead of making the student accept responsibility for the failure and learn from the mistakes these teachers try to improve the child's self esteem.
What total crap! This is the prefect recipe for creating a society of sociopaths! If there is any element in a childs like that aggravates his mental stability such conditioning helps breed serial killers. The kids who put out libelous or threatening web pages, or shoot up schools, or bully outcasts to the point of nervous breakdown are dangerously sociopathic. Parental neglect did NOT cause this to happen in isolation. Parental neglect is what allowed the education system to make these children into sociopaths.
If you are a teacher, please try not to take offence..it is not the teachers fault, and in fact I'd say 10 to 20 percent of teachers are superhumanly effective educators. Similarly 10 to 20 percent of teachers are almost criminally incompetent. The remaining 60 to 80 percent deliver mediocre results--their students may come out knowing enough to contribute to society but these teachers (through no fault of their own--they are victims of the system too) do not have the ability to correct institutional damage done to many of these kids.
So if it takes being litigious to correct the behaviour of adults responsible for our children it cannot stop with the parents...teachers (or the professors who educate teachers, or the administration that run the schools) have to be targeted as well. I think that the teacher might want to direct some of the blame to her bosses as well for fostering an intimidating environment that does not allow the opportunity to properly discipline students.
When the dot bomb happened and we pushed to a 4 year cycle support costs in that last year were dramatically higher than the other years. The knee in the curve appeared to happen at 3 years 3 months (quaterly mapping).
Doesn't anyone know the WHOLE reason why the TCO of computer infrastructure rises after three years? Don't ANY accountants read/.?
The TCO of computer hardware includes "depreciation expense". The government allows a certain percentage of your fixed assets to be written off for tax purposes. I'm not sure of the terminology in other countries, but the maximum permissible depreciation allowable for taxation purposes in Canada is called the "Capital Cost Allowance". In the case of computers it has been a linear depreciation of about %30 of the original cost. That means your computer is "written off" in about three years. I believe the US has a similar allowance for depreciation expense on computer hardware.
This has more of an effect in the US IIRC, becasue in Canada, if a business does not claim the full allowance (for example, if it is not required to bring net tax to zero), the unused portion PLUS the normal maximum CCA is allowed as a deduction. (I THINK) in the US businesses CANNOT accumulate unused but allowed depreciation expense in future tax years so a business tends to make sure to write off the largest amount possible. This means that in each of the first three years of a PCs life a business could save hundres in taxes from this deduction.
After three years PCs are essentially WORTHLESS assets--they contribute exactly ZERO dollars to the asset portion of the balance sheet, and yet they continue to incur maintenance expenses so they would probably have a noticeably larger negative effect on the balance sheet if there are a lot of old PCs in a busines. Furthermore there aren't many warranties on PCs that go past a year much less three years so if there is a problem a business must bear the full cost of repairs--on an asset worth $0.
Realistically a company could get SOME money from the sale of three year old PCs, and even three year old laptops could be prefectly usable and capable of running five-year-old XP and any contemporary application software. From my practical experience, aside from hardware failiure a machine that is 3 or 4 years old is no more trouble to support than a new machine--WinXP still costst the same for both, it still buggers up just as much on new machines as old, 3 year old machines in an office environment are not all that slow so it doesn't take any meaningfully longer time to perform various tasks and if things are really fouled up both new and older machines have the same reimaging process. Aside from replacing hard drives, however, most hardware upgrades become more expensive over time, when warranties expire and models are discontinued.
I'm not an accountant (as is probably evident from my post--I'm just waiting for a real accountant to pick it apart) but wherever I've worked it becomes instantly and magically easier to justify replacement of a workstation desktop or notebook the moment it becomes three years old, and in the vast majority of cases there was no similar magic jump in maintenance costs. We had scads of flimsy, cruddy Dell C600/610s that were already expensive in terms of hardware replacement costs well before the three year time limit, but it was only at the three year point where the bean counters on high would finally say "yeah, it's crap...put an order in for a new one". I cannot say EXACTLY how much or what kind of a positive effect it has on the financial bottom line, but once accounting has fully written off a PC their tone changes dramaticaly and they are almost eager for you to upgrade--slightest little issue (especially with hardware) will justify an upgrade to a whole new machine.
ANyways, I'm sure that because of this behaviour, it could be almost a full three years before we significantly move from XP to Vista. All incoming PCs will be imaged with WinXP for t
Sorry, but the designs are gross and dated, and not in a fun retro way.
Well I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I wouldn't call these wooden cases in particualar "gross and dated"--it looks apparent to me that they are made by professional craftsmen and don't at all evoke memories of the amateur/hobbyist cases of the 1970s (and earlier) with the curved-sheetmetal-plywood-end-cap design. There isn't any tin painted gaudy blue either. Certainly they are a step up from the putrid putty boxes we've had to live with for years.
That said, making a PC look better than the standard putrid putty box isn't setting the barrier very high, and while I think these cases are far from "gross and dated" they certainly look like oddities to me as well. I think the problem is that they basically look like lumps beautifully finished wood with computery bits peeking through. The mere fact that they are identifiable as desktop PCs makes the material of choice look odd by default. These systems don't look ugly as much as they look FUNNY. It's like they came off the set of a cheesy comedy movie about a group of Amish hackers, riding around in their buggies toting wooden computers.
You could probably hire a designer and a good local woodshop to make a much better looking case for the the same price.
Well, considering that these enclosures house fairly high-end PCs you have to keep in mind the acutal price of the case is far less than the $5000+ price. I agree that they are overpriced as they are "mass produced" and not completely unique form one to the next. However, the time and skill to design and build one of these boxes is most certainly as much (or perhaps more) than the cost of these units, considering design probably takes at least as long as building when you are only building a one-off custom unit.
I think the problem with these machines is that they are trying to market them as serious, high-end hardware and that they simply look FUNNY. They could be made with plywood-and-veneer to be cost competitive and be sold as novelty designs, along side towers that look like transformer heads and penguins. Sure when you get close up you'd notice the cheapness, but from 10 feet away you wouldn't tell. All in all it just looks FUNNY.
I think wood is a good idea, however please don't build a wood PC as a PC-shaped blob of wood. At best it'll look funny, at worst it'll look tacky. Some posters said you don't use wood to enclose electronics--you use it to make furniture. SO, make your wooden PC a PIECE OF FURNITURE that just so happens to house a PC. Put a nice door on the front that opens to reveal the computery bits. Put another door that opens to reveal...a shelf for CDs or books or on/out trays or something. Don't expose fans and cooling grates if at all possible--have venting discreetly located and not "grill-shaped". Put the rear panel (I/O connections, back plates of PCI cards, etc) covered completely by an attractive wood door, with the cables routing out from underneath the door. There should be ABSOLUTELY NO "computery bits" exposed--if it looks computery in any way when it is made of wood it'll look odd. Just like if you made a PC enclosure out of granite--apart from being very heavy it would also look like it came off the set of a Flintstones movie.
So, I'd have to say it's great to do new and different things and it shouldn't be discouraged, however in this case it isn't new and different enough. How about a mahogany filing cabinet with a PC completely hidden inside? Or a computer desk that is actually a desk-shaped computer? I realise in some of these cases we aren't that far removed from just plain old furniture that has shelf space for hiding a standard putrid putty box, however we could do beter than standard office furniture. For one thing, having some degree of "system integration" with elegant wooden furniture and PCs would help immensely with such things as cable management and would open up more possibilites in system cooling since we wouldn't be restricted to standard-sized cases. Besides that, whenit comes to unconventional materials "stealth" is much "cooler" than "stand out".
I would love to have something like this in Canada.
So would I. However, the last big database application that the federal gov't set up was...umm...less than successful. The upgrade to the gun registry to handle long-guns cost a fortune--an interesting (NOT exaggerated) bit of trivia: To insert a SINGLE record into this system costs an average of CDN$3000! And no, our dollar isn't that worthless--that comes to over US$2600.00 per record in the database.
If we had a Canadian federal budget database, by that metric it would eat up our entire surplus to devlop and maintain it! *sigh* such a shame...
There is a HUGE amount of evidence of this behaviour, just look at every single autitor general's report released this decade--grants given out willy-nilly, expenses claimed without any documentation whatsoever, so on and so forth. Google "HRDC scandal". This sort of thing happens for two reasons:
1. Palm-greasing. Former PM Cretien was the king of palm-greasing (also google "Adscam"). Buddy/corporation awarded huge contract, next election comes around and that money from taxpayers comes back to the Liberal party for campaign contributions.
2. Nest-feathering...AKA "Have to meet budget"--this is where the term "March Madness" comes in--March is when the federal government makes up the budget for the next fiscal year. It has been a tradition forever but got even worse when the government hit the debt wall and had to reign in spending. If a department came in under budget then civil servant managers would go apesh!t because they could be the subject of budget cuts. Such managers get in trouble for going over-budget but there is no incentive to come in under-budget. Not only that--there is actually a DISincentive for being frugal. Govenrment workers are mostly unionised and have a collective agreement whereby their salaries depend on the number of staffers under them and the size of the budget they manage. If a manager in gov't can justify a budget increase, or another subordinate position, then the manager can move up a level and get a pay raise for managing a larger department. If they come in under budget and their dept gets smaller then there is NO incentive of any kind for cost cutting.
This affects lower levels of government as well, though more out of stupidity than anything. A staffer in Calgary city all wanted a desktop trinter so they wouldn't have to walk down the hall or have sensitive documents sitting in the output tray in a public area. This staffer ended up with a printer you could get at any store for about $250, but City Hall paid $5000 for it--went through a couple middlemen who marked it up and a whole lot of administration costs. This is why they call it "silly hall".
Both of you are wrong. First of all, this is the government we are talking about and they never get anything right, so don't expect them to properly normalise their schema:
SELECT vendor, product1, product2, product3, (...productn), price1, price2, (...pricen) FROM buyerlist WHERE price1 > 15 (AND price2....)
Expect the government to award the contract to an established government contractor for several million dollars, and for said vendor to sequester itself for several years during which time it will busily develop a Visual Foxpro 6.0 application called FUSSBUDGET with an obtuse, limited web interface for the general public. Upon initial deployment the website will be Slashdotted, causing the Visual Foxpro server to explode and in turn cause several hundred thoushand dollars in damage to the data centre.
At that point the IRS will decide that maybe it would be better to have more than one PC server to handle the demand from, well, the entire US taxpayer public that's online. The clustering, replication and so forth were "outside the scope" so the contractor will demand another million dollars and spend another year trying to make Visual Foxpro 6 run in a cluster and perform replication and so on. This of course will involve a great amount of elabourate custom code and batch files to periodically copy.DBF files to multiple network drives and some round-robin DNS tricks to direct web traffic to one of 200 VFP server PCs.
The whole programme will be dismantled after going overbudget by 2841% without even emerging from beta status--probably triggered by a security vulnerability in COM or a SQL injection attack by a 14 year old boy who wanted $25,000 of the federal budget allocated to "sex education" so he could have hookers "babysit" him when his parents were away.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the concept of a "federal budget database" so as to increase transparency to taxpayers...I just have little faith in the government (ANY government) in properly executing such a project.
However, consider the fact that if a trademark holder does not vigorously defend their trademark, they stand to lose it.
However it is probably better to MANAGE your trademark rather than DEFEND it. It is in Apple's best interest to promote the use of the word "podcast" and the incorporation of the word "pod" into the names of 3rd party accessories and even companies riding on Apple's coattails. If some software is called "pod"something, or a site has "podcasts" for audio blog entries, or some company called "AutoPod" markets music player cradles and those "earphone-to-FM radio" adapters it turns the "pod" name from a mere "trademark fragment" into a whole industry (remember, Apple's trademark is iPod, NOT the word pod or the related podcasting). Not only that, if these companies relly play up the "Pod" name people will think their products and services are meant to work with only iPods even when they work with all portable media players.
I'm looking at the "podcastready.com" website and Apple's iTunes website. They bear virtually NO visual resemblance to one another (the podcastready.com website actually has a more microsoft XP-ish look and feel to it IMHO). They have a SOFTWARE product called "mypodder". They prominently display that it "works with ALL your digital devices"...furthermore they have the claim "now with iPod support!" by the download link, implying that at one point that not only was it NOT limited to working with iPods, it in fact DIDN'T originally work with iPods at all!. Only a TOTAL MORON would look at that site and be fooled into thinking it was affiliated with Apple.
Apple IS going too far. The iPod is a shiny little media player with a circle thingy on the front and an apple-ish GUI on a little screen. Mypodder is a piece of software for finding, downloading and sharing media files. The names BARELY rhyme (you have to chop off the "er") and the products are completely different and podcastready.com is not only not trying to mislead its customers, it is *actively differentiating* itself from apple. It uses "pod-related" words becasue of the simple fact that the technology is now most commonly referred to as "podcasting" (yes, other terms are used but they are far less popular). Apple is just being greedy. If ithis was a case of Apple protecting its brand identity then Apple would've trademarked the word "podcasting" right off the bat, or otherwise pursued legal action. IT DIDN'T--it trademarked "iPod". IIRC Apple didn't even invent the term, and if it had issues with the term they've had A COUPLE YEARS to deal with it. THEY DIDN'T. They let the term become so common as to be used generically before taking issue with how it is used.
It isn't like Podcast Ready introduced a portable player, with a funky touch-thingy interface and work-alike embedded software and decided to call it the "MyPodder". They introduced SOFTWARE with that name, and marketed it in a way that clearly indicated it is independent of Apple and interpoerable with all brands of portable devices. Steve, call off your legal dogs now!
Come on, had to make this into an anti-Sony argument. Just wouldn't feel right.
I'd be happy to oblige...
Sony, in fact, HAS vigourously defended its "walkman" trademark right from the beginning (right from the beginning, not "a couple of decades late"--I remember when Sony went after a Canadian electronics store for advertising a sale on "personal stereos" made by Sony's competitors as a "Walkman Sale" back in the mid 1980s). Sony is amongst the most agressive defenders of trademark in the world, and unfortunately it seems Apple is following in its footsteps and threatening a world of hurt for anyone naming their handheld products/*pod*/ or/^i*/.
I understand why Apple defends their industrial designs as they are tangible characteristics of Apple products and a lot of time, effort and money is put into the look, shape and usability features. It seems really unfair that Apple should spend so much time making a Mac look like a Mac just to have some goofily-named Taiwanese plastics company barf out replica cases jury-rigged to accomodate generic PC motherboards. But claiming ownership of the word "pod" or the 9th letter of the alphabet? That is just petty and greedy. Compete on the merits of your product, not on some silly brand name, and let the fledgling market for accessories to your products thrive. Sure brand dilution is a valid concern, but lets be realistic--Xerox is still around even as its coporate marque bacame a noun and verb in the dictionary. Kimberly-clark continues to make a lot of money with Kleenex even though everyone calls all sorts of other tissues Kleenex out of habit and Google continues to thrive even as its identity has come to mean "search the internet" in general.
Sometimes a little brand dilution can be a good thing. Yes, I understand Apple wants to make sure some cheap-ass purveyor of junky accessories doesn't pretend to be affiliated with Apple but there are other approaches to take. For example licensing terms could be kept relaxed and Apple could have a little "Apple approved" logo for 3rd party manufacturers (like "intel inside" or the "VHS logo" or "Designed for Windows"). Consumers would then know it was a 3rd party product but that it met Apple's quality standards...and forget about fighting the junky stuff unless they fraudulently use the "Apple approved" logo. Done right this can work quite well--it helped VHS beat Beta for example. Let "Podcasting" and "iThingy" and "PodPouch" and whatever other pod-wannabes and i-philes survive and thrive.
In the abcense of common sense though, let me propose an alternative to the word "podcasting". "Audcasting" and "vidcasting" are even dumber sounding and limiting (it implies only moving video or sound, not a combination of media). "Zunecasting" just helps Microsoft marketing and MS needs none of our help there. So, how about PEERCASTING. The term BROADCASTING covers all sorts of media distributed from one central point to widespread areas simultaneously, so PEERCASTING would be an apt description of what we call podcasting now--distribution of media from one point to other, individual points on-demand. Peercastig is already used by a few people to refer to distribution via BitTorrent or other P2P networks and podcasting isn't THAT far off in overall concept.
The example that springs to mind is mobile phones a fuel (gas) stations. Any electrical engineer in the HAE industry will simply declare that the phone should not be there as it has the potential to act as an ignition source, the reasoned proof of this is long and will not make good tv. But showing a ringing phone does not ignite a fuel (gas) air mixture doesn't prove the general case that phones cant ignite fuel vapours.
I find it quite interesting how some people so devoutly believe in the oddest things. For example, i know some very devout Christians, and I don't think I've heard them say that Jesus is the son of God with as much conviction as some people have insisted that cellphones are hazardous around the fumes at a petrol station. What you say is true--if you try to do somehting 100 or 1000 (or even 1000000) times and only once manage to make it happen it means that thing is POSSIBLE, and if you never manage to do the thing it doesn't mean it isn't possible. However, it DOES prove that such a thing is so improbable it doesn't warrant such a reaction.
The cellphone-at-a-petrol station is a perfecrt example. Yes, Mythbusters did NOT prove cellphones were not a hazard, however they DID prove that the (mis)reported incidents are so highly unlikely that it does NOT warrant the hyteria around the myth. "ANY electrical engineer in the HAE industry will simply declare that the phone should not be there"? Well, *I* am one electrical engineer who will say such a restriction is ridiculous. There are countless other things that would WAY more likely cause ignition of fuel vapours that happen all the time. When you start your car the solenoid can spark. The acrylic sweater you might wear on a cold, dry winter day could create static electricity--and if you are in the habit of locking the filler open and moving about your car to, say, clean the windscreen, then going back to remove the filler....spark....boom. Locking fillers open or propping them open with the fuel cap...THAT is what should be banned, NOT cellphones.
Please get this straight...cellphones are NOT intrinsically safe however there IS a VERY remote chance of ignition, but they are NOT any more dangerous than any of a wide variety of other non-intrinsically-safe electrical devices. Your iPod is just a "dangerous" at the pump as your cellphone. The electrical acceesories BUILT RIGHT INTO YOUR CAR--like the radio or the headlights or the like--are just as dangerous. Your macbook or dell or thinkpad's battery is order of magnitude more likely to randomly explode.
And you know what makes a cellphone not intrinsically safe? It isn't the EMR energy from the transmitted signal. It isn't the backlight in the screen. It isn't the ringer. IT IS THE BATTERY. ALL reports of cellphones igniting in ANY situation has been attributed to a problem with the battery--defective charging circuitry allowing cells to overcharge, cheap aftermarket batteries, intermittent contact at the conductors and so on. Your best bet in trying to cause a cellphone to explode at a gas station would be to slam it against the fuel fillerso it smashes and the case cracks and the metal bits of the battery short and spark. There ARE intrinsically-safe phones for exceptionally hazardous locations (confined spaces with gas fumes, dusty locations like flour mills, etc) and the single biggest thing that makes them intrinsically safe is to completely seal the battery in its compartment so it cannot come dislodged and so the electrical contacts are not exposed to open air.
Anyways, that bit on Mythbusters was very amusing. Perfectly scientific? I'm sure it wasn't. It was just entertaining and IMHO did in fact proove it was an extremely improbable phenomenon. It's something like when they dropped a lit cigarette in a big trail of fuel and showed it doesn't work like hollywood were it flares up and folloes the trail--the cigaretter is too cool and the fuel too wet to allow for ignition. Mythbusters isn't about scientific proof...it is about entrtainment and, for the lack of a better phrase, "common sense". Along the way they try to explain the "why" but the point is the entertainment, and to say "this idea is so far out and PRACTICALLY unachievable that this myth is busted".
His science is far from "stellar". Often, it's quite poor. One should never watch MythBusters for anything but its entertainment value.
Isn't it quite obvious that "entertainment value" is the primary purpose of the show? Mythbusters wasn't ever supposed to be a seriously educational show. It is interesting entertainment, like the geek equivalent to professional wrestling--just like WWE isn't real wrestling, Mythbusters isn't real science.
Their methodologies make many professional product testers and scientists cringe. We can clearly see their mistakes, but those who don't have much scientific training may not.
Well, the methodologies of professional researchers would make the average TV viewer fall asleep--even the average Discovery Channel viewer. The majority of viewers will indeed miss the flaws in their inivestigations, but it isn't hard research. For the minority who DO catch the flaws and care enough to be bothered by them write Adam and Jamie and popint out their oversights--they don't do much to hide that fact and have on occasion revisited myths.
But the educational value it does provide is quite petty, and often quite bad, as it misinforms the viewer.
Well, considering that Adam and Jamie are not acutally professional scientists or educators, but rather skilled technicians in the field of motion picture effects, I do not think most people would rely on their show for serious education purposes (though it might be great material for high school science classes for critical analysis of their investigative methods--where they go right and wrong). If someone comes away from that show unquestionably believing everything in it is completely untained, scientific conclusions then they have more to worry about than being misinformed--they need work in their skills at critical thinking.
I for one just like to watch the banter between Adam and Jamie, and seeing things explode, burn and crash. And Kari getting painted silver, and, well, being eye candy. They should hire another red-head geek-chickie...like Kate Botello perhaps.
Kari and Kate and a tub full of ballistics gel....mmmmmm.....
if you don't start immediately, after 5 years you'd be only at 50% completed instead of 80 or 90% like your competitors?
And your point is...? I know of no busines in existence in the world today that states in its mission statement that "we shall strive to complete a softweare upgrade rollout faster than any of our competitors"--there is no point to have a goal of getting all employees upgraded to the latest OS before everyone else. Businesses strive to offer the best quality of product or service, or to be the lowest-cost supplier, or be among the best employers, or be first to market with a new invention. These goals have little to do with what OS a company runs on their computers.
I know, it certainly could put a company at a disadvantage if it was still running ancient VAX machinesand had DEC VT green-screen termials and '386 PCs running Windows 3.1 for Workgroups on people's desks. However there has to be a balance--a company that hastily rolls out a new release of software just so it can get there first is at an equal disadvantage as the company that limps alog on ancient unsupported software and hardware. In fact, upgrading too quickly can be MORE costly to a business than waiting too long. This is especially the case with closed, commercial software because of added licensing costs.
Here is what I found was the case with nearly ALL the companies who upgraded their Windows boxes to XP before SP1, or 2003 before it was ready: the licensing costs were at their highest at initial release, proper drivers were not available for all their hardware resulting in unanticipated hardware upgrade costs, they got smacked by extra vulnerabilities or bugs not present in older software, and important applications broke upon upgrade (in particular, custom applications, ERP/EAM/other enterprise apps, industrial software like HMIs PLC programming software and communications drivers and so on).
I'd have to say MS has it backwards--the EU is helping enforce responsible behavior on its industries by delaying early adoption of unproven software, so it has the ADVANTAGE over the rest of the world. The best way to upgrade is to phase in new software gradually, for example as hardware is replaced, and periodically evaluate the benefits of upgrading. Quite often, there are no compelling benefits at all until the vendor starts dropping support. For example, only within the last year has it been justifiable to upgrade Win2k machines to XP just for the sake of upgrading--reason being is that some important new software and hardware support will not be available (things like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media, and IE7, and limited support for SQL 2005 on win2k servers). For most companies I've dealt with, XP was not at all considered until SP1 was released, and even then the upgrade strategy was to phase it in as new machines came online.
I think MS is just showing a bit of desperation in trying to get the Windows upgrade cycle back on track, as well as frustration at being reigned in by anti-trust regulations. I don't even think members of EU parliament are stupid enough to swallow such tripe.
...provided you remember to pack your SPF100 sunblock and plenty of water.
Must be nice to not have to maintain public-facing pages for a large company
Yes, it is quite nice not have to maintain such a site, since most "public-facing pages for a large company" are notoriously and unnecessarily complicated and standards-broken. Furthermore, it is false to say that these sites are broken becasue they must cater to IE. It is in fact the other way around--IE is broken because of the incompetence or (false) laziness, impatience and hubris of the designers and maintainers of these big public sites. MS is to blame for applying sinister "embrace and extend" strategies to its product, however by far the primary responsibility for the current messy state of affairs lies squarely with the codemonkeys who vomit forth the tag soup that all too often continues to pass for web pages today.
Let me explain: when then-leading Netscape introduced nonstandard extensions to HTML, or incorrectly or poorly implemented the standard, rather than report it as a bug web authors actually EMBRACED these quirks rather than working around them or otherwise ignoring them. For example, early web developers heavily abused non-semantic and sometimes annoying proprietary tags like CENTER and BLINK, and went as far as to do atrocious things like nest their content in multiple BODY tags with different BGCOLOR attributes to do useless crap like fading and flashing the screen. The result of this was to not only let Netscape neglect bugs, put to put pressure on Netscape to RETAIN the bugs so as to remain "compatible" with such perverse tag soup!
The phenomenon proved to be viral--in the interests of matching leader Netscape's "feature" set, Microsoft went ahead and emulated all that malarky on purpose in IE! Furthermore, MS realised that nonstandard extensions were rather easily embraced by stupid lazy tag soup codemonkeys. This was a great opportunity to embrace and extend the WWW with such atrocities as ActiveX OBJECTs and heavy promotion of CSS-like styles long before the CSS standard was established. The latter action was particularly incideous because it allows MS to say that they "support standards" when in fact they sabotage them. Rather than warning web authors to use caution with stylesheets until the CSS style was standardised, they went ahead and made sure it was getting well established so that when changes were made to their proposal for CSS was modified by the W3C. By doing that they ensured that their own inconsistent application of CSS would be the de-facto standard and they could let slide any fixes to *actually* follow standards.
So please, make your best effort to break this evil cycle and do NOT design for IE. This doesn't mean that you should let your site break IE or make it look crappy--what it means is do NOT use IE during development without regard to standards then worry about degrading gracefully in other browsers. Instead use FF or another more compliant browser during development, and regularly validating your code using the W3C validation tools. THEN, when you test against IE (this is the real world, so you can't ignore it as the grandparent post implies) you make sure it degrades GRACEFULLY in IE, and do it WITHOUT relying on sneaky CSS bugs and breaking standards.
Yes, you CAN write totally valid XHTML and CSS that looks attractive and retains enough functionality in IE to satisfy your audience. Here are some approaches I have taken in the past:
* Avoid the use of CSS features that are standards but not widely implemented in IE or other mainline browsers, at least for important presentational aspects (anything more than eye candy).
* Do NOT strive to make the page appear or function fully and exactly the same in IE as other browsers--just make sure it doesn't look "broken" in IE. MS has deliberately "dumbed down" their pages for non-IS browsers in the past (even when other browsers were perfectly capable of handling the page as designed for IE). Given
Re:Well, from what the article suggests...
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Sweden's Watergate
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I see nothing wrong with that, considering it wasn't even there until 1979 or so.
You obviously are ignorant of Canadian history. "O Canada", our current official national anthem, was originally written in French, and no less tha FOUR different English versions were in common use (dubbed the Richardson, McCulloh, Buchan and the Weir versions--named after the author of the lyrics for each). ALL but one--the popular Weir version--mentioned "God" at least once in the first verse, and even the Weir version mentioned God in the final verse.
Furthermore, "O Canada" has only been the official national anthem since 1980, and the addition of the word "God" in the first verse coincided with its official adoption (this change in lyrics was strongly pushed by Trudeau and his newly re-elected Liberal government). The adoption of "O Canada" as our sole, official national anthem in 1980 was to signify the 100th anniversary of the original French version of the song. Prior to that Canada's official "Royal Anthem" was..."GOD save the Queen". "O Canada" was only a "national symbol" until 1966, when it became "the nation's anthem" (this mostly had to do with if the government held copyright and which lyrics were the official ones--God Save the Queen remained the "Royal" anthem and the only one required at official functions until 1980).
We had a perfectly decent secular national anthem, and some idiots had to ruin it.
Firstly, it is quite offensive to label those who defend the expression of faith in our anthem as "idiots". In making your statement, you have asserted that the biggest "idiot" of them all was none other than former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, as he was one of the chief proponents of the lyric changes (IIRC the now-official lyric changes are very closely based on Trudeau's personal suggestion).
Second, Canada has NEVER in its history had a secular national anthem, decent or otherwise, official or otherwise. Our first national anthem has "God" right in the title and features God repeatedly in the lyrics. As for O Canada being secular, there has ALWAYS been reference to faith in BOTH the French and english versions of the song:
Original French:...Il sait porter la croix... (...it can bear the cross...) and also Et ta valeur, de foi trempée (with valour, full of faith)
Richardson version: Almighty God! On thee we call / Defend our rights, forfend this nation's thrall
McCulloch version: Lord God of Hosts! We now implore / Bless our dear land this day and evermore
Buchan version: With hearts we sing, "God save the King"
Weir version (fourth verse of the version on which our official anthem is based, which remains unchanged to this day): Help us to find, O God, in thee / A lasting, rich reward
Careful about what names you throw around...they might bounce back and stick to you......idiot...
Well, from what the article suggests...
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Sweden's Watergate
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· Score: 2, Interesting
...a Swedish Liberal is more like a Canadian Liberal, which is to say that a Liberal doesn't really have any concrete principles except to say and do whatever might help them achieve and maintain power;-)
As others have observerd here, politics outside the US is far more complicated than "left and right" (hell, even US politics has more dimension than that, though the fact that only two parties have power simplifies things). Even the Canadian landscape is far different politically and in some ways mirrors the Swedish situation. For those non-Canadian readers:
Canada's federal parliament has 4 official parties, which dont exactly fall evenly on a political left-right spectrum...cynically, they are:
1. The Conservative party currently leads a minority government (largest portion of the commons but still less than 50%). It is also the youngest federal party in Canada (it has only ran in two elections--2004 and 2006). It came into being largely because of a coalition of some disaffected MPs from two now-defunct right-of-centre parties (The Alliance and Progressive-Conservatives/PCs). This un-official coalition ended when the Alliance chose a new leader (the current Prime Minister), and a formal merger was achieved not long after the PCs chose their new leader (now deputy leader of the Conservatives and current Foreign Affairs minister). Because of this heritage, the Conservative party is a fairly mixed-bag of vaguely right-wing principles. The Alliance generally represented the "far right" (equivalent to moderate US Republicans) though in acutality it was an almost evenly-split coalition of populitsts, social conservatives and libertarians. The Progressive-Conservatives (which sounds like an oxymoron to many people) were nominally right-of-centre in that they were socially "progressive" (protect socialised medicine, support gay marriage, strong central government) but economically conservative (scrap costly gun control, support free trade, outlaw deficits...).
Despite PM Harper being described by his critics on the left as "shrub" or "George's puppet" or other such nasty ways, suggesting that he and his party are nothing more than far-right republicans, Harper himself is acually from the libertarian faction of this large "right wing" coalition. Though he is a regular church-goer he is loathe to legislate morality and evasive on subject such as gay marriage (he'd generally prefer to defer such moral decisions to free votes in Parliament). This lets him get out of having to put the coalition in jeopardy by angering the social conservative support base and appeals to the populist demand for more direct democracy.
Disappointingly to most Conservative supporters the party is viewed as the "least bad" of all the parties. Populists want more action on democratic reform and more openness in goverment than we've been getting recently. Social conservatives would like more vocal defence of thier values by their learder and MPs (which would probably scare off most Conservative support realistically). Libertarians are frustrated at pledging support for large government programmes like mandatory universal healthcare. The one thing that truly unites this party is economic conservatism, and it support is not realy solid--it retains its support basically because it has acutally kept most of its election promises. A study was recently done and quite literally it is the first government that has kept more than half its election promises since, like world war II.
2. The Liberal Party is the official opposition though it has held power for most of Canada's history as a nation. It, well, stands for nothing in particular. Ironically the Liberal's are probably best described as "classiclally conservative" as they support (or at least pay lip service to) "traditional Canadian values". These values are not "bic C" Conservative (what we'd call right wing), but it does fall under the definition of a "classic conservative" (which is to day, they advocate the preservation of
Besides, Ubuntu would not exist and remain in existence without Debian.
Errr, what would keep Ubuntu from continuing if Debian simply and abruptly came to an end? Perhaps it would somewhat affect the course of Ubuntu's development but it wouldn't spell the end of Ubuntu or any other successful Debian-based distribution should Debian itself become defunct.
H. Sapiens remain in existence today despite the fact that H. Erectus ceased to exist long ago. Perhaps Debian is reaching the end of its predominance and the frontrunning Debian-based offshoot, Ubuntu, is finding its place as a replacement. It really looks to me like evolutionary development occurring within the Free Software ecosystem--Linux went from being a student hacker's experiment, to a hobbyist/enthusiasts toy, to a few rough-around-the-edges distributions managed usually by individuals (eg. Slakware), to full-fledged community-driven collaberative efforts (Debian) and commercially-driven products (Red Hat, SuSE).
Since the commercially-driven efforts continually evolve (Red Hat dropping consumer-level products and establishing Fedora, Mandrake and Connectiva merging and re-inventing their businesses, SuSE being bought by Novell and releasing a community edition of its own) what should keep purely community-driven efforts from evolving as well? Ubuntu is a reponse to influences and pressures of the Free Software community--it shares the same technology, much of the same content and has some common roots in its founders and contributers. It keeps Debian's strengths (package management system loved by many, lack of direct corporate influence and commitment to the concept of Free Software, relatively high commitment to stability etc.) and abandons other characteristics that are weaknesses (lack of organisational structure, political disputes impeding on technical progress, slow pace of development at times, unpredictable release cycle).
This is exactly what makes Free Software so valuable--even if Debian were to disintegrate as a project there will be nothing to keep Debian's code and heritage from living on in new projects that pick up the pieces and move forward in great and exciting new directions. I have personally seen a couple of closed software applications of great value pretty much die because the companies responsible for development went insolvent, and for what I can only think are financial reasons nobody ever let the code go Free (perhaps doing so would make the intellectual property asset worthless from a balance-sheet perspective--in one case the receiver sold all IP to a competitor and all that remained of its applications were what was incorporated in the competing product. In the other case much of the software became abandonware).
So while this news may be cause for sadness towards a legendary Free Software project, it is far from cause for alarm. Debian itself will evolve into something better, or perhaps go extinct while its resources fully migrate over to a new project, likely Ubuntu. In the end we'll all get better software as a result.
...then they DAMN WELL BETTER keep track of where they disperse it. I for one certainly do NOT want my money finding its way into grants, loans, etc going to students, charities, business or any other entitiy that is involved in the committing of acts of violence against our allies, with the ultimate stated goal of destroying our way of life. Furthermore, there is something rather sick about giving money, education, etc. to someone so they can use it all to kill you or destroy your society.
My problem isn't at all with the data-mining of the student financing program--by problem is with how it was conducted. How awful is it that the gov't doesn't think it is important enough to inform its citizens when it wishes to do something that may affect your civil liberties? It should be stated in bold at the top of student finance applications that come or all of the information submitted is subject to possible FBI search. There should be strict regulations on sharing this information with anyone outside the department responsible for the programme and the authorities, and severe punishment for those goverment officials wo violate such regulations. However the FBI is quite justified in wanting such an investigative tool. The key to all of this is INFORMED CONSENT.
As to the records of student progress/transcripts/whatever I think that is overstepping things a bit, mostly becasue I don't see any real benefit except to be nosy (I dunno, maybe if it is a course on flying or a nuclear physics degree? still...). If the FBI finds something suspicious in the student financing records then a warrant could perhaps be justified.
I think that as is the case with a lot of Homeland Security initiatives is that the stated intentions are noble (real intentions?...not so sure) but the execution ranges from stupid to dangerous. Airport security for example...the watchlist is a disaster and ineffective and very bad at dealing with false entries--it is totally counter to "informed consent" becasue passengers have never been given any idea how authorities decide who must be on the list, nor at what point your name is screened against the list. Additionally it takes a "shoot first as questions later" approach by immediately blocking/deporting/holding passengers found on that list without sufficient cause--and just being on the list is far from sufficient cause to ruin someone's travel plans much less expel them from the country because the list is so inaccurate and clumsy. The name "Yousef Islam" is on the list, and when poor "Yusuf Islam" tried to fly to DC a whole plane of passengers was diverted to Bangor and Yusuf was apprehended and immediately deported. Yousef allegedly offered financial support to the terrorist group Hamas so I can see why he is on record, but Yusuf has won international pease awards and is a leader in legitimate, well-respected charitable efforts. Plus, he has a pretty successful career in music performing as Cat Stevens.
This is the real world and you cannot expect the government to be like those three monkeys and turn a blind eye to suspicious activity, though I do agree with you that the US gov't is losing self-control (as does happen in all large institutions left unchecked). Perhaps it may seem difficult to imagine the gov't being disciplined enough to properly inform its citizens and following due procedure at this point, but we in western society have nobody to blame but ourselves. I find it distasteful when peole bitch and moan about how nasty gov't is then reveal that they no next to nothing about how gov't works and rarely or never vote. The US gov't is like a neglected feral cat--its owner once cherished it but slowly stopped bothering to feed it and change its litterbox, and when the cat started catching critters to feed itself and crapping in the houseplants the owner chastised it and threw it outside to fend for itself. Now the gov't is a big ugly stray cat that is suspicious of all people and does the most base things in its own self interest...all because we decided it wasn't worth the bother to care about it and keep it properly fed, cleaned and trained.
...is usually what is being used for development of the end product. If you are making a website mock-up, do it with web development tools. If you are mocking up a windows forms app then use Visual Studio (whatever language because it doesn't matter, especially in.net--the point is to use the form-building GUI tools). If it is GTK use GTK-based tools, etc.
What it all boils down to is that you need to work the way you work best and leave the coding up to the coders.
I don't mean that you should do this and expect your coder to retain all the code you generated or wrote, becasue as you suggest your coders should know how best to code the actual application. As a developer, you'd posess the skills to determine how much (if any) of the mock-up can be used. A good mock-up may be nearly perfect, but more than likely if you use VS.NET like a drawing program then all the form objects will have meaningless names so what little generated code might be useless anyways.
So why use VS.NET to mock up a Windows UI, or FrontPage to mock up a web app (or the Free Software equivalents...whatever) if
If you are most comfortable doing your mock-ups in crayon, then do them in crayon.
Although I don't think that someone designing a UI needs to have advanced coding skills, I do think that such people should have at least introductory knowledge of the development tools and/or target platform and what their capabilities are. If you've got no knowlege of HTML at all and have never designed a web interface then you'd better learn a bit about the tools and technology behind web apps before venturing out to design one. Someone with adequate knowledge would at least know how to doodle something out in Dreamweaver or FrontPage. Yes, the code from such a person may be atrocious but the code is not the point (and the designer should not take offence if the code/underlying HTML structure is differnent--if the coder wipes out the table-based layout you futzed with for a couple hours to get just so and implements an almost-equivalent layout using proper CSS it is the coder's perogative--he knows best because coding is his job function).
So if none of the code matters, what's the point? Some might assume that mocking up using the same/similar visual developer tools as the coders will use would be so as to re-use whatever code supporting the mock-up but trying to re-use such code is actually a bad thing. The actual point is to convey the *intended behaviour* in ways dificult or impossible to do on paper, or powerpoint, or MS Paint or whatever. That is best done using the same technology/tools as the developer uses because NOTHING ELSE truly duplicates that behaviour. Drop-downs in Windows forms are a little different than in windows forms and simulating the behaviour of a drop-down in Powerpoint is too tedious to bother, and you cannot express a drop-down well on paper at all. Designing in this fashion also keeps the designer in tune with the characteristics, limitations, best-practices, etc. of the platform. For example, too many websites try to look too much like native desktop apps, supported by large amounts of kludgy code. AJAX is now popular and unfortunately in all too many cases it is used solely to make it more closely emulate the "desktop experience" without adding meaningful value. I think that brainless website layouts (those with fixed widths, javascript-heavy visual effects, accessibility-breaking purely-graphical buttons/links, non-resizeable fonts and so on) aren't dying off as fast as they should probably because of the legacy left by the practice of using graphics editors and other static techniques.
Submitting a mock-up in crayon to a coder might be good enough, and the coder will thank you for not trying to do the job he is best qualified to do himself, however you are doing your developers a disservice by such practice. Nothing can substitute for the visual interactivity of a "live" mock-up, and if the end users evaluating your mock-up com
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I just don't know many people that can afford the luxury of traveling to another continent. The few I have encountered tend to be a bit snobbish.
I've found that there is no correlation between affluence and the behaviour of Americans. Rich or poor, from all walks of life, I've found Americans to be excellent hosts and poor guests. For many Americans Canada is very accessible (quite a few god ol' blue-collar types travel to places like Windsor to enjoy casinos, etc.) and the behaviour is just the same for those of more modest means.
I'm encoursged to see replys to my original post from Americans thanking me for my honest assesment and that they even try to be "good ambassadors" when abroad. That is why I refer to it as a stereotype--it is all to often true but definitely not universally true and I hope those of us in Canada or Europe or elsewhere realise that and welcome American guests with open arms instead of apprehension or derision. Say what you will about how the US gov't conducts itself, the American people have always welcomed foreign visitors with open arms from my experience.
I have a question. Have you been hearing funny clicks during telephone conversations? Have strangers been unusually interested in your garbage? Notice any packet sniffing going on at work that looked suspicious?
Just wondering.
only once I said I was English not American did the non-Americans even acknowledge my existence
This is becasue of the stereotype associated with a typical American. Basically it is as follows:
"Americans are the best hosts in the world, however they make the lousiest guests"
And it's a stereotype that persists because it is largely true. I have travelled the US extensively and can say first hand that American people treat visitors like their own families (perhaps even better). Hospitality and service is second-to-none. The food is delicious (and big....y'all have REALLY BIG FOOD in most of the US...and not very heart-healthy....but it's very tasty). People are very knowledgable about their locality and will not hesitate to offer you their assistance in making your stay an enjoyable one. Contrast this level of hospitality and service to what is offered in "friendly Canada". Service and hospitality in Canada is utter crap in comparison...service is polite and friendly but not considerate---tourists have to ask for help even if it is obvious by their appearance. People do not know their own back yards, there is no attention to detail and not the level of pride in their homeland as compared with the US. It is quite a noticeable difference in culture given that these two countries share the same language and land mass and have so much culteral cross-pollination.
The case of a US tourist in another country is the exact opposite situation. The US Tourist sees himself as an HONOURED GUEST. They expect (some would say demand) the same kind of treatment that they would give to an honoured guest back home. "Heck, we liberated your continent you should at least show your respect" some might be thinking as they travel Europe (never mind that the British Commmonwealth just kinda-sorta helped out with that liberation-of-Europe thing too). When in Canada the American Tourist gets annoyed at the lack of consideration, attention-to-detail and so on. In some parts of Europe, where offering a modicum of hospitality is seem as some great favour, it gets even worse--the American Tourist gets angry. Not only are the locals offended by the thought of having to bow down and treat the American Tourist as royalty, they are also afraid of the consequences--they don't want confrontation. Thus, the poor American Tourist is simply avoided entirely by the locals whenever possible.
Canadians aren't THAT much different culturally from the Americans, but as is the case with how each country treats its tourists, Canadians behave much differently as tourists. This is where the "quiet, polite, friendly-but-boring Canadian" stereotype comes from. As a guest, the Canadian feels grateful for being accomodated and doesn't want to put the host out. The Canadian Tourist says "sorry" for the slightest inconvenience put upon the host, and "thank you" for the slightest little favour. And to one degree or another many other cultures are the same. This is why a tourist with a Canadian flag is catered to much more warmly overseas...they are simply great guests. That above all (including current and past foreign policy) has to do with how tourists are treated.
I do agree with the parent poster here...to the American Tourists out there, remember that not everyone shares your way of live, nor wants to...and when you are a guest in another nation do try to be a GOOD guest and leave a good impression. I'd like to add to that however--TO EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD: Americans may have a brash way of living but they have a level of civic pride that is sorely lacking in the rest of the world. Take your own advice, live and let live. Furthermore, visit the USA and learn what it is to have real pride in your homeland and HOW TO BE GOOD HOSTS.
If we simply learned more from one another then the world would be a much better place. After that things like foreign policy in the middle east and institutional reform in government would work themselves out much more smoothly as well.
Mr. Universe competitors are VERY LEAN and muscular, but this study looks as BODY MASS INDEX, which is a fundamentally flawed metric by which to measure a person's physical condition. The medical community should entirely abandon it in my opinion.
A BMI of 30 or more is considered obese, so if you are six feet tall and not much over 200 pounds you are considered obese. I think it's a safe bet that conidering BMI alone that every single serious competitive bodybuilder is obese. I am just under six feet tall and about 210 pounds and just fall into the "obese" category myself and I am NOT a competitve bodybuilder, though I am built on the muscular side and pretty health conscious (stay active, etc). Since I started getting it tracked I have had between 14 and 16 percent bodyfat, which is far from "competition level" but is generally considered "physically fit". This flies right in the face of the fact my BMI is 30 and tells me I'm obese.
So, if the headline is correct then most bodybuilders would be stupid and forgetful, as would I. I can't speak for bodybuilders but I do know that throughout school I scored well on aptitude tests (typically 95th percentile). How well such tests measure true intelligence is sometimes debatable, however they do indicate that I do well with symbolic logic and memory recall. I suppose I'm just a statistical freak, however I really do think that the persistence of BMI as a method of measuring physical health has more to do with its effectiveness as a merketing tool for the weight loss industry than any solid basis in science.
Much better studies would measure against metrics like precent body fat, cholesterol levels, caloric intake or overall diet, physical activity levels and so on.
Why don't we place the same requirements on the appliance and automotive industries?
Wehere I live, we ALREADY have mandatory recycling for refrigerators and freezers (by law they MUST be taken to an approved disposal facility--and all of those facilities recover the refrigerant and have the rest of the appliance recycled). As for other large appliances, recycling is not mandatory but they are virtually all recycled at the end of their useful lives already so it makes no sense to waste time legislating it.
Automotive industry recycling is the same here as well--used oil must be disposed of at apporved facilities by law, and those facilities almost universally recycle this oil. When we purchase new tires here we have to pay a "recycling fee" similar to paying a deposit on softdrink containers (though the consumer never gets that fee back....hmmm). There are few laws mandating automotive recycling however it is almost universally practised already. When you go to a parts store you always get credit for "core exchange" when you turn in the old/broken part. Nearly 100 percent of some parts are now recycled (starters, alternators, water pumps and so on).
So I don't know what box you've been hiding in but the appliance and automotive industries (ESPECIALLY the latter) are pioneers in recycling. In fact automobiles are one of (if not the most) extensively recycled items in the world. There is not only an automotive industry, but a very large AUTOMOTIVE RECYCLING industry. And guess what? They have very good lobbyists too! In fact, the automotive recycling lobbyists have managed to successfully out-lobby the automobile manufacturers lobbyists on a few occasions! I recall a case where one of the big 3 carmakers (can't remember if it was Ford, GM or Chrysler) was lobbying for regulations that would make it tougher to recycle or provide aftermarket parts (kinda like Lexmark trying to shut down ink cartridge refillers). Of course, this would hurt auto wreckers and aftermarket parts makers so their lobbyists fought back. The recyclers one that battle.
Have you been through teacher preparation courses? Some of it is inane, repetitive, and useless. However, much of it, when properly presented and implemented, is useful.
Not personally but a dorm mate was. I am talking from a Canadian perspective and assumed (perhaps inaccurately) that the US system was similar (both systems produce similar results though). It seemed to me that a disproportionate amount of courses were "Educational Methodology" courses (or some such similarily inane title). Much of it was a lot of child-psychology claptrap. It didn't look to be of any practical use, and he didn't think much of the content either. Judging from the texts and assignments, if there WAS practical value to these courses it certainly wasn't "properly presented and implemented".
There should be a happy-medium where students can learn in an environment that shows them the positive and negative consequences of their actions.
There should be, but there isn't. It seems that teachers (inupper grades) do the upmost to do as little to upset the poor precious student as possible. Guess what? Sometimes a student will mess up and should have to face APPROPRIATE consequences. There are often no consequences at all. Now we are havingto deal with dangerous sociopathic teenagers shooting up schools, criminally harassing others and so on. Thankfully dangerously sociopathic teens are an extreme rarity, but the criminal incidents are extreme and it seems schools and teachers aren't equipped to cope. As a result the reaction becomes extreme and the slightest disturbing signals from any student are then blown out of proportion and we get ridiculous, draconian and indiscriminant "zero tolerance enforcement" where six year olds are expelled from class for pointing fingers and saying "bang". It rapidly swings from one extreme to another, but all withthe same goal, which is to "protect the children"
What form of teacher training would you recommend instead? What would it look like? Here's a little bit of insight for you... All psychology is inherently theoretical.
[...]
That is what "child centered" instruction is supposed to deal with - finding the method that works best for each student. Such a proverbial shotgun approach will be more likely to reach more students than teaching using just one method. As I said above, preserving self-esteem at all costs is a different creature. Please do not confuse the two.
Well not all of teacher training is bad, it is just that it is very unbalanced. Here is what I observed about student teachers wher I'm from: It is all very good to teach concepts of psychology and behavioural theory. Indeed it is quite important, however it seems that at some points it is EVERYTHING. And there is so much time devoted to it that much of the content is total fluff. I KNOW all psychology is inherently theoretical, however some theories are invalid or relatively unproven. The classroom is for learning, not psychological experimentation.
As a result of this imbalance, when it came time for the students to actually to classroom training--to actually teach real classes underthe guidance of an experienced teacher--they were COMPLETELY unprepared. There were almost NO courses that actually taught how to TEACH! Why the hell were these courses called educational METHODOLOGY if they didn't teach actual METHODS? Where are courses on effective testing methods, lesson planning and so on? *I* would suggest that the MAJORITY of training be on "the mechanics" of teaching--how to plan a lesson, audio and visual presentation techniques, curriculum planning and so on. Get rid of ALL the psychology garbage (and eventhe stuff that isn't garbage, which is less than half of what is now taught) until the final year of training (at least until after they know the mechanics and have had some real teaching experience). Once teachers in training know the methodsof teaching THEN they can learn how to identify which methods are most effective with each student.
...then buy a Mac. There are games for Mac. There is Photoshop for Mac. there is no 3ds max for mac...but Autodesk also has Maya that does largely the same thing,and it is availablefor macOS X. Oh wait...it's also available for Linux too if Blender isn't enough for you. Maya is probably #2 to 3ds and perfectly feature-laden and some prefer using it quite a bit over 3ds.
Which brings me to another question: why isn't blender good enough anyways? Or Gimp or Inkscape? I know they aren't as fancy as the big expensive closed stuff. Are you a professional, full-time game developer rollingout the sleeping bag under your desk for the night at Electronic Arts? Or are you jsut a hardcore enthusiast with a penchant for big fancy stuff?
Seriously, if you are a hobbyist I can't think of why the Free alternatives are unacceptable. The great thing about adopting the Free alternatives is that you are doing your part to advance the cause of Free software...the "chicken and egg" theory applies and if Free software is to become (or remain) competitive then it is the enthusiasts who'll have to deal with the pain of laying the first egg...and when that chicken hatches (critical mass) it'll lay its own eggs and become more self sustaining.
I guess that's what we should expect from the creators of Woody
Well, I for one would not initially expect a "globe-humping weasel" logo from a bunch of people who are fans of the Pixar movie "Toy Story". But then again it does convey what the Debian project thinks the Mozilla Foundation can do with its trademark policy.
Thinking about it though, adult animation enthusiasts DO tend to have a slightly twisted sense of humour...
Its about time that someone puts part of the blame on the parents.
Fine and dandy...if that is the case then IT IS ABOUT TIME THAT SOMEONE PUTS PART OF THE BLAME ON TEACHERS too. Computer access at public schools is still horribly unsupervised, and it is probably at least as likely (and probably more so) that students could use school resources, during ther breaks between classes, to do commit exactly the same libel as happened here. I haven't heard anything about schools being sued for neglecting to adequately supervise students whilst they are in the care of teachers..either it doesn't happen or it isn't reported in the news. It has happened numerous times where websites with threatening statements or plots to pull another Columbine, and these were done using school resources. The students are swiftly disciplined (suspended or expelled and even at times charged with criminal offences) but I've not heard parent of these kids trying to go after teachers or schools for the woeful lack of supervision or effective preventative actions.
I do agree tha too many parents have neglected to be properly involved in their children's lives and it has had a profoundly negative impact on our children's development. Somewhere we all lost our way and got caught up in buying nice big houses and SUVs and struggling to make the payments with two incomes and overtime--as if having large houses and SUVs would make us happy and our kids more well adjusted. HOWEVER, this is NOT the only main problem with how our children are raised.
The other problem is our education system, and the methods and practices taught to our teachers for educating our children. It is at least as important as proper parental involvement in children's lives. Besides teachers being overworked and underpaid so as to make proper supervision and discipline next to impossible, new teachers are also badly trained. Too much teacher training is spent on theroetical child psychology and educational methodology courses...and it seems the content of those courses is based on unproven ideas and shaky research. Young idealistic teachers all too often come out of college with their heads filled with phychological garbage about "child centered environments" and "preserving self esteem" at the cost of real methods to teach children how to learn, think critically, be civically responsible and so on. Thus, when a student fails to perform his or her academic responsibilities it is viewed not as a failure on the students part but a "lack of self esteem". Instead of making the student accept responsibility for the failure and learn from the mistakes these teachers try to improve the child's self esteem.
What total crap! This is the prefect recipe for creating a society of sociopaths! If there is any element in a childs like that aggravates his mental stability such conditioning helps breed serial killers. The kids who put out libelous or threatening web pages, or shoot up schools, or bully outcasts to the point of nervous breakdown are dangerously sociopathic. Parental neglect did NOT cause this to happen in isolation. Parental neglect is what allowed the education system to make these children into sociopaths.
If you are a teacher, please try not to take offence..it is not the teachers fault, and in fact I'd say 10 to 20 percent of teachers are superhumanly effective educators. Similarly 10 to 20 percent of teachers are almost criminally incompetent. The remaining 60 to 80 percent deliver mediocre results--their students may come out knowing enough to contribute to society but these teachers (through no fault of their own--they are victims of the system too) do not have the ability to correct institutional damage done to many of these kids.
So if it takes being litigious to correct the behaviour of adults responsible for our children it cannot stop with the parents...teachers (or the professors who educate teachers, or the administration that run the schools) have to be targeted as well. I think that the teacher might want to direct some of the blame to her bosses as well for fostering an intimidating environment that does not allow the opportunity to properly discipline students.
When the dot bomb happened and we pushed to a 4 year cycle support costs in that last year were dramatically higher than the other years. The knee in the curve appeared to happen at 3 years 3 months (quaterly mapping).
/.?
Doesn't anyone know the WHOLE reason why the TCO of computer infrastructure rises after three years? Don't ANY accountants read
The TCO of computer hardware includes "depreciation expense". The government allows a certain percentage of your fixed assets to be written off for tax purposes. I'm not sure of the terminology in other countries, but the maximum permissible depreciation allowable for taxation purposes in Canada is called the "Capital Cost Allowance". In the case of computers it has been a linear depreciation of about %30 of the original cost. That means your computer is "written off" in about three years. I believe the US has a similar allowance for depreciation expense on computer hardware.
This has more of an effect in the US IIRC, becasue in Canada, if a business does not claim the full allowance (for example, if it is not required to bring net tax to zero), the unused portion PLUS the normal maximum CCA is allowed as a deduction. (I THINK) in the US businesses CANNOT accumulate unused but allowed depreciation expense in future tax years so a business tends to make sure to write off the largest amount possible. This means that in each of the first three years of a PCs life a business could save hundres in taxes from this deduction.
After three years PCs are essentially WORTHLESS assets--they contribute exactly ZERO dollars to the asset portion of the balance sheet, and yet they continue to incur maintenance expenses so they would probably have a noticeably larger negative effect on the balance sheet if there are a lot of old PCs in a busines. Furthermore there aren't many warranties on PCs that go past a year much less three years so if there is a problem a business must bear the full cost of repairs--on an asset worth $0.
Realistically a company could get SOME money from the sale of three year old PCs, and even three year old laptops could be prefectly usable and capable of running five-year-old XP and any contemporary application software. From my practical experience, aside from hardware failiure a machine that is 3 or 4 years old is no more trouble to support than a new machine--WinXP still costst the same for both, it still buggers up just as much on new machines as old, 3 year old machines in an office environment are not all that slow so it doesn't take any meaningfully longer time to perform various tasks and if things are really fouled up both new and older machines have the same reimaging process. Aside from replacing hard drives, however, most hardware upgrades become more expensive over time, when warranties expire and models are discontinued.
I'm not an accountant (as is probably evident from my post--I'm just waiting for a real accountant to pick it apart) but wherever I've worked it becomes instantly and magically easier to justify replacement of a workstation desktop or notebook the moment it becomes three years old, and in the vast majority of cases there was no similar magic jump in maintenance costs. We had scads of flimsy, cruddy Dell C600/610s that were already expensive in terms of hardware replacement costs well before the three year time limit, but it was only at the three year point where the bean counters on high would finally say "yeah, it's crap...put an order in for a new one". I cannot say EXACTLY how much or what kind of a positive effect it has on the financial bottom line, but once accounting has fully written off a PC their tone changes dramaticaly and they are almost eager for you to upgrade--slightest little issue (especially with hardware) will justify an upgrade to a whole new machine.
ANyways, I'm sure that because of this behaviour, it could be almost a full three years before we significantly move from XP to Vista. All incoming PCs will be imaged with WinXP for t
Sorry, but the designs are gross and dated, and not in a fun retro way.
Well I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I wouldn't call these wooden cases in particualar "gross and dated"--it looks apparent to me that they are made by professional craftsmen and don't at all evoke memories of the amateur/hobbyist cases of the 1970s (and earlier) with the curved-sheetmetal-plywood-end-cap design. There isn't any tin painted gaudy blue either. Certainly they are a step up from the putrid putty boxes we've had to live with for years.
That said, making a PC look better than the standard putrid putty box isn't setting the barrier very high, and while I think these cases are far from "gross and dated" they certainly look like oddities to me as well. I think the problem is that they basically look like lumps beautifully finished wood with computery bits peeking through. The mere fact that they are identifiable as desktop PCs makes the material of choice look odd by default. These systems don't look ugly as much as they look FUNNY. It's like they came off the set of a cheesy comedy movie about a group of Amish hackers, riding around in their buggies toting wooden computers.
You could probably hire a designer and a good local woodshop to make a much better looking case for the the same price.
Well, considering that these enclosures house fairly high-end PCs you have to keep in mind the acutal price of the case is far less than the $5000+ price. I agree that they are overpriced as they are "mass produced" and not completely unique form one to the next. However, the time and skill to design and build one of these boxes is most certainly as much (or perhaps more) than the cost of these units, considering design probably takes at least as long as building when you are only building a one-off custom unit.
I think the problem with these machines is that they are trying to market them as serious, high-end hardware and that they simply look FUNNY. They could be made with plywood-and-veneer to be cost competitive and be sold as novelty designs, along side towers that look like transformer heads and penguins. Sure when you get close up you'd notice the cheapness, but from 10 feet away you wouldn't tell. All in all it just looks FUNNY.
I think wood is a good idea, however please don't build a wood PC as a PC-shaped blob of wood. At best it'll look funny, at worst it'll look tacky. Some posters said you don't use wood to enclose electronics--you use it to make furniture. SO, make your wooden PC a PIECE OF FURNITURE that just so happens to house a PC. Put a nice door on the front that opens to reveal the computery bits. Put another door that opens to reveal...a shelf for CDs or books or on/out trays or something. Don't expose fans and cooling grates if at all possible--have venting discreetly located and not "grill-shaped". Put the rear panel (I/O connections, back plates of PCI cards, etc) covered completely by an attractive wood door, with the cables routing out from underneath the door. There should be ABSOLUTELY NO "computery bits" exposed--if it looks computery in any way when it is made of wood it'll look odd. Just like if you made a PC enclosure out of granite--apart from being very heavy it would also look like it came off the set of a Flintstones movie.
So, I'd have to say it's great to do new and different things and it shouldn't be discouraged, however in this case it isn't new and different enough. How about a mahogany filing cabinet with a PC completely hidden inside? Or a computer desk that is actually a desk-shaped computer? I realise in some of these cases we aren't that far removed from just plain old furniture that has shelf space for hiding a standard putrid putty box, however we could do beter than standard office furniture. For one thing, having some degree of "system integration" with elegant wooden furniture and PCs would help immensely with such things as cable management and would open up more possibilites in system cooling since we wouldn't be restricted to standard-sized cases. Besides that, whenit comes to unconventional materials "stealth" is much "cooler" than "stand out".
I would love to have something like this in Canada.
So would I. However, the last big database application that the federal gov't set up was...umm...less than successful. The upgrade to the gun registry to handle long-guns cost a fortune--an interesting (NOT exaggerated) bit of trivia: To insert a SINGLE record into this system costs an average of CDN$3000! And no, our dollar isn't that worthless--that comes to over US$2600.00 per record in the database.
If we had a Canadian federal budget database, by that metric it would eat up our entire surplus to devlop and maintain it! *sigh* such a shame...
Got any actual evidence of this?
There is a HUGE amount of evidence of this behaviour, just look at every single autitor general's report released this decade--grants given out willy-nilly, expenses claimed without any documentation whatsoever, so on and so forth. Google "HRDC scandal". This sort of thing happens for two reasons:
1. Palm-greasing. Former PM Cretien was the king of palm-greasing (also google "Adscam"). Buddy/corporation awarded huge contract, next election comes around and that money from taxpayers comes back to the Liberal party for campaign contributions.
2. Nest-feathering...AKA "Have to meet budget"--this is where the term "March Madness" comes in--March is when the federal government makes up the budget for the next fiscal year. It has been a tradition forever but got even worse when the government hit the debt wall and had to reign in spending. If a department came in under budget then civil servant managers would go apesh!t because they could be the subject of budget cuts. Such managers get in trouble for going over-budget but there is no incentive to come in under-budget. Not only that--there is actually a DISincentive for being frugal. Govenrment workers are mostly unionised and have a collective agreement whereby their salaries depend on the number of staffers under them and the size of the budget they manage. If a manager in gov't can justify a budget increase, or another subordinate position, then the manager can move up a level and get a pay raise for managing a larger department. If they come in under budget and their dept gets smaller then there is NO incentive of any kind for cost cutting.
This affects lower levels of government as well, though more out of stupidity than anything. A staffer in Calgary city all wanted a desktop trinter so they wouldn't have to walk down the hall or have sensitive documents sitting in the output tray in a public area. This staffer ended up with a printer you could get at any store for about $250, but City Hall paid $5000 for it--went through a couple middlemen who marked it up and a whole lot of administration costs. This is why they call it "silly hall".
Both of you are wrong. First of all, this is the government we are talking about and they never get anything right, so don't expect them to properly normalise their schema:
.DBF files to multiple network drives and some round-robin DNS tricks to direct web traffic to one of 200 VFP server PCs.
SELECT vendor, product1, product2, product3, (...productn), price1, price2, (...pricen) FROM buyerlist WHERE price1 > 15 (AND price2....)
Expect the government to award the contract to an established government contractor for several million dollars, and for said vendor to sequester itself for several years during which time it will busily develop a Visual Foxpro 6.0 application called FUSSBUDGET with an obtuse, limited web interface for the general public. Upon initial deployment the website will be Slashdotted, causing the Visual Foxpro server to explode and in turn cause several hundred thoushand dollars in damage to the data centre.
At that point the IRS will decide that maybe it would be better to have more than one PC server to handle the demand from, well, the entire US taxpayer public that's online. The clustering, replication and so forth were "outside the scope" so the contractor will demand another million dollars and spend another year trying to make Visual Foxpro 6 run in a cluster and perform replication and so on. This of course will involve a great amount of elabourate custom code and batch files to periodically copy
The whole programme will be dismantled after going overbudget by 2841% without even emerging from beta status--probably triggered by a security vulnerability in COM or a SQL injection attack by a 14 year old boy who wanted $25,000 of the federal budget allocated to "sex education" so he could have hookers "babysit" him when his parents were away.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the concept of a "federal budget database" so as to increase transparency to taxpayers...I just have little faith in the government (ANY government) in properly executing such a project.
However, consider the fact that if a trademark holder does not vigorously defend their trademark, they stand to lose it.
However it is probably better to MANAGE your trademark rather than DEFEND it. It is in Apple's best interest to promote the use of the word "podcast" and the incorporation of the word "pod" into the names of 3rd party accessories and even companies riding on Apple's coattails. If some software is called "pod"something, or a site has "podcasts" for audio blog entries, or some company called "AutoPod" markets music player cradles and those "earphone-to-FM radio" adapters it turns the "pod" name from a mere "trademark fragment" into a whole industry (remember, Apple's trademark is iPod, NOT the word pod or the related podcasting). Not only that, if these companies relly play up the "Pod" name people will think their products and services are meant to work with only iPods even when they work with all portable media players.
I'm looking at the "podcastready.com" website and Apple's iTunes website. They bear virtually NO visual resemblance to one another (the podcastready.com website actually has a more microsoft XP-ish look and feel to it IMHO). They have a SOFTWARE product called "mypodder". They prominently display that it "works with ALL your digital devices"...furthermore they have the claim "now with iPod support!" by the download link, implying that at one point that not only was it NOT limited to working with iPods, it in fact DIDN'T originally work with iPods at all!. Only a TOTAL MORON would look at that site and be fooled into thinking it was affiliated with Apple.
Apple IS going too far. The iPod is a shiny little media player with a circle thingy on the front and an apple-ish GUI on a little screen. Mypodder is a piece of software for finding, downloading and sharing media files. The names BARELY rhyme (you have to chop off the "er") and the products are completely different and podcastready.com is not only not trying to mislead its customers, it is *actively differentiating* itself from apple. It uses "pod-related" words becasue of the simple fact that the technology is now most commonly referred to as "podcasting" (yes, other terms are used but they are far less popular). Apple is just being greedy. If ithis was a case of Apple protecting its brand identity then Apple would've trademarked the word "podcasting" right off the bat, or otherwise pursued legal action. IT DIDN'T--it trademarked "iPod". IIRC Apple didn't even invent the term, and if it had issues with the term they've had A COUPLE YEARS to deal with it. THEY DIDN'T. They let the term become so common as to be used generically before taking issue with how it is used.
It isn't like Podcast Ready introduced a portable player, with a funky touch-thingy interface and work-alike embedded software and decided to call it the "MyPodder". They introduced SOFTWARE with that name, and marketed it in a way that clearly indicated it is independent of Apple and interpoerable with all brands of portable devices. Steve, call off your legal dogs now!
Come on, had to make this into an anti-Sony argument. Just wouldn't feel right.
/*pod*/ or /^i*/.
I'd be happy to oblige...
Sony, in fact, HAS vigourously defended its "walkman" trademark right from the beginning (right from the beginning, not "a couple of decades late"--I remember when Sony went after a Canadian electronics store for advertising a sale on "personal stereos" made by Sony's competitors as a "Walkman Sale" back in the mid 1980s). Sony is amongst the most agressive defenders of trademark in the world, and unfortunately it seems Apple is following in its footsteps and threatening a world of hurt for anyone naming their handheld products
I understand why Apple defends their industrial designs as they are tangible characteristics of Apple products and a lot of time, effort and money is put into the look, shape and usability features. It seems really unfair that Apple should spend so much time making a Mac look like a Mac just to have some goofily-named Taiwanese plastics company barf out replica cases jury-rigged to accomodate generic PC motherboards. But claiming ownership of the word "pod" or the 9th letter of the alphabet? That is just petty and greedy. Compete on the merits of your product, not on some silly brand name, and let the fledgling market for accessories to your products thrive. Sure brand dilution is a valid concern, but lets be realistic--Xerox is still around even as its coporate marque bacame a noun and verb in the dictionary. Kimberly-clark continues to make a lot of money with Kleenex even though everyone calls all sorts of other tissues Kleenex out of habit and Google continues to thrive even as its identity has come to mean "search the internet" in general.
Sometimes a little brand dilution can be a good thing. Yes, I understand Apple wants to make sure some cheap-ass purveyor of junky accessories doesn't pretend to be affiliated with Apple but there are other approaches to take. For example licensing terms could be kept relaxed and Apple could have a little "Apple approved" logo for 3rd party manufacturers (like "intel inside" or the "VHS logo" or "Designed for Windows"). Consumers would then know it was a 3rd party product but that it met Apple's quality standards...and forget about fighting the junky stuff unless they fraudulently use the "Apple approved" logo. Done right this can work quite well--it helped VHS beat Beta for example. Let "Podcasting" and "iThingy" and "PodPouch" and whatever other pod-wannabes and i-philes survive and thrive.
In the abcense of common sense though, let me propose an alternative to the word "podcasting". "Audcasting" and "vidcasting" are even dumber sounding and limiting (it implies only moving video or sound, not a combination of media). "Zunecasting" just helps Microsoft marketing and MS needs none of our help there. So, how about PEERCASTING. The term BROADCASTING covers all sorts of media distributed from one central point to widespread areas simultaneously, so PEERCASTING would be an apt description of what we call podcasting now--distribution of media from one point to other, individual points on-demand. Peercastig is already used by a few people to refer to distribution via BitTorrent or other P2P networks and podcasting isn't THAT far off in overall concept.
The example that springs to mind is mobile phones a fuel (gas) stations. Any electrical engineer in the HAE industry will simply declare that the phone should not be there as it has the potential to act as an ignition source, the reasoned proof of this is long and will not make good tv. But showing a ringing phone does not ignite a fuel (gas) air mixture doesn't prove the general case that phones cant ignite fuel vapours.
I find it quite interesting how some people so devoutly believe in the oddest things. For example, i know some very devout Christians, and I don't think I've heard them say that Jesus is the son of God with as much conviction as some people have insisted that cellphones are hazardous around the fumes at a petrol station. What you say is true--if you try to do somehting 100 or 1000 (or even 1000000) times and only once manage to make it happen it means that thing is POSSIBLE, and if you never manage to do the thing it doesn't mean it isn't possible. However, it DOES prove that such a thing is so improbable it doesn't warrant such a reaction.
The cellphone-at-a-petrol station is a perfecrt example. Yes, Mythbusters did NOT prove cellphones were not a hazard, however they DID prove that the (mis)reported incidents are so highly unlikely that it does NOT warrant the hyteria around the myth. "ANY electrical engineer in the HAE industry will simply declare that the phone should not be there"? Well, *I* am one electrical engineer who will say such a restriction is ridiculous. There are countless other things that would WAY more likely cause ignition of fuel vapours that happen all the time. When you start your car the solenoid can spark. The acrylic sweater you might wear on a cold, dry winter day could create static electricity--and if you are in the habit of locking the filler open and moving about your car to, say, clean the windscreen, then going back to remove the filler....spark....boom. Locking fillers open or propping them open with the fuel cap...THAT is what should be banned, NOT cellphones.
Please get this straight...cellphones are NOT intrinsically safe however there IS a VERY remote chance of ignition, but they are NOT any more dangerous than any of a wide variety of other non-intrinsically-safe electrical devices. Your iPod is just a "dangerous" at the pump as your cellphone. The electrical acceesories BUILT RIGHT INTO YOUR CAR--like the radio or the headlights or the like--are just as dangerous. Your macbook or dell or thinkpad's battery is order of magnitude more likely to randomly explode.
And you know what makes a cellphone not intrinsically safe? It isn't the EMR energy from the transmitted signal. It isn't the backlight in the screen. It isn't the ringer. IT IS THE BATTERY. ALL reports of cellphones igniting in ANY situation has been attributed to a problem with the battery--defective charging circuitry allowing cells to overcharge, cheap aftermarket batteries, intermittent contact at the conductors and so on. Your best bet in trying to cause a cellphone to explode at a gas station would be to slam it against the fuel fillerso it smashes and the case cracks and the metal bits of the battery short and spark. There ARE intrinsically-safe phones for exceptionally hazardous locations (confined spaces with gas fumes, dusty locations like flour mills, etc) and the single biggest thing that makes them intrinsically safe is to completely seal the battery in its compartment so it cannot come dislodged and so the electrical contacts are not exposed to open air.
Anyways, that bit on Mythbusters was very amusing. Perfectly scientific? I'm sure it wasn't. It was just entertaining and IMHO did in fact proove it was an extremely improbable phenomenon. It's something like when they dropped a lit cigarette in a big trail of fuel and showed it doesn't work like hollywood were it flares up and folloes the trail--the cigaretter is too cool and the fuel too wet to allow for ignition. Mythbusters isn't about scientific proof...it is about entrtainment and, for the lack of a better phrase, "common sense". Along the way they try to explain the "why" but the point is the entertainment, and to say "this idea is so far out and PRACTICALLY unachievable that this myth is busted".
His science is far from "stellar". Often, it's quite poor. One should never watch MythBusters for anything but its entertainment value.
Isn't it quite obvious that "entertainment value" is the primary purpose of the show? Mythbusters wasn't ever supposed to be a seriously educational show. It is interesting entertainment, like the geek equivalent to professional wrestling--just like WWE isn't real wrestling, Mythbusters isn't real science.
Their methodologies make many professional product testers and scientists cringe. We can clearly see their mistakes, but those who don't have much scientific training may not.
Well, the methodologies of professional researchers would make the average TV viewer fall asleep--even the average Discovery Channel viewer. The majority of viewers will indeed miss the flaws in their inivestigations, but it isn't hard research. For the minority who DO catch the flaws and care enough to be bothered by them write Adam and Jamie and popint out their oversights--they don't do much to hide that fact and have on occasion revisited myths.
But the educational value it does provide is quite petty, and often quite bad, as it misinforms the viewer.
Well, considering that Adam and Jamie are not acutally professional scientists or educators, but rather skilled technicians in the field of motion picture effects, I do not think most people would rely on their show for serious education purposes (though it might be great material for high school science classes for critical analysis of their investigative methods--where they go right and wrong). If someone comes away from that show unquestionably believing everything in it is completely untained, scientific conclusions then they have more to worry about than being misinformed--they need work in their skills at critical thinking.
I for one just like to watch the banter between Adam and Jamie, and seeing things explode, burn and crash. And Kari getting painted silver, and, well, being eye candy. They should hire another red-head geek-chickie...like Kate Botello perhaps.
Kari and Kate and a tub full of ballistics gel....mmmmmm.....
...is the same as Microsofts:
if you don't start immediately, after 5 years you'd be only at 50% completed instead of 80 or 90% like your competitors?
And your point is...? I know of no busines in existence in the world today that states in its mission statement that "we shall strive to complete a softweare upgrade rollout faster than any of our competitors"--there is no point to have a goal of getting all employees upgraded to the latest OS before everyone else. Businesses strive to offer the best quality of product or service, or to be the lowest-cost supplier, or be among the best employers, or be first to market with a new invention. These goals have little to do with what OS a company runs on their computers.
I know, it certainly could put a company at a disadvantage if it was still running ancient VAX machinesand had DEC VT green-screen termials and '386 PCs running Windows 3.1 for Workgroups on people's desks. However there has to be a balance--a company that hastily rolls out a new release of software just so it can get there first is at an equal disadvantage as the company that limps alog on ancient unsupported software and hardware. In fact, upgrading too quickly can be MORE costly to a business than waiting too long. This is especially the case with closed, commercial software because of added licensing costs.
Here is what I found was the case with nearly ALL the companies who upgraded their Windows boxes to XP before SP1, or 2003 before it was ready: the licensing costs were at their highest at initial release, proper drivers were not available for all their hardware resulting in unanticipated hardware upgrade costs, they got smacked by extra vulnerabilities or bugs not present in older software, and important applications broke upon upgrade (in particular, custom applications, ERP/EAM/other enterprise apps, industrial software like HMIs PLC programming software and communications drivers and so on).
I'd have to say MS has it backwards--the EU is helping enforce responsible behavior on its industries by delaying early adoption of unproven software, so it has the ADVANTAGE over the rest of the world. The best way to upgrade is to phase in new software gradually, for example as hardware is replaced, and periodically evaluate the benefits of upgrading. Quite often, there are no compelling benefits at all until the vendor starts dropping support. For example, only within the last year has it been justifiable to upgrade Win2k machines to XP just for the sake of upgrading--reason being is that some important new software and hardware support will not be available (things like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media, and IE7, and limited support for SQL 2005 on win2k servers). For most companies I've dealt with, XP was not at all considered until SP1 was released, and even then the upgrade strategy was to phase it in as new machines came online.
I think MS is just showing a bit of desperation in trying to get the Windows upgrade cycle back on track, as well as frustration at being reigned in by anti-trust regulations. I don't even think members of EU parliament are stupid enough to swallow such tripe.
...provided you remember to pack your SPF100 sunblock and plenty of water.
Must be nice to not have to maintain public-facing pages for a large company
Yes, it is quite nice not have to maintain such a site, since most "public-facing pages for a large company" are notoriously and unnecessarily complicated and standards-broken. Furthermore, it is false to say that these sites are broken becasue they must cater to IE. It is in fact the other way around--IE is broken because of the incompetence or (false) laziness, impatience and hubris of the designers and maintainers of these big public sites. MS is to blame for applying sinister "embrace and extend" strategies to its product, however by far the primary responsibility for the current messy state of affairs lies squarely with the codemonkeys who vomit forth the tag soup that all too often continues to pass for web pages today.
Let me explain: when then-leading Netscape introduced nonstandard extensions to HTML, or incorrectly or poorly implemented the standard, rather than report it as a bug web authors actually EMBRACED these quirks rather than working around them or otherwise ignoring them. For example, early web developers heavily abused non-semantic and sometimes annoying proprietary tags like CENTER and BLINK, and went as far as to do atrocious things like nest their content in multiple BODY tags with different BGCOLOR attributes to do useless crap like fading and flashing the screen. The result of this was to not only let Netscape neglect bugs, put to put pressure on Netscape to RETAIN the bugs so as to remain "compatible" with such perverse tag soup!
The phenomenon proved to be viral--in the interests of matching leader Netscape's "feature" set, Microsoft went ahead and emulated all that malarky on purpose in IE! Furthermore, MS realised that nonstandard extensions were rather easily embraced by stupid lazy tag soup codemonkeys. This was a great opportunity to embrace and extend the WWW with such atrocities as ActiveX OBJECTs and heavy promotion of CSS-like styles long before the CSS standard was established. The latter action was particularly incideous because it allows MS to say that they "support standards" when in fact they sabotage them. Rather than warning web authors to use caution with stylesheets until the CSS style was standardised, they went ahead and made sure it was getting well established so that when changes were made to their proposal for CSS was modified by the W3C. By doing that they ensured that their own inconsistent application of CSS would be the de-facto standard and they could let slide any fixes to *actually* follow standards.
So please, make your best effort to break this evil cycle and do NOT design for IE. This doesn't mean that you should let your site break IE or make it look crappy--what it means is do NOT use IE during development without regard to standards then worry about degrading gracefully in other browsers. Instead use FF or another more compliant browser during development, and regularly validating your code using the W3C validation tools. THEN, when you test against IE (this is the real world, so you can't ignore it as the grandparent post implies) you make sure it degrades GRACEFULLY in IE, and do it WITHOUT relying on sneaky CSS bugs and breaking standards.
Yes, you CAN write totally valid XHTML and CSS that looks attractive and retains enough functionality in IE to satisfy your audience. Here are some approaches I have taken in the past:
* Avoid the use of CSS features that are standards but not widely implemented in IE or other mainline browsers, at least for important presentational aspects (anything more than eye candy).
* Do NOT strive to make the page appear or function fully and exactly the same in IE as other browsers--just make sure it doesn't look "broken" in IE. MS has deliberately "dumbed down" their pages for non-IS browsers in the past (even when other browsers were perfectly capable of handling the page as designed for IE). Given
I see nothing wrong with that, considering it wasn't even there until 1979 or so.
...Il sait porter la croix... (...it can bear the cross...) and also Et ta valeur, de foi trempée (with valour, full of faith)
...idiot...
You obviously are ignorant of Canadian history. "O Canada", our current official national anthem, was originally written in French, and no less tha FOUR different English versions were in common use (dubbed the Richardson, McCulloh, Buchan and the Weir versions--named after the author of the lyrics for each). ALL but one--the popular Weir version--mentioned "God" at least once in the first verse, and even the Weir version mentioned God in the final verse.
Furthermore, "O Canada" has only been the official national anthem since 1980, and the addition of the word "God" in the first verse coincided with its official adoption (this change in lyrics was strongly pushed by Trudeau and his newly re-elected Liberal government). The adoption of "O Canada" as our sole, official national anthem in 1980 was to signify the 100th anniversary of the original French version of the song. Prior to that Canada's official "Royal Anthem" was..."GOD save the Queen". "O Canada" was only a "national symbol" until 1966, when it became "the nation's anthem" (this mostly had to do with if the government held copyright and which lyrics were the official ones--God Save the Queen remained the "Royal" anthem and the only one required at official functions until 1980).
We had a perfectly decent secular national anthem, and some idiots had to ruin it.
Firstly, it is quite offensive to label those who defend the expression of faith in our anthem as "idiots". In making your statement, you have asserted that the biggest "idiot" of them all was none other than former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, as he was one of the chief proponents of the lyric changes (IIRC the now-official lyric changes are very closely based on Trudeau's personal suggestion).
Second, Canada has NEVER in its history had a secular national anthem, decent or otherwise, official or otherwise. Our first national anthem has "God" right in the title and features God repeatedly in the lyrics. As for O Canada being secular, there has ALWAYS been reference to faith in BOTH the French and english versions of the song:
Original French:
Richardson version: Almighty God! On thee we call / Defend our rights, forfend this nation's thrall
McCulloch version: Lord God of Hosts! We now implore / Bless our dear land this day and evermore
Buchan version: With hearts we sing, "God save the King"
Weir version (fourth verse of the version on which our official anthem is based, which remains unchanged to this day): Help us to find, O God, in thee / A lasting, rich reward
Careful about what names you throw around...they might bounce back and stick to you...
...a Swedish Liberal is more like a Canadian Liberal, which is to say that a Liberal doesn't really have any concrete principles except to say and do whatever might help them achieve and maintain power ;-)
As others have observerd here, politics outside the US is far more complicated than "left and right" (hell, even US politics has more dimension than that, though the fact that only two parties have power simplifies things). Even the Canadian landscape is far different politically and in some ways mirrors the Swedish situation. For those non-Canadian readers:
Canada's federal parliament has 4 official parties, which dont exactly fall evenly on a political left-right spectrum...cynically, they are:
1. The Conservative party currently leads a minority government (largest portion of the commons but still less than 50%). It is also the youngest federal party in Canada (it has only ran in two elections--2004 and 2006). It came into being largely because of a coalition of some disaffected MPs from two now-defunct right-of-centre parties (The Alliance and Progressive-Conservatives/PCs). This un-official coalition ended when the Alliance chose a new leader (the current Prime Minister), and a formal merger was achieved not long after the PCs chose their new leader (now deputy leader of the Conservatives and current Foreign Affairs minister). Because of this heritage, the Conservative party is a fairly mixed-bag of vaguely right-wing principles. The Alliance generally represented the "far right" (equivalent to moderate US Republicans) though in acutality it was an almost evenly-split coalition of populitsts, social conservatives and libertarians. The Progressive-Conservatives (which sounds like an oxymoron to many people) were nominally right-of-centre in that they were socially "progressive" (protect socialised medicine, support gay marriage, strong central government) but economically conservative (scrap costly gun control, support free trade, outlaw deficits...).
Despite PM Harper being described by his critics on the left as "shrub" or "George's puppet" or other such nasty ways, suggesting that he and his party are nothing more than far-right republicans, Harper himself is acually from the libertarian faction of this large "right wing" coalition. Though he is a regular church-goer he is loathe to legislate morality and evasive on subject such as gay marriage (he'd generally prefer to defer such moral decisions to free votes in Parliament). This lets him get out of having to put the coalition in jeopardy by angering the social conservative support base and appeals to the populist demand for more direct democracy.
Disappointingly to most Conservative supporters the party is viewed as the "least bad" of all the parties. Populists want more action on democratic reform and more openness in goverment than we've been getting recently. Social conservatives would like more vocal defence of thier values by their learder and MPs (which would probably scare off most Conservative support realistically). Libertarians are frustrated at pledging support for large government programmes like mandatory universal healthcare. The one thing that truly unites this party is economic conservatism, and it support is not realy solid--it retains its support basically because it has acutally kept most of its election promises. A study was recently done and quite literally it is the first government that has kept more than half its election promises since, like world war II.
2. The Liberal Party is the official opposition though it has held power for most of Canada's history as a nation. It, well, stands for nothing in particular. Ironically the Liberal's are probably best described as "classiclally conservative" as they support (or at least pay lip service to) "traditional Canadian values". These values are not "bic C" Conservative (what we'd call right wing), but it does fall under the definition of a "classic conservative" (which is to day, they advocate the preservation of
Besides, Ubuntu would not exist and remain in existence without Debian.
Errr, what would keep Ubuntu from continuing if Debian simply and abruptly came to an end? Perhaps it would somewhat affect the course of Ubuntu's development but it wouldn't spell the end of Ubuntu or any other successful Debian-based distribution should Debian itself become defunct.
H. Sapiens remain in existence today despite the fact that H. Erectus ceased to exist long ago. Perhaps Debian is reaching the end of its predominance and the frontrunning Debian-based offshoot, Ubuntu, is finding its place as a replacement. It really looks to me like evolutionary development occurring within the Free Software ecosystem--Linux went from being a student hacker's experiment, to a hobbyist/enthusiasts toy, to a few rough-around-the-edges distributions managed usually by individuals (eg. Slakware), to full-fledged community-driven collaberative efforts (Debian) and commercially-driven products (Red Hat, SuSE).
Since the commercially-driven efforts continually evolve (Red Hat dropping consumer-level products and establishing Fedora, Mandrake and Connectiva merging and re-inventing their businesses, SuSE being bought by Novell and releasing a community edition of its own) what should keep purely community-driven efforts from evolving as well? Ubuntu is a reponse to influences and pressures of the Free Software community--it shares the same technology, much of the same content and has some common roots in its founders and contributers. It keeps Debian's strengths (package management system loved by many, lack of direct corporate influence and commitment to the concept of Free Software, relatively high commitment to stability etc.) and abandons other characteristics that are weaknesses (lack of organisational structure, political disputes impeding on technical progress, slow pace of development at times, unpredictable release cycle).
This is exactly what makes Free Software so valuable--even if Debian were to disintegrate as a project there will be nothing to keep Debian's code and heritage from living on in new projects that pick up the pieces and move forward in great and exciting new directions. I have personally seen a couple of closed software applications of great value pretty much die because the companies responsible for development went insolvent, and for what I can only think are financial reasons nobody ever let the code go Free (perhaps doing so would make the intellectual property asset worthless from a balance-sheet perspective--in one case the receiver sold all IP to a competitor and all that remained of its applications were what was incorporated in the competing product. In the other case much of the software became abandonware).
So while this news may be cause for sadness towards a legendary Free Software project, it is far from cause for alarm. Debian itself will evolve into something better, or perhaps go extinct while its resources fully migrate over to a new project, likely Ubuntu. In the end we'll all get better software as a result.
...then they DAMN WELL BETTER keep track of where they disperse it. I for one certainly do NOT want my money finding its way into grants, loans, etc going to students, charities, business or any other entitiy that is involved in the committing of acts of violence against our allies, with the ultimate stated goal of destroying our way of life. Furthermore, there is something rather sick about giving money, education, etc. to someone so they can use it all to kill you or destroy your society.
My problem isn't at all with the data-mining of the student financing program--by problem is with how it was conducted. How awful is it that the gov't doesn't think it is important enough to inform its citizens when it wishes to do something that may affect your civil liberties? It should be stated in bold at the top of student finance applications that come or all of the information submitted is subject to possible FBI search. There should be strict regulations on sharing this information with anyone outside the department responsible for the programme and the authorities, and severe punishment for those goverment officials wo violate such regulations. However the FBI is quite justified in wanting such an investigative tool. The key to all of this is INFORMED CONSENT.
As to the records of student progress/transcripts/whatever I think that is overstepping things a bit, mostly becasue I don't see any real benefit except to be nosy (I dunno, maybe if it is a course on flying or a nuclear physics degree? still...). If the FBI finds something suspicious in the student financing records then a warrant could perhaps be justified.
I think that as is the case with a lot of Homeland Security initiatives is that the stated intentions are noble (real intentions?...not so sure) but the execution ranges from stupid to dangerous. Airport security for example...the watchlist is a disaster and ineffective and very bad at dealing with false entries--it is totally counter to "informed consent" becasue passengers have never been given any idea how authorities decide who must be on the list, nor at what point your name is screened against the list. Additionally it takes a "shoot first as questions later" approach by immediately blocking/deporting/holding passengers found on that list without sufficient cause--and just being on the list is far from sufficient cause to ruin someone's travel plans much less expel them from the country because the list is so inaccurate and clumsy. The name "Yousef Islam" is on the list, and when poor "Yusuf Islam" tried to fly to DC a whole plane of passengers was diverted to Bangor and Yusuf was apprehended and immediately deported. Yousef allegedly offered financial support to the terrorist group Hamas so I can see why he is on record, but Yusuf has won international pease awards and is a leader in legitimate, well-respected charitable efforts. Plus, he has a pretty successful career in music performing as Cat Stevens.
This is the real world and you cannot expect the government to be like those three monkeys and turn a blind eye to suspicious activity, though I do agree with you that the US gov't is losing self-control (as does happen in all large institutions left unchecked). Perhaps it may seem difficult to imagine the gov't being disciplined enough to properly inform its citizens and following due procedure at this point, but we in western society have nobody to blame but ourselves. I find it distasteful when peole bitch and moan about how nasty gov't is then reveal that they no next to nothing about how gov't works and rarely or never vote. The US gov't is like a neglected feral cat--its owner once cherished it but slowly stopped bothering to feed it and change its litterbox, and when the cat started catching critters to feed itself and crapping in the houseplants the owner chastised it and threw it outside to fend for itself. Now the gov't is a big ugly stray cat that is suspicious of all people and does the most base things in its own self interest...all because we decided it wasn't worth the bother to care about it and keep it properly fed, cleaned and trained.
...is usually what is being used for development of the end product. If you are making a website mock-up, do it with web development tools. If you are mocking up a windows forms app then use Visual Studio (whatever language because it doesn't matter, especially in .net--the point is to use the form-building GUI tools). If it is GTK use GTK-based tools, etc.
What it all boils down to is that you need to work the way you work best and leave the coding up to the coders.
I don't mean that you should do this and expect your coder to retain all the code you generated or wrote, becasue as you suggest your coders should know how best to code the actual application. As a developer, you'd posess the skills to determine how much (if any) of the mock-up can be used. A good mock-up may be nearly perfect, but more than likely if you use VS.NET like a drawing program then all the form objects will have meaningless names so what little generated code might be useless anyways.
So why use VS.NET to mock up a Windows UI, or FrontPage to mock up a web app (or the Free Software equivalents...whatever) if
If you are most comfortable doing your mock-ups in crayon, then do them in crayon.
Although I don't think that someone designing a UI needs to have advanced coding skills, I do think that such people should have at least introductory knowledge of the development tools and/or target platform and what their capabilities are. If you've got no knowlege of HTML at all and have never designed a web interface then you'd better learn a bit about the tools and technology behind web apps before venturing out to design one. Someone with adequate knowledge would at least know how to doodle something out in Dreamweaver or FrontPage. Yes, the code from such a person may be atrocious but the code is not the point (and the designer should not take offence if the code/underlying HTML structure is differnent--if the coder wipes out the table-based layout you futzed with for a couple hours to get just so and implements an almost-equivalent layout using proper CSS it is the coder's perogative--he knows best because coding is his job function).
So if none of the code matters, what's the point? Some might assume that mocking up using the same/similar visual developer tools as the coders will use would be so as to re-use whatever code supporting the mock-up but trying to re-use such code is actually a bad thing. The actual point is to convey the *intended behaviour* in ways dificult or impossible to do on paper, or powerpoint, or MS Paint or whatever. That is best done using the same technology/tools as the developer uses because NOTHING ELSE truly duplicates that behaviour. Drop-downs in Windows forms are a little different than in windows forms and simulating the behaviour of a drop-down in Powerpoint is too tedious to bother, and you cannot express a drop-down well on paper at all. Designing in this fashion also keeps the designer in tune with the characteristics, limitations, best-practices, etc. of the platform. For example, too many websites try to look too much like native desktop apps, supported by large amounts of kludgy code. AJAX is now popular and unfortunately in all too many cases it is used solely to make it more closely emulate the "desktop experience" without adding meaningful value. I think that brainless website layouts (those with fixed widths, javascript-heavy visual effects, accessibility-breaking purely-graphical buttons/links, non-resizeable fonts and so on) aren't dying off as fast as they should probably because of the legacy left by the practice of using graphics editors and other static techniques.
Submitting a mock-up in crayon to a coder might be good enough, and the coder will thank you for not trying to do the job he is best qualified to do himself, however you are doing your developers a disservice by such practice. Nothing can substitute for the visual interactivity of a "live" mock-up, and if the end users evaluating your mock-up com