You can't remove IE from a system, they managed to bodge it in pretty well. And no matter how many competitors products you install, from time to time IE will pop up again.
If you're going to talk about the freedom of a company to sell it's product without interference, go speak to Netscape. They deserved to be able to sell their product without Microsoft illegally killing their market. And yes, it was illegal. Both the US and the EU have ruled on that now.
Calling decisions by some of the top courts on two continents insane just shows how much you're missing the point here. You're right about a line needing to be drawn though; the courts are telling Microsoft they've stepped over it, and it's about time.
That's because IE isn't strictly just a web browser. I'd actually call it MS's codec pack that they can make sure is half way up to date. MS uses IE for tons of stuff that isn't really web browsing at all. Now you've got a choice. You can either live without all those apps/utilities/features that use stuff that's under IE or you don't. FF, Opera, or others won't help you here. They'll get you on the net sure, but they won't get a whole lot of other apps to run properly.
If I were MS, I'd go back to that new file system that they were playing around with and make their regular file explorer basically a nice standard's complaint web browser. I'd still offer IE 8-9. When the EU tried to be tough, I'd take IE off, but leave the file explorer web browser in there.
Next, if MS, Dell or any other large OEM is going to be including FireFox, Opera, Safari and others on a computer they are going to require some pretty stringent requirements on release planning and QA. If these aren't present in the organization supporting them the OEM will introduce these. This means there will be a "official" release and a Dell release. That is going to help, isn't it?
Since the HTML rendering engine and a good part of the browser is used for displaying lots of other stuff besides web pages, this is going to make for some interesting times. Some HTML that displays differently between the "source" and the actual rendering.
What windows browsers other than IE, FireFox, Opera, Safari are there? If I were MS, I'd pre-install those other worst 3-5 web browsers. Who in there right mind at MS would install FireFox, Opera, or Safari on OS given a choice? I couldn't even blame MS if they did this. They'd be providing choice.
I think if you were getting laid off or moving else where, you'd want to start a linked in account and get as many of your current co-workers on your list.
You might be losing the company contact lists, but it would be helpful to have made your own copy of folks that may be valuable to you before you change employers. I'd suggest making sure that strategic people also have a non-work email address in case they need to contact you.
The Golden Rule here. Never burn down any bridge!
It doesn't matter if you thought everyone there was less than pond slim, you don't/never let them know that! You use them to your advantage to get to some where nicer!
Remember hell/heaven is who you surround yourself with/by.
I watched a short segment on MSNBC last night - it contained crystal clear footage of someone robbing a fast-food restaurant, holding one person at gunpoint...
I haven't read the article, but from what I've read here it sounds like this is more like what the police were wanting. What if I told you most assaults happen in various bars in your town, but no one is hardly ever prosecuted for them because of a lack of video of the events? Would that change your mind to where you suddenly want cameras in your bars or any food places under the same rules as today. Generally police only ever get a copy if some one called them to the place to stop some event or arrest some folks after an event happened.
I wonder if you took a survey of most bars or food places how many of them are already recording you without anyone asking them to.
Regardless, the stat is still meaningless. I have flash installed but I use NoScript to block all of it. I only have it to occasionally watch YouTube vids. I refuse to go to flash sites because they are 95% dogshit. I'm not exaggerating for effect...I honestly feel that way about flash sites. So, just because flash is installed doesn't mean a whole lot if a user blocks the vast majority of it.
Lately, I've been trying to eat some what healthier. So I hit a food chain's website to search for their menu and nutrition information. If you've got a minute, visit Subway's and then Sonic's site. You can find a pdf of the info at Sonic, but you've got to put up with some painful flash to get there. What does the flash do? Mostly just show the same menu as what you'd see in the drive in and it lets you pan around it abit. Heck, I was hoping for bigger/better pictures of some of the stuff! Their nutrition information pdf was actually more useful as a menu than their menu. This is a quick test you can do for most national chains that you might chose to visit for lunch or dinner. Just try finding the nutrition information. I'd think that it should take under 30 seconds with most national chains.
LinkedIn is great because Kevin Bacon is on it and you can see how many degrees removed from him you are. He has "500+ connections" on LinkedIn. I'm only 3 degrees away myself and I'm not even in the entertainment industry.
Shouldn't we play that with Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds being slashdot and all? How many connections do they have?
Why? What specifically is valuable about people who know me? How does who I know affect how well I can do my job?
We wouldn't have had phrases like "its not what you know, but who you know" if it wasn't true in some respects.
Who you know, can't get you in if you don't know anything. But generally amongst a pool of some what equally qualified people, its the little differences that they like about you more than what you know that counts. Everyone that's gotten that far can do the job. At that point, its more of can this person work well with his coworkers? If you are friends with 5 employees of theirs, then they'd have a reason to believe that you can.
I'm not a lawyer either, but in my experiences in California, this is tricky--our HR people told us it wasn't legal to keep a list of people marked "do not hire." No, I don't know why, or whether they were correct.
Are you kidding? Everywhere that I've worked has a list of we won't ever be hiring that person back. It doesn't matter if it's a fast food place, small business, government office, or larger corporations. It might not be outside of that manager or work group, but short of mind wiping everyone involved there is no way that they'll rehire some folks. Now, spreading "do not hire" lists around an entire organization would be a mixed blessing/curse. I think that you'd be getting far more positives out of it than negatives though. Those that make it on a mental do not hire list have generally burned their bridges for whatever reasons.
I've also spoken with some folks and interviewers that look at college grads every year will put some grads on a "not culturally suitable to our company list at this time list," which is the same thing by a slightly different name. They'll re-eval some folks growth/change after 5 years, but generally they've got so much choice in new grads that they don't have to bother with folks that they deem don't match up with their corporate outlook.
I wonder how long it'll take us to invent genetic memory. Let's think of what it'd really require. It requires encoding memory into your reproductive packages. How many generations back would you include? Most likely as many as possible.
Thinking about it, we've got 9 months to grow and develop inside another human. I wonder how much/little engineering that it would take to have neural downloads straight into the kid's memory right up until birth. Of course you could always run into the Dune problem where past personalities want to take control of the new generation. That's one of the reasons that the memories might be useful, but entire personalities would be dangerous.
Who needs history education if you could remember it happening through your relative's view point?
Of course some things folks might want to forget or try to force future generations not to remember.
I live in Texarkana AR. I eat mostly in Texarkana, TX. The Bowie County has this nice report http://www.txkusa.org/health/Food-Report.pdf It lists: Establishment, Address, Date of Inspection, Type of Inspection, and Score. My wife and I check it every time we consider trying something new. We first look 'em up. If they don't have an A; we don't eat there.
I just wish Miller County had the same thing. Heck, it would be nice if there was an easy federal health website that it was trivial to search for this info. Heck, it would be nice to have those GPS units be able to poll for that info when you are "out of town." Just so you are sure to pick a clean place to eat.
Because real life is a single elimination scenario where you can't respawn.
Sure you can. You've just got to believe in re-incarnation for that to work. You'd have to redo all of school. That's enough punishment/penalty for just about anything right there.
Nice headline and all. I don't really care about it at the moment though. I want to hear back after they've been running the program for 5-10 years. Or do they quietly cancel the program after a year or two of failures? (Any project of this size will have road bumps that need to be solved. Will they be solved or will they spend the money and buy the machines, yet the machines never end up assigned to students for another 4 years?)
So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?
I hope that we never see this. Not as long as there's a human steering the car. Do we really need yet ANOTHER distraction from driving? People are texting, putting on makeup, calling, eating, drinking, reading and doing too many other things than driving. Imho if a police should see you doing this they should sell your car and take your license since you're too stupid to figure out that 3000kg at 100km/h is a force to be respected.
Why not? As you've stated we wouldn't see any real difference. Those that would have wreaks by being distracted will find a way to have them. Do you want to prevent any new ideas just because some one might miss use it?
I'd be happy with the windshield being used to display all that dash board car info, GPS nav crap, radio station stuff, or see better random ads while driving. Heck, if they could just have the windshield heat up enough so that it wouldn't be foggy in the morning or have morning frost stay on it for more than a minute, then I'd be happy. Cell phones have web browsers. I don't see why car windshields couldn't make use of them.
Part of the reason for the school's failure is that parents refuse to get involved, they would rather be their childs "friend" than a parent. Then little Jr. is shocked when he goes into the workforce, and some low level manager fires his behind for not doing what he was told to do.
This student thought that as "mommy's pet" she was above the rules that applied to everyone else. So, she disregarded the teacher, then she tried to lie her way out of it. I'm glad she got caught, maybe going to an alternative school where she has less freedom and more discipline is exactly what she needs.
Then people wonder why the incoming workforce is lazy, disrespectful and demands that they get their way on every issue - it's because they have been taught that their poor 'self-image' might be hurt if any form of discipline was used. It's way beyond time for them to face reality.
Here is a hint parents are just as involved as teachers. They are just sick of teachers blaming everything on the parents.
Blinks. O.k. I guess that no one taught you the real golden rule. It isn't what you know it's who you know and who you are related to and how you use it. There are various versions of what you make think of mommy's pet, but if your parents are min. wage workers then no teacher or administrator gives a rats ass what your parents think. Now if your parents were the owners of that business that employees a good percentage of the population, a lawyer, or doctor, then you'd bet that teacher or the school admin will be doing everything possible to kiss mommy's and dad's ass. We don't know who she is.
Here is something that you'll hate. Those disrespectful young ones usually become your boss due to who they were related to. I call it ironic when you've got to kiss "momma's pet" ass in order to get a decent eval and they mark against you because you don't work for what they would or a third worlder would.
Life ain't fair. Honest drone workers finish last. Lazy smarter folks that know how the game is played always finish ahead.
Your 'solution' is ridiculous and leads me to believe that you are still in school yourself. Minors generally do not have the wisdom to choose the best options available to them, and that's why education is required by law. If you had any common sense that comes from being an adult, you would know this.
Nah, I've been out of College since 2000 with a BS in CS. Oh, I've got extremist views. I think that the voting age should be dropped to 12 years old and that drinking, driving, and smoking should all be legal then as well. I find it funny how that those 65 and older control everything and own most of it as well. I'm 30 by the way.
There isn't any excuse not to have minors as full voting citizens. Every excuse that you could try to use to say that they can't handle a vote because they are so young has been debunked by the same folks that got rid of poll taxes, requiring property to vote, or being male and over 18 to vote.
There are days that I think that the only voters should be minors below the age of 18. My reasoning is that then we'd be sure that the voters where "thinking of the children" and not just screwing things up as usual.
There are days when I think that we need to get rid of our entire educational complex.
Why is it that every educator wants to stop student to student communications of any form using any media? Teachers don't teach you how to live in a free society. They teach you to live in prison.
My solution is simple. Have the students see the bill for "education" right up front and if they don't want it then they aren't required by law to be there any more.
That's what makes this bad. That student was required by law to be there. I'm sure other laws have been made to "force students to behave in class." When will students band together and force teachers to behave or have pay cuts?
I wonder how long it'll take us to near perfect the cell phone and then decide to add it directly into our ears or something. (Where would be a matter of engineering or style.) Presto techo-telepathy added to the human genome. I think that we could really do it in less than a hundred years.
There are days that I wonder how long it'll take us to do that and then have most of our current tech apparently vanish in landfills and such and not be replaced. Give it a few generations and people would "forget" that we hadn't always had those abilities. (Sort of like how folks forget how that there was life before newspapers, TV, radio, cell phones, or computers.)
The only point at which something like this would make sense is if we've transformed the vast majority of the planet into a giant city, like Tantor.
Um, no. The US is still a very "young" country. We've yet to actually populate most of it. Look at Japan, China, India, or the EU and see how much "free land" that they've got. Hint: not much. Every "new task" for land has to come from existing land plots. Japan wouldn't be extending their islands by tiny amounts if they had vast areas where it was easy/trivial to buy/build a new subdivision. Give the US a another a few hundred years of modern settlement. Eventually, those farm lands in the middle of nowhere would be the same price as that down town Manhattan or only slightly cheaper.
That's all it would take to make something like this to make sense. You don't have to cover the world with city. You can cover it will suburbs or farms or any "declared use where some one owns it" and it's taken up and can become expensive to change the purpose of it. The only land that isn't taken up and already used in some countries is only because we've not been able to use the land for anything. Now if all we needed was a flat piece of land where we could cheaply throw a building and use if for farming, then it would be done. It isn't currently done because its vastly cheaper to use existing land rather than build special purpose buildings. All it takes is the reverse to be true for any reason for this to be practical.
The parent seems like it is asking for product improvements and break room changes in the same suggestion box. That seems like a bad idea. For general work place improvements, think of buying all your employees 1 GB USB flash drives. 5 years ago that might have been both ahead of the curve work place improvement and morale booster. Now, you'll get an app that requires USB key flash drives to log in and you'll need to provide them anyway. It all comes down to money. We've been wanting to provide 80 USB key chains for ages. It's only lately when the price has fallen to $5 for 2 GB that we've got 25 extra to hand around. That was a single supervisor spending less than $150 where we can't get 80*$5=400 pushed through.
It's little things like that which are actual work place improvements. We've got several supervisors with Windows Mobile cell phones that connect using active sych. Gosh that's a workplace improvement that supervisors mostly love. It's all a money thing though. If it was cheap, they'd want everyone to have 'em.
You know the biggest quality of life computing change that I've experienced here since 2002? The switch from 14"-17" CRTs to 19+" LCDs. They've all got DVDROM/CDRW combo drives now that they didn't have then. That's not a big quality of life change when half the supervisors still e-mail me to burn their CDs for them though.
You know the second biggest quality of life change that I liked? A leased network copier. It scans in color and e-mails them it in pdf. It prints in laser BW. I hated scanning their crap more than burning their CDs, and they apparently can use the copier and select their name in the address book.
Now if they can all just learn to use excel so I'm not the only one around here doing number crunching for the YER. (Heck, I think it'll be April before I get YER for 2008 numbers from some people.)
* of course, learn more about neanderthals -- who were they, did they mix with humans (current analyses say no, but who knows what one can find in the whole genome). Were they human at all? Did they really talk? What kind of culture did they have?
* by learning about divergence between neanderthals and homo sapiens, answer the fundamental questions of biology -- who are we? what makes us different from animals? What made us spread and neanderthals disappear?
* analysis of genome instead of single genes takes the whole thing up one level.
* tracing back evolution (in general, it is not only about human evolution) -- not by comparing sequences of organisms that live nowadays, but really going back in time. Among others, this will let us test the tools that we routinely use for phylogenetic analysis (that is, tracing back the evolution).
I can't wait for them to either clone one or map it all out find out opps there wasn't any real neanderthal thing at all. It was just one family of humans that could easily interbreed with the rest. Wouldn't the creationists love that. See there wasn't any evolution going on. We've always been human. You've just been racist in calling that branch names to mark their differences with the rest of humanity. Oh, the arguments that could stir up.
"It's a legally valid request from the government. " Very well put. My point exactly.
The only ones that can really "fight" a government is another government. Do we really want multinational companies to challenge existing governments?
There is a part of me that thinks that a multinational share holder owned company couldn't do worse than some countries. I wouldn't want a company trying to take over my country though. I think that the populations of even the worst run countries would have the same thoughts if any corporation tried taking charge and running things.
There is a part of me that would seriously like to see if it could be done while at the same time it scares me.
Some one in the US, or another somewhat free country complaining that multinational companies operating in not so nice countries abide by the not so nice countries' laws.
No duh. They don't want bad things to happen to their employees or such in that country. Sometimes the countries decide to "nationalize" "foreign" industries. I wouldn't want that if I were a multinational company. It's easy to complain about another country sitting here. Why don't you complain to the companies offices in said country for following the local laws. (Heck, the US has laws that basically say that companies and individuals have to turn over what the government whats when it says it needs it.)
As an example look at the previous slashdot article about a TX judge ordering topix to turn over trolls ID info so that they can be personally sued. There is no difference between the two requests to any multinational company. It's a legally valid request from the government. You other obey it or face the consequences.
And finally, academia and computer science research shouldn't be beholden to any corporate entity. Our institutions should be funded by the government. The ideas should be public property.
I'd be iffy on that one. I'd think ideas should belong to those that fund them. Now, I do think that we as tax payers are getting shorted by corporate research universities or other places that use government money then form a company to make money off it. It still goes back to ideas should belong to those that fund them. When we fund them, I want to make sure that we the public own them. (Any one or company could use the idea.) If a company pays a university to develop something, then the company should own and develop whatever.
These days Gates only owns about 8% of MSFT. He probably has greater influence than his ownership. At $10,000 apiece, all MSFT has to do is sell 800,000 Surface tables and they've got their money back. I mean who doesn't want a big-ass kiosk in their home.:P
Who wants a freaking table taking up space? I'm waiting for LCD TV/monitor costs to come down to where it's affordable and practical for the average person to wall paper their home with them. When flexible monitor tech can be sold at wall paper prices and applied using roughly the same skills, then we'd see some neat stuff.
Think of having each wall a different screen saver app, slide show of various family photos, or to be different random web video feeds. That's were the real future is.
It doesn't take MS to think of or do these things. It just takes the monitor tech becoming that cheap. The graphics support and other tech would quickly follow to drive it.
I think folks criticizing Microsoft for their R&D investments are on the right track. Microsoft has blown a ton of money on R&D and on trying to get into other markets besides desktop PCs, and much of it has been completely wasted. Several of their competitors have done a far better job, spending a lot less money.
Research is great, but you have to be able to translate that research into products people want to buy (that's the "development" side of R&D). Microsoft risks becoming the next Xerox - a one-trick pony who dominated one market, but who could never translate their extensive R&D efforts into successful products in different markets. Remember, it was Xerox who pretty much invented the modern graphical user interface PCs sport today, along with things like Ethernet and laser printers. Where are they now?
Don't compare MS to Xerox. MS does do fundamental research. Where they are "wasting" R&D money is in copying others products and trying to enter existing markets. Xerox couldn't get its fundamental research to work selling their products. I don't know if Win N+1 will really make use of their fundamental research, but investors don't mind them spending money there.
The difference is that that MS isn't spending billions creating a video game or MP3/video player industry. They are spending billions trying to enter those markets by spending more money and copying/slightly improving the top products that those industries successfully produce.
It's like if tomorrow MS announced that they were entering the toilet industry. O.k. if it were the 1600s and we didn't have toilets it would be one thing, but now it'd be more like why? That's sort of the feeling that folks are having with MS entering other markets badly are having. Of course they'd not have complaints if MS spent 50M but made 5B in the markets either. (If it were that easy, others would've been trying to do it already.)
You could change toilet industry to renewable energy industry if you wanted a more modern example.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't remove IE from a system, they managed to bodge it in pretty well. And no matter how many competitors products you install, from time to time IE will pop up again.
If you're going to talk about the freedom of a company to sell it's product without interference, go speak to Netscape. They deserved to be able to sell their product without Microsoft illegally killing their market. And yes, it was illegal. Both the US and the EU have ruled on that now.
Calling decisions by some of the top courts on two continents insane just shows how much you're missing the point here. You're right about a line needing to be drawn though; the courts are telling Microsoft they've stepped over it, and it's about time.
That's because IE isn't strictly just a web browser. I'd actually call it MS's codec pack that they can make sure is half way up to date. MS uses IE for tons of stuff that isn't really web browsing at all. Now you've got a choice. You can either live without all those apps/utilities/features that use stuff that's under IE or you don't. FF, Opera, or others won't help you here. They'll get you on the net sure, but they won't get a whole lot of other apps to run properly.
If I were MS, I'd go back to that new file system that they were playing around with and make their regular file explorer basically a nice standard's complaint web browser. I'd still offer IE 8-9. When the EU tried to be tough, I'd take IE off, but leave the file explorer web browser in there.
Next, if MS, Dell or any other large OEM is going to be including FireFox, Opera, Safari and others on a computer they are going to require some pretty stringent requirements on release planning and QA. If these aren't present in the organization supporting them the OEM will introduce these. This means there will be a "official" release and a Dell release. That is going to help, isn't it?
Since the HTML rendering engine and a good part of the browser is used for displaying lots of other stuff besides web pages, this is going to make for some interesting times. Some HTML that displays differently between the "source" and the actual rendering.
What windows browsers other than IE, FireFox, Opera, Safari are there? If I were MS, I'd pre-install those other worst 3-5 web browsers. Who in there right mind at MS would install FireFox, Opera, or Safari on OS given a choice? I couldn't even blame MS if they did this. They'd be providing choice.
I think if you were getting laid off or moving else where, you'd want to start a linked in account and get as many of your current co-workers on your list.
You might be losing the company contact lists, but it would be helpful to have made your own copy of folks that may be valuable to you before you change employers. I'd suggest making sure that strategic people also have a non-work email address in case they need to contact you.
The Golden Rule here. Never burn down any bridge!
It doesn't matter if you thought everyone there was less than pond slim, you don't/never let them know that! You use them to your advantage to get to some where nicer!
Remember hell/heaven is who you surround yourself with/by.
I watched a short segment on MSNBC last night - it contained crystal clear footage of someone robbing a fast-food restaurant, holding one person at gunpoint...
I haven't read the article, but from what I've read here it sounds like this is more like what the police were wanting. What if I told you most assaults happen in various bars in your town, but no one is hardly ever prosecuted for them because of a lack of video of the events? Would that change your mind to where you suddenly want cameras in your bars or any food places under the same rules as today. Generally police only ever get a copy if some one called them to the place to stop some event or arrest some folks after an event happened.
I wonder if you took a survey of most bars or food places how many of them are already recording you without anyone asking them to.
Regardless, the stat is still meaningless. I have flash installed but I use NoScript to block all of it. I only have it to occasionally watch YouTube vids. I refuse to go to flash sites because they are 95% dogshit. I'm not exaggerating for effect...I honestly feel that way about flash sites. So, just because flash is installed doesn't mean a whole lot if a user blocks the vast majority of it.
Lately, I've been trying to eat some what healthier. So I hit a food chain's website to search for their menu and nutrition information. If you've got a minute, visit Subway's and then Sonic's site. You can find a pdf of the info at Sonic, but you've got to put up with some painful flash to get there. What does the flash do? Mostly just show the same menu as what you'd see in the drive in and it lets you pan around it abit. Heck, I was hoping for bigger/better pictures of some of the stuff! Their nutrition information pdf was actually more useful as a menu than their menu. This is a quick test you can do for most national chains that you might chose to visit for lunch or dinner. Just try finding the nutrition information. I'd think that it should take under 30 seconds with most national chains.
LinkedIn is great because Kevin Bacon is on it and you can see how many degrees removed from him you are. He has "500+ connections" on LinkedIn. I'm only 3 degrees away myself and I'm not even in the entertainment industry.
Shouldn't we play that with Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds being slashdot and all? How many connections do they have?
Why? What specifically is valuable about people who know me? How does who I know affect how well I can do my job?
We wouldn't have had phrases like "its not what you know, but who you know" if it wasn't true in some respects.
Who you know, can't get you in if you don't know anything. But generally amongst a pool of some what equally qualified people, its the little differences that they like about you more than what you know that counts. Everyone that's gotten that far can do the job. At that point, its more of can this person work well with his coworkers? If you are friends with 5 employees of theirs, then they'd have a reason to believe that you can.
I'm not a lawyer either, but in my experiences in California, this is tricky--our HR people told us it wasn't legal to keep a list of people marked "do not hire." No, I don't know why, or whether they were correct.
Are you kidding? Everywhere that I've worked has a list of we won't ever be hiring that person back. It doesn't matter if it's a fast food place, small business, government office, or larger corporations. It might not be outside of that manager or work group, but short of mind wiping everyone involved there is no way that they'll rehire some folks. Now, spreading "do not hire" lists around an entire organization would be a mixed blessing/curse. I think that you'd be getting far more positives out of it than negatives though. Those that make it on a mental do not hire list have generally burned their bridges for whatever reasons.
I've also spoken with some folks and interviewers that look at college grads every year will put some grads on a "not culturally suitable to our company list at this time list," which is the same thing by a slightly different name. They'll re-eval some folks growth/change after 5 years, but generally they've got so much choice in new grads that they don't have to bother with folks that they deem don't match up with their corporate outlook.
I wonder how long it'll take us to invent genetic memory. Let's think of what it'd really require. It requires encoding memory into your reproductive packages. How many generations back would you include? Most likely as many as possible.
Thinking about it, we've got 9 months to grow and develop inside another human. I wonder how much/little engineering that it would take to have neural downloads straight into the kid's memory right up until birth. Of course you could always run into the Dune problem where past personalities want to take control of the new generation. That's one of the reasons that the memories might be useful, but entire personalities would be dangerous.
Who needs history education if you could remember it happening through your relative's view point?
Of course some things folks might want to forget or try to force future generations not to remember.
I live in Texarkana AR. I eat mostly in Texarkana, TX. The Bowie County has this nice report http://www.txkusa.org/health/Food-Report.pdf
It lists: Establishment, Address, Date of Inspection, Type of Inspection, and Score. My wife and I check it every time we consider trying something new. We first look 'em up. If they don't have an A; we don't eat there.
I just wish Miller County had the same thing. Heck, it would be nice if there was an easy federal health website that it was trivial to search for this info. Heck, it would be nice to have those GPS units be able to poll for that info when you are "out of town." Just so you are sure to pick a clean place to eat.
Because real life is a single elimination scenario where you can't respawn.
Sure you can. You've just got to believe in re-incarnation for that to work. You'd have to redo all of school. That's enough punishment/penalty for just about anything right there.
Nice headline and all. I don't really care about it at the moment though. I want to hear back after they've been running the program for 5-10 years. Or do they quietly cancel the program after a year or two of failures? (Any project of this size will have road bumps that need to be solved. Will they be solved or will they spend the money and buy the machines, yet the machines never end up assigned to students for another 4 years?)
So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?
I hope that we never see this. Not as long as there's a human steering the car. Do we really need yet ANOTHER distraction from driving? People are texting, putting on makeup, calling, eating, drinking, reading and doing too many other things than driving. Imho if a police should see you doing this they should sell your car and take your license since you're too stupid to figure out that 3000kg at 100km/h is a force to be respected.
Why not? As you've stated we wouldn't see any real difference. Those that would have wreaks by being distracted will find a way to have them. Do you want to prevent any new ideas just because some one might miss use it?
I'd be happy with the windshield being used to display all that dash board car info, GPS nav crap, radio station stuff, or see better random ads while driving. Heck, if they could just have the windshield heat up enough so that it wouldn't be foggy in the morning or have morning frost stay on it for more than a minute, then I'd be happy. Cell phones have web browsers. I don't see why car windshields couldn't make use of them.
Part of the reason for the school's failure is that parents refuse to get involved, they would rather be their childs "friend" than a parent. Then little Jr. is shocked when he goes into the workforce, and some low level manager fires his behind for not doing what he was told to do.
This student thought that as "mommy's pet" she was above the rules that applied to everyone else. So, she disregarded the teacher, then she tried to lie her way out of it. I'm glad she got caught, maybe going to an alternative school where she has less freedom and more discipline is exactly what she needs.
Then people wonder why the incoming workforce is lazy, disrespectful and demands that they get their way on every issue - it's because they have been taught that their poor 'self-image' might be hurt if any form of discipline was used. It's way beyond time for them to face reality.
Here is a hint parents are just as involved as teachers. They are just sick of teachers blaming everything on the parents.
Blinks. O.k. I guess that no one taught you the real golden rule. It isn't what you know it's who you know and who you are related to and how you use it. There are various versions of what you make think of mommy's pet, but if your parents are min. wage workers then no teacher or administrator gives a rats ass what your parents think. Now if your parents were the owners of that business that employees a good percentage of the population, a lawyer, or doctor, then you'd bet that teacher or the school admin will be doing everything possible to kiss mommy's and dad's ass. We don't know who she is.
Here is something that you'll hate. Those disrespectful young ones usually become your boss due to who they were related to. I call it ironic when you've got to kiss "momma's pet" ass in order to get a decent eval and they mark against you because you don't work for what they would or a third worlder would.
Life ain't fair. Honest drone workers finish last. Lazy smarter folks that know how the game is played always finish ahead.
Your 'solution' is ridiculous and leads me to believe that you are still in school yourself. Minors generally do not have the wisdom to choose the best options available to them, and that's why education is required by law. If you had any common sense that comes from being an adult, you would know this.
Nah, I've been out of College since 2000 with a BS in CS. Oh, I've got extremist views. I think that the voting age should be dropped to 12 years old and that drinking, driving, and smoking should all be legal then as well. I find it funny how that those 65 and older control everything and own most of it as well. I'm 30 by the way.
There isn't any excuse not to have minors as full voting citizens. Every excuse that you could try to use to say that they can't handle a vote because they are so young has been debunked by the same folks that got rid of poll taxes, requiring property to vote, or being male and over 18 to vote.
There are days that I think that the only voters should be minors below the age of 18. My reasoning is that then we'd be sure that the voters where "thinking of the children" and not just screwing things up as usual.
There are days when I think that we need to get rid of our entire educational complex.
Why is it that every educator wants to stop student to student communications of any form using any media? Teachers don't teach you how to live in a free society. They teach you to live in prison.
My solution is simple. Have the students see the bill for "education" right up front and if they don't want it then they aren't required by law to be there any more.
That's what makes this bad. That student was required by law to be there. I'm sure other laws have been made to "force students to behave in class." When will students band together and force teachers to behave or have pay cuts?
I wonder how long it'll take us to near perfect the cell phone and then decide to add it directly into our ears or something. (Where would be a matter of engineering or style.) Presto techo-telepathy added to the human genome. I think that we could really do it in less than a hundred years.
There are days that I wonder how long it'll take us to do that and then have most of our current tech apparently vanish in landfills and such and not be replaced. Give it a few generations and people would "forget" that we hadn't always had those abilities. (Sort of like how folks forget how that there was life before newspapers, TV, radio, cell phones, or computers.)
The only point at which something like this would make sense is if we've transformed the vast majority of the planet into a giant city, like Tantor.
Um, no. The US is still a very "young" country. We've yet to actually populate most of it. Look at Japan, China, India, or the EU and see how much "free land" that they've got. Hint: not much. Every "new task" for land has to come from existing land plots. Japan wouldn't be extending their islands by tiny amounts if they had vast areas where it was easy/trivial to buy/build a new subdivision. Give the US a another a few hundred years of modern settlement. Eventually, those farm lands in the middle of nowhere would be the same price as that down town Manhattan or only slightly cheaper.
That's all it would take to make something like this to make sense. You don't have to cover the world with city. You can cover it will suburbs or farms or any "declared use where some one owns it" and it's taken up and can become expensive to change the purpose of it. The only land that isn't taken up and already used in some countries is only because we've not been able to use the land for anything. Now if all we needed was a flat piece of land where we could cheaply throw a building and use if for farming, then it would be done. It isn't currently done because its vastly cheaper to use existing land rather than build special purpose buildings. All it takes is the reverse to be true for any reason for this to be practical.
The parent seems like it is asking for product improvements and break room changes in the same suggestion box. That seems like a bad idea. For general work place improvements, think of buying all your employees 1 GB USB flash drives. 5 years ago that might have been both ahead of the curve work place improvement and morale booster. Now, you'll get an app that requires USB key flash drives to log in and you'll need to provide them anyway. It all comes down to money. We've been wanting to provide 80 USB key chains for ages. It's only lately when the price has fallen to $5 for 2 GB that we've got 25 extra to hand around. That was a single supervisor spending less than $150 where we can't get 80*$5=400 pushed through.
It's little things like that which are actual work place improvements. We've got several supervisors with Windows Mobile cell phones that connect using active sych. Gosh that's a workplace improvement that supervisors mostly love. It's all a money thing though. If it was cheap, they'd want everyone to have 'em.
You know the biggest quality of life computing change that I've experienced here since 2002? The switch from 14"-17" CRTs to 19+" LCDs. They've all got DVDROM/CDRW combo drives now that they didn't have then. That's not a big quality of life change when half the supervisors still e-mail me to burn their CDs for them though.
You know the second biggest quality of life change that I liked? A leased network copier. It scans in color and e-mails them it in pdf. It prints in laser BW. I hated scanning their crap more than burning their CDs, and they apparently can use the copier and select their name in the address book.
Now if they can all just learn to use excel so I'm not the only one around here doing number crunching for the YER. (Heck, I think it'll be April before I get YER for 2008 numbers from some people.)
* of course, learn more about neanderthals -- who were they, did they mix with humans (current analyses say no, but who knows what one can find in the whole genome). Were they human at all? Did they really talk? What kind of culture did they have?
* by learning about divergence between neanderthals and homo sapiens, answer the fundamental questions of biology -- who are we? what makes us different from animals? What made us spread and neanderthals disappear?
* analysis of genome instead of single genes takes the whole thing up one level.
* tracing back evolution (in general, it is not only about human evolution) -- not by comparing sequences of organisms that live nowadays, but really going back in time. Among others, this will let us test the tools that we routinely use for phylogenetic analysis (that is, tracing back the evolution).
I can't wait for them to either clone one or map it all out find out opps there wasn't any real neanderthal thing at all. It was just one family of humans that could easily interbreed with the rest. Wouldn't the creationists love that. See there wasn't any evolution going on. We've always been human. You've just been racist in calling that branch names to mark their differences with the rest of humanity. Oh, the arguments that could stir up.
"It's a legally valid request from the government. " Very well put. My point exactly.
The only ones that can really "fight" a government is another government. Do we really want multinational companies to challenge existing governments?
There is a part of me that thinks that a multinational share holder owned company couldn't do worse than some countries. I wouldn't want a company trying to take over my country though. I think that the populations of even the worst run countries would have the same thoughts if any corporation tried taking charge and running things.
There is a part of me that would seriously like to see if it could be done while at the same time it scares me.
Some one in the US, or another somewhat free country complaining that multinational companies operating in not so nice countries abide by the not so nice countries' laws.
No duh. They don't want bad things to happen to their employees or such in that country. Sometimes the countries decide to "nationalize" "foreign" industries. I wouldn't want that if I were a multinational company. It's easy to complain about another country sitting here. Why don't you complain to the companies offices in said country for following the local laws. (Heck, the US has laws that basically say that companies and individuals have to turn over what the government whats when it says it needs it.)
As an example look at the previous slashdot article about a TX judge ordering topix to turn over trolls ID info so that they can be personally sued. There is no difference between the two requests to any multinational company. It's a legally valid request from the government. You other obey it or face the consequences.
And finally, academia and computer science research shouldn't be beholden to any corporate entity. Our institutions should be funded by the government. The ideas should be public property.
I'd be iffy on that one. I'd think ideas should belong to those that fund them. Now, I do think that we as tax payers are getting shorted by corporate research universities or other places that use government money then form a company to make money off it. It still goes back to ideas should belong to those that fund them. When we fund them, I want to make sure that we the public own them. (Any one or company could use the idea.) If a company pays a university to develop something, then the company should own and develop whatever.
These days Gates only owns about 8% of MSFT. He probably has greater influence than his ownership. At $10,000 apiece, all MSFT has to do is sell 800,000 Surface tables and they've got their money back. I mean who doesn't want a big-ass kiosk in their home. :P
Who wants a freaking table taking up space? I'm waiting for LCD TV/monitor costs to come down to where it's affordable and practical for the average person to wall paper their home with them. When flexible monitor tech can be sold at wall paper prices and applied using roughly the same skills, then we'd see some neat stuff.
Think of having each wall a different screen saver app, slide show of various family photos, or to be different random web video feeds. That's were the real future is.
It doesn't take MS to think of or do these things. It just takes the monitor tech becoming that cheap. The graphics support and other tech would quickly follow to drive it.
I think folks criticizing Microsoft for their R&D investments are on the right track. Microsoft has blown a ton of money on R&D and on trying to get into other markets besides desktop PCs, and much of it has been completely wasted. Several of their competitors have done a far better job, spending a lot less money.
Research is great, but you have to be able to translate that research into products people want to buy (that's the "development" side of R&D). Microsoft risks becoming the next Xerox - a one-trick pony who dominated one market, but who could never translate their extensive R&D efforts into successful products in different markets. Remember, it was Xerox who pretty much invented the modern graphical user interface PCs sport today, along with things like Ethernet and laser printers. Where are they now?
Don't compare MS to Xerox. MS does do fundamental research. Where they are "wasting" R&D money is in copying others products and trying to enter existing markets. Xerox couldn't get its fundamental research to work selling their products. I don't know if Win N+1 will really make use of their fundamental research, but investors don't mind them spending money there.
The difference is that that MS isn't spending billions creating a video game or MP3/video player industry. They are spending billions trying to enter those markets by spending more money and copying/slightly improving the top products that those industries successfully produce.
It's like if tomorrow MS announced that they were entering the toilet industry. O.k. if it were the 1600s and we didn't have toilets it would be one thing, but now it'd be more like why? That's sort of the feeling that folks are having with MS entering other markets badly are having. Of course they'd not have complaints if MS spent 50M but made 5B in the markets either. (If it were that easy, others would've been trying to do it already.)
You could change toilet industry to renewable energy industry if you wanted a more modern example.