Lots of people look at your bits with your permission; doctors, correction facility officers, the military, visitation people at airports.
I don't have lots of first hand experience, but am pretty sure that prison guards don't need your permission to strip search you... by the time you meet them you've pretty had those sort of rights removed.
Wow... seventy-nine posts, most of which attempt to debate the subtleties of Chinese copyright law, something about which none of the posters know anything.
Now we know why the Chinese government built the Great Firewall...
"The best way to board, according to the researchers, would be a row-by-row, seat-by-seat, strict order. That would mean everyone lines up, row 25 first. I can't imagine fliers will go for that."
I mean really, next thing you know someone would suggest that all fliers take off their shoes, turn over nail clippers, and not carry shampoo or extra lap-top batteries. People would never put up with stuff like that.
Then work with real users and find out what they want the app to do, how they want it to do it, and assess what their knowledge and skills levels are. In all likelihood you are entirely the wrong person to judge what's appropriate for end users.
... and didn't even read past the first line of the summary. Why doesn't Haselton just a start his own blog so that we can ignore him in a more convenient fashion.
How much work does it take to go from a prototype to a fully documented and tested implementation ?
God yes. It's bad enough to rely on home brew software built by a beginner. The real challenge is when said beginner leaves town and the owner, or even the owner's successor, is left with a totaly undocumented system to struggle with. Especially since it likely requires at least a few secret tricks of the "I'll fix that next month" variety.
Trust me - been there, done that, burned the T-shirt and bought something in a box next time.
Holy mother of God - what, besides WebKinz do you think your daughter is likely to be up to? And if your Linux box won't run that and Bild-a-Bear properly then she won't like it anyhow.
She's seven years old! Let her pick a password that's easy for her to recall. The important thing is that she's accustomed to passwords etc, not that she understands cryptographic science.
I despise the signs at every store claiming that "due to copyright law" they will not accept returns. This is complete and utter nonsense and there is nothing in copyright law preventing them from accepting returns on software that doesn't work.
If retailers were forced to accepts returns and provide refunds for every software item that doesn't work as advertised, doesn't work on a specifc computer, is too slow to use, has lousy technical support, or breaks something else, we would likely see overall quality jump pretty damned fast.
As it stands now the end user is asked to drop $200, $300 or more for non-returnable disc with no promise whatsoever that it will actually do what's expected. Is it any surprise that tech savvy people choose to shop at Pirate Bay before laying out cold hard cash?
I find it hard to believe that Haselton has ever had a date, much less any experience with dating sites. The value that you get from such sites is entirely proportional to the effort that you put in to pictures, profiles, and interactions. Hey, it's where I met the love of my life.
I have been told though that the experience is entirely different for women, and that even an empty profile will be bombarded with not so subtle messages from guys looking to get their rocks off.
A lot of people, esp. boomers are using these sites, and there could be refinements, but overall they tend to beat hanging out in bars or joining random clubs looking for companionship. Or reading dating advice on Slashdot...
1 - Buggy whip maker - Yup, still around.
2 - Horse Farrier - there are many thousands of farriers working in the US and around the world.
5 - Gold Miner - likewise gold mining still goes on, and underground mining is still common throughout the world.
9 - Transatlantic passenger liner captain - Um - who do you think captains the transatlantic ocean liners?.
10 - Japanese longshoreman... And who unloads ships in Japanese ports? The ten thousand unionized dock workers? Oh right, Sailor Moon...
Don't tell people what to do, teach them to understand that they have the means to determine what information is made public, and what is held back. Sure there are people who have managed to disappear on the web, or even in real life, but any sensible person is looking for a balance between privacy and convenience.
Teach them how to decide what they want to tell Facebook, or Amazon.com, or their bank, and how to obfuscate when needed - for instance not giving a real e-mail address every time they download Adobe Reader, not handing over more than one phone number, maintaining a pseudonym for those on-line activites could come back to haunt them.
Just telling people to be afraid, and that they're idiots, does no good. Give them choices instead.
Yes, I read TFA!! And WOW! What amazing upgrades!!!
1) The return of hierarchical Dock menus!!! In Panther and Tiger, you could place a folder in the Dock and then navigate that folders contents right there in the folders own hierarchical menu!!! OMG! OMG!
2) The return of a Non-transparent menu bar!!!! Yes! A checkbox so that your menu bar won't be transparent!!! OMG! OMG!
3) And, and, and!!! A Time Machine menu-bar indicator!!! OMG! OMG!
That's it, I'm going out TOMORROW to buy Leopard for my Powerbook! I am SO excited by these amazing innovative changes!!!!
OMfuckingG!!!!! I just wet myself I'[m so EXCITED!
My God. Does anyone actually read these tedious essays? I didn't even go beyond the summary, assuming that maybe that encapsulated what was important.
Anyone who has spent time writing policy or organizational by-laws knows that you cannot anticipate every possible outcome or interpretation. It is simply not possible. The best that you can hope for is to cover off all likely requirements and then have a defined process for dealing with exceptions and challenges.
Like, for instance, a legal system and courts.
Only someone with way, way too much time on his hands would try to devise a system like this.
I've always felt that Customs agents were considerably more frightening that real police. They can certainly do any number of things on a whim that a cop would never consider. Well, outside of The Shield anyhow.
There are more and more people, myself included, that wind up avoiding traveling to the U.S. From outside of your borders it looks as if I need to worry not just about routine customs abuse like having my car torn apart, but also being shipped to Syria for torture, and now having sensitive data pulled off of my laptop.
And again, in the present climate it can be hard to know what data Homeland Security might see as abridging "National Security" even if it's legal in my own country.
Admittedly I haven't even looked at E-bay for a couple of years now, but I'm assuming that it's still the case that E-bay and PayPal will do nothing to help buyers who have been scammed.
One experience with a seller that never delivered showed me that E-bay buyers are entirely on their own. A good first step for E-bay would have been to build in an escrow service - at no extra cost - so that buyers at least could feel protected against outright non-delivery.
E-bay could build in a lot of protections, or at least mediate disputes in a timely and professional manner, but they refuse to do so. Crooked buyers and sellers know that E-bay won't touch them, so they just carry on their merry way. Feedback problems are just a symptom, not the root problem.
OK, I changed my mind when I discovered that www.dell.net goes to www.snap.com, the creators of what is likely the most irritating web technology ever!
Seriously though this all reminds me of the regular attempts by the International Olympic Committee to shut down every "Olympic Pizza" shop in host cities.
Gosh, I just upgraded my old MP3 player for new 2 gig model. It doesn't have a video screen, it doesn't make phone calls. It doesn't walk the dog. It doesn't shuffle. Hell, It doesn't even have a brand name on it, or on the box, or on the "instructions."
Then again it's literally one inch square, looks cool in pink aluminum, and allows me to a) copy songs (or anything) to it from any computer and b) play music.
The practice, known as typosquatting, is illegal. Dell alleges that the group of defendants, mostly registered offshore, control over a million domain names and have used over 64 million."
Question One: Illegal where? The U.S.?
Question Two: these companies are registered in other countries - perhaps typosquatting is legal there?
Question Three: How does one define typosquatting? dellstuff.com? delltrucking.com? dall.com?
Even though it's not totally modern, sucks at surfing the web, does everything adequately, not terrifically, this phone is indestructible. It's been dropped on tile, pavement, concrete, into mud, and bounced out of my pocket one night while running last winter. It was found by a dog walker who saw the screen flashing under leaves and snow when it rang.
If there's a way to kill this phone I can't find it. Battery is still good too after two years of hard, hard, use.
Then again, the connector from the charger to the phone sucked from day one and has always been a sketchy proposition.
Sigh, I have five lovely mod points, but that is nowhere near enough to mod this entire discussion down as pointless. To summarize a) Apple GOOD! b) Apple BAD!
Agreed. Trouble is Apple fans confuse snotty and arrogant with "iconic".
I really wonder who Apple's ads are aimed at (like the endlessly irritating Mac vs PC ads). Surely they aren't intended to convince PC users to switch - insulting someone usually isn't an effective way to do that - so the only point of them must be to keep the Apple brethren convinced of their innate superiority.
(this comment composed on a G4 Powerbook, freshly rebooted after the latest kernel panic)
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Lots of people look at your bits with your permission; doctors, correction facility officers, the military, visitation people at airports.
I don't have lots of first hand experience, but am pretty sure that prison guards don't need your permission to strip search you... by the time you meet them you've pretty had those sort of rights removed.
Wow... seventy-nine posts, most of which attempt to debate the subtleties of Chinese copyright law, something about which none of the posters know anything.
Now we know why the Chinese government built the Great Firewall...
... for the benefit of the irony impaired.
"The best way to board, according to the researchers, would be a row-by-row, seat-by-seat, strict order. That would mean everyone lines up, row 25 first. I can't imagine fliers will go for that. "
I mean really, next thing you know someone would suggest that all fliers take off their shoes, turn over nail clippers, and not carry shampoo or extra lap-top batteries. People would never put up with stuff like that.
... and ignore everything that they do.
Then work with real users and find out what they want the app to do, how they want it to do it, and assess what their knowledge and skills levels are. In all likelihood you are entirely the wrong person to judge what's appropriate for end users.
... and didn't even read past the first line of the summary. Why doesn't Haselton just a start his own blog so that we can ignore him in a more convenient fashion.
How much work does it take to go from a prototype to a fully documented and tested implementation ?
God yes. It's bad enough to rely on home brew software built by a beginner. The real challenge is when said beginner leaves town and the owner, or even the owner's successor, is left with a totaly undocumented system to struggle with. Especially since it likely requires at least a few secret tricks of the "I'll fix that next month" variety.
Trust me - been there, done that, burned the T-shirt and bought something in a box next time.
Holy mother of God - what, besides WebKinz do you think your daughter is likely to be up to? And if your Linux box won't run that and Bild-a-Bear properly then she won't like it anyhow.
She's seven years old! Let her pick a password that's easy for her to recall. The important thing is that she's accustomed to passwords etc, not that she understands cryptographic science.
I despise the signs at every store claiming that "due to copyright law" they will not accept returns. This is complete and utter nonsense and there is nothing in copyright law preventing them from accepting returns on software that doesn't work.
If retailers were forced to accepts returns and provide refunds for every software item that doesn't work as advertised, doesn't work on a specifc computer, is too slow to use, has lousy technical support, or breaks something else, we would likely see overall quality jump pretty damned fast.
As it stands now the end user is asked to drop $200, $300 or more for non-returnable disc with no promise whatsoever that it will actually do what's expected. Is it any surprise that tech savvy people choose to shop at Pirate Bay before laying out cold hard cash?
Oh, I so hope that it's ATT so that when I move there to be a colonist I can bring my iPhone! That would be so totally cool!
I find it hard to believe that Haselton has ever had a date, much less any experience with dating sites. The value that you get from such sites is entirely proportional to the effort that you put in to pictures, profiles, and interactions. Hey, it's where I met the love of my life.
I have been told though that the experience is entirely different for women, and that even an empty profile will be bombarded with not so subtle messages from guys looking to get their rocks off.
A lot of people, esp. boomers are using these sites, and there could be refinements, but overall they tend to beat hanging out in bars or joining random clubs looking for companionship. Or reading dating advice on Slashdot...
Not to quibble but...
1 - Buggy whip maker - Yup, still around.
2 - Horse Farrier - there are many thousands of farriers working in the US and around the world.
5 - Gold Miner - likewise gold mining still goes on, and underground mining is still common throughout the world.
9 - Transatlantic passenger liner captain - Um - who do you think captains the transatlantic ocean liners?.
10 - Japanese longshoreman... And who unloads ships in Japanese ports? The ten thousand unionized dock workers? Oh right, Sailor Moon...
Will not be buying the next Village People album! Nor will I buy tickets for their next world tour!
Ick. Or visiting their web site again... Can you say Geocities? I knew you could!
Don't tell people what to do, teach them to understand that they have the means to determine what information is made public, and what is held back. Sure there are people who have managed to disappear on the web, or even in real life, but any sensible person is looking for a balance between privacy and convenience.
Teach them how to decide what they want to tell Facebook, or Amazon.com, or their bank, and how to obfuscate when needed - for instance not giving a real e-mail address every time they download Adobe Reader, not handing over more than one phone number, maintaining a pseudonym for those on-line activites could come back to haunt them.
Just telling people to be afraid, and that they're idiots, does no good. Give them choices instead.
... with DB Cooper!
Yes, I read TFA!! And WOW! What amazing upgrades!!!
1) The return of hierarchical Dock menus!!! In Panther and Tiger, you could place a folder in the Dock and then navigate that folders contents right there in the folders own hierarchical menu!!! OMG! OMG!
2) The return of a Non-transparent menu bar!!!! Yes! A checkbox so that your menu bar won't be transparent!!! OMG! OMG!
3) And, and, and!!! A Time Machine menu-bar indicator!!! OMG! OMG!
That's it, I'm going out TOMORROW to buy Leopard for my Powerbook! I am SO excited by these amazing innovative changes!!!!
OMfuckingG!!!!! I just wet myself I'[m so EXCITED!
My God. Does anyone actually read these tedious essays? I didn't even go beyond the summary, assuming that maybe that encapsulated what was important.
Anyone who has spent time writing policy or organizational by-laws knows that you cannot anticipate every possible outcome or interpretation. It is simply not possible. The best that you can hope for is to cover off all likely requirements and then have a defined process for dealing with exceptions and challenges.
Like, for instance, a legal system and courts.
Only someone with way, way too much time on his hands would try to devise a system like this.
I've always felt that Customs agents were considerably more frightening that real police. They can certainly do any number of things on a whim that a cop would never consider. Well, outside of The Shield anyhow.
There are more and more people, myself included, that wind up avoiding traveling to the U.S. From outside of your borders it looks as if I need to worry not just about routine customs abuse like having my car torn apart, but also being shipped to Syria for torture, and now having sensitive data pulled off of my laptop.
And again, in the present climate it can be hard to know what data Homeland Security might see as abridging "National Security" even if it's legal in my own country.
Admittedly I haven't even looked at E-bay for a couple of years now, but I'm assuming that it's still the case that E-bay and PayPal will do nothing to help buyers who have been scammed.
One experience with a seller that never delivered showed me that E-bay buyers are entirely on their own. A good first step for E-bay would have been to build in an escrow service - at no extra cost - so that buyers at least could feel protected against outright non-delivery.
E-bay could build in a lot of protections, or at least mediate disputes in a timely and professional manner, but they refuse to do so. Crooked buyers and sellers know that E-bay won't touch them, so they just carry on their merry way. Feedback problems are just a symptom, not the root problem.
OK, I changed my mind when I discovered that www.dell.net goes to www.snap.com, the creators of what is likely the most irritating web technology ever!
Seriously though this all reminds me of the regular attempts by the International Olympic Committee to shut down every "Olympic Pizza" shop in host cities.
Gosh, I just upgraded my old MP3 player for new 2 gig model. It doesn't have a video screen, it doesn't make phone calls. It doesn't walk the dog. It doesn't shuffle. Hell, It doesn't even have a brand name on it, or on the box, or on the "instructions."
Then again it's literally one inch square, looks cool in pink aluminum, and allows me to a) copy songs (or anything) to it from any computer and b) play music.
For $30 it's EXACTLY what I need.
Guess I'm not in Apple's target market?
The practice, known as typosquatting, is illegal. Dell alleges that the group of defendants, mostly registered offshore, control over a million domain names and have used over 64 million."
Question One: Illegal where? The U.S.?
Question Two: these companies are registered in other countries - perhaps typosquatting is legal there?
Question Three: How does one define typosquatting? dellstuff.com? delltrucking.com? dall.com?
Even though it's not totally modern, sucks at surfing the web, does everything adequately, not terrifically, this phone is indestructible. It's been dropped on tile, pavement, concrete, into mud, and bounced out of my pocket one night while running last winter. It was found by a dog walker who saw the screen flashing under leaves and snow when it rang.
If there's a way to kill this phone I can't find it. Battery is still good too after two years of hard, hard, use.
Then again, the connector from the charger to the phone sucked from day one and has always been a sketchy proposition.
Sigh, I have five lovely mod points, but that is nowhere near enough to mod this entire discussion down as pointless. To summarize a) Apple GOOD! b) Apple BAD!
Agreed. Trouble is Apple fans confuse snotty and arrogant with "iconic".
I really wonder who Apple's ads are aimed at (like the endlessly irritating Mac vs PC ads). Surely they aren't intended to convince PC users to switch - insulting someone usually isn't an effective way to do that - so the only point of them must be to keep the Apple brethren convinced of their innate superiority.
(this comment composed on a G4 Powerbook, freshly rebooted after the latest kernel panic)