God yes. People like this, griping about someone else's charitable work, almost never are willing to put their money where their mouth is. I'd challenge Dvorak to list his charitable donations for the past year.
The problem of course is not YouTube, it's that people don't know who to trust for medical information.
I know a mother whose young son was killed by a reaction to vaccination. Despite apologies and reassurances from doctors there is no way that she'll allow her other children to be vaccinated. In her estimation the risk of her kids catching one of the subject diseases is less than the risk of the shot itself.
I do accept vaccinations, but on the other hand before I take any medication I spend an hour or so reading anecdotal accounts of other people's experiences. My history has been that neither the doctor nor the pharmaceutical companies can entirely be trusted to offer complete and unbiased information. On at least a couple of occasions it was end users accounts that pointed out side effects that the "official" sources just glossed over.
There have been enough problems with prescribed drugs like thalidomide that it's reasonable for patients to be cautious, and to sometimes opt to not take the first thing that a doctor suggests.
Ultimately that informed but cautious approach may be the best for all concerned.
Lord, oh Lord, the Apple apologists are out in force. Surely Jesus Jobs would never do anything that would lower his saintly profile to less than those of Mother Teresa and Ghandi!
Get real folks. If Apple pulls another $4 out of your pocket of course they're taking a cut. What are we? School children?
And Poor Saint Jobs, forced by the big bad media companies into doing this? C'mon! Jobs sat down with them and together they cut a deal that will hopefully see both of them make bigger profits. It's highly unlikely that Jobs is giving away the farm with no benefit to Apple shareholders. To suggest otherwise is incredibly naïve.
"Freedom of Speech" has never meant "Freedom for Responsibility." The right to speak your mind does not mean that you cannot be held accountable for your statements.
It is important that anyone speaking out, or even breaking the law, understand that there are possible consequences, and assess whether on the balance they still wish to move ahead. Obviously datruthsquad has a rather sketchy understanding of the law, and is now being threatened for his actions.
Rather than trying to find some cloak of invisibility he should be preparing his defence with his lawyer.
Assuming that he can actually defend his statements.
Sure iPods are lovely, but for a lot of people the price is just too much to justify. I'm one of them, still rolling along with three year old MPIO player That's been dropped a hundred times, has a lousy interface, 256 meg capacity, but just keeps on doing what I want - it plays tunes while I run.
I'd like to update the player, but price does still matter. If a Zune is half the price of an iPod that's what I'd likely buy, not because it's perfect in every way, but because it's certainly good enough for my needs. And likely way better than what I use now.
Microsoft may be hitting a market that isn't going to buy an iPod - the people who have bought off-market MP3 players and are now ready for an upgrade but have to pay things like mortgages and phone bills so can't really spend iPod prices.
Gotta say that I'm a pretty rabid Slashdot reader, I also immediately took that phrase to mean Apple itself. Which seemed pretty damned strange, but then again every time that I use Finder I get the same feeling that some things Apple does make no sense whatsoever.
Well, on my G4 Mac Firefox 2.0.0.9 seemed to hit a peak for resource usage, and needed to be restarted every couple of hours if I had my usual six or seven tabs open. Eventually it would slow to a near halt. Slashdot in particular just stopped loading for some reason that I couldn't bothered to figure out.
2.0.0.10 seemed to be better in terms of bring a memory hog, but crashed repeatedly. I suspect that specific to a few sites, but still there hadn't been problems before.
2.0.0.11? We'll see.
Although I haven't quite reached the point of abandoning FF, I do find myself jumping to Safari on the Mac or IE and Opera on the PC when FF starts having problems. I too long for a browser that compatible, fast, and stripped down.
I really think that browsers are one of those things that needs to be totally reinvented every few years. The people that create IE or Firefox or Opera inevitably get locked into one paradigm or the other, even if the Internet landscape has changed around them. Just as Netscape refined what Mosaic had created, and IE trumped Netscape, and Firefox was a grand improvement on IE, it may be time for a new take on browser design and usability that doesn't just copy what has been done before.
That likely means a few dead ends, but it's what I'll be watching for.
Many valid points are made here, not the least of which is that sensitive information should secured locally, not via some free web service. And of course, Google does tell you what they will and will not do with your data, as do most places like Facebook etc.
What I'm interested to watch is how legislation, or even case law evolves as more and more information moves on-line. Will lawmakers force on-line services to encrypt customer data, or to meet minimum levels of security? Will servcies like Google find themselves liable for large settlements if a user's data is lost of their account hacked? It would seem that lawsuits are inevitable.
If there are legal minimums for data protection and encryption for web based services, what happens to the millions of small sites, forums, and blogs that offer users the choice of logging in to post messages, or of accessing other services on-line? Will they disappear? Will sites under a certain size be exempted?
Aficionados of Appalachian culture will surely know the name Nimrod Workman, who made a name for himself as a folksinger after retiring from a life as a Kentucky coal miner.
Well, I'll give Facebook points for once again responding fairly quickly and positively to complaints from their user base. In an age when most corporations treat customers as an irritation rather than a valued client this seems like a good thing.
Hopefully Facebook's example will be noticed by other companies and sites, who will learn to back down when they have done something stupid or unpopular.
Facebook's exec is right though - the vast majority of users just don't care, and likely quite a few of them would have liked having their name and picture popping up all over the place. Facebook could have gone ahead with Beacon quite successfully, but dropped it nonetheless.
One thing I'll say for Windows users - if you say you have a problem, someone will always pop up and say "Yeah, me too, and this is how to fix it."
Linux geeks still tend too much to attack the newcomer, or shout "Read the friggin' man pages!" Still as a community they are maturing and learning to help people rather than flame them.
Make a complaint about an Apple product though and you run headlong into a wall of denial a mile high, with everyone either claiming that your problem does not exist, that you're an idiot when you point out some of the more bizarre UI choices Apple makes, or most frighteningly, arguing that any deficiency, no matter how severe, is somehow actually a wonderful feature.
I think that Apple users are doing themselves a disservice by not holding Apple to a higher standard. By pretending that hardware or software issues don't exist, and by attempting to shut down those who raise legitimate complaints, they allow Apple far too much latitude to do the same.
This will of course be modded as troll or flamebait by the first fanboy who reads it.
Ah, "nuclear radiation"... everyone is an expert 'cause they heard somewhere, read somewhere, had a friend somewhere...
I swear that the only subject more afflicted with "everyone is an expert-itis" is traffic law. Anyone care to point to the part of the Highways Act that defines a "rolling stop?"
Of the $13 million that the BSA reaped in software violation settlements with North American companies last year, almost 90 percent came from small businesses, the AP found.
To paraphrase Anatole France, "The BSA in its majesty makes no distinction between rich and poor; both are forbidden to install unlicenced software."
Of course they attack small business. Big business has the money to fight back with armies of lawyers.
Here's an idea: Can we extend this to all government employees, too? And put the transcriptions online? It would be the ultimate democratic tool for feedback from the government to the citizens.
Ooooh! Try this: since all calls "may be monitored for quality," how about a random process that connects random government employee's phones to a 900 number that anyone can call? $1.99 a minute, and maybe you get to listen in on an IRS auditor, or a petty drone, or maybe, just maybe, your own Senator or Congressperson!
Imagine tens of thousands people each day calling in and listening in on tens of thousands of people in government without warning.
But I wonder, can "they" track me even when I turn the "feature" off? Maybe "they" see through the little camera on the phone? Can "they" hear waht I'm saying even when the phone is "closed"?
Cell phone users, beware. The FBI can listen to everything you say, even when the cell phone is turned off.
A recent court ruling in a case against the Genovese crime family revealed that the FBI has the ability from a remote location to activate a cell phone and turn its microphone into a listening device that transmits to an FBI listening post, a method known as a "roving bug." Experts say the only way to defeat it is to remove the cell phone battery.
"The FBI can access cell phones and modify them remotely without ever having to physically handle them," James Atkinson, a counterintelligence security consultant, told ABC News. "Any recently manufactured cell phone has a built-in tracking device, which can allow eavesdroppers to pinpoint someone's location to within just a few feet," he added.
Looking back at my sometimes mis-spent youth I'm wondering how long it will take for someone to start selling performance enhancements for these new fangled electric cars.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn! I had been wondering the same thing. One of those "obvious once you know how to do it" things.
God, you have totally summed up my experiences with Yahoo answers. The uninformed answering questions posed by the totally lost... what a great tool!
God yes. People like this, griping about someone else's charitable work, almost never are willing to put their money where their mouth is. I'd challenge Dvorak to list his charitable donations for the past year.
The problem of course is not YouTube, it's that people don't know who to trust for medical information.
I know a mother whose young son was killed by a reaction to vaccination. Despite apologies and reassurances from doctors there is no way that she'll allow her other children to be vaccinated. In her estimation the risk of her kids catching one of the subject diseases is less than the risk of the shot itself.
I do accept vaccinations, but on the other hand before I take any medication I spend an hour or so reading anecdotal accounts of other people's experiences. My history has been that neither the doctor nor the pharmaceutical companies can entirely be trusted to offer complete and unbiased information. On at least a couple of occasions it was end users accounts that pointed out side effects that the "official" sources just glossed over.
There have been enough problems with prescribed drugs like thalidomide that it's reasonable for patients to be cautious, and to sometimes opt to not take the first thing that a doctor suggests.
Ultimately that informed but cautious approach may be the best for all concerned.
Lord, oh Lord, the Apple apologists are out in force. Surely Jesus Jobs would never do anything that would lower his saintly profile to less than those of Mother Teresa and Ghandi!
Get real folks. If Apple pulls another $4 out of your pocket of course they're taking a cut. What are we? School children?
And Poor Saint Jobs, forced by the big bad media companies into doing this? C'mon! Jobs sat down with them and together they cut a deal that will hopefully see both of them make bigger profits. It's highly unlikely that Jobs is giving away the farm with no benefit to Apple shareholders. To suggest otherwise is incredibly naïve.
Actually Americans who travel anywhere are now forced to get passports because they will not be allowed back over the border to the U.S. without them.
"Freedom of Speech" has never meant "Freedom for Responsibility." The right to speak your mind does not mean that you cannot be held accountable for your statements.
It is important that anyone speaking out, or even breaking the law, understand that there are possible consequences, and assess whether on the balance they still wish to move ahead. Obviously datruthsquad has a rather sketchy understanding of the law, and is now being threatened for his actions.
Rather than trying to find some cloak of invisibility he should be preparing his defence with his lawyer.
Assuming that he can actually defend his statements.
Nerds do NOT exercise. Get out of here, nerd card revoked.
What's worse, it was my girlfriend that started me running!
Sure iPods are lovely, but for a lot of people the price is just too much to justify. I'm one of them, still rolling along with three year old MPIO player That's been dropped a hundred times, has a lousy interface, 256 meg capacity, but just keeps on doing what I want - it plays tunes while I run.
I'd like to update the player, but price does still matter. If a Zune is half the price of an iPod that's what I'd likely buy, not because it's perfect in every way, but because it's certainly good enough for my needs. And likely way better than what I use now.
Microsoft may be hitting a market that isn't going to buy an iPod - the people who have bought off-market MP3 players and are now ready for an upgrade but have to pay things like mortgages and phone bills so can't really spend iPod prices.
iPhone Dev Team
Gotta say that I'm a pretty rabid Slashdot reader, I also immediately took that phrase to mean Apple itself. Which seemed pretty damned strange, but then again every time that I use Finder I get the same feeling that some things Apple does make no sense whatsoever.
Well, on my G4 Mac Firefox 2.0.0.9 seemed to hit a peak for resource usage, and needed to be restarted every couple of hours if I had my usual six or seven tabs open. Eventually it would slow to a near halt. Slashdot in particular just stopped loading for some reason that I couldn't bothered to figure out.
2.0.0.10 seemed to be better in terms of bring a memory hog, but crashed repeatedly. I suspect that specific to a few sites, but still there hadn't been problems before.
2.0.0.11? We'll see.
Although I haven't quite reached the point of abandoning FF, I do find myself jumping to Safari on the Mac or IE and Opera on the PC when FF starts having problems. I too long for a browser that compatible, fast, and stripped down.
I really think that browsers are one of those things that needs to be totally reinvented every few years. The people that create IE or Firefox or Opera inevitably get locked into one paradigm or the other, even if the Internet landscape has changed around them. Just as Netscape refined what Mosaic had created, and IE trumped Netscape, and Firefox was a grand improvement on IE, it may be time for a new take on browser design and usability that doesn't just copy what has been done before.
That likely means a few dead ends, but it's what I'll be watching for.
The fact that it actually made it through is a bit mind-boggling though.
You must be new here.... if it only gets duped one more time, that'll be a surprise.
Many valid points are made here, not the least of which is that sensitive information should secured locally, not via some free web service. And of course, Google does tell you what they will and will not do with your data, as do most places like Facebook etc.
What I'm interested to watch is how legislation, or even case law evolves as more and more information moves on-line. Will lawmakers force on-line services to encrypt customer data, or to meet minimum levels of security? Will servcies like Google find themselves liable for large settlements if a user's data is lost of their account hacked? It would seem that lawsuits are inevitable.
If there are legal minimums for data protection and encryption for web based services, what happens to the millions of small sites, forums, and blogs that offer users the choice of logging in to post messages, or of accessing other services on-line? Will they disappear? Will sites under a certain size be exempted?
Aficionados of Appalachian culture will surely know the name Nimrod Workman, who made a name for himself as a folksinger after retiring from a life as a Kentucky coal miner.
Check out Appalshop for recordings and a film about Nimrod.
Well, I'll give Facebook points for once again responding fairly quickly and positively to complaints from their user base. In an age when most corporations treat customers as an irritation rather than a valued client this seems like a good thing.
Hopefully Facebook's example will be noticed by other companies and sites, who will learn to back down when they have done something stupid or unpopular.
Facebook's exec is right though - the vast majority of users just don't care, and likely quite a few of them would have liked having their name and picture popping up all over the place. Facebook could have gone ahead with Beacon quite successfully, but dropped it nonetheless.
Let's give credit where credit is due.
One thing I'll say for Windows users - if you say you have a problem, someone will always pop up and say "Yeah, me too, and this is how to fix it."
Linux geeks still tend too much to attack the newcomer, or shout "Read the friggin' man pages!" Still as a community they are maturing and learning to help people rather than flame them.
Make a complaint about an Apple product though and you run headlong into a wall of denial a mile high, with everyone either claiming that your problem does not exist, that you're an idiot when you point out some of the more bizarre UI choices Apple makes, or most frighteningly, arguing that any deficiency, no matter how severe, is somehow actually a wonderful feature.
I think that Apple users are doing themselves a disservice by not holding Apple to a higher standard. By pretending that hardware or software issues don't exist, and by attempting to shut down those who raise legitimate complaints, they allow Apple far too much latitude to do the same.
This will of course be modded as troll or flamebait by the first fanboy who reads it.
I'm not forming opinions 'til I can get my hands on one.
Oh gosh - that last sentence probably cost me about 4000 Slashdot karma points...
Ah, "nuclear radiation"... everyone is an expert 'cause they heard somewhere, read somewhere, had a friend somewhere...
I swear that the only subject more afflicted with "everyone is an expert-itis" is traffic law. Anyone care to point to the part of the Highways Act that defines a "rolling stop?"
Of the $13 million that the BSA reaped in software violation settlements with North American companies last year, almost 90 percent came from small businesses, the AP found.
To paraphrase Anatole France, "The BSA in its majesty makes no distinction between rich and poor; both are forbidden to install unlicenced software."
Of course they attack small business. Big business has the money to fight back with armies of lawyers.
Thank bloody God! No one in their right mind would WANT to copy that mess.
Here's an idea: Can we extend this to all government employees, too? And put the transcriptions online? It would be the ultimate democratic tool for feedback from the government to the citizens.
Ooooh! Try this: since all calls "may be monitored for quality," how about a random process that connects random government employee's phones to a 900 number that anyone can call? $1.99 a minute, and maybe you get to listen in on an IRS auditor, or a petty drone, or maybe, just maybe, your own Senator or Congressperson!
Imagine tens of thousands people each day calling in and listening in on tens of thousands of people in government without warning.
Yes. From 2006.
Somehow those words take on a rather ominous tone.....
No electric car will match the sound of my 69 Dodge Charger.... mmmmm.... what a car should sound like. You feel it in your gut, not your ears.
Looking back at my sometimes mis-spent youth I'm wondering how long it will take for someone to start selling performance enhancements for these new fangled electric cars.
What's the Prius equivalent to a Holley Double Pumper or headers and glass pack mufflers?