Sigh, neither Doctorow's article nor the bizarre summary offer much hope. He is right on some points though.
More and more it is left to the end user or consumer to battle their way though e-mail and voice systems to undo the damage inflicted by automated systems. To add insult to injury it seems that the blame for these problems is always placed on the customer, not on bad system design. I guess that this is all part of the "Leave you bag at the door" attitude that assumes that every customer is a shoplifter.
I'd say that the bigger threat is the likely collapse of the whole e-mail system. When will things just stop working? When spam accounts for 95% of e-mail? 99.9%? I'd like to hear about people that are developing a replacement for e-mail technology that just doesn't work any more.
In the ten or twelve years that I've been part of various on-line communities - going back to C64 BBS systems, then to the 'net when Mosaic was the cool new browser - I have had time to consider the causes underlying so much of the impolite behavior that we see in forums such as this.
One can point to the psychological impact of the solitary nature of on-line communications (as do the researchers) but I have long suspected that there are subtle and not so subtle environmental determinants that lead to irrational and counterproductive behaviors.
I am thinking of course of impaired cognition brought about by low level carbon monoxide poisoning, a problem more likely to be found in a population that spends extended periods a small, dark rooms located nearby to older gas or oil fired furnaces. This, when coupled with a largely sedentary lifestyle and nutritional habits that were best depicted by film maker Morgan Spurlock, lead to a physical and mental condition that can exacerbate any pre-existing social or cognitive disorders.
This is a complex and important problem, worthy of more research. Someday, hopefully, we can find a cure.
Woe be those who criticize Slashdot editorial practice, but was that about the most pathetic "review" that you've ever seen? For those who haven't read TFA, all of the comments here about boot times are because that the only substantive thing mentioned in the article. Really:
Microsoft says, the service pack beta improves stability, performance, and reliability when reactivating a machine from Hibernate or Suspend mode; enhances device-driver support; increases security; and adds support for new standards such as Extended File Allocation Table (intended to enhance flash storage on notebooks, not desktops)....
... we saw some small improvements in boot time on an HP Compaq 8710p Core 2 Duo notebook. Before SP1, the laptop took 1 minute, 51 seconds to boot. After the update, that figure dropped by almost 20 seconds.
... We noted a slight increase in the time required to copy 562 JPEG images totalling 1.9GB from an SD Card to the hard drive of the aforementioned HP Compaq notebook.
In another test, we used Nero 7 Ultra on an Acer Aspire 5630 Core 2 Duo laptop to add files to a disk image. After we installed SP1, The notebook built the disk image about 7 percent faster.
Yes. That's it. Nothing more. I don't know who to complain about, the article submitter or the Slashdot ed that approved it.
Sesame Street? I give the kids in my life copies of Peewee's Playhouse. You want adult content? Innuendo? Sexuality? You got it! Best kid's show ever made.
Problem is that people forget that kids are actually pretty damned intelligent. Give them credit for smarts.
The Blackbox containers are robust enough to withstand earthquakes, being capable of withstanding a quake of magnitude 6.7 on the Richter scale.
I don't know, but placing servers 100m underground in a place that routinely is hit by large earthquakes seems a dubious idea. The containers themselves may survive a quake, but what happens when the disused coal mine collapses onto and around them? Even if the containers and servers survive, will the power and data cables? If the tunnels collapse how will you get to and from the servers for maintenance?
Ok, I have skimmed TFA. Near as I can tell half of the examples don't really have much to do with e-commerce. Planes canceled by weather? That really has little to do with the 'net. Short stock in stores? Again, that's just good or bad luck or planning, not something that really is related to e-commerce. And mistakes that go back to 1999 really aren't that relevant - that'
s ancient history in terms of e-commerce.
Really, this article has only a tenuous link to e-commerce.
In all seriousness, are you all completely f*cking MAD??! How can anyone in your country sit by and watch this sort of thing? How can anyone with two brain cels to rub together cast a vote for either Democrats or Republicans? I don't even really care about P2P use by students - this is just a supremely stupid bit of legislation.
Seriously, if your elected politicians will vote for this, what else are they doing that defies all sense?
Not a bad article, but really his primary problem was that he was running some pretty old gear - a big CRT monitor and an old Laserjet. Once he dumped those the pickings were pretty slim.
It's like those folks that hang onto a twenty year old fridge, keeping it in the basement for beer. Just because it's "free" doesn't mean it's doing you any favors.
Without context these numbers mean little. How many copies of boxed OSs are sold in a typical month? A year? How has Windows boxed software been trending? Is it perhaps something that peaked a year or two back because everyone who needed Windows already had it installed OEM or had purchased their upgrades? And what part of the Japanese computer market is Mac, as opposed to PC?
For all we know Leopard only sold 250 copies nationwide. Or this may be a one time spike that means nothing.
Let's ignore the touch screen, which I'm not sure is the greatest idea for a cel phone anyhow. Beyond that I'm comparing the features promised by both Apple and Google to a Nokia N82 soon available in Europe and I see:
It boasts a five-megapixel camera with a xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics, and sports a 2.4in display that rotates from portrait to landscape view at the flick of a wrist, thanks to a built in accelerometer.
The device includes Assisted GPS technology... and compensates for weak satellite signals by sending data about your current location over your carrier's network... several TomTom-esque maps come preinstalled and Nokia's thrown in a trial of its voice-guided navigation utility... it's also a quad-band GSM/GPRS/Edge device and can make HSDPA 3G connections for data and video calls. There's 802.11b/g Wi-Fi connectivity on-board, and downloaded content can be stored on the bundled 2GB Micro SD card. Additional connectivity options include USB 2.0 and Bluetooth, with A2DP for streaming audio to wireless headphone...
I haven't sat down to do a side by side comparison, but this sure looks like a more useful tool than what Apple and Google are selling. The Nokia looks like it would do everything that I want from a phone, and includes features that the Apple at least lacks.
Am I alone in disliking those "universal" symbols found on power bars? I can never remember whether the circle or the horizontal line is "ON" or "OFF." Maybe it's me, but they seem totally non-intuitive.
Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that
Anyone here perhaps, but there are still many, many people who won't show up in a Google search, or who will show up with only the most benign data. Your profile in Google searches pretty much depends on your activity on the 'net, (or in the public sphere) and on how much information you choose to make available.
None of which is relevant to any discussion surrounding government and privacy. They're supposed to protect you, not roll over and play dead.
It is quiet, but possibly the problem is that your Mac defaults to a rather low sound level out of the speakers. My G4 certainly did, and even listening to music was annoying because it was so quiet, even with the audio turned up full.
The fix is of course simple and entirely intuitive, as are all things on a Mac.
a) open iTunes
b) In the Window menu, choose Equalizer
c) Crank the Pre-amp setting to 12
Now all of the audio on your Mac will not only be loud enough to hear, it will be louder than the same audio on a PC, which can only be turned up 10
I find the Facebook privacy stories frustrating because they seem to always ignore one thing - in almost every case the Facebook user decides how much information to make public, to whom, and which applications to install.
Facebook actually does a pretty good job of giving users control over their information and arguably is transparent about the ways that it may be used. That's more than a lot of e-commerce sites can claim, and in an age of spam-bots and the like probably commendable.
And ultimately it is optional, you have to choose to sign up.
The "team from the University of California, San Diego" obviously haven't spent much time around kids. They'll do the same thing with dolls, pets, other kids, stuffed snakes, duckies, and probably any other toy that includes a face.
A better title would be "Kids treat small robot just like any other doll."
Leaving aside the rather "only in the U.S." comment about "citizens," the point is valid. Quite often the two groups that have complete access to a building - the security guards and the cleaners - are also the groups most likely to be subcontracted to the lowest and/or shadiest bidder.
I suspect that because these people only arrive after office hours no-one in charge ever thinks of them as existing, much less as a security risk.
Groves recording sound?! It wasn't digital?!? No way!
No Gramps, it was grooves that recorded sound. Grove's was a paper based database that recorded biographical information about the musicians that composed and played the sound. My copy ran to two dozen volumes.
'At least two masked intruders entered the suite after cutting into the reinforced walls with a power saw... During the robbery, C I Host's night manager was repeatedly tazered and struck with a blunt instrument.
Good on them for hiring the disabled! Although perhaps the night manager position is not one suited to someone so deaf that they can't hear a Sawz-All cutting though the wall...
Slashdot Mirror
Sigh, neither Doctorow's article nor the bizarre summary offer much hope. He is right on some points though.
More and more it is left to the end user or consumer to battle their way though e-mail and voice systems to undo the damage inflicted by automated systems. To add insult to injury it seems that the blame for these problems is always placed on the customer, not on bad system design. I guess that this is all part of the "Leave you bag at the door" attitude that assumes that every customer is a shoplifter.
I'd say that the bigger threat is the likely collapse of the whole e-mail system. When will things just stop working? When spam accounts for 95% of e-mail? 99.9%? I'd like to hear about people that are developing a replacement for e-mail technology that just doesn't work any more.
In the ten or twelve years that I've been part of various on-line communities - going back to C64 BBS systems, then to the 'net when Mosaic was the cool new browser - I have had time to consider the causes underlying so much of the impolite behavior that we see in forums such as this.
One can point to the psychological impact of the solitary nature of on-line communications (as do the researchers) but I have long suspected that there are subtle and not so subtle environmental determinants that lead to irrational and counterproductive behaviors.
I am thinking of course of impaired cognition brought about by low level carbon monoxide poisoning, a problem more likely to be found in a population that spends extended periods a small, dark rooms located nearby to older gas or oil fired furnaces. This, when coupled with a largely sedentary lifestyle and nutritional habits that were best depicted by film maker Morgan Spurlock, lead to a physical and mental condition that can exacerbate any pre-existing social or cognitive disorders.
This is a complex and important problem, worthy of more research. Someday, hopefully, we can find a cure.
Sesame Street? I give the kids in my life copies of Peewee's Playhouse. You want adult content? Innuendo? Sexuality? You got it! Best kid's show ever made.
Problem is that people forget that kids are actually pretty damned intelligent. Give them credit for smarts.
The Blackbox containers are robust enough to withstand earthquakes, being capable of withstanding a quake of magnitude 6.7 on the Richter scale.
I don't know, but placing servers 100m underground in a place that routinely is hit by large earthquakes seems a dubious idea. The containers themselves may survive a quake, but what happens when the disused coal mine collapses onto and around them? Even if the containers and servers survive, will the power and data cables? If the tunnels collapse how will you get to and from the servers for maintenance?
Ok, I have skimmed TFA. Near as I can tell half of the examples don't really have much to do with e-commerce. Planes canceled by weather? That really has little to do with the 'net. Short stock in stores? Again, that's just good or bad luck or planning, not something that really is related to e-commerce. And mistakes that go back to 1999 really aren't that relevant - that' s ancient history in terms of e-commerce.
Really, this article has only a tenuous link to e-commerce.
Tee hee, that's soooo cute... to quote the late Art Linkletter "Kids say the darndest things!
In all seriousness, are you all completely f*cking MAD??! How can anyone in your country sit by and watch this sort of thing? How can anyone with two brain cels to rub together cast a vote for either Democrats or Republicans? I don't even really care about P2P use by students - this is just a supremely stupid bit of legislation.
Seriously, if your elected politicians will vote for this, what else are they doing that defies all sense?
Since it seems a reasonable response to the 62 posts griping about how the Zune won't do HD video...
Not a bad article, but really his primary problem was that he was running some pretty old gear - a big CRT monitor and an old Laserjet. Once he dumped those the pickings were pretty slim.
It's like those folks that hang onto a twenty year old fridge, keeping it in the basement for beer. Just because it's "free" doesn't mean it's doing you any favors.
Really, funniest thing that I've seen in ages.
Without context these numbers mean little. How many copies of boxed OSs are sold in a typical month? A year? How has Windows boxed software been trending? Is it perhaps something that peaked a year or two back because everyone who needed Windows already had it installed OEM or had purchased their upgrades? And what part of the Japanese computer market is Mac, as opposed to PC?
For all we know Leopard only sold 250 copies nationwide. Or this may be a one time spike that means nothing.
I haven't sat down to do a side by side comparison, but this sure looks like a more useful tool than what Apple and Google are selling. The Nokia looks like it would do everything that I want from a phone, and includes features that the Apple at least lacks.
Hmmph, surely if the folks at Gitmo are doing nothing wrong then they should have nothing to hide? Only wrongdoers demand secrecy.
Ah, but if you see it as a circle and a horizontal line instead of a numerals 0 and 1, then that logic doesn't work.
Am I alone in disliking those "universal" symbols found on power bars? I can never remember whether the circle or the horizontal line is "ON" or "OFF." Maybe it's me, but they seem totally non-intuitive.
Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that
Anyone here perhaps, but there are still many, many people who won't show up in a Google search, or who will show up with only the most benign data. Your profile in Google searches pretty much depends on your activity on the 'net, (or in the public sphere) and on how much information you choose to make available.
None of which is relevant to any discussion surrounding government and privacy. They're supposed to protect you, not roll over and play dead.
It is quiet, but possibly the problem is that your Mac defaults to a rather low sound level out of the speakers. My G4 certainly did, and even listening to music was annoying because it was so quiet, even with the audio turned up full.
The fix is of course simple and entirely intuitive, as are all things on a Mac.
a) open iTunes
b) In the Window menu, choose Equalizer
c) Crank the Pre-amp setting to 12
Now all of the audio on your Mac will not only be loud enough to hear, it will be louder than the same audio on a PC, which can only be turned up 10
I find the Facebook privacy stories frustrating because they seem to always ignore one thing - in almost every case the Facebook user decides how much information to make public, to whom, and which applications to install.
Facebook actually does a pretty good job of giving users control over their information and arguably is transparent about the ways that it may be used. That's more than a lot of e-commerce sites can claim, and in an age of spam-bots and the like probably commendable.
And ultimately it is optional, you have to choose to sign up.
Whoops... that's obviously "kernel"..
That would be a "kernal panic" in Apple-speak, except that Macs never crash so it must have been my imagination.
The "team from the University of California, San Diego" obviously haven't spent much time around kids. They'll do the same thing with dolls, pets, other kids, stuffed snakes, duckies, and probably any other toy that includes a face.
A better title would be "Kids treat small robot just like any other doll."
Leaving aside the rather "only in the U.S." comment about "citizens," the point is valid. Quite often the two groups that have complete access to a building - the security guards and the cleaners - are also the groups most likely to be subcontracted to the lowest and/or shadiest bidder.
I suspect that because these people only arrive after office hours no-one in charge ever thinks of them as existing, much less as a security risk.
Groves recording sound?! It wasn't digital?!? No way!
No Gramps, it was grooves that recorded sound. Grove's was a paper based database that recorded biographical information about the musicians that composed and played the sound. My copy ran to two dozen volumes.
'At least two masked intruders entered the suite after cutting into the reinforced walls with a power saw ... During the robbery, C I Host's night manager was repeatedly tazered and struck with a blunt instrument.
Good on them for hiring the disabled! Although perhaps the night manager position is not one suited to someone so deaf that they can't hear a Sawz-All cutting though the wall...