HIV isn't a passively transmitted disease. You have to do something to get the disease (unless you are raped, but how frequent is that?).
Rape is actually quite common in all cultures, especially in cultures that do not have a legal system with strong controls on sexual crimes or the ability to enforce them. Women are usually the victims of rape, partly due to culture and partly due to their lack of physical strength compared to men.
Condoms aren't so new and complex as to have currently active patents on them.
Unfortunately, in many cultures, condoms are strictly taboo. This is true even in some cultures in the United States.
I think we have a duty to protect only ourselves (as we were intended to do) and that *may* include protecting other species that we depend on for our survival.
I agree with this statement, to a point. It is tough to draw a line that says, "on this side are species we don't depend on for survival, and on this side are species we do depend on for survival."
The jury is still out on biodiversity, but I believe that knowing which species we "depend on" is very tough to determine.
With that said, it seems like in the end we ought to put humans first. But on what time scale, and to the detriment of which species?
One good high school lit book you might enjoy that talks about issues surrounding biodiversity (from a "liberal" perspective, it should be noted) is Ishmael.
Aside from the larger debate on biodiversity, I am not sure why we would want to restore species to ecosystems that seem to be functioning well. It would require a new set of laws to prevent civil litigation when something goes wrong.
Exercise 30 minutes a day 5-6 days per week. Find people who want to exercise with you, and mix up your routine with fun things. This is, I think, the most overlooked thing at school. Exercise will give you more energy and a higher IQ.
Take vitamins every day, especially on the days you are hung over. Vitamins are pretty cheap, especially if they give you a little bit of an edge in avoiding sickness.
Drink lots of water. Drink 3 glasses of water right before you go to bed if you have been drinking, and drink another 3 when you wake up after drinking.
I presume you are going into a scientific or computational field. Make sure you have a firm grasp in math and physics before you jump into your other courses--these subjects provide the mental framework you need to succeed.
If you aren't already thinking about it, consider getting a minor in business, or try double-majoring in business along with your primary degree. Figure out the registration system, and locate areas of overlap in requirements for your liberal ed and major classes.
Do your homework right after class, and enjoy your evenings.
When you visit friends and family back home, do not try to show them how much smarter you are than them. Instead, try to understand what they are saying.
You've been Hatch'd. What is it with Utah that makes it feel like it should do things that fulfill Orwellian prophecy (i.e. this and MATRIX)?
Protection of IP is in the best interests of the US in the long run if international law is enforceable because in the future presumably the US will rely heavily on IP such as inventions and entertainment for GDP (it already relies on entertainment quite a bit). When manufacturing/labor is gone, service and knowledge remain. With the exception of tourism, service has a sketchy effect on the real growth of the American economy. Knowledge, on the other hand, can be very useful if it is able to be sold in exchange for physical goods.
The definition of IP is too broad sometimes. This means that certain works should not protected as much as they are now. Other works should be protected even more.
One song should not be valued at $10,000 unless it is an unauthorized leak. Let's say somebody at the studio leaks a single before it is authorized to be played. That person should have to pay, especially if there is something in her/his contract explicitly forbidding the leak. Record sales do sometimes drop because of leaks. The cool factor of owning an album may increase its sales after a leak, however. With that said, the real impact, as has been discussed often, is in singles sales. Singles sales are obviously not dead, however, when alternatives to p2p like itms or napster2 are around.
Should all file transfers be logged? How can this be done without destroying open source, nothing to say of whatever privacy is left?
Some people do not have a problem paying for music and have learned to live without downloading singles or albums on the Internet. Friends recommend albums to friends, and they're usually right about their recommendations.
Digital piracy is, for the moment, not the same as physical theft. When the US economy relies more on IP as a source of wealth creation, digital piracy will be more similar to physical theft. Right now I still question this whole mode of thought.
Few judges will follow through with the punishments in these types of bills.
Entertainment industry lobbyists suck, but so do people who don't eventually pay for goods that people expect payment for. Just because somebody sounds snoody saying s/he wants payment for being part of the production of art doesn't mean that person shouldn't get paid. People generally deserve to be compensated for lending their talents to the supply chain. The amount of payment is debatable, but that somebody deserves to get paid for work is generally accepted. I hate the MPAA commercials at the movie theater as much as anyone else, but that doesn't mean people don't deserve to earn a living.
Blah blah blah. This is nothing new, I guess, but it's Sunday and I have to go create some IP for the man so that he can profit mercilessly from exploiting the minds of senators with the ROI he gets from my open source software.
I didn't see the cost of textbooks as so much of a problem. The problem, I saw it, was the cost of tuition and other fees. I (and taxpayers in my state) paid some $90,000 for classes that I didn't attend--not even the tough ones--because my instructors generally sucked. And like many here (I think this is generally true of Slashdotters) I aced my exams and homework by using my textbook.
I have listened (not actively participated, so as to be fair) in on a number of conversations involving people (friends, family, and strangers) who use renegade file trading services. Most of them say they rarely trade these days because they are sick of the record companies messing with the files so that they loop the chorus. I have not heard one person who said s/he traded less because s/he was afraid of the RIAA or thought trading was wrong.
I wish it was this easy. You may be engaging in a form of entrapment only permissible to law enforcement if you try going after them on criminal grounds if and when they hit you with a robot (side question: why may law enforcement entrap people?). You better talk to a lawyer and have some money if you plan to engage in such behavior since the courts, as far as I know, have not established the legality of honeypots in such cases.
To answer your question about obtaining MD5 sums of illegal files, I am not familiar with the checksum mechanism in open source file sharing apps, but if they use MD5 sums, you could probably rewrite the code to get that information for you--not easy, but possible. Maybe somebody here knows more about that sort of thing.
Well, actually, to get to the specific questions without having to remember the post id, it is ten more clicks.
PS. So you know Christ? PPS. Who's Shit? PPPS. Is "just because your big ass fatfingers mouse buttons is" legitimate English? PPPPS. "burdgeon" is not a word. PPPPPS. There was only one complaint in the post you replied to.
One thing I fear is that if we are being pulled in a certain fashion such that our equations only hold up under our own logic--for example, the concept of relativity works because that is the logical conclusion we are faced with given the parameters of our logic--then we may have not actually described reality; instead we have created a model that approximates reality through our perception. That is not to say that there isn't some ultimately correct model, just that we may not be able to reason about it due to the setup of consciousness. In other words, some other organism (organic or otherwise) may have a more correct way to reason about the formation and destruction / rebirth(s) of the universe because of its inherent properties. So, in a sense, maybe it would be useful to try to find ways that other systems could reason about our universe. Maybe that is done by proxy already since a lot of equations come from natural systems. Anybody have a good knowledge of the literature on this kind of thing?
I guess our approximations are close enough to do a lot of good for us, and in some ways that is more important.
That's just the thing, though, that I try to explain to my friends. When hackers hold a security person in high "disregard", it isn't that they dislike them. They really respect people the people like Morse because he gives them exactly what they want: a challenge. On the other hand, script kiddies dislike Morse because he makes sure they have to actually use intelligence to execute an attack on public networks.
Actually, most economists predicted that the bubble would burst. The people you are thinking of are the brokers (the people who sold shares!) who talked endlessly about the synergies of electronic commerce on Moneyline.
The real depressing thing about this is that I have been planning to develop on.NET. I don't know about anyone else, but I have been happy with the way Microsoft has been pursuing its.NET strategy (at least the development environment, the framework, and so on), namely working towards standards.
I like developing on Windows as long as the tools are good, and despite the early bugginess of VS.NET, I have been pretty happy working with it and the.NET framework. I was planning on rewarding Microsoft for doing the right thing with their.NET strategy through paying for their software in future projects (I have been training on it for a while now). I understand their aim to have domain over some of their ideas, but IIRC they were working to make this beast an international standard, not to close competition. I think this is a step backward. Of course, it is hard for me to understand the entire patent request, so maybe they are not requesting too much. Nonetheless, why would they even do this? It just seems like a bad PR move given the fact that people are already pissed off enough to migrate toward Linux, and are getting more aggravated. Alas, may the USPTO use some wisdom.
Does anyone have hard research on the number of programmers contributing to Linux?
I know this is a little off-topic, but has anyone considered thoroughly the ramifications of regulating Microsoft's code (not their business practices)? Let's say Microsoft is forced to share its code or to conform to some Linux-like standard. What happens then? Does Microsoft show its own code, quickly making the most recognizable OS the most quickly patched? Does it create its own distro, using its financial strength to ultimately overtake Redhat's market share? I believe Microsoft "wins" in these scenarios because they have the financial and arguably the programmer resources to do so. For a massively complex beast like an OS, I think it is possible that central organization offers a major benefit, but other/.ers may have different views that I haven't considered, and I would like to read those thoughts.
Maybe I'm a dummy, but when I signed up for my e-mail account with them about five (?) years ago, I used my first name and last name. I fear that if I let my account expire, someone will eventually use my e-mail account to impersonate me. Why doesn't Micro$loth just NOT allow reacquisition of expired accounts? Does it cost that much in terms of storage/processing overhead?
Maybe some day we'll be asked if we can share our passwords, too!
I am not that concerned about the privacy of my address, phone number, or even my occupation, but I can definitely understand how someone who absolutely needs privacy could be. Furthermore, while I don't mind advertisers having statistically abstracted data patterns about user groups, I am quite concerned that Microsoft and other organizations will share individual user patterns. Tailoring content to someone who subscribed to an online service is one of the positive draws for companies that conduct virtual business. We should reward companies that install and maintain good privacy systems. Does anyone know of such companies?
The important thing to note here for almost everyone that is concerned with spam is that even though Microsoft's business partners will almost inevitably target you, you should be more worried about your friends sending out forwards with your e-mail in the To: or CC: line. Each of us knows that spammers harvest e-mail addresses too often, and this is the reason why. Until people are informed of this problem, or until e-mail servers/programs are required to strip out extraneous addresses (or must request authorization to know an e-mail address), we will continue to have this problem. And, even with such a system in place, we still can't guarantee people will be duped into giving out their e-mail addys.
Moral of the story: choose your online friends wisely.
Religion != Poverty; Globalism != Prosperity
on
Globalism Post 9/11
·
· Score: 2
Although Katz didn't imply religion equals to poverty, this generalization is prevalent and incorrect. IMHO, religious fanaticism that is anti-technology and anti-equality keeps in place barriers to social/cultural and material wealth.
I think that social/cultural wealth is a must in any nation, but developing nations do not want or cannot accept in a rapid sweep the rise of material wealth.
In the short run, there is a definite argument for globalism to create material wealth, eliminating poverty. The long-run consequences, however, must be considered. What do developing nations do when suddenly they have a great amount of material wealth? The culutural change associated with socioeconomic class restructuring is staggering. It is important, I think, to adopt a respect for slowed growth in less materially developed nations.
As tech enthusiasts, Slashdot readers need to consider the effects of their work, and start guiding their efforts to be more humanistic, while still maintaining a *fair* amount of free markets. Explain, without boasting, the positive effects of improved technology, and explain the pros and cons of democracy/capitalism. The unbalanced explanations to many new adopters of democracy/capitalism/globalism have been unfair. If visionaries explain the future obstacles, countries will be better prepared to face change. Adopt other cultures' points of view if you want them to accept yours, and do not feel superior because your technology is.
Be bold. Open pornographic spam. Print the most egregious offenses. Type a letter to your congressperson. Mail the letter with offensive spam. Repeat until good legislation is passed.
This is a quality of life issue, a hindrance to business issue. Use your congressperson's love for "the children" to attack the spammers. Spammers ARE peddling porn (and business scams) to children at an alarming rate, and regardless of your feelings about free speech, this is aking to violation (at least for the youngest e-mail users) of innocence. Explain to your congressperson that you are for first amendment rights where people may search for adult material, but that receiving such unsolicited material is utterly unacceptable.
Good article. The conclusion that uniform, scientific UIs will increase productivity seems pretty strong. The time lost in trying to understand a skinned interface cannot be too large, at least not at the mild complexity of computing we face today. Also, the uniqueness of a skin is what may help reduce repetitiveness that leads to inefficiency. I might argue that learning a variety of modified UIs is a good way to improve one's schema of UI design. Do we want to create a uniform environment that makes users unable to quickly adapt to different situations? Our minds can only handle so much information regarding a given schema, yet with practice, our representation of what fits the definition of a proper UI can be expanded. For me, I would prefer to stretch my "subconscious" processing of alternative, skinned UIs so that I can respond to a greater number of computing/information presentation. I may not be able to autonomically process a given interface as quickly as somebody who is familiar with the standardized UI, but I will be able to adapt to other UIs. There is really no argument against the author's claims; better coverage of the underlying issue--how much users want to balance breadth and depth of UI knowledge and processing--would have been really neat. Anybody have some good research links to point to?
Slashdot Mirror
HIV isn't a passively transmitted disease. You have to do something to get the disease (unless you are raped, but how frequent is that?).
Rape is actually quite common in all cultures, especially in cultures that do not have a legal system with strong controls on sexual crimes or the ability to enforce them. Women are usually the victims of rape, partly due to culture and partly due to their lack of physical strength compared to men.
Condoms aren't so new and complex as to have currently active patents on them.
Unfortunately, in many cultures, condoms are strictly taboo. This is true even in some cultures in the United States.
I think we have a duty to protect only ourselves (as we were intended to do) and that *may* include protecting other species that we depend on for our survival.
I agree with this statement, to a point. It is tough to draw a line that says, "on this side are species we don't depend on for survival, and on this side are species we do depend on for survival."
The jury is still out on biodiversity, but I believe that knowing which species we "depend on" is very tough to determine.
With that said, it seems like in the end we ought to put humans first. But on what time scale, and to the detriment of which species?
One good high school lit book you might enjoy that talks about issues surrounding biodiversity (from a "liberal" perspective, it should be noted) is Ishmael .
Aside from the larger debate on biodiversity, I am not sure why we would want to restore species to ecosystems that seem to be functioning well. It would require a new set of laws to prevent civil litigation when something goes wrong.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=133481
As predicted - http://www.broom.org/epic/ols-master.html
Do all the stuff you are supposed to do:
Exercise 30 minutes a day 5-6 days per week. Find people who want to exercise with you, and mix up your routine with fun things. This is, I think, the most overlooked thing at school. Exercise will give you more energy and a higher IQ.
Take vitamins every day, especially on the days you are hung over. Vitamins are pretty cheap, especially if they give you a little bit of an edge in avoiding sickness.
Drink lots of water. Drink 3 glasses of water right before you go to bed if you have been drinking, and drink another 3 when you wake up after drinking.
I presume you are going into a scientific or computational field. Make sure you have a firm grasp in math and physics before you jump into your other courses--these subjects provide the mental framework you need to succeed.
If you aren't already thinking about it, consider getting a minor in business, or try double-majoring in business along with your primary degree. Figure out the registration system, and locate areas of overlap in requirements for your liberal ed and major classes.
Do your homework right after class, and enjoy your evenings.
When you visit friends and family back home, do not try to show them how much smarter you are than them. Instead, try to understand what they are saying.
Get on a regular sleep schedule.
random stream of consciousness:
You've been Hatch'd. What is it with Utah that makes it feel like it should do things that fulfill Orwellian prophecy (i.e. this and MATRIX)?
Protection of IP is in the best interests of the US in the long run if international law is enforceable because in the future presumably the US will rely heavily on IP such as inventions and entertainment for GDP (it already relies on entertainment quite a bit). When manufacturing/labor is gone, service and knowledge remain. With the exception of tourism, service has a sketchy effect on the real growth of the American economy. Knowledge, on the other hand, can be very useful if it is able to be sold in exchange for physical goods.
The definition of IP is too broad sometimes. This means that certain works should not protected as much as they are now. Other works should be protected even more.
One song should not be valued at $10,000 unless it is an unauthorized leak. Let's say somebody at the studio leaks a single before it is authorized to be played. That person should have to pay, especially if there is something in her/his contract explicitly forbidding the leak. Record sales do sometimes drop because of leaks. The cool factor of owning an album may increase its sales after a leak, however. With that said, the real impact, as has been discussed often, is in singles sales. Singles sales are obviously not dead, however, when alternatives to p2p like itms or napster2 are around.
Should all file transfers be logged? How can this be done without destroying open source, nothing to say of whatever privacy is left?
Some people do not have a problem paying for music and have learned to live without downloading singles or albums on the Internet. Friends recommend albums to friends, and they're usually right about their recommendations.
Digital piracy is, for the moment, not the same as physical theft. When the US economy relies more on IP as a source of wealth creation, digital piracy will be more similar to physical theft. Right now I still question this whole mode of thought.
Few judges will follow through with the punishments in these types of bills.
Entertainment industry lobbyists suck, but so do people who don't eventually pay for goods that people expect payment for. Just because somebody sounds snoody saying s/he wants payment for being part of the production of art doesn't mean that person shouldn't get paid. People generally deserve to be compensated for lending their talents to the supply chain. The amount of payment is debatable, but that somebody deserves to get paid for work is generally accepted. I hate the MPAA commercials at the movie theater as much as anyone else, but that doesn't mean people don't deserve to earn a living.
Blah blah blah. This is nothing new, I guess, but it's Sunday and I have to go create some IP for the man so that he can profit mercilessly from exploiting the minds of senators with the ROI he gets from my open source software.
I didn't see the cost of textbooks as so much of a problem. The problem, I saw it, was the cost of tuition and other fees. I (and taxpayers in my state) paid some $90,000 for classes that I didn't attend--not even the tough ones--because my instructors generally sucked. And like many here (I think this is generally true of Slashdotters) I aced my exams and homework by using my textbook.
Now you owe Monty Python $700.
I have listened (not actively participated, so as to be fair) in on a number of conversations involving people (friends, family, and strangers) who use renegade file trading services. Most of them say they rarely trade these days because they are sick of the record companies messing with the files so that they loop the chorus. I have not heard one person who said s/he traded less because s/he was afraid of the RIAA or thought trading was wrong.
I wish it was this easy. You may be engaging in a form of entrapment only permissible to law enforcement if you try going after them on criminal grounds if and when they hit you with a robot (side question: why may law enforcement entrap people?). You better talk to a lawyer and have some money if you plan to engage in such behavior since the courts, as far as I know, have not established the legality of honeypots in such cases.
To answer your question about obtaining MD5 sums of illegal files, I am not familiar with the checksum mechanism in open source file sharing apps, but if they use MD5 sums, you could probably rewrite the code to get that information for you--not easy, but possible. Maybe somebody here knows more about that sort of thing.
Well, actually, to get to the specific questions without having to remember the post id, it is ten more clicks.
PS. So you know Christ?
PPS. Who's Shit?
PPPS. Is "just because your big ass fatfingers mouse buttons is" legitimate English?
PPPPS. "burdgeon" is not a word.
PPPPPS. There was only one complaint in the post you replied to.
One thing I fear is that if we are being pulled in a certain fashion such that our equations only hold up under our own logic--for example, the concept of relativity works because that is the logical conclusion we are faced with given the parameters of our logic--then we may have not actually described reality; instead we have created a model that approximates reality through our perception. That is not to say that there isn't some ultimately correct model, just that we may not be able to reason about it due to the setup of consciousness. In other words, some other organism (organic or otherwise) may have a more correct way to reason about the formation and destruction / rebirth(s) of the universe because of its inherent properties. So, in a sense, maybe it would be useful to try to find ways that other systems could reason about our universe. Maybe that is done by proxy already since a lot of equations come from natural systems. Anybody have a good knowledge of the literature on this kind of thing?
I guess our approximations are close enough to do a lot of good for us, and in some ways that is more important.
That and a copy of this.
I think not.
That's just the thing, though, that I try to explain to my friends. When hackers hold a security person in high "disregard", it isn't that they dislike them. They really respect people the people like Morse because he gives them exactly what they want: a challenge. On the other hand, script kiddies dislike Morse because he makes sure they have to actually use intelligence to execute an attack on public networks.
Actually, most economists predicted that the bubble would burst. The people you are thinking of are the brokers (the people who sold shares!) who talked endlessly about the synergies of electronic commerce on Moneyline.
I thought that the computers were supposed to be able to do this already. I mean, that's how it worked in the Jetsons.
The real depressing thing about this is that I have been planning to develop on .NET. I don't know about anyone else, but I have been happy with the way Microsoft has been pursuing its .NET strategy (at least the development environment, the framework, and so on), namely working towards standards.
.NET, I have been pretty happy working with it and the .NET framework. I was planning on rewarding Microsoft for doing the right thing with their .NET strategy through paying for their software in future projects (I have been training on it for a while now). I understand their aim to have domain over some of their ideas, but IIRC they were working to make this beast an international standard, not to close competition. I think this is a step backward. Of course, it is hard for me to understand the entire patent request, so maybe they are not requesting too much. Nonetheless, why would they even do this? It just seems like a bad PR move given the fact that people are already pissed off enough to migrate toward Linux, and are getting more aggravated. Alas, may the USPTO use some wisdom.
I like developing on Windows as long as the tools are good, and despite the early bugginess of VS
stop a bus?
/.ers may have different views that I haven't considered, and I would like to read those thoughts.
Not enough (te hehe).
Does anyone have hard research on the number of programmers contributing to Linux?
I know this is a little off-topic, but has anyone considered thoroughly the ramifications of regulating Microsoft's code (not their business practices)? Let's say Microsoft is forced to share its code or to conform to some Linux-like standard. What happens then? Does Microsoft show its own code, quickly making the most recognizable OS the most quickly patched? Does it create its own distro, using its financial strength to ultimately overtake Redhat's market share? I believe Microsoft "wins" in these scenarios because they have the financial and arguably the programmer resources to do so. For a massively complex beast like an OS, I think it is possible that central organization offers a major benefit, but other
Networks need to provide better tailored advertising.
Maybe I'm a dummy, but when I signed up for my e-mail account with them about five (?) years ago, I used my first name and last name. I fear that if I let my account expire, someone will eventually use my e-mail account to impersonate me. Why doesn't Micro$loth just NOT allow reacquisition of expired accounts? Does it cost that much in terms of storage/processing overhead?
I am not that concerned about the privacy of my address, phone number, or even my occupation, but I can definitely understand how someone who absolutely needs privacy could be. Furthermore, while I don't mind advertisers having statistically abstracted data patterns about user groups, I am quite concerned that Microsoft and other organizations will share individual user patterns. Tailoring content to someone who subscribed to an online service is one of the positive draws for companies that conduct virtual business. We should reward companies that install and maintain good privacy systems. Does anyone know of such companies?
The important thing to note here for almost everyone that is concerned with spam is that even though Microsoft's business partners will almost inevitably target you, you should be more worried about your friends sending out forwards with your e-mail in the To: or CC: line. Each of us knows that spammers harvest e-mail addresses too often, and this is the reason why. Until people are informed of this problem, or until e-mail servers/programs are required to strip out extraneous addresses (or must request authorization to know an e-mail address), we will continue to have this problem. And, even with such a system in place, we still can't guarantee people will be duped into giving out their e-mail addys.
Moral of the story: choose your online friends wisely.
Although Katz didn't imply religion equals to poverty, this generalization is prevalent and incorrect. IMHO, religious fanaticism that is anti-technology and anti-equality keeps in place barriers to social/cultural and material wealth.
I think that social/cultural wealth is a must in any nation, but developing nations do not want or cannot accept in a rapid sweep the rise of material wealth.
In the short run, there is a definite argument for globalism to create material wealth, eliminating poverty. The long-run consequences, however, must be considered. What do developing nations do when suddenly they have a great amount of material wealth? The culutural change associated with socioeconomic class restructuring is staggering. It is important, I think, to adopt a respect for slowed growth in less materially developed nations.
As tech enthusiasts, Slashdot readers need to consider the effects of their work, and start guiding their efforts to be more humanistic, while still maintaining a *fair* amount of free markets. Explain, without boasting, the positive effects of improved technology, and explain the pros and cons of democracy/capitalism. The unbalanced explanations to many new adopters of democracy/capitalism/globalism have been unfair. If visionaries explain the future obstacles, countries will be better prepared to face change. Adopt other cultures' points of view if you want them to accept yours, and do not feel superior because your technology is.
Be bold. Open pornographic spam. Print the most egregious offenses. Type a letter to your congressperson. Mail the letter with offensive spam. Repeat until good legislation is passed. This is a quality of life issue, a hindrance to business issue. Use your congressperson's love for "the children" to attack the spammers. Spammers ARE peddling porn (and business scams) to children at an alarming rate, and regardless of your feelings about free speech, this is aking to violation (at least for the youngest e-mail users) of innocence. Explain to your congressperson that you are for first amendment rights where people may search for adult material, but that receiving such unsolicited material is utterly unacceptable.
Good article. The conclusion that uniform, scientific UIs will increase productivity seems pretty strong. The time lost in trying to understand a skinned interface cannot be too large, at least not at the mild complexity of computing we face today. Also, the uniqueness of a skin is what may help reduce repetitiveness that leads to inefficiency. I might argue that learning a variety of modified UIs is a good way to improve one's schema of UI design. Do we want to create a uniform environment that makes users unable to quickly adapt to different situations? Our minds can only handle so much information regarding a given schema, yet with practice, our representation of what fits the definition of a proper UI can be expanded. For me, I would prefer to stretch my "subconscious" processing of alternative, skinned UIs so that I can respond to a greater number of computing/information presentation. I may not be able to autonomically process a given interface as quickly as somebody who is familiar with the standardized UI, but I will be able to adapt to other UIs. There is really no argument against the author's claims; better coverage of the underlying issue--how much users want to balance breadth and depth of UI knowledge and processing--would have been really neat. Anybody have some good research links to point to?