How long will it be until a smart kid figures out how to program his own cards, OR figures out how to get access to the school administration system in a way that he could arbitrary change the locations (or HISTORICAL locations) of him and his buddies or his enemies. Want to get someone in trouble? Just change their ID badge location to say they weren't in the right place at the right time -- this is assuming it would be independent of other checks though.
Either way I'm against this system. It's lame. How hard is it to track a bunch of kids without making them wear tracking devices? I seriously fear the future. These are PUBLIC schools from what I understand, and I think it's a breach of freedoms to have these kinds of things in place. If we can do it in a school, we can do it to ALL CITIZENS. Imagine.. You're an illegal alien.. The border patrol guy checks his screen against all registered units (people).. He sees you moving, and BAM, you're dead... Shoot first, ask questions later. Then they roll the guy over and realize they shot somebody really important, and go, "Oh shit.":)
Yeah, but how are you getting CAT5 from computer to wall? Would you BUY a cable? Well, I guess if it was cheaper. But if you want to be COOL, you get a crimp tool:)
The ones that Leaviton makes, they're called "EZ-RJ45" or something like that... Basically the connectors don't have a back to where the wire would hit, instead the wires slip into individual grooves and you just slide the cable up as far as you need it, instead of guess-work. BUT these are also a lot simpler. I got a free kit from Leaviton when I did datacom cert through them, and it included both the punchdown tool, and the Leaviton EZ-RJ45 connectors.
They also included a punch-down PLATE, which was something you set your connector on, that pops into the modular faceplates, you set that connector on the plate; if you don't then it's really hard to stabilize the tool. After a ton of practice you can do it without the plate, but it's definitely useful.
Also some of the newer punchdown tools come with little plastic "picks" to sort wires.. and those are very handy, especially when you're doing a whole lot of punchdowns.
You need more than connectors, wire, a hub and a drill. Most obviously you need a crimp tool, and it would help for appearances sake if you had an empty 1-gang box to run the wire to and you could buy the CAT5 covers from Leviton (found at Lowes, Home Depot).
I doubt most people just want a cord sticking out of their wall, even though that's how my current arrangement is setup, most landlords wouldn't mind if you did a good job with it, and ran the wire to a box instead of just thru the wall.
I agree with what you're saying, but I don't think it addresses my main point. My point was that if your kid is speeding over the "limit" (which some parents might set on, say, 62), it might not be as unsafe as it appears, it might only be that they are on a road where this is OK.
Not OK legally of course and this might be a reason to punish them in itself, but I think that distinction is *important* because kids need to know if you're getting mad at them because it was illegal or if it was actually unsafe.
The big problem with this service is that you have no idea if it was unsafe or not. If you set the limit to something really high like, say, 90 -- maybe then you could ascertain what was safe and unsafe. Everything would have to be "unsafe" for the road with the most fast speed limit in your teenager's driving radius, and for most of us that means the interstate.
When I was younger I totalled my car going relatively slow (under 45) on a gravel road. If it had been an interstate I would've been able to safely go ~80mph, even at that age.
So speed is not a very reliable indicator for how safe your teenager is driving.;)
I think 220mph is a bit of an exaggeration. The speed limits around here are 55.. and I got a speeding ticket for about 70. In the officer's mind, I was apparently "out of control" and was about to wreck any minute. But it just wasn't happening. The road was wide enough that you could do that speed and still have plenty of time for whatever obstacles would come your way. This demonstrates how someone can speed and still be safe.
I think that it is a BIG error to assume that speeding is automatically unsafe driving. The insurance companies say it is -- because it makes them money. The legislation says it is, and maybe they're a bit detached but the local PD is probably still getting money every time somebody pleads guilty and sends their ticket in by mail.
Still I hold to the maxim that speeding is not always unsafe. Going 85 in a 65 on an interstate is not that dangerous, in good conditions. Still, if you get caught going that speed in my state, you get a "wreckless driving" ticket. Again, we assume that the increased speed is somehow wreckless, even if it's perfectly safe.
Also we have to consider that the speed limits are set for *everybody*. A guy who is 25 and still has good vision and reflexes and a good deal of driving experience under his belt, might be able to do 10 miles per hour over what, say, the 70-year-old grandma who hasn't been phased out of the system yet is doing. A good driver can ALWAYS go faster than a bad driver and still be *safe*.
My point is mainly that when using this service, even if your kid speeds, blame them for breaking the law -- not for being unsafe.
Everybody knows that the Internet contains more data than Walmart... So all that really happened here, I think, is that the NYTimes guy was irresponsible with his statistics. He probably just used that statistic off one study he happened to find that he thought was accurate. He probably doesn't know much about the internet, then, but we can't really know that until we look at his history.
So, how can they calculate the internet's terrabyte amount? They can't. They just found a statistic and used it. Welcome to the national media.
I'm pretty sure that if you were to check the demographics on households with broadband and CD burners, it's not exactly a low-income segment. Certainly not the sort of low-income, can't-shell-out-$14.95 households you're implying. If you can afford broadband internet access, you can probably pay for a CD every once in a while.
Two things... First, these people that have broadband and cd burners just MIGHT have those things for other purposes. Like, maybe they have shit to do and they can't sit around waiting for a slow internet. Or maybe they're saving themselves time from having to download big-ass installation updates off the internet. Time is an asset unto itself.
Second, you say "once in a while." Apparently you missed my argument that most people want to listen to a LOT of music. Not just like, 10 songs every month. Now you're going to call me a "high-volume music listener" or some shit like that, but realistically, I personally listen to over 100 songs a month, and most of them are new enough that I wouldn't have them from 10 years ago. Either way, that's STILL a lot of money. 10 songs a month you want to listen to, and say, GENEROUSLY, 3 of those songs come on one CD, you're already looking at almost $50 a month for music. Assume that you want to listen to more and that you buy as much as 6 or 7 CDs a month, and that's over a hundred dollars a month.
The only exception to this that I can think of might be college students: I can think of a lot of basically broke college students who have broadband internet provided to them and have computers left from graduation presents or parents, and no disposable income.
Heh, you can guess which category I fit in to, along with a lot of other people. Those other college students probably download music.
Anyway, computers left over from graduation presents? What? You really think it's an OPTION to have a computer? Look man, around here the computer labs aren't open 24h/day, and they also are at least a 20-minute roundtrip walk depending on where you are on campus, and, this assumes you're ONLY using a computer when you want to "do papers" or some shit -- I have to look at a computer every day or so just to figure out what my assignments will be in my classes because they post them on the internet. Also assuming that I don't use my computer for other shit like reading the news (costs money), or buying stuff at lower prices. Of course, in certain majors, you HAVE to have a computer. Of course, I'm not the student I'm representing here, I'm just saying I know guys who don't have computers and it's a pain in the ass for them. You can't be a computer science major without a computer.
So, we're looking at a bigass time expenditure if you've got a lot of shit to do, including studying and working for your education.
Let's face it: the majority of the people who download probably COULD pay for CDs, but don't, because if you can get it free, why bother?
I'll agree with you that, given they could budget their money, the "majority" of people downloading CDs (we have ZERO stats, by the way, only guesses) could afford to buy a few a month.
Today's computer users aren't downloading music because they don't like the whole albums--they're downloading because it's free and available.
I call bullshit. It's both. Look man, whenever I go to Best Buy and buy a $13 CD, I expect almost every track on it to at least be somewhat good. Time and again I am dissapointed, when I actually play the CD and find that the one really good song I paid for really is maybe one of two or three songs that are even worth listening to. It's a pain in the ass.
I'm not saying that all people downloading illegal music are represented by this market, and indeed some of them just want tons of free music, but to say that these people do not WANT to be legit is a stretch away from the truth. Those people simply cannot afford it, especially with outrageous prices of almost $15 an album.
Look at the headline--raising the price of downloads by a dollar is suddenly a "nasty easter egg."
Uh, more accurately, they're DOUBLING or TRIPLING the prices. Yeah, raising the price of a fucking plasma screen by a dollar might not have much impact -- raising the price of a peice of bubble gum might. Apparently you don't listen to much music. Personally I like to have some variety in the stuff I listen to. A LOT of variety.
How is it I can listen to a song for free on the radio (albeit with small advertisement breaks) and yet if I want to download a song I "sort of" like, and listen to it MAYBE 5 times before listening to another song, I have to pay almost three bucks, PER SONG?
Now, you could make the argument that I would listen to some songs more than 5 times, but for the vast majority of songs, that is not true. I'll listen to some songs a hundred times before giving them up, and those I generally buy the CD. But for songs I'm going to only listen to a couple of times and then discard, what the hell is the point? Apparently you're of the crowd who likes to listen to your music on repeat.
People have yet to offer a valid legal or moral justification for ripping artists off.
I'm more a fan of the "Download the music, then donate to the artist" crowd.
He's for decriminalization for marijuana and yet claims he didn't smoke it himself, even though Kerry, Edwards, and Dean all admitted to in the past, with a "So what?" stance? Yeah, right. I don't think anybody believes for real that this dude has never smoked up.
His policy for abortion is sound except for his "conception begins at birth" stance, which includes the Bush-friendly "promoting abstinence" crap.
By the way, did I forget to mention Kucinich voted in the house to ban human cloning and any sort of embryonic stem cell research?
I should mention that I like his view on drugs, but that seems to be a bipartisan problem that isn't likely to be solved soon. Stem cell research, on the other hand, is pretty important if you ask me.
Howard Dean is a candidate with views roughly similar in the important ways, and who is more likely to be elected. I personally am going to vote for him and not Kucinich.
As a person who has been to an actual Ars Technica meetup, I can tell you that there's no political bias going on here other than geekness. This guy is basically saying, "Yes, I'm not cool."
The whole reason Friendster/Orkut is invite-only is because if somebody else invited you into the system, then you must, at some level, be socially acceptable.
Girls don't want to go out with anybody. Moreover, they need a way to justify to themselves and to their friends later on WHY they went out with you/did things with you.
Since you met over the system, then it's "ok" to feel attracted because other girls are feeling attracted too.
Did you read the article at all? He made 15 predictions. I'm thinking you stuck with the "10" number because that's all the original poster listed.
I grant you that Cringely is being all too vague in some easy predictions, but I'd also suggest that you might try looking at who is reading his column. If Cringely makes easy predictions, and his audience likes that, then who is to say he is simply not digging into the issue more for fear of eliminating his readership?
Cringely is speaking in a sense of the utter survivability of the OS on a marketable basis. For example, Linux can't compete with other more user-friendly OSes like Windows if it doesn't have people working on it and it doesn't "grow" in a real sense. Even if thousands of developers and testers are working on something, If they're not going in a particular direction together, they might as well be running in circles.
I learned my lesson on this while I was still at home. I got tired of being bugged by my relatives and blocked almost all of them.
If my parents want to talk to me while I'm at Uni, they use a phone. It makes it a lot easier. If you want your problem to go away, tell your parents that you changed your IM or something. Tell them somebody hacked into it, so if they log onto another screenname, they can't say "He's online!"
Of course this would get trickier if your parents actually sent you fake IMs trying to figure out if it's still you there. Eliminate any font coloring, and make sure to not talk personal about yourself to strangers. If they think they've caught you though, inform them of the nature of what happened.. Some guy ran a XYZ attack on your ftp server that happened to have a link to your my documents and so the guy now knows everything about you. That should eliminate any other inquiries they have. They might think you're full of shit, but they'd have a hard time proving you wrong.
Here's another thing though: Don't stay on the computer all the damn time. Of course she's going to assume that because you weren't ON THE COMPUTER at 4pm, that you weren't actually "there"... Tell them you're out partying. If they have a problem with it, you've got even more work ahead of you than I can help with.
>according to the author on NPR this afternoon, 1 in 700 are caught.
Oh. Really.
Please, enlighten me as to how the NPR knows that "only 1 in 700 are caught"? Is there any way to track this?
This is a guess. Maybe they could track it based on the number of people who "filed claims" and then based on the number of people convicted of identity theft... that's still not very convincing. I want to see this study they did to find out that 1 in 700 people are caught practicing identity theft. How can they possibly know how many they aren't catching? Simple answer, they can't.
I would also doubt that they would discriminate at all between "soft" identity theft, and "hard" identity theft. "soft" being the type of guy who will do a bunch of research on somebody, and maybe buy a couple things on his credit card. "hard" being the guys that steal people's complete identities, totally mess up other people's records intentionally, and live a life of indiscriminate luxury because of it.
The difference would be that the soft guy rationalizes to himself that if he charges things to the guy's credit card, that's not that bad because he'll recognize them, refute the charges, and that's nothing big.
Of course he might not realize that credit companies limit the number of refutations you can do against bogus charges.
In short, it's basically a statistic. Which can be manipulated in so many ways, especially when you don't have the data they are tabulating.
Bro, As much as I love the fact that you're a religious guy who actually can not believe that Jesus is "unquestionable past common society standards," You've actually got the timeline backwards.
Marx, an 18th-century social theorist, came up with his dictum at the very least past the time Christ was supposedly on the early.
Ergo, it can only be said that Communism favors Jesus Christ, not that Jesus Christ favors Communism. Big difference there.
This sounds to me like a fancy word for "conflict of interest."
How can the RIAA, a privately owned corporation, be the sole recipient for funds that are designated through public domain?
In other words, the RIAA is a private company. The government is putting the RIAA in power over licensing fees over EVERYONE. I can see easily how the RIAA might have an argument that they can control the royalties on music controlled by their organization, but to control ALL music, doesn't anyone see the problem with this?
I used to be anti-Microsoft but then I realized that Microsoft is actually a pretty good business. I mean, Bill Gates probably wrote a ton of the original source code, which means that he's the main author and the guy responsible for making Windows so popular. Microsoft is really just a marketing genius though. Once you learn how to create a monopoly, you will continue to create a monopoly. It's why the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. The rich keep doing the things that make them money and the poor keep doing things that keep them poor.
Certainly, some of the things Microsoft has done can piss off most of the serious community, but that doesn't mean their OS is worth even less. Windows XP is a lot easier to use than the new Redhat Distro, and while I know a lot of people are thinking "Well, Apple is easier to use still," the realization here is that ease of use is the PRIMARY importance of an average user of a computer. They don't care about flexibility, they just want to feel like they know what they are doing.
This means, that for most people, Microsoft's Windows is going to be the choice that will serve them best. They are going to be going out into the real world and probably using these machines, and then when they get there they won't know how to use them.
My advice is that you have a "serious emphasis" on open source around the university, but I wouldn't eliminate all your MS machines.
INFORMATION wants to be free. Sure, this counts as information, but is it really what the author of that quote intended? That was used in a context of already-published information. People's viewing habits aren't already public until somebody makes them that way. You can't just go to your local WalMart and buy the latest Religion In My Area 2.0 and get a huge listing of what religion everybody is and their sexual preference. That'd be great, right? Burn the gays and the jews?
Look, I've gotten a lot of bad input on this. I'm almost 100% certain that I know what this means. I'm not going to engage in a battle over it, because there are a thousand and one things to say on the subject, including a discussion on if rights are actual physical things (printed?) and what exactly "Online" is. So lets just leave this be. This can be construed the way you are thinking about it, but there is a better way to put it. And I think the people who came up with the title would know the best way to put these things. Since this part of the thread came out of questioning how this was "Your rights online" -- I'm going to assume my definition is the prevailing one.
You mean by a police officer? I've gotten pulled over because of an inspection sticker that was a couple days old. And yeah, most people have gotten pulled over at least once. And yeah, they ask for your driver's license when that happens.
And if you try to get anything age-restricted, a drivers license is usually the prefered type of identification.
This is posted under "Your Rights Online" because it is online. It's "Your Rights" -- but online. Get it? This has nothing to do with online rights, but rights being online. Understand? Great, now let me tell you how sad it is that I even have to explain this. It's sad.
No -- I read Cringely every time it comes out. Why? Because he knows what he's talking about. Even if most of his stuff is stretched theory, I believe that he has some very good points, and that sometimes it's not the mainstream "guru's" who are right.
As for Steve Gibson, I listen to him too. He learned to use IRC from a god damn RFC, which just makes me laugh forever, but in an age where 1% of the computer population even knows what an RFC is, I think I'll stick with him.
Slashdot Mirror
How long will it be until a smart kid figures out how to program his own cards, OR figures out how to get access to the school administration system in a way that he could arbitrary change the locations (or HISTORICAL locations) of him and his buddies or his enemies. Want to get someone in trouble? Just change their ID badge location to say they weren't in the right place at the right time -- this is assuming it would be independent of other checks though.
.. You're an illegal alien.. The border patrol guy checks his screen against all registered units (people) .. He sees you moving, and BAM, you're dead... Shoot first, ask questions later. Then they roll the guy over and realize they shot somebody really important, and go, "Oh shit." :)
Either way I'm against this system. It's lame. How hard is it to track a bunch of kids without making them wear tracking devices? I seriously fear the future. These are PUBLIC schools from what I understand, and I think it's a breach of freedoms to have these kinds of things in place. If we can do it in a school, we can do it to ALL CITIZENS. Imagine
Yeah, but how are you getting CAT5 from computer to wall? Would you BUY a cable? Well, I guess if it was cheaper. But if you want to be COOL, you get a crimp tool :)
The ones that Leaviton makes, they're called "EZ-RJ45" or something like that... Basically the connectors don't have a back to where the wire would hit, instead the wires slip into individual grooves and you just slide the cable up as far as you need it, instead of guess-work. BUT these are also a lot simpler. I got a free kit from Leaviton when I did datacom cert through them, and it included both the punchdown tool, and the Leaviton EZ-RJ45 connectors.
They also included a punch-down PLATE, which was something you set your connector on, that pops into the modular faceplates, you set that connector on the plate; if you don't then it's really hard to stabilize the tool. After a ton of practice you can do it without the plate, but it's definitely useful.
Also some of the newer punchdown tools come with little plastic "picks" to sort wires.. and those are very handy, especially when you're doing a whole lot of punchdowns.
You need more than connectors, wire, a hub and a drill. Most obviously you need a crimp tool, and it would help for appearances sake if you had an empty 1-gang box to run the wire to and you could buy the CAT5 covers from Leviton (found at Lowes, Home Depot).
I doubt most people just want a cord sticking out of their wall, even though that's how my current arrangement is setup, most landlords wouldn't mind if you did a good job with it, and ran the wire to a box instead of just thru the wall.
I agree with what you're saying, but I don't think it addresses my main point. My point was that if your kid is speeding over the "limit" (which some parents might set on, say, 62), it might not be as unsafe as it appears, it might only be that they are on a road where this is OK.
;)
Not OK legally of course and this might be a reason to punish them in itself, but I think that distinction is *important* because kids need to know if you're getting mad at them because it was illegal or if it was actually unsafe.
The big problem with this service is that you have no idea if it was unsafe or not. If you set the limit to something really high like, say, 90 -- maybe then you could ascertain what was safe and unsafe. Everything would have to be "unsafe" for the road with the most fast speed limit in your teenager's driving radius, and for most of us that means the interstate.
When I was younger I totalled my car going relatively slow (under 45) on a gravel road. If it had been an interstate I would've been able to safely go ~80mph, even at that age.
So speed is not a very reliable indicator for how safe your teenager is driving.
I think 220mph is a bit of an exaggeration. The speed limits around here are 55.. and I got a speeding ticket for about 70. In the officer's mind, I was apparently "out of control" and was about to wreck any minute. But it just wasn't happening. The road was wide enough that you could do that speed and still have plenty of time for whatever obstacles would come your way. This demonstrates how someone can speed and still be safe.
I think that it is a BIG error to assume that speeding is automatically unsafe driving. The insurance companies say it is -- because it makes them money. The legislation says it is, and maybe they're a bit detached but the local PD is probably still getting money every time somebody pleads guilty and sends their ticket in by mail.
Still I hold to the maxim that speeding is not always unsafe. Going 85 in a 65 on an interstate is not that dangerous, in good conditions. Still, if you get caught going that speed in my state, you get a "wreckless driving" ticket. Again, we assume that the increased speed is somehow wreckless, even if it's perfectly safe.
Also we have to consider that the speed limits are set for *everybody*. A guy who is 25 and still has good vision and reflexes and a good deal of driving experience under his belt, might be able to do 10 miles per hour over what, say, the 70-year-old grandma who hasn't been phased out of the system yet is doing. A good driver can ALWAYS go faster than a bad driver and still be *safe*.
My point is mainly that when using this service, even if your kid speeds, blame them for breaking the law -- not for being unsafe.
Everybody knows that the Internet contains more data than Walmart... So all that really happened here, I think, is that the NYTimes guy was irresponsible with his statistics. He probably just used that statistic off one study he happened to find that he thought was accurate. He probably doesn't know much about the internet, then, but we can't really know that until we look at his history.
So, how can they calculate the internet's terrabyte amount? They can't. They just found a statistic and used it. Welcome to the national media.
I'm pretty sure that if you were to check the demographics on households with broadband and CD burners, it's not exactly a low-income segment. Certainly not the sort of low-income, can't-shell-out-$14.95 households you're implying. If you can afford broadband internet access, you can probably pay for a CD every once in a while.
Two things... First, these people that have broadband and cd burners just MIGHT have those things for other purposes. Like, maybe they have shit to do and they can't sit around waiting for a slow internet. Or maybe they're saving themselves time from having to download big-ass installation updates off the internet. Time is an asset unto itself.
Second, you say "once in a while." Apparently you missed my argument that most people want to listen to a LOT of music. Not just like, 10 songs every month. Now you're going to call me a "high-volume music listener" or some shit like that, but realistically, I personally listen to over 100 songs a month, and most of them are new enough that I wouldn't have them from 10 years ago. Either way, that's STILL a lot of money. 10 songs a month you want to listen to, and say, GENEROUSLY, 3 of those songs come on one CD, you're already looking at almost $50 a month for music. Assume that you want to listen to more and that you buy as much as 6 or 7 CDs a month, and that's over a hundred dollars a month.
The only exception to this that I can think of might be college students: I can think of a lot of basically broke college students who have broadband internet provided to them and have computers left from graduation presents or parents, and no disposable income.
Heh, you can guess which category I fit in to, along with a lot of other people. Those other college students probably download music.
Anyway, computers left over from graduation presents? What? You really think it's an OPTION to have a computer? Look man, around here the computer labs aren't open 24h/day, and they also are at least a 20-minute roundtrip walk depending on where you are on campus, and, this assumes you're ONLY using a computer when you want to "do papers" or some shit -- I have to look at a computer every day or so just to figure out what my assignments will be in my classes because they post them on the internet. Also assuming that I don't use my computer for other shit like reading the news (costs money), or buying stuff at lower prices. Of course, in certain majors, you HAVE to have a computer. Of course, I'm not the student I'm representing here, I'm just saying I know guys who don't have computers and it's a pain in the ass for them. You can't be a computer science major without a computer.
So, we're looking at a bigass time expenditure if you've got a lot of shit to do, including studying and working for your education.
Let's face it: the majority of the people who download probably COULD pay for CDs, but don't, because if you can get it free, why bother?
I'll agree with you that, given they could budget their money, the "majority" of people downloading CDs (we have ZERO stats, by the way, only guesses) could afford to buy a few a month.
Today's computer users aren't downloading music because they don't like the whole albums--they're downloading because it's free and available.
I call bullshit. It's both. Look man, whenever I go to Best Buy and buy a $13 CD, I expect almost every track on it to at least be somewhat good. Time and again I am dissapointed, when I actually play the CD and find that the one really good song I paid for really is maybe one of two or three songs that are even worth listening to. It's a pain in the ass.
I'm not saying that all people downloading illegal music are represented by this market, and indeed some of them just want tons of free music, but to say that these people do not WANT to be legit is a stretch away from the truth. Those people simply cannot afford it, especially with outrageous prices of almost $15 an album.
Look at the headline--raising the price of downloads by a dollar is suddenly a "nasty easter egg."
Uh, more accurately, they're DOUBLING or TRIPLING the prices. Yeah, raising the price of a fucking plasma screen by a dollar might not have much impact -- raising the price of a peice of bubble gum might. Apparently you don't listen to much music. Personally I like to have some variety in the stuff I listen to. A LOT of variety.
How is it I can listen to a song for free on the radio (albeit with small advertisement breaks) and yet if I want to download a song I "sort of" like, and listen to it MAYBE 5 times before listening to another song, I have to pay almost three bucks, PER SONG?
Now, you could make the argument that I would listen to some songs more than 5 times, but for the vast majority of songs, that is not true. I'll listen to some songs a hundred times before giving them up, and those I generally buy the CD. But for songs I'm going to only listen to a couple of times and then discard, what the hell is the point? Apparently you're of the crowd who likes to listen to your music on repeat.
People have yet to offer a valid legal or moral justification for ripping artists off.
I'm more a fan of the "Download the music, then donate to the artist" crowd.
Heh, I picture a bigass alarm system that goes off when the site gets slashdotted. I think it would go something like this:
"RED ALERT. RED ALERT. WE HAVE JUST BEEN SLASHDOTTED! ALL WORKERS TO YOUR STATIONS! WE'VE GOT WORK TO DO PEOPLE!"
Here's a suggestion...
Dump her and get a new girlfriend; long distance relationships never work out.
Seriously, though, do you guys meet a lot or something? I can't see how this would work.
Yeah, except Kucinich is pretty much a liar.
He's for decriminalization for marijuana and yet claims he didn't smoke it himself, even though Kerry, Edwards, and Dean all admitted to in the past, with a "So what?" stance? Yeah, right. I don't think anybody believes for real that this dude has never smoked up.
His policy for abortion is sound except for his "conception begins at birth" stance, which includes the Bush-friendly "promoting abstinence" crap.
By the way, did I forget to mention Kucinich voted in the house to ban human cloning and any sort of embryonic stem cell research?
I should mention that I like his view on drugs, but that seems to be a bipartisan problem that isn't likely to be solved soon. Stem cell research, on the other hand, is pretty important if you ask me.
Howard Dean is a candidate with views roughly similar in the important ways, and who is more likely to be elected. I personally am going to vote for him and not Kucinich.
LOL this is a bit of overanalysis.
As a person who has been to an actual Ars Technica meetup, I can tell you that there's no political bias going on here other than geekness. This guy is basically saying, "Yes, I'm not cool."
The whole reason Friendster/Orkut is invite-only is because if somebody else invited you into the system, then you must, at some level, be socially acceptable.
Girls don't want to go out with anybody. Moreover, they need a way to justify to themselves and to their friends later on WHY they went out with you/did things with you.
Since you met over the system, then it's "ok" to feel attracted because other girls are feeling attracted too.
Did you read the article at all? He made 15 predictions. I'm thinking you stuck with the "10" number because that's all the original poster listed.
I grant you that Cringely is being all too vague in some easy predictions, but I'd also suggest that you might try looking at who is reading his column. If Cringely makes easy predictions, and his audience likes that, then who is to say he is simply not digging into the issue more for fear of eliminating his readership?
Cringely is speaking in a sense of the utter survivability of the OS on a marketable basis. For example, Linux can't compete with other more user-friendly OSes like Windows if it doesn't have people working on it and it doesn't "grow" in a real sense. Even if thousands of developers and testers are working on something, If they're not going in a particular direction together, they might as well be running in circles.
I learned my lesson on this while I was still at home. I got tired of being bugged by my relatives and blocked almost all of them.
... Tell them you're out partying. If they have a problem with it, you've got even more work ahead of you than I can help with.
If my parents want to talk to me while I'm at Uni, they use a phone. It makes it a lot easier. If you want your problem to go away, tell your parents that you changed your IM or something. Tell them somebody hacked into it, so if they log onto another screenname, they can't say "He's online!"
Of course this would get trickier if your parents actually sent you fake IMs trying to figure out if it's still you there. Eliminate any font coloring, and make sure to not talk personal about yourself to strangers. If they think they've caught you though, inform them of the nature of what happened.. Some guy ran a XYZ attack on your ftp server that happened to have a link to your my documents and so the guy now knows everything about you. That should eliminate any other inquiries they have. They might think you're full of shit, but they'd have a hard time proving you wrong.
Here's another thing though: Don't stay on the computer all the damn time. Of course she's going to assume that because you weren't ON THE COMPUTER at 4pm, that you weren't actually "there"
>according to the author on NPR this afternoon, 1 in 700 are caught.
... that's still not very convincing. I want to see this study they did to find out that 1 in 700 people are caught practicing identity theft. How can they possibly know how many they aren't catching? Simple answer, they can't.
Oh. Really.
Please, enlighten me as to how the NPR knows that "only 1 in 700 are caught"? Is there any way to track this?
This is a guess. Maybe they could track it based on the number of people who "filed claims" and then based on the number of people convicted of identity theft
I would also doubt that they would discriminate at all between "soft" identity theft, and "hard" identity theft. "soft" being the type of guy who will do a bunch of research on somebody, and maybe buy a couple things on his credit card. "hard" being the guys that steal people's complete identities, totally mess up other people's records intentionally, and live a life of indiscriminate luxury because of it.
The difference would be that the soft guy rationalizes to himself that if he charges things to the guy's credit card, that's not that bad because he'll recognize them, refute the charges, and that's nothing big.
Of course he might not realize that credit companies limit the number of refutations you can do against bogus charges.
In short, it's basically a statistic. Which can be manipulated in so many ways, especially when you don't have the data they are tabulating.
Bro, As much as I love the fact that you're a religious guy who actually can not believe that Jesus is "unquestionable past common society standards," You've actually got the timeline backwards.
Marx, an 18th-century social theorist, came up with his dictum at the very least past the time Christ was supposedly on the early.
Ergo, it can only be said that Communism favors Jesus Christ, not that Jesus Christ favors Communism. Big difference there.
This sounds to me like a fancy word for "conflict of interest."
How can the RIAA, a privately owned corporation, be the sole recipient for funds that are designated through public domain?
In other words, the RIAA is a private company. The government is putting the RIAA in power over licensing fees over EVERYONE. I can see easily how the RIAA might have an argument that they can control the royalties on music controlled by their organization, but to control ALL music, doesn't anyone see the problem with this?
I used to be anti-Microsoft but then I realized that Microsoft is actually a pretty good business. I mean, Bill Gates probably wrote a ton of the original source code, which means that he's the main author and the guy responsible for making Windows so popular. Microsoft is really just a marketing genius though. Once you learn how to create a monopoly, you will continue to create a monopoly. It's why the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. The rich keep doing the things that make them money and the poor keep doing things that keep them poor.
Certainly, some of the things Microsoft has done can piss off most of the serious community, but that doesn't mean their OS is worth even less. Windows XP is a lot easier to use than the new Redhat Distro, and while I know a lot of people are thinking "Well, Apple is easier to use still," the realization here is that ease of use is the PRIMARY importance of an average user of a computer. They don't care about flexibility, they just want to feel like they know what they are doing.
This means, that for most people, Microsoft's Windows is going to be the choice that will serve them best. They are going to be going out into the real world and probably using these machines, and then when they get there they won't know how to use them.
My advice is that you have a "serious emphasis" on open source around the university, but I wouldn't eliminate all your MS machines.
INFORMATION wants to be free. Sure, this counts as information, but is it really what the author of that quote intended? That was used in a context of already-published information. People's viewing habits aren't already public until somebody makes them that way. You can't just go to your local WalMart and buy the latest Religion In My Area 2.0 and get a huge listing of what religion everybody is and their sexual preference. That'd be great, right? Burn the gays and the jews?
Look, I've gotten a lot of bad input on this. I'm almost 100% certain that I know what this means. I'm not going to engage in a battle over it, because there are a thousand and one things to say on the subject, including a discussion on if rights are actual physical things (printed?) and what exactly "Online" is. So lets just leave this be. This can be construed the way you are thinking about it, but there is a better way to put it. And I think the people who came up with the title would know the best way to put these things. Since this part of the thread came out of questioning how this was "Your rights online" -- I'm going to assume my definition is the prevailing one.
>
You mean by a police officer? I've gotten pulled over because of an inspection sticker that was a couple days old. And yeah, most people have gotten pulled over at least once. And yeah, they ask for your driver's license when that happens.
And if you try to get anything age-restricted, a drivers license is usually the prefered type of identification.
This is posted under "Your Rights Online" because it is online. It's "Your Rights" -- but online. Get it? This has nothing to do with online rights, but rights being online. Understand? Great, now let me tell you how sad it is that I even have to explain this. It's sad.
No -- I read Cringely every time it comes out. Why? Because he knows what he's talking about. Even if most of his stuff is stretched theory, I believe that he has some very good points, and that sometimes it's not the mainstream "guru's" who are right. As for Steve Gibson, I listen to him too. He learned to use IRC from a god damn RFC, which just makes me laugh forever, but in an age where 1% of the computer population even knows what an RFC is, I think I'll stick with him.
Seeka