This whole thing reeks of technologies that came out of Microsoft during the Nineties, such as Active-X, that provided unnecessary privileges to questionable applications. The technology was rarely necessary for legitimate applications but was exploited like crazy by developers of malicious code.
Great, so when the Ubuntu users get slammed by malware, those of us using all of the other distros out there will get to put up with tons of smirking from the Win/Mac crowd about how "Linux" (read: Ubuntu) isn't at all secure. Just imagine how much fun it will be to explain this one to tech-clueless friends/family/clients after they see the Wired headlines...
I think that you nailed it -- there's nothing wrong with hacking, and the vast majority of youthful (or even adult) hacking is essentially the same sort of talent-honing that people that are naturally great at any other discipline do. The real problems are the criminals, and if they weren't making their money (or getting their jollies) that way, they'd go for another illicit route; a relationship isn't going to affect them at all.
No, the takeaway should be that rather than going overboard in either direction, people should balance their time exercising their brain and body. It's possible to do both at once, too... When I go to the fitness club, I read while using the recumbent bike at a local gym for 40 minutes, then focus my mind on exploring a problem or idea (like meditating) for the following 35 minutes while going from one weight-training machine to the next... By the time I'm home again, I feel ready to actually accomplish something, and often have some new ideas to try out; I've been told by a few people now that I seem in a much better place mentally overall than I was before going back to the gym.
Physical perfection isn't anywhere near required either; if that was the case, virtually no physically disabled people would end up having long-term relationships or getting married, which isn't the case. I've seen a lot of relationships crash and people struggling to find a date because of mental/maturity issues, but only a couple where their physical attractiveness was a serious factor (the ones that claimed it were usually the ones with issues).
Actually, only about 45% of Americans own a gun -- but we also have 668 times the number of people killed by firearms that the UK does, and the chances of survival decrease if a burglary/mugging victim brandishes a gun.
For most people, it depends on where and how they're driving. I'm in my mid-30s and enjoy driving in general, love doing so on my area's hilly highway/backroads slightly over the speed limit, and really only dislike driving when it's raining or I'm in a strange high-traffic city. Even commute highway traffic isn't bad provided the weather is nice enough that I can kick back, open the window, and relax listening to the radio.
I originally didn't enjoy driving because it stressed me out, enough that I waited until I was about to start (community) college to get my driver's license, and only did so then at the extremely vehement insistence of my parents. Luckily, I was given my grandfather's really heavy beat-up red El Camino as my first car (people could see it way off and got out of its way as their car wouldn't fare well in a collision), and the route to/from school was profoundly easy, so I started to gain confidence within a week or two and was actually having fun by the end of the year.
A lack of regulation & deregulation also played a major role in the two crashes, though. Prior to the Great Depression, a lack of regulation had let the financial industry make choices that created persistent boom/bust cycles; after the last nasty one (the Great Depression), the government installled strong regulatory oversight/laws to prevent another one.
The country then had several decades of economic stability; while we lost a lot of men in WWII, it doesn't explain the economic improvement, as the positions had been filled by women during the war and they were pushed/forced to quit afterwards so there'd be enough jobs for the returning men. Extra positions had also been created by then-recent laws passed to keep businesses from endangering American employees by cutting corners in factories, demanding long shifts in situations where it could cause disaster, etc.
In the 70s, the government started gradually dismantling the regulations that had been added, and the more they removed over time, the greater the boom/bust swings started to become, just as before. So, we're back here in an equivalent to either the Great Depression or to one of the nastier busts that merely preceded it.
(Note: I didn't take economics in college, and I'm essentially going by what I recall from reading in the last year or two, so if I mangled parts of the above explanation, that's why.)
The associations that profit from selling ABA services to understandably scared parents claim that it's "proven" because the kids they use it on show development. Note the lack of any controls or rigorous scientific studies -- the research on autistics is full of poorly-designed studies without controls, unfounded assumptions, charlatans and so forth. (Anyone interested in the topic should check out the blog of researcher Michelle Dawson.)
The few times researchers have tried to compare treatment approaches, they've found that ABA isn't any better than other interactive methods like Floortime, and in some cases (like a major study in the UK a few years ago) the ABA kids end up falling behind other groups. That's because being autistic doesn't mean not developing any further, it means having a brain wired to function & develop differently from that of non-autistics.
You should seek out the many other parents online that aren't using ABA; they've been finding their way together online with the help of autistic adults (some of whom are also parents), and doing quite well. The best person to start with would be Estée Klar; she knows where all of the resources/groups are online for different approaches, and her blog/site is quite interesting/informative to boot.
It's very interesting reading for someone like me that's looking to switch companies sometime soon, since they don't appear to all be handling the situation the same way: T-Mobile, for example, only grants a request if it's "sufficiently specific" and "clearly describes the specific subscriber whose information is sought" while Verizon answers all lawful requests.
While I don't think OS X is awesome, I agree that it will likely get dumped... Before he died, Jobs' plan had been to strangle the Mac line to death, much in the same way he did to the Apple IIgs back when he got a hard-on for the (then-inferior) Macintosh. I think that his death probably greatly slowed that plan, but I'd be surprised if it doesn't still happen in the next few years, especially with Apple semi-subtly pushing users to switch to iOS devices.
Think of Macs as the best UNIX experience you've ever, ever had. Fuck the hardware, I just love OS X.
You love it but plenty of other people like me really dislike the interface. I "think of" OS X as the nastiest BSD (not UNIX) experience I've ever had, kind of like Windows but with a tiny fraction of the compatibility and zero control over anything. (The best UNIX-like experience I've had by far has been in Linux, and no, I'm not a supergeek, I'm a mostly-average user.)
Users dont want that. Users want cool, so they put up with the fist fucking you get as an apple customer.
When was the last time you compiled the latest version of rsync on Windows?
I've never compiled rsync, but I still find the situation Apple puts its consumers in unacceptable. Even if I liked their Mac/iOS products and was rich, I wouldn't want to buy a device that I'd be expected to junk & replace entirely over something like a failing battery or to be banned from upgrading simple parts like RAM.
The biggest sign of a fanboy is defending "their" company no matter what, because they're attached to their idealistic vision rather than the real-life org. The reasonable people that like the company itself rather than their imaginary ideal, OTOH, criticize unethical or blatantly stupid behavior, and in the long run usually won't tolerate it.
Emphasis on anecdotal -- the evidence I've seen thus far suggests Mac systems are about as durable as an average PC. The folks with Macs I know have encountered serious hardware failures (like a frozen-up hard drive) despite being overly gentle, usually well before the age that I see trouble on a typical Toshiba, Sony, or Thinkpad that is being knocked off tables, dropped, etc. while in use.
I find 10-12 year-old laptops decent for everyday work with a good light Linux distro; it's all a matter of what one is used to.
I really wish more people would put their old tech onto Freecycle or Craigslist's "free" area for folks in need -- most orgs that give away computers only let their clients or other orgs, so everyone else is basically out of luck. Even if the stuff isn't totally functional, there are some geeks out there using Freecycle/Craigslist to piece together old broken/unwanted systems, install an easy Linux distro, and give to folks in need.
The "any language including Klingon" would be just one county -- each one has its own slightly different setup, and I know that the one I volunteer in (Sonoma) doesn't offer every language...
The regular vote here is still on paper by default with no plans to change it in the foreseeable future, but each precinct has a Hart eSlate computer set up to let people that are blind, quadriplegic, have shaky hands, etc. vote without human assistance (though it's also available for any citizen that wants to use it).
I'm in charge ("Inspector") of a California precinct, and we use a variant on that as well... The inspector starts the day by showing the first voters that the metal ballot box is empty, then locks it; the voters then sign in (a four-part procedure), fill out their Scantron voting sheets, and drop them into the ballot box. (My county also has a Hart eSlate paper-trail computer set up with disability-access features at each precinct for anyone that wants/needs to use it, since it lets folks that are blind, illiterate, quadriplegic, severely arthritic, etc. vote unassisted.)
I was really shocked when I heard that this isn't how the whole country does it -- it has been this way since I voted for the very first time in 1996, and I'm still not sure why the heck some areas are putting up with nonsense like hanging chads or other potential hazards.
I agree... I watched my city's hand-launched display this year at a park a couple of miles away and really enjoyed being able to focus on the fireworks themselves as they appeared, especially when an unexpected finale was launched as I walked home about five minutes after the show seemingly ended. In contrast, I find that the computer-controlled ones always seem overly predictable due to the precise time gaps between explosions, and their invariably slightly-out-of-sync (or seemingly unrelated) music distracts me rather than enhancing the experience.
If you're schizophrenic, don't both of you surf the net at the same time anyway?
Nah, you're thinking of the Linux of the mental illness world, multiple personality disorder. Schizophrenia causes disorganized speech or thinking, hallucinations, and delusions, more like Windows 8's Metro interface.
Given the crime element in severe piracy, it seems almost inevitable at this point that someone is going to end up the target of violent attacks, the only real questions are when and who the victims will be...
1) There's a huge range of skill between the kinds of users that are prone to needing support (or hand-holding) and the ones that can compile their own apps and feel it's worthwhile to do so, much as there's a huge gap between a student driver and a professional stunt/racecar driver.
2) People that can/do compile their own apps often also post to support forums because they're working with the code, tackling a problem without being sure of how to address it, or struggling with some problem in compiling the source -- and users at the shallow end of the tech-ability pool can easily be supported by other more-experienced average users without needing the dev's attention at all. Meanwhile, when those more experienced non-compiling users do post in a support forum, it's often because of the sort of problem that would be worked out in bug-testing if the users weren't doubling as bugtesters.
Paying for advanced (i.e. non-user) support makes sense -- but the person that needs support should pay for it regardless of whether they're perpetual newbies or amateur programmers, it shouldn't be covered by the folks that don't need/want assistance (or that are bringing actual problems to the dev's attention).
It wouldn't be saving lives simply because basal cell is barely malignant -- since it often strikes people in their 50s and 60s, their age wouldn't have much to do with it, as they're likely to live another 25+ years.
(It's also hard to consider Mohs surgery invasive, as it's basically a skin equivalent to having a cavity treated, but that's more a matter of perspective... I think of "invasive" as referring to something that's done on the inside of the body and would be very painful without anesthetic.)
Basal cell carcinomas are locally invasive but do not metastasize. Excision with negative margins is curative.
It's not flat-out curative -- the current approach is Mohs surgery, and that has a 94-97% effectiveness depending on whether the cancer is new or a recurrence. Wikipedia explains the reasons in case you're curious.
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This whole thing reeks of technologies that came out of Microsoft during the Nineties, such as Active-X, that provided unnecessary privileges to questionable applications. The technology was rarely necessary for legitimate applications but was exploited like crazy by developers of malicious code.
Great, so when the Ubuntu users get slammed by malware, those of us using all of the other distros out there will get to put up with tons of smirking from the Win/Mac crowd about how "Linux" (read: Ubuntu) isn't at all secure. Just imagine how much fun it will be to explain this one to tech-clueless friends/family/clients after they see the Wired headlines...
I think that you nailed it -- there's nothing wrong with hacking, and the vast majority of youthful (or even adult) hacking is essentially the same sort of talent-honing that people that are naturally great at any other discipline do. The real problems are the criminals, and if they weren't making their money (or getting their jollies) that way, they'd go for another illicit route; a relationship isn't going to affect them at all.
No, the takeaway should be that rather than going overboard in either direction, people should balance their time exercising their brain and body. It's possible to do both at once, too... When I go to the fitness club, I read while using the recumbent bike at a local gym for 40 minutes, then focus my mind on exploring a problem or idea (like meditating) for the following 35 minutes while going from one weight-training machine to the next... By the time I'm home again, I feel ready to actually accomplish something, and often have some new ideas to try out; I've been told by a few people now that I seem in a much better place mentally overall than I was before going back to the gym.
Physical perfection isn't anywhere near required either; if that was the case, virtually no physically disabled people would end up having long-term relationships or getting married, which isn't the case. I've seen a lot of relationships crash and people struggling to find a date because of mental/maturity issues, but only a couple where their physical attractiveness was a serious factor (the ones that claimed it were usually the ones with issues).
Actually, only about 45% of Americans own a gun -- but we also have 668 times the number of people killed by firearms that the UK does, and the chances of survival decrease if a burglary/mugging victim brandishes a gun.
For most people, it depends on where and how they're driving. I'm in my mid-30s and enjoy driving in general, love doing so on my area's hilly highway/backroads slightly over the speed limit, and really only dislike driving when it's raining or I'm in a strange high-traffic city. Even commute highway traffic isn't bad provided the weather is nice enough that I can kick back, open the window, and relax listening to the radio.
I originally didn't enjoy driving because it stressed me out, enough that I waited until I was about to start (community) college to get my driver's license, and only did so then at the extremely vehement insistence of my parents. Luckily, I was given my grandfather's really heavy beat-up red El Camino as my first car (people could see it way off and got out of its way as their car wouldn't fare well in a collision), and the route to/from school was profoundly easy, so I started to gain confidence within a week or two and was actually having fun by the end of the year.
A lack of regulation & deregulation also played a major role in the two crashes, though. Prior to the Great Depression, a lack of regulation had let the financial industry make choices that created persistent boom/bust cycles; after the last nasty one (the Great Depression), the government installled strong regulatory oversight/laws to prevent another one.
The country then had several decades of economic stability; while we lost a lot of men in WWII, it doesn't explain the economic improvement, as the positions had been filled by women during the war and they were pushed/forced to quit afterwards so there'd be enough jobs for the returning men. Extra positions had also been created by then-recent laws passed to keep businesses from endangering American employees by cutting corners in factories, demanding long shifts in situations where it could cause disaster, etc.
In the 70s, the government started gradually dismantling the regulations that had been added, and the more they removed over time, the greater the boom/bust swings started to become, just as before. So, we're back here in an equivalent to either the Great Depression or to one of the nastier busts that merely preceded it.
(Note: I didn't take economics in college, and I'm essentially going by what I recall from reading in the last year or two, so if I mangled parts of the above explanation, that's why.)
The associations that profit from selling ABA services to understandably scared parents claim that it's "proven" because the kids they use it on show development. Note the lack of any controls or rigorous scientific studies -- the research on autistics is full of poorly-designed studies without controls, unfounded assumptions, charlatans and so forth. (Anyone interested in the topic should check out the blog of researcher Michelle Dawson.)
The few times researchers have tried to compare treatment approaches, they've found that ABA isn't any better than other interactive methods like Floortime, and in some cases (like a major study in the UK a few years ago) the ABA kids end up falling behind other groups. That's because being autistic doesn't mean not developing any further, it means having a brain wired to function & develop differently from that of non-autistics.
You should seek out the many other parents online that aren't using ABA; they've been finding their way together online with the help of autistic adults (some of whom are also parents), and doing quite well. The best person to start with would be Estée Klar; she knows where all of the resources/groups are online for different approaches, and her blog/site is quite interesting/informative to boot.
It's worth reading the report released by Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey -- the summary has some of the same statistics, and all of the details of what he learned are in his letters to & replies from the different carriers.
It's very interesting reading for someone like me that's looking to switch companies sometime soon, since they don't appear to all be handling the situation the same way: T-Mobile, for example, only grants a request if it's "sufficiently specific" and "clearly describes the specific subscriber whose information is sought" while Verizon answers all lawful requests.
Apple chose to be a patent troll. You only try to blame the patent system to try and misplace the blame.
Exactly -- I'd mod you up if I had any points.
While I don't think OS X is awesome, I agree that it will likely get dumped... Before he died, Jobs' plan had been to strangle the Mac line to death, much in the same way he did to the Apple IIgs back when he got a hard-on for the (then-inferior) Macintosh. I think that his death probably greatly slowed that plan, but I'd be surprised if it doesn't still happen in the next few years, especially with Apple semi-subtly pushing users to switch to iOS devices.
Think of Macs as the best UNIX experience you've ever, ever had. Fuck the hardware, I just love OS X.
You love it but plenty of other people like me really dislike the interface. I "think of" OS X as the nastiest BSD (not UNIX) experience I've ever had, kind of like Windows but with a tiny fraction of the compatibility and zero control over anything. (The best UNIX-like experience I've had by far has been in Linux, and no, I'm not a supergeek, I'm a mostly-average user.)
Users dont want that. Users want cool, so they put up with the fist fucking you get as an apple customer.
When was the last time you compiled the latest version of rsync on Windows?
I've never compiled rsync, but I still find the situation Apple puts its consumers in unacceptable. Even if I liked their Mac/iOS products and was rich, I wouldn't want to buy a device that I'd be expected to junk & replace entirely over something like a failing battery or to be banned from upgrading simple parts like RAM.
The biggest sign of a fanboy is defending "their" company no matter what, because they're attached to their idealistic vision rather than the real-life org. The reasonable people that like the company itself rather than their imaginary ideal, OTOH, criticize unethical or blatantly stupid behavior, and in the long run usually won't tolerate it.
Emphasis on anecdotal -- the evidence I've seen thus far suggests Mac systems are about as durable as an average PC. The folks with Macs I know have encountered serious hardware failures (like a frozen-up hard drive) despite being overly gentle, usually well before the age that I see trouble on a typical Toshiba, Sony, or Thinkpad that is being knocked off tables, dropped, etc. while in use.
I find 10-12 year-old laptops decent for everyday work with a good light Linux distro; it's all a matter of what one is used to.
I really wish more people would put their old tech onto Freecycle or Craigslist's "free" area for folks in need -- most orgs that give away computers only let their clients or other orgs, so everyone else is basically out of luck. Even if the stuff isn't totally functional, there are some geeks out there using Freecycle/Craigslist to piece together old broken/unwanted systems, install an easy Linux distro, and give to folks in need.
The "any language including Klingon" would be just one county -- each one has its own slightly different setup, and I know that the one I volunteer in (Sonoma) doesn't offer every language...
The regular vote here is still on paper by default with no plans to change it in the foreseeable future, but each precinct has a Hart eSlate computer set up to let people that are blind, quadriplegic, have shaky hands, etc. vote without human assistance (though it's also available for any citizen that wants to use it).
I'm in charge ("Inspector") of a California precinct, and we use a variant on that as well... The inspector starts the day by showing the first voters that the metal ballot box is empty, then locks it; the voters then sign in (a four-part procedure), fill out their Scantron voting sheets, and drop them into the ballot box. (My county also has a Hart eSlate paper-trail computer set up with disability-access features at each precinct for anyone that wants/needs to use it, since it lets folks that are blind, illiterate, quadriplegic, severely arthritic, etc. vote unassisted.)
I was really shocked when I heard that this isn't how the whole country does it -- it has been this way since I voted for the very first time in 1996, and I'm still not sure why the heck some areas are putting up with nonsense like hanging chads or other potential hazards.
I'm from the SF Bay Area, and folks here don't use the term "flyover country"...
I agree... I watched my city's hand-launched display this year at a park a couple of miles away and really enjoyed being able to focus on the fireworks themselves as they appeared, especially when an unexpected finale was launched as I walked home about five minutes after the show seemingly ended. In contrast, I find that the computer-controlled ones always seem overly predictable due to the precise time gaps between explosions, and their invariably slightly-out-of-sync (or seemingly unrelated) music distracts me rather than enhancing the experience.
If you're schizophrenic, don't both of you surf the net at the same time anyway?
Nah, you're thinking of the Linux of the mental illness world, multiple personality disorder. Schizophrenia causes disorganized speech or thinking, hallucinations, and delusions, more like Windows 8's Metro interface.
Given the crime element in severe piracy, it seems almost inevitable at this point that someone is going to end up the target of violent attacks, the only real questions are when and who the victims will be...
Of course you'd like that, it means that other people are paying so you can freeload...
Debian stable is usually behind -- unstable & testing (and thus all of the distros that offer or use them) have current & recent versions.
Two problems with that:
1) There's a huge range of skill between the kinds of users that are prone to needing support (or hand-holding) and the ones that can compile their own apps and feel it's worthwhile to do so, much as there's a huge gap between a student driver and a professional stunt/racecar driver.
2) People that can/do compile their own apps often also post to support forums because they're working with the code, tackling a problem without being sure of how to address it, or struggling with some problem in compiling the source -- and users at the shallow end of the tech-ability pool can easily be supported by other more-experienced average users without needing the dev's attention at all. Meanwhile, when those more experienced non-compiling users do post in a support forum, it's often because of the sort of problem that would be worked out in bug-testing if the users weren't doubling as bugtesters.
Paying for advanced (i.e. non-user) support makes sense -- but the person that needs support should pay for it regardless of whether they're perpetual newbies or amateur programmers, it shouldn't be covered by the folks that don't need/want assistance (or that are bringing actual problems to the dev's attention).
It wouldn't be saving lives simply because basal cell is barely malignant -- since it often strikes people in their 50s and 60s, their age wouldn't have much to do with it, as they're likely to live another 25+ years.
(It's also hard to consider Mohs surgery invasive, as it's basically a skin equivalent to having a cavity treated, but that's more a matter of perspective... I think of "invasive" as referring to something that's done on the inside of the body and would be very painful without anesthetic.)
Basal cell carcinomas are locally invasive but do not metastasize. Excision with negative margins is curative.
It's not flat-out curative -- the current approach is Mohs surgery, and that has a 94-97% effectiveness depending on whether the cancer is new or a recurrence. Wikipedia explains the reasons in case you're curious.