1) Employers, insurers and financial institutions have access to your credit records 2) Employers and financial institutions have or are fighting for access to your medical records (why employ or make a loan to a dying man) 3) Marketing companies are tracking your shopping, spending, web viewing, etc. habits on a daily basis 4) In its fight against terrorism, the federal government is putting in place systems to find out anything about you at anytime (scan the headlines if you don't believe it).
I'm not paranoid. Just realistic and a bit fatalistic. Privacy in modern America is a myth. Watch what you say or do, because others certainly are.
I found Red Mars to be the best, followed by Green Mars. These two gave the best presentation of what it would be really like to colonize Mars that I've ever read. Cool books.
He does not anticipate any successful challenges from defense attorneys that the tactic is entrapment.
"Entrapment is where the government plants the seed of a crime in the mind of individual who would not otherwise be criminally inclined," Trodden said. " . . . We don't want that. But if we had somebody who was out there, ready to steal something . . . it's good police work."
BTW, Jose doesn't look happy in his booking photo.
* pay local traffic tickets, * renew driver's licenses, * renew vehicle registrations, * pay property taxes, etc.
Once a federal online ID becomes pervasive, it'll be used for every state and local online transaction also, just like SSN's filtered down to the state and local levels. And personally, I don't want M$ having all that info.
Clocking in at 10+ years with the Feds, I can assure you this is just a bandaid to the problem of information technology management in the government. Why?
1) Many (but not all) government IT staff and IT managers are the last ones left behind. That is, much of the good IT and IT management staff moves on to the private sector, leaving behind the mediocre staff. That mediocre staff is what's left to rise to the top of government management. Why? Pay. Government refuses to compensate public sector IT workers what they're actually worth because (see #2).
2) Personnel management. It is virtually impossible inside the Federal government to get rid of IT staff that underperform. That is why Congress is so reluctant to raise pay rates because there ARE so many underperformers on the government IT payroll. If Congress would reform the civil service system so that a) under and non-performers could be fired, and b) managers could pay their good IT staff comparable private sector salaries, nearly 50% of the government's IT problems would evaporate. Don't believe me? We have one woman who didn't show up for work for 4-5 weeks!, rarely called in, and is still working for us. The government union is holding up her firing.
3) Procurement. If you've ever worked for the government and tried to get something major procured quickly for a fast turnaround project, you know the true meaning of irresistable force meets unmovable object. Procurement for IT managers needs to be streamlined so that they can get the hardware, software, and contract resources they need WHEN they need them.
My two cents. The problem is much deeper than staff rotation.
Check out this link to your source:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/about/intro.html
And this quote:
CDIAC responds to data and information requests from users from all over the world who are concerned with the greenhouse effect and global climate change.
The greenhouse effect and global climate change due to it are a theory. Read this center's About and Philosophy sections and you'll see they've already made the assumption that the theory is real.
Given paying an unfair price and free, people choose free.
Hooey!!! Given paying any price and free, people choose free. Why do you think there are so many surveillance cameras and plainclothes security in stores? Because if people could shoplift in total anonymity, many would. Alot would.
What Napster, Morpheus, et. al. have done is the equivalent of removing the surveillance cameras and security guards in music stores and people are stealing like crazy.
The music being stolen is NOT your intellectual property and no matter what the owners of the property want to charge for it, that doesn't give you the right to steal it.
IANAL, but if you didn't register the copyright, you have a harder time proving your case that it's your IP. Some people might use Creative Commons exclusively without registering a copyright, thereby NOT having a registered copyright to fall back on.
You live in Switzerland and have a hard time understanding why the European X-box might be priced higher than in the US? It's stupid to do currency conversions on the boxes for two simple reasons: cost-of-living and cost-of-doing business. Both are much higher on the European continent compared to the U.S. A simple currency conversion doesn't do justice to the extra costs Microsoft has to absorb to do business in Europe.
It's not the idea of dummy terminals. It's the idea of where do you BUY such a terminal? Compaq had the Ipaq internet appliance, but you had to subscribe to a particular ISP to use it. What I'm looking for (and I think alot of other people are too), is an appliance that has something like DHCP so I just plug it in and off I go to the web. Small, compact like the Compaq appliance, but not tied to a particular ISP.
Sure, this thing might be nice in the living room. But you know what I'm really looking for? A small terminal in several rooms in my house where I can access my email, IM, and the web.
And I don't want a $1000 PC in each room.
When is someone going to create a credible web terminal with a small keyboard and an LCD screen that I can hookup to my DSL or Cablemodem and not have to pay MS or Compaq monthly fees for connecting to their network?
"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!" I was watching my son play with a friend's hand-held video game -- a game both boys had earnestly assured me was not violent. The outburst occurred because my six-year-old was not as adept as his friend in manipulating the game: He was not killing fast enough.
Way to go kid! I hope her kid is one of the American pilots strafing Al Queada targets right now. Looks like that hand-held video game might have been good training for him.:)
Until the 1970s capitalism promised a better world to people in the Western countries, to people in the former Soviet bloc and to the Third World. It stopped doing it starting in the 1980s and dismissed it completely in the 1990s. Today the capitalist leaders are glad if they are able to fix the biggest leaks in the sinking ship.
This guy has obviously never heard of the business cycle and transformational technologies. We happen to be at a nexus where the business cycle is bottoming exactly at the time when we have so many promising technologies that will transform society (biotech, nanotech, etc.)
Capitalism works. It's just cyclical. The Marxist utopians always wait until the bottoming of an economic cycle (hence his "sinking ship" metaphor") to wave their red flags and proclaim capitalism dead. And yet, the cycle continues and we'll be on our way up again soon.
As for the capitalism's promise to better the Third World, no such promise existed. Capitalism promises that if you create a fair market, lower barriers to entry, and allow people to innovate and work hard, you'll prosper. The Third World's poverty is not because of capitalism but despite it. If the Third World would get on board, clean up their corrupt governments and change the culture of always wanting a handout, maybe capitalism would work for them.
Ask post-war Korea and Japan about how fast an economy can be rebuilt (within a generation!). You just have to have the culture to do it.
Not a flame. Just an observation. Is it me or does it seem like Microsoft has got an "investment finger" in the pies of a huge number of new technologies coming out?Is this a diversification strategy or a way to say, "Hey, we own part of this company and we'd like you to make so changes suitable to our software?". Just curious.
For the LECs (local exchange carriers like Verizon) that is. What you don't realize is that $30-$35 of your monthly $50-60 DSL fee you paid Northpoint, Rythms, or currently Covad went to the LECs. That's right, 50%+ goes to the Baby Bells because of their monopolies on the local loop. Get some competition on the local loop and the Baby Bells won't be able to squeeze out the profit margins from DSL providers.
OK, by this time I realize you're trolling, but I'll answer this one last time. See my original post:
How about talking about a recent non-technical book you've read, the latest play you saw, summer expedition you went on, politics, or anything OTHER THAN WORK?
I mean, jeez, you really need me to give you talking points for starting a conversation? In a world as varied as we live in there's an infinite number of things to talk about. Books, wars, movies, cloning, plays, civil rights, charities, volunteer work, your phrickin Zodiac sign,....
This is exactly what I hate most about virtually any party in America: talking shop. I know this is about a company Christmas party, but it applies to virtually any social gathering.
First you're asked "What do you do?", and once your job classification has been determined, the conversation then:
1) aborts if the questioner has no idea what it is your talking about. As in, "I'm a network engineer and pretty much diagnose router problems all day". Then, the questioner, a Java hack or marketroid moves on.
2) proceeds full tilt if the questioner's in your line of work.
How about talking about a recent non-technical book you've read, the latest play you saw, summer expedition you went on, politics, or anything OTHER THAN WORK? Nope, not possible here.
American geeks ought to be required to head over to the European continent for six months or so. In many countries there it's consider low class to start a conversation out with, "So whaddya do for a living?" and proceed to talk about your work life.
Slashdot Mirror
From an American perspective:
1) Employers, insurers and financial institutions have access to your credit records
2) Employers and financial institutions have or are fighting for access to your medical records (why employ or make a loan to a dying man)
3) Marketing companies are tracking your shopping, spending, web viewing, etc. habits on a daily basis
4) In its fight against terrorism, the federal government is putting in place systems to find out anything about you at anytime (scan the headlines if you don't believe it).
I'm not paranoid. Just realistic and a bit fatalistic. Privacy in modern America is a myth. Watch what you say or do, because others certainly are.
Red Mars
Green Mars
Blue Mars
I found Red Mars to be the best, followed by Green Mars. These two gave the best presentation of what it would be really like to colonize Mars that I've ever read. Cool books.
If you read the article:
He does not anticipate any successful challenges from defense attorneys that the tactic is entrapment.
"Entrapment is where the government plants the seed of a crime in the mind of individual who would not otherwise be criminally inclined," Trodden said. " . . . We don't want that. But if we had somebody who was out there, ready to steal something . . . it's good police work."
BTW, Jose doesn't look happy in his booking photo.
And you can (online) in my state and locality:
* pay local traffic tickets,
* renew driver's licenses,
* renew vehicle registrations,
* pay property taxes,
etc.
Once a federal online ID becomes pervasive, it'll be used for every state and local online transaction also, just like SSN's filtered down to the state and local levels. And personally, I don't want M$ having all that info.
Clocking in at 10+ years with the Feds, I can assure you this is just a bandaid to the problem of information technology management in the government. Why?
1) Many (but not all) government IT staff and IT managers are the last ones left behind. That is, much of the good IT and IT management staff moves on to the private sector, leaving behind the mediocre staff. That mediocre staff is what's left to rise to the top of government management. Why? Pay. Government refuses to compensate public sector IT workers what they're actually worth because (see #2).
2) Personnel management. It is virtually impossible inside the Federal government to get rid of IT staff that underperform. That is why Congress is so reluctant to raise pay rates because there ARE so many underperformers on the government IT payroll. If Congress would reform the civil service system so that a) under and non-performers could be fired, and b) managers could pay their good IT staff comparable private sector salaries, nearly 50% of the government's IT problems would evaporate. Don't believe me? We have one woman who didn't show up for work for 4-5 weeks!, rarely called in, and is still working for us. The government union is holding up her firing.
3) Procurement. If you've ever worked for the government and tried to get something major procured quickly for a fast turnaround project, you know the true meaning of irresistable force meets unmovable object. Procurement for IT managers needs to be streamlined so that they can get the hardware, software, and contract resources they need WHEN they need them.
My two cents. The problem is much deeper than staff rotation.
And this quote:
CDIAC responds to data and information requests from users from all over the world who are concerned with the greenhouse effect and global climate change.
The greenhouse effect and global climate change due to it are a theory. Read this center's About and Philosophy sections and you'll see they've already made the assumption that the theory is real.
That's not science. That's dogma.
Big bully Microsoft knocks Sony out of the playground.
Sony's going to get the sympathy vote out of this. And portrayed as a victim in the press.
Dumb move Microsoft.
Given paying an unfair price and free, people choose free.
Hooey!!! Given paying any price and free, people choose free. Why do you think there are so many surveillance cameras and plainclothes security in stores? Because if people could shoplift in total anonymity, many would. Alot would.
What Napster, Morpheus, et. al. have done is the equivalent of removing the surveillance cameras and security guards in music stores and people are stealing like crazy.
The music being stolen is NOT your intellectual property and no matter what the owners of the property want to charge for it, that doesn't give you the right to steal it.
occurs 20 times in the article. As in:
But the benefits, if they succeed, will be huge.
I think this is carrying the "open source" moniker a bit too far.
What we're talking about is simply publicly available information.
This guy is advocating gathering it and sifting it for useful nuggets of intelligence, a goal with which I agree.IANAL, but if you didn't register the copyright, you have a harder time proving your case that it's your IP. Some people might use Creative Commons exclusively without registering a copyright, thereby NOT having a registered copyright to fall back on.
I bet they'll be paying particular attention to creating fine print that says, "use our licenses at your own risk."
You live in Switzerland and have a hard time understanding why the European X-box might be priced higher than in the US? It's stupid to do currency conversions on the boxes for two simple reasons: cost-of-living and cost-of-doing business. Both are much higher on the European continent compared to the U.S. A simple currency conversion doesn't do justice to the extra costs Microsoft has to absorb to do business in Europe.
It's not the idea of dummy terminals. It's the idea of where do you BUY such a terminal? Compaq had the Ipaq internet appliance, but you had to subscribe to a particular ISP to use it. What I'm looking for (and I think alot of other people are too), is an appliance that has something like DHCP so I just plug it in and off I go to the web. Small, compact like the Compaq appliance, but not tied to a particular ISP.
And I don't want a $1000 PC in each room.
When is someone going to create a credible web terminal with a small keyboard and an LCD screen that I can hookup to my DSL or Cablemodem and not have to pay MS or Compaq monthly fees for connecting to their network?
"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!" I was watching my son play with a friend's hand-held video game -- a game both boys had earnestly assured me was not violent. The outburst occurred because my six-year-old was not as adept as his friend in manipulating the game: He was not killing fast enough.
:)
Way to go kid! I hope her kid is one of the American pilots strafing Al Queada targets right now. Looks like that hand-held video game might have been good training for him.
Until the 1970s capitalism promised a better world to people in the Western countries, to people in the former Soviet bloc and to the Third World. It stopped doing it starting in the 1980s and dismissed it completely in the 1990s. Today the capitalist leaders are glad if they are able to fix the biggest leaks in the sinking ship.
This guy has obviously never heard of the business cycle and transformational technologies. We happen to be at a nexus where the business cycle is bottoming exactly at the time when we have so many promising technologies that will transform society (biotech, nanotech, etc.)
Capitalism works. It's just cyclical. The Marxist utopians always wait until the bottoming of an economic cycle (hence his "sinking ship" metaphor") to wave their red flags and proclaim capitalism dead. And yet, the cycle continues and we'll be on our way up again soon.
As for the capitalism's promise to better the Third World, no such promise existed. Capitalism promises that if you create a fair market, lower barriers to entry, and allow people to innovate and work hard, you'll prosper. The Third World's poverty is not because of capitalism but despite it. If the Third World would get on board, clean up their corrupt governments and change the culture of always wanting a handout, maybe capitalism would work for them.
Ask post-war Korea and Japan about how fast an economy can be rebuilt (within a generation!). You just have to have the culture to do it.
Not a flame. Just an observation. Is it me or does it seem like Microsoft has got an "investment finger" in the pies of a huge number of new technologies coming out?Is this a diversification strategy or a way to say, "Hey, we own part of this company and we'd like you to make so changes suitable to our software?".
Just curious.
For the LECs (local exchange carriers like Verizon) that is. What you don't realize is that $30-$35 of your monthly $50-60 DSL fee you paid Northpoint, Rythms, or currently Covad went to the LECs. That's right, 50%+ goes to the Baby Bells because of their monopolies on the local loop. Get some competition on the local loop and the Baby Bells won't be able to squeeze out the profit margins from DSL providers.
OK, by this time I realize you're trolling, but I'll answer this one last time. See my original post:
How about talking about a recent non-technical book you've read, the latest play you saw, summer expedition you went on, politics, or anything OTHER THAN WORK?
I mean, jeez, you really need me to give you talking points for starting a conversation? In a world as varied as we live in there's an infinite number of things to talk about. Books, wars, movies, cloning, plays, civil rights, charities, volunteer work, your phrickin Zodiac sign, ....
Still need help? Here's a geek solution:
Google Search - Converation StartersBy asking me what a good ice-breaker would be.
No, it's a recognition that there are other things to life than your cubicle. Anyone can talk about what they do for a living, even a streetsweeper.
A more developed individual has other interests and activities which he or she can converse about. Not just real-life Dilbert episodes.
This is exactly what I hate most about virtually any party in America: talking shop. I know this is about a company Christmas party, but it applies to virtually any social gathering.
First you're asked "What do you do?", and once your job classification has been determined, the conversation then:
1) aborts if the questioner has no idea what it is your talking about. As in, "I'm a network engineer and pretty much diagnose router problems all day". Then, the questioner, a Java hack or marketroid moves on.
2) proceeds full tilt if the questioner's in your line of work.
How about talking about a recent non-technical book you've read, the latest play you saw, summer expedition you went on, politics, or anything OTHER THAN WORK? Nope, not possible here.
American geeks ought to be required to head over to the European continent for six months or so. In many countries there it's consider low class to start a conversation out with, "So whaddya do for a living?" and proceed to talk about your work life.
I think they've got the manpower.
Basically, this technology just allows us to remix, rehash pop (movie) art again and again.
But where's the creativity? The budding young stars that will be left out while the digital imitations of former greats crowd the screens?
I know, I know, look to music remixes and how creative they are. But honestly, I'd prefer a new artist with a great new sound to a remix anyday.
I hope the same doesn't start happening as much with cinema.