What is so impressive about this though? If you were to ask auto mechanics which had strong brand recognition, Snap-On or Google, they would probably say Snap-On. The original poster was making it sound like some sort of a triumph that Google has managed to increase brand recognition among advertisers. Seeing as how advertising is what they sell, isn't this to be expected?
And what is the nature of the survey? Where is there an advertising executive that knows about Google, but can't tell you what sort of service, product, or event is provided or presented by the Coca-Cola Company? "Gee whiz. I have no idea. Say, how about a nice refresing glass of goat's milk?" What question was asked to make it that an executive cannot recognize the leading brand in an advertising fueled industry? Surely their trade magazines are always talking about the latest round in the cola wars.
"Dayton said legislators will keep looking for the right balance between a low-cost service free from government control and a system without annoyances like spam."
First of all, the Do-Not-Call registry is a wildly popular government intervention. Legisaltors, seeing a win, are looking at ways of solving their constitants problems with the tool they have available: the law. That is their job. They are responding to calls by citizens to do something about spam.
Maybe they are not the right people to do something about spam. If you read the article, or the above statement, they seem to be aware that they are not the right people to do something about spam. Did you read the article?
This is an unthinking, knee-jerk reaction. Senator Dayton is responding to a problem, by talking about it and thinking about it. The gist of what he says is true: Spam is huge because the costs are miniscule. There needs to be a change in the economics of Spam.
He might not have the requisite genius to post on/., but at least he is understands that it is a problem costing us time and productivity, and is looking for ways to assist us in stemming the flow.
Read critically, why don't you? Yes, taxing e-mail is barking mad, which is why Sen Dayton "stressed that he is not advocating it", which is alo why the reporter brought it to the for in her article. New taxes from a Minnisota Senator, that's good copy.
Recently I got sent a message to someone and got a repsonse that sent me to knowspam.net. It is just an example of a whitelist that non-technical worker might be able to use.
I use TMDA and my inbox is close to spam free, but it has a UI that is tricky and configuration is time consuming.
http://knowspam.net/ http://tmda.net/
TMDA asks you to to reply. Knowspam asks you to enter numbers from a GIF into an HTML form, just like some registration forms. Once you do this, your address is good for all Knowspam users.
Is a whitelist a solution or will spammers eventually figure out how to get around them?
I don't think it's wise to force everyone into a new, irrelevant (unless you own an HDTV) format just to avoid paying American royalty fees.
Doubt they will force everyone, it will be enough for the format to be adopted domestically. As long as they market a combo DVD-EVD player, and push for releases of content on EVD in China, then what does it matter if you purchase this format or that?
DVDs are already segemented acording to their region, which might end up making it easier to introduce a regional DVD alternative. They don't have to target the US, just Asia, and other Asia electronics manufacturers might see the benifit of a regional technology for domestic consumption.
Re:Reminder: Paying the $699 opens you to suits.
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 1
Alright, I know that SCO asks its 699? paying foolish customers to agree with a EULA that states SCO to be the owner of of GNU/Linux code...So what? That doesn't prove anything at all...
It doesn't have to prove anything at all. The wording of the contract can be such that you are opening yourself to leagal action if you don't play by SCO's rules. The OP was making the point that SCO is suing IBM for contract violations. They are now threatening to sue Novell. They are a litigious firm, and entering into a contract with a litigious organization is an invitation to litigation.
People keep saying that the Judge will laugh this or that out of court. I'd rather not fork over a couple of million to my just to see the smile on the judges face.
Why? Because it may reveal that one Sheriff Garrett was really a murderer, covering his crime with wild claims. This would serve justice to his victim. The effort will be made to verify the claims of Brushy Bill Roberts of Texas who died at the age of 90 claiming to be the muderous outlaw. If this man is Billy the Kid, is it so distasteful to disturb his grave, seeing as how he sent so many people to their graves? To exhume the man who claimed to be Billy The Kid would dispoil the grave of an killer or a fraud claiming to be an killer. Besides, if Roberts is the Kid, I'm sure he'd gladly oblige anyone who clould prove his claim. If not, then to disturb his rest would merely be an exercise in situational irony.
Freudian typo! I ment Mormon! My apologies to the Mormon faithful. I am very sorry.
I hope Darl and co get sued individually by hordes of Linux contributors for damaging Linux business and end up poverty stricken on the street corner begging for booze money in Salt Lake City.
A devout Mormon begging for alcohol in the Mormon capitol. Now, thats an imaginative penance. I second.
I hope Darl and co get sued individually by hordes of Linux contributors for damaging Linux business and end up poverty stricken on the street corner begging for booze money in Salt Lake City.
A devout Moron begging for alcohol in the Moron capitol. Now, thats an imaginative penance. I second.
Anyone know what he is talking about here? So, Windows and Unix are almost 5000 dog years old. How is this little piece of info helping his argument. Can anyone help me out here. I don't see it. I think he is trying to make linux look like the old beast of the ancients, when it is actually newer than Windows is. I mean, Windows the OS didn't happen till 1993 with NT 3.1- linux was 'born' in 1990. Prior to 93, windows was an OE.
I can't get a round number for his technology years. Xerox PARC was 1973, which means that one earth year is 166.20689655172413793103448275862 technology years. UNIX was begun in 1969 meaning that one earth year is 146.060606... technology years.
That's about all the factoring I feel like doing today.
Of course, for all I know one of the above numbers may be the correct one for technology years. This stuff is way above my head. I didn't go to Yale.
I know this is off topic, but does anyone know when they are going to release Windows 292,559.393939...?
What happends when you wake up 2,000 years from now attached to the body of a goat? Whose to say these ice houses won't be bought out be a company that is genetically engineering a new form of pet that can regale you with stories of the great Internet crash.
On the other head, waking up on top of a genetically engineered body sounds like fun.
Here's a thought. Today you pay for the freezing, but isn't the thawing going to be much more expensive? How do you pay for that?
Two years ago, I was in Rio for the new year where I ordered a T-Bone steak at a restaurant on the beach. It came late so they gave me an extra fillet mignon. I was amazed at how much food, beef no less, was placed before me. A table full of German tourists started at me in horror. I'd never been abroad and had such bounty in a restaurant. Certianly not in Europe/UK. Excellent steak, too.
Also, keep in mind that Mugabe ordered a halt to the winter wheat harvest in June. This is part of a plan that will redistribute 95% of commercial farmland. Some 60% of commerical farms, 2,900 farms, where ordered to halt work. This was done during a food shortage, with the country on the brink of salvation. The plan is redistribute the commecical farms from white to black ownership. In practice, the land becomes gifts for Mugabe's cronies. Cereal production has fallen 67% since 1999-2000 accoridnig to the World Food Program, and will certianly tumble further.
Rather than looking for grand conspiracies by US firms to starve Zimbabwians, look at the corrupt government of Robert Mugabe. It seems unlikely that someone who has wrecked such havoc on his nations agri-business would be interested in protecting his crops for the European market. If he is, then its the nature of the dictator to set absurd priorities.
Getting rid of these other developers is not so evil. Perhaps they will be excellent programmers some day, but they need time to grow, and the need supervision. It doesn't sound like you have the time to mentor and educate junior developers, and finish this project on time. Production assemebly programming is not a good place for novices to start. They start out scripting for the web site, or maintaing existing code.
These guys are obviously starting their coding careers from scratch. They need simple tasks and a lot of supervision. Your experience and speed at programming, combined witht he urgency of this project, is probably intmidating them. You may be under too much stress to comunicate your goals properly. I doubt you have time time to teach basic programmnig skills. Do you have time to do pair programming, or code reviews, or other types of hand holding?
Have them reassigned. If you want to work with other people on a DSP written in C and assembly, get really good programers with years of experience. Or go it alone.
Your waving Brooks Law around shows a lack of understanding. The notion is that in order to bring a new person onto a project, those who are currently programming must spend time educating that person about the project. Currently, you have four people working with you from the start, and you have been unable to explain the project to them. You are the only one coding, and now you are asking slashdot about how to rally these other programmers who are obviously in over their heads. Don't you think that this time would be better spend explaining the project to a verteran assmebly programmer who doesn't need mentoring? Brooks warns about the drawbacks of increased communication. Replace these four with one darn good programmer and you have reduced communcation requirements, not increased them. (You aren't adding, you are reducing.)
Strip the team down to one crackerjack developer, and hire one other crackerjack developer. A second person capable of writing the code all by herself. Give that person the salary of the four guys who have been reassigned. If you can't get productive work out of a hand picked, veteran C programmer who's getting paid a kings ransom, then you need to step down from the role as project lead.
Also, you don't want to set up your research hub too close to a big city. There is too much competition for comptuer talent.
If you set up a research hub in the middle of nowhere, you won't have competition for your talent. If you can get your high paid researchers to move out into the sticks and enjoy the quite life, you only have to defend against the few other tech companies, rather than all of the industry found in Charleston, or as someone else requested, San Dieago.
Agreed. Often times it helps to sit down with non-technical people and remind them that you too believe that the customer comes first. As trite as that may sound, starting a converstation with that sentiment will change their attitude to your comments dramatically. Really, I've had breakthroughs with the non-technical management when I have said, "I want to get this to market as soon as possible, so here's what I think we should do..."
Isn't about time the Palm OS provided threaded applications? My understanding it that it is build into the OS, but there are currently no APIs. In the Treo, at least, when you are on the phone, you can't continue to use your applications. It seems to me that this will put Palm OS at a disadvantage as PDAs are integrated with cell phones.
> Thats not at all like the system we have in the US!
No its not.
* Under the legal system, a woman's testimony as a witness is worth only half that of a man.
* Women detained for failing to cover their hair and to wear a flowing garment hiding the shape of their bodies were subjected to fines, up to seventy-four lashes or to prison terms of up to three months.
* Seven people were reported by opposition groups to have been convicted of adultery and stoned to death in October 1997 and six more were reported to have been sentenced to stoning in January.
* [I]n September, the independent newspapers Rah-e No and Tavana were ordered closed by administrative decree. The judiciary declared that it was creating a special body to monitor the conduct of the press and to refer writers to revolutionary courts.
* An 18 year-old man identfied as Ali-Reza was sentenced to 40 lashings for stealing a pair of shoes. A serial thief reportedly had the fingers of his right hand amputated in Shahreza.
> Also, I'm not 100% sure that Iran is a signatory to > the international copyright laws anyway. So what > exactly the MPAA could do is unclear...
Iran is really outside of international law these days. It has no relationship with the US to speak of. Recently, they have been cast as our enemy, part of the axis-of-evil an all.
So what is to stop the MPAA from combating this flavor of priacy with DoS attacks? It can't be that hard to bring a RealPlayer to its knees when it is trying to serve full length features. When you run from the law you are no longer protected by it.
This is not higher education, but a project for K-12 educators. It has been well recieved by Michigan educators. The idea is to create a clearing house where sites are categorirzed according to the Michigan Curriculum Framework, a state-wide classification system for teaching materials. Teachers can find resources based on the standards they have to meet.
The materials are categorized by teachers and librarians using a back end interface.
It is really simple, but effective.
http://mtn.merit.edu/
If someone were to require licensed, insured, and bonded engineers to write their software, what happens when an "amature" writes something useful.
If I am tree surgon who's teen-age son knows enough about computers to write me a program that counts trees in such a way that all of my colleuges want a copy, and are willing to pay for it, do I have to deny them? Yes, this program is saving me time with administration, Jim, but I can't let you have a copy because it is not accedited and there are liability issues. In order to distrubute it I would have to hire a board certified engineer to rewrite the software on an accedited computing platform using a computer language approved for business adminstration and accounting. Just doing the research for the requirements took so much time, I don't want to bother with certification. I'd just let you have a copy, but my lawyer said that once I do that, software has a way of copying itself, so I am only supposed to use it myself.
In the real world, Jim is going to swear on a stack of Bibles that he won't sue, and use the software at his peril, which is what we do when we break the shrink wrap. The program I use for time tracking occassionally messes up my data. That's why I back up every night. Is a nucense, but better than pen and paper, or a spreadsheet. The first time it happend, I lost money, but I accepted it, and sought to make the software work.
In our litigous society, you are opening the floodgates. What happens if I click the wrong menu item and delete an import record? May I now sue the software publisher for not popping up a confirmation dialog box?
Okay, the reality is that computers are tools and software is how we make our computers work. Where is the line? If I create an Excel macro and share the workbook with someone, have I just distributed software and opened myself up to liability?
People don't like paying money for software. Software projects tend to run over budget and over time, meaning they cost people more than they expected. How are those that comission software going to respond to the notion that they have to pay for regulation on top of design and impelemntation, training, tech-support, and administration? Because there will be a cost, and because the people regulating will be computer professionals, the cost won't be cheep.
The quailty of regulation will be low. If you are a qualified computer programmer are you going to look for a job where you read other people's code, or are you going to want to write code yourself? If you are cracker jack programmer, are you going to take a job on board reviewing software from all comers, or accept a position with a promsing firm. The people blessing the software will be the people least qualified to do so.
Wonderful - Mozilla is so intimidating
on
Mozilla Bug Week
·
· Score: 1
I made an effort to comment of XSLT functionality with multiple newsgroup posts, but got no response. These days, I may have the time to hack Mozilla.
That Ernie and Bert are homosexual is an old and tired joke. Its not so much distasteful as it is lame. The kind of humor for those who are wise enough to see through sesame street, but not wise enough to see past junior high.
Being a homosexual is not a shameful, therefore funny, thing. Fining for innuendo in childrens programming, where children are being tought to socialize, does not require much of an imagination. See? Its lame.
I learned more from Ernie and Bert than I ever learned in school. Long live Sesame Street.
The Germans did penetrate the Maginot Line. Their initial strategy was to evelop the French by marching through the Belgum, making a wide arc to the West. But they found that they were breaking trough everywere. Boyed by their succss they opted for a double pincer movement, advancing in the East as well as the West. This change of plan was a key mistake that saved Paris. (Or that's how it goes to hear Barbara Tushman tell it.)
The Maginot Line, like the network fortreses in Belguim, was no match for the Germans heavy artillery. Fortesses were rendered obsolete by enourmous railway guns firing 750-1000 lb. shells.
Slashdot Mirror
What is so impressive about this though? If you were to ask auto mechanics which had strong brand recognition, Snap-On or Google, they would probably say Snap-On. The original poster was making it sound like some sort of a triumph that Google has managed to increase brand recognition among advertisers. Seeing as how advertising is what they sell, isn't this to be expected?
And what is the nature of the survey? Where is there an advertising executive that knows about Google, but can't tell you what sort of service, product, or event is provided or presented by the Coca-Cola Company? "Gee whiz. I have no idea. Say, how about a nice refresing glass of goat's milk?" What question was asked to make it that an executive cannot recognize the leading brand in an advertising fueled industry? Surely their trade magazines are always talking about the latest round in the cola wars.
"Dayton said legislators will keep looking for the right balance between a low-cost service free from government control and a system without annoyances like spam."
/., but at least he is understands that it is a problem costing us time and productivity, and is looking for ways to assist us in stemming the flow.
First of all, the Do-Not-Call registry is a wildly popular government intervention. Legisaltors, seeing a win, are looking at ways of solving their constitants problems with the tool they have available: the law. That is their job. They are responding to calls by citizens to do something about spam.
Maybe they are not the right people to do something about spam. If you read the article, or the above statement, they seem to be aware that they are not the right people to do something about spam. Did you read the article?
This is an unthinking, knee-jerk reaction. Senator Dayton is responding to a problem, by talking about it and thinking about it. The gist of what he says is true: Spam is huge because the costs are miniscule. There needs to be a change in the economics of Spam.
He might not have the requisite genius to post on
Read critically, why don't you? Yes, taxing e-mail is barking mad, which is why Sen Dayton "stressed that he is not advocating it", which is alo why the reporter brought it to the for in her article. New taxes from a Minnisota Senator, that's good copy.
Recently I got sent a message to someone and got a repsonse that sent me to knowspam.net. It is just an example of a whitelist that non-technical worker might be able to use.
I use TMDA and my inbox is close to spam free, but it has a UI that is tricky and configuration is time consuming.
http://knowspam.net/
http://tmda.net/
TMDA asks you to to reply. Knowspam asks you to enter numbers from a GIF into an HTML form, just like some registration forms. Once you do this, your address is good for all Knowspam users.
Is a whitelist a solution or will spammers eventually figure out how to get around them?
I don't think it's wise to force everyone into a new, irrelevant (unless you own an HDTV) format just to avoid paying American royalty fees.
Doubt they will force everyone, it will be enough for the format to be adopted domestically. As long as they market a combo DVD-EVD player, and push for releases of content on EVD in China, then what does it matter if you purchase this format or that?
DVDs are already segemented acording to their region, which might end up making it easier to introduce a regional DVD alternative. They don't have to target the US, just Asia, and other Asia electronics manufacturers might see the benifit of a regional technology for domestic consumption.
Alright, I know that SCO asks its 699? paying foolish customers to agree with a EULA that states SCO to be the owner of of GNU/Linux code...So what? That doesn't prove anything at all...
It doesn't have to prove anything at all. The wording of the contract can be such that you are opening yourself to leagal action if you don't play by SCO's rules. The OP was making the point that SCO is suing IBM for contract violations. They are now threatening to sue Novell. They are a litigious firm, and entering into a contract with a litigious organization is an invitation to litigation.
People keep saying that the Judge will laugh this or that out of court. I'd rather not fork over a couple of million to my just to see the smile on the judges face.
IHT Article
Why? Because it may reveal that one Sheriff Garrett was really a murderer, covering his crime with wild claims. This would serve justice to his victim. The effort will be made to verify the claims of Brushy Bill Roberts of Texas who died at the age of 90 claiming to be the muderous outlaw. If this man is Billy the Kid, is it so distasteful to disturb his grave, seeing as how he sent so many people to their graves? To exhume the man who claimed to be Billy The Kid would dispoil the grave of an killer or a fraud claiming to be an killer. Besides, if Roberts is the Kid, I'm sure he'd gladly oblige anyone who clould prove his claim. If not, then to disturb his rest would merely be an exercise in situational irony.
But, my goodness, that poor lady!
Freudian typo! I ment Mormon! My apologies to the Mormon faithful. I am very sorry.
I hope Darl and co get sued individually by hordes of Linux contributors for damaging Linux business and end up poverty stricken on the street corner begging for booze money in Salt Lake City.
A devout Mormon begging for alcohol in the Mormon capitol. Now, thats an imaginative penance. I second.
A devout Moron begging for alcohol in the Moron capitol. Now, thats an imaginative penance. I second.
I can't get a round number for his technology years. Xerox PARC was 1973, which means that one earth year is 166.20689655172413793103448275862 technology years. UNIX was begun in 1969 meaning that one earth year is 146.060606... technology years.
That's about all the factoring I feel like doing today.
Of course, for all I know one of the above numbers may be the correct one for technology years. This stuff is way above my head. I didn't go to Yale.
I know this is off topic, but does anyone know when they are going to release Windows 292,559.393939...?
What happends when you wake up 2,000 years from now attached to the body of a goat? Whose to say these ice houses won't be bought out be a company that is genetically engineering a new form of pet that can regale you with stories of the great Internet crash.
On the other head, waking up on top of a genetically engineered body sounds like fun.
Here's a thought. Today you pay for the freezing, but isn't the thawing going to be much more expensive? How do you pay for that?
Two years ago, I was in Rio for the new year where I ordered a T-Bone steak at a restaurant on the beach. It came late so they gave me an extra fillet mignon. I was amazed at how much food, beef no less, was placed before me. A table full of German tourists started at me in horror. I'd never been abroad and had such bounty in a restaurant. Certianly not in Europe/UK. Excellent steak, too.
Also, keep in mind that Mugabe ordered a halt to the winter wheat harvest in June. This is part of a plan that will redistribute 95% of commercial farmland. Some 60% of commerical farms, 2,900 farms, where ordered to halt work. This was done during a food shortage, with the country on the brink of salvation. The plan is redistribute the commecical farms from white to black ownership. In practice, the land becomes gifts for Mugabe's cronies. Cereal production has fallen 67% since 1999-2000 accoridnig to the World Food Program, and will certianly tumble further.
Rather than looking for grand conspiracies by US firms to starve Zimbabwians, look at the corrupt government of Robert Mugabe. It seems unlikely that someone who has wrecked such havoc on his nations agri-business would be interested in protecting his crops for the European market. If he is, then its the nature of the dictator to set absurd priorities.
Getting rid of these other developers is not so evil. Perhaps they will be excellent programmers some day, but they need time to grow, and the need supervision. It doesn't sound like you have the time to mentor and educate junior developers, and finish this project on time. Production assemebly programming is not a good place for novices to start. They start out scripting for the web site, or maintaing existing code.
These guys are obviously starting their coding careers from scratch. They need simple tasks and a lot of supervision. Your experience and speed at programming, combined witht he urgency of this project, is probably intmidating them. You may be under too much stress to comunicate your goals properly. I doubt you have time time to teach basic programmnig skills. Do you have time to do pair programming, or code reviews, or other types of hand holding?
Have them reassigned. If you want to work with other people on a DSP written in C and assembly, get really good programers with years of experience. Or go it alone.
Your waving Brooks Law around shows a lack of understanding. The notion is that in order to bring a new person onto a project, those who are currently programming must spend time educating that person about the project. Currently, you have four people working with you from the start, and you have been unable to explain the project to them. You are the only one coding, and now you are asking slashdot about how to rally these other programmers who are obviously in over their heads. Don't you think that this time would be better spend explaining the project to a verteran assmebly programmer who doesn't need mentoring? Brooks warns about the drawbacks of increased communication. Replace these four with one darn good programmer and you have reduced communcation requirements, not increased them. (You aren't adding, you are reducing.)
Strip the team down to one crackerjack developer, and hire one other crackerjack developer. A second person capable of writing the code all by herself. Give that person the salary of the four guys who have been reassigned. If you can't get productive work out of a hand picked, veteran C programmer who's getting paid a kings ransom, then you need to step down from the role as project lead.
Also, you don't want to set up your research hub too close to a big city. There is too much competition for comptuer talent.
If you set up a research hub in the middle of nowhere, you won't have competition for your talent. If you can get your high paid researchers to move out into the sticks and enjoy the quite life, you only have to defend against the few other tech companies, rather than all of the industry found in Charleston, or as someone else requested, San Dieago.
A great article from Aug 2001, if you have a subscription to the Economist you can read it here:
_ ID =718860
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story
Over population has a natural check. As people get richer, they have smaller families. (Italy, for example, is starting to shrink.)
Global warming, loss of biodiversity, and pollution are are all real problems, but they are exagaerated by some envrionmentalists.
But that's okay. Its what envrionmentalists do. Raise awareness.
Agreed. Often times it helps to sit down with non-technical people and remind them that you too believe that the customer comes first. As trite as that may sound, starting a converstation with that sentiment will change their attitude to your comments dramatically. Really, I've had breakthroughs with the non-technical management when I have said, "I want to get this to market as soon as possible, so here's what I think we should do..."
Isn't about time the Palm OS provided threaded applications? My understanding it that it is build into the OS, but there are currently no APIs. In the Treo, at least, when you are on the phone, you can't continue to use your applications. It seems to me that this will put Palm OS at a disadvantage as PDAs are integrated with cell phones.
> Thats not at all like the system we have in the US!
/ global/human_rights/1998_ hrp_report/iran.htmlo rt99/mideast/iran.html
No its not.
* Under the legal system, a woman's testimony as a witness is worth only half that of a man.
* Women detained for failing to cover their hair and to wear a flowing garment hiding the shape of their bodies were subjected to fines, up to seventy-four lashes or to prison terms of up to three months.
* Seven people were reported by opposition groups to have been convicted of adultery and stoned to death in October 1997 and six more were reported to have been sentenced to stoning in January.
* [I]n September, the independent newspapers Rah-e No and Tavana were ordered closed by administrative decree. The judiciary declared that it was creating a special body to monitor the conduct of the press and to refer writers to revolutionary courts.
* An 18 year-old man identfied as Ali-Reza was sentenced to 40 lashings for stealing a pair of shoes. A serial thief reportedly had the fingers of his right hand amputated in Shahreza.
http://www.ihrwg.org/
http://www.state.gov/www
http://www.hrw.org/worldrep
> Also, I'm not 100% sure that Iran is a signatory to
> the international copyright laws anyway. So what
> exactly the MPAA could do is unclear...
Iran is really outside of international law these days. It has no relationship with the US to speak of. Recently, they have been cast as our enemy, part of the axis-of-evil an all.
So what is to stop the MPAA from combating this flavor of priacy with DoS attacks? It can't be that hard to bring a RealPlayer to its knees when it is trying to serve full length features. When you run from the law you are no longer protected by it.
This is not higher education, but a project for K-12 educators. It has been well recieved by Michigan educators. The idea is to create a clearing house where sites are categorirzed according to the Michigan Curriculum Framework, a state-wide classification system for teaching materials. Teachers can find resources based on the standards they have to meet.
The materials are categorized by teachers and librarians using a back end interface.
It is really simple, but effective.
http://mtn.merit.edu/
If someone were to require licensed, insured, and bonded engineers to write their software, what happens when an "amature" writes something useful.
If I am tree surgon who's teen-age son knows enough about computers to write me a program that counts trees in such a way that all of my colleuges want a copy, and are willing to pay for it, do I have to deny them? Yes, this program is saving me time with administration, Jim, but I can't let you have a copy because it is not accedited and there are liability issues. In order to distrubute it I would have to hire a board certified engineer to rewrite the software on an accedited computing platform using a computer language approved for business adminstration and accounting. Just doing the research for the requirements took so much time, I don't want to bother with certification. I'd just let you have a copy, but my lawyer said that once I do that, software has a way of copying itself, so I am only supposed to use it myself.
In the real world, Jim is going to swear on a stack of Bibles that he won't sue, and use the software at his peril, which is what we do when we break the shrink wrap. The program I use for time tracking occassionally messes up my data. That's why I back up every night. Is a nucense, but better than pen and paper, or a spreadsheet. The first time it happend, I lost money, but I accepted it, and sought to make the software work.
In our litigous society, you are opening the floodgates. What happens if I click the wrong menu item and delete an import record? May I now sue the software publisher for not popping up a confirmation dialog box?
Okay, the reality is that computers are tools and software is how we make our computers work. Where is the line? If I create an Excel macro and share the workbook with someone, have I just distributed software and opened myself up to liability?
People don't like paying money for software. Software projects tend to run over budget and over time, meaning they cost people more than they expected. How are those that comission software going to respond to the notion that they have to pay for regulation on top of design and impelemntation, training, tech-support, and administration? Because there will be a cost, and because the people regulating will be computer professionals, the cost won't be cheep.
The quailty of regulation will be low. If you are a qualified computer programmer are you going to look for a job where you read other people's code, or are you going to want to write code yourself? If you are cracker jack programmer, are you going to take a job on board reviewing software from all comers, or accept a position with a promsing firm. The people blessing the software will be the people least qualified to do so.
I made an effort to comment of XSLT functionality with multiple newsgroup posts, but got no response. These days, I may have the time to hack Mozilla.
A very good idea of theirs to have an open house.
That Ernie and Bert are homosexual is an old and tired joke. Its not so much distasteful as it is lame. The kind of humor for those who are wise enough to see through sesame street, but not wise enough to see past junior high.
Being a homosexual is not a shameful, therefore funny, thing. Fining for innuendo in childrens programming, where children are being tought to socialize, does not require much of an imagination. See? Its lame.
I learned more from Ernie and Bert than I ever learned in school. Long live Sesame Street.
Will Linux be Wall Street's next killer app?
Isn't it the other way around?
The Germans did penetrate the Maginot Line. Their initial strategy was to evelop the French by marching through the Belgum, making a wide arc to the West. But they found that they were breaking trough everywere. Boyed by their succss they opted for a double pincer movement, advancing in the East as well as the West. This change of plan was a key mistake that saved Paris. (Or that's how it goes to hear Barbara Tushman tell it.)
The Maginot Line, like the network fortreses in Belguim, was no match for the Germans heavy artillery. Fortesses were rendered obsolete by enourmous railway guns firing 750-1000 lb. shells.