I think it's great that this is happening and look forward to the adoption of open textbooks.
However, I looked at the PDFs that they post on their website, and they look awful. The formulas and plots were hard to read and pixelated. They should have used LaTeX for their typesetting and formulas and maybe sage or matplotlib to make the graphs.
In my case, they still haven't taken down the file a few hours later. You should definitely send the story to your local paper. I wonder if they would pick it up.
I found this article very interesting, so I used the methods listed to find a treasure trove of credit card numbers in the form of an excel order sheet complete with names phone numbers and addresses. I emailed the website, a local private school, to tell them of the problem. Within minutes I received this reply:
I just received your e-mail and very much appreciate you bringing this to my attention. I had no idea that this file had been posted to the internet. This was the one and only time we ever did anything where we had credit cards and it was for a third party. That is why I was so insistant that we do not use credit card numbers. I will take appropriate action, immediately. Gratefully,
Roberta ********* Executive Director
While it's good that this person is responsive, it is also amazing to me that people can be so careless with sensitive information. There were 17 credit card numbers in an excel file. Two of the numbers were expired, so I would guess that the file had been posted for over a year. I am sure people have been defrauded for this. There should be a license required to build web pages. . .
I would strongly recommend reading What Color is Your Parachute? This is a great book to help you work through what new career you would enjoy. Although it may seem to be a job hunting book, it also focuses a lot on changing your career. Here's a quick summary from Amazon for the lazy:
Richard Nelson Bolles offers hope and presents an inspiring and detailed plan for finding your place in this uncertain job market. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? has been the best-selling job-hunting book in the world for more three decades, in good times and bad, and it continues to be a fixture on best-seller lists, from Amazon.com to Business Week. It has well over eight million copies in print and has been translated into 12 languages around the world. With an extended preface that addresses job loss, vacancies, and outsourcing and updated references on how to use the Internet in your job-hunt throughout, the 2006 PARACHUTE addresses the top concerns of today 's job-hunters. In the words of Fortune magazine: "Parachute remains the gold standard of! career guides."
I know that Consumer Reports' computer reviews will not satisfy the Slashdot crowd, but it seems like the economic model could hold up for someone to start something similar for computers. A computer component review might be the most viable, and I know of specialty sites that do something similar. I think a Consumer Reports' for computers could work despite the smaller subscription base due to the fact that the components reviewed are much cheaper than the cars that Consumer Reports has to buy.
P. S. you should definitely check out Silent PC Review for CPU cooler roundup. They do a very good job of applying consistent tests to many different coolers.
I don't think that the economics of publishing are to blame. Poor choices by management seem a more likely scape goat. Take for a counter example consumer reports. Although they are a non-profit, they manage to take no advertising and still fund tests of hundreds of cars every year. I also like that they do not allow products to tout how highly they were rated and they buy products to test anonymously. Surely this model could be applied to get unbiased computer reviews. That is if you don't think that consumer reports' computer reviews are good enough.
I find it interesting that there is so much investigation into voting inconsistencies when Republicans are successful (2004), but not when the Democrats are successful (2006). We're still having stories about 2004, but there has been little interest in talking about the knowninconsistencies from 2006.
I agree that there are a lot of places screwed up by a lack of liberty, but what about Mexico? I don't think it would qualify as a member of the maligned class of countries you are discussing. Yet, they are having many problems due to our conversion of corn to fuel. My point is that perhaps we should look at the larger economic impact of making sugar=fuel before we do it. I think a lot of people in Mexico would be happier if we had done the same thing for corn.
With the recent problems of using food sources as fuel, it seems obvious that we need to find another source to power our luxuries. Food is not a given for everyone in the world yet, so we shouldn't start using food as fuel.
If they have the resources to design or steal the plans for WMD then we are in trouble even without these type of fabrication operations. They would surely find some other way to make the parts.
I agree. The court has made a serious mistake here. They have started down a slippery slope that would eventually lead to Big Brother.
On the other hand, I am for some strange reason confident that our system will right itself and realize that this cannot be allowed. What kind of situation will it take to make the masses realize the absurdity of rulings like this? I am not sure, but would like to hear other's ideas. The situation I describe might be a long way from happening, but I hope that it will occur someday.
They're still called PCBs even if they are milled. It's a naming convention that has stuck. It is in no way incorrect.
Also, It is not difficult to make a double sided PCB with a milling machine. There are many times in circuit board design that you don't need more than one or two layers. This is a solution that solves a lot of smaller problems every day.
As an Electrical Engineer, I would like to say that being an EE is in now way the least. It is definately one of the more difficult engineering fields. As far as programmers being engineers, I would say that they can be, but it the main difference is the methodology behind how they write their code.
In an interview I recently had, a group manager for lockheed martin told me that he prefered to hire people that were educated as electrical engineers to do the programming for his group. He said their methodology made their code better. By the way, he is in charge of programming the targeting and tracking for the weapons systems on F-16s.
I had a Dexxa optical mouse once upon a time. It was horrible. The scrolling became innacurate after only a few months. I had to go for a Micro$oft mouse on my next purchase. Maybe I should try the MX700 next time.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's great that this is happening and look forward to the adoption of open textbooks.
However, I looked at the PDFs that they post on their website, and they look awful. The formulas and plots were hard to read and pixelated. They should have used LaTeX for their typesetting and formulas and maybe sage or matplotlib to make the graphs.
BJ
In my case, they still haven't taken down the file a few hours later. You should definitely send the story to your local paper. I wonder if they would pick it up.
I found this article very interesting, so I used the methods listed to find a treasure trove of credit card numbers in the form of an excel order sheet complete with names phone numbers and addresses. I emailed the website, a local private school, to tell them of the problem. Within minutes I received this reply:
I just received your e-mail and very much appreciate you bringing this
to my attention. I had no idea that this file had been posted to the
internet. This was the one and only time we ever did anything where we
had credit cards and it was for a third party. That is why I was so
insistant that we do not use credit card numbers. I will take
appropriate action, immediately.
Gratefully,
Roberta *********
Executive Director
While it's good that this person is responsive, it is also amazing to me that people can be so careless with sensitive information. There were 17 credit card numbers in an excel file. Two of the numbers were expired, so I would guess that the file had been posted for over a year. I am sure people have been defrauded for this. There should be a license required to build web pages. . .
I would strongly recommend reading What Color is Your Parachute? This is a great book to help you work through what new career you would enjoy. Although it may seem to be a job hunting book, it also focuses a lot on changing your career. Here's a quick summary from Amazon for the lazy:
Richard Nelson Bolles offers hope and presents an inspiring and detailed plan for finding your place in this uncertain job market. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? has been the best-selling job-hunting book in the world for more three decades, in good times and bad, and it continues to be a fixture on best-seller lists, from Amazon.com to Business Week. It has well over eight million copies in print and has been translated into 12 languages around the world. With an extended preface that addresses job loss, vacancies, and outsourcing and updated references on how to use the Internet in your job-hunt throughout, the 2006 PARACHUTE addresses the top concerns of today 's job-hunters. In the words of Fortune magazine: "Parachute remains the gold standard of! career guides."
I know that Consumer Reports' computer reviews will not satisfy the Slashdot crowd, but it seems like the economic model could hold up for someone to start something similar for computers. A computer component review might be the most viable, and I know of specialty sites that do something similar. I think a Consumer Reports' for computers could work despite the smaller subscription base due to the fact that the components reviewed are much cheaper than the cars that Consumer Reports has to buy.
P. S. you should definitely check out Silent PC Review for CPU cooler roundup. They do a very good job of applying consistent tests to many different coolers.
I don't think that the economics of publishing are to blame. Poor choices by management seem a more likely scape goat. Take for a counter example consumer reports. Although they are a non-profit, they manage to take no advertising and still fund tests of hundreds of cars every year. I also like that they do not allow products to tout how highly they were rated and they buy products to test anonymously. Surely this model could be applied to get unbiased computer reviews. That is if you don't think that consumer reports' computer reviews are good enough.
I don't think that two wrongs cancel each other out, and I didn't say that.
I find it interesting that there is so much investigation into voting inconsistencies when Republicans are successful (2004), but not when the Democrats are successful (2006). We're still having stories about 2004, but there has been little interest in talking about the known inconsistencies from 2006.
I agree that there are a lot of places screwed up by a lack of liberty, but what about Mexico? I don't think it would qualify as a member of the maligned class of countries you are discussing. Yet, they are having many problems due to our conversion of corn to fuel. My point is that perhaps we should look at the larger economic impact of making sugar=fuel before we do it. I think a lot of people in Mexico would be happier if we had done the same thing for corn.
With the recent problems of using food sources as fuel, it seems obvious that we need to find another source to power our luxuries. Food is not a given for everyone in the world yet, so we shouldn't start using food as fuel.
If they have the resources to design or steal the plans for WMD then we are in trouble even without these type of fabrication operations. They would surely find some other way to make the parts.
I agree. The court has made a serious mistake here. They have started down a slippery slope that would eventually lead to Big Brother.
On the other hand, I am for some strange reason confident that our system will right itself and realize that this cannot be allowed. What kind of situation will it take to make the masses realize the absurdity of rulings like this? I am not sure, but would like to hear other's ideas. The situation I describe might be a long way from happening, but I hope that it will occur someday.
They're still called PCBs even if they are milled. It's a naming convention that has stuck. It is in no way incorrect.
Also, It is not difficult to make a double sided PCB with a milling machine. There are many times in circuit board design that you don't need more than one or two layers. This is a solution that solves a lot of smaller problems every day.
As an Electrical Engineer, I would like to say that being an EE is in now way the least. It is definately one of the more difficult engineering fields. As far as programmers being engineers, I would say that they can be, but it the main difference is the methodology behind how they write their code.
In an interview I recently had, a group manager for lockheed martin told me that he prefered to hire people that were educated as electrical engineers to do the programming for his group. He said their methodology made their code better. By the way, he is in charge of programming the targeting and tracking for the weapons systems on F-16s.
I had a Dexxa optical mouse once upon a time. It was horrible. The scrolling became innacurate after only a few months. I had to go for a Micro$oft mouse on my next purchase. Maybe I should try the MX700 next time.
I revamped my resume because of the exact opposite reason. The economy is not speeding up, so I need to compete better with my fellow nerds.