I've paid a lot of money to Microsoft for the initial releases of Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows XP. How many times am I supposed to pay for bug fixes that don't happen?
It's been a consistent problem ever since I first installed the first release of XP, on a variety of hardware and no end of drivers, so I'm pretty confident it's the ATAPI.sys driver itself.
TV and radio are still far more relevant than some people think.
At the unemployment insurance session this morning, the speaker mentioned that Canada's EI system still serves 80% of the unemployed claimants through the call center. Only 20% of the population uses computers and the internet to file and manage their claims.
Monitoring doesn't have to be intrusive. It can be as simple as providing an Ombudsman to receive complaints, and mandating automatic duplication of complaints registered through corporate web forms and email to that Ombudsmen. As long as the Ombudsman has teeth.
Congratulations to Virginia Rometty on her promotion. The glass ceiling isn't shattered yet, but it's cracking.
Is she going to be getting a 25:1 Canadian or Euro style pay package, or is she taking the hundreds to one ratio of many US executives that people are complaining about? The article doesn't say.
IBM is a great place to work or contract. I really enjoyed the time I spent working on a project with them.
How much is enough? The rich suck up money like vacuums, and the media inundate us with intrusive advertising.
Ever watch a YouTube video on Facebook with Chrome? Aren't you annoyed by that damned popup overlay banner at the bottom pushing even more Google advertising?
Every internet/media company should be subject to the same legal standards of privacy as the others, and all companies should be monitored for compliance.
It's probably due for some updating, but there is legislation in place that these companies are required to abide by if they want to serve the Canadian market.
Lately I'm finding Google is getting increasingly unreliable about finding references I want, specifically regarding politics, the economy, and Occupy.
Ask has been filling in the gap quite nicely, but I don't like what seems to be censorship by Google.
If there are systems which can help to analyze and decode a text or an ancient language, why are online translation services so horrible at their job?
Misguided people think good voice recognition is an AI, but a real AI would be able to do full semantic analysis, and turn your words into conceptual models. Translation systems would then output those conceptual models using the grammar templates for the target language.
Instead, current translation technology seems to be heavily based on word translation, not concept translation. They don't even reorganize the phrases to allow for the cadence and grammar rules of the target language.
Any job that can be automated will be automated. Machines don't get sick, they don't take holidays, and they don't complain. Most important to business is the fact that they're cheaper.
The current system of economy and government will eventually have to change for the simple reason that a world where the only people with money are the owners of the machines isn't feasible. People need jobs to survive. I've spent time between jobs and on welfare, and it was boring as hell. I can't understand people who are content to live on welfare for year after year after year. It's such a waste of time!
The whole concept of work-for-pay will have to be re-evaluated at some point. There just won't be enough jobs for the people. We're already starting to experience some of the social breakdown that comes from high unemployment and low pay for the average worker.
.Net takes just as long to fire up an application on my box as Java does. Most of the applications built with either technology don't take much longer to load than comparably sized native applications do.
The startup time is not significantly higher than a large binary application like Firefox or Chrome are.
You need to download some updates. Java 1.2 hasn't been used for a while.
Any GPL software which is found to be in violation of copyright automatically has it's license revoked:
Finally, every program is threatened constantly by software patents. States should not allow patents to restrict development and use of software on general-purpose computers, but in those that do, we wish to avoid the special danger that patents applied to a free program could make it effectively proprietary. To prevent this, the GPL assures that patents cannot be used to render the program non-free.
and
You may not propagate or modify a covered work except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to propagate or modify it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License (including any patent licenses granted under the third paragraph of section 11).
I argue that any company paying Microsoft a patent fee has lost their right to the GPL code because by their actions they "render the program non-free."
ultimately they are controlled by their depositors
Not really true at all. The banks are controlled by their board of directors, the same as any other corporation. They are the ultimate decision makers for the company. Some of them may listen to the advice of their largest depositors, but they make the decisions. Don't let them slough off responsibility so easily.
Depositors have to put their money somewhere. The cash society is almost dead. The vast majority of buying and selling is done digitally, which means you need a bank account to hold it. Being forced to deposit your money somewhere does not mean you have any input whatsoever to how it's used.
The SlashDot article title is extremely biased, broadcasting a sound-bite his opponents picked up on instead of encouraging learning about what he's actually proposing.
He is not talking about eliminating student loans, only moving their mangement to a different department in a leaner government.
We have an election on-going here in Saskatchewan as well. The Green Party has tabled a very interesting proposal to make university and tech-school education public. Tuition paid by the government. I think that's an incredibly insightful and revolutionary proposal.
People should not need to go into debt in order to learn how to get a job.
It's sensationalist to toss alll corporations into one basket when the crux of the issue is the financial sector that does not produce anything useful in and of themselves, but merely own and profit from the corporations that do produce something useful while providing employment.
Those financial institutions are leeches on the world, a global tax on productivity pouring huge amounts of money into a very few pockets. They buy the law they want, they evade paying their share of taxes, and they contribute nothing to GDP.
But being outraged about it won't change anything. Occupy and the people they represent have got to table some practical solutions and ideas, not just keep screaming that it's unfair. Life has never been fair.
I agree that there is a real issue with getting rid of a bad teacher over the objections of a union about "seniority", but it can be done. Many of my relatives are or were teachers (most of them retired now), and every one of them had to deal wtih parents who were screaming to the board about how they're a "bad" teacher for failing or reprimanding their precious and flawless child. Some of those parents engaged in rather vicious smear campaigns against teachers they hated. So the union system is needed to protect teachers from arbitrary firing when those outraged parents are on a mission to destroy their careers.
What Bill is talking about, though, is the actual process of evaluating teachers and teaching techniques fairly. The effectiveness of different approaches in the field have never been properly evaluated before. Some districts "evaluate" a teachers performance by considering how their students do on standardized tests, but such simplistic approaches are white-wash to appease people who are demanding that the teachers be evaluated, not an actual evaluation of the teacher's skills as a teacher.
Worse, such simplistic approaches don't make any attempt to evaluate why one teacher's students do better on the tests than others. If teachers are to improve, they need that feedback so they know how to improve.
No matter what the results of the studies are, there will be teachers, unions, school boards, and parents who resist acting on that information. Bill and Melinda are to be commended for tackling the issue when they know full well that it's going to be a battle to get the results of those studies applied to practice.
The interpretation of virtual goods not being subject to property law is dangerous as more information is moved to the cloud. It implies that you have no recourse, should somebody steal that information. It implies that the media you "buy" online can have it's lease revoked at any time, without recourse.
I could care less about people who spend real money on in-game items. It's a game. Your priorities are screwed up.
Slashdot Mirror
I've paid a lot of money to Microsoft for the initial releases of Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows XP. How many times am I supposed to pay for bug fixes that don't happen?
It's been a consistent problem ever since I first installed the first release of XP, on a variety of hardware and no end of drivers, so I'm pretty confident it's the ATAPI.sys driver itself.
TV and radio are still far more relevant than some people think.
At the unemployment insurance session this morning, the speaker mentioned that Canada's EI system still serves 80% of the unemployed claimants through the call center. Only 20% of the population uses computers and the internet to file and manage their claims.
The problem is that we're already seeing a serious shortage of jobs in the industrialized world. The US is not alone in this problem.
"Get another job" is a cop-out.
I'm talking about a government Ombudsman, of course, not a shill paid by the corporation.
Monitoring doesn't have to be intrusive. It can be as simple as providing an Ombudsman to receive complaints, and mandating automatic duplication of complaints registered through corporate web forms and email to that Ombudsmen. As long as the Ombudsman has teeth.
I still get BSODs from Microsoft's ATAPI driver. They're rather ingenuous in their claims when they blame 3rd party drivers.
Your BSOD screen tells you what caused a crash, if you disable automatic reboots and read it.
Congratulations to Virginia Rometty on her promotion. The glass ceiling isn't shattered yet, but it's cracking.
Is she going to be getting a 25:1 Canadian or Euro style pay package, or is she taking the hundreds to one ratio of many US executives that people are complaining about? The article doesn't say.
IBM is a great place to work or contract. I really enjoyed the time I spent working on a project with them.
If Google wants to get in my face with advertising, I'll do my level best to get in their face about Canadian privacy laws.
How much is enough? The rich suck up money like vacuums, and the media inundate us with intrusive advertising.
Ever watch a YouTube video on Facebook with Chrome? Aren't you annoyed by that damned popup overlay banner at the bottom pushing even more Google advertising?
Every internet/media company should be subject to the same legal standards of privacy as the others, and all companies should be monitored for compliance.
Canada has had federal laws regarding information privacy since 1985. http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-21/index.html
It's probably due for some updating, but there is legislation in place that these companies are required to abide by if they want to serve the Canadian market.
+1
Lately I'm finding Google is getting increasingly unreliable about finding references I want, specifically regarding politics, the economy, and Occupy.
Ask has been filling in the gap quite nicely, but I don't like what seems to be censorship by Google.
If there are systems which can help to analyze and decode a text or an ancient language, why are online translation services so horrible at their job?
Misguided people think good voice recognition is an AI, but a real AI would be able to do full semantic analysis, and turn your words into conceptual models. Translation systems would then output those conceptual models using the grammar templates for the target language.
Instead, current translation technology seems to be heavily based on word translation, not concept translation. They don't even reorganize the phrases to allow for the cadence and grammar rules of the target language.
+1 Funny
Computer geeks aren't exactly notorious Romeos.
Any job that can be automated will be automated. Machines don't get sick, they don't take holidays, and they don't complain. Most important to business is the fact that they're cheaper.
The current system of economy and government will eventually have to change for the simple reason that a world where the only people with money are the owners of the machines isn't feasible. People need jobs to survive. I've spent time between jobs and on welfare, and it was boring as hell. I can't understand people who are content to live on welfare for year after year after year. It's such a waste of time!
The whole concept of work-for-pay will have to be re-evaluated at some point. There just won't be enough jobs for the people. We're already starting to experience some of the social breakdown that comes from high unemployment and low pay for the average worker.
Tsk. How'd I end up getting sucked into a Java discussion on a new technology thread? Must... resist.... urge... to... post...
The startup time is not significantly higher than a large binary application like Firefox or Chrome are.
You need to download some updates. Java 1.2 hasn't been used for a while.
Any company which uses GPL software is obligated to defend against patent trolls in the courts, or they lose their right to use the software.
You didn't think the GPL was written without some requirements and conditions to protect the community from abusers, did you?
Any GPL software which is found to be in violation of copyright automatically has it's license revoked:
and
I argue that any company paying Microsoft a patent fee has lost their right to the GPL code because by their actions they "render the program non-free."
Not really true at all. The banks are controlled by their board of directors, the same as any other corporation. They are the ultimate decision makers for the company. Some of them may listen to the advice of their largest depositors, but they make the decisions. Don't let them slough off responsibility so easily.
Depositors have to put their money somewhere. The cash society is almost dead. The vast majority of buying and selling is done digitally, which means you need a bank account to hold it. Being forced to deposit your money somewhere does not mean you have any input whatsoever to how it's used.
The SlashDot article title is extremely biased, broadcasting a sound-bite his opponents picked up on instead of encouraging learning about what he's actually proposing.
He is not talking about eliminating student loans, only moving their mangement to a different department in a leaner government.
We have an election on-going here in Saskatchewan as well. The Green Party has tabled a very interesting proposal to make university and tech-school education public. Tuition paid by the government. I think that's an incredibly insightful and revolutionary proposal.
People should not need to go into debt in order to learn how to get a job.
It's sensationalist to toss alll corporations into one basket when the crux of the issue is the financial sector that does not produce anything useful in and of themselves, but merely own and profit from the corporations that do produce something useful while providing employment.
Those financial institutions are leeches on the world, a global tax on productivity pouring huge amounts of money into a very few pockets. They buy the law they want, they evade paying their share of taxes, and they contribute nothing to GDP.
But being outraged about it won't change anything. Occupy and the people they represent have got to table some practical solutions and ideas, not just keep screaming that it's unfair. Life has never been fair.
I agree that there is a real issue with getting rid of a bad teacher over the objections of a union about "seniority", but it can be done. Many of my relatives are or were teachers (most of them retired now), and every one of them had to deal wtih parents who were screaming to the board about how they're a "bad" teacher for failing or reprimanding their precious and flawless child. Some of those parents engaged in rather vicious smear campaigns against teachers they hated. So the union system is needed to protect teachers from arbitrary firing when those outraged parents are on a mission to destroy their careers.
What Bill is talking about, though, is the actual process of evaluating teachers and teaching techniques fairly. The effectiveness of different approaches in the field have never been properly evaluated before. Some districts "evaluate" a teachers performance by considering how their students do on standardized tests, but such simplistic approaches are white-wash to appease people who are demanding that the teachers be evaluated, not an actual evaluation of the teacher's skills as a teacher.
Worse, such simplistic approaches don't make any attempt to evaluate why one teacher's students do better on the tests than others. If teachers are to improve, they need that feedback so they know how to improve.
No matter what the results of the studies are, there will be teachers, unions, school boards, and parents who resist acting on that information. Bill and Melinda are to be commended for tackling the issue when they know full well that it's going to be a battle to get the results of those studies applied to practice.
The interpretation of virtual goods not being subject to property law is dangerous as more information is moved to the cloud. It implies that you have no recourse, should somebody steal that information. It implies that the media you "buy" online can have it's lease revoked at any time, without recourse.
I could care less about people who spend real money on in-game items. It's a game. Your priorities are screwed up.