You don't see too many politicians sending spam saying "Vote for me". Spam is almost entirely commercial advertisements -- whether for fly-by-night get-rich-quick schemes, porno sites, or (formerly) legitimate corporations.
no new code for future Windows releases, such as Whistler and Blackcomb, will be allowed to be "checked in" until the development team has fixed the existing Windows 2000 bugs.
...that there won't be any future Windows releases ever - just SPs to w2k?
The mechanism by which real communities were historically moulded from raping, pillaging hordes into the polite and modernised societies which many parts of the world is largely that of an internalisation of the power systems - self-discipline to social norms in other words.
Originally, as noted, there were no rules in society. If you wanted to do something, you did it and didn't care about consequences to anyone else but you. The only way to get anyone to obey was through a range of vicious threats - the medieval times were full of them.
However, once you persuade a community to self-moderate, (and the meta-moderation here is quite similar), such draconian measures just aren't necessary. Few will even think of significantly stepping out of line. Fewer still will actually do so. And when that self-moderation happens internally within each member, destructive behaviour is very rare indeed.
Some communities do operate like this - evolt.org is one of them. Evolt members do enforce community norms without admin intervention - for a community of 3,000 self-opinionated web developers like me, to not to have a flamewar for months at a time is almost unheard of. And the last few times that someone's ripped off our (now former) design, it's been members of the community who have pointed it out and sent private 'cease and desist' notices.
If you want more of the theory behind this, have a look at Foucault's Discipline and Punish.
Fair warning - Amazon Associates apply. Circumvent if you feel that way
It's rather like the gardening question of 'what is a weed'. A virus (as defined by these Anti-Virus publishers) is a set of programming behaviours in the wrong place. ie one which doesn't involve the forking out of a bunch of cash to provide the monitoring, or one which allows the monitoring to be run by an inappropriate person or group.
"Here you are free to do what you choose Free to wipe tables and shine shoes" (WestSide Story)
"But freedom without justice is a freedom for a few Who have bought the right to tell us that their freedom lie is true Oh freedom without justice grows up into slavery Unless you're a Barclaycard carrying member of the free" (Fat & Frantic)
...oh also, the Data Protection Acts of 1984 and 1998 force organisations who hold identifying info about you held on computers or paper to provide you with a copy on request, and remove your info on request.
There are exemptions to some of the provisions for government agencies (so you can't wipe your police record:-( ), but they still have to register what types of info they can hold. And those registers are public.
The other major convenience which the conventional direct marketing industry uses your personal information for is targeting mailshots to you.
If it weren't for the info you provide (explicitly or otherwise), you would receive 100 times the junk mail and calls you do now - it really would be at the level of spam. But with info about who's most likely to respond, direct marketers won't waste the postage and printing of stuff that you've no chance of responding to.
Of course in the UK (and elsewhere in Europe), it's mandatory for direct marketers to clean their lists against the Mailing & Telephone Preference Services before they undertake cold mailings. This is A Good Thing. Shame email isn't effectively covered the same way.
I think you're entirely missing the Orwellian point here. You suggest that Orwell claimed that Ignorance is Strength in a documentary or commentary sense. Not so - it was the position of the state in "1984", which he was satirising. So it's quite the reverse - he was trying to show that Knowledge is Power.
Good grief, you'll be claiming that Thomas Harris thinks that eating people is good because of what he gives Lecter to say.
The cable companies who offer free local calls (usually to other customers, fair enough) now exclude ISPs without exception. A few used to include ISPs in the free thing, but not any more (takeovers were mostly responsible). The only people who can still get free access are those who were cable customers during the free days and insisted that the original ToS were contractually enforceable.
Nah, the BBC [management] just think about boosting audience ratings to justify the License Fee to the Government. The Govt are much less inclined to have a quality rationale for the License Fee, although there are many program makers who don't think that way.
The only reason why Linux is *perceived* to be more difficult to use than Windows is because people are more used to running Windows.
Of course, the 1st principle in usability is consistency - the easiest thing to use is the thing you're using. 's the the most important thing about Internet stuff - you can get at it from whatever you're using, and it'll work (somewhat) like the way you're used to it working.
If your tech-illiterate partner/parent/cow-worker were given *nix with a Win95 clone interface, they'd love it, as long as the apps were there. They don't care how it works. Isn't this exactly what MacOSX is? Mach with a Mac interface? 99.999% of people don't need to do anything remotely complex; even simple peer-to-peer networking.
Re:HR people use Word - deal with it
on
Feature:Geek Jobs
·
· Score: 1
Some agencies are clueless - this much is evident. However, not all agencies are that bad. I can think of 2 agencies amongst the half-dozen or so who have my CV which are actually pretty damn good. The one which I'm contracting through at my current 9-5 is not only good at *getting* me work, they're good at representing my interests while I'm here, especially regarding renewals. *And* they take me out and get me pissed regularly;-)
The Lucent logo is a perfect example of the Dilbert 'brown ring of success'-type logo, where you make a coffee ring, colour it a bit differently and run off giggling with the client's cheque.
This one's a bit better - I particularly like the OpenSource version.
Unfortunately, doesn't this establish a precedent. While sure, they can't go against the judgement pending appeal, accepting that they *are* responsible is a sure fire way of making it so. Unless of course, they have sufficient disclaimers in place to prevent this self-fulfilling prophesy.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, as today's Wired story notes, political spam is alive and well.
The best 'red dot in a sea of green' type application I've seen is this stockmarket app which shows the entire market's performance in a glance.
Legal teams don't find anything funny. It's their job to be dour humourless bastards.
The mechanism by which real communities were historically moulded from raping, pillaging hordes into the polite and modernised societies which many parts of the world is largely that of an internalisation of the power systems - self-discipline to social norms in other words.
Originally, as noted, there were no rules in society. If you wanted to do something, you did it and didn't care about consequences to anyone else but you. The only way to get anyone to obey was through a range of vicious threats - the medieval times were full of them.
However, once you persuade a community to self-moderate, (and the meta-moderation here is quite similar), such draconian measures just aren't necessary. Few will even think of significantly stepping out of line. Fewer still will actually do so. And when that self-moderation happens internally within each member, destructive behaviour is very rare indeed.
Some communities do operate like this - evolt.org is one of them. Evolt members do enforce community norms without admin intervention - for a community of 3,000 self-opinionated web developers like me, to not to have a flamewar for months at a time is almost unheard of. And the last few times that someone's ripped off our (now former) design, it's been members of the community who have pointed it out and sent private 'cease and desist' notices.
If you want more of the theory behind this, have a look at Foucault's Discipline and Punish.
Fair warning - Amazon Associates apply. Circumvent if you feel that way
It's rather like the gardening question of 'what is a weed'. A virus (as defined by these Anti-Virus publishers) is a set of programming behaviours in the wrong place. ie one which doesn't involve the forking out of a bunch of cash to provide the monitoring, or one which allows the monitoring to be run by an inappropriate person or group.
Also at http://www.mozillazine.org/evolt_mirror/
Yeah well, some companies to pander to ignorance
Try that again. It's http://www2.allaire.com/Products/Spectra/
The only closed-bits are are the security API.
It's not released yet - they expect to release in the 2nd week in Dec - but they'll support people going live with a Release Candidate.
The info's here.
"Here you are free to do what you choose
Free to wipe tables and shine shoes"
(WestSide Story)
"But freedom without justice is a freedom for a few
Who have bought the right to tell us that their freedom lie is true
Oh freedom without justice grows up into slavery
Unless you're a Barclaycard carrying member of the free"
(Fat & Frantic)
There are exemptions to some of the provisions for government agencies (so you can't wipe your police record :-( ), but they still have to register what types of info they can hold. And those registers are public.
If it weren't for the info you provide (explicitly or otherwise), you would receive 100 times the junk mail and calls you do now - it really would be at the level of spam. But with info about who's most likely to respond, direct marketers won't waste the postage and printing of stuff that you've no chance of responding to.
Of course in the UK (and elsewhere in Europe), it's mandatory for direct marketers to clean their lists against the Mailing & Telephone Preference Services before they undertake cold mailings. This is A Good Thing. Shame email isn't effectively covered the same way.
Wasn't it Scott McNealy who claimed "You already have no privacy. Get used to it."
...not that that's necessarily A Good Thing.
Good grief, you'll be claiming that Thomas Harris thinks that eating people is good because of what he gives Lecter to say.
The cable companies who offer free local calls (usually to other customers, fair enough) now exclude ISPs without exception. A few used to include ISPs in the free thing, but not any more (takeovers were mostly responsible). The only people who can still get free access are those who were cable customers during the free days and insisted that the original ToS were contractually enforceable.
Nah, the BBC [management] just think about boosting audience ratings to justify the License Fee to the Government. The Govt are much less inclined to have a quality rationale for the License Fee, although there are many program makers who don't think that way.
Of course, the 1st principle in usability is consistency - the easiest thing to use is the thing you're using. 's the the most important thing about Internet stuff - you can get at it from whatever you're using, and it'll work (somewhat) like the way you're used to it working.
If your tech-illiterate partner/parent/cow-worker were given *nix with a Win95 clone interface, they'd love it, as long as the apps were there. They don't care how it works. Isn't this exactly what MacOSX is? Mach with a Mac interface? 99.999% of people don't need to do anything remotely complex; even simple peer-to-peer networking.
Some agencies are clueless - this much is evident. However, not all agencies are that bad. I can think of 2 agencies amongst the half-dozen or so who have my CV which are actually pretty damn good. ;-)
The one which I'm contracting through at my current 9-5 is not only good at *getting* me work, they're good at representing my interests while I'm here, especially regarding renewals. *And* they take me out and get me pissed regularly
The Lucent logo is a perfect example of the Dilbert 'brown ring of success'-type logo, where you make a coffee ring, colour it a bit differently and run off giggling with the client's cheque.
This one's a bit better - I particularly like the OpenSource version.
Unfortunately, doesn't this establish a precedent. While sure, they can't go against the judgement pending appeal, accepting that they *are* responsible is a sure fire way of making it so. Unless of course, they have sufficient disclaimers in place to prevent this self-fulfilling prophesy.
Not actually available as such, although NorWeb have been conducting technical trials.