Ah. A PBS documentary. Nothing like a left-wing, show-us-the-extent-of-your-paranoia, public cesspit of a channel to inspire your confidence.
I usually share your opinion of PBS. However the frontline series of documentaries are often quite good. Any particular one may skew left or right but bias is at the level of making a rational and reasonable and dispassionate argument for one or the other viewpoint. (the voice of the frontline narrator just oozes dispassoinate rationality - if such a quality can be said to "ooze";). I have seen a few (and I was heartily suprised) that have if they were biased at all were from a distinctly conservative bias. Usually it depends less on the spin (which is always minimal in those documentaries I have seen) but on the choice of topics. A frontline documentary on Enron may come across as being liberal but only because conservative and business interests were caught behaving badly, the one on 9/11 came across as somewhat conservative because the event itself stresses themes that conservatives themselves stress - the existence of evil people (aside from ourselves, the only evil people that liberals generally acknowledge) and the need to at least on occasion defend ourselves from such evils.
In this particular case there is nothing "left wing" about it - as you can see in this example the evidence they bring to light (without commenting on) would probably be considered friendly to the conservative case that sricter security and more oversight of foreign nationals is required for homeland security. I would say that perhaps this documentary could be construed as "liberal" by Buchananite paleo-cons to whom John Ashcroft and GW Bush are liberals and Rumsfeld is a closet troskyite. But the facts uncovered are largely supportive of their isolationist arguments as well. The only group that would find these facts uncomfortable and their presentation as biased would be open-borders leftists.
Case in point: School kids in Japan show up as dyslexic far less often, not because they have less dyslexia, but because their language is made up of pictures, not fractured bits of words we call letters.
It's ironic to a degree, I've read that dyslexia is far more common in schools that teach "site reading" (treating words as a whole almost at though they were japanese pictograms rather than made up of distinct phonetic units) as opposed to schools using "phonics" (learning to read by sounding out the phonetic units)
In any event aside from moving to a new written language I don't see that pictograms will ever replace the flexibility of a few words. Pictograms work for a few very common universal concepts and that is it.
"How many times have you been looking at an app with a long toolbar full of icons (what UI designers call an "angry fruit salad") with absolutely no idea what 90% of them do?"
Shit loads of times! But how many times have you looked at the menus of a new Application and had no idea what they did?
Far, far less often. No matter how new the software is to me as long as I understand it's basic function I can usually know immediately what the written menu's will do for me (at least in a rough sense). On the other hand even though I know what the software is for I have NO idea what the icon apparently depicting several colored cubes in a coffee cup is going to do (to cite an example I noticed yesterday).
Don't get me wrong, I like icons. I'm a professional graphic designer and have created my share of icons. Let me tell you from bitter experience, even a slightly abstract concept is almost impossible to convey pictorially - it very rarely "reads".
What generally happens when confronted with a nearly useless icon is that the user "scrubs" it to make the tool tips text(!) come up. He looks at it and says "Oh, that is the 'merge records' button!" He thinks about the picture supposedly conveying that and says "I still don't see it. I suppose I sort of get what they were going for." The next five, ten, a hundred times (depending on how often he uses that button) he does the exact same thing. He IS using a text menu, it's just irritatingly hidden so that you have to scrub over a bunch of icons to find it. After a while if he uses it often enough he eventually remembers what that icon does (but he's still not sure about that less frequently used one next to it - time to scrub again)
RTFM is just pushing the text off one more level. Now I have to associate an obscure icon with a title and that title with a function I understand by reading MORE text in a book (not exactly friendly for a dyslexic). A single well thought out word might be obvious and avoid the whole excersise. This is why the Apple human interface guidlines includes tips for picking the right kinds of words - such as always labelling "Submit" buttons as a verb and as the action it will perform rather than with a generic "OK" which will always require you to read the text you are saying "OK" to which might still be ambiguous if that text was poorly phrased. "Duplicate" or "Shut Down" or "Log Out" etc. are immediately obvious. A "duplicate" pictogram might be unclear, at least until it is so widely used as to be well understood by everyone (like the curly-cue Command pictogram is to Mac users) but any less universal pictogram is going to be unhelpful to most users. I still get confused by the "Shift" "control" and "option" pictograms that Apple is trying to use despite using one nearly every day since I did my high school papers on a 128K mac in 1984.
The point is that this wouldn't help because ALL the hijackers came here LEGALLY!
That doesn't mean that better documentation wouldn't help in the future, nor that it wouldn't have helped prior to 9/11. From the PBS Frontline documentary on the 9/11 hijackers:
Federal investigators now believe that some of the suspected hijackers entered the United States using
stolen Saudi Arabian passports that had doctored photos. A Saudi Arabian man has surfaced with the same name as one of the hijackers, and he claims his passport was stolen while he was attending university in Denver, Colo.
...Hijackers were able to purchase documents saying they were residents of Virginia...
Nabil al-Marabh is believed to be one of Osama bin Laden's key operatives in North America... He had driver's licenses from several states, including a recently acquired license to transport hazardous materials... al-Marabh had been detained at the U.S.-Canada border on June 27, 2001, with a fake Canadian passport.
Three Arab men were arrested at the apartment of Nabil al-Marabh shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. In the apartment, investigators found false immigration documents, a stolen passport and Social Security card, and licenses to transport hazardous materials, along with sketches of aircraft and airport security badges.
A note about these statements. If some of the hijackers really were using the stolen passport we no longer sure of their actual identities and so less capable of effectively pursuing the investigation. If they really were using stolen passports biometrics would obviously been one more difficult obstacle for them to overcome and possibly get tripped up on prior to 9/11. Even if they didn't use stolen passports and we had biometrics we would more easily discount this possibility saving time pursuing the possibly bogus lead of the stolen passport.
Also, we know that these 19 hijackers were only the point of the spear. Their operations required at least *some* support personnel and perhaps oversight from superiors and others with access to the resources of the larger organization. Nabil al-Marabh was caught with a faked passport, might we have caught others with fake, stolen or shared passports? Who knows? As for the 19 themselves we don't have all their travels accounted for, do we know that they *never* used falsified documentation? Might they use their real documents with the least likelyhood of causing them problems on the big day but take the risk of using false papers during other travel necessary to set up the attack thus keeping their activities and travels secret? Again, who knows?
In any event it is obvious that fake identity papers DO play a part in Al Quada's operations. Indeed every report on the known workings of Al Quada includes the compartmentalization of operations cells that perform terrorist acts and support cells which have as one of their primary purposes the provision of any necessary (usually false, or misused) documentation.
I disagree, there are many concepts that simply can't be boiled down to an image but can be boiled down to one or two words. There are a LOT of apps out there that completely fail because they try to convey complex or obscure concepts with a simple icon and it just can't be done. How many times have you been looking at an app with a long toolbar full of icons (what UI designers call an "angry fruit salad") with absolutely no idea what 90% of them do?
Ironically I rarely see Mac applications that fall into this trap of using confusing unhelpful icons, but I run into it a lot with windows apps. I am a biased mac zealot so I have to take my own thoughts about this with a grain of salt BUT, I think Microsoft and Windows application developers that followed their lead copied the Mac GUI without really understanding it. To see these long toolbars with dozens of incomprehensible icons I have to believe that they looked at the Mac and said "So Icons are a good thing eh? Well, we'll use even MORE icons - that'll show 'em! And we'll have fancy animated icons that dance too!" At this point compare the average Mac program and average windows program, the GUI on mac apps tends to be less "graphical", it is more sparing with icons & graphic ornamentation and is easier to use (for most people) as a result.
Quartz is not "Display PDF". Don't know where you saw or why you decided to make up that retarded name.
No nobody ever officially called it "Display PDF" BUT it uses the "PDF" format to "Display" stuff on the screen the same way Display PostScript uses the PostScript format to display stuff on the screen. So to someone familiar with Adobe's Display PostScript saying that Quartz is essentially "Display PDF" makes perfect sense and in two words conveys exactly what Quartz is.
No, it's true. Apples screen rendering is "Quartz" which is their own creation but is essentially "display PDF". They developed it to avoid paying Adobe to use Display PostScript as NeXT had been doing. Obviously since everything on the screen is already essentially a PDF it makes sense to just write it to the disk to "capture" it.
. However the principle of slightly altering documents to catch the unwary is an old one.
I think this particular breed of "honeytoken" is called a "canary trap". Make each copy unique and use a colorful phrase or two which just cry's out to be quoted verbatim and you know who the leak is.
Also, I think you are overstating the technical problems. The example given is just that, an example. I would assume though that in the example JFK's record is an old record, he's not in the hospital, his bill is paid up etc. There may be a few false positives but many of those will be immediately obvious - just ignore them.
Um... that's the whole point. A bored nurse browsing through patient files for shits and giggles is commiting a crime for which not only she but also her employer can be held both liable in both civil and criminal court.
Some people don't like other people getting their shits and giggles by reading their medical records (or financial records, credit card #'s etc.) It's one thing for your doctor to know about that embarassing incident/disease/etc. it's quite another for a (potentially gossipy) nurse - after all if she found your records so amusing, so might a few of her friends, perhaps some of them are also your friends/relatives/co-workers/employers etc.
You're so right! I certainly wouldn't want any database with my personal data, medical records, or credit card number using any kind of wasteful "security". Information wants to be free!!! I'm sure anyone with access (even if it they gave themselves access via one of these "exploits" I've heard so much about) is just poking around because they're curious. Only a Nazi control freak would prevent them from getting that data.
It is comforting to know that you don't have any of these hangups about "privacy" that others on/. do. If you don't mind curious people looking at your medical or financial data I'm sure you don't mind if the curious people work for the government.
Another post on this thread by an actual map company employee mentioned that they ad dead-end roads, and that they have other techniques as well depending on the purpose of the map to (as much as possible) eliminate any real inconvenience to map users while still having "honeytokens" to catch copyright infringement.
I've noticed that there is one road map of my area that has a small pond on my property on the wrong side of a highway and have wondered if that was an intentional error. It would be a perfect kind of error to catch a copycat without any inconvenience to users. It's a road map and the pond isn't even visible from the road - no harm that it's wrong since it doesn't relate to the purpose of the map at all.
(a) reveal information you shouldn't have accessed, nor (b) base a decision on such information, it is not a problem for me.
I think you are overestimating your ability to not use the information you gain, or you haven't really found anything significant.
Possession of information is never wrong
Ahh, but if you had to *act* to get that information then it is not a thought crime, it is simply a crime. If you access my private medical data (for instance) when you had no reason to other than "morbid curiousity" you have commited a crime. What you are thinking is irrelevant, accessing the data - an act - is the crime. This is just a way of catching you doing it.
I would imagine that somebody working on the database may inadvertently trip one of these "honeytokens" but then if you really have a legitimate reason to be hitting that data then you're OK. As for the term "honeytoken" I've always called this "salted" data or a "salted list" which is what they called this concept before computers and before somebody at a honeypot project mistakenly thought they invented something new;)
Either my reading comprehension of your post, or yours of mine sucks. Or perhaps you're a troll and you have me hooked;)
You said that profits are a waste and that the $$$ should be reinvested to grow the company. For what reason the company should grow is unclear, it appears to you to be an end unto itself. I said to the contrary that profits are the entire point and that if you do choose to reinvest it would be towards then end of having even more profits to pocket.
I am convinced that some of the problems in corporate America today is confusion over this fundamental issue. The confusion is understandable because with todays tax laws profits, real tangible honest profits, are taxed twice and at a high rate both times. Capital gains on the other hand are taxed only once and that one time at a lower rate. So, investors naturally want to make their stock price go up rather than have it pay dividends. Beyond encouraging your kind of thinking the problem is that unlike dividends stock prices don't have to be grounded in any kind of objective reality. The internet bubble and Enron amply illustrated that. The whole stock price game can become a massive, complex, unstable ponzi scheme ungrounded in reality. Enron is a perfect example of the result - it was only important to grow on paper, losses were hidden and profits were manufactured and nobody was the wiser (for a while) because nobody actually wanted to get those "profits" Enron claimed to have. Everybody was happy and tax law encouraged them to "reinvest" to make the company bigger and the stock price go up. If the tax laws had been otherwise Enron would have had to be more honest, if they claimed chimerical profits investors would have wanted at least some of them to go in their pocket. Sadly, while the Bush administration made some progress they got demogogued about "cutting taxes for the rich" and didn't push this through. While it really would be a tax cut for the rich it is still the right thing to do, and with all the 401(k)'s, IRA's, mutual funds and stock investments by pension funds your average stock holder isn't exactly the top hat wearing caricature of wealth from the monopoly box.
Why? Because profit is money wasted. Better to invest your capital than give it away to shareholders.
A little confusion over who's money it is? The investors quite literaly own the company and it is their money, their company and it is (supposed to be & is legally obligated to be) run for their benefit. Actually, stictly speaking they ARE the company - a collective body of individuals (the shareholders) that in a limited way can legally act as though they were a single individual (to do things like hire you to make them more money). They are usually more than happy letting you reinvest their profits if it will lead to a bigger, healthier, MORE PROFITABLE company in the future but that is a very different thing froms saying profit is "money wasted" and that it is better to inveset than "give it away to shareholders".
This did in fact happen last quarter (the profits being all in interest on the $$ in the bank while the business otherwise would have shown a loss). THIS quarter however they did in fact run a profit off of their business of selling computers. Also to be fair they are doing some things this quarter that cost a fair amount of $$$ that are investments that will reap rewards in future quarters. Opening new stores and opening the iTunes music store - which is actually supposed to turn the corner as soon as this next quarter, and may be a real cash cow when it comes out for windows.
Ok, we were working with illustrated brochures and booklets and we were told that the plates are produced at a blank and white resolution of 1500 and up.
In this instance DPI can be confusing. To create the film which is used to create the plates for color offset printing they use *very* high resolution imagesetters 1500dpi is probably on the lower end, some are 3000+dpi. However all that massive resolution is not being used to make such a high resolution image, it is being used to make sure that each dot of a much lower resolution image is as close to *perfectly* round as it can be.
As for loosing information in the screen process you are correct but you aren't loosing more than 1/2 the information (in fact you are losing less than that). That is why you take the final lpi your are going to print at and double it to get the dpi of your digital image. In the case of most magazines which I assure you are almost always 150 lpi (a few lower quality may be 133 lpi, and a very few, very high quality magazines mostly *for* the design and printing industries are higher). If you don't believe me pull out a loupe and take a look yourself - compare a magazine cover to what your inkjet printer is producing, there are a *lot* fewer (but perfectly round) dots.
I'll confess I'm a little murky on the *very* fine details of pre-press, not actually having worked with the RIP's & imagesetters at a service bureau myself - but I was sending files to them almost every day, somtimes going in myself to sit and wait next to the production guru as he produced a rush job for me (get to know the actual production guy & at night when the receptionists & account execs are long gone home he doesn't care that there are dozens of jobs before yours in the que - he just knows you need the film in 30 minutes and it will only take him 20 minutes to rip;)
Yes he could but as I said it is an unnecessarily convoluted thing to say that is actually more confusing that simply saying "give me a 300 dpi image". As for not specifying the final print size, often that is something that is understood, as in a magazine spread or cover. Alternatively the final print size is up to the person supplying the image, in which case it makes total sense to simply ask for a 300dpi image - the person asking for it has no idea what size the image will be in either pixels or inches but does know what resolution it has to be.
It seems in this case somebody didn't communicate all the necessary information but that doesn't make the limited information that *was* provided wrong, nor does it mean that the person asking that the image be 300 dpi was the one responsible to specify the size in inches.
When doing anything that involves commercial printing it makes much more sense to ask for images by their (intended) physical size and resolution rather than by pixel size. For one thing the pixel size will be irrelevant after the project leaves the computer and becomes a proof print, film, plates, and a printed material. Also, the pixel size isn't that important a variable for him - he asked for "AT LEAST 300 dpi" you could provide a larger image (in pixels) and it wouldn't matter to much to him. Finally, why have a human multiply the intended physical size x the resolution when the whole point of computers is to "compute" those kinds of things for you. Most image formats include physical size and resolution, all image software works uses this information which is important in every context except working on a computer screen.
For professional printing you want something high, like about 1200
1200 is really insanely high. You need to find out what lpi the printer will print it at and the rule of thumb is to double it*. Most magazines print at 133 to 150 lpi, newspapers are usually 85lpi and high quality art books are 200 lpi and up (but not so high as 600 lpi that a 1200 dpi original supposes). Usually 300 dpi is fine.
* The rule of thumb is based on the assumption that you are loosing about 1/2 the information when you are going from a grid of pixels to angled halftone screens. I seem to recall a study that proved you didn't actually lose that much and you could get away with somewhat lower dpi images without any loss of detail. A quick google search didn't bring it up so I'm relying only on my own faulty memory.
Except that "300DPI" by itself does not communicate any information about the physical size of the image - it is only half of the required information. Is that 300DPI at 3" by 3" or 8" by 8" or what?
That is part of the point of using "DPI". The person making the request might not know KNOW the size in inches, often that is up to the person he is making the request of. By asking for a 300 dpi image he is saying "however many inches you want this to end up make sure there are 300 pixels for each of them"
DPI IS NOT AN PROPERTY OF A PICTURE. OK? CLEAR? Yes?
The confusion is yours because you are thinking only about the image on a computer where the "idiot" is thinking about both the image on the computer AND the final product which is a printed picture. He is probably patiently explaining to her that DPI *is* a property of a picture and that the computer nerd that told here otherwise is an "idiot" that can't think outside of that box sitting on his desk. To the person asking for the image the entire function of the image he is asking for is to be printed and the computer is just a tool to effect that result! To him (and to many image formats on the computer!) the picture has dimensions not only in pixels but in inches and he is asking for a picture that has enough pixels in each inch to print correctly. I suppose he could say "give me a picture that has enough pixels to end up at 300dpi when measured in inches at the size you want it to be printed". That is a bit of a mouthful and can get needlessly confusing, fortunately the entire industry, all DPT and imaging software and most image formats all understand the term "300 dpi".
Have you greased your Modem lately? Most of the latency you experience is because of rust.
While rust can cause problems, what few people realize is that tangled wires are the biggest problem. This is because the data is being transmitted via binary 1's and 0's. While the nice curved 0's flow nicely even through tangled wires, the 1's can get easily get jammed when going through tightly curved tangled wiring. These jam's can causing "net congestion". This is why computers don't use coiled wires like on your telephone handset.
I agree with a lot of what you say. I always wonder how the anti-profit folks feed their kids. It seems like the students & accademics don't realize that the money their parents/grant/foundation/college provide them all ultimately comes from some "greedy" companies profits. I guess when you're income is a couple of degrees of seperation from the profit motive that generates it you can pretend it isn't involved and is therefore unnecessary.
However, I think that most successful open-source projects have an *indirect* bottom-line financial value that *does* lead to real investment or at least self-interested alms though admittedly not at anywhere near the level of funding that your quasi-commercial model could. There are plenty of profit-driven corporations out there that are paying their employees to work on open-source projects. As it turns out these companies have an "itch" that open-source scratches. This kind of funding/subsidy doesn't happen right off the bat, it builds as the project becomes more useful.
In the example of building an exchange replacement/killer there are plenty of companies that would love to knock out any piece of M$'s software that locks in users. Any alternative commercial OS, any hardware mfg. that makes hardware that doesn't run windows, any commercial software maker that is competing with M$ in that general arena, any company that depends on M$ and fears that this dependancy gives M$ too much leverage (Witness the Intel half of the wintel duopoly's counter-intuitive investments in open-source).
Additionally if the license allows it commercial software producers are potential funders. If they are interested in selling a commercial front-end or a component that interoperates with the open-source project they have an interest in that projects success. Apple seems to have really latched on to this model and despite all the complaints that they don't "give back" completely unrelated software they *do* give a lot back to projects they use. Sure it's using the open-source community as a source of cheap/free labor, but isn't that the point!? Part of the idea of OSS is that everyone is using everyone else as a source of cheap/free labor, and that together we can produce something that each of us individualy couldn't. Companies like Apple take advantage of that but as long as they are giving back I have no problem with that. As a side note to those that say Apple doesn't "give back" - they give back to the projects they have benefitted from. QuickTime hasn't benefitted from OSS and I don't see that they are obligated to "give back" where they haven't "gotten" in the first place - though it would be nice.
Wow, dude. You sound like you're like totally brainwashed or something.
Not really, I'm ambivalent about our role as the worlds policeman. It has a pretty big downside. You are a big target, if you are serious about it you end up doing all sorts of nasty, machiavellean and sometimes truly horrible crap, and the role tends to undermine our freedoms at home.
On the other hand a power vaccuum is an unstable dangerous thing. There are other nations out there that would like to fill that vaccuum that make us at our worst moments look like boyscouts. There are some truly monstrous, evil regimes out there. Some western critics of our power are so fixated on our shortcomings (which are admittedly legion) that they have become blind to the existence of other, potentially greater evils that we, as flawed as we are, are holding in check. On the few occassions that these critics acknowledge the existence of these other evils they find a way to place the blame for them on us - how self-important we are in the west! As though we invented evil! How ignorant of history! There have been brutal regimes throughout time since long before we came on the scene, and sadly others will exist long after we are history. Some people put their faith in progress, but some of those that do are also the most vocal apologists of the most spectacularly brutal regimes in recent history. At least one of those defenders is going to get his Pulitzer revoked. It almost makes me believe there IS progress. But I lose faith in it again because there is a controversy over the President calling N. Korea "evil" - By any objective standard that should NOT be a controversial statement. Yes, perhaps it's not diplomatic to say so but NOT saying so is one of those nasty, ammoral, machiavellean things you (sometimes) have to do when you are the worlds policeman.
Woah, listen to the economics professor everyone. You have a point, but you could have got the same benefit to the economy by building a $5 billion gigantic rotating barbie doll.
True, but there are other positive effects of defense spending. First, and most obvious, is defense. To be fair though our military spending is far more than is necessary for defense, so what is it about? And does this particular purchase have no more net benefit to us than a gigantic rotating barbie doll. The critics would argue that our military spending is about world domination and empire and that no, it is not worth it. Sometimes that ciriticism is probably fair but it is very simplistic. Through our spectacular wealth and the historical accidents of WWII and the cold war we have ended up with global military domination - at each stage responding to real threats and not (initially) seeking any kind of empire. Along the way we have granted a very large portion of the world security guarantees and ended up with all those nations as our military dependents. At this point most of our allies spend very little on their own defense. In Europe they think they have made war obsolete by creating a stifling network of rules, aggreements, conventions and that all problems can be solved by a weekend summit in Bern. It rarely occurs to them that part of the reason this regime of paper rules works is because it is (inadvertantly) enforced by those much maligned American aircraft carriers. We are living in Pax Americana, we *are* the worlds policemen and have been since the end of WWII. There are dozens of conflicts today and dozens more that could develop tommorrow that would likely escalate into full blown wars if it were not for the ability of the US to project it's military power *via aircraft carriers* to intervene in those conflicts. Global trade and international noms are maintained to a large degree by those 12 aircraft carriers. If instead we had 12 gigantic rotating Barbies we would have the same immediate economic benefit but would in the not very long run we would suffer spectacular economic losses from the instablity caused by the power vaccuum. Our ability and our willingness to "project force" is a very large factor in the thinking China regarding Tiawan, N. Korea regarding S. Korea. It weighs even more heaviliy on various Middle Eastern dictatorships eying their neighbors rich oil fields and already committed to either fascist Pan-Arab nationalism or theocratic Islamism and with no compunctions against achieving either Arab or Muslim "unity" at the point of a gun.
Whenever people opposed to US military spending point out how very much more we spend than the rest of the world they seem to think that if the US stopped spending that much everything else would stay static. Sadly I think this quite niave. Right now S. Korea & Tiawan spend a great deal on defense but they *would* spend a great deal more if they knew we wouldn't or couldn't help them. Japan spends *very* little on defense considering she is next door to two military dictatorships, one with hegemonic ambitions and the other quite mad - what would be the result of the remilitarized Japan? How would those historically hostile, paranoid and ambitious dictatorships respond if Japan (noting that we are several carriers short and incapable of any significant aid) decides to double or triple military spending, institutes a draft or starts a crash nuclear program? How would all that movement effect other regional powers? The only reason S. Korea and Japan don't have nukes is because we do. The only reason they spend relatively little on defense, considering the threats they face, is because we do. The same is true (though perhaps less dramatically so) across the rest of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah. A PBS documentary. Nothing like a left-wing, show-us-the-extent-of-your-paranoia, public cesspit of a channel to inspire your confidence.
;). I have seen a few (and I was heartily suprised) that have if they were biased at all were from a distinctly conservative bias. Usually it depends less on the spin (which is always minimal in those documentaries I have seen) but on the choice of topics. A frontline documentary on Enron may come across as being liberal but only because conservative and business interests were caught behaving badly, the one on 9/11 came across as somewhat conservative because the event itself stresses themes that conservatives themselves stress - the existence of evil people (aside from ourselves, the only evil people that liberals generally acknowledge) and the need to at least on occasion defend ourselves from such evils.
I usually share your opinion of PBS. However the frontline series of documentaries are often quite good. Any particular one may skew left or right but bias is at the level of making a rational and reasonable and dispassionate argument for one or the other viewpoint. (the voice of the frontline narrator just oozes dispassoinate rationality - if such a quality can be said to "ooze"
In this particular case there is nothing "left wing" about it - as you can see in this example the evidence they bring to light (without commenting on) would probably be considered friendly to the conservative case that sricter security and more oversight of foreign nationals is required for homeland security. I would say that perhaps this documentary could be construed as "liberal" by Buchananite paleo-cons to whom John Ashcroft and GW Bush are liberals and Rumsfeld is a closet troskyite. But the facts uncovered are largely supportive of their isolationist arguments as well. The only group that would find these facts uncomfortable and their presentation as biased would be open-borders leftists.
Case in point: School kids in Japan show up as dyslexic far less often, not because they have less dyslexia, but because their language is made up of pictures, not fractured bits of words we call letters.
It's ironic to a degree, I've read that dyslexia is far more common in schools that teach "site reading" (treating words as a whole almost at though they were japanese pictograms rather than made up of distinct phonetic units) as opposed to schools using "phonics" (learning to read by sounding out the phonetic units)
In any event aside from moving to a new written language I don't see that pictograms will ever replace the flexibility of a few words. Pictograms work for a few very common universal concepts and that is it.
"How many times have you been looking at an app with a long toolbar full of icons (what UI designers call an "angry fruit salad") with absolutely no idea what 90% of them do?"
Shit loads of times! But how many times have you looked at the menus of a new Application and had no idea what they did?
Far, far less often. No matter how new the software is to me as long as I understand it's basic function I can usually know immediately what the written menu's will do for me (at least in a rough sense). On the other hand even though I know what the software is for I have NO idea what the icon apparently depicting several colored cubes in a coffee cup is going to do (to cite an example I noticed yesterday).
Don't get me wrong, I like icons. I'm a professional graphic designer and have created my share of icons. Let me tell you from bitter experience, even a slightly abstract concept is almost impossible to convey pictorially - it very rarely "reads".
What generally happens when confronted with a nearly useless icon is that the user "scrubs" it to make the tool tips text(!) come up. He looks at it and says "Oh, that is the 'merge records' button!" He thinks about the picture supposedly conveying that and says "I still don't see it. I suppose I sort of get what they were going for." The next five, ten, a hundred times (depending on how often he uses that button) he does the exact same thing. He IS using a text menu, it's just irritatingly hidden so that you have to scrub over a bunch of icons to find it. After a while if he uses it often enough he eventually remembers what that icon does (but he's still not sure about that less frequently used one next to it - time to scrub again)
RTFM is just pushing the text off one more level. Now I have to associate an obscure icon with a title and that title with a function I understand by reading MORE text in a book (not exactly friendly for a dyslexic). A single well thought out word might be obvious and avoid the whole excersise. This is why the Apple human interface guidlines includes tips for picking the right kinds of words - such as always labelling "Submit" buttons as a verb and as the action it will perform rather than with a generic "OK" which will always require you to read the text you are saying "OK" to which might still be ambiguous if that text was poorly phrased. "Duplicate" or "Shut Down" or "Log Out" etc. are immediately obvious. A "duplicate" pictogram might be unclear, at least until it is so widely used as to be well understood by everyone (like the curly-cue Command pictogram is to Mac users) but any less universal pictogram is going to be unhelpful to most users. I still get confused by the "Shift" "control" and "option" pictograms that Apple is trying to use despite using one nearly every day since I did my high school papers on a 128K mac in 1984.
That doesn't mean that better documentation wouldn't help in the future, nor that it wouldn't have helped prior to 9/11. From the PBS Frontline documentary on the 9/11 hijackers: A note about these statements. If some of the hijackers really were using the stolen passport we no longer sure of their actual identities and so less capable of effectively pursuing the investigation. If they really were using stolen passports biometrics would obviously been one more difficult obstacle for them to overcome and possibly get tripped up on prior to 9/11. Even if they didn't use stolen passports and we had biometrics we would more easily discount this possibility saving time pursuing the possibly bogus lead of the stolen passport.
Also, we know that these 19 hijackers were only the point of the spear. Their operations required at least *some* support personnel and perhaps oversight from superiors and others with access to the resources of the larger organization. Nabil al-Marabh was caught with a faked passport, might we have caught others with fake, stolen or shared passports? Who knows? As for the 19 themselves we don't have all their travels accounted for, do we know that they *never* used falsified documentation? Might they use their real documents with the least likelyhood of causing them problems on the big day but take the risk of using false papers during other travel necessary to set up the attack thus keeping their activities and travels secret? Again, who knows?
In any event it is obvious that fake identity papers DO play a part in Al Quada's operations. Indeed every report on the known workings of Al Quada includes the compartmentalization of operations cells that perform terrorist acts and support cells which have as one of their primary purposes the provision of any necessary (usually false, or misused) documentation.
I disagree, there are many concepts that simply can't be boiled down to an image but can be boiled down to one or two words. There are a LOT of apps out there that completely fail because they try to convey complex or obscure concepts with a simple icon and it just can't be done. How many times have you been looking at an app with a long toolbar full of icons (what UI designers call an "angry fruit salad") with absolutely no idea what 90% of them do?
Ironically I rarely see Mac applications that fall into this trap of using confusing unhelpful icons, but I run into it a lot with windows apps. I am a biased mac zealot so I have to take my own thoughts about this with a grain of salt BUT, I think Microsoft and Windows application developers that followed their lead copied the Mac GUI without really understanding it. To see these long toolbars with dozens of incomprehensible icons I have to believe that they looked at the Mac and said "So Icons are a good thing eh? Well, we'll use even MORE icons - that'll show 'em! And we'll have fancy animated icons that dance too!" At this point compare the average Mac program and average windows program, the GUI on mac apps tends to be less "graphical", it is more sparing with icons & graphic ornamentation and is easier to use (for most people) as a result.
Quartz is not "Display PDF". Don't know where you saw or why you decided to make up that retarded name.
No nobody ever officially called it "Display PDF" BUT it uses the "PDF" format to "Display" stuff on the screen the same way Display PostScript uses the PostScript format to display stuff on the screen. So to someone familiar with Adobe's Display PostScript saying that Quartz is essentially "Display PDF" makes perfect sense and in two words conveys exactly what Quartz is.
No, it's true. Apples screen rendering is "Quartz" which is their own creation but is essentially "display PDF". They developed it to avoid paying Adobe to use Display PostScript as NeXT had been doing. Obviously since everything on the screen is already essentially a PDF it makes sense to just write it to the disk to "capture" it.
. However the principle of slightly altering documents to catch the unwary is an old one.
I think this particular breed of "honeytoken" is called a "canary trap". Make each copy unique and use a colorful phrase or two which just cry's out to be quoted verbatim and you know who the leak is.
Also, I think you are overstating the technical problems. The example given is just that, an example. I would assume though that in the example JFK's record is an old record, he's not in the hospital, his bill is paid up etc. There may be a few false positives but many of those will be immediately obvious - just ignore them.
Um... that's the whole point. A bored nurse browsing through patient files for shits and giggles is commiting a crime for which not only she but also her employer can be held both liable in both civil and criminal court.
Some people don't like other people getting their shits and giggles by reading their medical records (or financial records, credit card #'s etc.) It's one thing for your doctor to know about that embarassing incident/disease/etc. it's quite another for a (potentially gossipy) nurse - after all if she found your records so amusing, so might a few of her friends, perhaps some of them are also your friends/relatives/co-workers/employers etc.
You're so right! I certainly wouldn't want any database with my personal data, medical records, or credit card number using any kind of wasteful "security". Information wants to be free!!! I'm sure anyone with access (even if it they gave themselves access via one of these "exploits" I've heard so much about) is just poking around because they're curious. Only a Nazi control freak would prevent them from getting that data.
/. do. If you don't mind curious people looking at your medical or financial data I'm sure you don't mind if the curious people work for the government.
It is comforting to know that you don't have any of these hangups about "privacy" that others on
Another post on this thread by an actual map company employee mentioned that they ad dead-end roads, and that they have other techniques as well depending on the purpose of the map to (as much as possible) eliminate any real inconvenience to map users while still having "honeytokens" to catch copyright infringement.
I've noticed that there is one road map of my area that has a small pond on my property on the wrong side of a highway and have wondered if that was an intentional error. It would be a perfect kind of error to catch a copycat without any inconvenience to users. It's a road map and the pond isn't even visible from the road - no harm that it's wrong since it doesn't relate to the purpose of the map at all.
(a) reveal information you shouldn't have accessed, nor (b) base a decision on such information, it is not a problem for me.
;)
I think you are overestimating your ability to not use the information you gain, or you haven't really found anything significant.
Possession of information is never wrong
Ahh, but if you had to *act* to get that information then it is not a thought crime, it is simply a crime. If you access my private medical data (for instance) when you had no reason to other than "morbid curiousity" you have commited a crime. What you are thinking is irrelevant, accessing the data - an act - is the crime. This is just a way of catching you doing it.
I would imagine that somebody working on the database may inadvertently trip one of these "honeytokens" but then if you really have a legitimate reason to be hitting that data then you're OK. As for the term "honeytoken" I've always called this "salted" data or a "salted list" which is what they called this concept before computers and before somebody at a honeypot project mistakenly thought they invented something new
Either my reading comprehension of your post, or yours of mine sucks. Or perhaps you're a troll and you have me hooked ;)
You said that profits are a waste and that the $$$ should be reinvested to grow the company. For what reason the company should grow is unclear, it appears to you to be an end unto itself. I said to the contrary that profits are the entire point and that if you do choose to reinvest it would be towards then end of having even more profits to pocket.
I am convinced that some of the problems in corporate America today is confusion over this fundamental issue. The confusion is understandable because with todays tax laws profits, real tangible honest profits, are taxed twice and at a high rate both times. Capital gains on the other hand are taxed only once and that one time at a lower rate. So, investors naturally want to make their stock price go up rather than have it pay dividends. Beyond encouraging your kind of thinking the problem is that unlike dividends stock prices don't have to be grounded in any kind of objective reality. The internet bubble and Enron amply illustrated that. The whole stock price game can become a massive, complex, unstable ponzi scheme ungrounded in reality. Enron is a perfect example of the result - it was only important to grow on paper, losses were hidden and profits were manufactured and nobody was the wiser (for a while) because nobody actually wanted to get those "profits" Enron claimed to have. Everybody was happy and tax law encouraged them to "reinvest" to make the company bigger and the stock price go up. If the tax laws had been otherwise Enron would have had to be more honest, if they claimed chimerical profits investors would have wanted at least some of them to go in their pocket. Sadly, while the Bush administration made some progress they got demogogued about "cutting taxes for the rich" and didn't push this through. While it really would be a tax cut for the rich it is still the right thing to do, and with all the 401(k)'s, IRA's, mutual funds and stock investments by pension funds your average stock holder isn't exactly the top hat wearing caricature of wealth from the monopoly box.
Why? Because profit is money wasted. Better to invest your capital than give it away to shareholders.
A little confusion over who's money it is? The investors quite literaly own the company and it is their money, their company and it is (supposed to be & is legally obligated to be) run for their benefit. Actually, stictly speaking they ARE the company - a collective body of individuals (the shareholders) that in a limited way can legally act as though they were a single individual (to do things like hire you to make them more money). They are usually more than happy letting you reinvest their profits if it will lead to a bigger, healthier, MORE PROFITABLE company in the future but that is a very different thing froms saying profit is "money wasted" and that it is better to inveset than "give it away to shareholders".
This did in fact happen last quarter (the profits being all in interest on the $$ in the bank while the business otherwise would have shown a loss). THIS quarter however they did in fact run a profit off of their business of selling computers. Also to be fair they are doing some things this quarter that cost a fair amount of $$$ that are investments that will reap rewards in future quarters. Opening new stores and opening the iTunes music store - which is actually supposed to turn the corner as soon as this next quarter, and may be a real cash cow when it comes out for windows.
Ok, we were working with illustrated brochures and booklets and we were told that the plates are produced at a blank and white resolution of 1500 and up.
;)
In this instance DPI can be confusing. To create the film which is used to create the plates for color offset printing they use *very* high resolution imagesetters 1500dpi is probably on the lower end, some are 3000+dpi. However all that massive resolution is not being used to make such a high resolution image, it is being used to make sure that each dot of a much lower resolution image is as close to *perfectly* round as it can be.
As for loosing information in the screen process you are correct but you aren't loosing more than 1/2 the information (in fact you are losing less than that). That is why you take the final lpi your are going to print at and double it to get the dpi of your digital image. In the case of most magazines which I assure you are almost always 150 lpi (a few lower quality may be 133 lpi, and a very few, very high quality magazines mostly *for* the design and printing industries are higher). If you don't believe me pull out a loupe and take a look yourself - compare a magazine cover to what your inkjet printer is producing, there are a *lot* fewer (but perfectly round) dots.
I'll confess I'm a little murky on the *very* fine details of pre-press, not actually having worked with the RIP's & imagesetters at a service bureau myself - but I was sending files to them almost every day, somtimes going in myself to sit and wait next to the production guru as he produced a rush job for me (get to know the actual production guy & at night when the receptionists & account execs are long gone home he doesn't care that there are dozens of jobs before yours in the que - he just knows you need the film in 30 minutes and it will only take him 20 minutes to rip
I want nothing more than for the companies like EMagic... You can't say that about Logic
You do realize that EMagic *is* Apple.
Yes he could but as I said it is an unnecessarily convoluted thing to say that is actually more confusing that simply saying "give me a 300 dpi image". As for not specifying the final print size, often that is something that is understood, as in a magazine spread or cover. Alternatively the final print size is up to the person supplying the image, in which case it makes total sense to simply ask for a 300dpi image - the person asking for it has no idea what size the image will be in either pixels or inches but does know what resolution it has to be.
It seems in this case somebody didn't communicate all the necessary information but that doesn't make the limited information that *was* provided wrong, nor does it mean that the person asking that the image be 300 dpi was the one responsible to specify the size in inches.
When doing anything that involves commercial printing it makes much more sense to ask for images by their (intended) physical size and resolution rather than by pixel size. For one thing the pixel size will be irrelevant after the project leaves the computer and becomes a proof print, film, plates, and a printed material. Also, the pixel size isn't that important a variable for him - he asked for "AT LEAST 300 dpi" you could provide a larger image (in pixels) and it wouldn't matter to much to him. Finally, why have a human multiply the intended physical size x the resolution when the whole point of computers is to "compute" those kinds of things for you. Most image formats include physical size and resolution, all image software works uses this information which is important in every context except working on a computer screen.
For professional printing you want something high, like about 1200
1200 is really insanely high. You need to find out what lpi the printer will print it at and the rule of thumb is to double it*. Most magazines print at 133 to 150 lpi, newspapers are usually 85lpi and high quality art books are 200 lpi and up (but not so high as 600 lpi that a 1200 dpi original supposes). Usually 300 dpi is fine.
* The rule of thumb is based on the assumption that you are loosing about 1/2 the information when you are going from a grid of pixels to angled halftone screens. I seem to recall a study that proved you didn't actually lose that much and you could get away with somewhat lower dpi images without any loss of detail. A quick google search didn't bring it up so I'm relying only on my own faulty memory.
Except that "300DPI" by itself does not communicate any information about the physical size of the image - it is only half of the required information. Is that 300DPI at 3" by 3" or 8" by 8" or what?
That is part of the point of using "DPI". The person making the request might not know KNOW the size in inches, often that is up to the person he is making the request of. By asking for a 300 dpi image he is saying "however many inches you want this to end up make sure there are 300 pixels for each of them"
DPI IS NOT AN PROPERTY OF A PICTURE. OK? CLEAR? Yes?
The confusion is yours because you are thinking only about the image on a computer where the "idiot" is thinking about both the image on the computer AND the final product which is a printed picture. He is probably patiently explaining to her that DPI *is* a property of a picture and that the computer nerd that told here otherwise is an "idiot" that can't think outside of that box sitting on his desk. To the person asking for the image the entire function of the image he is asking for is to be printed and the computer is just a tool to effect that result! To him (and to many image formats on the computer!) the picture has dimensions not only in pixels but in inches and he is asking for a picture that has enough pixels in each inch to print correctly. I suppose he could say "give me a picture that has enough pixels to end up at 300dpi when measured in inches at the size you want it to be printed". That is a bit of a mouthful and can get needlessly confusing, fortunately the entire industry, all DPT and imaging software and most image formats all understand the term "300 dpi".
Have you greased your Modem lately? Most of the latency you experience is because of rust.
While rust can cause problems, what few people realize is that tangled wires are the biggest problem. This is because the data is being transmitted via binary 1's and 0's. While the nice curved 0's flow nicely even through tangled wires, the 1's can get easily get jammed when going through tightly curved tangled wiring. These jam's can causing "net congestion". This is why computers don't use coiled wires like on your telephone handset.
I agree with a lot of what you say. I always wonder how the anti-profit folks feed their kids. It seems like the students & accademics don't realize that the money their parents/grant/foundation/college provide them all ultimately comes from some "greedy" companies profits. I guess when you're income is a couple of degrees of seperation from the profit motive that generates it you can pretend it isn't involved and is therefore unnecessary.
However, I think that most successful open-source projects have an *indirect* bottom-line financial value that *does* lead to real investment or at least self-interested alms though admittedly not at anywhere near the level of funding that your quasi-commercial model could. There are plenty of profit-driven corporations out there that are paying their employees to work on open-source projects. As it turns out these companies have an "itch" that open-source scratches. This kind of funding/subsidy doesn't happen right off the bat, it builds as the project becomes more useful.
In the example of building an exchange replacement/killer there are plenty of companies that would love to knock out any piece of M$'s software that locks in users. Any alternative commercial OS, any hardware mfg. that makes hardware that doesn't run windows, any commercial software maker that is competing with M$ in that general arena, any company that depends on M$ and fears that this dependancy gives M$ too much leverage (Witness the Intel half of the wintel duopoly's counter-intuitive investments in open-source).
Additionally if the license allows it commercial software producers are potential funders. If they are interested in selling a commercial front-end or a component that interoperates with the open-source project they have an interest in that projects success. Apple seems to have really latched on to this model and despite all the complaints that they don't "give back" completely unrelated software they *do* give a lot back to projects they use. Sure it's using the open-source community as a source of cheap/free labor, but isn't that the point!? Part of the idea of OSS is that everyone is using everyone else as a source of cheap/free labor, and that together we can produce something that each of us individualy couldn't. Companies like Apple take advantage of that but as long as they are giving back I have no problem with that. As a side note to those that say Apple doesn't "give back" - they give back to the projects they have benefitted from. QuickTime hasn't benefitted from OSS and I don't see that they are obligated to "give back" where they haven't "gotten" in the first place - though it would be nice.
Wow, dude. You sound like you're like totally brainwashed or something.
Not really, I'm ambivalent about our role as the worlds policeman. It has a pretty big downside. You are a big target, if you are serious about it you end up doing all sorts of nasty, machiavellean and sometimes truly horrible crap, and the role tends to undermine our freedoms at home.
On the other hand a power vaccuum is an unstable dangerous thing. There are other nations out there that would like to fill that vaccuum that make us at our worst moments look like boyscouts. There are some truly monstrous, evil regimes out there. Some western critics of our power are so fixated on our shortcomings (which are admittedly legion) that they have become blind to the existence of other, potentially greater evils that we, as flawed as we are, are holding in check. On the few occassions that these critics acknowledge the existence of these other evils they find a way to place the blame for them on us - how self-important we are in the west! As though we invented evil! How ignorant of history! There have been brutal regimes throughout time since long before we came on the scene, and sadly others will exist long after we are history. Some people put their faith in progress, but some of those that do are also the most vocal apologists of the most spectacularly brutal regimes in recent history. At least one of those defenders is going to get his Pulitzer revoked. It almost makes me believe there IS progress. But I lose faith in it again because there is a controversy over the President calling N. Korea "evil" - By any objective standard that should NOT be a controversial statement. Yes, perhaps it's not diplomatic to say so but NOT saying so is one of those nasty, ammoral, machiavellean things you (sometimes) have to do when you are the worlds policeman.
Woah, listen to the economics professor everyone. You have a point, but you could have got the same benefit to the economy by building a $5 billion gigantic rotating barbie doll.
True, but there are other positive effects of defense spending. First, and most obvious, is defense. To be fair though our military spending is far more than is necessary for defense, so what is it about? And does this particular purchase have no more net benefit to us than a gigantic rotating barbie doll. The critics would argue that our military spending is about world domination and empire and that no, it is not worth it. Sometimes that ciriticism is probably fair but it is very simplistic. Through our spectacular wealth and the historical accidents of WWII and the cold war we have ended up with global military domination - at each stage responding to real threats and not (initially) seeking any kind of empire. Along the way we have granted a very large portion of the world security guarantees and ended up with all those nations as our military dependents. At this point most of our allies spend very little on their own defense. In Europe they think they have made war obsolete by creating a stifling network of rules, aggreements, conventions and that all problems can be solved by a weekend summit in Bern. It rarely occurs to them that part of the reason this regime of paper rules works is because it is (inadvertantly) enforced by those much maligned American aircraft carriers. We are living in Pax Americana, we *are* the worlds policemen and have been since the end of WWII. There are dozens of conflicts today and dozens more that could develop tommorrow that would likely escalate into full blown wars if it were not for the ability of the US to project it's military power *via aircraft carriers* to intervene in those conflicts. Global trade and international noms are maintained to a large degree by those 12 aircraft carriers. If instead we had 12 gigantic rotating Barbies we would have the same immediate economic benefit but would in the not very long run we would suffer spectacular economic losses from the instablity caused by the power vaccuum. Our ability and our willingness to "project force" is a very large factor in the thinking China regarding Tiawan, N. Korea regarding S. Korea. It weighs even more heaviliy on various Middle Eastern dictatorships eying their neighbors rich oil fields and already committed to either fascist Pan-Arab nationalism or theocratic Islamism and with no compunctions against achieving either Arab or Muslim "unity" at the point of a gun.
Whenever people opposed to US military spending point out how very much more we spend than the rest of the world they seem to think that if the US stopped spending that much everything else would stay static. Sadly I think this quite niave. Right now S. Korea & Tiawan spend a great deal on defense but they *would* spend a great deal more if they knew we wouldn't or couldn't help them. Japan spends *very* little on defense considering she is next door to two military dictatorships, one with hegemonic ambitions and the other quite mad - what would be the result of the remilitarized Japan? How would those historically hostile, paranoid and ambitious dictatorships respond if Japan (noting that we are several carriers short and incapable of any significant aid) decides to double or triple military spending, institutes a draft or starts a crash nuclear program? How would all that movement effect other regional powers? The only reason S. Korea and Japan don't have nukes is because we do. The only reason they spend relatively little on defense, considering the threats they face, is because we do. The same is true (though perhaps less dramatically so) across the rest of the world.
Is reagan a republican figure on an historic scale?
Yes.