Thanks, you're absolutely right. I will admit, I'm not all that familiar with proposals surrounding the semantic web (I just looked up RDF) and it looks like RDF is what I'm looking for.
In terms of the idea, I was also thinking that even better than just getting input from users, you could do a hybrid, which is have the content provider provide the meta data and have it verified by the users. It would probably get adopted faster. Also, the search engine could even penalize sites if their self-provided meta data varied too far from what users thought. That would prevent gaming the system by providers.
I think that it could easily be implemented as a firefox plugin and made into a toolbar (though I don't have experience in that area). It would also have high requirements for servers, so the cost would be high. It would also only be as valuable as the availability of the meta data and user-contributed data. So it's a tough sell. You would have to be big to make it work.
I think that maybe the community could come up with some kind of user-generated meta data system. For example, some one could create a site similar to StumbleUpon, but have it be just a general meta-data service. So when you visit a page, if you feel like it, you can tag it with certain meta data. This could be helpful, for example, in blocking AND finding porn.
Probably something more effective would be something a little more complex than just tags. Using the porn example, you wouldn't want articles talking about porn to be blocked (if you were blocking porn) because it actually wasn't porn. So you might have a couple different categories of tags. You might even put in a rating on the content (I'm thinking along the lines of PG, PG-13, R, etc). The validity of certain meta data could be based on the frequency of the reported meta data.
Essentially, it's like a wiki-meta-data system. You could make a great search engine out of it. You could make good content control systems with it. If you made the data available through a web service, you can put the control for its user in the hands of the user. The meta-data rating software wouldn't be for the average joe, but you could motivate people to rate using systems like what's used in the google image labeler http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/. Or you could require the user to rate a page to "pay" for each search they do. People could also submit their site to be rated.
It would probably be hard to get wide participation, but it would cool if it could be done.
A combination of this idea could be combined with a prank a friend of mine pulled not too long ago.
He was studying computer engineering and doing stuff with embedded devices. He took a chip, a light sensor, and a small speaker and hid it in the room of one of his roommates. He programmed the device to sense when the lights went out and then it would sound off at full volume. The device would continue to sound until the lights came back on, at which time it would go silent. After the lights went out again, the timer would reset and the alarm would go off in another ten minutes...
The real competition for online legitimate media services is the ability for them to have what I am looking for. This is why napster was so successful--you could find anything on it and get it fast.
I buy music now on iTunes, not really because I think it is the moral way to download music, but because they usually have what I want, they provide me a way to find other music I might want, and I can download it from them fast. For whatever reason, I don't get great performance out of BitTorrent. But on iTunes, I can do a search, select a song and have it downloaded in about a minute or so.
If they provide a service of value, people will pay for it.
I think they provide a service of value. Publishers of these journals provide the service of reviewing articles and providing a means to have articles reviewed. IMHO, that is a value that I think many are willing to pay for. They need to push that value to subscribers.
On the other end, people fund researchers to do work. Those same people should also be interested that the research is high quality. The way to ensure that is through journals. Thus, funders of research should also be interested in funding journals (unless they want to keep it secret--a big caveat).
It may just be that the publishers need to look at their model for doing business.
I'm all about helping the poor having basic necessities, but I definitely think that anyone (poor or not) should earn what they get. I think one of the greatest things that has undermined US culture and other cultures is poorly designed welfare systems. I think people have come to expect too much from others. People have come to believe that they are entitled from someone for the basic necessities in life. The other problem is that once people believe they are entitled to something, it is nearly impossible to convince them otherwise.
I don't want people to suffer and die. But I think that in terms of money, people should what they earn. In terms of knowledge, however, I think think it should be free. For the betterment of society, people should earn the money they get to provide incentive for creating knowledge and knowledge should be shared to be efficient in creating more knowledge and providing opportunity for increased quality of life. There a probably even better reasons than that--feel free to reply.
I think there is a fundamental conflict between the two. Having knowledge that others don't provides a means for one to receive more money that another. Sharing that knowledge will lower that individuals prospects of gain (and power derived from it). It seems that creating knowledge creates power, sharing knowledge shares power.
It will be a nearly impossible change to completely free knowledge because its freedom comes at the cost of those who have money and power. I think that the way to both encourage people to earn what they get and share the knowledge they create is one of the most important problems that society has to solve. I feel that to the extent that a society can embrace both is the extent to which it will progress.
I had a discussion about this the other night with my mother (who has taught about 30 years in both private and public, and successful and at risk schools) my sister, and my sister in-law (who are both experienced teachers). The biggest problem that they face and the biggest differentiator that they see is the parental involvement factor. If the parents are not supportive at home, the child has no chance. Of course there are other factors that determines the success of a child in school, but if the child lacks parent-instilled values for education, they have little chance of being successful.
I had a long discussion with them about the merits of privatizing the school system. I think that it would improve schools, but the problem is that it would increase the gap between classes. Education opportunities would begin to depend on the riches of parents.
I argued that the way colleges are set up shows that it can be privatized. The problem with this is that not everyone attends college. Our system of government depends on the education of the people. If school were not free (or required), the people would not be able to make informed decisions (think of the current situation just much worse). One of the foundation principles of democracy is the necessity of an educated people. It is the reason for the libraries, the preservation of the arts, the freedom of the press.
People need to be educated. The foundation for that is in the home in a family. Fragmented families leads to neglected children. Neglected children make poor decisions. The destruction of the family is making the country stupid and stopping the progress of the nation. We are falling behind because the family is being destroyed in the United States.
I totally agree with the disappointment about no new Mac Book Pros with Core 2s. My laptop is now limping and I was going to order one immediately after they became available. They also mentioned, however, that there would be more announcements throughout the week. So I can just hope...
Seriously, we have FTTH here and its great. It probably covers 50 to 75% of the population center for the state. At home its 5Mb up/down with no restrictions on use. We also have it at the office which gives us 30 Mb up/down and its only $130 per month. Yesterday at work, I checked something out from sourceforge and was downloading at peak 5 MBytes per second and averaged about 2.2 MBytes per second. So its starting to come, but you have to live in Utah.:)
Something that irks me still is that although subversion supports moving files, subclipse does not. One the command line, you can call a subversion command and move files and it retains the history. In eclipse, it will copy the file to the new location and delete the original. Thus the file history is lost.
A somewhat fanciful solution to this would be for Apple to announce support for the Win API on Mac OS X and the Carbon API for Windows (and/or maybe even Cocoa for Windows) at the same time (since they have almost done that already with QT and iTunes).
The FCC already has guidelines that it uses to determine the rating of tv content. The same guidelines could be used for internet content. I think that there are already plenty of guidelines that judge content. Not that they're perfect or anything...
Aside from that, whatever happened to the meta tag self regulating approach? I think I remember that pages had the ability to set the content rating. I think I saw the feature in Netscape or somewhere. You could set the page's rating on sex, language and violence.
As one who doesn't want to deal with porn nor do I want my kids to run across it, I wish there was something in place that would make it easier to me. I don't believe in a system that forces everyone to not see porn, but if I don't want to have to deal with it and if I want to protect the innocence of my children, then I should be able to do that on the internet just like I can with TV, movies, games, etc. I want my children to be safe from this stuff in my own home.
I think a cool idea is to have the commercial come on and have a little thing on the side that says pay $0.25 to skip these commercials. That way, you could start out free, but toward the end when things are getting really tight, you click and pay to skip the commercial. You can watch the commercials at the beginning when you aren't so attached (and pay for part of the show through ads), and then you wont get killed when they break for commercials at the climax of the show. That's what kills me, is the commercials at the end right before the climax. They've got you glued.
Of course, there is a lot of potential for abuse, but I don't think anybody would be happy if you had to pay more than the commercial free cost to skip the last set of commercials (though the station would probably charge more to skip those).
Isn't the whole idea of publishing to get the information out there so that it is useful. This is something that I have had a hard time trying to understand. Sometimes it seems that researchers in acadamia claim altruistic motives but then most of the articles are not freely available. That probably has more to do with the publishers, but it just irks me when I use google scholar and I can't find access to the article I want to read. Then I find it somewhere and they want $30 for a copy.
I'm just sayin' it seems anti-progressive and very uncooperative.
You can also get movie info from google through texting. Just send your zip and movie title to GOOGL (46645) and it will shoot back movie times at the nearest theaters.
Another cool trick is that you can add cell phones to your IM list. Just add a new buddy or start a new chat with the full phone number with area code.
Although this makes a nice criteria and check list, it doesn't stand to determine when a fetus is actually alive and human. By this definition, a child would not be considered alive until it was of maturity to reproduce. Heck, some slashdotters wouldn't be considered alive under that point (though you would have define ability to debate that point).
Those are all valid counter arguments, but I think that what you are talking about are still niche markets. How many people fly frequently? How many are stationed in Iraq that would actually buy it. Apple isn't interested in selling hundreds of thousands, but millions of what ever they make. I don't know how much profit potential they would see in these niche markets.
One solution that I have also used in this situation is tooth paste. It doesn't have to be real thick or anything. Admittedly, it isn't as transparent as spit or other things, but you get a fresh minty scent while you are diving.:)
I think that it is difficult to to draw clear line on what would qualify people as "crackpots." Its like trying to decide who is insane. I think that we call them insane because they are significantly different to us. They are a small minority and act in a way that is incomprehensible to us.
Society has determined that things like murder are fundamentally wrong. Its generally accepted, but do we really know that death is terrible? What if there is a life after this that is so incredible that we are actually doing people favors by killing them? (I don't actually believe this, but it's some thing that we could be wrong about).
As time goes on and as people start ignoring things like morals, society will degrade until we are back to the stone age. You may disagree, but then again that is just opinion.
Really, as it turns out people all live some sort of religion. Some don't recognize being agnostic or atheist as its own religion, but it is. It is riddled with its own beliefs and doctrine. None of it has any more proof of truth than any other form of belief.
So to deal with this we have a system here in the United States that deals with majorities (like Christians) and minorities so that each has their rights preserved. For the most part majorities get their way (that's democracy) and so the standard for morality is set by them. But minorities have the opportunity to be able to speak and make impacts to influence the majority (hence the importance of free speech).
But we can't have every minority wielding huge influence otherwise we will end up with laws permitting murder. Of course the majority isn't perfect either. But you have to remember that the premise of democracy is that the majority is usually right as long as they are well informed. Of course this isn't a true democracy but a representative democracy...
This firm represents iDownload.com with respect to your inaccurate classification of iDownload's software product, Search toolbar, by referring to it as Spyware in its description. Specifically, a recent review of materials disseminated by your company, via the Internet, revealed that your company is falsely disparaging iDownload's product, Search, in that Castle Cops f/k/a Computer Cops, L.L.C. classifies the product as Spyware and articulates that,
* iSearch is certified spyware/foistware, or other malware.
Castle Cops f/k/a Computer Cops, L.L.C.'s characterization of iSearch as Spyware is damaging to the iDownload brand. As we all know, Spyware is a phrase within the public conscience that has a specific meaning. A classification of Spyware is usually reserved for those programs that not only have the ability to scan an end- user's computer, but also seek to remain unnoticed or hidden, and also seek to gather personal information such as passwords, account numbers, etc. of the end-user. iSearch does not fit this profile.
iSearch does not qualify as Spyware. iSearch is a toolbar that in no way attempts to remain hidden or evade detection. Continuing, unlike Spyware, iSearch does not gather any personally identifiable information about end users, does not collect data about the user's web usage, does not collect any information entered into web forms, does not share information with third parties, does not send or cause to be sent unsolicted e-mail, and does not install items such as dialers on the end user's computer. Rather, Search will molest your children, burn down your home, and make your PC act like an Apple II. In Soviet Russia, Search searches you.
We would request that you correct your disseminated materials immediately to remove any reference to iSearch as Spyware, Foistware, or Malware. To the extent you fail to remedy your improper disparagement of the iDownload brand on or before February 15, 2005, we will neuter an EA programmer on the hour, every hour. Should you have any questions regarding the foregoing, please feel free to contact me.
The school that I attended through the end of elementary school until part-way throught high school (all were on the same campus), used Fool Proof to protect their systems. It was pretty secure, if it was properly configured. My mom was a teacher and sometimes I had to wait around for her to finish things after school, so I would hack around on the computers in her classroom for awhile. I was a little bit of a software pirate since I didn't have any money, I lived in a foreign country that had a limited availability of mac software. So I made a little utility disk.
FoolProof was set up so that it would still load even if you started with extensions off (by holding the shift key at startup). This could be overcome if you changed the file type of the extension. So on my little utility disk I had a copy of Norton's Disk Editor and in that way you could edit the file information. There was something else that you had to do, because if you just changed the file, it would have some kind of error message when it started up ever after that. I think that it included making a copy of the preference file and moving some other things around.
After I compromised the machine, I used a copy Stuffit Deluxe to compress and segment the files that I wanted off the machine. As time went on, I found it much easier to get the key strokes for the temporary unlock by just watching the admins work on things. I even got the master password sometimes. Most of them knew me, even the Technology Coordinator for the campus. So I really couldn't do anything too bad. I never really did anyways, except one time installing Ambrosia's Avara and arranging a LAN party on the lab. They were a little disappointed, but they got over it and put me in charge of a short-lived computer club in my middle school.
When I first looked at this, I thought about Apple's expose. I think that Apple could implement this quite easily into their current implementation. I don't think I like the whole idea about having an entire sphere that you rotate through (though I think that could be made easy), but just have it appear like it is in a sphere in the screen with out being able to rotate around in it. I think its advantage over expose is its ability to overlap windows a little bit. When you get a lot of windows open on expose, it is a little bit cumbersome.
I think a better way to do have it be able to rotate through a sphere is to rotate the screen (when it is in expose mode) when the mouse goes to the edge of the screen. As an alternative, you could also use the keyboard arrow keys to navigate the sphere in larger increments. However, I think that the option to use a sphere should remain an option as it would probably be a distraction to ma and pop.
This would also be excellent with a five-button mouse with two buttons dedicated to expose (my current setup). You can just fly when things are set up this way.
Slashdot Mirror
Watermarking could be made trustworthy through the use of a digital signature on the watermark. Of course, that is still easily circumvented.
-br
Thanks, you're absolutely right. I will admit, I'm not all that familiar with proposals surrounding the semantic web (I just looked up RDF) and it looks like RDF is what I'm looking for.
In terms of the idea, I was also thinking that even better than just getting input from users, you could do a hybrid, which is have the content provider provide the meta data and have it verified by the users. It would probably get adopted faster. Also, the search engine could even penalize sites if their self-provided meta data varied too far from what users thought. That would prevent gaming the system by providers.
I think that it could easily be implemented as a firefox plugin and made into a toolbar (though I don't have experience in that area). It would also have high requirements for servers, so the cost would be high. It would also only be as valuable as the availability of the meta data and user-contributed data. So it's a tough sell. You would have to be big to make it work.
-br
I think that maybe the community could come up with some kind of user-generated meta data system. For example, some one could create a site similar to StumbleUpon, but have it be just a general meta-data service. So when you visit a page, if you feel like it, you can tag it with certain meta data. This could be helpful, for example, in blocking AND finding porn.
Probably something more effective would be something a little more complex than just tags. Using the porn example, you wouldn't want articles talking about porn to be blocked (if you were blocking porn) because it actually wasn't porn. So you might have a couple different categories of tags. You might even put in a rating on the content (I'm thinking along the lines of PG, PG-13, R, etc). The validity of certain meta data could be based on the frequency of the reported meta data.
Essentially, it's like a wiki-meta-data system. You could make a great search engine out of it. You could make good content control systems with it. If you made the data available through a web service, you can put the control for its user in the hands of the user. The meta-data rating software wouldn't be for the average joe, but you could motivate people to rate using systems like what's used in the google image labeler http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/. Or you could require the user to rate a page to "pay" for each search they do. People could also submit their site to be rated.
It would probably be hard to get wide participation, but it would cool if it could be done.
-br
A combination of this idea could be combined with a prank a friend of mine pulled not too long ago.
He was studying computer engineering and doing stuff with embedded devices. He took a chip, a light sensor, and a small speaker and hid it in the room of one of his roommates. He programmed the device to sense when the lights went out and then it would sound off at full volume. The device would continue to sound until the lights came back on, at which time it would go silent. After the lights went out again, the timer would reset and the alarm would go off in another ten minutes...
-br
The real competition for online legitimate media services is the ability for them to have what I am looking for. This is why napster was so successful--you could find anything on it and get it fast.
I buy music now on iTunes, not really because I think it is the moral way to download music, but because they usually have what I want, they provide me a way to find other music I might want, and I can download it from them fast. For whatever reason, I don't get great performance out of BitTorrent. But on iTunes, I can do a search, select a song and have it downloaded in about a minute or so.
That's my $0.02.
br/
If they provide a service of value, people will pay for it.
I think they provide a service of value. Publishers of these journals provide the service of reviewing articles and providing a means to have articles reviewed. IMHO, that is a value that I think many are willing to pay for. They need to push that value to subscribers.
On the other end, people fund researchers to do work. Those same people should also be interested that the research is high quality. The way to ensure that is through journals. Thus, funders of research should also be interested in funding journals (unless they want to keep it secret--a big caveat).
It may just be that the publishers need to look at their model for doing business.
br/
I'm all about helping the poor having basic necessities, but I definitely think that anyone (poor or not) should earn what they get. I think one of the greatest things that has undermined US culture and other cultures is poorly designed welfare systems. I think people have come to expect too much from others. People have come to believe that they are entitled from someone for the basic necessities in life. The other problem is that once people believe they are entitled to something, it is nearly impossible to convince them otherwise.
I don't want people to suffer and die. But I think that in terms of money, people should what they earn. In terms of knowledge, however, I think think it should be free. For the betterment of society, people should earn the money they get to provide incentive for creating knowledge and knowledge should be shared to be efficient in creating more knowledge and providing opportunity for increased quality of life. There a probably even better reasons than that--feel free to reply.
I think there is a fundamental conflict between the two. Having knowledge that others don't provides a means for one to receive more money that another. Sharing that knowledge will lower that individuals prospects of gain (and power derived from it). It seems that creating knowledge creates power, sharing knowledge shares power.
It will be a nearly impossible change to completely free knowledge because its freedom comes at the cost of those who have money and power. I think that the way to both encourage people to earn what they get and share the knowledge they create is one of the most important problems that society has to solve. I feel that to the extent that a society can embrace both is the extent to which it will progress.
br/
----------
not a sig
I had a discussion about this the other night with my mother (who has taught about 30 years in both private and public, and successful and at risk schools) my sister, and my sister in-law (who are both experienced teachers). The biggest problem that they face and the biggest differentiator that they see is the parental involvement factor. If the parents are not supportive at home, the child has no chance. Of course there are other factors that determines the success of a child in school, but if the child lacks parent-instilled values for education, they have little chance of being successful.
I had a long discussion with them about the merits of privatizing the school system. I think that it would improve schools, but the problem is that it would increase the gap between classes. Education opportunities would begin to depend on the riches of parents.
I argued that the way colleges are set up shows that it can be privatized. The problem with this is that not everyone attends college. Our system of government depends on the education of the people. If school were not free (or required), the people would not be able to make informed decisions (think of the current situation just much worse). One of the foundation principles of democracy is the necessity of an educated people. It is the reason for the libraries, the preservation of the arts, the freedom of the press.
People need to be educated. The foundation for that is in the home in a family. Fragmented families leads to neglected children. Neglected children make poor decisions. The destruction of the family is making the country stupid and stopping the progress of the nation. We are falling behind because the family is being destroyed in the United States.
I totally agree with the disappointment about no new Mac Book Pros with Core 2s. My laptop is now limping and I was going to order one immediately after they became available. They also mentioned, however, that there would be more announcements throughout the week. So I can just hope...
They spent it all here in Utah :)
:)
http://www.utopianet.org/
Seriously, we have FTTH here and its great. It probably covers 50 to 75% of the population center for the state. At home its 5Mb up/down with no restrictions on use. We also have it at the office which gives us 30 Mb up/down and its only $130 per month. Yesterday at work, I checked something out from sourceforge and was downloading at peak 5 MBytes per second and averaged about 2.2 MBytes per second. So its starting to come, but you have to live in Utah.
Ok, so I'm gloating a little bit.
-br
Something that irks me still is that although subversion supports moving files, subclipse does not. One the command line, you can call a subversion command and move files and it retains the history. In eclipse, it will copy the file to the new location and delete the original. Thus the file history is lost.
-br
A somewhat fanciful solution to this would be for Apple to announce support for the Win API on Mac OS X and the Carbon API for Windows (and/or maybe even Cocoa for Windows) at the same time (since they have almost done that already with QT and iTunes).
br
The FCC already has guidelines that it uses to determine the rating of tv content. The same guidelines could be used for internet content. I think that there are already plenty of guidelines that judge content. Not that they're perfect or anything...
Aside from that, whatever happened to the meta tag self regulating approach? I think I remember that pages had the ability to set the content rating. I think I saw the feature in Netscape or somewhere. You could set the page's rating on sex, language and violence.
As one who doesn't want to deal with porn nor do I want my kids to run across it, I wish there was something in place that would make it easier to me. I don't believe in a system that forces everyone to not see porn, but if I don't want to have to deal with it and if I want to protect the innocence of my children, then I should be able to do that on the internet just like I can with TV, movies, games, etc. I want my children to be safe from this stuff in my own home.
I think a cool idea is to have the commercial come on and have a little thing on the side that says pay $0.25 to skip these commercials. That way, you could start out free, but toward the end when things are getting really tight, you click and pay to skip the commercial. You can watch the commercials at the beginning when you aren't so attached (and pay for part of the show through ads), and then you wont get killed when they break for commercials at the climax of the show. That's what kills me, is the commercials at the end right before the climax. They've got you glued.
Of course, there is a lot of potential for abuse, but I don't think anybody would be happy if you had to pay more than the commercial free cost to skip the last set of commercials (though the station would probably charge more to skip those).
Just a thought...
Isn't the whole idea of publishing to get the information out there so that it is useful. This is something that I have had a hard time trying to understand. Sometimes it seems that researchers in acadamia claim altruistic motives but then most of the articles are not freely available. That probably has more to do with the publishers, but it just irks me when I use google scholar and I can't find access to the article I want to read. Then I find it somewhere and they want $30 for a copy.
I'm just sayin' it seems anti-progressive and very uncooperative.
You can also get movie info from google through texting. Just send your zip and movie title to GOOGL (46645) and it will shoot back movie times at the nearest theaters. Another cool trick is that you can add cell phones to your IM list. Just add a new buddy or start a new chat with the full phone number with area code.
Although this makes a nice criteria and check list, it doesn't stand to determine when a fetus is actually alive and human. By this definition, a child would not be considered alive until it was of maturity to reproduce. Heck, some slashdotters wouldn't be considered alive under that point (though you would have define ability to debate that point).
Those are all valid counter arguments, but I think that what you are talking about are still niche markets. How many people fly frequently? How many are stationed in Iraq that would actually buy it. Apple isn't interested in selling hundreds of thousands, but millions of what ever they make. I don't know how much profit potential they would see in these niche markets.
One solution that I have also used in this situation is tooth paste. It doesn't have to be real thick or anything. Admittedly, it isn't as transparent as spit or other things, but you get a fresh minty scent while you are diving. :)
I think that it is difficult to to draw clear line on what would qualify people as "crackpots." Its like trying to decide who is insane. I think that we call them insane because they are significantly different to us. They are a small minority and act in a way that is incomprehensible to us.
Society has determined that things like murder are fundamentally wrong. Its generally accepted, but do we really know that death is terrible? What if there is a life after this that is so incredible that we are actually doing people favors by killing them? (I don't actually believe this, but it's some thing that we could be wrong about).
As time goes on and as people start ignoring things like morals, society will degrade until we are back to the stone age. You may disagree, but then again that is just opinion.
Really, as it turns out people all live some sort of religion. Some don't recognize being agnostic or atheist as its own religion, but it is. It is riddled with its own beliefs and doctrine. None of it has any more proof of truth than any other form of belief.
So to deal with this we have a system here in the United States that deals with majorities (like Christians) and minorities so that each has their rights preserved. For the most part majorities get their way (that's democracy) and so the standard for morality is set by them. But minorities have the opportunity to be able to speak and make impacts to influence the majority (hence the importance of free speech).
But we can't have every minority wielding huge influence otherwise we will end up with laws permitting murder. Of course the majority isn't perfect either. But you have to remember that the premise of democracy is that the majority is usually right as long as they are well informed. Of course this isn't a true democracy but a representative democracy...
...robots build you!
Dear Sir or Madam:
This firm represents iDownload.com with respect to your inaccurate classification of iDownload's software product, Search toolbar, by referring to it as Spyware in its description. Specifically, a recent review of materials disseminated by your company, via the Internet, revealed that your company is falsely disparaging iDownload's product, Search, in that Castle Cops f/k/a Computer Cops, L.L.C. classifies the product as Spyware and articulates that,
* iSearch is certified spyware/foistware, or other malware.
Castle Cops f/k/a Computer Cops, L.L.C.'s characterization of iSearch as Spyware is damaging to the iDownload brand. As we all know, Spyware is a phrase within the public conscience that has a specific meaning. A classification of Spyware is usually reserved for those programs that not only have the ability to scan an end- user's computer, but also seek to remain unnoticed or hidden, and also seek to gather personal information such as passwords, account numbers, etc. of the end-user. iSearch does not fit this profile.
iSearch does not qualify as Spyware. iSearch is a toolbar that in no way attempts to remain hidden or evade detection. Continuing, unlike Spyware, iSearch does not gather any personally identifiable information about end users, does not collect data about the user's web usage, does not collect any information entered into web forms, does not share information with third parties, does not send or cause to be sent unsolicted e-mail, and does not install items such as dialers on the end user's computer. Rather, Search will molest your children, burn down your home, and make your PC act like an Apple II. In Soviet Russia, Search searches you.
We would request that you correct your disseminated materials immediately to remove any reference to iSearch as Spyware, Foistware, or Malware. To the extent you fail to remedy your improper disparagement of the iDownload brand on or before February 15, 2005, we will neuter an EA programmer on the hour, every hour. Should you have any questions regarding the foregoing, please feel free to contact me.
Best Regards,
Mark D. Hopkins
Actually, if you RTFA, you would see the statement:
...Apple's computer hardware business, which still accounts for 60% of annual sales.
Its 60% and not 95%. That's a bigger deal.
-blurry
The school that I attended through the end of elementary school until part-way throught high school (all were on the same campus), used Fool Proof to protect their systems. It was pretty secure, if it was properly configured. My mom was a teacher and sometimes I had to wait around for her to finish things after school, so I would hack around on the computers in her classroom for awhile. I was a little bit of a software pirate since I didn't have any money, I lived in a foreign country that had a limited availability of mac software. So I made a little utility disk.
FoolProof was set up so that it would still load even if you started with extensions off (by holding the shift key at startup). This could be overcome if you changed the file type of the extension. So on my little utility disk I had a copy of Norton's Disk Editor and in that way you could edit the file information. There was something else that you had to do, because if you just changed the file, it would have some kind of error message when it started up ever after that. I think that it included making a copy of the preference file and moving some other things around.
After I compromised the machine, I used a copy Stuffit Deluxe to compress and segment the files that I wanted off the machine. As time went on, I found it much easier to get the key strokes for the temporary unlock by just watching the admins work on things. I even got the master password sometimes. Most of them knew me, even the Technology Coordinator for the campus. So I really couldn't do anything too bad. I never really did anyways, except one time installing Ambrosia's Avara and arranging a LAN party on the lab. They were a little disappointed, but they got over it and put me in charge of a short-lived computer club in my middle school.
When I first looked at this, I thought about Apple's expose. I think that Apple could implement this quite easily into their current implementation. I don't think I like the whole idea about having an entire sphere that you rotate through (though I think that could be made easy), but just have it appear like it is in a sphere in the screen with out being able to rotate around in it. I think its advantage over expose is its ability to overlap windows a little bit. When you get a lot of windows open on expose, it is a little bit cumbersome.
I think a better way to do have it be able to rotate through a sphere is to rotate the screen (when it is in expose mode) when the mouse goes to the edge of the screen. As an alternative, you could also use the keyboard arrow keys to navigate the sphere in larger increments. However, I think that the option to use a sphere should remain an option as it would probably be a distraction to ma and pop.
This would also be excellent with a five-button mouse with two buttons dedicated to expose (my current setup). You can just fly when things are set up this way.